Our Kind of Cruelty(24)

The last time I was properly with my mother she was lying on the sofa in our flat, her body already floppy from drink, her speech slurring. Miss Highland had had me in her office again the day before to remind me I didn’t have any duty to protect someone who didn’t protect me. I had nodded and smiled and presumed nothing would change. But it must have done, because when the familiar knock sounded on our door that evening I let them in. I didn’t lie down flat on the floor so they couldn’t see me when they looked through the letter box, like Mum had taught me. I didn’t even try to wake Mum or bother to formulate a ready lie. I just opened the door and let them walk through into the living room covered with mouldy plates and overflowing mugs of cigarettes. I let them gag at the stench in the bathroom and stare open-mouthed at the piles of empty beer cans and bottles in the kitchen. I confirmed my name and let them lead me to a car. It was only afterwards, on our drive to the home, that I realised I hadn’t even asked what was going to happen to Mum. But it was too late by then.

I stayed in bed again on Tuesday, ordering in more food and managing to make it to the kitchen for cups of tea. I noticed that the weather was glorious with streaming sunshine and clear blue skies and I thought late summer was the perfect time to be getting married. By the end of the day I felt stronger and after a shower I felt well enough to put on some shorts and sit in the garden for half an hour with the sun on my face. Tomorrow I would have to get back to some serious workouts as I was determined to look as perfect as possible for Saturday.

I woke the next morning with the distinct impression I had forgotten something, but it was only on my run that I realised what it was. I hadn’t bought V a wedding present. The thought was so ghastly I had to stop and bend over, pretending I had developed a sudden cramp. I couldn’t quite believe I had been so negligent. If I wasn’t meant to stop the wedding, then my gift had to be very important.

It was my next move in our new Crave and I felt sure would be the first present V opened.

It was all I could think of throughout the day. Even when the chairman popped his head round my door and asked me if I was feeling better, I know I didn’t give him my full attention. I was even quite dismissive when he said there was a new project he thought would suit me and he shut my door with a look of vague confusion on his face.

Just before I left for America V and I were asked to the wedding of an old friend of hers from university. At the bottom of the invitation they had written: ‘No presents please, your presence is the only present we need.’ V had fake retched when she’d read that. What crap, she’d said, everyone wants presents.

It came to me the next morning and so I went at lunchtime to a rare bookshop I found on Google. There were hardly any books of the type I requested, he’d told me over the phone, but naturally he did have one. Its rarity, he warned me, would make it more expensive than the hideously expensive ones all around us in the musty, over-crowded shop, but I had expected that. I waited while he went to fetch it, breathing in the dust of centuries and running my fingers across worn and broken spines, the leather cracked and chipped.

I was pleased by the size of the book which he laid on to the wooden table at the back of the shop and, as soon as he turned the first page, I knew I was going to buy it. There were pages and pages of detailed, gorgeous pictures of eagles, each one protected by a thin layer of white tissue paper. The prints were good enough to cut out and frame, something the dealer told me had happened to so many of these types of books. I was lucky, he said, that I had found his shop because he could guarantee he was the only person in London to have such a magnificent item in stock. But I was barely listening, instead marvelling at the riches in front of me, the golds and blues, the intricate details, the amazing scenes. He told me he could let it go for ￡3,500 and I didn’t bother to bargain because I would have paid double, maybe even triple, for a gift so perfect.

I had the book professionally wrapped at another place I found on Google, leaving it overnight and collecting it at lunchtime. From there I had it couriered to Steeple House. I could have taken it back to the office to accomplish all these tasks, but couldn’t bear answering questions about it all afternoon in the office. I didn’t want to turn up with it on the day and, more than that, I hoped V would open it before the wedding, I hoped she would get the message.



V once told me that I’m useless at interpreting signs and at the time she was probably right. We were lying on the grass near to her home in Sussex and it was one of those blisteringly hot summer days which only really seem to exist in memory. We had taken a picnic to a nearby field and V had laid our rug in the semi-shade of a tree. We had eaten well and drunk a bottle of wine, and I was on my back, V was resting on my chest, my arm lazily slung around her. I could feel her head rise and fall with my breathing and I remember thinking that this was what bliss felt like. That you could put a picture of us next to the word in the dictionary and everyone would understand. And I also knew it was the first time I had ever truly felt that way. Of course Elaine and Barry had made me feel happy and safe and even loved, but this feeling, which seemed to spread through my blood, into my toes, up through my head, along my muscles, this was new. It was also delicious; it was like a drug and I was already addicted.

‘Look, there’s a swan,’ V said, pointing upwards.

I looked into the sky but there was nothing there. ‘Can they fly?’

She laughed. ‘No, not an actual swan. A cloud swan.’