You were peeling potatoes when I told you. It was summer, you were wearing shorts, standing perfectly poised, your left foot scratching the back of your right ankle, peel falling from your hands. I said she sounded awful, how insane, to stop speaking to him like that, no explanation. I’ll never forget your response because I’d never thought about it like that: ‘Either he’s telling you half the story,’ you said, ‘or something is seriously wrong.’
I’m asking you for one single word. One word more than what Peter’s wife gave him. What’s the other half of our story? What is seriously wrong?
43
School
Now
Down an avenue of rhododendrons, the manor house of Wyatt rises between the oaks, the grey Victorian stone, the rose window of the chapel. The lake shimmers under the trees; the memory of the first time I felt that water on my skin shivers down my spine. Four years of schooling and all I can think of is when Wyatt was just a holiday camp. When I was angry with my mother but she was alive. When my feelings for my stepfather were just a crush. My transgressions were so innocent then.
Daniel removes his aviators to take in the school, ‘I forgot how grand this is.’ With his suede jacket and chocolate loafers, he belongs here more than I do. When I planned coming back, I looked up how much Wyatt’s fees are for boarding – an obscene £50,000 a year. True, he paid for me eighteen years ago but he still did it while he was in prison, no questions asked, when I, as a lawyer with a mortgage, would struggle to pay this for Millie. I never thought about it at the time. How he could afford boarding fees as a lepidopterist in prison.
It was easy getting into the school, Mrs Hannington arranged everything. I phoned her yesterday after I came back from Sky Garden, the office wouldn’t put me through at first. ‘It’s a Sunday,’ the receptionist said flatly. ‘She’s with her family.’ But I insisted, she capitulated and, when she finally connected me, there was a brief pause before Mrs Hannington said, ‘Of course you should come. I’m free at twelve. Just go to the porter. I’ll have everything ready.’ She’s true to her word. The porter hands us two visitor lanyards and a prospectus, as if Daniel and I are new parents thinking about sending our daughter here. The reversals, half parallels, almost possibilities strike me in a series of low blows.
We walk into reception, high-ceilinged and wood-panelled. Glass cases display trophies, ribbons, photos of winning lacrosse and netball teams, all recent. So strange. Four years at Wyatt loom so large in my memory but there’s nothing to show for them here. Then, I see it. Above the cabinets, in gold letters, are the names of every headmistress and every head girl since the 1980s. Including me. ‘Lauren Tan – 2011’. My name injects me with a solidity I haven’t possessed in a long time. I was here. It really happened here.
‘You were head girl?’ Daniel says behind me.
A girl walks past us in school uniform. It’s still the same – the navy pleated skirt, the striped shirt, the crest with the school motto:Ad astra per aspera.
‘You never told me.’
‘How could I?’
‘You could have written.’
‘Is that what you expected? All my school news?’
‘Expected?’ Anger ripples through his voice. I remember when that started to creep in towards the end, and I see he is stuck in the vortex of us as much as I am, nothing ever past, everything always present. The aviators, the suede jacket, the silvered hair don’t just conceal a man in a prison jumpsuit, they hide a man waiting for one letter, one message that never came. ‘You could have let me know how you were. You could have asked if I was okay. Even if you decided you never wanted to hear from me again, you could have written to say that. What did I expect? A crumb. I expected you to throw me a crumb.’
‘I didn’t owe you anything,’ I whisper, although there’s barely anyone here. ‘I didn’t promise you anything.’
He takes a hurt inhale of breath.
I stare at the cover of the prospectus, tell myself,I’m right, he’s wrong.But I’m not sure I believe it. Promises were made, weren’t they? Perhaps not out loud but in under-cover light, in the softness of each other’s skin. If you say, ‘I love you’ over and over, what else does that mean if not forever?
And then I’m astonished at how hard I have to battle this lovesick fourteen-year-old, how fearful I am of her. I’ve dismissed her for years, such an imperfect victim, too needy, too willing. But the more time I spend with Daniel, the stronger she grows. Have I come to confront him or vanquish her?
You’ve forgotten what he made you do, I say to her. I will show you.
I start walking, training my eyes on the map on the inside cover of the prospectus. I’m struggling to understand it, I can’t layer over the school’s recent renovations with my memory, but then I find the English department in the same place, Shakespeare sonnets and Chaucer essays on the wall. I lead us past oneof my old form rooms; inside, the girls are sitting in a horseshoe arrangement around the teacher’s desk, some with their hands up, others writing or fiddling with their hair. By their height, their confidence, they’re about fifteen, sixteen, so young in their white socks and bare knees. My heart beats very fast. I was younger than them. Thirteen when I first met Daniel. Fourteen in Cornwall.
‘Look, what are we doing here?’ He squints under the strip lighting, massages his temples. Another migraine. When they got really bad, he’d put his head in my lap like a Great Dane; I’d run my fingers through his hair. It would be so easy to give him that relief, his body is begging me to do it – the inclination of his neck, the top knot of his spine edging out from his shirt. I won’t. I want him to suffer.
‘I’ve already told you,’ I say, placidly. ‘There are things I want to show you.’
‘You haven’t shown me anything.’
‘I’m taking you now.’
‘Where, though?’ He rubs his hand over his neck; he’s still feeling the poison from the ivy leaves. ‘I don’t want to walk through your school. I want you to tell me what’s wrong with your stomach. I want to finish what we started yesterday.’
So, he’s not sorry for what he said about Kit. Not sorry at all.
He puts his hands over his eyes, a makeshift dark room. I’ve bewildered him. I should have fallen in line when he undermined my marriage. Instead, he finds himself in my territory. I’m dropping grenades, sending bullets flying.
‘It’s ironic, don’t you think?’ I say, taking him further down the corridor.