He Said/She Said(66)

‘That’s brilliant,’ I said, although my delight was in knowing that we would see less of each other now; or rather, we could scale the friendship back to something less intense, more normal. We’d be able to meet for a coffee for an hour, or dinner for the evening, then go back to our homes.

‘So. I just got you one last thing, to say thank you for having me. I know you said I didn’t have to keep giving you stuff, but this is the last one, I promise.’ Her smile was shy and child-like. ‘Please don’t tell me I shouldn’t have.’

The present she handed me had been carefully gift-wrapped in William Morris paper and tied with a real ribbon. It looked like a book, but I opened the paper to find a slim pine picture frame and in it was—

‘Bloody hell,’ I said.

It was a photograph of me and Kit, clearly taken from the doorway of our bedroom. When? Early one morning, at any rate, while we were still asleep. A dawn light streamed in between the slats of the bamboo blind and painted tiger stripes on our skin. The covers were half off, almost as though they had been pulled, and we were exposed from our waists upwards. I was lying on my back while Kit was on his side, half curled around me. His arm was slung across my breasts, his fist clutching at my hair as a baby might its comforter. Instinctively I crossed my arms over my body. Kit sucked in his breath; I could feel the anger coming off him in waves.

‘What do you think?’ Our silence was protracted and Beth’s eyes were starting to lose their shine.

I couldn’t use the word violation knowing what she had been through, but there was no other word to describe how it felt to see myself like that.

‘It’s very . . . intimate,’ I said, at last.

‘I know!’ she said. ‘You can’t plan photos like that. But the door was open when I went to the loo, and I couldn’t help but see you and the light was just . . .’ She held up her fingers in the OK sign. ‘And your camera was sitting on the side, Kit.’ His mouth set in a furious line; he had a stronger reaction to the thought of her touching his precious camera than he’d had at the sight of the photograph. Beth continued, heedless. ‘And I thought about that other photo that your friend took, and what you said about not being aware of it, and I couldn’t resist. I went to the one-hour photo place on the common today.’ Her voice weakened a little with every sentence. ‘I used a really slow shutter speed. The lens is . . .’ She shook her head, her voice diminished to a whisper. ‘You don’t like it.’ She scanned our faces and read them wrong. ‘I’ll replace the film,’ she said, missing the point by miles. ‘It was only from Boots. Sorry, Kit, I didn’t even think you’d notice it was gone.’

‘It’s fine,’ I said, but Kit’s silence was louder.

Beth hit herself hard in the forehead with her palm. ‘I thought you’d get it, I thought you’d love it.’

‘I do love it,’ I said, catching her wrist in case she struck herself again. I had forgotten how soft her skin was. ‘It’s just unexpected, that’s all.’

She wriggled free of my grip. ‘I can be a bit full-on,’ she said, addressing the window. It had the ring of something she’d been told about herself more than once. ‘I’ve misjudged it. I’m sorry.’

Later, after an awkward goodbye, Kit and I waited in silence for the street door to slam behind her, unsure whether to laugh or scream.

Kit held the framed picture at arm’s length. ‘How could she possibly think that was ok, on any level?’

‘Well . . . I suppose her judgement’s off, after what she’s been through.’ For all we knew she had always been this direct, always had such fluid boundaries; or perhaps it was a reaction to her ordeal, that she had been stripped back so far that she had decided to leave the nerves exposed in the hope she might eventually become desensitised. This was Beth’s trauma. If this was her way of processing it, who were we to judge?

‘What if I’d had my knob hanging out?’ said Kit.

I stood next to him and looked at the photograph properly; it was easier without the weight of Beth’s expectation.

‘We look good, though.’ I smiled. ‘If you take away the massively creepy nature of it, it’s actually quite beautiful. I didn’t know you slept with my hair in your hand like that.’

‘Neither did I,’ he said, softening. He smoothed down the length of my ponytail.

‘We can look at this when we’re old and saggy,’ I said. ‘Remember what we used to be like. I know it’s not exactly one to have on the mantelpiece, but I’d like to keep it.’

We put it face down in my bedside drawer. It was one of the things that we lost when we went into hiding, and I don’t know where it is now.

Looking back, Kit was right, and I should have been firm but fair at the first opportunity, that time she’d come to see me at work. I shouldn’t have let her into our lives. I should have kept the relationship proper, to use an old-fashioned word.

That night in bed, I couldn’t sleep. I was too aware of what I looked like; too aware of being naked. Only when I got out of bed and put some nightclothes on did I finally relax. I had weird dreams – a sense of being watched, of a figure in the doorway – that I attributed to Beth’s photograph. I didn’t yet realise that my unease was about something more than her trespass. It was the first stirrings of something too big, deep and dark to shove in a drawer or a bin in the street. Something I was not yet ready to name.