If You Knew Her Read online

  ‘Well, Dad,’ Lucy says, smiling nervously. ‘I promised no tattoos but you never said anything about getting my nose pierced.’ She splutters a little laugh as a tear rolls down her face and drops on to the back of my hand. It feels glorious, a cherished, sad little kiss. She wipes another away with a quick hand.

  Don’t be sad, my love, don’t be sad. I’m not! I’m so happy you’re here.

  ‘I’ll be just at the end of the ward if you need me,’ Alice says to Lucy.

  Lucy moves her eyes from me to Alice, and nods. She puts her hand over mine, where her tear just fell. Her hand’s warm, healing, and she starts crying in earnest.

  ‘Sorry, Dad. Sorry. I promised myself I wouldn’t do this,’ she says, pointing at her tear-stained face.

  You never need to be sorry with me, my love. You know that.

  I can see from her face she’s trying to remember Alice’s advice, trying to remember how to talk naturally to me. She looks down briefly, playing with the tissue in her lap. She frowns. I see the little scar in the middle of her forehead where she fell and hit her head when she was a toddler. She looks up, visibly brightening a little. She’s thought of something.

  ‘I got a kitten, Dad! She’s a rescue. The landlord doesn’t know, of course, but he’s never around and I’ve wanted one since I was what, like six? All my flatmates love her. I’ll show you a photo.’ She carries on talking as she rummages in a bag I can’t see.

  ‘She’s the sweetest little thing. I’m mad about her. It reminds me of that time we looked after our old neighbour’s cats? You remember that one that crapped in the bath? Mum went crazy. Anyway, here she is. Her name’s Betty.’ Lucy holds a phone screen in front of my eyes. She’s wearing chipped, pink nail varnish. She’s still biting her nails. The screen’s too shiny, I can’t see the photo. All I see is a skeletal face, reflected perfectly back at me, bones barely covered by translucent skin, like a saggy-skinned chicken before it’s cooked. My eyes are sunken in their sockets, as if someone’s taken the soft tissue out with an ice cream baller. I can’t see any hair at all, and a blue tube, like a sick joke tie, pokes out from the lower edge of the image. My eyes are the eyes of a dead fish, filmy and vacant.

  Take it away, Lucy, please move it.

  But she doesn’t. I’m forced to look at myself, an appalled narcissus as she chatters away about Betty.

  ‘She’s pretty good but she does shred everything.’ At last she takes the phone away.

  Don’t do that again, please, sweetheart.

  ‘Anyway,’ she says, chewing her mouth, again trying to find something to say. ‘Uni’s pretty good. I’ve met loads of brilliant people, Dad, and I love living in London. I’m going to have to get a job, maybe bar work or something. It’s just so expensive …’ She tails off and lightly places her hand back on top of mine, the best medicine.

  ‘That’s why I haven’t been to see you for a couple of weeks. I’m sorry. It sounds so selfish, but I’ve just been so caught up in my own stuff. I decided to stay in London over Christmas. Mum wanted me home in Brighton, of course, but I just wanted to do my own thing …’

  Lucy looks at me, frowning slightly. She chews one of her fingernails. My heart seizes. Something’s on her mind; I can tell.

  What is it, my love?

  ‘Mum was going to come with me to see you today, Dad, but she bottled it at the last minute, said something came up with Gran and she had to go and help her.’ Lucy rolls her eyes at her mum’s transparent excuse. We both know Ange’s mum prides herself on never asking for help, and even if she did, we know she wouldn’t ask her daughter.

  ‘I thought she should tell you herself, but –’ Lucy rubs her face with her hands, and shakes her head a couple of times ‘– Mum’s got a new boyfriend, Dad. Craig. He works in insurance, and he’s pretty much the most boring man I’ve ever met.’

  Ange has a boyfriend, a boyfriend called Craig. Strange, the simple sentence doesn’t appal me, doesn’t even surprise me that much. I imagine insurance man Craig, a lumpy face, the colour of porridge, pulling his double chin away from the collar of a cheap polyester suit and I hope he’ll succeed where I failed again and again. I wonder if he’ll be able to make Ange happy, lift a life full of disappointment. I wonder if he can make Ange’s mouth so often pursed as a tight knot finally loosen into a long-lost smile. I hope so. I’d like to think she could be happy; it would be good for Lucy to see her mum happy.

  Lucy leans over me to look at the photo of us, me dressed as Santa, her on my knee, she laughs a small, wet laugh.

  ‘We had fun, didn’t we, Dad? You and me?’

  Remember our fishing trip to Wales?

  ‘Remember when we went to Wales? I caught, like, ten fish and you caught one tiny little thing.’ She laughs again before she looks down at me and her smile disappears. When I was with Lucy, the creature seemed to nap. I didn’t want to drink when I was with her; didn’t want to miss a thing.

  She puts the photo back on my bedside unit and comes to sit back in the visitor’s chair. Silence settles around us and I feel her struggle for something to say. Luce and I used to laugh at things no one else saw or understood: a jogger’s funny run; a dog kicking clumps of grass in the air with their back legs after going to the toilet. Ange used to tell us to shut up. We used to be good in silence as well, Luce and I, but before the silence was chosen, not forced upon us like now. She fiddles with the ring in her nose, looks at her hands. I wish she wouldn’t search for something to say; it makes me feel like we’re not us any more.

  ‘I’ve started talking to someone, Dad,’ she says, not lifting her eyes from her hands. ‘A uni counsellor. It’s free so I thought I may as well.’ She shrugs and looks up at me, new tears falling fast as rain down her face. Her voice is a tiny, frightened little thing when she starts, but it gets stronger, practised, as she keeps talking.

  ‘I want you to know I forgive you. I forgive you for drinking, I forgive you for disappearing and I forgive you for lying to us. I know now that it’s a disease, just like cancer or whatever. You couldn’t help it. It’s not your fault. That’s why I forgive you.’

  She leans forward, and squeezes my hand. Her tears dampen my bed and I would die a happy man if the world would just let me stroke her hair once, or tell her I love her. But, of course, I’m asking too much. Her forgiveness chimes through my veins like a sugar rush neutralising, for a while at least, the bitterness of my shame.

  I love you, I’m so proud of you.

  I say it again and again, my whole body pulsing with the charge, and I hope she senses the flavour of my feeling at least, which I think she does because she splutters a little laugh and smiles down at me.

  We sit in silence together for a few minutes, Lucy cries some more before she kisses my cheek, sending the loveliest wave rippling through my blood.

  ‘I’ll come again soon, Dad. Love you.’

  No more piercings! That’s an order!

  She gives me a final little smile and then she disappears.

  The space around my bed seems to ache with her absence and I am alone again.

  12

  Cassie

  Cassie sips her coffee and stands back in the shed to look at the canvas, which glistens, wet with paint, before her. The coffee tastes processed, too meddled with. She’s not used to decaf. She winces and puts it on the windowsill, careful to avoid the bumblebee that has been bashing itself uselessly against the window pane all afternoon. Every time she tries to rescue it, the stupid thing flies away.

  She turns back to the canvas.

  Inspiration struck for the painting while she was swimming in the sea with Jonny at Birling Gap. It was one of those freakishly hot June days and they’d been at a sweaty indoor market all day. Jonny had been nervous, and shouted at Cassie when she’d swam underwater. He’d said there were invisible rip currents, but she’d been hypnotised by how the sunlight, as seen from underwater, silvered the undulating surface of the water, weird and mercurial. She’d wanted to ha
rness that mottled, refracted light on her canvas, and hoped it would fill the viewers’ ears with the endless silence of the ocean. She’d wanted them to feel peaceful, held, safe.

  Before she started painting, she imagined taking a photo of her work so Jonny would finally understand her vision, but now that feels needy, too desperate for praise, and besides she hasn’t got it at all. The canvas is flat, one-dimensional; it looks like an A-level attempt. Completely shit.

  Suddenly the shed feels stuffy, claustrophobic. She pulls off the old shirt she uses for painting. It slides to the floor but she can’t be arsed to pick it up. She leaves the disgusting coffee on the windowsill. The shed door bangs shut behind her, and after a brief armistice, the bee recommences its assault, bashing itself against the pane again and again and again.

  Outside, Cassie drops down onto the lawn between the shed and the cottage. Her bare toes rake against the grass, decorated with daisies and other wild summer flowers Cassie can’t name. White clouds scud across the blue sky like cartoon drawings, and a may bug like a rusty, tiny bomber, rattles unseen nearby. Cassie always thought it was especially cruel that April died in the summer, a perfect sunny afternoon, two years ago to the day. April loved the summer. Cassie leans back, and opens herself to the sky. She closes her eyes and tries not to think too much. She feels weightless, as though she could lie there for ever.

  She dozes but after a few minutes her phone rattles, fracturing the silence. She pulls it out of her pocket, hoping it’s not Marcus calling again. She’s already ignored one call from him today, lying to herself that she’d call him back later; ignoring a second call would feel too cruel. But it’s not Marcus; it’s Nicky. Her friend’s name, as familiar to Cassie as her own, flashes on the screen, desperate for attention. She hovers her thumb over the ‘Accept’ button, but she pauses and suddenly it’s too late, the answer phone clicks on.

  Cassie tells herself she’ll call Nicky back later.

  She lies back and closes her eyes again, trying to find her peace, but she can’t. Her phone buzzes again, with Nicky’s voicemail this time. Cassie peaks a hand over her brow against the sun as she presses to listen to the recording on her phone speaker. Traffic and the painful hammering of roadworks explode out of her phone, the noise dystopian and alien in the soporific summer slumber of the little garden. A longing twists like a knife in Cassie. London, the smell of molten tarmac, the distracted buzz of people, people everywhere.

  ‘God, sorry, Cas. Hope you can hear me.’ Nicky’s voice breaks just over the scream from traffic and roadworks. Cassie can hear her rushing, trying to get past the noise. ‘I’m at Victoria. Jesus, it’s always a nightmare around here. I’m just calling to say I’m thinking of you and April so much today. I can’t believe it’s been two years already. It’s nuts. Anyway, I really hope you’re OK. It must be beautiful down there. You’re so lucky; London’s filthy. Maybe call me later if you can, OK? Let’s sort out a date for me to come down again, yeah? Lots of love.’

  Cassie’s arm drops heavy on top of her grassy bed. What’s wrong with her? She thought she’d be OK today; after all, it’s just another day, isn’t it? Cassie remembers Jack’s line that ‘grief is a kind of art form’. She rests her head back and thinks maybe there’s some truth in it. Maybe now is a good day to try and give in to it. She’s got April’s diary from Mexico, when she became pregnant with Cassie. It’s upstairs in a drawer. She considers reading it stretched out on the grass. That’d probably do the trick – release some of the tears she can feel building in her throat like a storm.

  She’s about to get up when her phone buzzes again. This time it’s a text message from Charlotte.

  Thinking of you and April today, Cas. Let me know if you need anything. All my love, C x

  Charlotte and Cassie haven’t talked about Mike’s affairs again since their chat in the car park at the food festival, the spring grass under their feet, the oily tang from the cars and trucks parked all around them. Cassie wants to know more. How did Charlotte hide it from Jack all these years? How has she let him go on believing his dad was some kind of hero and not the slippery cheat he really was? Doesn’t she want revenge? She has a new admiration for Charlotte, a new, dizzying perspective on the love she has for Jack, always putting his feelings before her own, even though at times her heart must have crackled and spat with anger in her chest. Cassie strokes her stomach. She hopes she’s capable of the same love for her child, and promises the little life that, whatever happens, she’ll try her best to be a mother like Charlotte.

  Without warning, she hears the crispy munch of wheels on the little gravel drive at the front of the cottage. She lifts herself up onto her elbows; her heart lifts. Jack. He’s come home early as a surprise so she won’t be alone! Her knees click as they bend for her to stand and, feeling better already, she runs on her tiptoes on the lawn and around the corner of the house, where she thinks she’ll bound headlong into Jack’s arms. She runs sharply around the corner and then has to skip herself to a stop. She knows the old Volvo parked in front of the cottage, but like a face she hasn’t seen in years, it takes a moment for her to place it. The driver’s door opens and a pair of long legs in corduroy trousers and round-toed brown leather shoes that look at least two decades old land on the pebbles. Marcus uses the door to pull himself to his full height. She sees him wince as his bad hip takes on his weight. He opens his arms to her and she walks gingerly over the pebbles towards him, trying to smile at Marcus through her surprise.

  ‘Marcus, what are you doing here?’

  She plants a carefully placed kiss on each of his cheeks, his face as crumpled as his plaid shirt, far too hot for this weather. He smells stale, mothballs and wood smoke. The smell makes Cassie feel twelve again, disappointed he doesn’t smell like the dad she always dreamed of, aftershave and expensive leather.

  ‘What are you doing here, Marcus?’ she asks again, feeling the pebbles dig into her feet.

  Marcus’s eyes widen as he says, ‘Cassie!’, as though she’s the one surprising him.

  ‘Marcus, I did not expect to see you!’ she asks again, smiling so he doesn’t feel foolish.

  He frowns again, glances up at the cottage and says, ‘I thought it would be nice to see you for a cup of tea. It’s not that far really.’

  ‘You mean you were in the area?’ Cassie asks.

  Marcus shrugs. Cassie knows he wasn’t. He drove two hours all the way from the Isle of Wight, ‘on the off-chance’ she’d be in.

  Marcus squints again at the friendly face of their red-brick cottage.

  ‘Lovely place, Cas,’ he says. He’s grown more wrinkles, his face a map of wiggly lines, the ones around his eyes most deeply riven. April always loved his white hair long but even she would bundle him off to the hairdresser’s if she saw him now. It’s crimped and wild, but flat at the back from where his head rested for the long drive. He’s grown more fragile in the seven months since the wedding, as though the scales of his life have been weighted by his years and have at last tipped him into old age.

  Cassie takes his arm. ‘Come on, I’ll make us some tea,’ and she leads him, both of them hobbling slightly over the pebbles, towards the cottage.

  They sit on the old wooden table and chairs, greened with outside living. The table wobbles as Cassie balances a teapot, cups and saucers on top – the cups and saucers a wedding gift from one of Charlotte’s friends, until now unused.

  ‘So, you’re painting again, Cas?’ Marcus looks at Cassie’s hands. She rubs her thumb over a streak of blue paint.

  ‘Yeah, just for fun,’ she says, shy suddenly. ‘I’ve got a little shed over there where I work. I’ve got some of Mum’s canvases in there actually, I’ll show you in a bit.’

  ‘I’d like that. So you’re still acting, are you?’

  ‘Marcus, that was four years ago.’ He used to know exactly what was happening in her life. She’s about to gently take the piss out of him for forgetting, but his brow knits, he’s confused, he can’t m
ake sense of his thoughts. It must be the anniversary getting to him. She tries to lighten his mood. ‘You’re just like Mum, Marcus; one stupid advert does not an actor make.’ She ennunciates her words, mimicking a Shakespearean actor, before she adds in her normal voice, ‘I think Mum genuinely expected the Academy Awards to call up with a nomination after that stupid advert.’

  Marcus chuckles, and gently shakes his head as if at the memory, but he’s a little too slow, his small laugh stiff. Cassie knows she’s lost him.

  ‘She was very proud of you, always believed in you,’ he says.

  ‘I know, but seriously, ask Jack, I’m no actress. Painting’s my thing. Just like Mum, remember?’

  Marcus swats a wasp away from the table and leans back in his chair as he says, ‘Oh, I know what I wanted to tell you. I found the “Fruit and Face” series recently. God, it made me laugh to see them again.’

  Cassie smiles, relieved to hear some of the old, sharper Marcus back in his voice. The paintings from the “Fruit and Face” series all came in pairs, one an image of a piece of fruit and the other the face of a person who resembled the fruit. One was of a fat man with a round, gouty face and dimpled chin next to a single, plump, red cherry; another of a woman with an oblong face and a high ponytail like fronds over her head next to a pineapple. April said she could get away with painting rude portraits, said it was one of the very few advantages of having cancer. Cassie remembers April giggling behind her canvas as she painted.

  Cassie stands to pour the tea.

  ‘So you cancelled this weekend then?’ she asks, trying to keep a lightness in her voice.

  Marcus scrunches his eyes, as though he’s rifling through a Rolodex of options about what Cassie could be talking about, so she adds, ‘Mum’s anniversary, Marcus?’

  Cassie keeps her eyes fixed on the cup as she pours milk, trying to hide a small flash of embarrassment for Marcus.