Precocious (17 page)

She has placed a little tin of Vaseline on the table in front of her, and every so often dips her spidery fingers into it and runs them over her lips. She has small, pointed teeth.

‘So you’re going to report him for that? Doesn’t sound like a crime to me.’ But my voice breaks a bit on the word
crime
.

‘No, but I’m assuming you don’t want the gory details. You don’t need them anyway – you were there before me, after all.’ Her voice is light and a smile plays on her lips as though she’s just told a joke.

‘Okay, tell me in legal speak then. When you
report
him, what exactly is it you’re going to accuse him of?’

‘Now, let me think. According to my solicitor it’s known as,’ she speaks slowly, as though reading it out, ‘sexual activity with a child.’

‘A child? You just said you were fifteen.’

‘A child in the eyes of the law, Fiona.’

I don’t like the way she says my name. Her ‘o’s are soft and round, out of place here among northern accents. She must have been living in the south – the same change started to happen to my voice after three years in London, but I fought it. I want to ask her: ‘Did you come back up here just for this?’ Instead I ask, ‘And you say this is your boyfriend’s idea?’

She falters.

‘Well, not his
idea
exactly, but …’

‘Whatever you think went on with Morgan,’ I say your name in a whisper, ‘this Dennis doesn’t like it and he wants – what? Some sort of revenge? Or is that what
you’re
after?’

‘I’m not after anything.’

‘Not half.’ I feel heat rising in my cheeks, I’m trying to keep my voice under control. ‘Attention? Revenge? Money? Is it some sort of compensation you want, is that it?’

She sighs as though suddenly exhausted, runs a hand through her hair in a way that reminds me, perversely, of you.

‘Look. Don’t get angry. Please. I just wanted to talk to you. I just want to do what’s right.’

‘And why me, Alice? I mean, how did you know to come looking for me?’

‘Once, he said I reminded him of someone. He said your name.’

‘And you remembered, all this time.’
Of course you did
, I think.
I would have. I did.
‘What else did he say about me?’

‘That you were … different.’

She doesn’t have to say anything else. Any doubt I might have had, any hope I was holding onto that she was a fantasist, that she’d never even
met
Morgan (she wasn’t in the yearbooks, I’d checked), much less been taught by him, been held by him – it starts to crumble.

‘He’s back,’ I say suddenly; Alice frowns. ‘I mean, I’m back … with him.’

‘I heard you were married.’

‘I was. I am. It’s complicated. I moved in with him.’

‘Wow.’ She makes a soft whistling sound.

‘So you see, these things you’re saying, I don’t … I
can’t
hear them.’

She leans forward and rests her chin on her delicate hands, clasped together as though praying. She has the expression of a child trying to work out a puzzle.

‘I wondered why you were being quite so … protective. Maybe this changes things. Maybe not. I still think I need you. And maybe you need me, too.’

She gets up and heads to the bathroom, leaving her words in the air between us, and her bag on the sofa. It’s a battered satchel, clumpy and too full.
With what?
I wonder. A compulsion to search it, to tip it out, starts to rise in me so I look around to distract myself, and to place myself back in the reality that is other people.

A couple sit at the next table; they are married, wearing rings, but his body language has already left her. His knees point away, his eyes scan the room. He’s good looking, in an empirical way: the square jaw, the broad shoulders. She is leaning over a notebook, ticking off tasks, her bobbed hair neat, her face free of make-up. They aren’t speaking. He looks as though he is wondering how he got here with her.

Another table is overrun by a huge family; the cantankerous old man at the centre of it is bullying his wife loudly to fetch him a more comfortable chair. She looks around desperately; the place is heaving. Her daughter’s voice rises and rises over the noise made by her clutch of children, who are running in circles and keep knocking the tiny table, dishes holding muffins and flapjacks sliding and shifting like tectonic plates.

A student with headphones on scans a textbook, makes notes in the margin, checks her phone which ‘beep, beep’s every third minute or so, sips herbal tea, scribbles again, chews her pencil.

Alice is back, and smiling as though she is my friend.

‘You know, for a long time I’ve wanted to meet you.’

‘I can’t say the same. He’s never mentioned you.’

‘I bet,’ she laughs. Then says archly, ‘but that doesn’t mean I don’t exist.’

How much does she have of you? I stare at the satchel, imagining you somehow wrapped up in there. I want to tear open its bulging seams. How much does she have of
me
?

Somehow the fact that you’ve talked about me is what troubles me the most. I’m beginning to realise that stories are rarely for their own sake; they are usually used for some other purpose. For what purpose did you use the story of me?

I’m torn between wanting to know everything and wanting to hear nothing.

How many times, where, when? How was it similar or different to how it was with me?

I want to know where I rank.

‘Do you want to ask me anything?’ she says quietly, as though reading my mind.

‘Yes and no,’ I say honestly. She studies my face.

‘We should leave it. For today.’

‘Alice,’ I say, ‘why am I here? I mean, what is it you want from me, exactly?’

‘I want you to testify against him.’

I almost spit out my tea.

‘You’ve got to be joking.’

‘Nope.’

‘Jesus. You did
hear
me before, right? I’m
living
with him.’

‘Look, it’s seven, eight years ago. There’s no evidence, not really. It’s my word against his. I need … I need backup.’

I suddenly feel like an older sister, oddly protective. I wish I could take myself out of the situation, watch from afar as a third person version of me gives her a hug. But my overarching need is all about you; all about us.

‘Just listen to yourself, Alice. Think about what you’re suggesting. How serious it is.’ I pause. ‘If you do this … he’ll be suspended.’

She looks at me, emotions passing over her face quick as light. Confusion. Pity. Triumph.

‘It’s done, Fiona. He was suspended three weeks ago.’

I stand outside the tea shop. I know I’m not ready to go home, wherever that is, but I don’t know where I should go. There’s a whirring in my head so loud, for a moment I think it’s the traffic. I’m in two pieces, I feel like two people with differing views, neither one making a decision. I want anonymity; I want crowds. I want silence; I want solitude. Into this confusion God, or Fate, or whoever is the choreographer of the insane dance that is suddenly my life, sends the person most likely to throw me into more turmoil.

Matt.

He’s sort of jogging towards me, one hand holding a briefcase, the other positioning a newspaper over his head to protect his hair from the rain that I hadn’t even noticed. He’s grinning and I have my back to the glass doorway so I can’t avoid his smile, and short of turning and going back inside there’s nowhere for me to disappear to.

One half of me, remembering Laura’s pained expression last time I saw her, wants to slap him.

The other wants to laugh. Seeing his beaming face is a kind of relief. I long for the time when a flirtation with Matt was the most I had to feel guilty about.

‘Hey,’ he leans forward and kisses my cheek, ‘how you doing, Fee? Good to see you.’

‘You, too,’ I say truthfully.

He looks over my shoulder through the glass into the steam and chatter.

‘Listen, would love to chat but I need to get in there. I’m meeting someone.’

I suddenly have the sense of all the pieces of my life connecting and a fear comes over me.

‘Who? I mean … it’s not …’

‘It’s not a woman, if that’s what you mean,’ he says irritably, ‘it’s a work thing. And anyway,’ and in an instant, with a wink, the old Matt is back, the tease, the flirt, ‘when did you get so virtuous? Marriage must really agree with you.’

Marriage
. I look into his honey-coloured eyes and know we are complicit in our betrayals. ‘She’s pregnant’, I want to spit at him, but the words sound hollow in my heart, before they even reach my mouth. His eyes say, ‘we’re the same, you and me’. Is it true? Are my fantasies just that – shadows I build to make the reality seem less sordid? Do we cheats seek each other out? Is there some invisible sonar, is that why he touched me the way he did when we danced? Did I encourage him, just by being what I am, this faithless creature?

‘Hey, chill out,’ he’s saying, ‘why such a serious face?’

‘Nothing. It’s just … well, what you said about marriage. Me and Dave are … kind of taking a break. I moved out.’

‘Oh. Shit. Sorry, Fee. Laura never said.’

‘Well, she wouldn’t, since I haven’t told her.’ I sigh. ‘We kind of had other things to talk about last time I saw her,’ I add. Oblivious to my meaning, Matt checks his watch and smiles.

‘Well listen, I really do have to go in there now.’ I realise I’m blocking the doorway. ‘But why don’t you drop in on her this afternoon? I’m working late and she could really do with some girl time I reckon. Sounds like you could too.’

He kisses me again, cool lips on my forehead, and squeezes my arm, and for a second I want to grab him and bury my face in his collar, but I don’t, I just say ‘bye’ and take myself off into the rain.

‘How do they do that?’

‘Who?’

‘Children.’

‘Do what?’

‘Disappear like that.’

I’m at Laura’s school. I’m always amazed by the way that children, even with all their mess and noise and clatter, can vacate a space in seconds; leave it ghostly.

She smiles. She’s getting a bump. I feel a pang of envy, a surprise lurch in my stomach.

‘I’m taking you for an early dinner,’ I say brightly.

‘Matt …’

‘Actually he gave me the idea,’ I confess. ‘I’ve just seen him, in town.’

She bundles up the papers on her desk and runs a hand through her hair.

‘Well, I guess that’s okay.’

‘Yep, you’re free for at least two hours. I’ll help you clear up.’

We slide in between yellow-topped desks, stooping to pick up an eraser here, a pencil there. Laura sits down, on a child’s chair, Year Six driftwood on her lap.

‘Matt,’ she says again.

‘Stop it,’ I tell her.

‘What?’

‘Stop wondering what he was doing in town today, what he’s doing this evening.’

‘Am I that transparent?’

‘Just think about you, for a change. Just for a couple of hours. Okay?’

‘Okay.’

‘Although I have to admit,’ I take her handbag for her and link her arm as she flicks off the lights, ‘I do have an ulterior motive for my visit. I need to pick your brains on something. Is that alright?’

‘Of course,’ she laughs, ‘I hope I can help. I’m beginning to think that the more pregnant I get, the more brain cells I lose.’ She makes a whistling sound. ‘Even the ten-year-olds seem to be running rings round me at the moment.’

It was always obvious Laura was going to be a primary school teacher. She had patience and a love of children, and what’s more they loved her too. They seemed to be able to sense in her a kindred spirit, one who had never really grown up, who still had wonder and innocence and could be silly at times. In turn, she loved their seemingly bottomless energy, and their honesty, both traits she tended to find lacking in adults.

Laura always tells me she loves teaching the class she does because they’re old enough to have great conversations with. She says they’re at that lovely point when their adult personalities are almost fully formed: ‘everything’s there except the crap stuff’ she always says, ‘that gets poured in last’.

‘So how’s school?’ I say when we’re settled. We’re scanning the menus although I don’t know why we bother: we always come to the same little Italian place in town and we both always order the same thing. When the waiter comes over and Laura mouths ‘two minutes please’, I know it can’t be because she hasn’t decided yet.

‘What’s this really about then, Fee?’ She has a concerned look, head tilted, eyes wide. It strikes me if she wasn’t a teacher she’d have made a great therapist. ‘You said you wanted to pick my brains on something.’

‘Yes, it’s a bit of a weird one, I hope you don’t mind?’

‘Fire away.’

‘Well. If a child were to make an, um, an accusation … against a member of staff. What would happen?’

She frowns.

‘What kind of an accusation?’

‘Oh you know, anything. Bullying, maybe. Verbal abuse. Physical abuse. Erm … sexual,’ I add hastily. ‘It might even be years later, say.’

‘Well, it doesn’t happen often, thank God.’ At this point, incongruously, she taps the table as if ‘touching wood’, or maybe she is just keeping herself anchored to a world of solidity, where these things don’t happen. ‘But if a complaint was made, well, the teacher would be suspended immediately while the investigation took place. Then I guess it would go to court, and so on.’

‘And if he – if they – were found guilty?’

‘You’re probably not asking the right person, honey. You’d need to ask a judge, or a lawyer. I can tell you they’d go onto List 99 – so they wouldn’t be able to work with children again. Although I think you can appeal after a certain number of years.’

The waiter is hovering impatiently, and we both just point at our usual choices on the menu: salmon farfalle for me, cannelloni for Laura.

‘Oh, and a bottle of Frascati, please,’ I say with a ‘what the hell’ smile at Laura.

‘You know you’re on your own with that, don’t you?’ she reminds me. ‘I’m not drinking.’

‘Oh shit, yes. Better make it a half bottle!’

‘Fee, I hope you don’t mind me asking,’ she waits for the waiter to move away, ‘but why do you want to know all of this?’