The sun was shining and the snow had turned to a dirty sludge as Emma made her way down the high street. She was feeling excited, slightly nervous; Si had no idea she was coming. She had a lot of making up to do with him. They had both been neglectful of their relationship and let things slip. Her plan was to turn up after practice and take him out for supper; she had booked a table at their local Italian and afterwards a late showing at the old picture house. She was unusually early; orchestra didn’t finish until five and it was only twenty to. She decided to wait for him in the pub across the road from where she would see the crypt doors.
She went in. It was like stepping into a time warp. A few grey heads turned to stare before slowly returning to their pale ales, old addled white men glued to their stools, lined up like babies in high chairs supping from their beakers. There was still a stigma in pubs like this, a woman coming in on her own; their stares made her self-conscious but it was too late to walk out. She would never have had the nerve to come into a place like this as a younger woman; she had always felt threatened by it. At least age brought with it a certain confidence in this respect, a safety. She thought of Connie’s confidence; her sense of self had somehow remained intact. Connie, who was never far from her mind, had become a kind of behavioural barometer for Emma’s own dealings with the everyday and Emma was surprised by how fiercely protective of her patient she had become – in meetings, in her professional dealings, with the press, in social situations, in private. Despite her obvious vulnerability, Connie had a strength to her and some of that strength had rubbed off on Emma.
She approached the bar and ordered herself a gin and tonic from the pretty eastern European girl behind the counter. The girl failed to understand her so, with misguided intentions, one of the stool-dwellers repeated the order in a loud, patronizing voice with a conspiratorial wink at Emma, inviting her to team up with him against the dumb foreigner, who probably spoke more languages than the pints he’d had so far today. She felt their rheumy eyes on her hips as she took her drink over to a small table by the window where she could see the crypt doors; men like this were largely harmless but their insidious lechery was always disquieting. She leant over to pick up a red top paper that was lying on the bench, flicking a page for want of something to do, and there she was, faced with Minxy Mandy from Manchester and her unnatural attributes.
Emma put the paper down and got out her Hotel du Lac. She crossed her legs, registering the slinky feel of the silk of her knickers against the smoothness of her waxed skin. She felt a twinge of guilt. For whom had she suffered the agonies of hair removal? She might pretend it was for herself but she would be lying. And yet it was truly lovely to touch – she’d spent a long time running her hand over her own softness in the bath. But that wasn’t the whole truth. She’d invited Si to come with her to the party, of course, hoping he’d say no, and when he did say no she’d felt a small disappointment, but was it only because she didn’t like arriving on her own at occasions? No, I understand, she’d said when he’d dithered. A reunion is always boring for partners.
Sally Pea had looked exactly the same to Emma. Apart from the fact she now had blonde hair (with purple streaks) and they both used to have black hair. Plus she must be about four stone heavier than she used to be, which came as something of a relief – Emma had been half starving herself since Sally sent the invite. She’d somehow imagined everyone from her past being unravaged by time. But there was much that hadn’t changed about Sally: her bright button eyes, her smile, her laugh, her warmth. She’d squealed with delight when she saw Emma approaching. They were both dressed entirely in black, perhaps subconsciously for old times’ sake. And it seemed to Emma, who was filled with a powerful nostalgia, the craziest thing in the world that they had lost touch. How had that happened? How introverted and serious she herself had become with her small life and her big career. As they held each other at arm’s length to examine the doings of time, Emma deeply regretted her self-inflicted isolation, all because of her inability to express her vulnerability. She had immersed herself in her work when perhaps it was friendship that got you up and down the snakes and ladders of life. Connection was all that really mattered.
‘You won the lottery! I can’t believe it!’ she cried, clinking her glass against Sally’s.
‘I know! I’m a jammy bugger!’ Sally hugged her tightly. She was already pretty plastered. Emma wasn’t far behind – she’d knocked back a few Martinis on her own before coming.
‘I can’t believe you came! Mum! Mum!!’ Sally called out behind her, beckoning wildly to a woman with identical hair. And there she was – Mrs Pea, ballooned and lined, but with those same bright eyes twinkling through the generations. They had always been a double act, Sally and her mother. Now they looked more alike than ever. Emma remembered how envious she had been of them as a teenager, the different atmosphere of their houses; the warmth in Sally’s and the chilliness in her own. Sally wrapped her arm around her mother. ‘Remember Emma, Mum? Clever Emma?’ She was shouting loudly into her ear and turned to Emma with a grin. ‘Deaf as a wombat.’
‘Ooh! Lordy me! Emma Davis! I certainly do but I wouldn’t have recognized you! You’ve lost a pound or two. What did you do, give it to Sally?’
Sally realigned a stray strand of her mother’s hair. ‘That’s rich coming from you, Karen Carpenter.’
Mrs Pea wheezed a smoker’s chuckle. ‘What are you doing with yourself these days, Emma?’ she asked. She meant marriage and kids, of course, the only female destination for her generation. ‘You married?’
‘She’s only a frigging psychologist!’ Sally yelled.
‘A gynaecologist?’ The unimaginable horrors of such a profession visibly passed across her features and Emma and Sally laughed.
‘Not a gynaecologist, Mum. A psychologist.’ Sally rolled her eyes at Emma. ‘She doesn’t know one end from the other …’
‘Psychiatrist, I’ll have you know, not psychologist,’ Emma said, flicking back her hair, taking the mickey out of herself, so happy to be here. How on earth had she let the years slip by without Sally? She reached out and squeezed Sally’s hand, overcome with fondness for the both of them.
‘She’s famous! She’s doing that case in the papers, Mum.’ Sally had bent forward to shout in her mum’s ear again. ‘You know The Yummy Monster? The acid attack woman?’
Emma flinched. The Yummy Monster. She hated that moniker. It had been splashed across the front page with two photographs of Connie. The ‘Before’: Connie at the school ball, a glamorous trendy yummy mummy. And the ‘After’: Connie looking dazed and confused in the psychiatric unit, her peculiar tufts of red hair sticking up on end, the grotesque scars on her neck and arms.
Although she smiled at Sally and her mother, she felt suddenly profoundly hurt for Connie, who would be sitting in that chair by the window with no idea that she was the subject of such careless gossip up and down the country.
‘Oh, her? Albert’s brother went to school with her brother!’
Why did everyone need a personal connection with tragedy? Sally turned to greet some late arrival with a whoop.
‘Nasty piece of work,’ Mrs Pea said to Emma. ‘How’s your mother, Emma?’ And Emma was glad she had moved on so quickly.
‘Oh, she died a good few years back, actually.’
‘She died? I’m sorry to hear that. I always thought, if you don’t mind me saying, dear, that she was a bit hard on you. It seemed to me that nothing you ever did was quite good enough for her. And you were such a good girl.’
Emma felt a jab at those words. A jab of validation. ‘Well, thank you for saying that,’ she said. ‘That was exactly how it felt.’ A passing waiter filled up her glass as she had hoped he would.
‘And you not having any siblings to take a bit of the flak … I always thought how lonely that must have been. You got kids?’
Emma took a long swig. ‘Nope,’ she said.
‘Ah, what a shame.’
‘Hey, listen to that!’ Sally shrieked, necking back her glass, cupping her ear theatrically and then grabbing Emma’s hand to pull her over towards the disco end of the room, where a silver ball spun slowly in a purple light. A couple of slightly younger women were enjoying themselves on the dance floor, exuding a physical self-confidence that normally would have left Emma feeling depleted – they were rock-chicky, slinky and sexy, blonde hair with dark roots, clothes slipping off smooth shoulders, tiny tattoos in erogenous places, oozing ease as they moved to the music.
But she had no choice: Sally was whispering to the DJ and soon their teenage years were beckoning. She laughed. ‘Billericay Dickie’. She remembered the days spent in Sally’s room working out dance routines to Ian Dury songs (before they embraced Gothdom and stopped moving altogether, and instead clung to dark walls in dark venues). It was amazing what the body could recall. The younger cooler women stepped aside, fans of Sally Pea, enjoying these old-timers and the snatches of remembered routines. Emma couldn’t remember the last time she had danced. Let alone like this; she shed the years like skin from a snake. She was no longer old, square and past it, she was herself again. She and Sally strutted stupidly for song after song. And Sally’s DJ just kept those old classics coming – Siouxsie, the Cure, the Clash – and they danced with all the exuberance of seventeen-year-olds and all the limitations of forty-seven-year-old bodies.
Then she spotted him, standing at the bar. He was watching her. Strangely confident with this new Emma reclaimed, she stopped dancing and went over to greet him. She was sweating, shining, happy.
‘Hello there, Mr Thompson.’
‘Nice moves,’ he said, kissing her cheeks.
‘I was wondering when you were going to turn up,’ she said.
‘Is your husband here?’ he asked.
She shook her head. ‘Is your wife?’
‘Ex-wife. Yeah.’ He nodded towards the rock chicks. Ah, of course he would have married a woman like that; he was Dougie Thompson, after all.
She was feeling fantastically drunk, unusually reckless. ‘Thanks for giving Sally my number, Dougie. It’s great to be here.’
‘I’m glad you could come. Other side of London. Babysitter and all that.’
She shook her head. ‘Actually, something’s been bothering me since I bumped into you. I lied to you and I don’t know why. Well, I do know why. My daughter … I told you my daughter was nine. I told you Abigail was nine. She’s not. Sometimes I just say she is …’ She was floundering, but she didn’t want his pity, she just wanted to explain. ‘Abigail died six years ago. She would have been nine, now.’
His face dropped. ‘Oh, I’m so sorry, Emma. I had no idea.’
‘Of course not. Why would you? You just kind of caught me at a moment … I don’t—Oh my God! Is that James Storm?!’
He looked around. ‘Yes, it is!’
A large bald man was approaching them. ‘Hey, Dougie! How goes?’
‘Jim! Look who it isn’t!’ Dougie said, putting his arm protectively around Emma’s shoulder.
‘Oh my God! No! Emma Davis!’ James said. ‘Wow! You look … great!’ It was the weight loss, he meant.
‘Hi, James,’ she said. ‘Actually, I was just remembering the other day a party at your dad’s house … we’d all finished our mocks or something. Do you remember it?’
‘I certainly do. So does my dad: Mickey Gray puked in his bed.’
She laughed.
‘I remember that party,’ Dougie said. And she found that she couldn’t quite look at him.
‘I saw your name in the papers. You’re on that case, aren’t you?’ James was looking at her excitedly. ‘The Yummy Monster. Is that right?’
‘Yup, that’s right,’ she said.
‘Fucked up!’ he said. He was glowing.
Emma nodded. ‘Do you know, I’m pretty sick of that name … just because she’s white and middle-class ….’ There was an awkward silence and Emma felt obliged to fill it. ‘What do you do these days, James?’
‘Oh,’ he said. ‘I’m an estate agent.’
‘Fucked up!’ she said, and Dougie laughed, caught a passing waiter and handed her a glass of bubbly, a gesture befitting a partner. She took it without thanks, like a partner might.
‘I’m just going outside for a quick smoke,’ Emma said, getting out her cigarettes. ‘I’ll be back in a minute.’
It was really cold outside and strangely silent because the snow had settled; at least, it had in this garden – not much, but enough to quieten the city by a decibel or two. In fact, she could see a few snowflakes, or perhaps they were just ash, swirling up in the warm yellow glow emanating from the Christmas bulbs in the tree. They were in Battersea somewhere, a warehouse in a back street. There were other people outside smoking and she went a little way off and sat at a table beneath the tree under a little awning. Her tights were thin and the metal bench was icy against her soft, hairless thighs. She shivered.
She felt exposed in all senses: the cold, the Yummy Monster, Abigail. She never talked about Abigail. Only twice had she ever spoken of her death in detail – once with Si and once with her psychiatrist in the months that followed. It was in the past now. She couldn’t help thinking of Connie sitting there in her room being forced to remember, and how generous she was with her honesty.
‘You OK?’
She looked up and smiled. Dougie sat down beside her and she offered him her cigarette.
‘I don’t smoke,’ he said, and took it from her fingers.
She laughed. ‘That’s right. You’re action man, aren’t you?’
‘I am a bit,’ he said, taking a drag and passing it back.
‘You were always sporty.’
‘I liked sport. Still do.’
‘You were so clever, Dougie. Why are you working in boring old IT?’
He laughed. ‘It’s not that boring. Not as exciting as your work, no doubt. So you’re fed up with everyone asking you about that case?’
‘Could you tell? Was I rude?’
‘It’s bloody freezing,’ he said. ‘Here, have my jacket.’ She let him put it around her shoulders. Were her generation the last that were allowed to enjoy such gentlemanly gestures?
‘Can you keep a secret?’ she said.
‘Sure.’
‘She’s a great woman.’
‘Who?’
‘Constance Mortensen.’
‘Is she?’ He sounded surprised.
She sighed. ‘I like her.’
‘Are you allowed to feel attached to your patients?’ he asked.
She shrugged.
‘She doesn’t remember it, you know, driving the kids into the river.’
‘Luckily for her.’
‘No. She’s disassociated herself from her actions.’
He shivered and she pushed her body into his a little to warm him up. It was dangerous, flirtatious, but she owed him some of the warmth of his jacket.
‘Don’t you think we’re all capable of anything, given the right triggers and the wrong medications?’ she asked him.
‘Not anything,’ he said. And she realized she didn’t know anything about him at all really.
‘Maybe we’re all just ticking bombs …’ she said softly, looking up.
The lights seemed to be spinning above them; she was really pretty drunk. He took the glass out of her hand and put his other hand under his jacket, around her back. She felt the danger, the thrill. She was the ticking bomb.
‘You’re lovely, Emma Davis,’ he said. ‘I always thought that.’
This was it, the moment she had fantasized about, the moment she had manipulated. She felt her body responding to his words, to his touch, her heart dropping with a thud to the base of her womb somewhere, her body suddenly pounding with anticipation from her Brazilian bikini line to the tip of her tongue. Her mouth was moist, ready. She thought of Connie, she thought of Karl and Ness, of the fantastic search to feel alive, to feel truly present, that tangible thumping wonder of being human, his breath on her face, those dark familiar eyes.
And then she thought of Si.
‘What is it?’ he whispered, his lips close to hers.
‘I’d like to kiss you, Dougie, more than anything in the world. I wanted to kiss you thirty years ago on that grubby brown sofa. And how my seventeen-year-old self would hate me now because I’m not going to kiss you …’
‘You’re not?’ he said, not really believing her.
‘No.’
‘It’s just a kiss,’ he said. ‘That’s all.’
‘No … But thank you.’
He nodded and smiled, moving imperceptibly away from her, his eyes still shining. ‘Sensible Emma Davis.’ He sounded a bit annoyed and she was intensely glad she’d stopped this before it began. That’s right, she remembered now, he was always used to getting what he wanted.
‘I don’t know who he is but he’s a lucky guy,’ he said, handing back her glass.
So here she was on a Saturday afternoon waiting for her lucky guy to come out of his orchestra practice. A stream of musicians filed out of the church and then she saw him. He looked different to her, there amongst his ‘people’, in his element, sharing a joke with someone at the door, holding it open for others. He was an average middle-aged man, she could see that; ostensibly there was nothing remarkable about him at all and yet everything about him spoke of reassurance, dependability – he was that person you might go to in a crisis. She watched as he let the door go and then tripped on a paving stone. She was momentarily embarrassed for him, the buffoon with a bassoon. But he was her buffoon with a bassoon and she loved him. She downed the remains of her gin and tonic and left the pub, smiling at the Polish girl behind the bar, throwing a cursory nod at the addled old men.
Outside the pub in the sludge, just before she drew Si’s attention with her arm poised for a wave, she saw a small dark woman come to greet him. It took a moment before she recognized her: it was Savannah, Adrian’s new girlfriend. They kissed each other’s cheeks and then hovered, looking left and right as if deciding where to go, totally oblivious to Emma on the other side of the road.
She watched curiously as they ambled towards the junction. Then slowly she followed them, parallel, slightly behind. They turned right. She crossed the road and could see them enter a cosy-looking gastropub with a log fire inside. Through the glass she could observe them approach the bar where they were taken to a table with no concern for anything but each other. She went into a bike shop from where she could still see them, hiding herself behind a frisbee which turned out to be a wheel. She needn’t have bothered hiding; they were entirely wrapped up with each other, not looking out for Adrian as she had half hoped. And the longer Adrian didn’t turn up, the greater the sinking feeling in her stomach became.
Emma got a bus straight home, opened the door, turned up the heating and sat at the kitchen table with a bottle of Rioja. After a while she took her glass upstairs and ran herself a bath. The towels were damp and smelt faintly of mould so she put them in the laundry basket and went to get clean ones. She paused at the linen cupboard. At the bottom lay the wooden framework of the cot. They kept it under the pretence that someone with a baby might stay. It was easier that way. She rested her head against the cupboard and stayed like that for a long time, pressing the soft cotton of the clean towel to her nose.
After her bath she tried to get on with some work on her laptop back at the kitchen table, some unfinished Crown Court consultation work, risk assessment and management, but she soon found herself staring out into the garden. Then she stopped bothering trying to work and pulled her chair up to the glass garden door, and sat there by the radiator in the hazy sunshine, her feet up on another chair, her smooth legs extended, a glass of wine in one hand and a cigarette in the other, the ashtray on her lap, looking out at the remnants of dirty snow, awaiting his return.
‘Hi,’ he called when he eventually arrived. She turned and watched him hanging up his coat in the hall. ‘I thought you’d be out,’ he said as he came through, putting his bassoon case on the kitchen table. He was in good spirits.
‘Hi,’ she said, smiling coolly, pouring out the last of the bottle into her glass. ‘How was orchestra?’
‘Great. Did my solo. Want to hear it?’
‘Sure,’ she said, taking her legs off the other chair and crossing them slowly, leaning over to pick up her cigarettes.
He took off his jumper and chucked it over a chair, and then he opened up his case and got out the bassoon as she lit up, pulling the glass door ajar to let the smoke out into the garden. She watched him then as he fixed the mouthpiece. His mouth was so familiar to her; that mouth that she never kissed but now someone else did; how nice for him to be wanted. Then when he began to play she turned away to watch a plump pigeon land in the cherry tree, peck at a few old berries and fly off again. She couldn’t ignore the music; it was haunting and tender and she did her best to remain untouched by it. As he finished, she turned to look at him again to find that he was evidently expecting some kind of response from her.
‘Very nice,’ she said.
He didn’t move. ‘What’s the matter?’ he asked, noting the empty bottle, slowly lowering the bassoon.
She held his eye. ‘Do you feel rejected by me, Si?’
‘What?’
‘Have I pushed you away?’
‘What are you talking about?’ He yanked the mouthpiece out and started putting the bassoon back in its case.
‘Just answer the question.’
‘I don’t understand the question,’ he said, snapping the bassoon case shut. She looked back out into the garden and inhaled slowly on her cigarette.
‘What’s going on?’ he asked, moving round the table to her side, pausing, perching himself on it, folding his arms.
‘I wonder,’ she said, watching him carefully, his studied cross-examination pose. ‘You tell me. What is going on, Si?’
‘You’re talking in riddles.’
She turned her body to face his. ‘I understand, you know. You can still have children. I’m holding you back.’
‘I’m sorry?’
‘And you need to feel needed.’
‘Is that right?’
‘And you don’t get that from me.’
‘You can stop now, Emma, you’re not at work. I’m not one of your bloody patients.’
‘Am I wrong?’
‘That I need to feel needed? Of course I need to feel needed. Everyone needs to feel needed, even you, Emma. Except you just don’t like to show any neediness because you think making yourself vulnerable means you’re weak or something, and God forbid you shouldn’t be able to cope with everything.’
She blew the smoke out of her mouth slowly in a steady stream. ‘Wow, that was quite an outburst,’ she said, stubbing out the cigarette, twisting it firmly in the ashtray which rested on her past-its-sell-by womb.
‘For example,’ he carried on, ‘whatever idea you’ve got in your head right now, you can’t say it, you can’t show that you care, you have to turn it into some kind of Gestapo inquisition.’
She angled her head and gazed at him. ‘You have so much anger towards me.’
‘Stop it! Stop twisting everything.’
‘Said the lawyer. How’s Sahara, Savannah, whatever the hell she’s called?’ She winced at herself; she hadn’t meant it to come out like this.
‘What?’
‘You heard me.’
He laughed, took a few steps away from the table and ran a hand through his hair. ‘Have you been following me?’ He sounded really annoyed.
‘I came to meet you but discovered you were otherwise engaged.’
He looked at her, aghast. ‘What do you take me for? She’s my best friend’s girlfriend, for Christ’s sake.’
‘Ha! That old chestnut.’ She bent down and picked up her glass.
‘What? Go on then! Ask me the question! Oh, you can’t because it might make you look too needy.’
‘Well, are you?’ she said, tapping out another cigarette.
‘Am I what?’
She lit up and inhaled as if she had all the time in the world. ‘Are you screwing her?’
He shook his head with disbelief. ‘No, I am not screwing her. She came to meet me because we’re planning a surprise party for Adrian’s birthday. OK?’
Emma chuckled and then laughed out loud.
‘Is that so funny?’
‘A surprise party! How original, your honour.’
‘You drink too much, you know that?’
She looked at him. ‘You hate me, Si. Underneath it all, you hate me. Just admit it.’
‘What?’
‘You’ll never forgive me.’
‘Don’t, Emma,’ he said. ‘Don’t start this now. You’re drunk.’
‘We don’t even talk about her any more. We don’t even say her name.’
He was silent, head bowed, eyes on his feet.
‘Say it!’ she said.
‘No, I’m not doing this.’
‘Say it!’
‘No.’
She stood up; she was angry now. ‘Just fucking say it, Si! Say that you blame me! Say that it was my fault!’
He looked up then. His bottom lip was trembling but his voice was steady. ‘Maybe you’re the one who needs to say it.’
Then he turned and walked out of the room.