Come Away With Me

The traffic was horrendous and I had left myself short of time. As I hurried along the platform for the Birmingham train a figure ahead of me reminded me of someone. It was the small movement of her head as she walked, the straight back. I had a bewildering lurch of déjà vu; a sliver of memory just beyond reach.

I climbed into an almost empty first class carriage and found a seat. The silence was wonderful. I could do some paperwork.

All of a sudden it came to me who the woman walking ahead of me had reminded me of from behind: Ruth Freidman, my best friend at school. We had been inseparable as children. She had practically lived at our house in St Ives. She was one of those girls who was good at everything. She needed to be because she had older parents who were cold and critical of everything she did, and very strict. She was never allowed to take friends home and there had been a myriad rules she must not break. It had made her different, made her stand out from the rest of us.

Bea had instinctively scooped her up into our large noisy family, and away from home, when she was with us, Ruth seemed to blossom. She had been fun and clever. I had loved her very much, but I knew, even as a child, that once she left home she would never return. She was loyal. She never really spoke about her awful parents; she just seemed to accept how they were.

The train gathered speed into the suburbs. I had not thought of Ruth for years and it was strange that a glimpse of a woman’s head could trigger memories that flooded back, sweet and painful. I remembered her saying, ‘I’m never going to get married, Jen. Do you know that my parents have lived in Cornwall all their lives and they’ve never been anywhere? They have no curiosity about anything or anyone. It’s incredible. I’m going to fly, free as a bird…’

I wondered if she did fly free. Inexplicably, a few months later, as we were both about to sit our A levels, her father, a bank manager, accepted a posting to Toronto and the family packed up in extraordinary haste and in weeks they were gone. Vanished. Leaving us all with open mouths.

It had made no sense to pull Ruth out of school just before important exams. It was weird, especially as her parents were always so pushy and expectant about Ruth’s academic progress. Bea, anxious that something was wrong, had gone round to see Ruth’s parents. She offered to have Ruth to live with us until after her A levels, but her parents had been coldly determined that Ruth was to go with them and take her exams later at the International School in Toronto.

The strangest thing of all was Ruth’s odd, robot-like compliance. She put up no fight to stay at all. When I begged and pleaded with her to remain with us, she eventually became angry. It was the only time she turned on me and told me to mind my own bloody business.

What stung me cruelly was that she left her life and me firmly behind her without as much as a backward glance. She never wrote to me once. We had been inseparable and yet I could be instantly discarded for her new life. Ruth had made a mistake with the box number and all my letters were returned. It took years for the hurt and sense of loss to leave me.

I looked out of the window at the battered little gardens of terraced houses. What did Ruth do with her life? What had happened to her? She had always been a little mysterious and prone to mood swings. It was not surprising with the parents she had, but I wondered, when she left without a backward glance, if I had really known her at all.

I stared at my shadowy reflection in the window. Odd how memory could be jogged by such a frail thing as a woman’s back.

Someone hovered near my seat, and then threw their coat on to the rack above me. I hastily fanned out my newspaper. There were plenty of seats elsewhere. I looked up, annoyed, into the smiling face of an elegant blonde woman.

‘Jenny Brown! I thought it must be you. No one else could wear outrageous clothes as you do and look absolutely stunning, and your hair is exactly the same. It had to be you!’

I stared up at her, startled. Ruth Freidman stood before me. I don’t think I would have recognised her immediately, but her voice and laugh had not changed.

‘Ruth! Oh my God. I followed the back of your head walking to the train. I just thought it was someone who reminded me of you from the back.’

I was prattling and our eyes met and we both laughed as she sat down opposite me.

‘You walked past the carriage window, Jenny. I only caught a glimpse but I was suddenly so sure it must be you and it is.’

Amazed, we stared at each other, fourteen years on, examined the lines and shadows that made up our adult faces. Her tall, athletic body was still slim and effortlessly graceful, but now she had style, was immaculately groomed. Long gone were the thin plaits. Her face was carefully made up, her hair beautifully blonde and expensively cut.

How do I look to her? I wondered, bemoaning, as always, my own small compact body and dark unruly hair that I still couldn’t control. I wasn’t wearing any make-up and I was sure I had aged more than she had.

I said suddenly, surprising myself, perhaps because it had been on my mind a moment ago, ‘You just vanished, Ruth. You just disappeared off the face of the earth. You never wrote to me. We never heard from you again. It was as if you had died.’

A flicker of something crossed Ruth’s face, then she shrugged in a movement I remembered. ‘I…just thought it was best. Look, here comes the coffee, wonderful.’

We fiddled with our small cartons of milk.

‘What are you doing on a train to Birmingham, Jenny? Did you get to art college? If I remember rightly you wanted masses of children, like Bea?’

She laughed, taking in my wedding ring. I said, feeling sick and playing for time, ‘Which question do I answer first? I’m on a train to Birmingham because I’m working. Yes, I went to Central St Martin’s.’

‘Did you get your scholarship?’

‘Yes. I was lucky.’

‘Lucky? I don’t think so! You were incredibly talented. So what are you doing now?’

Ruth’s terrier-like persistence had not changed. ‘I have a partnership with a French designer, Danielle Sabot. We teamed together for the Royal Society of Arts Bursary Scheme and won. Because of that show, one of the London stores asked us to do some designs for them and it all sort of took off from there. Now we design for various companies here, and in France and Italy. Usually, Danielle does Birmingham. She’s a better businesswoman than me, but when she’s abroad it’s my job.’

‘You always were modest. I knew you’d be successful, Jenny. Well done you.’

‘So, what about you, Ruth?’ I said quickly. ‘What did you do in Toronto? When did you come back to England?’

‘Hey, not me yet!’ Ruth said, equally quickly. ‘What about the rest of your life? It can’t be all work.’

I looked out of the window as if I could escape. Outside, Lego houses flashed by back to back: tiny gardens, pin-board people going about their days, keeping to their own territories; life rolling inexorably on.

I thought I’d kept my face expressionless but something must have shown because Ruth tentatively put out her hand and touched mine. ‘I’m sorry, Jenny. It’s none of my business, is it?’

I stared at the slim hand lying near my own. The hand moved and gently placed itself over mine on the table. Grief shifted inside me. I stared out at the fields. Dark, wet earth being ploughed, seagulls wheeling behind the tractor. I said, for a lie was easier, like telling someone else’s story, ‘My husband was killed in a road accident.’ My voice sounded as if it were coming down a long echoing tunnel.

Easier to say it fast, like that. Ruth would not remember or connect those awful headlines and photographs with me.

Her fingers curled round mine and held them. Her voice was shocked. ’Oh, Jenny. Oh, God. I’m so, so sorry. When? How long ago?’

‘In August.’

‘Only six months ago. I was in Israel. I don’t know what to say. I’m so sorry, please forgive me and my insistent prying.’

The small fluttering movement of Ruth’s hands on mine triggered a warmth inside me that I thought had gone for good. ‘Tell me about your life, Ruth. Tell me about you. How long were you in Canada? When did you come home?’

Ruth searched my face anxiously, wanting to offer me comfort, but seeing my expression she let go of my fingers and leant back in her seat. She closed her eyes for a second. ‘I never went to Canada.’ Her face was closing, just as mine had done a moment ago.

I stared at her stupidly. ‘What on earth do you mean, you didn’t go?’

Ruth didn’t answer.

‘You gave us a forwarding address, even if it was the wrong box number. Your father had a job in Toronto, didn’t he?’

Ruth looked up and her face was bleak and expressionless, reminding me of the child she had been. There was bitterness in her voice clear to hear. ‘I mean my parents went. I didn’t. I was sent to live with an aunt on Arran. I did my A levels by post. I never got to any university.’

I stared at her. ‘I don’t understand…’

‘They wanted to be rid of me.’

I looked at her, shocked. ‘What do you mean?’

Ruth smiled grimly. ‘As you know, my parents had an absolute terror of scandal and were obsessed by what people thought of them. Do you remember that last Christmas before I left?’

I nodded. ‘I was in hospital having my appendix out.’

‘Yes. Well, I lied to my parents and said that we were both going to a party together. I went on my own and I got drunk and missed my lift home. I was eventually taken home by someone else’s father, still far from sober. Unfortunately, he happened to be a clerk in my father’s bank.’