Something Only We Know (33 page)

She and I had begun to use these little excursions to talk, about all sorts. It must have been the relief of knowing I’d nearly lost her, but I suddenly felt as if all the old tensions
between us had dissolved away. Or perhaps it was just that I’d grown up. For the first time I was able to fill her in properly about the Owen and Chelle business, and she listened and was
cross on my behalf. ‘Don’t go back with him if you’re not sure,’ she told me. ‘You deserve someone who takes you as you are.’ ‘I am sure,’ I replied,
even though I wasn’t.

In turn she’d confided about a boy she dated in the early 1970s, who claimed she’d ‘never learn to drive’ and anyway, ‘women should stay off the roads’. He
didn’t believe in equal pay, either. ‘Why ever did you go out with him?’ I asked. She shrugged. ‘I was young. In those days opinions like his weren’t uncommon. It was
perfectly legal then to pay a woman a lower wage for doing the same job. When I worked on reception at Heaton’s garage, I did longer hours but I got less at the end of the week than the lad
who swept the floors. It wasn’t fair but you had to just get on with it.’ ‘I wouldn’t have,’ I said, ‘I’d have campaigned, I’d have made a
fuss.’ ‘I know you would,’ she said.

She talked about how she and Dad first got together, how sorry she’d felt for him because, at twenty, both his parents were already dead and he had to look after an ageing uncle. ‘He
needed taking care of himself,’ she said. She’d decided to marry him in a lay-by on the A49 at Peckforton, where his Morris Marina had broken down. He’d asked her to get a rag out
of the glove compartment and a ring box tumbled out onto her lap. At first he was mortified. He’d been planning the proposal for weeks, had a table booked at Lorenzo’s. ‘He was so
crestfallen, bless him,’ said Mum.

We reminisced about my childhood and Helen’s, and how impressed the teachers at my primary school had been with my reading, and how, in the infants, I’d had to go up to the junior
classrooms sometimes to get books which were appropriate for my level. She described how a ten-year-old Helen had cornered an injured fox in the playground (a story I already knew) and had stopped
the other children from throwing stones at it. For myself, I recalled the infant Christmas party where Mum had flu so my sister took me along, and we’d been late and had to sneak round the
rear of the building where, to my horror, we’d spotted Father Christmas coming out of the men’s staff toilets. ‘Think about it, though: even Santa has to wee,’ she’d
explained kindly.

On one of these post-heart-attack walks, a morning on which we’d witnessed a rabbit have the nearest squeak of its life under the wheels of a jeep, I plucked up courage to ask about the
anorexia. What was it like? How did she feel, looking back? I suppose I was trying to find out whether Hel was right, that Mum did believe it had been some kind of deliberate strategy.

‘It’s the worst thing I’ve ever been through,’ she admitted, glancing round as if we might be overheard, even though we were on a deserted road between fields.
‘There’s nothing,
nothing
as bad as your child fading in front of you. Feeling as if you can’t do anything, or you’re making it worse. Just agony. I’d suffer
a hundred heart attacks rather than it happen again. You see, when you’re a mum it’s your whole drive to nurture, so it’s the cruellest blow to have someone you love refuse food
in front of you. You search and search yourself for what you’ve done wrong as a parent. Was it because I dieted myself? Made her eat carrots even when I knew she hated them? Or because I
shouted at her for outgrowing her school skirt within a month? Or was it because I spoiled her, or put too much pressure on her to do well? Or because we didn’t teach her to stick up for
herself at school? Did we raise her to be too polite? There were a million ways I could have failed. I should have made her move schools, I should have tackled the bullying better. I know I should
never have talked about calories or my own weight in front of her.’

‘That’s mad. Loads of women diet and their kids end up fine. You can’t blame yourself for that. The anorexia was an illness, it wasn’t anyone’s fault.’

Mum’s face had gone tight. ‘I’ll tell you whose fault it was, if you really want to know. I curse her every night – that
awful girl.
Saskia
Fox-Lawrence.’

And at last this hidden part of the past came pouring out, hot and angry.

Saskia had not been a friend, as Hel claimed, but an enemy of the worst kind. She had spotted Hel was struggling at school and pretended she was on her side. Inveigled herself into Hel’s
life. Then she’d taken her over. Nagged her to get slimmer at first, set her weight-loss targets which became increasingly harsh, turned nasty if she missed them. As time went on, she
persuaded her to dodge meals and lie to her family, live a secret life. Had given her crazy exercise regimes to follow, some of which included getting up in the middle of the night. Called her
Useless and Crap-Head and The Blob. Actually used those names in front of her. Systematically destroyed the little self-esteem she had left. Yet the meaner Saskia had been, the more tightly my
sister had clung to her. The dynamic was twisted and powerful; it sounded like a true abusive relationship.

On and on my mother talked, unburdening herself. I listened with appalled fascination. ‘I don’t think I’ve ever hated anyone as much in my life as I hated that girl,’ she
finished. ‘It’s just as well she moved away or I don’t know what your dad would have done with her.’

‘My God. I had no idea. Why didn’t you tell me this before?’

She looked away. ‘Because I was ashamed.’

‘Of what?’

‘We should have worked out what was going on. I’m her mother, I should have picked it up. But
we
never saw this Saskia at all. They met in town or at school. And also our
routine was upside-down, there was a crisis every day. We had health professionals coming in and out, hospital appointments, and I was missing days off work, and Helen stopped talking to me. By the
time your dad and I understood what had been going on, Saskia had left the school and it was too late. The damage was done.’

Mum had paused by a farmer’s gate to rest then.

‘I do know I’m overanxious,’ she said. ‘I can’t help it. The bad time might be years ago, but to me it feels like yesterday. She tells me she’s better, and
she is better than she was, obviously, but she’s still not, she doesn’t—’

‘She doesn’t run in the same groove as the rest of us.’

‘No.’ Mum looked relieved. ‘You understand?’

‘I’m not sure I’d go that far.’ And I thought about how I’d caught Hel that very morning hiding her post under a magazine so I wouldn’t see it; how the week
before she’d slipped out into the garden to take some secret phone call. No, I would never understand the way she worked.

Afterwards Mum and I had walked slowly home, me picturing Hel as she’d been that night we nursed Pepper, when I’d naively believed she’d bared her soul to me. Saskia the
friend. Saskia the enemy. Still we were mired in lies and secrets. Would my sister ever be able to open her mouth and just speak the truth?

Someone thudding up the office stairs made Gerry and me look up from our PCs. The door burst open and in came a delivery man staggering under the weight of a monster bunch of flowers.

‘Is there a Rosa Heffer in here?’ he said from behind a bank of lilies.

Gerry pointed with his pen.

‘Cheers,’ said the man and carried his swaying burden across the carpet towards her desk.

‘Wow,’ I said, turning in my seat to stare after him. ‘Are those from Mr Lover-man? They must’ve cost an absolute bomb.’

‘Nah, not from him. Oh, I forgot, you missed the drama yesterday.’

‘I was out covering that demo in Frodsham till late. Why, what happened?’

‘You didn’t get to witness the dance of the dying swan.’

‘Eh?’

‘He’s finished with her, Rosa’s man-pal. Did it by text.’

‘What?’

‘I know, harsh. Alan went in to see her about four-ish to ask about photographs of the football stadium, and she’s sitting there in floods of tears. It’s all over.’ Gerry
pulled a heartbroken face.

‘Why, though? Do we know?’

‘No idea. I certainly shan’t be asking.’

I took a moment to process the development. Well, well. Rosa dumped. Rosa brought low, shaken out of her insufferable smugness and discarded, just like a common person. Served her right. Except,
to my surprise I found I actually felt sorry for her. The news seemed like another example of the meanness of fate. One more person floundering about with their dreams dashed. If glossy, confident
Rosa had come a cropper, what hope was there for the rest of us?

‘Bloody hell. So who are the flowers from?’ I asked, as the delivery man backed out, shutting her door carefully behind him. He had a deflated air about him. I guessed his reception
had not been as joyous as he’d been anticipating.

‘Dunno. Most likely the Malloys, they’ve been phoning and sending cards the whole week.’

Donny Malloy had ended up overall winner of Take The Mike, with his cheeky comedic charm. Despite a tendency to veer towards adult double-entendre, he’d impressed the judges with his
confidence, though the presence of his extensive and very vocal family in the audience probably helped too. I’d thought his mother was going to pass out with excitement. We’d had the St
John’s Ambulance on stand-by.

‘Yeah, they’ve been pretty grateful, haven’t they?’

‘I’ll say. It’s what Mrs Malloy’s lived her whole life for. And
you
made it happen. You. Who’s the real star here?’ Gerry made jazz hands at me.

For a moment I allowed myself to bask in his approval. The talent show had gone well overall, not counting some funny business with fake voting coupons in week eight.
The
Messenger
’s circulation had been significantly boosted, and four other newspapers in the group were interested in the idea. Rosa had concluded it was a ‘good job, Jen’.

I looked towards her office and saw, through the glass panel on the door, that she was sitting hunched right over, her brow resting on the desk top. That didn’t look right. ‘Think
she’s ill?’

He shrugged. ‘Do you wanna go see?’

‘Not especially.’ But somehow I couldn’t leave her there, forehead-down in her own pain.

I made my way over, trying not to catch the interest of Alan, and knocked very lightly.

‘Yes?’ came the peevish response.

I took it as permission to go in. Rosa was upright in her seat when I stepped across the threshold, but with a pink dent above her eyebrows. The magnificent bouquet sat in the corner, its
message card torn out and discarded on the floor. I wasn’t sure if she’d been crying but her make up was certainly blurry, her hair messy at the sides where it had slid free from the
clips. It felt slightly shameful to see her without her usual poise, almost as if I’d caught her on the toilet. I’d watched her over the past months doing her strange facial exercises
when she thought no one was looking, and practising smiles into the mirrored side of her pen pot. Stroking her parting into place, dabbing at her lipstick in a compact. Whoever the guy was, surgeon
or lawyer or big-shot banker, he’d obviously meant a hell of a lot to her. She’d really been in love.

‘I was wondering . . . if I could do anything?’ I ventured.

‘You can take those damn flowers away.’

‘And do what with them?’

‘
I
don’t know.’

‘Shall I bin them?’

‘Whatever you think.’

‘Can I – if you don’t want them, would it be OK to take them home to my mum?’

She shrugged. ‘Do what you like. I hope you’ve prepared adequately for this morning’s interview.’

‘Oh. Yeah, I have.’

At 10.30 I was scheduled to visit a Mr Luc Lambin, Canadian furniture designer to the stars, recently relocated to the Tallybridge area. He hadn’t given an interview for a while but
she’d managed to secure one, some deal struck in his cups over a fancy Chester Racecourse dinner.
The problem is, Jennifer,
she’d explained,
I can’t go myself because
I’m presenting certificates at Cestrian Academy and I’m the guest of honour. And Gerry has an appointment with the Mayor at twelve, and Alan’s got to cover that meeting of the
directors of Chester FC. But you should be capable of turning up at the studio and asking a few straightforward questions. There’s nothing contentious here. Just for God’s sake,
don’t do
anything to mess up
. There’s nothing like bolstering your employees’ confidence.

‘Well?’ Rosa was waiting.

‘Is there anything else I can do while I’m here? Anything to help, I mean? Only, you look upset.’ I hoped she’d catch the genuine sympathy in my voice. I didn’t
much like the woman, but we’re all sisters when it comes to being dumped. I could at least bring her a hot drink or do a chocolate run or lend her a clean hanky.

She dropped her face and looked at me from under her fringe, an unflattering angle that showed off the beginnings of jowls.

‘Yes. You can get out and leave me alone,’ she said.

I know when I’m beaten. I retrieved the ripped card, hoisted the bouquet and left her to it.

Afterwards, as I drove out of Chester, I found I couldn’t stop replaying the scene. Witnessing Rosa in that state had rattled me because she was supposed to be
invincible. Above your common-or-garden heartache. What had prompted the break-up? Had she fought, cajoled, begged? What answering forms of humiliation had he heaped upon her head? I was relieved I
hadn’t been in the office yesterday, when she was properly upset. The whole business, of course, made me think of Owen, and whether I’d been right to go back with him. In the end
he’d said everything about Chelle I’d needed to hear: that he could now see she was selfish and calculating, and he’d been a fool to believe her spin. He was truly penitent about
the things he’d said to me when we broke up. He loved me, he would try and make more time for me, and I could stay over whenever I wanted. So I ought to have been beside myself with joy. Yet
something still wasn’t sitting right. Three months ago I’d have given anything, anything to be his girlfriend again. But three months ago had been a very different place.