The Book of You: A Novel (2 page)

You smile tolerantly, as if I am one of your students. You are dressed like a preppy American professor—not your usual look. Tweedy blazer, soft brown corduroy trousers, a finely striped blue-and-white shirt, a sleeveless navy sweater. “Explain.” You shoot out the word peremptorily, the way you must do it in English literature seminars.

“Well, if there was a secret room right at the beginning, and he commanded the very first Mrs. Bluebeard not to enter it, there wouldn’t have been any murdered wives in there yet. There wouldn’t have been the stream of blood for her to drop the key into, and no stain on it to give her away. So what reason did he think he had for killing the first time? That’s always puzzled me.”

“Maybe he didn’t invent the room until wife number two. Maybe wife number one did something even more unforgivable than going into the room. The worst form of disobedience: maybe she was unfaithful, like the first wife in the
Arabian Nights,
and that’s why he killed her. Then he needed to test each of the others after, to see if she was worthy. Except not a single one was.” You say all of this lightly, jokingly.

I should have seen then that you don’t joke. You are never light. If I hadn’t accepted the third glass of wine, I might have seen that and averted everything that followed.

“You sound like you think she deserved it.”

“Of course I don’t.” You speak too quickly, too insistently, a sign that you’re lying. “Of course I don’t think that.”

“But you used the word disobedience.” Am I only imagining that I’m beginning to wobble? “That’s a horrifying word. And it was never a fair promise. You can’t ask somebody never to enter a room that’s part of her own house.”

“Men need secret places, Clarissa.”

“Do they?” We’ve reached Bath Abbey. The building’s west front is illuminated, but I can’t seem to focus on my favorite fallen angels, sculpted upside down on Jacob’s Ladder. The vertigo I’m beginning to feel must be like theirs, with the world upended.

You take my arm. “Clarissa?” You wave a hand in front of my eyes, smiling. “Wake up, sleepyhead.”

That helps me to remember the point I’m trying to make, though I have to concentrate extra hard to form sentences. “There must have been some truly dreadful secrets in that room. It was a place for his fantasies, where he made them real.”

We’re passing the Roman Baths. I imagine the statues of the emperors and governors and military leaders frowning down at me from their high terrace, willing me to drown in the great green pool below them. My mouth tastes of sulfur, like the spa water from the Pump Room’s fountain.

“You’re better on ‘Blue Beard’ than any critic, Clarissa. You should be the professor. You should have finished that PhD.”

I shake my head to deny this. Even after my head stops moving, the world continues to waver from side to side. I hardly ever tell anyone about the abandoned PhD. I wonder vaguely how you know but halt abruptly, distracted by a ring in a shop window. It is a twist of platinum twinkling with diamonds. It is the ring I dreamed Henry would one day surprise me with, but he never did. Moving lights glitter and flash inside the gems like bright sun on blue sea. White and gold fairy bulbs rim the window, dazzling me.

You pull me away from the glass, and I blink as if you’ve woken me. By the time we’ve passed the closed shops in their deep-gold Georgian buildings, my steps are no longer straight. Your arm is around my waist, aiming me in the right direction.

I hardly remember going through the subway, but already we are climbing the steep hill and I am breathless. You are holding me close, pushing or pulling me, half carrying me. Flashes from the diamonds and fairy lights come back, tiny dots before my eyes. How is it that we are already at the door of the old house whose upper floor is mine?

I sway gently, like a funny rag doll. Blood rushes into my head. You help me find my keys, help me up the stairs to the second floor, help me to put two more keys into the locks of my own front door. I stand there, dizzily, not knowing what to do next.

“Aren’t you going to invite me in for a coffee?”

It can’t fail to work, your manipulative little call to my politeness. I think of idiot-eyed Snow White opening the door to the wicked queen and practically grabbing the poisoned apple out of her hands. I think of Jonathan Harker crossing Dracula’s threshold freely and of his own will. I think again of Bluebeard and his bloody chamber. Did he carry each new bride over the threshold and into his castle after she’d leapt happily into his arms? After that came the room of torture she never imagined.

I try to smile, but my face seems not to move as it should. “Of course. Of course I am. You must come in for a coffee and warm up while I call you a taxi. It was so sweet of you to walk me home on your special night.” I’m jabbering. I know I’m jabbering.

I stand in front of the sink, letting water run into the kettle. “I’m sorry.” My words sound smudgy, as if spoken in a language I barely know. “My head is feeling funny.”

It is such an effort to stand up. I feel like a spinning top. Or is it the room that is revolving? My body seems to be made of liquid. I float down, my legs folding with such pleasing neatness, until I find myself sitting on the slate tiles of my galley kitchen. The kettle is still in my hands, sloshing water from its spout. “I’m very thirsty.” Though the water is splashing onto my dress, I can’t imagine how to get any of it into my mouth.

You find a glass and fill it. You kneel beside me, feeding the water to me as if I’m a child drinking from a sippy cup. You wipe a drop from my chin with your index finger and then put it to your lips. My own hands still clutch the kettle.

You rise again to set the glass down and turn off the tap. You lean over to take the kettle from me. “It hurts me to think you don’t trust me.” I can feel your breath in my hair as you speak.

You pull me to my feet, supporting my weight. My legs are barely working as you move me toward the bedroom. You sit me at the edge of the bed and crouch in front of me, leaning me into you to stop me from falling over. I can’t keep my back straight. I am weeping.

“Don’t,” you whisper, smoothing my hair, murmuring that it is so soft, kissing away the tears streaming down my face. “Let me put you to bed. I know just what to do with you.”

“Henry . . .” I try to say. Speaking seems too difficult, as if I have forgotten how.

“Don’t think about him.” You sound angry. You look deeply into my eyes so that I must close my own. “The Munch painting, I know you were thinking of us, imagining our being together. We both were.”

I am completely floppy. I feel as though I am made of waves. I am slipping backward. All I want is to lie down. There is a rushing in my head like the sea. There is a pounding in my ears like a drumbeat, my own heart growing louder.

Your hands are on my waist, on my stomach, on my hips, on the small of my back, moving over me as you unfasten my wrap dress.

I only ever meant for Henry to touch this dress. I made it for the birthday dinner I had with him seven months ago. Even though we both knew it was all but over, he didn’t want me to turn thirty-eight alone. Our last night together. A good-bye dinner, with good-bye sex. This dress was never meant for you.

I am trying to push you away, but I might as well be a child. You are pulling the dress the rest of the way open and sliding it off my shoulders. And then the room tips, and everything that follows is shadowy. Broken images from a nightmare I don’t want to remember.

S
HE WAS SO
immersed in writing that the rasp of the jury officer’s microphone startled the pen from her fingers, making it shoot across the quiet area where she was sitting. “Will the following people please come and stand by the desk for the trial that is about to begin in Court 12?” Her name was the first to be called, giving her an electric shock. She shoved the notebook into her bag as if it were a piece of incriminating evidence she didn’t want to be seen with.

Two minutes later she was hurrying after the usher with the others. A heavy door sprang open and they were in the hidden depths of the building, winding their way up several flights of drafty concrete stairs, padding across the linoleum of a small, overly bright waiting room, then stumbling through another door. She blinked several times as she realized that they were in the courtroom. Her name was called again, and she filed into the back row.

Henry would have refused the Bible, but Clarissa took it from the usher without wavering. She meant every word of the oath, though her voice was faint.

Sitting next to her was a prettily plump, dark-haired woman whose necklace spelled her name in letters of white gold:
Annie.
As if through a haze, Clarissa glanced farther to the right, where five defendants sat only a few feet away, flanked by police guards. Annie was studying the men with undisguised interest, as if daring them to notice.

The judge addressed the jurors. “This trial will last for seven weeks.”

Seven weeks.
She’d never dreamed she’d be that lucky.

“If there are compelling reasons as to why you cannot serve on this jury, please pass a note to the usher before leaving. Tomorrow the Crown will make his opening remarks.”

She groped for her bag, tugged down her skirt as she stood to make sure it hadn’t ridden up, and lurched after the others. As she passed the dock, she saw that if she and the nearest defendant were each to stretch out an arm, they would almost be able to touch.

S
HE SQUIRMED OFF
her mittens as she boarded the train, found the last empty seat, and took out her mobile. A sick wave went through her. Four texts. One from her mother. The others from Rafe. It was actually restrained for him, stopping at three.

She didn’t smile, as she normally would, when she read her mother’s:
Coffee is not a breakfast food
. Nothing could inure her to his little series, however harmless they might seem to somebody else.

Hope you’re sleeping. Hope you’re dreaming of me.

Keep getting your voicemail. Will phone later.

You’ll need juice and fruit and things with vitamins. I’ll come to your flat.

She wanted a friend to turn to, to show the texts to; she wanted a friend to tell her what to do. She used to have friends before Henry and fertility treatments took over her life; before she let a married man leave his wife for her; before other women stopped trusting her; before she found it too hard to look at their disapproving faces and see her own bewilderment at what she’d done mirrored in them.

Henry and her friends wouldn’t mix, but she still should have found a way to obey that cardinal rule, the one that says you should never let a relationship interfere with your friends. Now Henry was gone, and Clarissa was too abashed to try to get her friends back. She wasn’t even sure she deserved them, or that they’d ever forgive her.

She thought of her oldest friend, Rowena, whom she hadn’t seen for two years. Their mothers had met in the maternity ward, cradling their new babies as they gazed at the sea from the hospital’s top-floor windows. There’d been playdates in infancy and toddlerhood. They’d gone all through school together. But Rowena was another friend who didn’t get along with Henry. She and Rowena had grown so different, though; perhaps Henry only hastened a breach that would have happened anyway.

She tried to shake away the self-pity. She would need to try harder to make new friends. And if she didn’t have friends to consult at the moment, at least she had the helplines; their information leaflets had arrived in the post on Saturday, just one day after she first spoke to them.

She texted him back. Don’t come. Don’t want to see you. Very contagious.

As soon as she pressed send, she regretted it, remembering the advice every one of those leaflets repeated in countless ways.
Wherever possible, do not talk to him. Do not engage in any kind of conversation.
She knew her lost friends would have said that, too.

She wished she hadn’t given him her mobile number. Nothing else had worked to get rid of him the morning after his book launch party. Not being audibly sick in the bathroom. Not swallowing three painkillers right before his eyes for her throbbing head. Not even her visible trembling made him see she was so unwell he needed to go. The number had been a last-resort payoff to get him to leave—if only she’d had the foresight to make up a fake number instead of using her real one to fob him off. But she’d been too ill to think clearly.

She dialed Gary. Compelling reasons, the judge had said. What might these be? Pregnancy, perhaps. Or breastfeeding. She had no compelling reasons. A line manager who would be mildly inconvenienced by her absence was not a compelling reason.

Clarissa tried to sound sorrowful and as if something shocking had been done to her. “I thought it would only be nine days. Two weeks at most. That’s what all the stuff they sent us says, but I somehow got picked for a seven-week trial. I’m so sorry.”

“Didn’t they give you a chance to say you couldn’t? You’re vital to this university.”

She couldn’t help but laugh. “I’m not. Not like doctors or teachers. Even they don’t get out of it. Even judges don’t. The secretary to the head of the graduate school is hardly a key worker—though of course I’m touched by your unique sense of my importance.”

“But you didn’t answer my question.” On rare occasions Gary could muster a serious boss tone with her. “Didn’t they give you a chance to get out of it?”

She felt no qualms about the lie. “No,” she said. She was home; the train was pulling into Bath. Her skin prickled, usually an unfailing warning that she was being watched, but she knew Rafe wasn’t in the carriage. She couldn’t see him on the platform, either. “No, they didn’t.”

Tuesday

T
HE TRAFFIC FUMES
were making her eyes burn. She was walking from Bristol Temple Meads station to the court, and the roads were so wide and alike she wondered if she was lost.

She was trying to concentrate on the route, the barely known landmarks—she was sure she remembered that purple wall to her right from yesterday—but Rafe was crowding out everything else, as usual.

Friday, January 30, 10:00 a.m. (four days ago)

It is my last day at work before jury service, my last day of having to avert you. On Monday I will disappear into the court building and you will not know where I am.

I place my documents and reports on one of the fixed wooden chairs in the large lecture theater and my bag on another. I take the seat between them, hoping these small battlements will deter you from sitting beside me. Such a visual signal of my wish for space would work with anyone else. But not with you. Of course not with you. Nothing works with you.

You are standing over me and saying “Hello, Clarissa” as you move my papers onto the floor and sit down. I’m unfairly, irrationally furious with Gary for insisting that I attend this meeting in his place. You are in the aisle seat, making escape more difficult—I’d been foolish not to see that coming.

You lock your eyes on me, your eyeballs quivering. There is nowhere to hide from your eyes. I want to put my face in my hands, to cover myself. Your cheeks flash crimson, then white, then crimson again with the sharpness of a car’s indicators. I hate to see such clear evidence of my effect on your body.

And your effect on mine. I am growing hot, and my chest hurts so much I fear I will stop breathing. I might faint in front of everybody, or be sick. It must be a panic attack.

The ceiling is high. The fluorescent lights are speckled with desiccated fly corpses. Though the bulbs are far above my head, they burn into the top of my skull. Even in winter the flies survive in the building’s warm roof space. I can hear one hissing and frying, unable to escape the trap of the lamp in which it has found itself. I fear it will fall on me. But better a fly than you.

You touch my arm, and I shrink away with as little violence as I can manage. You whisper, “You know I love your hair that way, off your neck. Your neck is so lovely, Clarissa. You did it for me, didn’t you? And the dress, too. You know how I love you in black.”

And I just can’t bear it anymore. As if the top has blown off a pressure cooker, I jump up, abandoning my papers, tripping over your feet and legs. You take advantage—of course you do, you always do—and put your hands on my waist in a pretense of helping to balance me. I slap your fingers away, beyond caring whether I affront the Vice Chancellor, who pauses in his opening remarks as all the heads in the room turn to watch me rush out. It makes me want to cry, knowing that it appears as if I’m the one out of control rather than you.

Somehow I flee the campus and get myself into the center of Bath and stumble along my near-automatic walk to the Assembly Rooms. I don’t follow my usual descent into the dimly lit basement, my favorite place, where they display gowns from hundreds of years ago; they are spun of silver and gold, brocaded in shimmering silks, embellished with jewels. Instead, I walk straight through the sage-green entrance hall, between marbled columns the color of pale honey, and stop just outside the Great Octagon.

The room is closed. A sign explains that a private function will be taking place in it later today. But I slip between the double doors as if I have a right to and close them behind me. It is hushed and peaceful in here, surrounded by these eight stone walls; soft light falls on me through the paned windows. I take out my phone, inhale deeply, and dial 999.

“Police emergency.” The operator’s greeting is singsong and chirpy, as if she’s working in a dress shop and I’m a potential customer.

I don’t know what to say. I manage “Hello,” though I’m breathing heavily. I must sound like a nuisance caller.

“What is your emergency, please?”

Queen Charlotte aims her gentle gaze at me from her high portrait, as if to offer encouragement. “At work this morning . . . a colleague . . .”

“Has there been an incident in your place of work?”

I try to explain.
He sat next to me in a meeting when I didn’t want him to. He whispered suggestively. He invaded my body space. He made me feel upset.

“Right. Is this man with you now?”

Queen Charlotte’s eyes follow me in concern as I circle the room. “No. But he’s stalking me all the time. I can’t get rid of him.”

“Did he physically injure you?”

The Drake family are too happy in their ornamental golden frame, posed in their manicured eighteenth-century landscape with their perfectly behaved children. “No.”

“Has he ever physically abused you?”

The sweet Drake baby, sitting on its mother’s lap, should not be hearing this. “No,” I say again after a long pause.

“Has he ever directly threatened you?”

Once more I hesitate. “Not directly, no. But he makes me feel threatened.”

“Are you in any danger at this moment?”

I look up, up, up, above the elegant frieze of curling tendrils, craning my neck. Captain William Wade poses in his red Master of Ceremonies coat and stares disapprovingly at me. “No.”

“I can see you’re very upset, and that’s understandable. But this isn’t a life-threatening matter. 999 is really meant for life-or-death emergencies.”

The room seems smaller, as if the tastefully muted yellow walls are drawing closer together. “I’m sorry.” The high ceiling doesn’t seem so high anymore. There isn’t enough oxygen in here.

“You don’t need to be. But I think you’d be able to help yourself better if you calmed down.” She clearly thinks I’m hysterical.

There are four pairs of brown double doors in the Great Octagon. One pair bursts open. A middle-aged tourist blunders in, takes one look at me, and quickly backs out, shutting the doors behind him.

“I am calm.” The words come out as a squeaky croak.

“I can see you made this call in good faith.” She clearly thinks I’m a crazy time-waster.

My face is red and hot. “I didn’t know who else to turn to. I thought that was what you were there for.”

“You’re obviously distressed. Have you thought of going to see your GP?” She clearly thinks I’m just plain mad.

I press my temple against the jutting plasterwork of one of the chimneypieces. “My GP isn’t going to make him leave me alone.”

Her voice is kind, even apologetic. “The police cannot act unless there is evidence that a crime has been committed. From what you are telling me, there hasn’t been a crime. I’m not saying I don’t believe you, but you have no evidence. And as much as I’d like to help, you are not in mortal danger, so I can’t send anyone out to you in these circumstances.”

George III looks off to the side. “Are you saying he has to hurt me before you’ll help?”

“I’m saying that nothing can be done at this stage. There are specialist organizations and helplines that can advise you on how to document persistent harassment from a stalker. You’re going to need to be proactive about gathering evidence if you want to put a stop to what he’s doing. Get in touch with them. That’s the best course of action you can take right now.”

I press end on the call and sit for a few minutes in the middle of the scuffed wood floor. Above me is the huge crystal chandelier. I think it might just fall on my head. I get to my feet, my knees stiff and sore, and hurry from the Great Octagon, casting one last look at Queen Charlotte before they find me and throw me out.

S
HE WAS RELIEVED
to be torn from these recollections by the sight of the court building. Somehow she’d made it, despite being so distracted by bad memories she’d missed the left turn and walked on for twenty minutes before seeing she’d have to backtrack. It was only day two, but she worried that the judge might be so strict about lateness that he’d kick her off before the trial had even begun. Again she practically stumbled into the jury box.

A ring binder lay on the desk she shared with Annie. Together, they opened it and read the charge sheets.
Kidnapping. False imprisonment. Rape. Conspiracy to supply Class A drugs.
Shocking, dramatic words. Words that made her wonder how she’d ended up in such a place.

The prosecuting barrister couldn’t have been more than fifty. The lines beneath his eyes had the slant of a good-humored man, but Mr. Morden looked deadly serious as he turned to the jury box. “I’m going to tell you a story,” he began. “A true story. And not a pretty one. It’s the story of Carlotta Lockyer, and what happened to her was no fairy tale.”

Four of the five defendants were studiously looking down, as if trying, politely, not to eavesdrop on a conversation that had nothing to do with them.

“A year and a half ago, on the last Saturday of July, Samuel Doleman took a ride with some friends.”

Doleman’s gray eyes were military-straight before him, though his face turned pale. His red hair was cut so close Clarissa could see his scalp. It made him look vulnerable. So did his freckles.

“He drove them from London to Bath in a van. They were on a hunt. Their prey was Carlotta Lockyer.”

Clarissa remembered exactly what she was doing then. She wondered if anybody else in the courtroom, other than the defendants, could. She had just finished her fourth attempt at IVF. July 28 was the date of the last pregnancy test she’d failed. She replayed the tense drive to London early on the Saturday morning to get to the lab for her blood draw. Perhaps she and Henry had even followed the van along the motorway as they returned to Bath that afternoon, Clarissa sobbing wretchedly after the clinic’s call to her mobile, Henry brooding and silent.

“If you turn to the screens, you will see CCTV images of the defendants taken outside the entrance to Miss Lockyer’s flat.”

Clarissa tried to shake herself back into concentration, willing her heart to slow down. She knew that flat. The building was a ten-minute walk from her own. If Rafe had caught her a few minutes later the previous morning, they’d have been standing in front of it.

Despite the jerky, grainy footage, she could see the men moving about, fidgety and circling, peering through the glass door, banging on it with their fists, shaking the handle.

She imagined Rafe doing that to her door. Miss Norton would have something to say about it if he dared. Miss Norton was the little old lady who lived in the ground-floor flat. Only Clarissa and Miss Norton occupied the building: the first-floor flat was always empty, an investment property owned by a rich Australian who seldom used it.

“Miss Lockyer, evidently, is not at home. Sadly for her, Mr. Doleman and his friends don’t give up easily.”

The same could be said of Rafe. She tasted her morning coffee, soured.

“They searched for her. They found her. They stalked her. They pounced. They dragged her onto a terrifying journey from Bath to London, into the darkness of their sadistic world.”

Yet again, she imagined going to the police to complain about him. Yet again, she saw all too clearly what would happen if she did: they’d end up thinking she’d brought it on herself.

He’d say she liked attention. He’d say she went to his party and wanted to sleep with him. He’d say she invited him home. There was probably CCTV footage of the two of them walking up the hill that night, with his arm around her.

She thought again of the leaflets’ warnings.
If there is any doubt that you are being truthful, it may harm your case and credibility.
But when it came to the truth, it was her word against his.

She was remembering something she usually kept buried. Walking home from school with Rowena when she was fifteen. That strange girl on the seafront who’d punched her in the stomach, grabbed her bag, and knocked her to the ground before running off. It had all seemed to happen at once. The only thing Clarissa could do was gasp for breath as Rowena crouched beside her, her arms around her.

Her parents took her to the police station and made her report the incident, but the sour-faced policewoman clearly thought it was a schoolgirl argument that wasn’t worth her time and kept asking what Clarissa might have done to provoke it. Had she been showing off? Flashing valuables at a girl who was less fortunate? Arguing over a boy? Clarissa left the station with her cheeks bright red and her face burning hot, feeling like a criminal.

A random act of violence.
That was what Rowena had called it, holding her hand afterward. But Clarissa wasn’t sure. There must have been something about her to draw that girl’s attention. And something about her to draw Rafe’s, too. There was certainly nothing random about him.

Her eyes ached; briefly, she squeezed them shut. Her shoulders were stiff. The man sitting in front of her was annoyingly tall, well over six feet; she’d had to crane her neck to see over his close-cropped brown head and keep Mr. Morden’s face in view; it had been like that yesterday, too. After seven weeks of this she’d need a chiropractor.

The man rose and gave her a small nod, waiting for her to precede him out of the courtroom. It was his stance that she noticed: standing solidly, feet a foot and a half apart and exactly parallel, weight back on his heels, arms crossed over his chest. She’d never seen anybody look so straight but so relaxed at once.

Any expression of thanks could only be muted in the theater of Court 12, but it seemed important to cling to small habits of courtesy in such company. She stepped ahead of him with a slight nod and almost-smile, answering his public display of good manners with her own.

Tuesday, February 3, 6:00 p.m.

It doesn’t last. Of course it doesn’t last. It is amazing enough that the lie about being sick bought me even one day of not being under your eye. It’s only been thirty-four hours, but it’s still the longest break from you I’ve had in weeks.

You would say it’s a love letter. I call it hate mail. Whatever its name, it is propped on the shelf in an innocuous brown envelope, neatly arranged by the ever-alert Miss Norton.