The Day We Met (11 page)

“I…” I don't know how to tell him the truth without frightening him away, so I tell him a version of it. “Let's just say, I don't have very long left.”

Ryan's slow, steady pace falters, and I feel sorry for him. I keep forgetting how frightening any serious illness is for other people. It's as if Death has just tapped them on the shoulder, and reminded them it's coming for them one day too.

“It's not fair,” he says quietly, taking in the news.

“No.” I can only agree. “This part is the worst part. The part when I know what I am losing. This part hurts me. More than I know how to say, to anyone. Not that I've ever tried to explain it to anyone…except you. This is the part I never want to end, and the part I want over now.”

Ryan looks, what? Mortified, I think. Horrified. His face is white as a sheet.

“Sorry,” I say. “I don't know why I've picked on you to confess my inner thoughts to. Look, it's okay. Don't feel obliged to talk to me. I'll be fine from here.”

I look around me, and realize I have no idea where I am, or even when. I don't want to let go of his hand, but I tell myself that if he loosens his grip on my fingers, even a little, then I must.

“Do you love your husband?” he asks me. I look down and see he is still holding my hand, firmly. I look at it, my hand in his, my wedding ring shimmering in the morning sun.

“Sometimes I remember what it felt like,” I say. “And I know that I was so lucky to have it, even for a little while.”

Chewing my lip as we walk on, I wonder what I'm doing, and why. Why am I telling this perfect stranger, who quite possibly has more mental health issues than I do, the secrets I can't tell my family? By now, I should have scared him off—he should be making his polite excuses, and finding a way to leave—but he is still walking next to me, still holding my hand. And it doesn't feel wrong, my hand in his. It feels…comforting.

“Love is a funny thing,” he says, breaking the silence. “Sometimes, I'd like to be better with words, so that I could talk about it more. It seems so wrong to me that there is this condition that affects all of us, more than anything else in our lives ever will, and only the poets and song writers get to talk about it with any sort of authority.”

“You can talk about it to me,” I say. “It doesn't matter what words you use.”

“I suppose I think it's more than just words and sentiment,” he says. “I suppose that, actually, I'd really like to be your friend, if you feel you need one, even though I'm missing my wife, who I still love, and even though you are so ill. And even though we can't be friends forever, I'd like us to be friends now. If you don't mind?”

“But why?” I ask him. “Why would you want to have anything to do with me?”

“Our paths crossed at exactly the right time, don't you think?” He draws to a stop, turning to face me. “When I think about love, I suppose I think it's something outside of us. Something that's about more than just sex or romance. I suppose I think that when we are gone, all that will be left of us is love.”

“That reminds me of something,” I say. “I can't think what.”

I try to push back the fold of fog in my memory as I glance
around, spotting a house with red curtains at the window. It's my house; somehow we have stopped outside my house.

“I live here,” I say, surprised. “You've brought me home.”

“More likely that you just knew the way, and led us here because you weren't thinking about it too much,” he says, looking a little sad, perhaps because our walk is over. “Either that or I'm your guardian angel.”

“I hope not,” I say. “I've always thought guardian angels sound like right party poopers.”

Something moves in my peripheral vision, probably my mum releasing the curtains, which means she's heading for the door. I don't want to have to explain Ryan to Mum—or worse, to Greg—so I guide him back a step or two behind our neighbor's stupidly tall privet hedge.

“I think my mum might ground me,” I whisper to Ryan, smiling ruefully.

“Oh, shall I…?” But before he can offer to say hello to my mother, I stop him.

“No, it's fine,” I say. “Thank you for the walk. Thank you for bringing me back. I'd better go.”

“Do you still have my number?” he asks me, catching my wrist.

“Yes,” I say. But the truth is, I don't know.

“If you need me,” he says, “if you need a friend who doesn't care what you are wearing, then you can reach me. Promise.”

“And you too,” I say. “You reach me too, when you are missing your wife more than you want to.”

“Remember me,” he says.

“I will,” I say, and I don't know why, but I know that it's true.

“I'm sorry,” Mum says, as soon as I walk in the door, my head tipped back, preparing to be grounded.

I turn around slowly and look at her. “Pardon?”

“I'm not doing a very good job of seeing what this is like for you,” she says, wringing her hands over and over. “I just want to look after you—that's all I want to do. And sometimes I think I try too hard, or not hard enough, to understand how frustrating this all is, for you. I suppose I'm not listening to you enough. I was worried sick, and Greg's out looking for you. I'd better ring him.”

Greg doesn't answer, and Mum leaves a message. Her voice is trembling, and I realize I've scared her. It seems so stupid to me that, just by going out of the door, I frighten my mother so much. It seems so stupid that this is my life now.

“I'm sorry,” I say. “I don't do things to frighten you. I do things because I honestly think it's fine…. This is all happening too fast for me to keep up with, that's the trouble.”

Mum nods, and letting go of the hem of her sweater, which she was holding on to for dear life, she comes toward me and puts her arms around me. It's an awkward embrace, all elbows and shoulders. At first we are out of practice, but then I remember sitting on her lap. I let myself be hugged by her, and we stand in the hallway holding each other. I am glad to be home.

“Look,” Mum says gently when we finally part. “While Greg was out looking for you, I was thinking about what to do about Caitlin….”

It comes back in a rush of worry—the reason I went out; the reason I escaped. I have to be with her. “Where are my car keys?” I ask her.

“Greg's coming home,” she says, holding up the thing that messages come on. “He's glad you are back. He's coming home to look after Esther.”

“I need my car keys,” I say, lost in the mosaic of information.

“When Greg gets here, we can go, you and me.”

The pieces slide and reassemble, and then I realize exactly what she is saying.

“You and me.” She smiles. “We're going to London together, to find Caitlin.”

This is a photo of my dad in his army uniform. It was taken long before he met Mum, maybe even before she was born. He is just eighteen in this photo, so handsome, and even in this posed, formal image, I always think there is a little twinkle in his eye: a sense of a life beginning. This is how I like to remember him. He served in the last two years of the Second World War, and he never talked about it, not once; but whatever happened to him in France changed him. The only times I ever saw that twinkle in his eye was in this photo and on the day he died, when he thought I was his sister.

I wasn't allowed to see him much at the end; if I'm honest, I didn't really want to. He'd always been something of a stranger to me anyway, an old-school sort of dad who usually came home after work when I was already in bed. I remember the earliest parts of my childhood as playing all day with Mum, and then
at night trying to stay awake until I heard the click of the front door, hoping that tonight would be one of the rare nights that Dad came into my room and kissed me on the forehead. He only ever did that, though, if he thought I was properly asleep. The merest twitch of an eyelash, and he would not enter the room. As I grew up, I resented that. I thought he was very cold, very remote. It took me years to realize that was just the way he was. He was all about the stiff upper lip, a pat on the back; no hugs or kisses, he wasn't that sort of father. He was the sort of dad who might make polite enquiries as to how my day had been at school. Like we were acquaintances who'd met in the street and discussed the weather. I loved him, and I am sure that he loved me, but I didn't really know him, especially not by the age of ten, which is how old I was when he died. I remember quite a lot about being ten, but very little about my dad. I wonder whether, had he lived longer, he would have meant more to me as a person. Would I remember him for the things he meant to me, instead of the things he didn't? I worry so much about how Esther will remember me, or whether she will remember me at all.

I only have two really clear memories of my dad, and one is of the last time I saw him before he died, when he thought I was his sister, Hattie.

Mum was in the kitchen, talking to the doctor, and I was in the hallway, sitting on the stairs. I spent a lot of Dad's last days on the stairs, trying to hear what was happening. Dad was in bed in what used to be the dining room. I could hear him calling. I listened to him calling for a long time, sitting on the stairs, reluctant to go in, waiting for Mum to respond to him like she always did, shutting the door behind her, and her soft voice, murmuring, soothing. But Mum was still talking to the doctor in the kitchen, and Dad sounded upset, so I went in. I didn't like to
hear him sounding scared: it scared me too. He was weak, then, with advanced pneumonia, so he couldn't sit up. I went over to him, right up to the bed so that he could see me.

“Oh, it's you,” he said. “Tell Mother it wasn't me. Tell her it wasn't me who broke your stupid doll, stinkers.”

I didn't understand, so I leaned closer. “What do you mean, Dad? What doll?”

“You're such a crybaby, Hattie,” he said. “Just a tattletale crybaby.”

He pulled my hair, really hard, gripping on to it and yanking it down, so that for a moment my head was pinned to the bed, inhaling the scent of sweat and urine, and I couldn't move or breathe. Then he let me go, and I stumbled back from the bed, rubbing my sore scalp, horrified. There were tears, although I hated to cry and prided myself on not doing it. Hot tears flowed down my face. He looked at me from the bed, those pale blue eyes that had once sparkled now looking at some other time, some other world, some other girl.

“Sorry, kid,” he said, his voice gentle now. “I didn't mean to make you blub. Tell you what, after lunch we'll go down to the stream and paddle till our toes turn blue, okay? I'll help you catch some tadpoles; we'll keep 'em in a bucket until they grow legs.”

My mum came in then, and seeing me crying, ushered me out of the room, closing the door behind me, and then all I could hear was her voice, soft and soothing as she comforted him. Dad died sometime later that afternoon.

The tube train rattles from side to side with a
tick, tick
, marking the passing of time as it bumps and judders along the tracks. I have been concentrating very hard on the map that's positioned above the seats opposite me—so that I don't lose myself, not only in this huge sprawling labyrinth but also in time. I need to remember what I am doing; I need to remember why. Whatever else happens, I must not forget those two things.

I'm in London; I'm looking for Caitlin.

I've thought about it, since my walk—my expedition to rescue Caitlin that didn't make it past the zebra crossing. I'm like a learner driver: I need to keep my eye on exactly where I am going, at any given moment. Any lapse in concentration will result in me veering off, lost in some off-roading adventure that I don't have the skill to navigate. I'm attempting to relearn basic
life skills quicker than I am losing them. It's a bit like walking up the down escalator, which I'll take; if working hard at concentrating keeps me in the same place, that's good enough for me. It's better than going down.

Only two more stops to go. I am pleased with myself for knowing that. And yet, looking at my reflection, in the window opposite, hollow and translucent, I see a woman disappearing. It would help if I looked like that in real life—if the more the disease advanced, the more “see-through” I became until, eventually, I would be just a wisp of a ghost. How much more convenient it would be, how much easier for everyone, including me, if my body just melted away along with my mind. Then we'd all know where we were, literally and metaphysically. I have no idea if that thought makes sense, but I like that I remember the word “metaphysical.”

Mum sits on one side of my ghostly reflection, reading a paper, her arm aligned carefully with mine, thus maintaining contact while appearing not to. On my other side sits a girl with multiple piercings just above her top lip. I turn and look directly at her, and see that there are five of them, jeweled metal studs piercing her white skin, echoing her perfect cupid's bow. She is wearing a white, fake-fur jacket over a deep-red shirt that is unbuttoned to reveal a scar in the center of her chest, perhaps from heart surgery. In each little dimple that once represented a stitch, she has placed a tiny sparkling jewel. It makes me smile.

If she can feel me looking at her, she ignores it, and I see she has earphones plugged in while she reads a battered-looking copy of
The Great Gatsby
. The train rattles on—
tick, tick, tick
. I can't stop looking at her, wondering why she decided to make what was beautiful, ugly, and what might have been ugly, beautiful. Perhaps it is her own version of a balancing act.

Mum smacks me rather smartly on the knee. “For God's sake, stop staring at the poor girl, you'll give her a complex,” she stage-whispers.

“She doesn't mind,” I say, gesturing at the girl, who catches my eye for a second. “Look, she wants to be looked at. I think it's rather wonderful.”

“Perhaps, but not like an animal in a zoo,” Mum hisses, although the train is noisy and the girl is listening to something very loud and heavy on bass in her earphones. Maybe she likes the same bands as Caitlin. Maybe she knows Caitlin.

“Who are you listening to?” I tap her on the wrist and she takes out her earphones.

“I'm sorry,” Mum says, but she stops short of giving my diagnosis.

“It's fine.” The girl smiles. “I don't mind. I'm listening to Dark Matter. Do you know them?”

“I don't think so,” I say. “When was your surgery?”

I reach out and, just for one heartbeat, place a finger on the topmost jeweled stud.

“Claire!” My mum reaches across me, perhaps in a bid to physically restrain me, or maybe just to stop me talking. I shake her off.

The girl smiles again. “Four years ago now.”

“I like the jewels on your scar,” I tell her. “I don't like the studs on your lips, though. You are so pretty, they spoil you.”

She nods. “That's what my mum says.”

“I'm so sorry,” Mum says again. “We're getting off at the next stop.”

“It's fine.” The girl chuckles and looks at me. “This isn't a phase I'm going through. This is my face and my body, and this is my statement about my life and the way I want to live it, for the rest of my life.”

“You think that,” I say, nodding at Mum. “But see that woman there? She used to be a hippie, dancing around naked in fields taking LSD. Now she wears support tights and listens to
The Archers
.”

The girl's eyes widen and she laughs behind her book.

“And she's got early-onset Alzheimer's,” Mum retorts, which, let's face it, is something of a trump card. The train slows to a halt at our station, and Mum grabs my wrist like I'm a naughty child, pulling me off the train. I wave at the girl as the train departs, and she waves back, the studs above her top lip sparkling. I'd like to be able to put jewels on my scars. But my scars are all in my head. Perhaps I can have that put in my will: after they've sliced me up, maybe they could pop in some diamantés along with the formaldehyde.

Mum knows the way, or at least she has the map. Apparently it's not far from the tube station, so I let her tuck my hand in hers, and follow her like a little girl on the way to school, the fine rain misting our skin, gently soaking us through as we approach what Mum tells me is the University College London English Department office near Gower Street.

“When we get inside, let me do the talking,” she says, which makes me laugh.

“I do still possess the power of speech,” I tell her.

“I know you do, but you don't possess the power of filtering out what you are thinking from what you are actually saying.” She arches an eyebrow. “Then again, I suppose you never did.”

“Thank you for being here,” I say. “For letting me do this.”

“I think sometimes you forget that I'd do anything for you.” Mum's smile softens as she reaches out and touches the back of my cheek with her cold hand. “You are still my baby, you know.”

“I don't know about that, although you may be feeding me mashed-up food with a spoon before we know it,” I reply, before I really think about what I'm saying. Mum tucks her hand back in her pocket, her face closing again, and I follow her into the building. Guilt crawls over me. Mum lost years of her life nursing one person she loved into an early grave because of this disease, and now she is set to do it again. I want to tell her not to bother; I want to tell that I will be fine in some sort of home, cared for by strangers. But I don't, because she is my mum, and I want her. And I know I will want her, even when I don't know that I do.

The sight of us approaching does not ruffle the substantial-looking woman behind the front desk; if anything, she seems to puff herself up a little more, like a hen preening her feathers. In a brilliant tactical move, she drops her gaze from us and begins to stare intently at her computer screen, as though she is doing something terribly important.

“Hello,” I say politely, repeating the word again when she doesn't look up. “Hello?”

I am greeted with a single raised finger as the woman presses something on the keyboard, waits for two more beats, then finally graces me with her attention. A lot of the time lately, I don't know if the way I feel about things is the way I really feel about them, or the way the disease is making me feel about them. But on this rarest of occasions I am sure that I—the me that still remains despite the disease—do not like this woman, and for that reason alone, I also rather like her.

“How can I help you?” she asks, looking distinctly put out that she is being required to do her job.

“My daughter is a third-year student here, and I need her address,” I say pleasantly. “It's a family emergency.”

“We don't give out personal information.” The woman
smiles benignly. “I mean, you say you are someone's mother, but for all I know you could be the queen.”

“Well, no, if I were the queen, I'm almost certain that you would know I was me,” I say. “And the thing is, while I completely agree with your policy, I don't know her address and I need to contact her urgently. I mean it's really urgent: she needs me.”

The woman sniffs. “You say you are this person's mother, and yet you don't know where she is?”

“Yes,” I say. “Yes, I am a shit mother.”

The woman prepares to look offended, but before she has time, my mother steps in. “Please excuse my daughter,” she says. “She has early-onset Alzheimer's.”

I know exactly what my mother's tactic is: she is planning to blindside the receptionist with my disease, go straight for the sympathy card and circumnavigate time-wasting tactics from my new nemesis. But still it smarts. I wanted to outwit her with my wits, not my lack of them.

The woman's plump little mouth forms a silent pink O, but no sound comes out.

“It's quite simple, you see,” Mum continues. “All we need you to do is contact Caitlin, wherever she is on campus, and tell her that her mother and grandmother…just tell her we are here. It's a family emergency.”

“Caitlin?” The woman sits up a little. “Caitlin who?”

“Armstrong,” I say. “Do you know her?”

“Caitlin Armstrong is this poor lady's daughter?” The receptionist has stopped looking at or talking to me directly. “Well, she's not a student here anymore. She dropped out at the end of the summer term.” She lowers her voice, and all but raises a hand to stop me reading her lips and seeing what she says. “Maybe the lady forgot,” she whispers.

Mum and I exchange shocked looks, which I can tell are thrilling my little receptionist friend.

“Dropped out? Are you sure?” I lean over the desk with a hint of menace, on the basis that as an AD sufferer, it's fine to have no idea about personal boundaries. “My Caitlin? She's tall, like me, but with big black eyes, long hair all over the place…She's a…She's a…words student. She's studying words. My Caitlin?”

“Sorry, dear.” The receptionist slides on her wheeled seat. She smiles at my mother. “Are you her carer? Does she get very confused? Must be hard for you.”

“I'm not confused,” I tell her, although she is still looking at my mother.

“You're sure it's the same girl?” my mum asks. She takes my hand under the desk, out of sight of the receptionist, and squeezes my fingers. She is telling me again to let her do the talking.

“Quite sure.” The woman nods, pressing her lips together to form an expression that is a mixture of empathy and quiet glee at being the bearer of bad news. “I remember because I was here when she came in to see the head of department. Never seen a girl cry so much. She failed her end-of-term exams. Probably something to do with a boy, I think—it usually is. She came in to talk about retakes. But as she didn't enroll for them, I assumed she'd gone home to lick her wounds, make a withdrawal from the bank of Mum and Dad. I can see why she didn't want to tell you.” Her voice drops to a whisper again.
“No need to upset her any more.”

“I am standing here, and I still have ears,” I say. “Which aren't deaf.”

The woman looks at me fleetingly, but still doesn't address me directly, and for a second I wonder if I have turned into that
other ghostly woman on the tube train—the one that no one looks in the eye anymore. The one that might not be real.

“You could try her best friend,” she says, with a flash of inspiration. “Caitlin was with her every time she came here last term. Becky Firth, her name is. I can't give you her address, though. Like I said, that's against our data protection policy. But she's supposed to be on campus today. If you go to the canteen, ask around, you'll probably find her. Nice-looking girl, blond, ponytailed, pretty.”