Remember Me This Way (4 page)

I sat back down, then waited for a raucous segment of the show before saying I needed air.

‘Oh sweetie, sorry,’ she said, jumping to her feet. ‘Do you want to watch something else? I can switch it off if you like.’

I paused as if I were considering it, though I was way past that. Mentally, I was already out, pacing the streets, sucking up the ozone. I tried to make my voice sound considerate: ‘You darling girl, you need your down time. I won’t be long.’

I felt relieved as soon as I was out in the open, repentant because of the look on her face, but also liberated. It’s her fault it’s not working. I want it to work, or I used to. What’s wrong with her? Why doesn’t she see what we
could
have? She’s a clever girl; for Christ’s sake, she does psychometric testing for a living. She should have sussed out what would make us happy. She doesn’t appreciate me, that’s the problem.

Brighton in high summer. Bins spilled their contents on to the pavement, black plastic flapping. The rancid smell of rotting fruit mixed with fried food, the pungent tang of Chinese. Men on a stag, pushing and pulling each other, falling into traffic, the tragic failed camaraderie of a half-hearted sing-song. Down at the beach, a group of women lay on the pebbles in the still light, their red-and-white sunburned legs outstretched, the gleam of their throats, raucous laughter. Rihanna’s ‘Umbrella’ blazed tinnily from someone’s iPhone. ‘Ella, ella, ella,’ the girls shouted. Drunken hens. Or shoppers – Primark carrier bags behind their heads – tanked up from happy hour. The sea glimmered in the sinking sun like oil. Seagulls, fat and dirty grey, pranced and flapped along the boardwalk. Even the seagulls down here seemed unnatural.

Earlier I walked along the front towards the pier. It wasn’t so much that I was attracted to the flashing lights or the high-pitched whirr. I just didn’t want to take the backstreets and risk passing Blank Canvas. It would be like turning over a stone, seeing woodlice on their backs, legs flailing. Those three artworks – none sold last time I looked. No one wants them. People don’t want heaviness, layers. They want small children with spades, the sky a shade to match their curtains. I don’t know why I bother. I should stick with the casts. Jim rang earlier to say three more commissions came in today. A newborn’s feet and two mothers wanting plaster representations of their kids’ pudgy hands. The residents of Brighton really can’t get enough of their own limbs.

I found myself outside Green’s Wine Bar. It’s far enough off the main drag to be quiet. Plus, no one wants solid, old-fashioned French any more – they want artisaned and heritaged and locally sourced. I thought about ringing someone but I’m not good company; it will be different when I sell a picture. I sat in the corner and the new waitress, dyed blonde hair and a heavy hand with the fake tan, perched on the edge of my table to take my order – grilled chicken with sautéed potatoes and green beans. When the food came, I divided it into sections, eating the potato first, then the beans, and lastly the chicken, smothering each mouthful with enough mustard to make my head sing. Sometimes I’ll do anything to get sensation back where it should be.

It was dark when I got back to the flat, the TV off. Charlotte had tidied up the living room and was waiting for me in the bedroom. She had changed her underwear from the overwashed shapeless grey I saw her put on this morning, into a matching red-and-black nylon-lace bra and thong. I’d seen the La Senza bag in the recycling. I don’t know if it was pity or the tackiness of her ‘lingerie’, but I felt aroused, despite myself. She told me she was sorry, but I don’t think she knew what for. It’s what I wanted, but
I
don’t know what for. Either way, I felt hollow. I don’t know what I’m looking for, but everything seems empty.

Afterwards I came back out here to the sitting room and poured myself a glass of Glengoyne. It seems to work when I’m feeling out of control like this. Out of the window is a purple-orange sky, white and yellow lights. Music throbbing from the nightclub a street away. Loud voices rising up across the rooftops. Brighton’s wrong for me. It’s not a good fit, literally. I’m too big for this flat; this town. The carpet is too static, the furniture too flimsy. The whole place brings out the worst in me. I should live in Cornwall. Perhaps I’ll do that.

No – I need sweetness, naivety. I need someone to rescue me from myself.

I could be happy, I think. I could be good.

Something’s got to happen. Something’s got to give.

Somewhere out there someone is waiting.

Chapter Three

Lizzie

I wake with a jerk. My neck is stiff. Howard is on my feet. He raises his head, and then lies back down.

It is 8 a.m.

A branch scrapes the window.

I shift my legs and Howard stands up. A pale light fills the room. It’s a day of flat cloud. I can’t believe I let myself sleep. Nothing here has changed. The front door is shut; the pile of ravaged post lies on the floor where I left it.

I should feel relieved, but I don’t, just a terrible deflation. I shiver and get gingerly to my feet. It’s cold. I’m wearing the same clothes as yesterday – an old summer skirt of my mother’s, from the back of my drawer. Zach wouldn’t have liked it. Early on, he took all my old fleeces and jeans to the charity shop. He was only happy when I wore clothes he had bought. Once Peggy gave me one of her cast-offs, a swirly purple wrap dress. I thought it looked nice, but he said it didn’t suit me and it disappeared from my cupboard.

In the chest of drawers in the bedroom, I find an old shirt of his – soft grey chambray, with a stain on the front. It was my fault, the stain. I rested a leaky ink pen on top of the ironing. He caught me trying to scrub it out, dabbing at it with a Stain Devil in the bathroom. I can still see him standing there in the doorway, a cold smile on his face. I jumped. ‘Are you scared of me?’ he asked, and I said I wasn’t. I forced my voice to stay steady. ‘But I know this sort of thing matters to you. I’m just trying to avoid unnecessary stress for both of us. It’s just a shirt.’

My tone surprised him; he looked confused, lost. He very rarely realised his obsessions were anything but normal. It was one of those moments when I experienced my own control. I felt a quickening low in my stomach, hooked my fingers into the belt of his jeans and pulled him to me.

I hold the shirt to my face, feel the threads against my lips. It smells of different washing powder – the only brand in the shop down here. I put it on with one of his old jerseys over that. I find an extra pair of socks in the drawer too. I catch my face in the mirror. I look old and pale. He liked me in make-up, but I haven’t worn it since he died. That red lipstick he bought me, I don’t know where it is. I sit on the bed wearing his clothes, and a wave of intense sadness and guilt surges through me.

Thoughts I have been keeping at bay begin to press. What if he read my letter and drove back to London to confront me? What if he had been drinking, was so crazed with anger that he wasn’t seeing straight? What if he died on his way?

Am I losing perspective? Have I been too much on my own?

I’ve got to get out.

My Converse are damp from last night and I open the cupboard for my wellington boots. I stare at the empty space where Zach’s should be. He must have been wearing them. Did he go for a walk when he first arrived, to blow away the cobwebs, and then come back and find my letter? I imagine him ambling back through the door, carefree, and then picking it up, and the thought is unbearable.

I grab my wellies then, knocking the fabric conditioner to the floor in my hurry. I put the bottle back on the shelf, in alignment with the washing powder. The dustpan and brush I used yesterday have fallen off their hook. Or perhaps I was so anguished I didn’t hang them up, as Zach taught me, just hurled them back in. I rehang them, thrust my feet into my boots, grab Howard’s lead and unlock the front door.

The wind is stiffer this morning and I take my waterproof jacket from the back seat, pulling up the hood to keep the wind out of my ears, digging my gloves out of the pocket. My mobile phone is tucked in the plastic groove on the inside of the handle on the driver’s door, where I left it last night. I don’t feel like speaking to anyone, but I promised I would ring Jane, and Peggy.

I straighten up and shut the car door, and, as I do that, I catch a movement out of the corner of my eye. A figure on the other side of the lane, a girl with long hair, in a blue coat. She stares at me. I can’t see her expression from this distance, but something about her body language, the way she’s positioning herself, legs apart, shoulders thrust forward, is disconcerting. I wonder if she is lost.

‘You all right?’ I call and begin to walk towards her, but she doesn’t answer. By the time I have crossed the road she has disappeared down the alley that runs alongside the bungalow opposite, and is gone

I take the same path, pocked with puddles from the recent weeks of rain. It leads down between a network of garden fences, along the boundary of the hotel, to the clifftop – the point where civilisation runs out and the swell of grassed cliff begins.

The sea: it’s always a surprise. Zach used to say it was some sort of consolation, no matter where or when. You feel it coming, smell it in the air, sense the opening light, and then there it is – that great expanse, that stretch. Today it is riffled, uneasy, not rolling, but tufted like the hair of a terrier. It is coloured in layers, sage and granite, only a few white tips, a smudged horizon. Stepper Point, across the bay, is a patchwork of green and mustard yellow, edged with thin parings of sand. Seagulls yelp and wheel above my head. Behind, on the back wall of the hotel, polished jackdaws caw.

I’d never imagined the kind of happiness I experienced with Zach would belong to me. When I met him, I had got used to thinking of myself as an aunt and a sister and a daughter, not a lover. I had set my sights on average contentment. And yet within months I was striding along this clifftop, his hand in mine, gorse underfoot, the wind in my ears, the sea in his eyes. He told me when we were walking here one day that I was a source of constant surprise to him, that my humble delight in the world was infectious. I wasn’t used to making a difference to anyone. When I wonder what he saw in me, I often think of that.

An elderly man passes with a black Labrador. I stand back. I’m having trouble breathing. I’ve got a tightness in my throat, an empty feeling in my abdomen, a need to sigh. I am biting my lip. This loss, this sense of emptiness, is worse than last night’s fear. It’s why I put off coming. The world seems blank. He used to ask me if I’d choose to die before or after him. ‘Before,’ I used to say.

I walk faster. There’s a bench around the headland, below the large holiday houses, the ones with the telescopes and the balconies, the ones Zach used to hanker after, and I reach it and sit down. Below me, the sea swarms around the black rocks.

I fumble for my phone. There’s a signal here. I ring Jane first, but she doesn’t answer. Sunday morning. She and Sanjay are probably having brunch in one of the new cafés that have opened near their flat. She will tell me about it later. She believes in the comfort of food – the sunrise muffin, or the eggs Benedict, or the Turkish pide. I will tell her I’m fine, and she will pretend to believe me. She might mention Sam Welham, the new psychology teacher. She loved Zach – my knight without armour, she used to call him, my fairy-tale prince – but she thinks it’s time I moved on.

Peggy answers. I stare at the sea and, keeping control of my voice, tell her Gulls is still standing. ‘And yes, I am too.’ Her Clapham kitchen, with its kids’ drawings, its piles of washing, seems a long way off. She hasn’t managed to visit Mum. ‘You know what weekends are like.’ She is preparing Sunday lunch and her five-year-old is helping. ‘No, no, no,’ she keeps saying. ‘Careful, Alfie. Sorry, Lizzie. Are you OK, not too sad?
Watch out
. HOT.’ Zach was always irritated by the way Peggy’s role as parent spilled into every corner of her life, but I’m touched by it. ‘I’ll ring you back,’ she says suddenly and goes.

I stand up. I’ve just got to reach the shop, buy a few things, organise for an estate agent to visit. It’s not much. I can go through these normal motions. I walk around the last bend and the village stretches out below, a crescent of buildings around a deep bay, a glimmering stretch of beach studded with rocks. It’s low tide, the sea pulling away in the distance. A scattering of sleek black-neoprene figures, leaning against yellow boards, disconsolate at the waterline. Several more bobbing a hundred metres out. Children scattered, people idly walking, more dogs. The mobile van’s here – ‘Rip It Up: Gary’s Surf Adventure’ – even if the waves aren’t.

Zach loved it here. He actually grew up somewhere else, on a different coast, in a village on the Isle of Wight, but a girl he met when he was young had a holiday home here and he got to know the area through her. When his parents were dead, he sold their house and invested the money in property here instead. For him, it was a breaking of ties, but I don’t think it was that big a leap – it’s still the same small, tight world he grew up in: the middle classes in all their faded red-trousered glory. He just swapped one privileged sailing community for another.

South-London-on-sea, some people call it. It’s funny, that, how limited the imaginations of the wealthy few, how they all end up in the same handful of places on holiday. Lots of parents at my school have houses here or relatives in the area. Down here, in the summer with Zach, I was guaranteed to bump into someone I recognised. It made me uncomfortable, horribly self-conscious. I’d see them thinking,
What’s that funny little librarian doing here?
I wonder, with an abrupt sinking feeling in my chest, if I will see anyone I recognise now.

I attach Howard to the lead and cross the last field to the path that runs down to the car park.

A river trickles from the hill, under the bridge and on to the beach, spreading and turning silver across the sand. On the rocky inland side, plastic bags tangle in the weeds, a supermarket trolley is upended. Three boys, bikes spreadeagled, are using it as target practice. Locals? I cross the bridge to the short row of shops. Outside the Spar hover two mothers with a gaggle of small children. Holidaymakers – you can tell from the warmth of their ski jackets: goose-down padding, fur-lined hoods. (The local lads with the bikes are in T-shirts.) They are peering at a peeling notice on the door – an appeal for help in the search for a missing person. ‘God, can you imagine?’ the taller woman is saying almost under her breath. ‘Losing someone like that. Never knowing what’s happened to them. You’d search for them, wouldn’t you, everywhere you went?’