ONE DAY(126)

Outside the sports centre the clouds had darkened and finally burst, letting loose fat grey drops of warm rain. She cursed the weather and the wet seat of her bicycle and set off across North London towards Kilburn, improvising a route through a maze of residential streets towards Lexington Road.

The rain became heavier, oily drops of brown city water, and Emma rode standing on the pedals with her head lowered so that she was only vaguely aware of a blur of movement in the side road to her left. The sensation is less of flying through the air, more of being picked up and hurled, and when she comes to rest on the roadside verge with her face against the wet pavement, her first instinct is to look for her bicycle, which has somehow disappeared from beneath her. She tries to move her head, but is unable to do so. She wants to take off her helmet, because people are looking at her now, faces craning over her and she looks ridiculous in a bicycle helmet, but the people crouching over her seem fearful and are asking her over and over again are you alright are you alright. One of them is crying and she realises for the first time that she is not alright. She blinks against the rain falling on her face. She is definitely going to be late now. Dexter will be waiting.

She thinks very distinctly of two things.

The first is a photograph of herself at nine years old in a red swimsuit on a beach, she can’t remember where, Filey or Scarborough perhaps. She is with her mother and father who are swinging her towards the camera, their sunburnt faces buckled with laughter. Then she thinks of Dexter, sheltering from the rain on the steps of the new house, looking at his watch, impatient; he’ll wonder where I am, she thinks. He’ll worry.

Then Emma Mayhew dies, and everything that she thought or felt vanishes and is gone forever.





Part Five


Three Anniversaries


‘She philosophically noted dates as they came past in the revolution of the year; . . . her own birthday; and every other day individualized by incidents in which she had taken some share. She suddenly thought one afternoon, when looking in the glass at her fairness, that there was yet another date, of greater importance to her than those; that of her own death, when all these charms would have disappeared; a day which lay sly and unseen among all the other days of the year, giving no sign or sound when she annually passed over it; but not the less surely there. When was it?’



Thomas Hardy, Tess of the d’Urbervilles





CHAPTER NINETEEN


The Morning After


SATURDAY 15 JULY 1988

Rankeillor Street, Edinburgh

When she opened her eyes again, the skinny boy was still there, his back to her now as he sat precariously on the edge of her old wooden chair, pulling on his trousers as quietly as possible. She glanced at her radio alarm clock: nine-twenty. They had slept for maybe three hours, and now he was sneaking off. She watched as he placed his hand in the trouser pocket to still the rattling of his loose change, then stood and started to pull on last night’s white shirt. One last glimpse of his long brown back. Handsome. He really was stupidly handsome. She very much wanted him to stay, almost as much perhaps as he clearly wanted to leave. She decided that she would have to speak.

‘Not going without saying goodbye, are you?’

He turned round, caught in the act. ‘I didn’t want to wake you.’

‘Why not?’

‘Just you looked so nice, sleeping there.’

Both knew this was a poor effort. ‘Right. Right, I see.’ She heard herself, needy and annoyed. Don’t let him think you care, Em. Be cool. Be . . . blasé.

‘I was going to leave you a note, but . . .’ He pantomimed looking for a pen, oblivious to the jam jar full of them on the desk.

She lifted her head from the pillow and rested it on one hand. ‘I don’t mind. You can leave if you want to. Ships that pass in the night n’all that. Very, what d’you call it . . . bittersweet.’

He sat on the chair, and continued to button his shirt. ‘Emma?’

‘Yes, Dexter?’

‘I’ve had a really nice time.’

‘I can tell by the way you’re searching for your shoes.’

‘No, seriously.’ Dexter leant forward on the chair. ‘I’m really glad we finally got to talk. And the other stuff as well. After all this time.’ He scrunched his face, looking for just the right words. ‘You’re really, really lovely, Em.’

‘Yeah, yeah, yeah—’

‘No, you are.’

‘Well you’re lovely too and now you can go.’ She allowed him a small, tight smile. He responded by suddenly crossing the room, and she turned her face up towards him in anticipation, only to find that he was reaching beneath the bed for a discarded sock. He noticed her raised face.

‘Sock under bed,’ he said.

‘Right.’

He perched uneasily on the bedframe, speaking in a strained, chipper tone as he pulled on his socks. ‘Big day today! Driving back!’

‘Where to, London?’

‘Oxfordshire. That’s where my parents live. Most of the time anyway.’

‘Oxfordshire. Very nice,’ she said, privately mortified at the speed with which intimacy evaporates, to be replaced by small talk. Last night they had said and done all those things, and now they were like strangers in a bus queue. The mistake she had made was to fall asleep and break the spell. If they had stayed awake, they might still have been kissing now, but instead it was all over and she found herself saying; ‘How long will that take then? To Oxfordshire?’