There was that time you ran out of Pepe’s. You were eating a slice of Hawaiian, I was eating pepperoni, when you suddenly stopped mid-sentence, dropped your slice and legged it. You were back before I could pay the bill, you were laughing, ‘Sorry, I thought I saw someone I knew,’ but I could see you were trembling. It was like you’d seen a ghost. I didn’t ask you who it was.
I should have asked.
47
Headmistress
Now
We’re outside the headmistress’ office now; I give my name to the secretary. She calls through. The bell rings, girls flood into the corridor. He puts his hands over his ears. They’re too loud for him, too busy, rushing past him, perhaps they recall the clamour of a prison dining hall, the exercise yard. I turn pitilessly away. Maybe there is some justice. Everyday things should put him on edge, they should make him jumpy. Just like they do for me.
Mrs Hannington opens the door. She looks different to how I remember her and exactly the same. The mass of blonde hair that used to float around her like a nimbus is now smoothed back and lined with grey and she has traded her floaty blouses and long amber necklaces for a pressed white shirt and pearls. But her eyes are still the same – placid, observant. She holds out her hand, but last minute, pulls me into a hug. In her arms, I’m fourteen again.
‘It’s so good to see you.’ There are tears in both our eyes when we pull apart. ‘And who is this?’
I wipe my palms on my jeans. Suddenly, this feels wrong, bringing him here, not telling him who she is. When do these secrets just become straightforward lies? But it’s too late to retreat, I’m too far in. ‘This is Daniel.’
‘Welcome,’ she says. It occurs to me that Mrs Hannington and Daniel are similar ages, both in their fifties. In another life, they might have been colleagues, friends, lovers. ‘Come in, come in.’
The headmistress’ office was always intimidating when I was at Wyatt. Even as head girl, I never got used to it, I’d have to gear myself up before I entered. Now, as an adult, I can break down why it is so impressive. It’s three times the length of the managing partner’s office at Dulwich & Sullivan, and everything in it is luxurious, from the polished escritoire framed by an expansive view of the lake to the casual seating area – a wool sofa, two deep armchairs, a glass table over a Turkish rug. Three of the four walls are filled with books: Angela Carter’sBloody Chamber; Jean Rhys’sWild Sargasso Sea; Rebecca Solnit’sMen Explain Things to Me. I steal a glance at Daniel, does he know these stories, these essays, how they hum with rage, can he anticipate what he’s walking into? But he doesn’t register them. He is looking at the portrait of Mrs Hannington hanging over the fireplace. In it, she wears a suit jacket and a smile that seems to capture both the force of her personality and her warmth.
She gestures for us to sit on the sofa. I perch at the edge, my abdomen is already twinging. Daniel sits beside me. Our knees almost touch. Eighteen years ago, not a day went by when they didn’t touch.
‘Coffee, Lauren, Daniel?’ she asks, standing in front of the silver service on her escritoire. Daniel asks for a water; I ask for acoffee. When she hands it to me, I press it close to my stomach, my body seeking its small heat. Since I lost Faye, Kit made three hot water bottles a day, in the morning before he left for work, when he came back and before bed, and I remember Mrs Hannington making me a hot water bottle after I came back from the clinic, she presented it on the tray with a cup of sweet tea. The ordinary ways they both tried to pull me out of extraordinary grief.
She pours herself a coffee, sits opposite us on the armchair. ‘I wish we’d kept in touch.’
‘I do too.’
‘I’ve thought of you many times over the last, how many years? Fifteen?’
‘Fourteen.’ There is some arithmetic I am always working out even as it moves away from me: it’s been fourteen years since I last saw Mrs Hannington; eighteen years since I last saw Daniel; almost four weeks since I lost Faye; two days and nineteen hours since I last saw Millie and Kit.
‘How have you been? What do you do now?’
‘I’m a lawyer.’
‘What kind?’
‘Corporate.’
‘M&A?’ she asks.
The specificity of her question surprises me, in my mind, she is sitting at the front of my English class, reciting Milton, her blonde hair shaking with the rhythm of iambic pentameter. I’ve forgotten she was one of the most intelligent people I used to know, her interests wide-reaching, from philosophy to economics. ‘It’s not actually corporate,’ I explain. ‘I just say that so people understand.’ My mistake. She’s not ‘people’. ‘It’s banking regulation.’
‘That would explain why you were involved in the deal to save Silicon Republic.’
‘You read about that?’
‘It was all over the news.’ She smiles, takes a sip of her coffee. ‘All right, I’ll admit it, I do keep tabs on my favourites. That sounds terrible, doesn’t it, I’m not supposed to have favourites. But I do.’
I bite the inside of my cheek. There are points in my life where knowing I was someone’s favourite might have saved me. We need so little to survive.
‘I’m so proud of you,’ she says and I think, suddenly, of when Mama stuck the poster I drew ofThe Tempeston the fridge, it was there for months. After she died, I found it in the pocket of her trench coat I pulled from the boxes in Daniel’s office, the folds soft from how long she’d kept it. I scramble to push down grief.
‘I always knew you’d do something valuable. Something important.’
Daniel stiffens beside me.