Precocious (16 page)

‘Oh?’ is all I can manage. Mari brings me tea.

‘Dave,’ she says.

‘Oh.’

‘I think you should talk to him, doll. He’s in bits.’

I narrow my eyes.

‘I thought you were supposed to be on my side.’

‘It’s not about sides. Jesus. We’re not kids anymore.’

‘Ha!’

‘What does that mean?’

‘Nothing. Forget it.’

‘No, come on. Let’s have it.’ Mari holds her head at a new angle, the spark of a challenge in her eyes.

I’ve only ever seen Mari angry with me once before. It was a few years ago, we’d come back to her flat from a night out and got stoned. One minute we were laughing then, seemingly from nowhere, she accused me of enjoying ‘keeping her where she was’. I’d said something, it had been meant as a compliment; something about her never changing. She exploded. She said I used the fact that she was living in the same flat, that she had the same traits, the same friends, to make myself feel better about where I had got to in life. She said I acted superior.

I’d been confused: if anything, I envied her.

The next morning, she’d laughed it off: ‘Jesus, doll. I was out of it. I was talking out my backside. Don’t take it to heart.’ And with a hug, that had been the end of it.

But now here it is again, and for the first time, something unsettling in her face: disapproval. There’s a distance between us that is the size and shape of Dave. I imagine him coming here, sitting on this sofa, taking the cup of tea she’s bound to have offered. Maybe something stronger. Mari sympathising. Promising to talk to me.

I take a deep breath.

‘Alright. It’s just – it’s rich, that’s all. Coming from you.’ There’s more vitriol than I intended in the word
you
but I can’t take it back now.

‘What does that mean?’ she says again, voice rising.

‘You. You’re the one who’s … you’ve always led me into trouble. Egged me on. Revelled in it. Then when something like this happens, you judge me. Do you know what?’

‘What?’

‘You once accused me of wanting to keep you where you were. Keep you down, in some way.’ She’s nodding; it hasn’t been forgotten, then. ‘Well maybe you had it the wrong way around, Mari. Maybe
you’ve
wanted to keep
me
where I was. The boring little married friend.’

‘That’s not—’

‘Well, fuck it. I can’t stay married to keep
you
feeling wild.’

Mari flinches, but says nothing. I take a deep breath and say, a little more calmly, ‘You only live once. Remember that? That’s what you always used to say.’

‘Yes, but babe,’ she says, ‘you have your life now. Maybe this is it. Your one life, your one shot. Don’t throw it away.’

‘It’s done. It’s thrown. Too late.’

‘Just
talk
to him.’

‘And say what? Why? I can’t give him an instruction manual to make it all better. It was never really broken.’

‘So why are you where you are?’

Because I remembered
, I think.
I remembered what it was like to feel not just that nothing was wrong, but that everything was right
. For some reason I don’t feel able to say this out loud.

‘I don’t know. But I ought to work that out before I speak to Dave, don’t you think?’

Mari sighs, ‘Well, at least we agree on that.’

When I get up to leave, she stops me at the door with a hand on my arm.

‘There’s always a bed for you here, you know that, don’t you?’

‘Thanks for the offer,’ I say, ‘but I won’t need it.’ We hug, but something has shifted between us, and however hard we hold onto each other, we can’t put it back into place.

‘Dave’s been ringing. I have to talk to him at some point.’

You and I are at opposite ends of your sofa, legs entwined. You’re holding one of those huge wine glasses that seem to cover your whole face when you lift them. You look at me through your Rioja as though through a pool of blood, and say nothing.

‘Morgan … can I ask you something?’

‘Of course. I might not answer, but you can ask.’

‘Why can’t we talk about this stuff? About Dave, I mean. About what we’re both doing here.’

‘Who says we can’t? We can talk.’

‘So why don’t we?’

You think about this for a moment, take my bare feet in your hands, bring my toe up to your mouth, softly bite it.

‘I prefer it when it’s just about us. Don’t you?’

‘Of course, but …’

‘Aren’t you happy here?’

‘Yes,’ I say slowly, ‘but it doesn’t mean there aren’t things I miss.’

You drop my foot back into your lap, fold your arms.

‘Okay. So talk. What do you miss the most?’

I consider.

‘I miss Bella,’ I say truthfully.

‘The dog?’

‘The dog. God. Is that weird?’

‘Dunno,’ you shrug, ‘never saw the point of pets, myself. All that responsibility, you love them, look after them, then they die. Break your heart. Why do that to yourself?’

I draw my legs up towards me.

‘Are you serious?’

‘Damn right.’

‘Some people get a lot of enjoyment from their pets.’

‘Yeah, because they anthropomorphise them and project all these ridiculous emotions onto them that they can’t possibly feel because, guess what, they’re just animals. But no, they can’t just treat them as animals, they have to act like they’re their children or something.’

‘Okay, while we’re on that,’ I take a deep breath, ‘what about children?’

‘What about them?’

‘Well, you could say that about children. I mean, God forbid they should die before you, but even if they don’t, they’ll probably cause you loads of heartache. But people still have them, don’t they? Millions of people.’ I think back to that first rainy night in the restaurant, the night that started all of this. ‘
Normal
people.’

‘Screw the normal people. Who wants to be normal?’

‘Well, not you, obviously.’

‘I’ve no interest in having children, if that’s what you’re getting at.’ You lean over to the coffee table, pick up a newspaper, untangling yourself from me in the process. ‘And from what you’ve told me, nor have you.’

‘I don’t know,’ I say quietly, ‘I mean, that’s what I told Dave, but … that was just easier than the truth.’ I want you to ask me to say more but you don’t. I go on anyway. ‘The truth is, you were the only person I ever wanted to … do that with. And I felt like that chance had come and gone.’

You throw down the newspaper.

‘We’re not going to go down that road, are we? What happened to not speaking about it again?’

‘Well, that was fifteen years ago. I thought maybe enough time had passed that I would be allowed to bring it up.’

‘What for?’

‘What do you mean, what for? I might want to talk about it. I’ve never … it’s difficult, keeping a thing like that to yourself.’

‘Best way if you ask me. Look, you make a decision and that’s that. You have to deal with it and move on. You can’t change it, and I don’t think you’d want to, so what’s the point in brooding?’

‘Brooding. Great choice of word.’

‘Fee, what’s this all about?’

‘I’ve been writing again.’

‘Well, that’s good.’

‘And … thinking. Remembering. Stuff about us. Me and you. Only, some of it’s a bit shadowy, and maybe if we talked about it …’

‘The past, the past,’ you say irritably, putting down your wine glass. ‘All past. What’s the point?’

‘But the past is what makes us. It’s why we’re here.’

‘The past is nothing but smoke and mirrors. Made-up memories and unreliable stories. You said it yourself. Shadows. The only thing that’s real is right now.’

And you pull me towards you and that’s all the talking, for now.

There’s a strange nervousness, ringing someone you used to see every day and not knowing what to say. I look at the phone in my hand as though it’s a bomb about to go off.

Dave and I rarely spoke on the phone – why would we? We were only ever apart with good reason, and when we did use the phone it was functional and often by text:

What do you want for dinner?

What time will you be home?

Can you just check I turned the iron off?

Phone calls are for people who live away: from a parent on the other side of the ring road, to the friend who moved to America. They’re not for the person whose warmth was still on the duvet when you crept back under it with your cup of tea to the comforting sound of them running the shower in the next room.

You don’t run out of things to talk about after years together; the things you talk about just change. I’ve used up all of my surprises, most of my stories, in the way everyone does: you gamble them all at the start, going all out to impress, maybe keeping one or two fascinating facts or funny anecdotes up your sleeve but more likely all your conversational cards are on the table in those first weeks and months. After all, you want to create the impression that this wit, this raconteur, will be a perfect first date/holiday companion/partner for life.

But suddenly we have a new topic: Us. Funny how couples only talk about Us when things are going really well, or really badly.

I’m assuming, of course, that Dave will want to talk about getting back together. After all, he’s in bits, Mari said.

I prepare my lines as though writing a play: editing and refining, discarding clichés and hyperbole with a critical eye. Does anyone even dare say ‘it’s not you, it’s me’ anymore? I smile in spite of myself. Dave always argued that clichés become so for a reason – because there is some truth in them.

But my lines leave me when I hear his voice. He doesn’t sound broken up. What was I expecting? Tears? I should’ve known better; this is Dave, he is tougher than he looks. I’ve only been gone a couple of weeks and yet there are things, important things, that I’m forgetting about him.

He’s loving, and generous, and open, but he’s also practical. He gets on with things. He won’t have taken time off work as I have, won’t have hit the gin bottle. He might be taking pills, I worry about that, wonder whether that’s why his voice sounds so calm, and want to ask him, but I won’t. He’ll still walk Bella every morning and night, and the thought of them crunching through the leaves together, him speaking in the soft voice he uses only for her, sends a small pain through me.

Living in the city can keep you removed from nature, its colour shrouded by the buildings and exhaust fumes, its sounds obliterated by police sirens, the incessant click of hurried heels on pavements, the raucous chatter of nighttime revellers. So the park, only a couple of streets away from our house, kept us anchored to the changing earth, and Bella gave us a reason to be there twice a day.

In the park, the seasons are bold and obvious, from April bursts of pale blossom to the rust-coloured carpets of autumn. The centre is marked by a war memorial fountain in which Bella habitually jumps and splashes.

‘How come,’ Dave used to laugh at her, ‘when I put you in the bath it’s like you’re
allergic
to water?’

I know how Bella, the fresh air and exercise and all the routine of looking after her, will have kept him from dissolving, so I shouldn’t be surprised he sounds like he’s coping.

But I should also remind myself that this isn’t exactly a social call: I’ve asked him not to contact me for a while, so he wouldn’t have, not even through Mari, unless it was important.

I thought I had all my defences prepared. That’s why I’m caught off guard when he says, ‘You had a visitor.’

Here it is. The second I stop anticipating it, of course, here it is. I hold my breath.

‘A girl. Alice somebody?’

Number three.

She went to my house. She saw my husband. Perhaps this is what helps me make the decision: the threat of two worlds colliding. I know I have to call her.

She asks me to go for coffee. What a civilised thing to do when you’re about to tear someone’s world apart.

This being the oh-so-cool Northern Quarter, it’s not actually a coffee shop but a tea shop, as this is the latest trend. It’s the kind of place you would absolutely hate: laden with ironic chintz, mismatched tablecloths and ‘shabby chic’ chipped-paint birdcages and picture frames. There are jars of different varieties of tea lined up on the counter, tied with spotty ribbons, and huge slabs of Victoria sponge and coffee cake. A smell of baking teases the back of the throat. A beaming girl in a gingham apron takes our money and cheerfully offers us a complimentary newspaper.

In here, every day is Sunday.

Alice perches on the edge of a sofa, the hard lines of her face incongruous among the cushions, but I choose a straight-backed, wooden chair and point it directly at her. I look at her coldly.

‘Go on then – say your piece.’

She takes such a deep breath that for an insane split-second I think she is going to burst into song. But the voice that comes out is low, and what she says is not what I expect.

‘It’s not me, really. It’s Dennis. He’s the one who thinks I should do this.’

Dennis is the boyfriend, it seems. I think about them laughing together behind the fountains.

‘I told him about Mr … about what happened, with …’ she straightens her back, ‘with
Henry
.’ She pronounces your name carefully, as though for the first time. It sounds foreign on her lips. ‘And he said I should report him.’

When she says the word ‘report’ she meets my eye, an unblinking challenge. I sit back, fold my arms, an attempt to keep my thundering heart in my chest.

‘And what is it he’s supposed to have done, exactly?’

She emits a brittle laugh.

‘I was fifteen. I thought I was ordinary, until somebody … until
he
convinced me otherwise.’

A cruel observation flashes across my mind:
she looks pretty ordinary to me
.

Her blonde hair is darker at the roots, the ends dry from too much bleach. She’s thinner than I am. Not athletic; she has the physique of the self-starved. Something about the hollowness of her cheeks, the shape of her collarbone. Her thinness is unnatural; she ought to be bigger. Her hands are constantly fluttering and I can see all of the bones in her wrist, like the way you can see a bird’s skeleton on the underside of its wing.