I crane my neck over the stairwell, angling for a glimpse of the living room, my heart hammering. It’s breathtakingly small, half the size of the living room in The Wedge, low ceilings, laminate floors, I’d balk at living there with Millie, though this is an adult thought, as a child, I never minded. I follow the windows – there is my room, where I draped pine cones from windowpanes, where I tacked maple leaves to the glass, there is the doorway where I watched him pick up the display case – and then, I hear myself whimper, make the sound of a small, wounded creature, because there is Mama’s room, where her music stand used to be, her bed. I press my back to the wall as the slab of my grief, which I didn’t know was there, cracks.
Did I believe I could outrun this? Sometimes. When Kit looked at me on our wedding day, when I held Millie in my arms, in my pristine glass office at Dulwich & Sullivan, I believed I could. But the memories would always return in retinal flashes: an iridescent blue wing; a butterfly net; a row of jars.
What if before Millie, before Kit, I did what I am doing now? What if I’d braved these old places, broke their terrible power? I might have exhausted grief, exhausted rage, prevented their knotweed spread. Now, I risk so much being here.
I shut my eyes. Behind them, a star explodes, a bright burst of fear, why must I look at everything I’ve left behind? But I don’t move. I am testing myself. If I cannot stand to be here, what will happen in a few hours when I see him again? I force myself to look at where I used to live, who I used to be. Let the memories ricochet.
9
NaturalHistory
Then
Mama has been dating him for weeks now. ‘He’s different,’ she says, although she doesn’t have to – I see it. He isn’t the third violinist with the slicked-back hair who tried to move in after the second date, or the conductor with the broad belly who pleaded with Mama at two a.m. to be let in then slammed his fleshy palms against the door when she wouldn’t. Immaculately dressed, punctual, he takes Mama to places she has to wear heels for. They travel in black cabs. He leaves money for me to order take-away. A crisp £20 note.
Mama is also different with Daniel. With her other boyfriends, I didn’t get a single detail, even if I begged to hear about her dates. ‘When it’s serious, I’ll tell you,’ she’d say, her way of protecting me. Now she cannot stop telling me about the concerts Daniel takes her to, the restaurants they eat at. Every day, she circles back to the moment he asked her out, the story of their beginning embellished each time she tells it: the drizzle outside our flat becomes torrents of rain; the hush after he asks her to dinnergrows deeper. She weaves in details she’s learnt about him – he grew up in an army barracks in the Philippines, he lives twenty minutes’ walk away in the exclusive Holland Park, he’s the senior curator of Lepidoptera at the Natural History Museum. I know more about him than my own father.
One day, after they’ve been dating for a few months, Mama tells me Daniel’s asked if I’d like to go to the museum to see his butterflies. The invitation thrills her. ‘He’s trying to get to know you. It’s a good sign.’
He meets us at the bottom of the steps of Hintze Hall, arms outstretched, as if the diplodocus, the arches belong to him, as if he is a king showing us his palace. In a way, he is. Volunteers nod to him, curators from other departments congratulate him on his latest publication. Mama beams and then, when it’s just the three of us, she says, ‘There’s a photography exhibition I want to check out.’ She squeezes my arm. ‘Have a good time.’
I follow him up to the balconies. It’s been years since I’ve visited the museum, I dimly recall the diplodocus, that there’s a dinosaur exhibition, but I don’t remember coming up here, where the museum’s geological treasures are on show, or recall that the museum itself is a work of art – the mosaic tiles on the floor, the carved pillars, the vaulted ceiling inlaid with gold illustrated panels.
‘I’ve seen your drawings,’ he says. Colours dance on his cheek from the stained-glass windows. ‘You’re talented. The way you look at things, there’s a rare detail to it.’
I blink. We’ve spoken in the flat while he waits for Mama; he asks me the usual questions,how am I,how’s school?I give him brief, factual responses. But he’s never said anything like this before. I hadn’t realised he’d even seen the artwork on thefridge or on the walls of my bedroom. I turn his words over in my mouth, savour the taste of them.Talented. Rare.
‘Your mother told me about your collection. Your botany—’
‘—It’s just a hobby.’
‘Don’t.’ His abruptness jars against the rhythm of our walk, the easy smile he gives the security guards. ‘Don’t do that, not for anyone. Enough people will undermine what you’re doing without you doing it yourself.’
I dare to look at him. Mama has always encouraged me to follow my passions, our lives are testimony to this, she left Singapore to focus on her violin, she went to the Royal Academy of Music to perfect her art. But while she approves of me giving myself over to something greater, she doesn’t appreciate botany any more than I appreciate the violin, and of course, there is no one at school who understands. Once, in junior school, I brought in a perfect specimen of a steak fungus still attached to a piece of bark for show and tell. The boys called me ‘fungus freak’ for months. Since then, I’ve kept my discoveries hidden, botany something I do at home, when it’s just Mama and me. But now, there’s Daniel, a professional, who thinks my collection is worth something. It is thrilling. Having an ally against my doubting self.
‘Will you tell me about it?’
I start slowly, studying his features for the slightest hint that he is indulging me, but when it becomes clear he is really listening, I can’t stop. I tell him I am watching to see if the bluebells in Kensington Gardens are native or Spanish, that I will distinguish them by sight, by scent. I tell him I’m looking forward to spring so I can collect plants from root to flower and to summer because I love grasses – meadow foxtail, tufts of cocksfoot, the spiky heads of timothy.
‘What do you do with them?’
‘Press them, put them in my scrapbook, try to figure out what they are. But lately, it doesn’t seem enough. My flower press squeezes the water out, the colours dull. I can’t capture them as they are, not like this.’ I gesture at the display of scarlet macaws suspended in flight. ‘I started drawing them a few years ago to record the exact pigments.’
‘I’d love to see more of them.’
‘They’re not very good.’
‘They’re astonishing.’
His praise settles deeply in the flush of my cheeks. I’ve never heard that word used about me before.
‘Your mother said you were upset when the butterflies sold.’ I feel a stab of rage against Mama, or perhaps the turn in conversation. How I sound like I sulk. How I sound like a child.
‘You kept them in impeccable condition, they sold for an incredible price.’
I shrug.
‘You don’t care?’