When She Was Bad (22 page)

‘This is a word association game. We take it in turns to decide on a category, say “colour”, and then we go around the table saying which colour best sums up our neighbour and why. So I’d say, for example, “Rachel is red because she’s powerful and sexy.”’ He broke off to wink at Rachel. ‘Or you could choose sports, so I could say, I don’t know, “Charlie is snooker because he’s got a lot of balls.”’

Everyone laughed obligingly, though Amira suspected Will had made that joke many times before. She was aware of a tightness around the table, as if people were holding themselves in, muscles tensed, nerves stretched out like the wire cord they’d been balancing on earlier that day. The air between them all vibrated as if someone was blowing one of those whistles so high-pitched that only dogs could hear it.

‘This isn’t going to end well,’ sing-songed Charlie under his breath as he leaned across the table. Charlie was in a strange mood. He’d spent most of dinner looking down at his lap, texting – which was pretty rude, Amira thought. And even when he joined in with odds and ends of conversation, he seemed distracted, his eyes constantly drawn down to his phone. Though he was next to Sarah, he’d hardly said a word to her. He must feel shut out, Amira decided. Normally Charlie would have been the first person Sarah confided in.

‘Right.’ Will smiled. ‘I’m going to sit this one out as I haven’t had the chance to get to know you guys properly yet, but I want you to have fun. This is the chance for you to really think about each other’s qualities. Be creative and generous and don’t spend too long thinking about your answers. Spontaneity is key. Mark, as you’re
The Man
, why don’t you start. What category are you going to pick?’

Mark Hamilton looked startled under his tan. He was wearing a white shirt open at the collar and his Adam’s apple moved up and down like an air bubble in a straw.

‘Erm.’ Mark’s glance darted around wildly as if trying to locate inspiration in the space around him. His gaze fixed on the glass in front of him and his face dropped with relief.

‘Got it. Drinks!’

‘Great choice.’ Will nodded. ‘So let’s start with Paula. What drink would you say Mark was?’

Paula blinked and pulled her face inwards so the entire thing rested on the cushion of flesh under her chin.

‘Drink? Er . . .’ She looked around the table for help.

‘It doesn’t have to be clever, Paula. Just say the first thing that comes to mind. As long as it’s clean.’ Will chuckled to himself. Paula, who was anyway looking flustered, now turned the deep pink of farmed salmon.

Then, ‘Hot chocolate!’ she practically yelled. ‘Because he’s warm . . . and tasty.’

A roar of laughter went up around the table, genuine this time. Paula’s hand flew to her mouth as she realized what she’d said.

Will raised his own hand. ‘It’s fine, Paula. That’s the whole point of it – it’s supposed to be fun. Right, Charlie. If Paula was a drink, what would she be?’

‘G and T,’ said Charlie, and for a horrible moment Amira thought he was going to say something about her being colourless, but instead, he said something clever about her either being neat, or a tonic.

Amira’s mind was so busy whirring through the possibilities for Sarah that she didn’t hear what Sarah said about Charlie; however, she was aware of a polite murmur. Sarah was a Bloody Mary, she said – red and with a hidden kick. Amira ignored Sarah’s questioning sideways glance at that last description, concentrating on what Rachel was about to say about her. There was a sharp intake of breath when Rachel described Amira as Guinness – ‘Smooth and you have to wait ages for her.’ Amira realized that the others probably thought Rachel was having a go at her timekeeping, whereas she alone knew it was a comment on how long it had taken her to decide she was interested in Paula’s job.

Ewan predictably described Rachel as champagne – sparkling and expensive and very classy. As Will was sitting on his other side, the game skipped a seat and moved on to the person in the next chair. Chloe.

‘If Ewan was a drink . . .’ she began, and Amira could see just how how drunk the younger woman was. ‘If Ewan was a drink . . . he’d be whisky because he seems like a good idea when you’re drunk but he makes you feel like shit in the morning. Haha!’

She spluttered with laughter, as if this had been a spur-of-the-moment witticism, but Amira knew Chloe’s mind wasn’t quick enough to come up with something like that unless she’d given it a lot of thought. Well, if she’d been aiming to humiliate Ewan in front of Rachel she’d probably succeeded, judging by the latter’s set expression and Ewan’s undisguised fury.

‘Cool. Remember, guys, let’s keep it light and fun,’ said Will evenly.

Amira stared at Chloe, still finding it hard to believe she’d said what she’d said. It was so unlike her. Not just because it was clever, but also mean. Chloe could be sulky and stroppy, but this was the first time Amira had heard her say something so out and out bitchy. This thing with Ewan, whatever it was, must have hit her really hard. Amira felt a stab of anger towards him. Normally she liked Ewan. He fancied himself a bit of a jack-the-lad, and he’d never made a secret of his ambition. She was surprised he’d hung around as long as he had – she’d have expected him to be off climbing through the ranks by now.

Though they’d worked together for two years, Amira knew very little about him, except on a superficial level. But lots of people were like that. Private. As if giving things away about themselves might lend you some sort of power over them. She didn’t mind that, but she did mind him being cavalier with Chloe’s heart. Hearts were delicate. You couldn’t take them out and pound them like fillet steak, then pop them back in and expect everything to be the same as it was.

After the drinks round came flowers and then pets. Everyone was trying to be funny as if their standing within the company could be gauged by levels of laughter. Amira was surprised to find her adrenaline levels building as her turn approached, frantically trying to think of witty things to say about Sarah.

‘Faster,’ Will said. ‘These should be totally off the cuff.’

As they did a round of famous books, he speeded them up, clicking his fingers at each in turn so they blurted out the first things that came into their heads. On the next round, TV shows, Will changed the rules.

‘I’m going to mix it up a bit, so as we go round the table I’ll shout a name and you describe that person.
Go
.’

Amira’s heart was pounding as Will yelled, ‘Mark!’ at her. ‘The news,’ she said impetuously. ‘Because he’s authoritative and . . .’

‘Boring?’ Mark interjected when she hesitated, raising a laugh.

The next round was capital cities. She felt her stress levels rising ever higher as her turn came closer. While Sarah next to her splutteringly described Rachel as Copenhagen because she was ‘expensive, clean and organized’, Amira was casting a frantic eye around the table, trying to come up with witty one-liners, but her mind was blank. The two cities that had lodged in her head – New York and Paris had both been used. Panic rose up inside her as Will nodded in her direction and said, ‘Faster now,’ and then, ‘Paula.’

Amira’s gaze swung across the table towards the departmental deputy who was looking hot and uncomfortable in her voluminous beige top. ‘Montreal,’ she blurted out. Will gestured to her to hurry, clicking his fingers in rapid succession – snap, snap, snap – and without pausing to think, she added: ‘Because she’s big and a bit dull.’

There are some silences that start out as one thing and mutate gradually into quite another, as if the silence itself has caused a subtle shifting of tectonic plates beneath the earth. This was one such time, where what had begun as a pause, pregnant with soon-to-be-released laughter, changed to discomfort and finally, as the meaning of what had been said sunk in, to shock. Amira’s hand flew to her mouth.

‘Oh my God, Paula. I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean . . . It was just the first thing . . .’

‘It’s fine,’ said Paula, but her face had the set look of someone trying not to cry. Her surprisingly small fingers were gripping so tightly to the handle of her coffee cup that Amira could see the blue threads of her veins through the translucent skin of her plump wrists.

‘I wasn’t thinking.’

There was nothing Amira could say. No excuse. The words had come from a part of her she hadn’t even known was there. She’d always been so careful of other people’s feelings. Even when she was drunk she didn’t let rip like some did. But now something was pricking like the rough ends of dried grass at the edges of her mind. Times as a child when she’d got into a temper and said or done things she afterwards couldn’t remember, and would emerge from her bad mood as if from a dream to find her beloved father shaking his head with such sorrow in his moss-green eyes. ‘Oh, Amira,’ was all he’d needed to say in his lilting voice and she’d be instantly filled with shame – much as she was right now.

‘I’m sorry,’ she said again. But by now the others had moved on and someone else was talking and it seemed the moment had passed – until Rachel leaned in towards her, her perfume crawling into Amira’s nostrils full-bodied and overpowering.

‘Spot on,’ she whispered, and giggled in a way Amira found more disturbing than her usual frostiness. It was as if she’d borrowed the giggle from someone else, or stolen it.

‘Montreal was inspired!’

Rachel moved her hand and for a moment Amira thought she was raising it for a high five, but instead she touched her fingers to Amira’s dress where the fabric stretched tight over her ribs.

‘Nice frock,’ she murmured and Amira went rigid as Rachel’s knuckles brushed the underside of her breast, but were gone so quickly she thought afterwards she must have imagined it. She glanced up in time to see Paula turning her head and knew she’d been watching. She waited for Paula to look at her so she could mouth another apology, but the older woman kept her gaze averted.

I’m sorry
, Amira repeated inside her own head.

27
Anne

My house is a new build so everything is perfectly squared off. No alcoves or fireplaces or hidden places where cobwebs can build. No high ceilings to which the heat gravitates, leaving sofas and chairs exposed and icy, no gappy floorboards through which the wind can whistle on winter evenings. Everything in my house is grey or white or oatmeal, everything has a place. The surfaces are clean and clear, not cluttered with every manner of ornament and relic of everyday life – postcards, ticket stubs, receipts, photographs, candle stubs, light bulbs, felt pens, their lids long lost. My house is nothing like my mother’s.

Unlike her I live a life filled with purpose. I have a job that I take very seriously. I go out to dinner once a week with my daughter. I have friends. I even exercise. Every evening when I get back from work I put on jogging pants and do a three-mile circuit of the neighbourhood. Not exactly running but very brisk walking. I never cheat. I never allow myself a day off because it’s raining, or because I have a sore throat or a pile of essays to mark. I pull on my trainers and plug in my headphones and do my three miles. And then I come home and shower and change and then, and only then, I allow myself a beer or a glass of wine. Just the one, mind. I am the kind of person who believes in delayed and earned gratification because if I allowed myself to waver, if I cut myself some slack, who knows where I might end up. I might turn into my mother. I might turn into Noelle Egan.

For days after we’d been to see her in jail, her dead, blank eyes haunted my dreams. How did a mother do what she had done?

‘It could be acute Post Natal Depression Syndrome,’ Ed had suggested as we drove away from the prison building. ‘Left untreated, she would have had major problems bonding with the child, and might even have experienced strong hostility. The child is responsible for the death of the person she was before. The child has in a sense killed her. Or she could have experienced massive guilt feelings about her own inadequacy as a mother. She might have felt that sooner or later she would end up damaging the child, but by doing it first, she was somehow pre-empting her own worst self.’

I didn’t believe that’s what had happened to Noelle. Without Peter Egan’s influence, she might not have been antagonistic towards her baby, but she’d still have been indifferent. Of that I was convinced. Peter hadn’t had to change her mind, or even reinforce a course she’d already set upon. He’d just planted a seed in a void. My secret fear is that, deep inside, I’m just as emotionally lazy as Noelle Egan, just as open to corruption – wide and shallow as a Petri dish. Only my love for Shannon marks me out as different. That’s why I structure my life around book deadlines and departmental meetings and lectures and my weekly writing group and my twice-a-week swim. The more strictly I timetable, the less space I leave for the bacteria to thrive.

By the time we met with Laurie for the fourth time, it was common knowledge that Noelle was going to enter a plea of diminished responsibility, claiming that her husband had a Svengali-like hold over her. She was hoping to get a lesser sentence by turning state witness against Peter. He had refused to comment at all. Those who’d dealt with him said he considered himself above the normal rule of law. Meanwhile witnesses were emerging from his past. An ex-girlfriend he’d left with a metal plate in her cheekbone, a half-sister who claimed he’d always been the black sheep. No criminal record, just a string of people who would be very happy never to see him again.

Whatever the outcome of the legal case, it seemed certain both parents would be behind bars for a very long time, if not the rest of their lives. Laurie was now officially a ward of the state. Our recommendation on her future was critical. Was she so damaged that she needed intensive ongoing treatment, or did her best hope for a normal life lie in adoption somewhere well away from all this, where she could start again, forge new memories, forget about monstrous goings-on in dark cellars? Forget she had a brother.

‘I think maybe it’s time to start probing,’ Ed said when I arrived upstairs at the medical centre. ‘If we decide adoption is the best course for Laurie, time is of the essence.’