Escape (35 page)

I look into his eyes and imagine my face next to his instead of
Carole's. He is looking at me adoringly, his hand wanders into my
hair. His fingers trace lines over my skin, grip the back of my neck. As
he looks down my body, his eyes swoop and darken like Harry's, he
carries Harry's dreams, my dreams. He wants to have me, possess me,
make me his . . . star.

I start to weep into my glass.
Oh stop feeling so sorry for yourself,
says the voice,
and do your stupid work. You can't even do ten minutes'
writing, can you, without crying, or getting up to scratch, or lying on the
floor or looking at your emails. Hopeless
.

Emails! I click on 'send and receive' and yes, there is Clara. Saved!

Hi Mum & Dad,

So sad to hear about Nan – what a shock, but glad she is okay!! I
know you said there's no need to come home Mum, but I feel bad about it.
Do you really think nan's okay? Marisa said her nanna had a pacemaker
put in ten years ago, and she's still doing fine. She carries one of those little
buzzer things to press in case of emergency, does our nan have that? Are
YOU okay Mum, is it getting very tyring looking after her? I bet Pop is
being a hero as usual.

love and hugs,

Clara xxx

I sit at my desk with my four magicians. Jonny and Patrick and Chuck
and Chip. Outside, the night is moonless. The electric heater is warm
on my ankles, which are encased in thick wool socks. My knees are
cold. But the red wine in my glass is hot. The bottle was so icy from
just standing out on the kitchen bench tonight that I put it in the
microwave for fifty seconds. Then I took it with me back to my room.
The wine warmed my stomach, all the way down.

You can do that kind of thing when you live alone. You can also
take up smoking, eat a whole packet of biscuits in ten minutes, fart,
let the pee whoosh noisily into the bowl, sing off key and swear out
loud. Nobody is there to judge or disapprove. You can also stop doing
your pelvic floor exercises because no one cares any more about your
stupid old vagina, least of all you. It's like a pet you used to love that's
been stuff ed and left on the shelf. A sad reminder. It's not as great as it
sounds, this living alone. It only seems to encourage the worst kind of
behaviour. At least, that's what it does to me.

'There's a difference between the words
alone
and
lonely
,' says
the therapist. I think of that puzzle, Spot the Difference, which I
used to play with Clara. Personally, I can't see the difference here. To
me,
alone
means being lonely forever. I see myself with my electric
heater, ploughing through all those Russian novels I never had time to
finish, The
Idiot
,
Crime and Punishment
, drinking too much red wine,
falling into a stupor, nodding off . I'll grow bitter and dark and old and
cultured like balsamic vinegar. That's a substance you'd only ever want
a drop of, not a whole bottle, because it sours everything.

The only source of sweetness in this long dark month is Clara. Oh,
Clara's emails – I savour them, save them up, like breaking open my
expensive Lindt chocolate. She tastes bittersweet. In the last five years,
all together, she wouldn't have shared so many words with me as she
has in these few weeks. Her emails offer the texture of her days so I can
feel them, spotlight her feelings so I can see them. They are marvellous
to me, even the bad spelling, utterly surprising, each one.

Hi Mum & Dad – thanks for the news, so good to know Nan is out of
hospital and recovering. We don't have to use the school's email any more
– see I have a new email address – the signora has a computer that I
can use any time I like. Life is good – exept for worrying about Nan. I'm
getting to know the signora – she's quite chatty and said I could use 'tu'
for you instead of the formal lei which is a relief. Marisa says I'm lucky –
when someone is so much older and in a position of athority you hardly
ever get to drop the lei. I find this whole formal business really strange –
will it ever get normal, using the third person to speak to someone standing
right in front of you? Like I go to Lucia, 'Does She want the floor swept
now? What would She like for dinner?' How weird is that!

Lucia seems glad that I speak English – she wants to improve hers
so she can talk to her grandchildren when they come to visit. They live in
America. She asks me a lot about Australia, if everyone is white and pink
like a merang, like me – I was a bit ofended even though I didn't show it
but she said merangs are delicious and very difficult to make, like sufflés.
Lucia's really helping my Italian conversation – last night she sat down
with me and started to go over the verbi irregolari which she says I am
'assassinating'. Roberto – that's the teacher – keeps picking me to translate
stories set in the passato remoto which are full of these damn verbs and
I have to stand up in class and read. I don't know why he chooses me
when there are other people in the class who are much better. Marisa for
instance. Next to her I'm like a lumpy scone. She dresses with that Italian
elegance I just can't get. Lucia's invited me to go shoe shopping with her
– I swear her wardrobe is like that old Imelda Marcos – so many pairs of
shoes, and not old lady shoes either. Lucia loves scarves too and she's given
me some to wear but actually I'm decorating my room with them.

Oh mum you should SEE my room. I have my own desk and chair
and all my things are put away. My books and the Chanel No 5 perfume
from Duty Free are on the bedside table, my jumpers and t shirts in
the chest of drawers. I have 2 keys, a map and all of Florence. AND
I'm getting paid! The windows have those lovely 'serrande', the wooden
shutters you can close so that the room becomes completely dark even in
full daylight. Yesterday at the market I bought blue ireses and an enameled
white jug and when I got home I put them on the chest of drawers on top
of a rainbow mat woven by Africans and it all looked fantastic. With the
shutters open the afternoon sun shines straight onto the blue like an arrow
at a target and the flowers turn a kind of flaming purple. Like royalty.
That's how I feel when I wake up in the morning and slowly take in the
fact that I am here, in Florence. Too lucky, too special for words.

Clara x

Twenty thousand kilometres of slack. Does distance from me allow
her more freedom? Whatever it is, I don't mind, I just want it to keep
coming. When I write back I am careful not to judge, to celebrate her
small successes. And suddenly I wonder, is this what I should have
done always? Is this perhaps how good mothers behave, applauding
the small victories, those victories that might not be the ones you
understand, but the ones chosen by this beautiful, good creature who
is an individual, a living breathing person separate from you, who
has to fill her own hours of her own life in a way that will make her
happy?

Well, at least you've made a start, I tell myself. You're listening.

A bit bloody late, only twenty years late, the whole of your daughter's
life so far!

The voice grates like a tin cup rattled against metal bars. I thump
the desk with my fist and shout, because I can and no one will know,
'LET ME OUT! LET ME OUT OF HERE!'

Break out then, why don't you? Haven't got the guts, you couldn't
break out of a wet paper bag, isn't that what you are, a sodden lamenting
crying shred of toilet paper?

I bang my head against the wall, the pain feels good, right as rain,
you deserve it you stupid sodden bitch, go on, knock yourself out.

'I walked into a wall,' I say to Doreen. She's looking at the bruise on my
forehead. I peer with her, into the mirror. It has purpled and bloomed.
I laugh. 'Too much of that cabernet sauvignon!'

Doreen laughs back. 'Ah well, at least you're enjoying your
freedom. You should put ice on it. Just don't drive like that!'

'Fell over,' I say to Dad. I can't stand his look of concern. It makes
him look older, but younger, too, vulnerable. I laugh again. I couldn't
bear him having to worry about me as well as Mum. 'I'm going to do
something about that path of mine – loose stones are such a nuisance.
I'm fine, how are things?'

The therapist just looked at my face and I began to cry. 'You are so
hard on yourself, Rachel,' she said. I cried for the entire hour. I didn't
look up once, not at her or the interesting books or the picture on the
wall. The therapist leant forward and took my hand. She let me cry.
She gave me tissues and a cup of coffee. Her face reflected my sadness.
'So hard,' she murmured. At the end she said, 'The voice is just a bad
habit, you know. You can kick it. Like cigarettes. Give it a big whacking
kick. Why don't you tell the voice to fuck off?'

It was an astonishing idea. I thought – black pit voice gone door
opens light.

'Do something nice for yourself each day,' the therapist said. 'Even
if you don't feel like it. You deserve it. Some small thing. What do you
like to do?'

Here we go, I thought. I'm the person without hobbies, remember?
The silence ticked on, empty as my list of hobbies.
What a failure of a
person
, said the voice.

'Fuck off ,' I said out loud.

The therapist looked surprised.

'Oh no, I didn't mean—' My cheeks blushed scarlet.

She laughed. A rich dark laugh with colours in it and little lights,
like the reflection of the city underwater. 'Good on you!' she said.
'That's good.'

In the silence without the voice, in that split second, I thought
quietly, what do I like?

'I like to read Clara's emails,' I said suddenly. 'I like listening to my
daughter. I like hearing her news. And dark Lindt chocolate. '

There you are! There's a thing. I am. There she is. There we are. I
love Clara. I love who she is. The feeling of uncluttered love makes me
feel whole for a moment, free.

'You're smiling,' grins the therapist. 'What's going on?'

'I'm not frightened. Or guilty.'

But when I get outside I can't hear what she's saying any more
because the voice has come back so loud I want to bang my head
against the wall a hundred times to get rid of it.

As I'm driving away, I try to hold on to her words. 'It's going to
take time. Change is uncomfortable, even good changes. But I'm here,
we're okay, we're on the way . . .'

Ciao!

Thanks for the update on nan, mum. SO good to get your emails!
Sounds as if she's doing well. I wish there was a shuttle service running
through the kitchens of the universe and I could send her the soup I made
last night. It wasn't her Jewish chicken specialty it was minestrone, but it
was good. I made it the proper Italian way and Lucia said it was molto
buono.

The food shopping is fun, too – it's so great going into an alimentari
shop and coming out with what you asked for! It makes you feel competent
like a real Italian or maybe just a proper adult relying on no one else but
yourself to survive. Yesterday I bought a ciabatt a for me and la signora,
and parmigiano for the minestrone and a cioccolato for dessert. I've come
a long way since that first day when I SO cleverly remembered the name of
my street, Senso Unico – One Way!

I'm getting on better with your poems Dad – my Italian is improving
– I recognise now little sayings and expresions. It's really fun trying to
decode your writing. And you do your sevens with that cross-bow through
the middle – looks dangerous, like a medieval scithe – I'm going to do that
from now on, it's cool. I've almost read one whole poem – and it's brilliant
Dad! 'La Neve' – I love it when you say the silence settles around the
house like a moat around a castle. It gives me goosebumps. When I read
it the sun was shining in on the polished floor and I was still hot from a
brisk walk across the piazza but I got a kind of shiver under my skin. How
are you getting on with the script? Is it set here in Italy? I could do any
research or anything you wanted while I'm here, remember. Haven't heard
from you in a while – I'm sending these emails to mum's computer for you
both to read – obviously! But would you like an email to yourself, Dad?
Oh anyway maybe you're just emersed in your work . . . don't worry, just
when you can.

A big hug to you both!

Clara xx

I've started to run now. I run in my old sandals, whatever I happen to
be wearing, bare feet. I just pick up my keys and run out of the house
along the stony path. I don't look up, I don't want to see anyone, I'm
so ashamed. I come back and I'm sweating and my heart is racing
and I say
run run run
out loud to quieten the voice. I shout at it like
a bad-mannered drunk. But it refuses to hear.
You're turning into an
animal
, the voice says. Its true, I'm no longer a vampire but more like
a werewolf, with hair that has grown long on my legs and under my
armpits, the hair on my head unwashed, unplucked eyebrows . . . And
in eight days I'll have to go to the Park Hyatt and meet Jonny Love,
the handsomest man I've ever seen, next to Guido that is, and sit still
across a table from him for at least two hours and act like a normal
human being instead of a werewolf.

Last night I ran at 2 am. The moon was full, loud as daylight. My
breath steamed out ahead of me. I flashed past all the words in my
head like a car on a road trip.

At night, when I have to lie still, I invite Harry in. Sometimes he
arrives with Jonny, or Jonny just watches. Harry's eyes are on fire. But
the running scenes bleed in; trees shake, dogs bark, my feet slap on the
road. I can't get back into my imagined world. When I think of Harry
and slide my hand into the cleft of me, I start to cry and everything
below my neck goes dead.

The only time I sit still with ease is when I read my emails from
Clara.

Ciao Mamma e Papà,

I went to Assisi this weekend – had the weekend off ! Bliss! Walked
up the hill into the Piazza del Commune – right back into medieval
times. In the early morning, around 5 or 6, the church bells toll, one set
finishing as another begins. Outside my window the pigeons pant like
dogs. Went to the church of San Francesco – Giotto and Cimabue on the
walls! You can breathe the air that Giotto breathed, walk on his ground.
Now that's Magic.

La signora seemed distant when I got back, though – maybe she
didn't like my going? Or maybe it's just this book club thing looming. She
belongs to a book club and they meet once a month – the ladies are all
coming here next week. I'm going to have to cook for them. Lucia wants
me to make a torta di mela.

Big hugs,

Clara xx

Run run run . . . I wonder what Jonny's hands are like – to touch. I
wonder how the breath of him will feel. Will I see a gesture, a curl of
smile, something of Harry? His essence?

Hi Mum,

How are you? How are you coping? Dad finally emailed me. He said
he was working at Silvia's now – she's helping him with his script. He
said you and he are having a break. Is that true? Why didn't you tell me?
Where's he living? He said the story he's writing is like a sea he's dived into
and he has to make conditions right so he can keep breathing underwater.
What the hell is he doing? I'm sorry to ask you, but I don't get it and he
doesn't make sense. He sounded okay, his usual obsesed self – only he's
living in another house! Or is he just working there? He's excited about his
work – he said he's swimming with deep-sea creatures. He wants to get to
know these creatures, and that Silvia is his 'diving instructor'. Has he gone
completely mad? Look, I know things have been difficult between you both
for a long time, but does this mean you two have separated? He gives me
deep-sea diving instead of different address.