The Book of You: A Novel (14 page)

Wednesday

S
HE WANDERED THROUGH
the outside market. She didn’t want to rush into the court building to hide before the day had even begun.

With Annie’s commands about iron in mind, she bought some organic stewing steak. She’d make a casserole over the weekend, using her mother’s recipe. She visited the vegetable woman for leeks and carrots and sprouts and parsnips and strong onions. She bought a bottle of red wine, too. She wasn’t going to stop cooking with wine, or stop drinking it, because of that story. It was pale wine that she’d drunk that November night, and that she now had an unconquerable aversion to. But she needed to tell herself that red was safe. She needed to believe that. There still had to be some safe things.

She packed it all up in a tote that she’d sewn in less than an hour with a beautiful fabric in blocks of crayon-like charcoals and blues. The groceries would be fine in the locker all day. The market would be all but gone if she waited until after court to do her shopping, and she didn’t want to miss the chance of a walk with Robert that evening. She wouldn’t let Rafe steal that from her.

He was stealing enough already. She paused for a minute to type furiously into her phone, answering an email from Caroline, a work friend who was secretary to the Vice Chancellor. Caroline had wondered if Clarissa wanted to meet for lunch on Saturday. Though Clarissa doubted that Rafe had much to do with Caroline, she couldn’t risk it. So she sent a polite excuse, her expression of disappointment more genuine than Caroline could have guessed.

She slipped her phone back into her bag and looked up. A man with a football supporter’s scarf around his neck was laughing with a stallholder. He handed over money, took his coffee, then sensed Clarissa’s close observation and turned. Their eyes met; she saw recognition in his, though his face was impassive. A voice made her break Mr. Morden’s gaze.

“Good morning, Clarissa.” Robert was standing beside her. “I made you jump. I’m sorry.”

“No,” she said. “No you didn’t.” She waved her nearly empty paper cup. “Too much coffee already, that’s all.” She didn’t say that her need for coffee was growing in proportion to her increased use of sleeping pills.

“I had a dream about you last night.” He added hastily, “Nothing bad. I can’t remember it. Just that you were there.”

“I hope the defendants weren’t,” she said.

“Definitely not.” He smiled. “I think it must be all the time we spend together.”

She nodded agreement. “I’m probably dreaming of you, too,” she said, “but forgetting by the time I wake up.”

“That’s for the best,” he said, closing the subject.

“It was funny, running into that boy with you yesterday. He didn’t know your name. Just ‘Fireman, hey, fireman.’ It made me see what a huge part of your identity that must be. Is it strange for you not to be that while you’re here?”

He laughed. “It’s great.”

They paused in front of the grand, mock-Renaissance building that now housed a bank but looked like it belonged in Venice.

“I was also thinking what an other world that fire station must be. But like a kind of second home to you, too.”

“You don’t get much sleep there when you’re on nights.”

They rounded the corner, side by side, navigating themselves around the queue spilling out of the sandwich and coffee shop.

“When you sleep at the station, are you not sure where you are when you wake?”

“I always know where I am.”

She gazed at him as if he were a magician who’d told her of an extraordinary trick and she didn’t doubt he could do it. “Do you have a favorite place in it?”

“The drying room. It’s where the dummies hang. They’re full of sand, different weights. God, some of those bad boys are heavy. They get splashed, and we have to save them.”

“Do they swing slightly? The dummies? I imagine they do.”

They were waiting for the custodial services vans to turn into the underground passage that led beneath the court building.

“The dummies are still. I like to read in there. It’s peaceful.”

“What do you read?”

He hesitated. “Poems.”

“What poems?” She was deeply interested, and a little surprised.

“Keats especially. I like Keats.”

Once, she’d noticed him holding a paperback thriller—an airport-type spy book with an image of an imperiled woman clinging to the gun-pointing hero. About as far away from Keats as it was possible to be. But she wasn’t being fair to him. Rafe had made her too suspicious of people. She herself read thrillers as well as poetry, and it hardly made her a serial killer. Why shouldn’t Robert read lots of different kinds of things, too?

She thought of Henry. Henry did not like Romanticism. He thought poems should be about contemporary economic and social and political issues. Henry wrote about negative equity and polluted landscapes and butter mountains. He played clever word games. He impressed her, but she did not love his poems. They were ceaselessly ambitious, as he was.

“I love Keats, too,” she said. And then, “So it’s a reading room as well as a drying room.”

He grinned. “And a talking room. Firemen like to talk. You get a new boy—maybe it’s his first death. You need to talk him through it.”

“That’s an important thing to do. One of those rare, difference-making things.”

He shrugged it off. “The drying room’s the warmest room in the station. We drink tea in there in winter. Sometimes I go there to be alone. Or I take one of the young pups in there, get him to practice knots. You need to be able to tie knots without looking, quickly, without thinking about it.” He moved his hands decisively, as if the rope were between his fingers.

The vans had long since disappeared underground. They walked on again, both of them flushed. They were at the revolving doors, then through security and putting things into lockers and on their way up to Court 12. The fun was over.

W
HEN
C
LARISSA SAT
down in the jury box, Mr. Morden studied her and Robert for a few seconds, then turned to his next witness. She was delicately boned and slight, with long black hair.

Three months before Lottie’s kidnapping, when Clarissa was still weeping over the failure of IVF number three, Polly Horton had been heavily pregnant. If she’d run into Polly, her face serene and complacent over her bump, Clarissa would have had to look away.

Polly had been at the farmers’ market when Thomas Godfrey approached her. “When I saw it was Godfrey, I was so scared. Elias—my partner—owed them money. Godfrey said, ‘You’re coming with me to London.’ ”

“Did you want to go with that man to London?”

“I did not. Godfrey encircled me with his arm, to stop me moving away.” She stretched her arm in a curve. “Like this.”

Godfrey shook his head in ominous denial; he seemed to want to threaten her telepathically through the blue screen. Mr. Harker turned and frowned at him.

“I started to cry. A man asked if I was okay. Godfrey said, ‘Mind your own fucking business,’ but he ran off. If that man hadn’t intervened”—she wiped away a tear—“I’m sure Godfrey would have forced me to go with him.”

What Clarissa heard above all else was that Polly went to the police but Godfrey was never interviewed, let alone charged. What she inferred above all else was that attempted kidnapping could not be proved, even with a witness. She was unsure whether Court 12 was educating her or paralyzing her. Perhaps it was doing both.

Mr. Harker stood to defend Godfrey. “Explain to the court, please, why you have a conviction for the possession of heroin and crack cocaine, for which you received a one-year suspended sentence.”

“They weren’t my drugs,” Polly whispered. “I didn’t want Elias to go to prison.”

“You took the rap for your boyfriend. You will go to any lengths to protect him and try to deflect attention from his drug-related crimes. Including slandering an innocent man. Mr. Godfrey had no motive to kidnap you. And it’s hardly credible, is it, that he would attempt to do so at a crowded farmers’ market in broad daylight?”

A
NNIE AND
C
LARISSA
were inspecting the cloakroom, making sure it was deserted.

Annie’s words practically burst from her. “I hate obsessed women.” Unusually, Annie had makeup on. She was wearing a blue pencil skirt and a low-cut black blouse that she’d hidden from the defendants beneath a cardigan she’d just removed and stuffed in her bag.

“You look so pretty, Annie,” Clarissa said.

Annie lifted her shoulders and made a face and shook her head in dismissal of the compliment. “I’m thirty-five, Clarissa. I’m a boring accountant, and I look like one.”

“Accountants aren’t boring. They know everyone’s secrets. And accountants look as different from one another as anyone else. You’re beautiful—and there’s no one accountant look.”

“My husband’s new girlfriend is a twenty-five-year-old fitness instructor, and she definitely looks like one.” Annie puffed out a little snort of something that was almost a laugh. “He’s too dazzled to notice that since he left, our six-year-old’s index finger is on a constant loop between her nose and her mouth, she scratches her bottom every five seconds, and she’s started doing this jutting thing with her head that makes her look like a turkey.”

“I did all that as a child. I grew out of it. Mostly.” Annie managed a smile, and Clarissa went on. “You’ll help her through it. I know you will. You’ll do whatever you have to do. And it sounds like a temporary thing, with a clear reason for why it’s started happening. Not like there’s anything medically wrong.”

Annie nodded and gave Clarissa a gentle push toward one of the sinks. “Wash your hands. We have to stop meeting like this.”

The two of them waved their hands about after they’d finished, not even bothering to try the always-broken dryers, then walked out of the jurors’ waiting area and down the stairs. No Robert, Clarissa saw. She wondered where he’d rushed off to.

They paused outside the revolving doors. Clarissa glanced up the road with a mixture of hope that she’d see Robert after all and fear that she’d see Rafe. She saw neither, and her disappointment at Robert’s absence was greater than her relief at Rafe’s.

“I must run,” Annie said. “My husband—or whatever it is I should call him—is delivering Lucy. They’re meeting me at that burger place around the corner. Happy families.”

Clarissa picked a piece of fluff from Annie’s dark hair. “He’ll see what he’s missing.”

Annie’s eyes welled up. “Thank you.” She gave Clarissa’s arm a squeeze. “Funny duchess,” she said fondly. And then she turned and hurried away. Clarissa waited until Annie was safely out of sight before she did, too.

Wednesday, February 18, 5:45 p.m.

At least you aren’t waiting for me in person when I get home. But Miss Norton has left an envelope on the white shelf, reflected in the gold-framed mirror on the wall above it. Inside, on a small cream card, you’ve written five words.
I dream of you, still.

I try not to let myself imagine what you do to me in your dreams. I wonder how I got myself into them. Can I get myself out if I make sense of how it happened? Is that the key? I want a spell to unwind time, to spool it back to the moment just before it all went wrong, so I can send it forward again in a better direction. The trouble is working out which instant was the crucial one.

But hindsight only shows me that I couldn’t have stopped you. Nothing I could have done would have stopped you, however clearly I can see you coming when I look back.

Thursday

Thursday, February 19, 8:13 a.m.

You are standing between the station’s dark-green double doors. If I want to go in, I must pass within a foot of you. That’s why you chose this position. I whirl around to try the other entrances, only to find they’re both sealed.

You smirk when I return after a few seconds, watching me shrink myself as far away from you as I can as I walk in. I’m so close to the door frame I bash my funny bone against it. You follow me to the queue, right behind me. I want to behave as if you’re a mere shadow I can’t see or hear, but it’s difficult when I’m rubbing my elbow to stop the weird numbness. Because of the risk of bumping you, I have to suppress the urge to flap my arm up and down like a mad chicken.

You do not speak until I get to the ticket gate. That’s when you move in. As I hurriedly feed my ticket through, counting the microseconds for the turnstile to release, you whisper, “You look so pretty in your sleep, Clarissa.” This is you in nice mode as opposed to angry mode. The ticket pops up, the turnstile snaps, and I push through.

You don’t see me when my knees buckle in the tunnel. But I quickly pick myself up and stumble up the stairs and get myself onto the train and fall into a seat, realizing that my body is becoming unglued. You are ungluing it. Ungluing me. Piece by piece.

The man beside me is staring, and asks if I’m okay, and I don’t think I can speak, so I gulp and make myself nod yes. He hesitates but turns back to his newspaper.

I have torn a stocking, and it’s sticking to my skinned knee, but it’s only a minor scrape. The tips of my fingers are tingling, as if they are thawing after frostbite, but I know it’s not the fault of the cold or my funny bone.

I consider phoning my doctor’s secretary during lunch to see if she can get him to post me a prescription for antianxiety medication. But I decide against it, remembering how Lottie had taken antianxiety tablets. I’m already following her too closely down the sleeping-pill path. And I know that more drugs will not make you go away. The cliché about needing to treat the problem and not the symptom is completely true. I know that to neutralize my anxiety would be very foolish. That anxiety is warning me that there is danger, something I can’t allow myself to ignore.

T
HE DAY WAS
a carnival of fear. One witness after another shot nervous looks at the blue screen as if to check that it hadn’t suddenly become transparent. Each and every shaking, quaking wreck claimed that their heads had been so messed up with drugs they didn’t remember saying or doing or seeing anything. Annie swore and muttered and nodded and hissed and looked as if she wanted to kill them all.

T
HEY WERE WALKING
to the train station again, side by side but not touching. It was sleeting. Robert was holding an umbrella over both of their heads. Clarissa liked this very much and was working hard to seem coherent. More and more clearly, she saw that Robert was an unfailing Rafe repellent: he wouldn’t come near her when she was with Robert. She saw also that it hadn’t been an accident that Rafe had left her alone until Henry left.

A car slowed alongside them. A stab of fear clutched her stomach. But the face peering at them was not Rafe’s. Waves of relief went through her. Robert nodded in greeting, and Mr. Tourville returned the gesture before driving away.

“He
is
preposterous, isn’t he, Robert?” she said. “It’s not just me?”

“It’s just you.”

She considered the possibility with intense mock seriousness for a few seconds. Then she shook her head to confirm her confidence in him. “Do you think we’ll be kicked off for walking together? We’re sharing an umbrella. Mr. Tourville might report us to the judge.”

“Not against any rules I’ve found.”

“Have you looked?”

“We can’t be the only ones.” His phone was ringing, but he made no move to answer it.

“You’re popular.”

“I’ll ignore this one.”

“If your fingers are tired, I can text for you again.”

“How helpful you are. But I think Jack’s had enough excitement lately.”

“I hope he greeted you warmly when you got to the pub last week.”

“A great smacking kiss, Clarissa. Our relationship will never be the same again. He calls me his beloved now, and I owe it all to you.”

“That’s very sweet. I like to help along friendships whenever I can.”

“You’re too kind.”

The sleet had stopped. She didn’t know how long the windscreen wipers on the passing cars had been off. She knew only that she was sorry when he closed the umbrella.

Thursday, February 19, 9:00 p.m.

I’m in my sewing room, hemming a skirt. I will wear it tomorrow with boots and a clingy black cashmere sweater. It is brown and mock-suede, slightly A-line, above the knee. It fastens with silver buttons up the center. I am secretly hoping Robert will like it—I’ve caught his eyes flicking over me before when he thought I wasn’t looking.

Just as I finish, the smoke detector starts to scream and I rush into the kitchen. The lentil soup I set to cook has boiled away to thick, inedible sludge. I do this kind of thing a lot. I switch off the gas and snap on the extractor fan to clear the smoke.

I climb onto a chair so I can reach the smoke detector’s red button. I push it in with a satisfying plunge. Even in the new silence my eardrums continue to vibrate.

On the countertop are the letters I grabbed before coming up to the flat. I’d tossed them there, nervously, putting off examining them until I’d finished my skirt.

There is nothing remarkable about the envelope I find in the middle of the pile, but I know it’s from you as soon as I see it. I have a kind of instinct for it now. I pull out the white sheet of paper, unfold it, and read.

You know
The Arabian Nights
, Clarissa. You know what King Shahryar did to his first wife, for being faithless, and to her lover. You know what he did to the ones who followed her, after he’d enjoyed the wedding night, Clarissa, to make sure they had no chance to betray him.

My chest squeezes, and I wonder briefly if this is a heart attack. My legs become things that will not hold my weight. I crumple onto the charcoal-blue slate. I’m not sure how long I stay there, sobbing into my own lap, trying to replay my own life. How many snapshots have you stolen from it? Watching when I know. Watching when I don’t know.

And to her lover.

Even though Robert isn’t my lover, you imagine that I would like him to be, and you want me to know that you are watching him, too. I’m furious with myself for letting this happen to him. I can’t pretend anymore that Robert is too big and strong for you to hurt.

I begin to stand, curling my fingers around the top of the oven to heave myself up. My left hand presses hard against the cast-iron saucepan, still fire-hot. I cry out, staggering to the sink and plunging my skin beneath a stream of icy water. Already, inch-long, angry red strips are visible on my ring and middle fingers. I blow out little puffs of air, like a woman in labor.

I abandon the kitchen mess, leaving the letter where I dropped it. I will stuff it in the back of the living-room cupboard with your other things later.

I wrap my fingers in a dripping-wet washcloth. They are throbbing fiercely. I swallow some painkillers with sleeping medication added to them that I bought when Henry took me to New York two years ago. The pain dissolves the tight locks I normally keep on all memories of how happy he’d made me then, so that my heart is burning, too.

You have done this. It is your fault. As if you’d taken an iron and pressed it into my fingers yourself.