I Remember You

‘…Sorry.’ Tess cleared her throat. ‘I’m sorry. That’s really rude of me.’

‘No,’ said Francesca, scratching her neck with her nails; it left red lines on her pale skin. ‘I’m sorry. I’m crazy. I need to calm down and…’ She blinked, suddenly. ‘I just need to take it easy. Right.’ She looked around her, as if ‘easy’ was just something she could physically pick up and start taking. ‘I’ll take this all back…’

Tess picked up the blue lamp, which was lying lopsided on the tatty old brown sofa. ‘This is lovely,’ she said placatingly. ‘Why don’t we keep this?’

‘Oh.’ Francesca smiled. ‘OK. I love it actually. And the plate?’

‘I don’t need a decorative plate.’

‘That’s not the point,’ Francesca said. ‘Was it not William Morris who said, “Have nothing in your homes that you do not know to be useful or believe to be beautiful”?’

‘I do not believe it to be useful or beautiful,’ said Tess, putting her hands back on her hips.

‘OK, OK,’ said Francesca, snatching the plate out of her hands. ‘I’ll put it in my room. I’ll—she narrowed her eyes. ‘Where’s your sense of fun, Tess? God, I bet you’re a bossy teacher.’

Tess thought fondly of that morning’s class on Virgil’s Georgics, in which she and her students had talked about the world of the hive as parallel with the Roman Empire. They had a) read the material, b) answered the essay questions, and c) listened in rapt silence as Tess talked about Virgil’s ideas of Rome and the countryside. Then, over coffee (Jan had made a walnut cake), all had discussed the relevance of the Georgics today to farming and the countryside. Andrea Marsh, who was not only the college’s secretary (every employee at the college was allowed to take one free course a year) but the cofounder of the campaign against the water meadows and kept bees, was particularly interesting.

‘The English bumblebee could be extinct in five years,’ she kept saying. ‘And no one knows why. If they’d listened to Virgil in the fourth Georgic, it’d all be OK. If we didn’t have these ridiculous ideas about twenty-four-hour shopping and eating huge strawberries grown in Chile in December and destroying our countryside to build brand new things—’ she cast an angry look at Leonora Mortmain—‘then we might be OK. He knew that!’

But Leonora had said nothing. She reacted to nothing. She just sat still, until Carolyn Tey—who was devoted to her, a sort of lapdog—offered her a slice of cake.

‘Do try some, it’s quite delicious,’ she’d said, her blue eyes bright with hope.

‘No, thank you,’ Leonora Mortmain replied. ‘I have had enough.’ She clamped her thin lips together. Tess wondered once again why she was there, as she didn’t seem to be enjoying the classes—but how could she tell? Leonora never reacted to anything.

She’d been teaching for a fortnight, and she was still surprised by how much she loved it. It was a treat to teach a class that didn’t lounge in its chairs, picking its nose, staring up at her with eyes full of near-psychopathic loathing. It was a treat for her to say, ‘Who wants to start reading this passage?’ and to see ten hands shoot up. It was a treat for her to watch the awkward Ron Thaxton, whom she had come to see was extremely shy, blossom in the class, talking fluently and articulately about Augustus, about battle strategies, his stuttering anger almost gone.

And then it was a treat for her to walk the ten minutes home, threading into town, her bag swinging from her arm, popping into shops here and there that sold things you actually needed, like a needle and thread, calling hello to people as she went. She was starting to recognize faces now, old and new. Some people remembered her from before, they asked how her mum and dad were, what Stephanie was up to. She thought of London now, of travelling back home, squashed on the tube, dodging the dog shit and the cracked pavements that had once tripped her up, the rain and the unfriendly faces. Tess hugged herself; it seemed so far away. She thought of Will, his huge face like a blank canvas, looming over her the night of Guy’s wedding, as he said, ‘But Tess, don’t you see? We’re not the same sort of people. We want different things.’

She had cried, she didn’t understand what he meant. ‘But I love you!’ she had cried, clutching at his shirt—why had she done that?

‘I don’t think you do,’ Will had said, removing her hand. ‘You don’t love my friends, you were bored the whole way through the reception. Lucinda’s a really interesting girl, you could have bloody made an effort. You’re so—rigid, Tess, it has to be on your terms or not at all.’

Tess shook her head, remembering it now. Dumped because she wasn’t nice to a girl called Lucinda who wanted to charge her rent and who made a living from making stuffed animals. What a diss. But…was he right?

‘Penny for them,’ Francesca said softly, standing behind her. ‘Hello?’ Tess started.

‘Sorry, I was miles away,’ she said, and blinked.

‘Are we all OK then?’ Francesca asked. Tess nodded. Francesca patted her housemate on the arm. ‘Fancy a glass of wine before I shoot off?’

‘Sure,’ said Tess, going through into the little kitchen, which looked out over the handkerchief-sized garden via a rickety old glass-paned door. She opened the drawer, looking for the corkscrew and glanced up at the sky. ‘Hey, it’s stopped raining!’

‘It has,’ said Francesca. She slapped her hands on the sides of her thighs. ‘Spring is here, and I’m ready for romancing.’ She looked up around her, her eyes sparkling. ‘Isn’t this weird? Us, here, in this house? Isn’t it strange, completely bonkers?’

‘Yes!’ Tess said, smiling. She was pleased to see her so happy. ‘Who are you getting ready to romance? Is Adam coming over?’

‘He sure is,’ said Francesca. ‘We’re going to try the pub at the other end of town, want to come? The Cross Keys, you know it?’

The door of the fridge swung wide open, knocking loudly against the wall, and they both jumped.

‘It always does that! So annoying. Ow,’ said Tess, putting the wine bottle firmly on the kitchen surface. ‘That’s a lovely pub,’ she added, rubbing her hand. ‘Right next to where we grew up. Adam’s mum worked there for a bit.’

‘What was she like, Adam’s mum?’ Francesca asked curiously. ‘Adam never talks about her.’

‘She was lovely.’ Tess took out some olives, bought the previous day from the Jen’s Deli on the high street where Liz worked. Jen’s Deli catered for tourists wanting a picnic. The olives were three pounds ninety-nine for a small tub. She tipped them into one of the little painted bowls that sat on the kitchen mantelpiece. ‘Ooh, I love this, don’t you? I feel as if I’m in a picture book, living in my own little cottage.’

‘You are living in your own little cottage,’ Francesca pointed out. ‘So am I.’

‘Oh.’ Tess took the nice new glasses out of the cupboard. Francesca lolled against the kitchen counter. She plucked an olive out of the bowl.

‘Has Adam always lived there, then?’

‘What?’ Tess opened the bottle. ‘Lived where? Here?’

‘In that house,’ Francesca said patiently. ‘Did he never live anywhere else, after she died? Am I going out with a man who’s never lived anywhere else?’

‘So you are actually going out with him?’ Tess said, trying to sound nonchalant. ‘Oh, my God!’ She swallowed, hastily, realizing she sounded like a teenager. ‘So have you—I thought you two were…’ She trailed off.

Francesca tossed her hair casually behind her back; Tess had noticed that, far from doing it to intimidate, she did this when she was feeling self-conscious.

‘Ahm. I don’t know. I suppose so. I’m seeing him.’ She raked a hand across her scalp. ‘We talked about it on the weekend. I don’t know what going out means these days, do you? It’s a bit juvenile, anyway. Like, sometimes it means one thing, and sometimes it means something else…you know…’ She trailed off, and Tess was pleased to see she was blushing.

‘You like him!’ Tess hit her housemate on the arm. ‘Oh, my God, how cool. And he likes you, it’s obvious.’

‘Is it?’

‘Absolutely.’ Tess thought back to the previous Sunday, when she, Francesca, Suggs and Adam had taken a picnic up to the ruins of Langford Priory, once the greatest monastery in Somerset before Henry VIII had given it a good going over. They had sat in the grass, perching on stones scattered around, looking down over the valley towards the town, and that’s when it had happened. Tess had asked Francesca for a knife, and Francesca had leaned into the bag to get one, her hair falling in her face and, without thinking about it, Adam had reached forward and gently tucked her hair behind her ear, his big hand touching her shoulder afterwards. He said nothing, Francesca said nothing, but Tess had watched them, with affection and a pang of loneliness, realizing she was aware of something they weren’t: that her oldest friend had fallen hook, line and sinker for Francesca Jackson.

She asked, a little shyly, ‘Can I ask—when did this all…happen?’

‘Oh—properly? Well, he came round to bring that spanner he’d promised? And he ended up fixing the door and then he stayed—and he stayed…’ She blushed.

She stopped, and looked at Tess guiltily, though why, Tess wondered fleetingly—there was nothing to be guilty about, it was nothing but good news. Why shouldn’t they have sex in the middle of the day, in her own home, while Tess was off wearing a sensible cardigan and shirt, teaching people about things that happened two thousand years ago?

‘That’s—it’s OK with you, isn’t it? It doesn’t make you feel weird?’

‘Of course it’s OK with me!’ Tess said. As she said it, she knew it wasn’t, it was a bit weird. It was her flatmate and her oldest friend, after all. She’d just have to get used to it, and then it’d be fine. And if she practised looking as if it was OK, it would be.

‘Oh, good,’ said Francesca. ‘I don’t want things to be awkward.’

‘Why would they be? He’s not my boyfriend.’

‘Exactly,’ Francesca said.

The words, No, he’s my boyfriend, hung in the air, unsaid.

‘So are you hanging out in the day then?’