The Couple’s Secret

‘Richmond isn’t a hellhole, Mom.’

‘Well, it’s all right for you, living here, in the centre of things. Not banished to the suburbs with the waifs and strays.’

This is too much for me. I can’t be doing this right now. I’m struggling to remain calm, the mounting level of unease causing a dull nausea to ebb and flow around my body. I stand up and try my best not to shout. ‘Waifs and strays? Do you know what kind of a life you have compared to some people out there?’

As soon as I’ve said this, my mind darts to those documents. Those young women – the desperate state of their lives intricately detailed. I shiver involuntarily, but my mother doesn’t notice. She bats away my comment. ‘Oh, you don’t need to have a go at me, Julianne. Not this early in the evening. I’m aware I’m not one of those refugees you see crawling across Europe. I make do with what I have and I don’t complain.’

In another mood I might have found the sheer awfulness of what she’s just said funny, but today it riles me all the more. ‘Jesus Christ, can you hear yourself, Mom?’

She looks at me again, an expression of puzzlement and mild alarm stretching across her preserved skin. ‘Julianne, you seem to be quite emotional tonight. Would it be better if I left?’

I’m about to tell her, yes, it would be goddamn marvellous if she could just turn around and leave, but before I can say anything, James walks back in suddenly and my stomach lurches slightly. Diane smiles at him and picks up her sherry from the coffee table.

‘Not arguing, are we?’ he says, his eyes wandering in my direction.

‘Not at all,’ Diane says smoothly, laying a hand on James’s shoulder as she leaves the room. ‘Julianne’s just expressing the stresses of the season. Christmas is always much harder on the women. But the girls in this family have always been headstrong. At least, they always have been in the past …’

She disappears in the direction of the dining room and I realise I’m standing in the middle of the room, my hands clenched into fists.

‘Dinner’s practically ready. You coming?’ James says.

‘Sure. Can’t wait for round two.’

He smiles at me encouragingly. ‘Try to go easy on her. It’s Christmas.’

‘Maybe one day she could just go a bit easier on me.’

He chuckles as if I’ve said something amusing, then goes out into the hallway and shouts up the stairs to Stephen. There’s no reply.

‘He’s just finishing up some work,’ I say and try to steer James towards the dining room, but he holds still.

‘He should have come down to greet his grandma.’ He looks faintly annoyed. When I don’t answer he looks back at me. I don’t say anything.

‘Julianne? Hello?’

I realise I’ve been staring blankly at him. ‘Er … sorry,’ I muster.

James is clearly puzzled. He turns back to the stairs, and for a second I think he’s going to march up them to find Stephen, but then he shrugs and walks away.

‘He’ll be down soon,’ I say, hoping I’m right.

Chapter 5 (#u4c1ff4b5-66a9-5c3b-89e4-f78adb8c24bb)

Holly

Oxford, 1990

The first month went by in a bit of a blur. There was a lot of enforced socialising, with societies and study groups and after-seminar catch-ups, where the really eager people, a group I had accidentally fallen into, stayed behind and went over what had been discussed in class. There were study sessions with tutors, too, sometimes one-to-one, but usually with a study partner. My partner was a small, red-haired boy named Peter. Like many people there, he was polite and generally friendly to me, while remaining a little distant. It took me a few weeks to realise he was part of ‘The Ally Club’, as I had come to call them.

Ever since the first night, Ally and I had been friends, though our meet-ups mostly consisted of watching television on her bed, her curled up in a big plush throw or baggy jumper and me seated a little awkwardly at the end. She was obsessed with the soap Neighbours (‘It’s about Australians’) and watched it religiously, recording every episode onto a video cassette during the day and then watching them, usually with me, on the evenings she wasn’t out. I was never sure where she went on these nights and she never volunteered the information, so I didn’t feel I could ask in case it sounded like I was hankering after an invite. I suspected she was spending time with her brother, or friends on her French and Philosophy course, but tried not to dwell on it. Thinking about Ally’s friends meant thinking about Ernest, and thinking about Ernest meant thinking about James. I’d had crushes on boys before; quite strong, all-encompassing crushes that never went anywhere, but always ended in me feeling down and discontented with my looks. I had never really thought of myself as vain, but I was far from confident in my appearance, even if my mum did insist on referring to me occasionally as her ‘little blonde beauty’. I didn’t want James to become a crush. He wasn’t my type, he was out of my league, and there was something about him that irritated me. That calm, entirely self-assured way he had been lying on his friend’s sister’s bed. Insolent, maybe? I wasn’t sure, but I was certain life would be simpler staying out of his way.

I first came to realise Ally had a sort of group when I was coming back from the cinema with Becky and Rachael, two girls from my Victorian Literature class. I hadn’t really made much of an effort to get to know them in the first few weeks, but I was flattered when they asked me if I wanted to go with them, and it was a film I’d been wanting to see, a gangster movie called Goodfellas. It was the type of movie my mother would have been appalled at but my father would have secretly enjoyed, before agreeing sternly with my mother that such violence was ‘quite unnecessary’. Becky and Rachael also seemed to find the violence unnecessary and spent most of the way home talking about how nasty the whole thing was. I’d really enjoyed it and was tempted to ask why they had gone to see a crime thriller with an 18 certificate if they both felt, to quote Becky, ‘sick at the sight of blood’. As we were passing our college library, Rachael said she just needed to dive in to return a book before it closed. It was early November and bitterly cold, so we sheltered in the hallway of the library, which wasn’t much warmer, while Rachael went up to the desk.

It was then I heard Ally’s laugh, quite unmistakable, that hearty, low rumble, building to a crescendo of enthusiastic mirth. I peered inside and saw the librarian at the desk glance irritably to her left at a group of students seated around a circular table near one of the bookshelves. There she was, sitting with her brother, one arm around the back of his chair. James was there too, and my stomach lurched as I took in his navy-blue jumper, pulled tightly over a light-pink Oxford shirt. Though close-fitting, his clothes didn’t seem to restrain him and he moved with a sense of casual fluidity as he bent down to take a book out of his bag and add it to the pile of tomes on their table. They seemed to be in the midst of a study session. Then there was Peter, smaller than both the others, who seemed absorbed in his reading, his hands up around his head as if he was trying to block out the surrounding chatter, a mop of ginger hair falling over his forehead.

‘Friends of yours?’

Becky had come to stand next to me. I realised I must have been staring and took a step back from the inner warmth of the library into the cold hallway. ‘No,’ I said, quickly, unsure why I felt suddenly pressured into giving an explanation. ‘Well, sort of … the girl, Ally, she’s in the room next to me.’

Becky nodded and said, ‘I know, I’ve seen her a few times. Her brother is rather handsome, isn’t he?’

I glanced back at Ernest Kelman, at his stylishly cut blond hair and bright-white shirt, looking almost identical to when I’d seen him last, lying casually next to James on his sister’s bed.

‘Yes, he is rather. Not my type, though.’

Becky laughed. ‘I know what you mean. There’s something a bit “Hooray Henry” about him, isn’t there? Wouldn’t say no to his friend, though.’ She raised her eyebrows and I realised she was looking at James, who was now away from the table, scanning the nearby bookshelves. It pained me to admit it to myself but I couldn’t help but feel a tinge of irritation when she said this, as if James’s attractiveness was to be appreciated by me and me alone. I gave a non-committal nod and turned my back to them, smiling at Rachael as she returned to meet us, tightening the scarf around her neck before we resumed our walk back to our respective halls.

Chapter 6 (#ulink_4237f8cb-7ee1-50be-8640-1ad3509119d3)

Holly

Oxford, 1990

‘Virginia Woolf is overrated.’ I heard myself say it, but I couldn’t quite believe it had come out of my mouth. I frequently participated in my study sessions with Peter and Dr Lawrence, but never in a such a blunt, potentially controversial way. I could feel Peter’s eyes staring at me. Dr Lawrence, meanwhile, smiled knowingly.

‘Maybe you could expand on that interesting analysis, Holly.’ He had a way of saying things that made me half-wonder if he was taking the piss, but his interjections were full of encouragement and a clear passion for his subject.

‘Well, she wraps everything up in these airy-fairy metaphors instead of actually saying what she should be saying: life is tough, you’ll never find a sense of belonging and, to be frank, the hunt for it isn’t worth the effort, even if you actually do find it.’ I paused and realised my voice had been getting steadily louder.

Dr Lawrence nodded. ‘Do go on.’

‘Well, that’s it, I think,’ I finished, lamely, and glanced at Peter. ‘Do you have anything to add?’

I wasn’t quite sure where my newfound confidence had come from, but I had started to enjoy it.

‘Umm, well …’ Peter was taken aback, and I noticed Dr Lawrence seemed mildly amused by the effect my words had had on him.

‘Let’s take a step back, shall we?’ he said, coming to Peter’s rescue. ‘Let’s think about the idea of symbolism in To the Lighthouse. Do either of you have any initial thoughts on that before we probe it further with some examples within the text?’

After the study session, Peter spoke to me. I had been struggling with my bag; the cover of Mrs Dalloway had become torn when I’d inadvertently shoved my dictionary in on top of it in a hurry. I was hoping Peter would just pack up and leave as he usually did, but today he lingered.

‘You seemed more alive today.’

It was an odd thing to say and it caused me to turn and look at him with more attention than I had in a while. ‘Er … thanks. Does that mean I look dead most of the time?’

He laughed, though the laugh wasn’t convincing, like a grunt. It was a strangely masculine sound, closer to something I’d imagine hearing from Ernest or James. I continued to stare at him, waiting for a proper answer, but it didn’t arrive. Finally he said, ‘I think we – I mean, I think you – should spend more time with us. With me, James, Ernest, Ally. I think you’d like it.’

‘I’d like it?’