Precocious (28 page)

I close my eyes for a second and when I open them he is holding out an envelope.

‘What’s this?’

‘Something for you. Take it.’

‘Why?’ I say simply.

‘Because I didn’t know if I’d get to say what I wanted to say, or know how to. And,’ he smiles, ‘because I know you love letters.’

I open it, alone in the car. It’s only one page, Dave’s handwriting neat as a child’s. It looks as though he’s copied it from a book, three or four times until it was just right, but the words are all his:

Here are the things I miss:

The way you play with and smooth down your eyebrow when you’re bored, or nervous;

Your out of tune singing in the shower, especially when I catch you using a shampoo bottle as a microphone;

How you love to eat fish but if you get a whole one on your plate in a restaurant you have to cut the head off and cover it up ‘so it can’t look at you’;

Oh, and

You.

The school seems smaller, but it has the same smell, of disinfectant and central heating. And it’s harder to get into; I have to show the curly-haired receptionist two forms of photo ID, tell her my maiden name and have her look me up on the computer to confirm me as an alumnus before I get so much as a smile from her.

‘And who is it you’re here to see?’

‘Mrs Syms, please.’

‘Is she expecting you?’ Her hand hovers over the phone.

‘Um, no. But … she’ll be pleased to see me, I’m sure.’ I try my most winning smile.

The receptionist, dubious, looks me up and down, glances at the clock and makes a clucking sound with her tongue. Finally she sighs, ‘You might just catch her. She’ll be in her room. It’s—’

‘Up the stairs and on the left. I know. Thank you so much!’ I scuttle away before one of us has a change of heart.

I take the stairs with no words in my mouth. I had thought that by this point I would know exactly what I was going to say, but through the entire journey here my mind was resolutely empty. My palms feel clammy. I recall the one and only time I was ever summoned to the head’s office – I can’t even remember what for, talking in class, probably – and I feel the same weight in my legs, the same dread.

If she’s not there
, I tell myself,
I’ll leave it. It’s a sign. I’ll have tried, at least. I’ll sort this all out some other way.
This makes me feel better; I move quicker, turn left, and see a light on in Mrs Syms’s classroom.

She sits at her desk, head bowed over a laptop. I suppose they all have laptops these days, but she looks out of place in her teacher’s uniform of plaid skirt and polo neck, tiny glasses perched on her nose. She is squinting slightly. Just as she did that day in court, she looks old.

I open the door and, because I don’t know what to say, I cough.

Mrs Syms looks up with slightly narrowed eyes that say, ‘I recognise you, but …’, and a question mark of a frown. What does she see when the recognition flickers in her eyes: the fifteen-year-old me, gauche and talkative and precocious? Or does she vaguely recall my face from the court, from behind the pew-like bench; does she see the same scarf pulled around me, the same restless hands?

Is she trying in this moment to put the two ‘me’s together – to work out what my being here means?

Finally she says my name, seconds before I open my mouth to do the same.

‘Fiona,’ she says, her voice warm, a long emphasis on the ‘oh’, ‘how
are
you?’

We talk. The potted histories people give when recounting fourteen or fifteen years, condensing years into minutes, show what has been important to them. Or what they think it’s important for others to hear, which is not necessarily the same thing.

So I tell Mrs Syms about university; she’s delighted I studied English, always said I was a great reader, a great writer. In fact, as I recall I used to frustrate her; I was so good at putting together elegant and pithy arguments in my essays that I wasn’t as thorough on the facts as my classmates. But she could never mark me down. I always had the language to conceal lack of substance.

I tell her about my career, such as it is, and she kindly shows interest, and when I’m apologetic about not having ended up doing something cerebral, or something worthy, she makes comforting noises, pats my arm.

I tell her I’m married. If she notices I’m not wearing a ring, she doesn’t mention it.

‘Children?’ she asks, because this is what people ask when you’re married and over a certain age.

‘No, just a Labrador,’ I smile, which is how I always answer.

And now I know that what she wants to ask is: ‘why are you
really
here?’

I’m overwhelmed by a desire to ask about her, to delay the difficult things I have to say, of course, but also because being here, in this building, and being with Mrs Syms, brings back good memories. This place reminds me of a time when everything seemed simpler, and everything seemed possible.

I feel sorry that she’s spent most of her life being interested in others, working hard for them, putting her heart into it, before sending them off into the world, to never see most of them again, much less be thanked, or be asked once in a while: ‘how are
you
doing? What’s new these days in
your
life?’

This woman’s kindness, her genuine interest in me, me, one of thousands of children she’s taught yet one she remembers; this kindness fills me with sadness. She’s looking at me, still, in the way she did then, as though I’m full of promise.

Tears rush to my eyes, and I know when they spill I’ll be forced to tell her why I’m here. She hands me a tissue and waits.

Not for the first time this year, I realise that it only takes a few minutes to change everything in your life. Life hinges on these moments: the things you choose to say, or not say; nothing changes as a result of feelings alone, only of actions, and the reports you make to the outside world.

It’s been years since I went to confession at church, but the experience of it is suddenly bright in my memory: a matter of moments during which a whole gamut of emotions rattle through the heart; fear, remorse, relief. And best of all: the abdication, at least partially, of responsibility. The sense that now I’ve said it out loud, I’ve shared it, now someone else can deal with it. Someone else can do what needs to be done.

I find myself hugging Mrs Syms as though she were my mother, and sobbing into her neck.

‘There, there,’ her soothing voice, her nurse-like hands patting my back. ‘You’ve been hurt, I know. But it’s alright now.’

‘I’m not crying because I’m hurt,’ I tell her, ‘I’m crying because it’s over.’

In what I’m coming to think of as the ‘business end’ of the conversation, once the tears had been mopped up, my nose blown and mascara smudges wiped away, Mrs Syms told me she’d recognised me, that day in court. Hundreds, thousands of children, she said, but some faces, you remember. More than you’d think. She said she’d wondered why I was there but didn’t imagine I was with you. This made sense; we’d taken pains, on the advice of Imogen Cartwright, not to arrive or leave together.

I’m driving away from school, my hands unsteady on the wheel, driving where? Home, I suppose.

Mrs Syms, her kindly voice still in my ears: ‘You know I have to do something with this information you’re giving me, don’t you?’

‘I don’t want to … go to court, or anything,’ I’d said, ‘I don’t even want to see him. I can’t.’

‘Well, maybe a statement or something will be enough … do you have anything written down?’

‘Yes. Yes, I do.’

I have found making friends, as a grown-up, uncomfortable. I guess that’s why my two best friends have been the same since childhood. Well, youth. (When does childhood end and youth begin, anyway? There are markers for adulthood – at eighteen you’re mostly there, at twenty-one, definitely – but what about leaving childhood? Surely you’re not a child at seventeen – so when does it end? I’ve been thinking about it a lot since meeting Alice: ‘A child in the eyes of the law, Fiona,’ she’d said, and I can’t stop thinking about how I’d hated the way she said my name. The funny thing is, she’d looked like a child herself, with her tiny hands and make-up-free face.)

It’s harder, as a grown-up. Even at university I struggled a bit, and that’s a place where it seems everyone’s desperate to be your friend. Like another playground but with beer and flirting.

So to say I find myself wanting to befriend Alice seems strange, especially given the circumstances. But isn’t that how relationships are formed – when you feel a kinship with someone, when you find yourself wanting to see them again?

I know we won’t ever be friends, of course. But I also know I have to see her and I’m grateful when finally (because this isn’t the first time I’ve tried her number, not sure of what I would say if she picked up) she answers the phone with an exasperated, ‘What is it?’

‘I need to see you,’ I say, ‘just half an hour.’

‘Thanks for seeing me.’ We’re in a pub in Manchester and I realise it was a bad choice, too close to the Christmas markets, too crowded, too noisy. As much as I generally try to ignore Christmas, it can’t be avoided here: a huge inflatable Santa waved jauntily from the top of the town hall as I hurried past the throng of shoppers, wrapping my scarf around my neck, pulling it up, covering my mouth and nose against the biting cold.

‘How have you been?’ I ask, swirling my straw around my glass, ice clinking. It’s hot in the bar, the windows steamed, but Alice keeps her coat on.

‘Not great, actually,’ she says flatly. ‘Being branded a fantasist and a liar can put you on a real downer.’

I tell her I’ve left you and left no way back.

I tell her I’ve been to the school.

I tell her I wanted her to know all this but I don’t know why.

She doesn’t say much, just nods occasionally and murmurs the odd ‘okay’.

‘I hope you’ll be happy,’ I say finally.

‘Why?’

‘What?’

‘Why say that to me? You don’t know me.’ Her eyes glitter.

‘I know, but …’ I stare at the bottom of my glass and I’m relieved when she gets up to go.

‘I’m meeting Dennis,’ she announces, squinting at the hazy windows as though looking for him. ‘We’re buying a Christmas tree today.’

We squeeze through the revellers, the after-work crowd, and out onto the square.

‘Alice?’ I call as she starts to walk away; she looks around without turning her body. ‘One more thing.’

‘Yes?’

‘I’m sorry I didn’t believe you.’

She looks at me for a long time, then says, ‘You did believe me.’

Alone in the house, I’m claustrophobic. Itching eyes and nose, heavy head, everywhere too warm and not enough air. The blanket of central heating, the inherent insulation of being at home. Can’t move for … stuff. Just want silence, and space. I long for a white canvas, a blank page. Close my eyes and wish that when I open them again it will be the same, smooth blank space as behind my eyelids. Just colourless, blind space, occasional blobs of light drifting by but nothing that I have to look at, no accusing, loving, questioning, hurt, imploring, wistful, pathetic, angry, sad eyes looking at mine.

I open the windows but I’m afraid of the night creatures. Afraid of moths, especially, fluttering their dull hairy wings, drawing stupidly to the light, buzz, frizz, then flitting away. Absurdly afraid, since it’s winter. I hate things that fly. Dave thought I would like butterflies, though. He once took me to a bloody butterfly house. I couldn’t believe it. I screamed when one landed on me, and cried on the way home. How could he have taken me there?

‘But’ – he was perplexed – ‘they’re butterflies. They’re—’

‘What?’

‘They’re beautiful.’

‘They’re just pretty moths,’ I said.

I hate them but I could never catch one or kill one. Hope the dog eats it. But of course: Bella has gone with Dave. I used to joke that if we ever split up there would be a bitter custody battle over the dog. He has taken her out of our home, taken her to stay with my mother, said she would be too much for me, as though I’m frail or ill. ‘You know how boisterous she gets,’ he said.

I don’t even know where Dave’s staying: presumably
not
with my mother; presumably somewhere he can’t have a dog. I haven’t asked, and he hasn’t told me. Just said he’ll be back in a flash if I ask him.

If it’s dark they might not come in. I take off all my clothes, turn off all the lights. No, the other way around. Don’t want to look at my own body. Close the curtains, open the window. The sudden rush of air sprinkles cold bumps over my bare breasts. Shiver as my sweat turns cold.

Lie on my bed, staring at the window. The ghost of a missed child with me all the time now. A child that was never even a baby, just a collection of cells, that’s how you put it to make me feel better. But I still feel her, imagine soft kicks low down in my tummy; feel her newborn mouth tugging at my breast, feel her crawling and grasping around my heels. Feel her head on my shoulder as I carry her to bed.

The curtains waft, waving to the creatures of the night, beckoning. Moth. Vampire. Incubus. In you come.

I did exactly as I was told, from January to May. I came back to school and I studied and I played the part of a good girl. In class I kept my head down.

At first I looked for you all the time, made excuses to walk past your classroom and glance in, just to see you. But as the weeks passed it seemed as though it was you looking for me. I had my hair cut shorter. I started to wear glasses; this gave you an excuse, apparently, to stop me in the corridor. You did a little half-jog to catch up with me.

‘I like the glasses,’ you said. ‘You look clever.’

‘I am clever.’ You laughed at this.

‘That’s true. And the hair. You look nice.’

‘I am nice.’

‘Yes, you are. Lovely, in fact.’

I walked away.

On another occasion, I burst from the girls’ toilets surrounded by my ‘followers’ as you called them, in a mist of Dewberry perfume and cigarette smoke, and you were there.

‘Bloody hell, girls, you smell like jam,’ you said. Some of the others sniggered, because you’d sworn, I suppose. ‘Jam and old ashtrays.’ You looked at me and I held your stare but didn’t say anything.