At just after seven, she sent a text to Ralph.
Can we meet?
He texted back almost immediately.
Why?
I want to show you something I made. Can you come to my place?
There was no reply for ages.
I don’t know. I’m not allowed to see you, am I?
Afterwards, she pictured him talking to Nina, dismissing her as a malicious lunatic. He must hate her. Of course he wouldn’t come. The high drained quickly into numb exhaustion and she lay down on the sofa, covering herself with a worn, tartan rug that smelled of picnics. The Tube trains crossed the bridge like intermittent lullabies and she was carried off by sleep.
The harsh entrance buzzer woke her and she jumped up, disoriented and unclear what time it was. Bright sunshine was streaming through the window. As she hurried to the intercom she saw on her phone that it was still only 8.30 a.m. Ralph was staring into the camera.
‘Hello.’ She pressed the button to let him in the main door and hurried to the bathroom to wash her face in cold water. Twisting her hair up with a clip, she opened the front door just as Ralph was emerging from the lift. He limped slowly along the carpeted corridor towards her and she saw him for the first time as a small, old person. Gone was the man who was always larger than her, larger than life. It was pitiful. Neither said a word. They didn’t kiss each other either and he stared at her with a tired, puzzled expression.
‘I’ll get some coffee. Would you like some?’ It was almost impossible to make sense of her contradictory thoughts: how this man had harmed her and loved her; how she had taken her revenge; and now, how it looked meaningless.
‘OK.’ Instead of following her into the kitchen, he walked into the sitting room to wait. She spotted him through the open door, looking out at the river, and they didn’t speak until she joined him bearing a tray laden with toast, butter and marmalade, from which she’d hastily scraped the mould. Hunger and lack of sleep were making her weak and she needed sustenance even if he didn’t. He was standing before her portrait of Connie.
‘What do you think?’
‘So like her. Quite creepy, what she’s wearing.’ He appeared repelled rather than impressed.
‘Yes, I kept her clothes after she died. I think I found the perfect use for them. But wait a sec, there’s something else I need to show you.’ She went to the hall cupboard, pulled out the rubbish bag and returned with Putney. ‘I wanted you to see this one.’ She spread it out over the sofa so the edges draped down to the floor and he examined it.
‘Hmm,’ he grunted. ‘And?’ The impatience in his voice made it clear he was waiting for an explanation as to why she’d dragged him over there early in the morning, after everything that had happened.
‘It’s meant to be about you and me. My childhood, Barnabas Road. These are our figures floating about in different places.’
‘I think we look rather happy.’ He sounded annoyed, but he looked scared. Perhaps he believed she was toying with him, a cat luxuriating in pawing a wounded bird before it delivers the coup de grâce.
‘I think we are,’ she said, wondering immediately what she was doing, what the implications were of admitting this. They stood in silence, the room streaked with lemony sunshine and filled with the comforting smells of toast and coffee.
He lowered himself into an armchair and she saw he was weeping. There was an awful noise like a whimper covered up with a grunt and he rubbed his hands hard against his eyes, as if to expunge the weakness. She kneeled down on the floor and put her hand on his. He looked genuinely shocked, groaned and leaned forward, gripping her arms and pressing his face on her shoulder. ‘Oh Christ.’ His body felt slight and angular against hers. Sobs erupted from deep within his belly, making him shudder violently, while his tears seeped through her shirt and wet her skin. When the gasping dwindled to hiccoughs and raucous sniffs, he spoke.
‘I know it’s not enough that I loved you.’ He looked up, his face a swamp of misery. ‘It was wrong. I’m a weak man. I was out of control and couldn’t stop myself. That’s not an excuse – it’s an admission of guilt. I deserve to be punished.’
She stood up and went to sit opposite him so she could see his face.
‘Daff, it’s the end for me, and I’m seeing things differently. I realise that you’re right. Nina shouldn’t have said you were responsible. Shit! You were a child. Oh Christ. But there’s nothing I can do to make it not have happened. What should I do?’
Ralph levered himself upright and staggered to the window like a lost person.
‘Here, let’s have some breakfast.’ Daphne guided him as she might a child, leading him to the sofa, removing Putney and helping him sit down. Pity had replaced anger and she saw before her an aged, dying man who had made mistakes and repented. She noticed his familiar smell, though it was altered, whether merely from growing old or from all the chemicals he’d been dosed with, she didn’t know.
Sitting next to him, she poured out the lukewarm coffee, buttered two slices of cold toast and dolloped on some marmalade. They chewed and sipped, their silent commensality broken only by Ralph’s intense, apparently involuntary sniffs. What would anyone gain by dragging this into a courtroom? She agreed with him, she couldn’t stop it having happened.
18
JANE
It should not really have been a surprise when Daphne called and announced she was dropping all charges against Ralph. Shape shifting, scene swivelling, mood altering and clothes swapping had always been her prerogative. Mind changing came naturally to her. Once, she even became a Buddhist. For about a week. Nevertheless, Jane had dreaded this, and when she heard the familiar, gravelly voice, she knew what was coming before the words were said. Her initial reaction was quiet, compressed anger – after all they’d been through this was a betrayal. She allowed Daphne to blurt out her cobbled-together reasoning, and didn’t argue back. There was no point.
‘It’s such a weight lifted,’ said Daphne. ‘It’s not that I think what happened was OK or justified. I’m just leaving it behind. Maybe the Christians are on to something with their talk of forgiveness!’ She laughed. ‘I already feel liberated.’ Changing tone, she said, ‘So! I’m going a bit mad and taking some days off work. Libby’s half-term starts this weekend and I found some crazy-cheap tickets to Athens. We’re leaving tomorrow. We’ll stay with my aunties in Maroussi. Maybe nip over to Aegina. And Libs will have her birthday out there.’
She hardly slept that night. It seemed bitterly unfair that Daphne had wriggled out of everything and was walking off into some Greek sunset, while Jane had been abandoned as though she was irrelevant. The duvet smothered her, the pillows jammed hard against her head and Michael snuffled and snored his way through her distress. Even their relationship had changed. For the first time in their marriage, she didn’t want him to touch her. Certainly not sexually, but even his affectionate embraces as they sat on the sofa or when he returned from a day away were unwelcome. She experienced a strange revulsion that she knew was not his fault, was nothing to do with him, but that engulfed her.
At 4.30 a.m., when the first aeroplanes could be heard following the Thames on their flight path into Heathrow, she got up. Putting a fleece over her pyjamas, she pulled down the extension loft ladder and climbed up into the roof space. The small suitcase had a padlock, but she twisted in the digits of her birth year – 1963 – and rifled through the contents until she found an item of clothing folded inside an old, brown-paper greengrocer’s bag. Good. She picked up the case and carefully made her way back down the ladder.