Girl A(41)

My period posed a more significant problem. It came when I was ten; I had expected another few years to prepare myself. We had been informed, by a video in school, of the practicalities: the blood; the cramping; the sanitary products. It had seemed sterile and simple. Now I stood in the bath, half-naked and baffled. Nobody had mentioned the smell, or the clots, or what you were meant to do with one shower a week. I tried to reassure myself, in the same stern tone taken by the actress in the school video. It was a problem, and like any other, it would have a solution. For now, I lined my knickers with toilet paper and prayed. I was unconvinced about God’s credentials in this particular sector. I would need a better plan.

My social currency had never been particularly high, but there was a handful of things that I could exchange for friendship. I was fast enough to be picked in the upper quartile in PE. I was intelligent, but quietly so. I didn’t raise my hand in class, or share my marks. It had already occurred to me that, if I was going to be clever, I needed to be smarter about it than Ethan. I hovered at the periphery of a studious group of girls, who were preparing for entrance examinations to better schools, and I suffered their occasional ridicule, like a dog content with a kicking. You can endure an awful lot when you know that you’ll be fed at the end of it.

‘Why don’t you ever have a sleepover, Lex?’ Amy or Jessica or Caroline asked (to which I responded that my parents were too strict, so that it would be boring anyway). Or: ‘My sister’s in your older brother’s class, and he’s really weird.’ (Yes, I would say, he really is; and then, feeling bad: He’s really smart, though.) Or – worst of all, because I had given something away – ‘When did you last wash your hair?’

The slights made it much easier to carry out my plan. Amy was holding a party on a Saturday afternoon for her tenth birthday, and I walked across town to attend it. A heavy summer day, strung with flies. I carried my school bag, and wore a church skirt and one of Mother’s old blouses; I had outgrown my jeans and T-shirts, and now they hung off Delilah. We sat in the family garden, sipping squash, and I watched the girls paint one another’s nails. There was an odd number of attendees, said Amy’s mother, and I would have to wait. I thought of Father’s face in the event that I returned home with red nails – with glitter – and I smiled. ‘Thank you,’ I said, ‘but I’m afraid that I’m allergic.’

When Amy’s mother carried out the cake and the other girls started to sing, I slipped inside and upstairs, and locked the bathroom door behind me. I surveyed the clean porcelain and the concoctions around the tub. I considered climbing in and running it full, so full that it flooded under the door and down the stairs, and submerged the whole stupid house. No. That wasn’t what I was here for. I opened the cupboards behind the mirror and under the sink. Plasters, pills, cleaning products. Outside, they were cutting the cake, and I heard my name. In the corner of the room, there was a prim hemp basket, sealed with ribbons. I untied the bows, lifted the lid, and opened a treasure trove of tampons and sanitary towels, stored in their cardboard packets, row after row in soft lilac, baby blue, hot pink. I imagined Amy and her mother in Boots, selecting the right boxes, and the resentment made me braver. I took an instruction leaflet and half of the products from each box and tucked them into my satchel, then I flushed the toilet, and rejoined the party.

On Saturday morning I took the Underground as far north as I could go, out of the tunnels and away from the city. By the end of the line, I was the only person left in the carriage, still blinking in the shock of light. The coffee kiosk at the station was closed. See you Monday! said a sign, printed in Comic Sans and propped in the window.

I had spoken to Bill the evening before. He always seemed to call at a time when Devlin wanted something, so that whenever we talked, I sounded less grateful than I was. He had spoken to the council, he said, about our initial thoughts. I stopped scrolling through the ChromoClick report, and turned away from my screens.

‘OK. How did it go?’

‘They were unconvinced.’

‘Unconvinced?’

‘If you ask me,’ Bill said, ‘they’d like to see it demolished. You mention Hollowfield, and what do people think of? They think of the seven of you, standing in that garden. As soon as your mother died there were people sniffing around for scraps. Photographing the house for some feature or other. They mentioned something written by your brother, just the other day. I think they’re tired of the whole thing.’

That, I understood. Ethan had sent me the essay. This one was titled ‘Memento Mori: What Death Makes You Remember’, and had just appeared in T. In the accompanying photograph, Ethan sat in monochrome in the house in Summertown, gazing out across the garden, with Horace in his lap. I didn’t read the essay, but I did respond to the message: Your kitchen looks fantastic.

‘We pitch it in person,’ Bill said. ‘That’s what I think. You’ll come across well, Lex. You know what you’re doing. They’ll see that this isn’t some – some exercise in vanity. They’ll see what you’re trying to do.’

I pressed my forehead against the window glass. From here, with the buildings dimming to lights, I could be back in New York, with an empty weekend awaiting.

‘In the meantime,’ Bill said. ‘How’s the family?’

I picked up a hire car and drove towards the Chilterns. All summer, the sun had worn the fields, and now they were dull and patched, like cheap metal. The hospital had been built between two market towns, and I ended up visiting them both; there was a discreet turn-off, which I missed from each direction. Back in the first town, I found a cafe on the roadside and pulled over, already bored with the day. ‘You’ve come too far,’ the waitress said, warily. She was the kind of person who would inflate this encounter for the next customer and for girls’ drinks tonight. By eight p.m., I would be psychotic, and seeking readmission. ‘It’s a green sign. You can’t miss it.’