Three weeks after the wedding, Eleanor got a message from Amy, suggesting they meet for a coffee, just the two of them. Amy was her oldest friend, yet something about the suggestion felt novel: it had been years since Eleanor had seen her on her own. Usually, Amy and Dominic came round for dinner or they went to theirs or sometimes they went to a new restaurant together or met for brunch. They had more or less learnt to work as a four and although she missed winding, private, two-person conversations, she had started to like more formal, polite, abstract group discussions too. Sometimes it was more enjoyable to talk about what was in the news or music or house prices; you didn’t always have to get mired in the guts of life.
She tried to think back to the last time she’d seen Amy without Richard or Dominic. Amy had come to visit just after Isobel was born and they talked about careers and houses and whether Amy should have a baby too, keeping their conversation malleable, so they could mould it around the demands of Rosie and Isobel. Sometimes, Eleanor didn’t care if Amy was going to get a promotion and whether that would make life more difficult for Dominic, because none of it felt as vivid or urgent as keeping her children alive, and she only asked because she hated herself for not caring. Sometimes, they returned to an ancient fluid intimacy, only to be interrupted again, re-emerging miles apart.
She still enjoyed Amy’s company and she didn’t think about how it used to be that much, except when she saw schoolgirls on the bus, gasping with laughter, or two women in their twenties outside Dalston Junction station, holding hands and running and screaming. Then it came back with an ache and she missed the way it was: visceral and specific, dense with private jokes, secrets and sharp detail that only they would find telling or funny.
The idea of the meeting buoyed her for the rest of the day. It was startlingly easy: a few messages, getting Richard to agree to take the girls, and then they had a date for next Sunday. Amy even offered to come to a cafe near London Fields. Perhaps it had just been laziness that had let them slide apart. Perhaps Amy had missed her too.
Eleanor began to wonder if she could tell Amy about the house. At first, confiding in anyone was unthinkable: when she imagined herself saying the words – I think my house is making me ill – it sounded crazy. It would be disloyal to Richard. But now she knew other people thought there was something wrong with it too. The secret was getting closer to the surface, and it stuck at the back of her throat, ready to spill out. Sometimes, broken down and exhausted, she thought it might emerge in front of the wrong person – someone at work, a mother at nursery.
As soon as she left the house on Sunday, she felt lighter. The novelty of being alone made everything seem new. It was mid-March and the sun was out; she experimented with wearing a jacket instead of a coat. She left a little earlier than she needed to so she could walk past all the new shops that had opened, curious about the beautiful, useless things: vintage kimonos, oil lamps, coffee beans. Ceramics, earrings and cakes.
Amy was sitting outside the cafe, her face rosy under the peach awning, scrolling on her phone. Eleanor was struck by how ordinary she looked, in her mustard jumper, brogues and expensive glasses. Her hair colour had slowly mellowed over the years, from the peroxide that made the ends brittle and raw, to subtle honey highlights. Her jeans were dark and smart; these days, Eleanor could only see the small hole in her nose where the piercing had been if she was looking.
Seeing her provoked an unexpected surge of sadness, even though she knew that Amy was a woman in her mid-thirties who ran a charity combating human trafficking and she had a husband who worked for the Foreign Office and she sometimes flew business class. Of course, she no longer looked like a teenager, like the most exciting person Eleanor had ever met. And then Amy saw her and waved, delighted, and Eleanor recognized her smile and the happiness returned. She was away from the house, her headache was lifting, and even just ordering a coffee in this delightfully tiny cafe, which would have been impossible with a buggy, felt glorious. She sat down opposite Amy, the sun on her face, feeling charged and new.
‘It was such a lovely wedding,’ Eleanor said, folding the milk into her coffee.
‘Yeah, it was OK in the end, wasn’t it? I’m just glad it’s over. Honestly, I was this close to killing Dom’s mum.’
‘Did you not enjoy it?’
‘Oh, it was all right. We got through it, didn’t we? I just had to accept from the beginning that it was never going to be very me. I suppose that’s the whole point, isn’t it. “Compromise.”’
‘I wish I could go back to D staircase and tell you that you were going to get married in a church, with a veil, and your dad walking you up the aisle . . .’
‘To Dominic, more to the point! Jesus Christ, I would have slit my wrists.’
‘I can still hear you now: “He’s arrogant, Eleanor, he’s chauvinistic, he’s entitled . . .”’
‘Ha, maybe I was protesting too much. I don’t know though – he could be a real twat in those days.’
‘He was fine! A bit arrogant, maybe. I always thought you were too mean about him.’
Amy leaned back in her chair and pulled her hair back into a ponytail. ‘It was different with you and Richard though, wasn’t it? You always knew.’
Eleanor played with her spoon, not sure whether to just agree or say what she was thinking. ‘Well . . . Remember Wilton Street?’
‘Oh my God, I’d forgotten all about that! “I’m going to break up with him – honestly, Amy, this weekend, I’m going to do it.”’
They were laughing and Eleanor was suddenly giddy with honesty. It was delightful to be liberated from the usual fiction about their relationship. ‘At university! That’s so romantic!’ people said when she told them how she and Richard met and most of the time, she didn’t mind going along with the story: she knew its grooves and corners and she found her way around it effortlessly. It was only sometimes that she wanted to tell them it wasn’t like that. But all the words in the world were inadequate to describe this unique, private, flawed thing she and Richard had created. With Amy, there was no need for words; she’d been there.
‘Still,’ Amy said, ‘it’s not like I was that great when I was nineteen.’
‘You were pretty great, Amy.’
‘I was kind of self-righteous. And stupid. Whenever I look back on that time, I just feel like we were all . . . a bit unformed basically. Don’t you think? It was amazing in one way – everything being all intense and spiky and raw, but you have to start moulding yourself into the world a bit, don’t you? I mean, can you imagine you, me, Richard and Dom having brunch when we were nineteen? It just wouldn’t have happened.’
Eleanor felt intensely sad.
‘So, how are you anyway?’ Amy said.
Eleanor steadied herself. ‘Actually, I’m still not feeling so good.’
‘What, you mean the headache/sicky thing? God, Eleanor, it’s been months – you should go and see someone.’
‘I have. The doctors have done all sorts of tests. Apparently there’s nothing wrong with me.’
‘Couldn’t your mum recommend some magic herbal remedy?’
‘Oh, I tried all that too. Richard wants to go private, but we can’t really afford it. And also, I don’t think it would help.’
‘It’d be worth a go, wouldn’t it?’
Eleanor sat up straighter and put down her cup. ‘Amy, can I tell you something? I know how this sounds, OK? But I think it’s something to do with the house.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I think there’s something in the house that’s making me ill. I feel ill when I’m in the house and better when I’m outside it.’
‘What, like damp or something in the wiring or . . . ?’
‘I don’t know! I don’t know what it is! I’ve taken the house apart trying to find it, but I still don’t know. I’m still trying. I know it doesn’t make any sense. But it’s happening.’
Amy started to say something and then stopped, leaving her mouth half open. The expression was familiar: Eleanor knew that she wouldn’t like the thing that Amy was about to say, but that she was obliged to invite it in anyway. It could be infuriating, knowing someone so well.
‘What? What is it?’
‘Have you thought about seeing a psychotherapist?’
Eleanor sometimes envied and admired Amy’s bluntness; she didn’t today.
‘Why would I do that?’
‘I just think – Eleanor, don’t take this the wrong way, but you just seem a bit run-down and unhappy and you’ve been like that for a while now . . .’
‘Because I’m ill!’
‘Sure, but have you ever thought it might be the other way round? That you’re ill because you’re unhappy? Headaches are brought on by stress, right?’
‘You think it’s all in my head?’
‘No! Well, I wouldn’t put it like that. I just think the mind and body are more connected than we realize.’
‘That sounds like the kind of thing my mum would say.’
‘I’m not being like your mum. There’s whole studies on this: people who have heart attacks on the anniversary of their father’s death, say. And they didn’t remember it was the anniversary. The body remembered. It was the unconscious acting through the body.’
‘Don’t armchair psychoanalyse me, Amy! I can’t explain how I know it, but I do. It’s connected to the house.’
‘See, to me, that just sounds like you don’t like the house.’
‘That’s ridiculous. Why wouldn’t I like it? We were so lucky to buy it. It’s our dream home.’
There was a small, mutinous pause, before Amy said quietly, ‘Richard’s dream home.’
‘What does that mean?’
‘You can’t shut him up about it, all his plans for extensions and stuff – I’m not being mean, I think it’s endearing – but you never seem that excited about it.’
‘I’m not as interested in that side of things as Richard is. And why do I have to be excited about it anyway? It’s just a house; we’ve got to live somewhere. And we don’t know what’s going to happen with Richard’s job . . . we had to make a good investment.’
‘I just think . . . This is a really difficult time. It’s hard work being married – well, so they say – you’ve got two small children, you’re working full-time—Oh come on, it’s practically full-time! Have you thought about post-natal depression?’
‘Amy, stop trying to pathologize everything – it’s really annoying me!’
‘Well, what do you think it is then?’
Eleanor had thought she might tell her about Emily and the Ashworths, but it seemed impossible and ridiculous now. It was too late. She decided to shut down the conversation, and with it, any kind of goodwill.
‘It is a difficult time, but you just manage. I love the house, I love being married, I love being a mother. It’s hard work and you have to sacrifice things, but it’s worth it. I don’t think it’s something you can properly understand if you haven’t experienced it. I think when you have kids, you’ll look back and you’ll know what I mean.’
Amy turned her face to the side and looked down. ‘Well, luckily, I’m not going to have long to wait. To experience this great level of understanding.’
‘What—? Oh, Amy – really? You should have said! I was going on about my stupid headaches and—’
‘I didn’t want to make it all about me.’
‘Oh, congratulations – I’m so sorry to ruin it, this is such great news . . .’
Eleanor half stood up and leaned across the table to hug her. It was awkward and she couldn’t quite reach; she immediately regretted not walking round the table to hug her properly. She proceeded through the questions – due date, scans, the sex, morning sickness, maternity leave – and talked about Amy’s plans and fears and whether anyone had guessed at the wedding, but she sensed they were both slightly bored.
Eleanor imagined being back in D staircase kitchen, showing Amy how to chop an onion, and someone explaining to her that when Amy told her she was having her first child, they would be having an argument, and how aghast she would be at the thought. And that she wouldn’t really be happy for Amy, because she would be thinking about herself and how they had just been pulled apart again, and they might never get back to that sweet, unvarnished closeness she missed so much. She tried to engage with Amy over names and what Dominic’s mum had said, but all the time she was grappling with the intense disappointment of having tried something else and it not having worked. She was on her own again.
*
The next day, she woke up, more defeated than she’d felt before. She got the children ready to go out, feeling slightly less patient, slightly more stretched and limited. She opened the front door and started. The pebbles were no longer at the bottom of the steps, but just outside the door. They were almost inside the house.