He Said/She Said(102)

Beth cracked an egg on the side of the pan with one hand. For a second I thought she was going to ignore me, but instead she took the pan off the heat and faced me, arms folded across her chest.

‘Meaning, I can move on with my life after all? Meaning, I should fuck off out of yours?’ Her fury was a reminder of how carefully I must tread.

‘That’s not how I’d have put it,’ I said, although it was exactly what I had meant. The gas ring burned blue behind her elbow: she didn’t seem to notice.

‘You think I’m going to tell her about us,’ she said. I winced at that ‘us’ – I would have preferred a ‘what we did’, or even ‘your mistake’.

‘Are you?’

Before answering, Beth wiped her hands on her skirt with the weariness of an old-fashioned scullery maid. If she was toying with me, she didn’t seem to be enjoying it. ‘Laura’s about the only friend I’ve got in the world right now,’ she said flatly. ‘Or the only one who understands about the Lizard. I can’t get through this without someone to talk to. Telling her about us would be the surest way to have no one. And I need someone, ok?’

How could I begrudge her a friend? I just wished, for the millionth time, it didn’t have to be Laura, and to wish that was to wish for the millionth time I’d never given Beth cause to follow me.

‘I’m sorry,’ I said.

‘I bet you are,’ she said. She attempted a brave smile; she didn’t get past rueful. ‘D’you know what the worst thing is? You’re the only one I can have a completely honest conversation with. The only one in the world who knows the whole story. And you can’t stand the sight of me.’ She finally turned off the gas. ‘I don’t want you any more, if that’s what you’re worried about. I’m not really looking for a boyfriend right now, funnily enough.’

I chewed that over; it had barely crossed my mind. I certainly wasn’t thinking of her in those terms any more. Risk might have been arousing but actual danger thoroughly wiped out that first visceral desire. I was worried more that Beth was out to get me than she was to have me.

‘That’s not what I’m saying,’ I said. What I wanted to say was, if you don’t have the self-control to think twice before turning up unannounced, before showering us with expensive, out-of-proportion gifts, before outstaying your welcome like this, if you don’t possess even these basic social sensitivities, then how can I trust you with the big stuff? This was the kind of mess Laura would have been able to refine into one precise sentence, but all I could come up with was, ‘You must be able to see why I’m uncomfortable. What we . . . it’s bound to slip out, during one of these deep and meaningful chats you keep having. You can both really put the wine away.’

She shrugged. ‘I don’t know what to say to that, only that it hasn’t come out yet.’ Now she looked awkward. ‘You know, I can see you two are solid. I told you the morning after I didn’t want to be that girl who trashed someone else’s relationship. I can’t change what happened but I can do the next best thing by keeping my mouth shut.’ She looked slowly up and down the body she’d seen all of but there was nothing suggestive about it. ‘You’ll just have to trust me, won’t you?’

I knew, because I do it myself, what she was trying to do. Lock the problem down. Compartmentalise it. Live life untouched by it. It was hard enough for me and I was – had been – a hyper-rational, disciplined man. How could traumatised, fucked-over Beth be expected to master it? Invisible fists squeezed my lungs. It couldn’t continue.

‘Kit,’ said Beth patiently. ‘People keep worse secrets than this all the time.’

‘Not me. Not people like me.’ I thumped my chest to make my point; it knocked air back into me at last.

‘Yes, people like you.’ Her voice was shot through with steel. ‘People exactly like you. Well-brought-up boys do bad things the whole time, and then they lie about it. Haven’t you been paying attention?’

The burst of strength quickly gave way to tears. We were back in the courtroom; back in the field. I couldn’t have pushed her any farther even if I’d known what to say.

‘I’m sorry,’ I said.

‘Me too.’ She turned her attention back to the pan.

The Vent-Axia ceased its droning and Laura burst from the bathroom. A plume of perfumed steam mixed with the clouds of butter that sizzled from Beth’s pan.

‘Smells amazing!’ said Laura, as she flitted from the bathroom to the bedroom wearing only a towel, water sitting in fat droplets on her slim shoulders. The tenderness I had momentarily felt for Beth was transferred wholesale to Laura.

‘Please, Beth,’ I said, when we were alone again. ‘Please leave Laura alone.’

I felt that she would be in my home for ever; and I knew that I could not survive it.

‘I can’t.’ Beth spoke with genuine regret, like the matter was out of her hands. I realised, with an internal plunge of sorrow, that I had no choice but to take it into mine.


August 2000

Only a year before, I had taken for granted that my wide life would only continue to expand as it had. I had a brilliant degree behind me, a stellar career ahead of me and, the impossible dream, a beautiful girl to love and to travel with. Since Cornwall the pattern had reversed and my life was narrowing to its crisis. Two images, each as terrible as the other, were my default daydream, filling times of repose as a screensaver scrolled across my laptop. The first image was Laura’s face when she found out about me and Beth, my own waking adult nightmare of the storybook drawing that had terrorised her when she was little. The second picture was me, alone in this flat, with all her things gone, staring into the black hole of my future.