9

“The worst loneliness is not to be comfortable with yourself”

—Mark Twain

The weeks have rolled by and life at The Lodge is falling into a pattern, one where Tom is happy and I am not. This is the house he’s always dreamed of but I find myself torn between loving and hating it. It unsettles me. I have tried so hard to find happiness here and have occasionally glimpsed its sunny upturned face, catching me unawares pottering in the garden or planning out the color scheme for a room. Trouble is I can’t sustain it. I seem unable to find peace.

I am trying to make a home. I’m gathering photos and planning my mood boards for each room but my enthusiasm falls too readily away. I start the day full of ideas, my palette a subtle mix of misty grays and heritage greens. I picture the rooms as an eclectic mix of traditional and contemporary; our favorite things from our London home seamlessly inserted into the tranquil space of a Victorian drawing room. No matter how much I focus, I find I lose my thread and slip into apathy. We will have an interior designer eventually but I need them to have a sense of my taste. To translate my vision into reality, not inflict me with theirs.

We are lucky. My father put money in trust for me until I was twenty-one—just in case I ended up wearing all my clothes at once while I howled at strangers in the street. This cushion has allowed me to pursue my art and has supplemented Tom’s income so we can do all the things we want to do just that little bit more easily. It has also served another purpose, of course. It is the balm, the emollient my father rubs into his conscience to salve the wound of his guilt. And yes, I am aware that I’m a hypocrite.

Tom leaves early each morning for his job in the city—investment funds, how dull—so I spend my days alone. Too much solitude seems not to be good for me. I was alone for much of my day in London but not lonely like this. No sounds from the street, no people going about their daily lives. Nothing. When we’re both here the air feels lighter somehow, the atmosphere lifts. When it’s just me it changes. It seems to clot and thicken until I’m wading through treacle, its ticky tendrils dragging at my limbs. The weather hasn’t helped. The summer has been long and sultry, which has added to my lassitude.

I am still troubled by a kind of déjà vu. It will come upon me unexpectedly, the sense that I’ve been here before. I’ll walk into a room, or more specifically go into the kitchen or come through the front door, and the familiarity of it all hits me with the quality of a childhood memory. Or like the recollection of a dream. To start with it was fleeting—a blink and it was gone—but recently it’s solidifying. It’s becoming more pronounced and it troubles me. It’s not something I’ve experienced before and it seems irrational, not linked to my injury or to anything that makes any sense. I know I haven’t been here before but the feeling persists. When it comes over me it feels so real; so real that the other day I found myself standing in the driveway looking up at the house, concentrating on its every detail. I then closed my eyes and tried to summon up a memory of actually coming here, of walking up the drive and knocking on the door. That way madness lies.

I haven’t said anything to Tom. In part because I don’t want to worry him but also because I don’t think I can bear the oversolicitous concern it will bring. He will try to wrap me in kindness, to cosset me in a way that reduces me to a child. I don’t want that anymore.

I’m also struggling to sleep. This has always been problematic for me—common in my situation—but now it’s worse. My nights are haunted by dreams, prophetic and terror laden. I’ve taken to dreaming of my attacker, something I haven’t done in years. In these fevered nightmares he’s a dark figure behind me, his hands grasping and clawing at my hair. As I turn and am about to see his face, I wake trembling and sweating, my heart thundering in my chest. Recently I’ve had to get up to clear my head and to allow the tingling aftermath of panic to subside. I walk the rooms—not the kitchen obviously—in the moonlight and listen to the house breathing. I swear it does. A sibilant sigh on the edge of silence.

My dream has always been the same, the same scenario over and over. It was every night in the early days. Every time I closed my eyes, until the very thought of sleep was enough to send me spiraling into dread. I have no memory of those events, they mean nothing to me, unless there’s something buried deep that only sleep sets free.

I can remember the morning of my attack with complete clarity. The halls of Thorpwood House vibrating with the pent-up energy of girls soon to be released for the summer. The summer of 1994. The dentist was paying his annual visit to the school that day and groups of us were periodically called from our form room to sick bay where he would slide his slippery-gloved fingers over our gums and probe us for cavities, all under the vengeful gaze of Matron as chaperone. The fees the parents of the privileged few paid to Thorpwood House took care not only of our educational needs but also of such tiresome parental duties as dental checks and vaccinations. Each year we were subject to these unwelcome attentions. The dentist, with his face like a boiled ham, would no doubt have been high on my list of likely assailants had he not at the time been avidly peering into the mouth of some unfortunate girl.

I had lost a bracelet, and once my teeth were pronounced present and correct, I slipped away to the sports pavilion in case I’d lost it during games. I was feeling resentful and angry that day. Resentful toward the girls whose parents would be taking them away for the summer, to loving homes and sun-kissed beaches. Angry at the fact that I would be spending my summer at the school—a fate usually reserved for the “overseas girls.”

I can remember walking past the tennis courts under the dark shade of the yew hedging and back out into the shimmering glare of the morning sunshine. Then there is nothing. No sense of impending danger. No leering stranger luring me with promises of sweeties or the chance to stroke his puppy dog. No searing pain, just a void in my existence like the suspension of time.

Despite various reports of suspicious vehicles, no perpetrator of the crime was ever found. It remains the great unsolved mystery of my life. The breaking and the making of me.

For a while my story captured the attention of the press. The heady combination of teenage victim, exclusive school and “frenzied” attacker proving irresistible. I couldn’t think it at the time, mainly because I couldn’t think much of anything, but I have since wondered if he, for I really can’t imagine a she, read my name, saw my childhood photo and absorbed the details of me. Whether he took pleasure in his handiwork or feared me for what I might know or say. In my darker moments I have wondered if he hovers at the edges of my life watching me still. It’s odd to think that all this time he’s been out there, living his life in parallel with what he left me of mine.

I had hoped Tom was unaware of my nocturnal wanderings. He’s not. Last night as I slipped back under the quilt he reached and stroked my hair, gently soothing me back to sleep. My dream was different this time but no less unsettling. A flaxen-haired girl was under the trees trying to give me a key. Again and again she tried to give it to me, pressing it into my palm. Each time it dropped into the grass. It kept falling through my fingers no matter how hard I tried to keep hold of it. It was so vivid that when I think of it even now I can still feel its pressure in my hand and the sense of loss. It’s as though I was on the brink of something important and now it’s lost to me.

Tom looked at me strangely this morning and I sense a conversation coming on. Luckily it won’t be today, not when there are things to do. He met our neighbors last week and has invited them to dinner. It might’ve been nice if he’d perhaps spoken to me first. They’re coming tomorrow and now I must do what I can with the dining room and prepare the menu. I must make an effort to get things right in the hope they’ll be friends.

The dining room is shabby despite Tom having stuck down the loose wallpaper and replaced the hideous wooden chandelier with a simple shade. There are no curtains and we’re not really set for entertaining yet. I’ve ordered yards of ivory muslin off the internet and I drape this around the window to hide the rail and artfully knot it in swathes at the corners. It hangs at the sides like curtains, bunched and gathered on the floor. It’s a bit theatrical but in the absence of anything else it’ll have to do.

Thankfully it’ll be dark when we eat. We’re stepping into autumn now and the evenings are drawing in. I’ll light the room with candles and tea lights, which I’ve placed on every available surface, the mantelpiece, the windowsill, the shelves either side of the fireplace and in the grate itself.

Our light beech table and chairs look so out of place here. I’ve covered the table with an ivory damask tablecloth, a wedding present from someone, which helps. It’s too big for the table and hangs nearly to the floor. Tomorrow I’ll add a jug of roses from the garden, those big full-blown rosettes. I stand back and survey my handiwork. It may be a tad Miss Havisham but with the candles lit and the table laid it’ll do.