I opened a private window and used my phone data rather than the home Wi-Fi. I clicked on the first recording: a man caressing a doll’s face, tucking her long hair behind her ears, admiring her cheerleading costume with its long socks and frills. He complimented her small feet. But then it cut straight to the same man pressing himself into her mouth, his face straining, her eyes impassive. He held her head with two tattooed hands. No noise except his own breath, the odd grunt. Not a squeak from her. He continued. It went on for twelve minutes.
He released the doll’s head. Her mouth regained its pout. Her eyes were fixed on nothing. No harm done. No one hurt. She was a mechanism and not real and a machine and had no feelings and was a game and a commodity and a receptacle and an imitation.
I watched another video. Two men. One doll. The fully dressed men took turns to smack the doll. They were sweating from the exertion. The clip lasted for four minutes. Just hitting.
And another video. A straight couple wearing lacy masks to hide their identities.
And another. A man eating his dinner opposite a naked doll.
Another. A man dressed in a black leotard kissing the doll, biting her.
Another. A man rubbing himself between two silicone breasts, the doll lying across a snooker table.
And another. And another. Another another another. The choice was endless.
I was getting wet even though I wanted to use a hammer to smash someone’s brains in.
But the men weren’t hurting the dolls because dolls can’t get hurt. There was a benignity to it. An inconsequence. No one bled. The girls’ bodies were synthetic, made of polymers, plastic joints, rubber nipples, hair from acetate. No tearing, crying, bruises, handprints, looks of terror towards a camera, no venereal disease or coercive directors.
Disclaimer: No women or children were harmed in the making of those movies.
º
We require trigger warnings.
Do you?
That’s funny.
º
Oliver Sminton was loitering outside the staffroom. He held up a notebook. ‘Is Miss Coleman in there, please?’ I asked if he had an appointment and explained that if she’d had lessons all morning, she’d be busy planning or marking. He waved the notebook again. ‘She’s helping me prepare for my interview at UCL.’
I congratulated him on this; few students went on to do medicine. ‘I’m glad you’re preparing, but Miss Coleman is an English specialist. You should have asked one of your science teachers. Or I could help, if you like.’ The corridor filled with younger students leaving the library, squealing and tripping over one another. As they knocked past, I took Oliver’s elbow and pulled him aside. He stared at the floor, seemed young, though he was over six foot.
‘Miss Coleman helped me write my UCAS statement,’ he said. His neck reddened as he stood there, bowed with guilt.
‘I’ll practise with you, and if I’m awful, we could ask my husband to meet you. He’s a doctor.’ I felt an absurd swell of pride that deflated quickly. ‘The interviews for medicine are more gruelling than most. Do you have interviews anywhere else?’
He looked me in the eye at last. ‘Birmingham and Cambridge. But I don’t want to move too far from the south coast.’ He drew back, his thumbnail scratching a rash on his arm. He was a handsome boy, mild and clever. I could see why a young teacher might have fallen for him.
The staffroom door behind me opened.
‘Oliver!’ Shannon Coleman was wearing a floral dress, opened in a V-shape at the chest. Her nails were manicured, polished in amber to match the flowers in the dress. Not many years before I had taken care of myself this way, perhaps purposely to tempt some of the older students. ‘I’ll grab my stuff.’ I held the staffroom door shut by its handle.
Oliver flinched. He wanted to protect Shannon but couldn’t. ‘Ms O’Shea said she thinks she should help me because it’s a science,’ he muttered.
Shannon crossed her arms over her chest. I wondered whether her stomach lurched. ‘Oh. Yes. That’s a better idea. Naturally!’ Was she heartbroken in that moment? Did she ache for the minutes she would not get to spend with this boy?
I didn’t want to upset anyone. But I also had a job to do. A duty of care.
I stepped aside and Shannon pushed through into the staffroom and was gone, her honeyed scent lingering. Oliver folded his notebook in half and tried to push it into his back pocket. When it wouldn’t fit, he took it in both of his slim hands and twisted it. ‘Shall we say lunchtime one day next week?’ I asked. ‘I’m a bit overwhelmed at the moment.’
He nodded gloomily.
I had made him miserable. I wasn’t proud of that.
º
I stopped at the cash machine and took £300 out of the joint account. I stashed it in a baking tin in the microwave. I did this day after day, hundreds then thousands of pounds. David never mentioned it, though he had a banking app on his phone that alerted him every time money was taken from the account.
He also never mentioned the fact I didn’t take his surname, when I knew his father was raging about it. And he never said, not once in our whole relationship, ‘Why are you the way you are?’ It would have been a valid question. And maybe I would have given him an honest answer. I don’t know. It’s all so easy in retrospect.
º
Twice more I watched David go into the garage when I wasn’t at home. I didn’t call and compel him to lie. That felt unfair.
On one occasion, as he left the garage, a long forty-three minutes after he first went in, he looked right into the camera’s lens and I had the sense he was looking for me. I had the sense he was willing me to catch him.
That was a difficult day.
º
The doll didn’t provoke jealousy. Discomfort mostly. And I pitied her – all scrunched up, suffocating in the bag, the idea of David using her then hiding her away like you would a garden fork. He kept his treadmill in the house.
º
Jacinta answered groggily. Ed, her boyfriend, had slept over, and they’d spent the evening arguing about gun control. Ed was not a Republican, but he was an antagonist. Debate seemed to be a thing they did for fun.
‘Yes, I’m sure. He’s been into the garage three times. And the recording won’t disappear for thirty days, so he can’t deny it.’
‘Good.’
‘Is it?’
‘No. I’m sorry, Dough.’
º
I stopped at a petrol station to buy flowers for Mum when a woman in a Porsche pulled up next to me. Even before she got out of the car, I could tell she was offbeat: her lips, too large for her face, were like uncooked sausages. As she stepped from the car her full peculiarities were revealed: a spindly body covered from neck to ankle in winding tattoos, breasts larger than footballs and close enough to her own mouth that she could easily have sucked her own nipples. She was wearing a tank top and miniskirt. In the passenger seat was a very young man, her boyfriend perhaps, or a son.
I have trained myself not to stare, knowing it’s unkind to do so, but this woman seemed to invite attention, her body mostly uncovered, her hair a gigantic platinum shambles wobbling away on her head.
When she caught me looking, I flinched.
She raised her chin in defiance.
But I wasn’t disapproving.
I was only looking.
I was interested.
She looked nothing like the doll and surely if you planned to sculpt yourself into a feminine ideal, the doll would be the guideline. Anything more extreme and the transformation tiptoes into self-hatred, self-harm, despair. ‘Hey,’ I said, ‘I like your car.’
The woman touched the shiny, silver roof. ‘I bought it myself,’ she said.
º
David had started playing tennis a few times a week, was making his way up the club league tables. It was evening. He grabbed his keys from the sideboard. ‘You can’t go out,’ I said. ‘We have guests coming for dinner.’ This wasn’t true. I’m not sure why I said it. Maybe I wanted him to start a quarrel.
He turned. ‘Since when? Who?’
I told him I’d invited Gavin and Faye. He pulled his phone from his jacket pocket and started to type. He wasn’t cancelling his match. I knew that. He was texting Gavin to postpone a non-existent dinner or to send his apologies for missing the non-existent dinner. He would be honest and explain he had a tennis game. But he would never also admit, I don’t want to see you. Although he disliked Gavin, David’s good manners would never permit complete candour. He had a way of perfectly balancing truth and diplomacy.
Outside, foxes were screeching. And our wheelie bin was full of maggots. I’d noticed earlier that day but hadn’t the stomach to deal with them. They were crawling towards the lid. Hundreds, maybe thousands, of them.
‘Why is there a sex robot in our garage?’
David’s keys clattered against the floor. Then his phone. His eyes searched the hallway for something to aid an explanation. He reached for the wall to steady himself. And then, as if about to give a speech at a conference, he straightened up.
‘Her name is Zoey,’ he said quietly.
º
Her name is Zoey. That is the first thing he said. Assuredly. Protectively. Her name is Zoey.
º
A woman said to her spouse, ‘Did you hear the one about the wife who asked her husband if he could feel pains across his body as though someone had a voodoo doll of him?’
He said, ‘No, why?’
The wife disappeared upstairs then called down to her husband, ‘How about now?’
º
David has a switch. I have always envied it, the composure he can access, even in the middle of a crisis. And that’s how it was.
‘Her name is Zoey,’ he said.
I was screaming a reply when the bell rang. ‘Don’t answer it,’ I warned. ‘Don’t answer that fucking door.’
David seemed about to comply. And then he did open the door, taking in a gulp of cold air. Seeing our neighbour he smiled. ‘Caleb!’ He shook his hand and ushered him inside. ‘What’s the story?’ The switch was on. I’d seen him do this the day his father died. He’d been bawling when the undertakers pulled up outside but stopped as they stepped into the house. David had told a preposterous anecdote about his father’s childhood, then a quip about death, finally finding money in his wallet for a tip. Should you tip an undertaker? David did. ‘Those guys don’t earn a lot, Dolores. It seemed the right thing to do,’ he’d said.
Caleb coughed into his elbow. ‘Oh, you know, misbehaving and trying not to get caught.’ He sucked something from his teeth. He’d had his hair cut very short. He was wearing grey slippers.
‘Your package.’ I retrieved a bulky envelope from the floor. It was the third I’d taken in that week. I was beginning to resent it, especially the food deliveries.
He tapped the envelope. ‘CBD oil. Don’t tell the cops!’
David laughed and it sounded so clean I thought for a moment I was mistaken, that I would return to the garage and find it empty, or a motorcycle where I thought I’d seen Zoey.
I thought, David isn’t worried, so why should I be? My work is stressful, Mum is getting more forgetful, I miss Jacinta. It’s me. I have imagined something sordid, like the time I came out of a general anaesthetic and thought I could see a pile of dead chickens in a corner of my hospital room, a fat baby at the centre gorging on them, feathers and all. As I was coming around, I kept asking for Gavin. The nurses asked me who he was and I told them he was my husband.
Caleb said, ‘Is it alright if I borrow your sander, guys?’
The tulips on the console table were dying, the water stagnant, stinking. I tapped the vase and some of their pale pink petals landed silently against the table.
I went upstairs and waited for Caleb to leave. I folded the laundry. I cleared my purse of old receipts. Then I heard David’s car starting up and pulling away.
º
We went abroad for the first time. A family holiday to France. Mum and Pete sat in the front fretting about driving on the wrong side of the road. Jacinta and I were in the back wishing we were still at home.
Mum had found a cottage in Dieppe on Teletext, called the owner and booked it herself. The place was described as rustic but was actually in disrepair and next door to a bowling alley that flashed neon lights day and night. Pete refused to sleep in any of the damp beds and chose an armchair in the living room. He did this mostly to prove to Mum what a sham foreign holidays were and to sabotage any chance of us going on another one.
A few days after we arrived, Gavin showed up with a girl and a backpack. Her name was Jasmine. She didn’t say very much unless it was in fluent French, so we took her with us wherever we went to avoid misunderstandings. On more than one occasion, Pete asked her to query the food bill which she did cheerfully, leading me to think she was simply complimenting the waitress on the food.
Jasmine’s arrival invited Pete to cheer up a bit, which he often did with strangers around, and Jasmine was no exception. In fact, he seemed delighted by Jasmine’s very existence and kept offering her the best seat, the largest slice of cake. Mum was washing up while he dried the dishes next to her, and I overheard him say, ‘Thank God for Jasmine. I was beginning to worry, Geraldine. I was beginning to think…’ But he didn’t finish his sentence and Mum didn’t ask him to explain what he meant.
Gavin and Jasmine slept on a mattress in the attic, and as they ascended a wooden ladder to bed one evening, Jasmine said, ‘Your sister’s creepy. She won’t stop watching me.’
I knew she meant me and not Jacinta who rarely looked up from her sketchbook unless it was to pick a flower for pressing between its pages. I was tempted to shout something up at Jasmine who I didn’t like, but the fact I’d overheard her did seem to prove a point.
Gavin said, ‘Dolores has had a weird life. It isn’t her fault.’
‘Yeah, well, it’s still creepy.’
They left the next morning, taking a train to Brussels. Jacinta and I went to the beach. All day Jacinta sat in the sun and by the time we got back to the cottage she was bright red. But later, on her thigh, a word began to appear, written in sunscreen with her finger while she’d let the rest of her skin burn: FAUX.
º
Zoey was manufactured by a company called Love Dolz in a Californian factory by a team of clever software specialists. I found photographs online of the company’s headquarters. A blonde doll in a suit sat at a desk and behind her three more dolls dressed in a variety of outfits. All of them had long hair, curves: one was in a sequinned green evening dress, a second in denim shorts and crop top, the third in white lingerie. I was none of those women. I was a woman in wide-leg trousers and expensive slip-ons, my hair to my shoulders, cut bluntly rather than feathered and flirty.
Love Dolz had been producing these toys for ten years, but it was only recently that they’d managed to get the product to move a little and talk. Each piece was completely customisable to the customer. David had been able to choose Zoey’s eye colour, nose shape, nipple shape, the size of her tits, arse, the number of freckles on her forearm, the length of her nails, her height.
The sole immutable was her name. Love Dolz had chosen it for all their AI models.
Zoey: life.
You had to hand it to those tech wankers and their sense of irony.
º
David didn’t like to kiss open mouthed. It took me a long time to come to terms with this when we were dating. But I did accept it. Just as I accepted a lot of other small things I didn’t like. I don’t know what he’d change about me. He’s never said.
º
It was my turn to give the lower school assembly, but I had not prepared. I wrote a quick list as children filed into the hall, jacked up on windy weather. The teachers followed the students, pointing and ordering, carrying uncertain loads of exercise books.
Shannon Coleman had a satchel over one shoulder, a handbag over the other. She was clutching a thick paperback. Her hair was tied in a high bun. She wasn’t wearing much make-up. She looked perfectly graceful, completely at odds with the scruffy students bumping past her, a few of the boys half-wrestling with one another.
A child stood in front of me. ‘Miss, can I go to my trumpet lesson, please?’ I couldn’t recall the boy’s name. He had several badges on the lapel of his blazer: PREFECT, LIBRARIAN, CHAMBER CHOIR. I doubted he had many friends.
‘Yes, go on.’
Shannon took a seat at the back of the hall. She scrolled her phone quickly then put it away. Sunlight split the hall in two. She shaded her eyes from the light.
I began:
‘Last week a drunk driver collided with a group of local children outside a chip shop in Kemptown and killed a girl. Some of our students knew her. It’s a difficult time.
‘On Saturday the school’s mixed athletics team became district champions after a rocky start to the season. This is an example of how perseverance can prevail. They should all be congratulated.
‘Kenza Dunthorne in Year Nine has been given a role in Matilda in the West End and leaves us on Friday for several months. We wish her all the luck in the world.
‘Students with phones turned on during lessons will have these devices confiscated and returned only to a parent or guardian.’
The children listened in weary silence. The teachers looked equally uninspired, depressed even. But Shannon was beaming, her eyes bright with hope.
º
Zoey is beautiful. It’s impossible to pretend otherwise. Especially her mouth. Silently it whispers: yes, please.
º
Pete was proper English. Mum told people this like it was a confession. She’d say, ‘Oh, yes, he’s grand. But he’s English,’ mouthing the word like it was the equivalent of calling him a cunt. Jacinta and I had been born in London, at the North Middlesex hospital two years apart, but we knew that, like Mum and Dad, we weren’t English. English people didn’t serve you a biscuit with your tea when you went to visit, they expected to be phoned up before you called over in case they were busy with private things, and they didn’t get a round in at the pub but instead paid for their own drinks as and when they wanted them. They also cried when members of the royal family died because they didn’t have a comprehensive understanding of the meaning of democracy.
Our friends at St Joseph’s Primary School and later at St Angela’s High School were also Irish, unless they were Italian or from one of the Caribbean islands. On prize night half the student body sullenly refused to sing ‘God Save the Queen’ and everyone sprayed their hair green on St Patrick’s Day. Sister Thomas, the headmistress, seemed inclined to do little about any of this, being from Mayo herself.
So when Pete moved in and insisted on baked beans with his fry-up and Yorkshire pudding with his Sunday roast, it was a bit of an adjustment, especially for Mum who was initially reassured that, because Pete’s dad was from Liverpool, Pete must have had some Irish in him somewhere. But Pete didn’t have a dribble of Irish in him and tortured my mother by raising a St George’s Cross in the front garden when England played an international game of football, cricket or rugby. If it hadn’t been for Ireland’s four Eurovision victories in the nineties, which Mum celebrated for months afterwards, buying the CDs and playing them on repeat in the kitchen, I don’t think she would have tolerated Pete’s brazen Englishness as long as she did.
Gavin was also English, of course. He wasn’t proud of it though, and he wasn’t a Tory, so somehow it felt less threatening to our way of life.
º
David rang the doorbell before he let himself in. ‘It’s me!’ he called out, loud enough to be heard, meek enough to sound contrite. I stirred the canned chicken soup simmering on the hob. Ignored him. He tipped the kitchen door twice with a knuckle. ‘Dolores?’ I continued to stir. The soup smelled like dog food. ‘I rang the bell,’ he said.
‘Why?’
His tie was still in place, not loosened to let him breathe at the day’s end. ‘I booked Moshimo for dinner, if you fancy it.’
‘I’ve got soup.’
David put his hands into his trouser pockets. As he came closer, I turned off the gas and looked for a bowl, just to get away from him. There were no bowls in the cupboard, and I’d forgotten to turn on the dishwasher. I reached for an oversized mug.
‘How was work?’ he asked.
‘Do me a favour, David.’
He unbuttoned his jacket, flicked through the post on the countertop. ‘I might go to Moshimo. I’m hungry.’
‘OK.’
‘Sure you won’t come?’
‘Are we going to talk about Zoey?’ I asked.
He let out a long sigh. ‘What do you want me to say?’
‘Firstly, those dolls are ten grand. We didn’t go away for half-term because things were a bit tight, you said. Ten thousand pounds, David.’
‘I know.’
‘You know?’ I put down the mug I was holding to stop myself from flinging it at the wall.
‘Actually she was closer to eight thousand.’ He went to the fridge, looked inside, but finding nothing closed it again.
‘David?’
‘What?’
‘Why?’
‘I don’t know what you want me to tell you.’
‘Tell me something. Anything. I don’t have a clue what to do with this information about you.’
‘What information? It isn’t a big deal.’
‘What?’
‘I don’t know how to talk about it,’ he said croakily. ‘I wanted us to stay together but I didn’t want … Jesus, I don’t know.’ He opened the fridge again, took out a beer and opened it but didn’t drink. ‘I think I’d rather split up than have to talk about it.’
‘You’re not being serious,’ I said, but I knew he was. He looked and sounded very serious. And I understood. Shame had stoppered him up. He was choking from it.
I wanted to tell him that splitting up wasn’t an option, that I needed him and our marriage, and that whatever we had hidden in the folds of our domestic life could be uncovered, explained, repaired.
He said, ‘I’ll get rid of the doll,’ as though Zoey was our problem.
She wasn’t.
I was.
It was me he had to get rid of.
º
DNA replicates and duplicates. It is the reason we exist. It answers the question: why am I here?
Why am I here?
Because of DNA.
Meaning can be found in biology.
º
David’s parents hired a function room for our engagement party. I was marking mock exams when he announced this. I put down my pen. ‘I don’t want a party. Who’s going to come?’
‘They’re excited. They like you.’
‘They want to meet my family.’
‘And what’s wrong with that?’
‘I don’t have time to plan a party, David. Ofsted inspectors are in school next month. I’m stressed out. I have nothing nice to wear.’
David smacked my knee lightly. ‘Wear something hot.’
‘Me?’
‘Yes, you.’
So I had my hair done and wore a blue dress that plunged down the back. On the way to the venue in a taxi, David kept running his thumb down my spine, kept kissing my cheek, forehead, fingers.
On a long table by one wall was an array of elegant finger food and loitering by the bar two servers dressed in black and white. They were holding trays by their sides, waiting for the guests.
David’s family were the first to arrive. ‘Dolores!’ Camille said, opening her arms to me. She smelled as though she’d sprayed herself with several different bottles of perfume. ‘Oh, you’re an angel. David is so lucky. Isn’t he, Ian? Hugo?’
David’s brother nodded and his father, who was holding a basket of flowers, deposited them with a flourish onto the end of the food table. ‘Very nice,’ Hugo said mildly. He was staring at a waiter.
The guests, most of whom were friends or relations of David’s, drifted in and were met at the door by a tray of fizzing champagne flutes. The music was loud enough to keep things from feeling too uncomfortable. The food was replenished when platters began to empty.
Leonard arrived with a woman I’d never met and told me he couldn’t stay long, that he had a book launch the same evening. ‘Was I meant to get you guys a present? I don’t know the etiquette.’
He began to introduce me to the woman at his side, a German publisher, when Mum, Pete and Gavin tumbled into the room. Mum was wearing a green dress with a bright yellow bolero, Pete was in a velvet blazer and Gavin had worn cargo trousers and a pink shirt. It had started to pour moments earlier, and the dash from the car park to the pub had soaked all three of them. No one except me had turned to look, but they seemed at that moment to have a spotlight shining on them. They were so bedraggled, colourful and out of keeping with the energy in the room. Mum spotted me and marched over, her slingbacks loud and angry.
‘You didn’t say it would take over an hour to get here. We were killed in the traffic.’
‘That’s OK. You’re here,’ I said.
Pete and Gavin grabbed glasses of champagne and joined us. Pete said, ‘You’ll catch your death in that dress.’
Gavin looked around the room and not directly at me. Then he said, ‘Are those the in-laws?’ He had correctly identified Ian and Camille, who were animatedly chatting with a couple I’d never seen before.
‘She’s not a bad-looking woman,’ Mum said.
Pete downed half his glass. ‘Where’s Jacinta?’
‘She isn’t well. Some tonsil thing.’
‘I wasn’t told,’ Mum said.
Jacinta had called as soon as I sent the invitation begging to be excused. ‘I’ll hate it. I’ll end up throwing handfuls of cake at someone. You know what I’m like.’ I didn’t believe Jacinta would misbehave in any way, but I happily liberated her from the obligation, and in exchange she sent me a thank you card with a joint taped into it.
David joined us with his parents and introductions were made, everyone smiling, well-mannered. Camille told a story about how David, as a boy, said he would never get married because he wanted to be a troll and live beneath a bridge so he could scare goats. It was a sweet anecdote, one any parent might tell for a gentle laugh, but I could see Mum’s mouth begin to tighten, her defences rising. ‘You haven’t a glass of anything,’ Camille noticed, tapping Mum’s hand. She called over a waiter. Mum accepted the drink and took a stiff sip.
The chatting continued, led by Ian and Camille, and I felt my shoulders release until I noticed Ian staring at something. He was squinting slightly and maybe grinning. I followed his gaze and landed on Pete’s sleeve, on the little label that had been sewn onto the cuff of his blazer, a label that should have been snipped off, but which Pete clearly thought was an indication of the item’s worth, and left there for all to see.
My knees buckled slightly. I leaned against David.
David whispered, ‘You OK?’
‘I’m good,’ I said. But I wasn’t. I was mortified by my family who couldn’t conform to any ordinary social situation, and I was nauseated by David’s parents pretending to be the fucking Waltons. I hadn’t asked for this party, and here was Ian looking down on Pete who had driven from London, loved my mother, given her a second chance in life and wasn’t perfect, wasn’t interesting, wasn’t much of anything, but didn’t deserve to be sneered at, even internally, by a person who didn’t even sleep in the same room as his wife.
Interrupting whatever was then being discussed, I took Pete by the elbow and led him away from the group. ‘What’s happened?’ he asked. ‘What’s going on?’
‘You’re not to drink. You have to drive home.’
‘Don’t worry about that. Gavin’s driving. He’s only having one.’ Pete tilted his head to look at me then, and put a hand on my shoulder. ‘It’s a lovely party, Dolores. Thanks for asking us.’
I turned around to look at the room of people. I wanted Jacinta there, someone who would understand the delicate nature of my role. I caught Leonard’s eye and he pointed at his watch. ‘I’d better go and chat to him,’ I said, and without asking Pete’s permission, put my finger and thumb beneath the label on his sleeve, and ripped it off the blazer.
‘You don’t need that, Pete,’ I said.
‘Oh,’ he replied. ‘Oh. I didn’t know.’
º
I met Oliver Sminton in the sixth form common room. He was slouched in a low chair tapping his phone. ‘Busy working, Mr Sminton?’
He sat up, turned the phone so I could see the screen. ‘I’m learning Mandarin.’
‘Why?’
‘Even if I get into medicine, I might do something else afterwards,’ he said. He stood and put the phone into his backpack. The only reason he hadn’t been chosen as head boy was that he’d specifically asked not to have his name on the ballot – he wanted to focus on other things, he’d said to his head of year when she told him he’d made the shortlist.
‘Do you speak any other languages?’ I asked.
‘Spanish. A bit of French.’
The common room smelled of burnt toast and bleach. Each of the dozen or so students was staring into a phone, even those at desks with books arranged around them. ‘Might I remind you all that gaps in your timetables are called study periods. Think about the other seventeen- and eighteen-year-olds around the country fighting for the place at university you claim you want.’ The students stopped chattering and delved into their lockers for books and photocopied bits of paper.
Oliver said, ‘Thank you for taking the time to help, Miss.’ He chewed his lips but didn’t break eye contact. I wondered whether he was flirting with me, whether the rumours about Shannon and Oliver were simply the result of the way Oliver interacted with everyone.
‘Actually, I can’t help you today, Oliver. Something urgent has come up.’
‘OK.’
‘I’ll find you another time.’
‘Shall I ask Miss Coleman?’
‘No. No, don’t do that.’
º
David and I took a trip to Kauai for our honeymoon. The first evening, while he was having a bath, I watched a film with Goldie Hawn and Kurt Russell about a wealthy woman who loses her memory and unwittingly falls for a pig of a man with a dirty house and too many children. David had left the bathroom door ajar, warned me jokingly about his nudity. The hotel was all inclusive; I told him it was sushi night and suggested we shake a leg. I hoped lobster would also be on the menu and didn’t want to miss out. I could hear David grumbling then he used his foot to push the door closed. He was so long in the water it must have gone cold.
At dinner he told me he wanted to find a driving range. I said, ‘Of course!’ but he was sullen. The next morning while he hit balls into the abyss, I read a battered copy of Wide Sargasso Sea.
Later we drove to the Kuilau Ridge trail. I’d read the guidebook. It was an easy hike, relatively short. No need for a permit.
The trail was wet from rain that morning but even so we came across local families picnicking and plenty of other walkers. David saluted them encouragingly. He made a lone woman walker blush.
By the time we saw the peak of the Makaleha Mountains, it was noon. The air was gluey. I drained my water bottle which had only been a quarter full at the outset. David gulped down water from his own bottle. ‘Do you have a spare hat?’ I asked.
‘Just the one I’m wearing.’ He put his cap onto my head.
‘No, you need it.’
He didn’t reply. He took a photo of us with the mountain in the background. ‘Shall we head back and go for a swim?’
Half an hour later I was light-headed, slipping on mud and wishing I’d worn something more sensible than a pair of Crocs.
David gave me his water bottle. ‘Keep it,’ he said. He was hiking ahead of me. The backs of his knees were sweating.
‘What about you?’ I asked him.
He kept walking, holding his hands out in front of him, presumably in case he fell. I swigged from his water. And five minutes later another swig, unable to ration it. By the time we got back to the trail head, David’s eyes were puffy, his hatless forehead burnt.
‘I didn’t understand the whole shaved-ice thing until now,’ he said. ‘I’d kill for one.’
In the car I put on the air-con and radio.
That night, instead of having sex, we made love. Maybe for the first time. Maybe for the last time. Everything was soft and slow, and I was there in the bed, not watching myself from the other side of the room going through the motions and rating my performance. David made eye contact. He told me he loved me. I wanted that to be the way we always were. But we weren’t like that.
We were whip-smart and busy. We were successful and nice to one another. We talked and talked and talked about politics and plans for retirement and the psychological problems we encountered in other people. We talked and talked and talked about nothing.
º
It was a Saturday, torrential rain. Mum called and said she thought there was water coming into her house, but she couldn’t be sure, it could also be a radiator leak. I went over to check, stopping quickly at Marks & Spencer for scones. Mum was annoyed that I’d bought clotted cream rather than double cream for whipping and said she preferred blackcurrant to strawberry jam. ‘Next time I won’t bring anything. I won’t even come,’ I said, using a wad of kitchen towel to soak up a small puddle on the floor in the living room. Mum had left a soaking towel over the radiator which had simply dripped onto the floor. ‘I’ll make a pot of tea,’ I said.
Mum called out from the sitting room. ‘Use the teapot with the chipped lid. The other one dribbles.’
When I went back in with the tray, she was using her cardigan cuff to clean the glass of a framed photo of Pete. It was a picture taken months before he died, at Faye’s birthday party. ‘That’s a good photograph of him,’ I said.
‘I miss him,’ she said.
‘I know, Mum. Me too.’
‘Bollocks,’ she said. She was right. Pete wasn’t someone I ever attached myself to. I felt very little of his loss when he died. But Mum loved him, and I felt that. ‘I hated keeping things from him.’
‘What did you keep from him?’ I asked.
She put the frame back onto the side table. ‘Makes me angry.’ Her voice was sharp and mean, a voice I knew well, a voice she saved especially for me and Jacinta.
I handed her a cup of tea and began to prepare a scone. ‘What do you want with yours?’ I asked.
‘However it comes,’ she said through clenched teeth.
It was the dementia taking a grip, I told myself. She couldn’t help it. Her brain wasn’t her own. I told myself a lot of things hoping they were true. I buttered her a scone. ‘No jam then?’ I asked.
‘Yes, please. Jam, please,’ she said.
º
It seemed like every time Jacinta and I visited Faye and Gavin, Faye was sunning herself and Gavin was building Lego. This was when they first got together and moved into a slummy cottage in Grantchester. They’d decided to be writers, so it seemed a fitting location. I asked Faye what she was working on. She was lying in the middle of the garden, on a lawn swarming with dandelions and daisies. She removed her sunglasses and turned onto her side. ‘It’s a literary sci-fi. A girl tries building her own rocket so she can go into space. She isn’t an engineer and enlists the help of a local recluse to help.’
Gavin brought out lemonades and left them on the patio. They didn’t have any furniture.
‘Is it a romance?’ Jacinta asked. ‘It sounds like you’ve plotted it with the intention of the protagonist falling in love with the recluse.’
Faye shook her head. She had long red curls that landed lightly between her shoulder blades. Her skin had a blue hue. ‘Romance is not a word I’d want associated with my writing.’
‘Whether you’d want it associated with your writing or not is irrelevant,’ Jacinta continued. She reached for a lemonade, drank a mouthful then promptly spat it back into the glass. ‘That’s very bitter.’
Gavin stood between Faye and Jacinta like some sort of cultural referee. ‘It’s a literary exploration of boundaries, wouldn’t you say, babe?’ he said.
Faye rolled onto her back. The sun had hidden behind a cloud. ‘Gavin’s poetry is razor-edged. You should read some for them, darling.’
Mum and Pete were in Camber Sands, only the two of them on holiday for the first time ever, and we’d been instructed to use one of our free weekend days to take a trip to see Gavin and Faye, the other to clean the bathroom.
‘I don’t like poetry,’ Jacinta said. ‘I prefer mysteries. Maybe one of you should write a detective novel. I borrow tapes from the library and listen to them when I’m painting.’
Faye found a tube of sunscreen next to her on the lawn and squirted some into her hand. I watched as she applied it to her legs, starting at the thigh and moving down to her feet in long hooping strokes.
‘I’ve got quiche for lunch,’ Gavin said.
‘What type?’ Jacinta asked. She was watching Faye too, with a look of deep disgust.
‘Lorraine.’
‘Good.’
I helped Gavin in the kitchen while Jacinta planted the lavender we’d brought as a gift and Faye continued to lie in the sun. I chopped the tomatoes and cucumbers for the salad, washed the lettuce. Once or twice I almost nicked my fingers with the knife. My body felt clumsy and tight.
Gavin was very quiet, unboxing the ready-made quiche and putting it into the oven, washing up four plates and enough cutlery for all of us.
‘Jacinta likes ketchup with her food,’ I reminded him.
‘I have some of that but the lid might be a bit gunky.’ He reached over me to retrieve it from a high cupboard and his whole body was against me. He handed me the bottle. ‘How’s school?’ he asked.
‘Fine.’
‘You’re clever, Dolores. Don’t waste it, yeah? Make sure you do your best. Get as far away from those fuckers as possible.’ He put an arm around my shoulder and squeezed. ‘I love you, you know.’
‘I know,’ I said.
º
I began to feel annoyed about anything requiring a charge. I started to hate the laptop David had bought me the previous year, my Bluetooth headphones, the lawnmower. Jacinta liked to FaceTime but even that reminded me of Zoey and David and the videos of the dolls with stretchy mouths. I sent some letters in place of emails. Leonard said, ‘You’ve lost your mind, I think, sweetie. Sweetie, have you lost your mind?’
I had. But I said, ‘No. Isn’t it fun to get a letter?’
‘It’s fun to know your friend isn’t going to end up on the news because she’s taken a machete to a crowd of strangers in the Waitrose dairy aisle.’
‘I’m full of violence,’ I admitted.
‘David still not speaking?’
‘Is he saying anything to you?’
‘He told me he feels ashamed and asked who you’d told.’
‘What did you say?’
‘I told him that apart from the billboard at King’s Cross Station, you’d said nothing to anyone else.’
‘I wonder how much it would cost to do that.’
‘Please, Dolores, put the machete away.’
º
David was home early, sitting at the dining table logged in to some international medical conference. He waved at me not to go, so I made myself a cheese and ham sandwich and sat at the opposite end of the table.
He contributed evenly every so often to what I assumed was a panel event, and his comments were met with approval and deferential questions. He was dressed smartly and shaved, but beneath the table he was in his sports socks.
The conference came to an end and he closed his laptop. ‘That ran over by twenty minutes.’
‘You should have clicked out. Blamed the broadband.’
He laughed. ‘If Covid taught us nothing else, it was to blame the internet.’
‘Have you had dinner?’ I asked.
‘I have tennis tonight. I’ll eat afterwards.’
I pushed my plate towards him, half a sandwich still on it. ‘Have that.’
‘I don’t want it.’
‘OK.’
‘How was your day?’ he asked.
‘Same as most days.’
‘How’s your mum?’
‘A pain in my arse.’
He laughed. ‘We should get tickets for the Rothko exhibition and take her. I think it finishes soon.’
‘Where is it?’
‘The Tate Modern? I can’t remember.’
‘Right.’
David was still so handsome, maybe more handsome than he’d been as a younger man. He had gentle eyes.
‘Oh, and I was talking to Hugo yesterday. He told me he was planning a big thing for Mum’s birthday next month. We should probably contribute something.’
‘What?’
‘Five hundred quid?’
I shrugged.
‘Is five hundred too much?’ he asked.
‘David.’
‘Yeah?’
‘Tell me what you’re thinking.’
‘You wouldn’t want to know what I’m thinking.’
‘I would.’
‘I’m thinking this feels fantastic.’
‘Stop it.’
‘I know what you’re trying to do though. It happened the day we met. You’re going to get me to talk. Then you can listen and sympathise and forgive me so we can be what we’ve always been. But I want you to punch me. Be angry. For once, Dolores. Have a backbone.’
‘For God’s sake, David.’
‘Don’t.’
‘Don’t what?’
‘Don’t say whatever bullshit you’re going to say to smooth all this over because I’ll get up and go.’
So I didn’t say another word. Neither of us did. We sat staring into the table. And eventually David stood up and left. That’s the thing: he left anyway.
º
It’s true. We never really argued. We weren’t any good at it although we came close a few times. Like when Mum and Pete celebrated their fifteenth anniversary and David told me it was nothing more than an excuse for gifts and a party because they weren’t even married. ‘Why can’t they have gifts and a party if they want gifts and a party?’ I asked. We were in the car on the way to their house. I had a bottle of wine with me and a framed photograph of Mum and Pete from the year they met. Mum had called twice that morning asking whether people would expect servers. I told her no because I knew that by ‘people’ she meant David.
‘I’m not saying they shouldn’t do what they want. But people force everyone around them into celebrating minor milestones. Like gender reveal parties for pregnant couples. I mean what the hell is that about?’
‘That’s different.’
‘Is it?’
‘We had an engagement party. And a wedding.’
‘I know.’ He looked in the rear-view mirror and frowned. The driver behind us was getting very close.
‘Would you rather be somewhere else today?’ I asked.
‘Yes.’
‘Where?’
‘Anywhere.’
I felt a jolt of upset but I said, ‘Me too.’
David tightened his grip on the steering wheel. ‘Who’s going to be there?’
‘Family mostly. Oh, come on, I tolerate your lot,’ I said.
‘You tolerate them?’
‘I didn’t mean it like that. You know I didn’t.’
David put on his indicator and, with a jolt, pulled into a layby to allow the driver behind us to pass. I thought he might cut the engine so we could continue our discussion, but as soon as the road was clear, he pulled out again. ‘You don’t like my family?’ he asked.
‘I do,’ I told him. And I did. There was nothing to particularly dislike. They were very tepid people.
‘OK.’ And in a softer voice he said, ‘We should have got your mum a better gift. Let’s buy some John Lewis vouchers next week and send them.’
‘What we got is enough.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘Yeah.’
‘OK.’
And that was it. We got close. Quite close to saying something reckless and then retreated.
º
Jordana Kenton’s mother was ten minutes late and didn’t apologise for it. As I led her into my office she said, ‘I tried making an appointment with you last week when it happened.’
‘I’m glad you’ve made time this week to see me, Mrs Kenton. And it’s nice to meet you in person.’
She sat without being asked, placed a garish handbag on the chair next to her. Her tracksuit was made of cashmere. I took my seat behind the desk. ‘So.’
‘Well, like I said in my email, I’m not happy about Mr Barry’s behaviour. He’s made Jordana cry twice in his lessons. The first time it was because she’d not fulfilled the brief, so he said. He wouldn’t let her show her presentation even though he showed everyone else’s. And a couple of weeks ago he shouted at her for handing out party invitations. He then said, and I’m quoting him here because I heard it not only from Jordana but from her friend too, You might not make it to your twelfth birthday, so hold off on the excitement for a while.’ Jordana’s mother wore a tight ponytail that pulled back the skin around her eyes. Her nails were pointy. She was in the Nothing-to-Fucking-Do-All-Day parent category which accounted for approximately half my workload.
I leaned towards her. ‘Do you think there’s any chance Mr Barry was being humorous?’
Jordana’s mother stretched her neck, her left ear to her left shoulder then her right ear to the right. I examined the shine of her engagement ring, and thought how difficult it must be to maintain such pristine standards with regard to one’s appearance. I wondered whether it was a strain, the process of becoming the woman she emerged as each day.
‘Is he qualified?’
‘Who?’
‘Mr Barry.’
‘Yes. All our teachers are qualified.’
‘As what? Comedians?’
Jordana hadn’t inherited her mother’s wit. Mrs Kenton used the tapered end of the nail on her index finger to scratch at the wooden arm of the chair she was sitting in.
‘Jordana has been late probably a dozen times this year. Is there a reason for it?’
As Mrs Kenton replied, explaining how many children she had and the route she took to drop each of them to their respective schools, I wondered what David was doing with his afternoon. Saving a life, perhaps. Being formidable. I’d turned off the camera notifications so he might also have been at home with Zoey.
‘Do you think there’s an argument to be made for Jordana getting herself to school? On a bus for example.’
‘She’s eleven.’
‘Soon to be twelve. Most of our Year Sevens don’t get dropped off by their parents.’
‘A fourteen-year-old girl was dragged into a car park off Old Shoreham Road last week. Did you hear about that?’
‘I did hear about that, yes. We’ve suggested students come to school in pairs for a while. Buddy-up.’
‘Are we going to talk about Mr Barry? That’s why I’m here.’
‘Of course,’ I said. ‘Let me talk to Mr Barry and see how this can be resolved.’
She nodded. But I had no intention of saying a word about any of it to Thomas Barry who was one of our best, most popular teachers. I planned to talk to Jordana and explain that grassing up every member of staff who said something she didn’t like wasn’t going to get her very far at all.
º
My mum’s sister Kitty visited from Malahide with her baby, my cousin Paulie, when he was three months old. Kitty’s husband was a labourer on the Queen Elizabeth II bridge over in Dartford and was rarely home to Ireland to see them, so Mum told Kitty to stay with us, that we’d help for a while. Pete wasn’t happy, being part of the chorus instead of centre stage, but Mum mostly ignored his sulks and spent long hours showing Kitty how to soothe Paulie and when to let him cry. Kitty spent a lot of time in the garden smoking and listening to Richard Marx on Pete’s new portable CD player. When Mum started to look really tired, my aunt offered to take Jacinta and me swimming, though once there Kitty disappeared, telling us that if we told no one she’d left us alone, we’d get Slush Puppies on her return. She even had us take her one piece into the pool so it would smell of chlorine. We told no one about Kitty’s absconding, and never properly discussed it between ourselves either, because freedom like that was rare, as were the Slush Puppies.
Then Kitty went from sleeping in Jacinta’s bed, Jacinta pressed up next to me, to sleeping on the sofa. Kitty said the mattress was thin and uncomfortable, but I guessed she just wanted some respite from Paulie who stayed in our room, in a travel cot wedged between our beds. It meant we couldn’t be noisy after seven in the evening or put on a light to read. Mum said, ‘We all need our sleep, and if he’s not let rest, none of us will be.’
‘Why can’t he be with Gavin? They’re both boys,’ Jacinta said.
‘That doesn’t mean much,’ I argued. I didn’t want Paulie to be with anyone else. I liked his gurgles and the yoghurty smell of our room when he’d been sleeping in it. Mum left bottles of formula on the chest of drawers for when he woke at night and the job of his feeds migrated to us.
Paulie would wake and make a sound so shocking to my system, I’d bolt upright immediately. Then I’d grab him, so no one else would be disturbed, find the formula and take him into bed with me. His fuzzy head was so tiny I could have crushed it between my fingers. I thought how easy it would have been to break an arm or leg, how effortless his murder would have been, how risky it was to pair a strong person with a weak person.
For the last few weeks of their visit, I pretended Paulie was my own baby. I’d walk him, grinning at strangers who peered into the pram with reproachful grimaces. To them I was little more than a tart. And even that fantasy stirred something in me, the idea of being seen in that way, as something menacing and fleshy.
When Kitty and Paulie eventually flew back to Ireland, Pete cheerfully offering to drop them to Stansted and Mum sending them off with some flapjacks Gavin had baked the night before, I sobbed. I missed the weight of my cousin against me, his guileless screams for milk and affection. The cot was removed from our room and there was space to move around again. Jacinta began skipping with a rope all knotted and frayed. But fret filled that space too. And so I kept the lights on whether we were reading or not. For a long time.
º
A handwritten sign appeared on the staffroom notice board: Are they attention seeking or connection seeking?
I considered ripping it down but couldn’t find a moment when the staffroom was empty. It stayed up there a long time, until someone else removed it.
º
I have a photograph from my wedding day on the desk in my office. Out of every picture, it is my favourite, taken at the end of the evening when David and I were saying our goodbyes. I am crouching to hug a ten-year-old Paulie in his short-sleeved shirt. He is beaming as he holds me. His eyes are scrunched closed. He is holding on and holding on. It is pure love.
º
A few years into the marriage David asked me to talk to him while we had sex. We were usually silent, not even a low moan. ‘Say something,’ he whispered. Then, ‘Say something.’
‘What do you want me to say?’
‘I don’t care. Tell me the best way to gut a goose. I want to hear your voice.’
We’d moved to Acton, bought roller blinds for all the rooms even though it was a rental. ‘Shh,’ I said, unable to focus, unable to sustain my arousal while he yabbered on. ‘Please.’
º
Connection: a relationship in which a person or thing is linked or associated with something else.
º
David couldn’t fit everything into one suitcase and resorted to stuffing belts and trainers into carrier bags. I sat on the end of the bed and watched him. I had an urge to remove each item he put into the bags. I had an urge to shake him. I had an urge to fall onto my knees and ask what it was he needed me to be. I said, ‘I’m not sure why we’re splitting up.’
He had been crying. He didn’t look at me. ‘What do you want me to say?’ he asked. ‘Can you pass me that shirt?’
‘I want to understand,’ I told him.
He shook his head. ‘No, you don’t.’
‘How do you know what I want?’
‘If I told you what it’s like to be in love with you, it would hurt you to hear it, Dolores.’
‘We haven’t even tried.’
He stopped for a moment and looked at me sadly. ‘I have tried. For years. For ever.’
‘We could talk to someone. Work things out.’
‘You talk to someone. I think you should. But I can’t help with that. I’m not blaming you. I know I’m difficult too.’
‘I’m difficult?’ I said.
His sweater was creased. His hair was stuck up at the back like he’d slept on it. ‘I’ll call you.’
‘Where will you go?’ I asked.
He looked at me like I was a child who needed to be told an adult truth and said, ‘Shall I take Zoey with me now or is it OK if I come back for her?’
º
At my Aunty Kitty’s funeral three years ago, after lowering her coffin into the ground with his father and our uncles Eamon and Shaun, Paulie held up the bar. He chortled with friends and drank pint after pint of stout. By late afternoon, he could hardly stand up. His jacket looked tailored against his slim build. He had large teeth that made him look like a boy still growing into his own face. His short beard made him seem wise. His eyeliner had smudged.
In the church and then at the reception he never acknowledged me, despite the trips he and Aunt Kitty continued to take to England as he grew up, all the times I’d driven him to the cinema and to Burger King and to Paperchase where I allowed him to pick out whatever he liked.
Before I left, I touched his shoulder, felt the heat from his body. He turned. ‘Paulie, I wanted to say I’m so sorry.’ He nodded. ‘And I wanted you to know that when you were a little boy, I cared about you. Do you remember that?’ I didn’t tell him that I still cared about him. That I loved him. It seemed true but it could have been the occasion that made me feel what I was feeling for him and later read like melodrama.
His nostrils flared a little. He looked ready for a fist fight. He was wearing a gold signet ring on his middle finger. The friend next to him excused himself and we were alone.
I wanted to put my arms around Paulie, smell his neck, remember the baby he had been and the mother I had wanted to be, know the man he was becoming and the woman I’d become. ‘I remember,’ he said. I took my hand from his shoulder.
Even that had been too much.
º
The night David left, I wrapped myself in a blanket and drank ouzo, the only booze I had in the house. How had everything turned to shit when I’d only ever done the right thing? I was easy-going and easy with forgiveness. I wasn’t a cheat or a thief or a liar. Usually. And yet I was alone.
No. I wasn’t even alone: my husband’s sex doll was still in the garage, stuffed into that bag like a dead whore.
And I thought about them alternately: David, Zoey, David, Zoey. Until I went to sleep.
º
I don’t love you any more, Dolores. I’m not in love with you, Dolores. I never loved you, Dolores. I don’t know how I feel about you, Dolores. I don’t love you, Dolores. I don’t think you love me, Dolores. I don’t feel you’re in love with me any more, Dolores. You never touch me, Dolores. You’ve never loved me, Dolores.
Is this what he’d meant when he said he found me difficult?