The Poison Tree (11 page)

“There. Even
I
can’t lose it now. I’ll walk you to the Tube.”

There was nothing but twenty or so houses between Biba’s front door and the entrance to Highgate Tube station, but she managed to steer me into a café before I even realized that I had made a detour. Somehow she had got me to cross Archway Road without my noticing. She ordered two coffees, which we drank from polystyrene cups, sitting gingerly on rickety aluminum chairs that wore a patina of North London smog. The café was placed directly opposite another café, the Woodman pub, a bus stop, and the Archway Road entrance to the Tube station, and afforded a perfect opportunity for people watching.

“See that couple across the road?” said Biba, pointing to a middle-aged man and woman at the bus stop. They were kissing passionately like teenagers. His hands were in her graying hair, and her bag lolled open at her feet. The public display of affection was at odds with the tasteful and muted autumn colors of their clothing. “How long do you think they’ve been together?”

“They’re very new,” I said. “That’s not normal at their age.”

“They’re having an affair,” she deduced.

“They’re not having a very discreet one, snogging at the forty-three bus stop,” I said.

“They’re not local,” she said authoritatively, as the couple made a hand-in-hand dash across three lanes of traffic and disappeared into another café a few doors down. “They only come up here because they don’t know anyone in this neighborhood.”

Some people say, “Oh, I can sit in a café for hours and watch the world go by,” but they don’t mean it: they’ve usually got a book on the go, or a paper on their lap, or these days, a cell phone in their hand. But Biba was like me: she could happily pass entire days people watching. I had never met anyone who shared my enthusiasm for the position of bystander before, although her capacity for imaginative conjecture impressed even me. Simon alone had noticed my voyeuristic tendencies and had remarked that if I had gone to a decent school as a child, someone would have pointed out to me that it was rude to stare, but that he supposed it was too late now. Claire, Emma, and Sarah had no need to people-watch: inseparable at all times, the other girls had never gone anywhere without one another and spent their time turning toward one another in a kind of never-ending triangle of reflected interest and affirmation. My parents had noticed my love of loitering in cafés but had identified it as a strange continental habit I had picked up, like bottled water. Of course, Biba and I had slightly different motivations. Mine were more by default than by design. If you are the kind of person other people tend not to notice, you naturally become a spectator. This tendency to voyeurism had been compounded by spending the last few years constantly showing up in new countries knowing nobody, hanging around at airports and in the strange corridors of foreign hostels and universities. Not only is it an excellent way to pass the time, it helps you grasp the idioms and gestures that make the difference between the schoolgirl linguist and the mother-tongue speaker.

Biba too observed with a view to imitation: her desire to be a better actress was not too far from the surface of anything she did, and passersby were potential case studies for future roles. I’d often catch her repeating phrases under her breath that “characters” had just uttered. She believed that any serious actress must also be a kind of anthropologist, but she was more of an anthrophile, with a genuine interest in other people that went beyond her desire to master voices and mannerisms. She was drawn not to those like herself, whose personalities were a full-frontal assault, but to those who slunk and skulked and made you work to guess their stories. I began to share her conviction that even the mousiest of passersby squirreled away colorful backstories, perhaps because her own past was a whirlpool of chaos and mystery.

By the time I finally pried myself away from the café and began my homeward journey, the unsupple muscles of my cheeks ached from hours of laughter. We had surmised about several other people, including the waitress from the café, three single men enjoying early pints in separate windows of the pub, a heavily pregnant woman carrying a pumpkin, and an elderly woman who, we decided, might have once been a nun but left the convent for a love affair that turned sour. To my delight, the couple from the bus stop appeared behind me on the descending escalator, bickering about whether it was quicker to get to London Bridge by Tube or bus. I gave up a silent prayer of thanks for my luck when they got on the same southbound train as me. They intrigued me: they kissed like illicit lovers but argued like an established couple. I sat opposite them, invisible, determined to solve the mystery of their relationship and save their story for Biba.

I let myself into an empty house that smelled of pine air freshener, a chemical tang as unlike a real pine forest as plastic is unlike wood. It was my turn to cook: the fridge was full of wine, two baskets of mushrooms, and a cellophane pillow of spinach. Two peeling shallots rolled together in the salad compartment, the only unpackaged food in the house. I checked the freezer: sure enough, there was an ice tray filled with frozen yellow blocks. Bottles of wine frequently went unfinished here, and Sarah, who could not bear waste and had done a cookery course before working as a chalet girl on her year abroad, would freeze them for use in the elaborate recipes she alone could be bothered to follow. I couldn’t imagine this happening in Queenswood Lane. There, bottles would be drained or, if not, filled with cigarette butts or used as candle-sticks while the inch of wine at the bottom clotted and turned to vinegar. I flexed the tray and four cubes shot out onto the counter, their crackled, bubbled, and uneven texture telling me that in their liquid lives they had been champagne. What kind of people save champagne for cooking, I wondered?

The gleaming tiled walls of the well-appointed kitchen seemed to lurch and squeeze in on me, giving me a sense of anger and claustrophobia. The checked-off cooking rotation sneered at me from the wall. This wasn’t what a student kitchen was supposed to look like—pine units with a dark brown work surface and integrated appliances. I wasn’t too far gone to recognize the surge of anger and panic the ice cubes triggered as entirely irrational, but this realization didn’t diminish it. I now knew I should have spent the last few years toughening up my immune system in a sprawling, crawling kitchen like the one in Biba’s basement. I was coming to the end of four years that were supposed to be about irresponsibility and squalor, and I had spent it living in the kind of house my parents still aspired to own.

When Sarah had first invited me to share this house, I had been so flattered and proud and excited. I soaked up the girls’ stories about childhood holidays in their parents’
gîtes
in Provence. I was thrilled that finally I was living with people who actually came from somewhere: big houses in villages with greens rather than houses surrounded by houses surrounded by houses surrounded by a ring road. Now that I had met Biba, with her crumbling urban castle and her chaotic glamour, my housemates seemed unbearably generic. They didn’t come from somewhere amazing at all. They just came from a different kind of nowhere from mine, one with more money and riding lessons. I was angry at myself for not realizing this sooner, and angry at them for not being Biba. I took my resentment out on the shallots, chopping them finer than any food processor. By the time the girls came home I was able to smile my usual hello to show that nothing had changed.

“The dirty stay-out is back!” said Emma, peering into my pan. “That looks gorgeous.”

Claire, with a glance down at her concave stomach, said, “Don’t add any Parmesan to mine, thanks, hon.”

Sarah laid out four wineglasses.

“Might as well have a glass of vino with dinner tonight, to celebrate,” she said.

I realized that they had taken their last exams today and immediately thought of the party I would have with the Capels when my own finals were out of the way.

“How did you get on?” I asked, adding risotto rice to the pan and stepping back from the buttery steam cloud that burst into my face.

“No idea,” said Emma. “And there’s no point worrying about it now. Besides, I’m more interested in hearing about your new man.” She flicked me on the leg with a dishtowel and I shrugged away from her, turning my attention back toward the pan to hide my blush.

At dinner, I drank faster than everyone else. It was a good wine, creamy and light, and perfect with risotto, but I couldn’t savor it. I had already got used to guzzling wine when I was around Biba, not just to keep up with her but also to stem the adrenaline that she injected into me. Now, drinking quickly dissolved a different kind of tension, that of boredom and resentment and that strange energy in the house that should have ended with the last exam. I regarded my old friends as though they were strangers and they looked at me with new eyes, too, so that I couldn’t help but wonder if I looked as foolish and giddy to them as I felt. After the first glass I felt relaxed enough to break the silence around the table.

“So,” I said, tipping back the glass a little too quickly and conscious of the trickle that ran down my chin. “Why do we need to have a house meeting? Is everything okay?” I addressed all three of them at once. Somehow I knew that it wasn’t a meeting so much as an interview, with the three of them forming a panel who knew more about the outcome than I did.

“We were just wondering,” said Sarah. “What are you going to do with your summer, Karen?”

As I didn’t know their agenda, there was no point in answering other than honestly.

“Oh. I’m not sure. I won’t be traveling this year, I don’t think.” (I can’t leave her.) “I’ve got to stay near college for my results, then probably apply for funding for a doctorate. Um, get work experience? I haven’t really decided.”

“The thing is . . .” Sarah looked down at her lap. “The thing is, Charlie’s dad has invested in this château near Perpignan and there’s work for us in the vineyard. Like a mini year abroad before we get proper careers. And he’s asked Claire and Emma and Rob and Dan too.”

In the short second I spent waiting for my name to be added to the list, I tried to think of a way to reject the offer. But excuses were not going to be necessary.

“And . . . God, this is really awkward,” said Sarah. Her hands fluttered and tapped on her glass without the remote control to busy them. “Simon’s going to be there too.” The girls shot a triangle of secret looks at each other. “With his new girlfriend. I’m really sorry. But he’s Charlie’s friend, and I haven’t really got much say in it. If it really bothers you . . .” They were all watching me now, waiting for my reaction.

“Oh,” I said, relieved and insulted at the same time. Then I forced a smile. “I don’t mind at all about Simon. Really, I don’t. You’re welcome to him.” I really
didn’t
mind about Simon, although I minded that they had known about this girlfriend, probably even while Simon and I were still a couple. The realization stung, and I understood that I still valued their friendship more than I had thought. “What’s her name?” I asked, as brightly as I could.

“Isabel,” said Claire. A smothering hush followed her name, during which I wondered where I would live while the others were in France.

“I suppose,” said Emma, “that you don’t mind about Simon having someone new now that you’ve got a new secret
lover
of your own.” She drew out the last syllable of the word
lover
and rolled the
r
. I appreciated her stab at humor, but couldn’t return it. She was near enough to the truth to summon the blood to my cheeks.

“I told you, it isn’t a new boyfriend.” I twirled my glass, wishing there was more to drink.

“There’s another thing,” Sarah went on. “You’d be doing me a favor if you stayed here for the summer. I mean, in the autumn when we come back I’m probably going to just move in here with Charlie or something, but you can have the house rent-free over the summer.” It was her way of apologizing, I knew. “And I know that Dad would be happy if there was someone keeping an eye on things.” One of Sarah’s father’s fixations was that people don’t burgle houses when people are in them, when of course they just do it far more violently.

The surge of happiness that welled up within me felt inappropriate and I tried to conceal it. A whole summer to come and go between here and Highgate, with no one to keep tabs on me and two months’ rent burning a hole in my pocket.

“Okay . . .” I agreed. “When are you off?”

“Yes, that’s the last thing,” said Sarah. “We’re off next week.”

“Next
week
!” I heard myself squeak. “But that’s before you’ve even got your results!” I said.

“You can open them for us, we’ll call you from France,” said Sarah.

“Yeah.” Emma spoke now. “You can tell us all about your First while we’re notching up our Two Twos and resigning ourselves to lives as au pairs or teachers.”

“Or we could just get married,” said Claire.

“Yes . . .” said Sarah.

They weren’t joking.

Emma usually disappeared from the kitchen when her name wasn’t on the list, and I knew that tonight’s eagerness to help me clean up was partly to cushion the blow of this evening’s news and part opportunity to interrogate me about the secret boyfriend she had fantasized into existence.

“Why don’t you want us to meet him?” she wheedled. Steam billowed from the dishwasher into her face, making her upturned collar wilt.

“Because he doesn’t exist!” I said.

“But you’re staying out all night and you’ve got that look,” said Emma. “That glow. You certainly never looked like that when you started going out with Simon.”

“Perhaps it’s the absence of Simon that’s given me the glow.”

“That’s understandable.” Emma laughed. “I have to say, I’m not looking forward to sharing a house with the sound of his voice all summer. You got off lightly there. So, this new guy. Why are you keeping him a secret? Is he married?”