Truly Madly Guilty(117)

‘Piss off yourself,’ said Clementine.

‘I thought it meant “f*ck off”,’ said Erika.

‘You’d know better than me,’ said Clementine. ‘You’re the one who got the higher mark.’

‘Too right I did,’ agreed Erika.

Clementine blinked back tears of laughter or grief, she wasn’t sure which. It was strange, because she always felt that she hid herself from Erika, that she was more ‘herself’ with her ‘true’ friends, where the friendship flowed in an ordinary, uncomplicated, grown-up fashion (emails, phone calls, drinks, dinners, banter and jokes that everyone got), but right now it felt like none of those friends knew her the raw, ugly, childish, basic way that Erika did.

‘Anyway, the truth is I’m ambivalent,’ said Erika. She tipped back her head and drank her coffee in virtually one gulp. It was one of her quirks. She drank coffee like she was doing a shot.

‘What do you mean?’

‘I never especially wanted to have children, as you know, as people keep reminding me. That’s why Oliver is the one driving this. I feel ambivalent.’ It was like she’d only recently settled on the word ‘ambivalent’ and wanted to use it as much as possible. She was staying on message like a politician. She pointed a warning finger at Clementine. ‘My ambivalence, by the way, is confidential.’

‘Yes, of course. But if you don’t really want a baby, you should tell him! You shouldn’t have a child just for him. It’s your choice!’

‘Yes, and I choose my marriage,’ said Erika. ‘That’s my choice: my marriage.’ She stood up. ‘Oliver’s dream is to have a baby and I’m not going to make him give that up.’ She picked up her bag. ‘Oh, by the way!’ Her tone changed, and became brittle. ‘I was going through an old box of memorabilia the other day, and I found this necklace. I think it was yours.’

She pulled out an extremely ugly shell necklace and held it up.

‘It’s not mine,’ said Clementine. ‘I always hated those necklaces.’

‘I’m pretty sure – well, maybe I’m wrong.’ Erika went to put the necklace back in the bag. ‘But maybe the girls would like it?’

She was giving Clementine a strange, piercing look, as if this really mattered. She was the oddest woman. ‘Sure. Thanks.’ Clementine took the necklace. She wouldn’t let the girls play with it. It didn’t look that clean and it would be like wearing barbed wire around your neck.

Erika looked relieved, as if she’d wiped her hands of something. ‘I hope your practice goes well. Only ten days until the audition, right?’

‘Right,’ said Clementine.

‘How’s it going?’

‘Not that great. I’ve found it hard to focus. Everything that happened – Sam and I – just … well, you know.’

‘Time to knuckle down then,’ said Erika briskly. ‘This is your dream, Dummkopf.’

And then she was gone, out into the rain in her sensible shoes. No kissing or hugging goodbye because they didn’t do that. The German insults had been their version of a hug.

You’re off the hook, thought Clementine as she cleared the coffee mugs away. No daily injections. She thought of the ‘So you’re thinking of becoming an egg donor!’ video she’d watched yesterday, and how her own stomach had clenched in horror as she’d watched the nice, generous woman briskly inject her stomach with the drug that would cause her body to produce multiple eggs.

She sat down with her cello, picked up her bow and focused on working her way through her chromatic scales.

Over the last few days she had been allowing an image to form in her head: an image of a little boy with Ruby’s almond-shaped eyes and Oliver’s jet-black hair.

The image trembled like a reflection on water and then vanished.

For heaven’s sake, Clementine, how dare you. Her hand tightened on her bow. The image didn’t even make sense because Ruby’s eyes came from Sam’s side of the family.

There it was again. Her friendly wolf tone. It was a truly ghastly sound. She could feel it in her teeth.

Sam always said she was overly sensitive to sounds because she was a musician, but she didn’t think that was true; he was just astonishingly insensitive to them. There were only a few sounds she could feel in her teeth: her wolf tone, a certain high-pitched shriek of Holly’s when Ruby had wronged her, the wailing shark alarm at Macmasters Beach.

She was suddenly transported to the last time she’d heard that shark alarm during that holiday when she was thirteen. Clementine and Erika had been in the surf together when the alarm went off. Erika was a strong swimmer, better than her. The alarm had made Clementine panicky (that sound) and she’d slipped as she waded towards the shore, and Erika had grabbed her arm. ‘I’m fine,’ Clementine had snapped, shrugging her off, full of that hideous rage she’d carried throughout that entire two weeks, but then, just a second later, she’d thought she felt something slippery and strange slide across one leg and she’d instinctively reached out for Erika. ‘You’re okay,’ said Erika, calmly, kindly, soothingly, steadying her. Clementine could still see Erika’s wet arm on hers, the salt water clinging like diamonds to her white skin, three angry red bite marks circling her thin, bony wrist like a bracelet. The fleas had come and gone in Erika’s house like seasons.