‘I’m serious, Alice.’ He feels suddenly petulant and incredibly tired. ‘Can you imagine what it was like to come back here and find you gone and,’ he gestures inarticulately towards the sink, ‘find your stuff gone? It was awful. Awful. There was no note. No explanation. I had no idea why you’d gone until I found that bloody card and I didn’t know where you were or if you were all right. Don’t ever do that again. Please.’
Her brow is puckered and she shakes her head, spraying him with droplets of water. ‘John, I’m so sorry ... I wasn’t thinking.’ She slides her arms around his neck, her body coming to rest on his. ‘I won’t ever do it again. I promise.’
Ben twitches the curtains straight and turns to look at his wife in the doorway. ‘Ann, we have to sleep here.’
‘I know.’
‘At least for tonight.’
‘I know.’
‘There’s nowhere else.’
‘I know, Ben, I know.’
Ann sidles across the bedroom and pokes at Alice’s bed with the heel of her palm as if testing the mattress for softness. She stays bending over it.
‘It’s too late to get a hotel room.’
No response.
‘We could sleep on the sofas downstairs, or there’s a camp bed next door, but I don’t think either of us would have a good night. We’re going to need that, I think.’
‘Ben, I know. It’s just ... it feels a bit . . . odd. Don’t you think?’
Ann comes round the side of the bed and gives the duvet a little tug.
‘Sleeping in Alice’s bed?’
She doesn’t answer. She has her hand over her mouth, looking down at one of the pillows, which has the rounded indent of a head in its middle. Even Ben shudders. Ann reaches out and Ben watches as she pulls from the pillowcase a single long black hair, and holds it up to the light. It is a slow, thoughtful movement. Two nights ago, Ben thinks, my daughter slept in that bed as normal, and now she is shaven-headed, locked into a private and silent struggle with death. Ann pulls from her pocket a tissue a»d coils the hair into it.
‘Ann . . .’he begins.
She is walking backwards and she sinks into a chair. Ben comes to crouch beside her. ‘Ann, I know this is difficult, but I don’t see what option we have.’
She clutches the tissue in both her hands.
‘Alice wouldn’t mind. You know she wouldn’t. She’d prefer us to be here than in a hotel, wouldn’t she?’
She looks at him. He can see she’s thinking about this. ‘Wouldn’t she?’ he persists.
‘Maybe,’ she concedes. She shifts in the seat, looks down at the chair and begins pulling clothes out from underneath her: socks, a short skirt, stockings, a red blouse. All Alice’s. She drapes them one by one over the arm of the chair. ‘Maybe if we changed the sheets . . .’ She says.
The air of the bedroom is filled with flapping sheets. It feels to Ben like it could be the first movement within these walls for years, as if no one’s lived in this room for a long, long time. Ann comes through the door with a pile of clean linen just as he is bundling the sheets up to take downstairs.
‘What’s that?’ she says.
‘What?’
‘That. ’ Ann points at a patch of blue in his bundle.
Ben shrugs. ‘It’s a T-shirt. It was under one of the
Ann stares at it, eyes narrowed. ‘Alice doesn’t wear anything in bed,’ she says, almost to herself.
‘Sorry?’
‘She doesn’t—’ Ann breaks off, then comes forward and extracts the T-shirt out of the bundle like a conjuror pulling a string of coloured handkerchiefs from a hat. ‘Alice never . . .’ She stops again and, raising the T-shirt to her face, inhales. She has the kind of look on her face that people have when they are listening to a distant strain of music. Something closed to Ben is passing through her mind. He lifts the end of the limp T-shirt to his own face. Sniffs it. A sleep-soaked smell. Faint but distinct. Male. Ben and Ann look at each other, connected by the different ends of the T-shirt. Ben drops his.
‘I don’t think we should wash this,’ Ann says quickly. ‘Just in case,’ she adds, and, folding it, puts the T-shirt down on top of Alice’s clothes on the chair. Ben doesn’t ask, in case of what. He gathers up the sheets again and goes downstairs.
A few strange weeks passed with the two of them tightroping above anxiety, circling around the subject in all their conversations. To Alice, it was like the limbo of waiting for exam results all over again: knowing that everything now hung in someone else’s hands. John was optimistic and gloomy by turns. She knew he was calling his father and she knew he knew she knew. She also knew that the father kept his answerphone on and never returned John’s calls. The weeks trickled past. It became mentioned less and less and he became more and more despondent.
One night, something happened: a train passed, or the curtains were filled by a wintry draught and then pressed flat, or someone shouted in the street outside. She was suddenly wide awake, jolted by something from sleep. The room seemed unnaturally still. John slept on beside her, his arm flung across her, his fingers entwined in her hair.
The certainty that his father intended to make him choose between them was there in her mind. He wasn’t just sulking, as John kept determinedly claiming, he meant exactly what he said. He wouldn’t return all those calls unless John could tell him that she was out of the house and out of his life.
Alice eased herself up on to her elbow, above him, and looked down at him. He had slid down off the pillow and his head was resting on the mattress. His arm felt heavy on her body. He must have sensed her sleeplessness or her gaze or something because he stirred. His eyes almost opened and he moved closer, burying his face between her breasts, muttering something. His arm came back to life and he drew her sleepily towards him. Then he stopped. For a few seconds he breathed against her body then he turned his head and looked up at her, eyes wide, fully awake. ‘What?’ he said.
Alice laid her palm against his cheek. ‘I love you.’
He caught her hand in his. ‘What is it, Alice? You’ve got a really scary look on your face.’
She bent and pressed her lips to his briefly, then said, ‘I think it’s a really scared look.’
He pulled her down towards him so that her face was very close to his and she was looking directly into his eyes. ‘What’s the matter?’ he whispered.
She couldn’t answer straight away. She didn’t want to say the words.
‘Alice, tell me. What’s wrong? I’ve never seen you look so serious.’
She kissed him again. He kissed her back, but in a reserved and puzzled way.
‘Your father,’ she said, ‘is going to make you choose between us.’
He began stroking the side of her body in long, slow sweeps of his hand, beginning at her neck, moving down the side of her breast, into the dip of her waist, over the curve of her hip and then up again. He did this three, four, five times and then he said, ‘I know.’
She put her arms around his neck and they held each other very close.
‘I can’t do it, I can’t do it, I can’t do it,’ he said.
‘I don’t want you to do it,’ she said into his neck. ‘I can’t bear for you to have to make that decision. I can’t. It’s a decision that no one should have to make. Ever.’
‘I know,’ he said again. ‘I feel like a shuttle on a loom. All day I am passed from you to him in my mind. How can he expect me to make a choice, for me to say, “Well, I’ll have you, but not you”? And even if I did say, “Yes, Dad, I’ll give up my shiksa and be a good Jewish boy from now on,” what kind of a relationship would he expect to have with me, knowing that he’d made me give you up? And how, in God’s name, could he ever think I’d voluntarily give you up? It would be like saying, “Yeah, sure, Dad, you can cut off my right arm if you want to.”’
He released her and she could look again into his face.
‘I can’t believe it’s come to this. It’s incredible in this day and
age,’ she said. ‘My mother was right, you know.’
‘Your mother?’
‘Mmm. She said, with her usual bad-fairy tact, at my grandmother’s funeral that your being Jewish would cause problems. ’
‘Oh, God. Alice, I’m sorry.’
‘Don’t be stupid. I didn’t exactly go into this with my eyes closed, did I?’
‘No, but you didn’t expect all this either.’
‘No, I didn’t.’
‘Do you know what he did last week?’
‘What?’
‘He sent me a copy of this Jewish youth magazine with lonely-hearts pages in the back. You can advertise for your perfect Jewish bride. He pinned this note on to it saying, “Have you thought about this?”’
Cars passed intermittently down Camden Road. He played restlessly with strands of Alice’s hair and muttered, ‘It’s so ridiculous,’ every now and again.
‘What are you going to do, then?’ she said after a while, addressing the region of his chest.
‘To be very honest with you, I don’t know. The way I see it, there are two options. Number one, 1 tell my father where to go and risk being cut off by him. Or, number two, I tell my father that everything’s over between us, but we carry on seeing each other anyway in the hope that he’ll come round eventually. ’
She shook her head. ‘That’s not really an option, John, is it? We can’t lie to him. He’d be bound to find out. There is,’ she said steadily, still not meeting his eye, ‘another option, though, isn’t there?’
‘No,’ he put his hands over his ears. ‘No. Never. Don’t even say it, Alice.’
‘Number three option,’ she said, as if she hadn’t heard him, ‘is for us to go our separate ways.’
‘But how could we?’ He thumped the pillow with his fist. ‘Alice, for fuck’s sake, look at me, will you? Look at me,’ he insisted. ‘How could we do that?’
‘I don’t know,’ she cried, ‘but we may have to. You can’t just . . . throw away your family like that. You just can’t. I won’t let you.’
He turned on to his back and glared at the ceiling. She held his hand between hers and examined it. This may be the last time we are in bed together, she caught herself thinking. ‘Right,’ she said, wanting to blot out that thought. ‘I have a plan.’
‘W'hat? An Alice Plan?’ He was reanimated, sitting up, his face filled with hope. ‘Is it a solution?’
She laughed, in spite of everything. ‘No, it’s not a solution, more a means to a solution. You have a week to decide what you’re going to do.’
‘A week?’ He took a deep breath. ‘OK.’
‘Starting from now. And — here’s the part you really won’t like — I go away.’
‘No.’
‘No? What do you mean “no”?’
‘I mean, no, you’re not to go away.’
‘I have to. It’s part of the plan.’
‘But . . . but . . .’he floundered ‘. . . I need you to help me decide.’
‘Bullshit. You need a bit of space and time on your own to think. Me being here will just cloud the issue.’
‘No, it won’t.’
‘Yes, it will. So, I go away for a week. We don’t call each other. There’s no contact between us at all. You go and see your father and you talk to him. You have time to think about what it is you want, your beliefs, your priorities,’ she waved her hand in the air, ‘and so on. And then at the end of the week, you call me and tell me what you’ve decided.’
‘1 don’t like the you-going-away part. What if you don’t come back?’
‘Well,’ she said, ‘then that would be option three decided upon, wouldn’t it? And we’d both have to . . . learn to live with it.’
He was looking at her, she could see out of the corner of her eye, but she refused to return his look, in case she weakened in her resolve.
‘OK. So, I stay here, see my father and decide between the three options.’
She slapped him on the arm. ‘John! I declared option two null and void.’
‘I know, I know. I’m only joking. But why can’t I declare your going-away plan null and void?’
‘Because.’
‘Because what?’
‘Because,’ said Alice, climbing on top of him and pinning him to the bed, ‘I said so. And, anyway, you know it’s the only way.’
He looked up at her through her hair. ‘You are right. As usual. But where will you go?’
‘Where will I go? Home, of course.’
I caught the plane the next morning, splashing out on an air ticket because I was unable to face four and a half hours trapped in a train carriage. John cried at the airport. I’d never seen him cry before: it horrified me and I held him until after the last call for my flight. I had to run out on to the tarmac and up the metal steps to a peeved, waiting air stewardess.
I took it as a bad sign, of course. If he cried, I told myself, that means he thinks it’s over. I saw Canary Wharf from the plane window. It looked tiny and flimsy, as if made from cardboard. If I’d shut one eye and raised my hand, I could have obliterated it with a thumbnail.
The flight took three-quarters of an hour. I ignored the safety demonstration, the offers of sandwiches and the peculiar lure of in-flight magazines, and sat slumped in my seat, staring out at the clouds. From the airport, I caught a bus to Princes Street. I’m no nationalist, but there is something about that first glimpse of the blackened tips of the Scott Monument and the green sweeps of the Gardens, the first lungful of that sharp, clean air that can always lift my spirits.
I pushed my way into a phone box outside Waverley Market and pulled the door closed behind me (just outside there was a man in a kilt playing bagpipes badly for the tourists). I lifted the receiver to my ear and dialled.
‘Susannah? It’s Alice.’
‘Alice, where in God’s name are you? It’s twelve-thirty. You’ve got—’
‘I’m in Edinburgh.’
‘What? You are joking, I presume.’
I eased the door ajar with my foot. ‘Listen to this,’ I said, and held the receiver towards the blasting bagpipes. I could hear Susannah groaning. ‘I can explain,’ I said.
‘Good. I’m listening.’
‘But not right now.’
There was a pause.
‘Ah,’ she said, ‘it’s like that, is it?’
‘Yeah.’
‘OK,’ she said thoughtfully, ‘well, you can tell me all about it when you get back. When would that be, precisely?’
‘Um . . . next week?’
‘Alice, are you mad? What am I supposed to tell Anthony?’ ‘I don’t know'. You’ll think of something. Tell him I’m ill. Tell him I’m doing research in Scotland. Anything.’
I heard her sigh. ‘You owe me one for this.’
‘Susannah, have I ever told you that I love you?’
‘Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, bring me some shortbread or haggis or whatever.’
‘I will, ’bye.’
‘’Bye.’
I pressed the follow-on-call button and hesitated for a moment. John would be at work now, sitting at his desk by the window, with all of east London below him. I was aching to call him. Already. This was not a good sign. It was against the rules. I looked out of the phone-box window, up at the skyline of the Old Town. American tourists in inflated Puffa jackets and multiple scarves milled around outside shouting to each other as they waited for the tour buses. I turned my back on them and resolutely pressed in Kirsty’s number.-‘Kirsty?’
‘Alice! How are you doing?’
‘OK. Kirsty, can I come and stay?’
‘Sure. When?’
‘Like, now?’
‘Now?’ Kirsty repeated. ‘Where are you?’ she asked cautiously.
‘Princes Street.’
‘For God’s sake, Alice, what are you doing here? What’s happened? Are you all right?’
‘I’m fine, I’m fine.’
Kirsty was silent at the other end of the line.
<
br /> ‘Look, are you busy? Can I come now?’
‘Am I busy?’ Kirsty said, laughing. ‘Of course I’m not busy. My days consist of either antenatal exercises or eating. Come now. I’ll set off and meet you half-way.’
Alice was writing an essay on Robert Browning. Pinned up in front of her was a calendar with black lines through the days of the year that had already elapsed. Boxed in red was the week of her Higher exams. The narrowing down of the clean white days between the red days and the encroaching black-lined ones made a crawling fear quicken in her stomach. This morning, when she was walking up to school, she’d felt the prickling smart in her throat and nose that meant hayfever, and hayfever meant summer and summer meant exams.
Alice bent her head over her work again. ‘Compare and contrast,’ the question read, ‘the motivations of the Duke in “My Last Duchess” and those of the monk in “Fra Lippo Lippi”.’ Alice had four pages of notes and an essay plan. There was, she knew, a formula to these things: an introductory paragraph in which you should answer the question in shortened form and explain your argument, an expansion on your argument — using at all times as many quotes as you could, as well as, where possible, the words of the question — a final paragraph where you could try and crowbar in as many other insights you had about this text, if you had any, and then a summing-up, referring back to your introduction. It should be easy, it should be easy. But she couldn’t quell these nerves. At night, she lay awake thinking over revision plans, subjects, notes, diagrams, links, multiple-choice answers.
She unscrewed the cap of the fountain pen she always used to write her essays. Her slanted writing had eroded the nib down on one side. ‘Browning,’ she wrote, ‘was concerned with individuals absorbed by their own needs.’ As she reached the end of the sentence, the ink at the beginning had already dried. The page of foolscap curled at the edges. She straightened it with her palm, and pressed her nib to the page again: ‘In his poems “My Last Duchess” and “Fra—’ She felt a movement of air in the room and saw her mother opening her bedroom door.