Eat My Heart Out (25 page)

‘I don't know what you're talking about.' She looked the other way, towards the common. The wedding dress didn't fit her; I could see that it wasn't done up at the back and her arms made the sleeves bulge. She had slipped her grimy fingers through the lace gloves. The hem was already blackened. There was a rich brown stain on the front of the skirt.

‘Give it back,' I said. ‘I'm going to have to get that drycleaned now. I had to wear this.' I gestured down to my white halter-neck summer dress from Primark; it was the only white thing I could find. I had teamed it with leggings and a short black blazer.

‘You look chic,' she said, dully. ‘You look young. You look like you could do anything. So why are you complaining?'

‘Give it back,' I whined. ‘I've got to go.'

‘No.' She opened her arms wide; I heard a rip.

‘Where's your baby?'

‘Dead.'

‘Dead?'

‘Yes,' she said. ‘Have you heard of death? It's what happens to us.'

I got on the tube without the dress, and read
Falling Out of Fate
:

The turning figure of modernity is the figure turned against itself, turned on itself. She is the figure who has grown from a child into an adult and learned on the way that in order to live at all in this fallen world, she must contain and control what she feels to be most natural. She learns that nature means violence; she does violence to nature. She does violence to herself. But what is lost along the way is a tragedy of the highest order. What is lost can never be regained, but it is remembered. Remembered as the hope of love.

I had never been to North Greenwich before.

I expected a baroque villa, too large to fit in the city, but James lived in a red-brick retirement village. The river was near. I rang the bell, and waited.

And waited.

Eventually a woman came to the door. She was about his age. She wore a red dress and bifocals. I could tell that she had been pretty.

‘Hello?' she said.

‘I'm here for … the pussies?' I said.

She smiled. ‘Pussies?'

‘The pussies with the blue fur and the blue light. In the blue mountains.' I paused. ‘With the monks.'

‘Monks? My dear, I think you've got the wrong address.' She tried to close the door.

I blocked it. ‘The pussies from the refuge?' I said, desperately.

Someone was coming from further inside the building.

The woman turned back.

James appeared, his comb-over not so slick, a red napkin in his hand. He stopped at the end of the hall when he saw me. ‘Margaret,' he said. ‘You go and finish your dinner.'

James came outside and closed the door behind him.

‘What about the pussies from the refuge?' I said. ‘What about the refuge?'

‘Wasn't it
you
who adopted the pussies from the refuge, Ann-Marie?'

I said nothing.

He looked very seriously at me. ‘What we had was wonderful. But it wasn't meant to last.'

‘Meant to last?' I echoed.

‘Meant to go anywhere,' he said. ‘Meant to be.'

When he opened the door to return inside, a cat slipped out. It was brown.

I stared into the black river at Greenwich as though I could divine my future there.

At Clapham Common, I got the crazy woman by the arm and told her to take me to her baby.

She looked at me suspiciously. Her black eye was really terrible.

We walked across the darkening common together, slowly. There seemed to be something wrong with her legs. The cars formed a ring of light around us. We walked all the way around the fenced-off area until we reached the filthy hut on the edge of the bowling green. There was a gap in the fence. We hid her trolley and got through. I watched my mother's dress get more and more soiled as her old knees raked through the dirt. There was a mountain of rubbish, hidden by trees. Prams and TVs and Hoovers. I heard things moving in the bushes. I could smell fire. She took my hand; it was black but I didn't pull away. We walked very slowly to the far corner, where branches from a big tree on the other side sheltered the earth.

‘Here,' she said.

I got down on my hands and knees and started digging.

She stood over me.

Finally I hit a smiling plastic face. I lifted the baby out. One of its legs had been ripped off.

‘They did it to us,' said the woman.

The birds started singing. They seemed to be shouting their song and it was hateful.

Acknowledgements

This book would not have been written without Hannah Westland, publisher at Serpent's Tail, who has mentored me since 2008. Her faith in my writing, her encouragement, support, and incredible editing have been more valuable than I can say here.

I feel so lucky to be part of Serpent's Tail, which seems to be one of the few publishers that gives its authors creative freedom. It has been a great pleasure to work with a load of feminists! Particular thanks to Anna-Marie Fitzgerald and Ruthie Petrie.

Thank you to my agent Jenny Hewson at Rogers, Coleridge & White for her excellent advice and encouragement.

A special thank you to David Lister, my editor at the
Independent
, for giving me a chance and starting me off as an art critic. Thanks too to the
Independent
, and particularly the arts desk.

Plenty of people have let me live in their houses while this book was written. Thank you so much to Mary and Rado Klose for all their kindness. Thank you too to Nigel Horne and Cassie Robinson.

Thank you to Tom Warner, Natasha Booty, and Roxy Smith.

Most of all, thank you to my parents. To my Dad, for unfaltering love and support. And to my Mum, for encouraging me to write and showing me the true importance of feminism.

Permissions

Extract from
Coeur de Lion
by Ariana Reines. Copyright © Ariana Reyes 2011. Extract of ‘1st September, 1939' © Estate of W.H Auden and reprinted by permission of Curtis Brown New York Ltd. Extract of ‘Westward Ho' © Estate of Samuel Beckett and reprinted by permission of Faber and Faber Ltd. Song lyric from ‘Munchausen' by No Bra reproduced by kind permission of No Bra. © No Bra. Extract of ‘Lady Lazarus' taken from
Ariel
© Estate of Sylvia Plath and reprinted by permission of Faber and Faber Ltd. Extract from
The Feminine Mystique
by Betty Friedan reproduced by kind permission of The Orion Publishing Group, London. Copyright © Betty Friedan 1963. Extract from
Save Me the Waltz
by Zelda Fitzgerald, reproduced by kind permission of Random House. Copyright renewed © 1960 Frances Scott Fitzgerald Lanahan. ‘Zipless Fuck' is a term coined by Erica Jong in
Fear of Flying
© 1973, 2013. Used by permission of the novelist.

The author has cited the following:

p.98-99. This extract is indebted to Marina Van Zuylen's
Monomania: The Flight From Every Day Life in Literature
(published by Cornell University Press, 2005), especially her insights into romantic obsession and femininity.

p.108. Pierre Bourdieu refers to ‘the weapons of the weak' in
Masculine Domination
, published by Polity Press 2001, which he draws from Lucien Bianco (p.59).

p. 108-9. The article recounted in
Falling Out of Fate
is a fictionalised version of a newspaper story described in
The Sixties Unplugged
by Gerard DeGroot published by MacMillan, 2008 (p.215)

p. 165. The italicized words below are from the Thames Water / Walthamstow Reservoir website: There was supposed to be v
arious insect life
,
meaning stocked fish very quickly turn into firm-fleshed, fighting wild fish
, but I couldn't see any water, let alone fish, let alone insects.

p.294. The idea of the turning figure of subjection is derived from
The Psychic Life of Power: Theories in Subjection
by Judith Butler, published by Stanford University Press, 1997.

ALSO AVAILABLE FROM SERPENT'S TAIL

THE PIANO TEACHER

Elfriede Jelinek

Winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature

Erika Kohut teaches piano at the Vienna Conservatory by day. By night she trawls the city's porn shows while her mother, whom she loves and hates in equal measure, waits up for her. Into this emotional pressure-cooker bounds music student and ladies' man Walter Klemmer.

With Walter as her student – and teacher – Erika spirals out of control, consumed by the ecstacy of self-destruction. A haunting tale of morbid voyeurism and masochism,
The Piano Teacher
is Elfriede Jelinek's masterpiece.

ISBN 978 1 84668 737 2
eISBN 978 1 84765 306 2

THE MIDDLESTEINS

Jami Attenberg

Edie and Richard have been married for over 30 years, living in the Chicago suburbs. Everyone who knew them – even their own children Robin and Benny – agreed that Edie was a tough woman to love, but no-one expected Richard to walk out on her, especially not in her condition. Edie is 59 years old, she weighs 300 pounds, and her doctors have told her she'll die if she doesn't stop eating.

As Richard is shut out by the family and seeks solace in the world of internet dating, Robin is dragged back from the city and forced to rebuild a relationship with her mother. Meanwhile Benny and his neurotic wife Rachelle try to take control of the situation. But have any of them stopped to think about whether Edie really wants to be saved?

Written with sly humour, warmth and great insight,
The Middlesteins
is a novel about what it means to be part of a family.

ISBN 978 1 84668 932 1
eISBN 978 1 84765 943 9

WEIRDO

Cathi Unsworth

Twenty years ago, a fifteen-year-old schoolgirl named Corrine Woodrow was convicted of murdering one of her classmates.

But now new forensic evidence indicates that Corrine didn't act alone, and Sean Ward – a private investigator whose promising career in the Met was cut short by a teenage drug dealer with an automatic weapon – travels to the seaside town of Ernemouth, to try to discover what really happened all those years ago. But he quickly realises that what's ultimately at stake is not Corrine's reputation, but those of the people who ran the place then – and still run it now.

In order to get to the truth, he has to take on not just retired Detective Inspector Len Rivett – the man who headed up the original case and wants to keep it firmly closed – but also the mindset of an entire town that has always known how to look after its own.

ISBN 978 1 84668 792 1
eISBN 978 1 84765 849 4

APOCALYPSE BABY

Virginie Despentes

Valentine, the troubled daughter of a well-off but dysfunctional Parisian family, vanishes on her way to school. Inexperienced private detective Lucie Toledo is hired to find the missing teenager, and enlists the help of a formidable agent with a past, known to her friends as the Hyena. Their quest, from Paris to Barcelona and back, uncovers a rich cast of characters whose paths have crossed Valentine's, leading to an alarming climax.

Part political thriller, part road-movie, part romance, the latest novel by subversive writer and film-maker Virginie Despentes won the Prix Renaudot 2010 for the pitiless gaze it directs at society in the age of the internet.

ISBN 978 1 84668 842 3
eISBN 978 1 84765 790 9

WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT KEVIN

Lionel Shriver

Winner of the Orange Prize for Fiction

Eva never really wanted to be a mother; certainly not the mother of the unlovable boy who murdered seven of his fellow high school students, a cafeteria worker and a teacher who tried to befriend him. Now, two years later, it is time for her to come to terms with marriage, career, family, parenthood and Kevin's horrific rampage in a series of startlingly direct correspondences with her absent husband. Uneasy with the sacrifices and social demotion of motherhood from the start, Eva fears that her alarming dislike for her own son may be responsible for driving him so nihilistically off the rails.

With a new introduction by Kate Mosse.

ISBN 978 1 84668 734 1
eISBN 978 1 84765 174 7

FAMILIAR

J. Robert Lennon