When I think back on those next two months, my memory has a soft-focus glow, not boom-chicka-wow-wow so much as that sheen scenes get in films when the director’s trying to prove that the snippet of time they’re showing in a flashback was simply wonderful, uncomplicatedly divine, the sort of place you’d kill to go back to.
Now there wasn’t a damn thing about that situation that you could label uncomplicated, but sweet flipping hell, was it divine. Lying awake at night, whispering and kissing. Sneaking hard hand-squeezes under the table in art therapy. Writing little notes and leaving them places—folded between the pages of a book, or tucked in a dresser drawer—for each other to find. (I still have them all, stashed in the front pocket of my old groups binder. My favorite is a dialogue between us. Clare: Want to buy short dress this weekend. After Mum & Dad leave. Bad idea? Me: Oh. Fuck. No. Will buy for you!!!)
And I did, with the social services allowance Francesca made sure I still received, next chance we got to go the shops on ADL training. Fitted little cherry-colored number with black grommets, femme but punky, paired with clunky-soled Mary Janes and black patterned tights. Best purchase of my life, I’m telling you. Not just because it was hot as fucking Hades, but because of the way Clare walked—bolder and brighter and unashamed—when she had it on.
She wore it the Saturday Miss took us out to lunch on an afternoon pass. We squished into the restaurant’s booth, Miss on one side, Clare and I on the other, aiming for the perfect amount of space between: not so much we looked cross, not so little we’d give it away.
While we waited for our steak plates, Miss asked us heaps of chatty questions: Were we still required to interrogate pieces of card stock? Was it still all Radio Enya, all the time? How about those A-levels, hmm?
I reached for the plate our server handed me. “No, no, and no.”
She shook her head. “Les . . .”
“I’m busy, Miss,” I said, picking up my knife. “This staying-sane gig is a full-time job.”
A wry, conciliatory grimace. “Can’t exactly argue with that.”
“Well, then it’s my turn for Twenty Questions,” I said. “They replace me at school yet?”
“You’re irreplaceable.” She put up a hand. “And yes, I know what you meant, and no, they have not.”
Whew. “How’s your husband?”
“Busy doing ice sculptures for the Moscow-on-Thames crowd.”
“My baby?” Her face did the melt. “He turned eighteen last week.”
“Off to university soon, I reckon.”
Miss beamed. “Art history at Oxford in the fall.”
Of course. I stared down at the smudgy tabletop, my eyes smarting, my chest cramping with a sudden pang of yearning: to be more than a day-tripper in achievement country, to accomplish something concrete and easily validated rather than merely refrain from doing something fucked up. (Which, yes, was and is a major achievement, but at the time I didn’t think of it like that. Didn’t even want to. I wanted an acceptance letter I could hold up, wave under everyone’s noses. Make them impressed. Bask in the congratulations. Prove intellect was as equally strong a force in my brain as unrest.)
Beneath the table, I felt Clare’s hand rest soothingly on my knee, rubbing it. I looked over at her. Watch out, my gaze said. And then: Thank you.
Across from us, Miss was still smiling, but in a more subdued way now, wrapped in the shawl of her own nostalgia. “Want to see a picture?”
“Please,” Clare said. Bless her, my girl, so eager.
I didn’t really care to, but no way was I shooting Miss down, so I gave a polite nod and dutifully opened the small black leather folio she passed over.
“Ooh, wedding!” I shrieked in spite of myself when I spied the picture of her in her velvet dress, standing next to a tuxedoed fortyish man with hair dark as hers and a smoldery, solemn expression.
“He always this broody-looking?” I asked, holding up the photo.
Miss laughed. “Just having a Russian moment.”
Clare slid closer to me. “Flip to the next one.”
We paged through, weirdly giddy, hungry for glimpses of a life utterly unlike our own. Our forearms brushed. Our hands touched.
“You have dogs!” Clare squealed, pointing to a pair of long-haired dachshunds. One black, one red, curled up on a couch together, bored and languid.
“The hellhounds,” Miss said. “Molly and Leopold.”
On the next page, there was her boy, six feet tall and towheaded, captured in a doorway with one hand in his hair and a bottle of Guinness in the other, laughing. His ease so effortless it made me want to smack him.
“Girls completely lose the plot over him, I’ll bet,” Clare said.
“Oh, you have no idea,” Miss said.
“Not a player, is he?” I asked.
“Would you be one, with me to answer to?” She laughed and reached over to take the album from Clare, her thumb brushing her son’s cheek, leaving a glossy imprint. “Nah, Curran’s a dream. Total sweetheart.”
She redid the album’s clasp and tucked it in her purse. “Will we be needing dessert, you think?”
“Just the loo right now,” Clare said.
I got up to let her out of the booth, careful not to touch her, not even with a jostle. After I’d sat back down, Miss took a sip of her water, then set her glass down with a decisive thunk.
“You two,” she said, “couldn’t be any more adorable together if you tried.”
My mouth fell open, same as it had the first time I saw Clare in The Dress. “How did you—”
“Forty years of accrued intuition, darlin’.”
Should have figured.
“I—I wasn’t looking to,” I said, staring down at the tabletop again. “It just . . . she just . . . happened.”
“Best ones always do,” Miss said.
“So no . . . no lecture?”
Miss leaned forward and put her hand over mine.
“Lesley,” she said, “I’m in no position to judge anyone else’s hard-won happiness. Least of all yours.”
“You won’t tell, will you?”
“Why would I?”
“Because I’m—”
“Playing fast and loose with the rules? Taking some risks? Yet another thing I’ve got no room to judge on.” She leaned back again, tucking her hair behind her ear. “Look, if you were adult enough to sign yourself into the hospital, you’re adult enough to make your own decisions about how much romantic adventure you’re up for.”
“Quite a lot,” I said, grinning, as Clare came back towards us.
When she sat down in the booth, I slid up close and draped my arm around her. She stiffened, glancing from me to Miss, then back again.
Miss gave her a small smile. “No need to keep up the charade on my account, Clare. Just promise me you’ll be careful, all right?”
In the photograph she took of us that day, Clare and I are pressed up against the side of her car, our arms wrapped round each other. Clare’s grinning, bright-mouthed, facing the camera straight on, while I keep my head ducked, my own lips doing a Mona Lisa smile as they skim a wayward lock of her swept-up hair. The delectable flesh of her upper arm peeks out from the dress’s short sleeves, squishy and soft in its reach across the plain baggy T-shirt concealing my chest. I look hardened but happy, my stance slouchy in my cargo trousers, my love-struck eyes, all shine, stuck fast upon her.
It’s the only memento of us I have, save for our binder notes and the proclamations they wrote about us in my chart after. Even back then, crowded round Miss for a look, our heads bent over the teeny view screen of her phone’s camera, we craved that proof, like graffiti: Lesley and Clare were here.
“Oh,” Clare breathed. “You’ve got to make us a copy.”
Later, Miss would get me one. Terrible print quality, even for a mobile snap, but I still keep it in a frame. I’d send a copy to Clare, too, if I knew where she was. Which of course begs the question: Does she even want to remember me? Haven’t got room to ponder that one, not hardly, not now, so I content myself with remembering: her arm across my chest, my arm around her waist. Dark hair, pale cheeks, mixed-state gray sky.
• • •
Which is not to say, of course, that it was all Smartie-crapping unicorns and nibbled earlobes. ’Cause it wasn’t. ’Cause it was hard.
Hard watching her parents show up and having to pretend I was the friendly roommate, nothing more, all the while wanting to throw it down, to shout: You people are deluded asshats, and I’m madly in love with your daughter.
Hard counting the days till May, nail-biting our way through the calendar, aching for us both to have autonomy.
Hard setting alarms on our watches at night for a quarter till midnight, reluctant and drowsy, sliding up and out into the cold air, into the empty bed opposite.
Hard (if also, let’s be honest here, a little exciting) to have to press my hand over her mouth so Amal or Miranda or whoever was on night shift wouldn’t hear.
And the hardest, the absolute hardest: that I wouldn’t let her in.
Wasn’t about wanting to be in control of her; it was just about wanting one hundred percent control over me. Which she always let me have.
Still, for all her acquiescence, I knew she ached for things to be different. You’d never guess it from the demure front she put on, but my Clare was fierce. “Don’t knock it till you’ve tried it, baby,” she’d murmur, her eyes all wicked-glinty behind those glasses, her mind full of naughty ideas I knew she was dying to test out on me. And I’d shake my head mournfully and slide back on my bed, watching her eyes turn plaintive, then dejected. I’d have been in heaven till 11:45 alarm call, if only I’d allowed myself to open up. But I couldn’t.
“You’re quite invested in avoiding feeling vulnerable, aren’t you?” Bethan asked me once, crossing and uncrossing her mulberry-stockinged legs.
I thought of the wind-sharp slap of shocked embodiment that hit me each time the crotch of my knickers went damp. Of the way every muscle in me tensed, not with arousal but with greyhound alertness, whenever Clare shyly attempted to lean over me and pin my hands down or slide her knuckles inside my trousers.
“No idea what the fuck you’re talking about,” I said. Which, as Bethan was quick to note, proved her point precisely.
“All right, then,” I said. “So I’m a closed trap, a walled fortress. Does that mean I’m never going to be able to have a proper relationship?” (Said earnestly, as if I’d never shared so much as a chaste kiss, much less a star-crossed ELOPEMENT RISK love affair.)
“Not necessarily,” Bethan said. “It’s just going to take some time whilst you unknot all these issues.”
Fuck that fuck that fucking fuck that. I didn’t have time to spare, and the only things I wanted to unknot were my belt buckle and Clare’s plait.
And so, the night after Miss’s March visit, I decided I would give it a go.
Things started out all right, our usual tangle, mouth arms legs, me still in my yoga pajamas. When her fingers tugged cheekily against my waistband, I didn’t stop them. Clare glanced at me, one eyebrow raised in an expression equal parts quizzical and sexy.
“Yeah?” she said, her mouth against my ear.
“Yeah,” I said, my voice hoarse. To her it probably sounded husky with excitement, but in reality I was terrified.
She slipped her fingers into the space between the stretchy trouser fabric and my knickers. I held my breath. My hips stayed stiff.
“Kiss me,” I said, hoping that would distract me from the goings-on down below.
Her mouth sank into mine, my tongue meeting hers, moving while she moved, familiar safe dance, soothing enough to let me let her stroke with her fingertips. Suffused, swollen twitch. Just relax, love, I told myself, as if I were one of those medics who’d picked me up off the floor of the girls’ toilets and strapped me on their trolley.
“Mmm,” Clare hummed in my throat, as she inched her fingers back up to my waistband and then inside my knickers. Clumsy, fumbling hand, same as mine had been the first time I’d done for her. Knuckles twining through dense fronds of hair. Ticklish.
I pulled back for air. Laughed a little. Tinny, tremory. Felt good to make noise, break the awkwardness into mosaic pieces of sound.
“Sorry,” she said under her breath.
“It’s cool,” I said, even though I had no idea whether it was or not. My body in limbo, dangerously close to dissociation.
Clare slid her hand down farther. Jerky, inept motion. Abrasive and dry. Not like she had much to work with, though, seeing how tightly I was holding myself together.
“You know,” she said, “this would work a lot better if you—”
“Okay.” Still freaking big-time, but hell if I was going to let her see.
Swift and assured, her hands moved to help me out of my clothes, but I stopped them. Couldn’t help it. I wanted—no, needed—this part on my terms.
I peeled the trousers off, leaving them in a wad close by. Snuggled up closer to her.
“Sorry I’m so slow,” I said. “Assess-and-adjust period, and all that.”
She laughed. Gave me a grin. Licked her index finger.
My legs shifted, their upper thighs opening just a touch. I was rocking some granny knickers, their elastic frayed enough to make them quite loose, so her hand worked its way in and down easily now.
Her voice at my ear was elated and breathy. “Oh my God, you’ve no idea how much I’ve—”
Shut up. Just kiss me.
Mmmph. The hum tinged with hard breathless swallow this time. Her moist finger finding exactly what it was looking for, tracing swirly little circles, spirals almost. Curving in on themselves, round round round, endless.
My legs fell open. My mind curled to the ceiling. Wisp of smoke, pigtail, silky nylon end of that funfair balloon. Float, bob, float.
A sucking sound, slick. Wet fingers? No, no, no. Water gurgling down a drain? Maybe. That’s better. Closer. Seaside? Yeah, down Margate. Old soothing memory. Carousel, candyfloss, him carrying me on his shoulders, not holding me by the hair. Wasn’t more than a few seconds before I was back on the ceiling, going round round round, riding a dark horse, licking pink nothing.
And then, jerking down to find myself sprawled on my back, my dislocated arousal making a moist sound like boots squished through mud in time to the rhythm—dive, retreat—of her fingers, Jesus flipping Christ, her beautiful broad fingers that needed to get the fuck out of me, and then I was sitting up, shaking, rocking, babbling that old litany of childlike protest: Nonononono.
“Lesley?” Tiny voice. Hesitant hand on my spine.
Whimper, rock, whimper.
Her tone shaky, scared now. “Honey?”
I gave Clare a skittish glance. “C-cold.”
“Here. Oh, here.” She gathered up my cast-off underwear and yoga trousers. “You want me to—”
I shook my head furiously. Scrambled to put my clothes back on. Huddled with my back to her, up against the wall.
“I’m s-sorry.” Even with my head turned, I could tell from the break in her syllables that she was on the verge of crying.
I rolled over to face her, my hands locked protectively between my knees as I watched her wipe her drippy nose.
“I should have known,” she sniffled. “But I just thought you were spaced out from enjoying it.”
“Were you?”
“Enjoying it?” She frowned. “Well, yeah, till I realized what I’d done.”
“Clare,” I said, freeing one hand to touch her arm. “It’s not your fault.”
“I know, but . . .” She looked away.
“Hey,” I said softly. “Come here.”
A skeptical glance. “You still want me, after that?”
“You still want me?”
In answer, she crawled over and drew me into her arms. “Soon as you graduate from trauma group,” she murmured, “I’m rocking your world.”
I cuddled my face against her chest. “Don’t talk about it. Too scary.”
Clare stroked the back of my neck with her damp fingers. “What shall we talk about, then?”
“What you’re making for dessert next time you’re on kitchen duty.”
“Ohh, that’s a good one.” She nestled her chin atop my freshly buzzed scalp. “I was thinking some bread pudding with chocolate shavings atop it. Not just any chocolate, either.”
“No?” My eyelids began to flicker, the drained post-panic sleep starting to overtake me.
She kissed the top of my head. “Nope. There’s a gourmet shop I saw in town last time Mum and Dad took me out. Super posh. You can get all these exotic-flavored chocolate bars, with the craziest stuff in them.”
I yawned. “Like what?”
“Chilies. Blueberries. Bacon.”
“Nasty.”
“Yeah, but you know which one wasn’t?”
“Mmm.”
“Lavender.” She whispered the word into my ear. “Could you imagine that, little lavender chocolate bread pudding? Wouldn’t that be ace?”
I nodded. “Or those poached pears you did last week. With the whipped cream.”
“Yesss. What do you want for your birthday dinner?”
I wiggled even closer, close as I could get, my bony hips pressed against her well-padded ones, my arms nestled round her waist. “Dunno. That’s like a month away.”
“Right, but I need to plan. Pesto tagliatelle? Chicken korma?”
I grinned into her nightdress. “Unicorn Smartie trifle.”
We both laughed. “No, really,” she said. “What do you want?”
Safety? Recovery? Five A-levels? Your mouth everywhere, I almost said, would have said, had I not already been spirited off to the land of unconscious oblivion, sedated as if I’d been doled out ten milligrams of Valium, lulled by her breath’s steady rise and fall.