The Day We Met (21 page)

“And if that fails, you've got the right haircut for
The X Factor
,” I say.

I like the fact that he is not a student, and that he doesn't seem to have much of a life plan apart from avoiding wedding photography and being a decent person. I like his lack of a life plan.

“So,” he says. “We'll have to bluff our way in.”

“What?” I question him in an unfeasibly high voice.

“Yep, I've seen it in the movies all the time. Come on.”

A little dumbfounded, I follow him into the faculty block's reception, where he leans across the desk and twinkles at the woman—and I mean twinkles. One look at him and she is more or less melting over the desk. It's ridiculous.

“Hey,” he says, and she giggles. I almost want to reach over and shake her, and tell her to stop it, but then I remember that he is using his superpowers for good—for my good, anyway—and I restrain myself.

“We've got an appointment with Paul.”

“Sumner or Ridgeway?” the girl simpers.

“Sumner,” he says. “Sorry, to me, he's always just Paul.”

“And how do you know him?” she asks, completely inappropriately in my view, and obviously in a desperate bid to strike up a conversation with a man who could easily be my boyfriend, as far as she knows. It's women like her that hold back the march of feminism.

“He's her dad,” he says, nodding at me. “This is Caitlin.”

“Oh!” The girl looks at me in genuine surprise. She has only just noticed that I am there. “I didn't know he had older kids.”

“From a previous relationship,” I say, wondering exactly how come I am revealing my secret past to this woman and not my father.

“Oh, well, you'd better go up, then. Just push on the gate when I press the buzzer, and go through.” She beams at Zach again, and lets us into the faculty building.

“Shall I call up, let him know you are on your way?”

“Oh no, thanks,” Zach says. “We want to surprise him.”

“How can we surprise him if we have an appointment with him?” I hiss, as we make our way up the stairs to the third floor, where he has an office.

“Luckily, we weren't trying to get past your steel trap of a mind,” Zach says, clearly enjoying himself far too much. “We're in, aren't we? And we didn't lie very much, so that's a good thing.”

“You are so strange,” I say, as we stop outside Paul Sumner's office. I can hear his voice on the other side of the door. “There's someone in there. We'll wait for them to come out, and then I'll knock.”

“Yep,” Zach agrees. “And what are you going to say?”

“I have no idea,” I say. “I'll just explain that…I'll apologize for being weird, and then I'll tell him who I am. And then…”

The office door opens, and a pretty young girl walks out, clutching folders to her chest, her cheeks two bright-pink full stops.

“He's a fucking bastard,” she tells me, then marches off down the corridor.

“Oh, good,” I say.

“I'll wait out here,” Zach says. “I'll be here when you come out.”

I pause. Somehow I expected him to come with me. But of course he wouldn't—that would be weird. Weirder. Another student, a boy this time, lumbers up the corridor looking half asleep.

“Quickly,” Zach says, “or you might miss your chance.”

And before I know what's happening, I open the door. Paul looks up from some papers he is reading, and recognizes me. I'm the crazy girl from his lecture—the strange girl from the bar.

“Can I help you?” he asks me, looking puzzled.

And there really is nothing else to do but to say it.

“Do you remember my mum, Claire Armstrong?” I ask him, as I close the door behind me.

He smiles. “Claire, yes, I remember Claire. Claire is your mum? Why didn't you say so? Of course I remember Claire. My first love, how could I forget?”

He is beaming. He looks so happy to hear her name that I smile too, and then the tears come, filling my eyes, and I can't stop them.

“Oh, look…” He passes me a box of tissues. “I'm sorry. I don't even know your name.”

“I'm Caitlin,” I say. “Caitlin Armstrong. I'm twenty.”

“So nice to meet you, Caitlin,” he says. “You look like her, you know. I knew there was something about you, when you sat in the lecture yesterday, something I recognized, but I just couldn't place it. But, yes. Different coloring, of course, but other than that…You look just like her.”

I just sit and stare at him, taking him in. He has kind eyes, and his smile when he heard Mum's name was warm and friendly.

“So are you studying in Manchester? How is Claire? I've often wondered what happened to her. I always thought I'd see her name up in lights somewhere. She had something about her. Something that set her apart.”

“Um…” I take a breath. “I don't study in Manchester. I came here to see you. Mum told me to come, because she is ill and she thought it was time that I met you.”

“Met me?” Paul asks, looking confused. “I mean, if there is anything I can do to help…”

“I don't know if there is,” I say. “But, um, the thing is…Paul, I'm sorry because I know this is going to be a shock to you, but you are my father.”

Paul stares at me for the longest time, and I'm wondering if he is noticing that my eyes are as black as his, and that our hair has exactly the same kink in it. Or that the tops of our thumbs are square. I wonder if he is noticing these things.

“Look, young lady,” he says, standing up abruptly, “you don't turn up at someone's place of work and come out with rubbish like that, okay? I am not your father, and I'm sorry that you have got it into your head that I am, but I am not. Your mum and I split up a long time ago, and there was no pregnancy. She would have told me. She would have let me know. And I don't know if this is because your mother is ill—which I am very sorry to hear, by the way—and you've been rooting around in
her past and trying to make sense of things…I am sympathetic, I am. But I am not your father, and you need to go now.”

He stands up and goes to the door, opening it.

“She never told you about me,” I say, not budging an inch toward the door. “Or me about you. I always pretended I was made in a test tube.”

“Oh God.” Paul looks horrified, frightened, sick. “Look, you must be going through a terrible time, but I am not your father.”

“Yes, you are. Mum told me you were, right after they diagnosed her with Alzheimer's, and she wouldn't lie.”

“Alzheimer's?” Paul repeats the word. “Oh, Caitlin, the same disease as her dad?”

“Yes,” I say. “Yes, it runs in the family. And that's why she told me about you. She wants me to have a family.”

“Oh, Caitlin,” he says again. “I'm not your father. I can't be. Look, if it's Alzheimer's, well, haven't you ever thought that maybe Claire is remembering it wrong? Maybe it's all in her head?”

“No,” I say. “Mum wouldn't lie about this.”

This is the daisy chain that Caitlin made the summer she was nine, and this is the cover of the copy of
Jane Eyre
that it has been pressed in up until now. My copy of this novel has been so well read, so many times, that the cover all but fell off when I was looking for the daisy chain, and I think it's right that the two things stay together. Two things that represent such a wonderful time in my life.

I was out of a job that summer—between jobs, if you like. I was still looking for my first proper teaching job, and we didn't have very much money at all. We lived in this little two-bedroom Victorian terrace that I rented. It was a pretty little house, but it was a winter house, meant for cozy evenings in front of the fire. Even though that summer was blazing hot, the house remained cool and dark inside, like another world altogether, and so I would take Caitlin out as much as possible. I had this old picnic
basket that used to be Mum's, and that I had rescued when she wanted to throw it out, because I'd always loved to play with it as a little girl. It was a proper, woven basket, with a red gingham lining. Once, it came with a full set of white china plates and proper metal cutlery, but by the time I had full ownership of it, all of the plates and most of the cutlery had gone. I still loved it, though. I packed it up with sandwiches and bottles of pop, and with the sun beating down on our heads as we went to the park, I felt like I was leading a perfect life. A perfect mother, with a perfect daughter, and my not-so-perfect picnic basket.

We took books to the park. I was lucky that Caitlin loved to read as much as I did. Often, she'd be off, chasing ducks or imagining some game, usually on her own but sometimes with school friends she'd bump into. But most of the time she liked to sit next to me, and we'd read. She had a copy of
Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone
. I was reading
Jane Eyre
again.

One sleepy afternoon, lying under the branches of a cedar tree, she put her book down and rolled onto her side. “What's it about, Mum?” she asked me.

“It's about a young woman, an orphan, who is left to fend for herself in the world. When she is about your age, she is sent to a horrible, horrible school, and when she is older she becomes a governess at this big old scary house, which is full of dark secrets.”

“Is there magic?” she asked me.

“Not the wand-waving sort,” I said. “But I think it's magical. I always have.”

“Will you read it to me?” she asked me, lying on her back and looking up at the branches of the trees. I felt sure that she would get bored before I'd even read a chapter, and go back to
Harry Potter
, or spot a friend on the other side of the park and run off to play. But she didn't. She listened, her eyes open, gazing
up at the dark, cathedral branches of the trees, as though she could see the book playing out among them.

Every day we'd come out into the blazing July sun, and I'd read to her, for almost a week. And she'd listen, sometimes sitting up, and once making this daisy chain, which for a few short hours she wore on her head like a crown. They were some of the happiest days I can remember, those moments when something that I have loved since I was a child became something that she loved too. And all of the darkness and chaos of Rochester and Jane's romance became entwined with the light and joy of that summer. I picked her daisy chain up off the grass at the end of one day, and pressed it in the back of the book.

When we finished it, the middle of one Thursday afternoon, Caitlin scrambled to her feet and brushed grass and pine needles off her shorts and said, “That was cool, Mum, thanks.”

I watched her for the rest of the afternoon, playing by the lake with some friends, and I realized then what I had done. I had made this person. I had helped create this little being who didn't mind singing in front of an audience, who felt happy to join in with her friends' games, even when she wasn't strictly invited, and who would put down a book full of magic and excitement to listen to me read to her the story of a little governess, and have all the imagination to let herself surrender to it. And I felt incredibly proud. Caitlin's confidence gave me the confidence to go on and do the things I have—to lead the life I have. And I wonder if she realizes that. I might have made Caitlin, but she made me too.

“I was thinking.” Greg sits down on the sofa next to me. “Maybe we should book an appointment to see your counselor, together?”

“My counselor.” I say the word slowly, carefully. I had forgotten that I had a counselor, which is interesting to me. So far, of all the things I have forgotten, I have not even for one second forgotten that I have the disease. Even when I forget that now is now, and I'm somewhere else, the disease is still here, lingering, like the background hum of a fluorescent light. But if I forgot Diane, right up until he mentioned her—Diane, my well-meaning, stupidly well-read, and infuriating counselor—then maybe that means something. Maybe it means I have been traveling, without even knowing it, further into the dark.

“I'm not ready,” I say, out loud.

“I don't mean right now,” Greg says. His hand hovers over
mine for a moment, and then retracts. “I just mean that I could call and make an appointment. To be honest, Claire, I thought I would be able to handle this much better than I am. I thought it would be all about me being brave and stoical, and strong, holding it all together. I didn't realize that it would have this impact on us. I miss you, and I don't know how to deal with the way things have changed.”

I don't say anything for a moment. I am trying to understand the reason some things stick, and some things don't—the reason Diane totally slipped my mind and yet I remember every single detail of my twenty minutes in the library with Ryan. Why is my brain giving me that to hold on to, when it will not let me know how much I have loved Greg? I look at him. He is such a good man. Knowing him has been a good thing for me—and he has given me Esther—but why won't my brain let me feel that now, when I would most like to be able to?

“I am sorry,” I say, and he looks up at me, scrutinizing my face as though he's trying to check it's really me. “I don't want to hurt you. The last thing I want is to hurt you. You are such a nice person, and a great father. And you are really very kind to me. If I were you, I'd have packed my bags and legged it by now.”

“That's the one thing that I can't do,” Greg says. “I can't ever leave you, Claire.”

“Thank you,” I say, and I smile, for him. The disease cuts bits of me off, or suffocates them, but I am still me. I still know what is right and what should be done. I want to be the best wife I can be before I go, even if that means learning to be polite again.

“Yes,” I say. “Yes. Book the appointment and we will go together. You never know, it might help.”

“Thank you.” He is careful to be calm, to keep his emotions
in check. “Thank you. Well, I'd better get off to work. What will you do today?”

“Well, my jailor has got me on full lockdown, so I'll probably hang out with Esther and write in my book a bit more. I'm hoping Caitlin will be in touch on the talker, and tell me how she is. I'm sure she will when she is ready.”

“I'm sure she will too,” Greg says. “Right, then. I'll see you tonight.”

“I will almost certainly be here,” I say.

A few moments, or a few hours, after he has gone, Esther brings me a book.

“Read to me,” she says, and I open the pages as she climbs onto my lap. But the words still aren't coming, and this time the pictures don't mean anything, either. I close my eyes and try to make up a story, but Esther knows this book off by heart, it seems, and she won't put up with my efforts to make something up. Nor will she tell me the story herself. She is angry and disappointed with me.

“I want you to read to me, Mummy, like you used to! What wrongs with you?”

“This book,” I say, throwing it hard across the room. It pounds into the wall with a loud bang, and Esther cries. I try to put my arms around her, but she fights me off, running upstairs, sobbing her heart out. Esther hardly ever cries like that, those awful shoulder-shaking sobs punctuated by long drawn-in breaths of silence. Esther is such a sunny child, and I have made her cry.

“What on earth is going on?” Mum comes into the room. She has been somewhere deep in the house, cleaning something that she invariably cleaned yesterday, and the day before. I have come to realize this is a way for her to be with me and yet not
be with me at the same time. She hides away, scrubbing at something that is already spotless, so she doesn't have to look at me failing.

“I can't read to Esther,” I say. “She is angry with me, and I am angry with me. I threw a book.”

Mum looks sad. She sits down on the edge of the sofa, holding a duster.

“I'm not very good at this, am I?” I ask her. “It would have been far better if I'd have got cancer, then at least I could have read to Esther, been in love with my husband. Been allowed out on my own.”

“You don't have to be good at it,” she says, smiling. “It's so like my overachieving daughter to want to be good at having Alzheimer's.”

“Well, I blame you for that,” I say. “You always told me the key to success is being happy, and I decided quite early on that it was actually the other way round. And now…”

I stop, because I get the feeling that the thought that's popped into my head isn't one that anyone else will like.

“And now?” Mum prompts me anyway.

“Now I wonder what happiness is anyway,” I say. “I wonder what emotions
are
, really, if they can be so altered and changed by plaque in my brain or the little emboli. Are they even real?”

“I think they are real,” Mum says. “I love you more than I have ever loved anyone—even your father, and I loved him very much. And Greg loves you, and that is real, much more real than I thought, I'll admit. Esther and Caitlin love you. A lot of people love you. And all of the feelings they have for you are real. I think it's love that lasts. It's love that remembers us. It's love that is left, when we are gone. I think those feelings are more real than our bodies and all the things that can go wrong with them. This”—she pinches her forearm—“is just the packaging.”

Her words move me in a way I didn't expect: somehow, she has made me feel hopeful, not for a cure, but for some sort of peace in my head. My poor, busy, never restful, dying brain.

“You'd better go and see Esther,” Mum says. “There are other things you can do together, apart from read. Get her paints out, or play in the garden?”

I nod and trudge up the stairs to find Esther sitting on her bedroom floor, looking out of the window. It's a blustery, cold day outside, but at least it's not raining, for once.

“I'm sorry I threw the pages,” I say.

“It's a book,” Esther says.

“I'm sorry I threw it,” I say again. “I got cross. I've forgotten how to read the words.”

“I forget sometimes which is my letter,” Esther says. “I know it is an ‘Eh' but I'd like it to be a ‘Ja.' They look much nicer, and I want to be called Jennifer.”

“Jennifer is a very pretty name,” I say, venturing on to the floor next to her. “But you are much prettier than that.”

“Don't worry, Mummy,” Esther says. “We can learn to read together at the same time. Sames.”

“What else would you like to do, instead?”

“Chocolate fountain and marshmallows?” Esther says with a big smile.

“Or painting?”

“Or park?”

“Or garden?”

“Okay,” Esther concedes. “The garden, then. What shall we do in the garden?”

I can't think of anything that can be done in our very small, square garden, so I say the only thing that comes to mind.

“We're going to dig an enormous hole.”

We haven't been digging for very long when Esther gets bored and puts down her trowel and goes to the gate. She rattles at the latch, and I realize that the poor child is sharing much of my confinement.

“Shall we go to the shop and get buttons?” she asks me hopefully.

“We could ask Granny if she's got some,” I say. I can see Mum in the kitchen, washing up, even though we have a contraption that does it, as an excuse to keep an eye on us.

“No, I want to walk to the shop, and see the trees,” Esther says so plaintively that I also miss the trees on her behalf.

“I have to ask Granny,” I say. “See if she can come with us.”

“Granny makes me eat apples,” Esther says darkly. “And I want a magazine with a thingy on.”

Esther means any type of comic or magazine aimed at children with any sort of free gift attached to the front. There is something about the joy of getting something free on the front of something else that cannot be rivaled, in her book. She does not care what the object is, and it's usually broken or forgotten by the next day, but the thrill of acquiring it is often enough for her. Greg and I joked once that her next Christmas stocking should be made up of freebies from magazines. I start as I remember the moment…. Standing in the newsagent's while Esther hopefully brought us a pile of six or so magazines…He put his arm around me, and kissed me on the cheek. I remember how it felt. I was happy. I'm happy now thinking about it.

“The shop is at the end of the road, isn't it?” I say to Esther, wondering if I am remembering a real shop, or the shop of my childhood where Mum used to send me to buy pints of milk in glass bottles when I was about seven years old.

“Yes,” Esther says confidently, although I am sure she would answer the same way, even if I were asking for directions to Disney World.

“This is what we will do,” I say, feeling emboldened by my memory of feelings. I sense that I am in a moment that is free from symptoms, and that I should do something with it. “We will walk to the end of the street, but if it's not there, then we will have to turn around and come right back, okay? Because we can't worry Granny again. It isn't fair.”

“Okay!” Esther jumps up and down excitedly. “Let's take a biscuit!”

“A biscuit?” I say.

“Like Hansel and Gretel,” she says. “So we will find our way back.”

“We won't need a biscuit,” I tell her. “I've got a good feeling.”

I can't see Esther, and the panic rises and rises in my chest. How many minutes has it been since I last saw her? How many hours? I walk outside the shop and look around. This is not the end of my road, or at least not the road I last remember living on. I am sure I came out with Esther, and now I can't see her. The traffic goes by very quickly. It's almost dark. I go back into the shop.

“Did I come in with a little girl?” I ask the man behind the counter. He ignores me.

“Did I come in with a little girl?” I repeat. He shrugs and reads his paper. “Esther!” I shout her name very loudly. “Esther!”

But she is not in the shop. Oh God, oh God. We left the house, out of the back gate, we turned right, and we were just going to walk to the end of the street. What happened? Where is Esther? Oh God, oh God. I take the calling thing and look at it. I don't know how it works. I don't know how to make it connect
with someone. I stumble out into the street and see a woman walking toward me, her head down because of the cold, and I grab her, making her start and pull away.

“Please, help me,” I say. “I've lost my little girl and I don't know how to make this work!” I'm shouting. I'm scared and confused. She shakes her head and marches on.

“Someone help me!” I shout at the top of my voice, in the middle of the street, as the sunlight dies and the headlights glare. “Someone help me. I've lost my little girl! I've lost my Esther. Where is she?”

“Don't worry.” The shopkeeper appears in the doorway, and beckons me over. “Come inside, madam, come inside. I'll phone people for you.”

“My little girl.” I cling on to him. “I should never have taken her out. I'm not capable of looking after her on my own anymore. I can't even read, and I've lost her, I've lost her. She is all alone.”