The Book of You: A Novel (6 page)

I swaddle myself in towels and go into my bedroom. Again I shut the door, and again it does almost nothing to muzzle the screech of the bell. I turn on the radio. They’re playing a Chopin prelude. I turn up the volume, and you’re seriously muffled but for the pauses between the piano’s notes. It’s only when I crawl under the bedclothes and pull them over my head that you entirely disappear.

Soon, though, my ears are hurting in a different way. This music was not meant to be blasted. You have ruined the Chopin for me forever. To have it at such a high decibel level, competing absurdly with your finger on the buzzer, makes it ugly and uncivilized—it was never meant to be used as a weapon. I’m suffocating again, unable to get enough air into my lungs with the comforter over my nose, and I must quickly abandon this homemade sensory deprivation unit, too. Once more, there is the stab of you in my eardrums.

By ten I cannot endure another minute. I grab the intercom phone. You win again. It is impossible to stay silent.

“I will never let you in. I don’t want to go out with you; I never asked for that ticket; I’d never have shown up at that restaurant last night if I’d known you’d be there.”

You say, “I don’t want to upset you, Clarissa.” You say, “I’m just trying to make you happy, Clarissa.” You say, “That’s all I want. But you’ve hurt me, Clarissa.” You say, “I know you’re lonely, Clarissa. I’m lonely, too.” You say, “I’m just trying to help us both, Clarissa.” You say, “I know your heart’s been broken, Clarissa. Mine’s been broken, too. Again and again by you.” You say, “I’m going now, Clarissa.”

I jerk the handset onto its cradle in such distress it falls off and dangles and I have to put it back. The new noiselessness is so quiet it makes a low hum in my ears. But I can’t get rid of my anxiety that you are still standing there.

Friday

I
T WAS DIFFICULT
to focus on Azarola’s barrister after barely sleeping the night before.

“Please confirm your description of the man you said they picked up en route to London.” Mr. Williams made Clarissa think of an actor in a legal drama who’d mastered his lines and moves. “You said, ‘About five foot nine, mixed race, slight build, with long plaits.’ ”

Azarola leaned forward. He was well over six feet. His skin was golden, his eyes were hazel, and his hair was straight and short and thick and medium brown. His shoulders and chest were broad, like Robert’s, beneath his fitted black sweater, which she thought looked expensive and fine, and was probably cashmere. He made her think of a Spanish pop star.

“Yes. That was my description,” Miss Lockyer said.

There was no way that description matched. Could Clarissa herself make such a mistake, if she were in too much fear to look? Or had the police got the wrong man?

T
OMLINSON’S BARRISTER LOOKED
like a seasoned Shakespearean actor. “Mr. Tomlinson had consensual sex with you. It was not the violent encounter you portrayed. It was a cold-blooded commercial transaction for drugs. You are a professional, Miss Lockyer. You even gave Mr. Tomlinson a condom.”

Clarissa shuddered. She hadn’t been able to remember enough of that November night to know if Rafe had worn a condom. Knowing him, he probably hadn’t. She’d been inexpressibly relieved when her period had started a week later, as expected: a novel experience for her to wish not to be pregnant. What would Mr. Belford make of her, if she were sitting in that witness chair?

C
LARISSA SPOKE QUIETLY
to Annie as they got their coats and slowly made their way out of the building. “That’s what happens when you press charges, when you complain. They just rape you up there all over again and say you’re a prostitute.”

“But she was a prostitute, Clarissa,” Annie said. “Nobody could possibly believe her when she says she wasn’t.”

C
LARISSA STUFFED HER
tattered copy of Keats’s
Collected Poems
into her bag. The book was a relic of her abandoned PhD, and something she always reached for when the world around her seemed especially dark and uncivilized. She glanced out the train window. Robert strode assuredly along the platform and disappeared down the stairs. She hadn’t realized he’d been on the train; it hadn’t occurred to her that he might live in Bath, too. Somehow he’d climbed off and got himself almost out of the station before the other passengers had even begun to alight.

She surveyed the platform for Rafe, peering into the crowd that was pressing her toward the stairs. Her body was aching from sitting all day. She wanted fresh air. She wanted to move. She’d already had to give up her morning walks. She didn’t want to lose the walk home, too. The fact that the taxi queue was so impossibly long helped her to make up her mind, but she was glad there were so many people about.

Still, she was nervous when she stepped into the railway arch behind the station. She paused to look inside the tunnel: no Rafe. And on the bridge, before she stepped onto it to cross the river: again he wasn’t there.

But there was someone in the middle of the bridge, crumpled inside a heap of shabby blankets and encircled by empty beer cans, clutching a bottle of cheap spirits. There were several plastic bags around her, with her meager belongings.

Normally, Clarissa would keep as much distance between them as she could. This time, she approached the woman, though she fought a stab of the same mixture of fear and pity that Miss Lockyer made her feel. She gripped her bag more tightly.

The woman’s hair was so greasy and matted Clarissa couldn’t tell what color it was. Her flimsy shell jacket was torn and filthy on her skeleton frame. Her wrinkled skin was so rough and red and flaky it must have hurt; she appeared at first glance to be an old woman, but probably wasn’t more than forty. Would this be Miss Lockyer, someday? There was a stench of sour flesh—an unmistakable mix of unwashed genitals and anus and armpit sweat—that made Clarissa gag and try to breathe through her mouth, hoping the woman didn’t notice.

“Money for the shelter?” The woman held out a hand that was almost blue with cold. Clarissa took off a mitten and drew out a twenty-pound note, knowing it would probably be used to purchase a wrap of crack cocaine and a wrap of heroin. “Bless you,” the woman said.

Clarissa peeled off her other mitten and offered the pair, uncertain if her mother’s knitting would be wanted. The woman hesitated, then took them and put them on, slowly and clumsily. “Bless you,” she said again, not meeting Clarissa’s eye, and Clarissa moved forward, pressing her now-frozen fists deeply into the pockets of the warm coat she’d cut out when Henry had still been there.

Henry, smiling faintly then, a glass of wine and the paper in his hands as she kneeled on the living-room floor, bending over the indigo wool she’d quilted into diamonds, immersed in her plans for it. Henry, crackling with energy even when he was still. Henry, shaving the few hairs he had left in the shower each morning so he was entirely bald—a style choice rather than unwanted fate, and yet more evidence of his infallible aesthetic judgment. Henry, in Cambridge now, a world away from this woman and from Clarissa.

Clarissa hurried on, wanting to get home as fast as she could. She reached the old churchyard within minutes. Miss Lockyer must have passed it countless times, including the day they took her. Had she ever noticed the only tomb that hadn’t been torn out? Green with mildew, the gray stone box marking the location of the bodies was the size of a large trunk. Many centuries ago the graveyard had been a wood. It was another of Clarissa’s special places. She liked to think it was a source of magic for her, and that someday that magic would take effect, though it hadn’t happened yet.

A woman had been buried there with her two babies in the middle of the nineteenth century. Three deaths in two years. Clarissa couldn’t see the inscriptions in the dark, and the engraved letters were losing their definition, but she knew them by heart.

Matilda Bourn, Died 21st August 1850, Aged 4 Months

Louisa Bourn, Died 16th September 1851, Aged 6 Weeks

Jane Bourn, Mother of the Above Children,

Died 22nd December 1852, Aged 43 Years & 6 Months

Clarissa always imagined the two babies cradled in their mother’s arms beneath that damp earth, and the mother happy at last to be able to hold them to her. Had they been her only babies? Probably there’d been many others; that was more likely. Probably her health had been ruined by too many pregnancies too close together—that might have been what killed her. Clarissa could have researched it, but she didn’t really want to know. She preferred the story she told herself, in which the woman waited and yearned, childless, for a long time. Then, miraculously, she had her babies after she turned forty, the age Clarissa would be in a year and a half. Only to lose them.

No husband was mentioned. No father. As if the only relationship that mattered was the one between the dead mother and her dead babies. But somebody had valued them enough to put up that stone.

Clarissa’s surname was a variant of theirs, but she knew that that wasn’t why she felt such a powerful connection to the dead mother and her dead babies. She had an almost superstitious ritual of praying for them—and to them—whenever she passed the grave. Sometimes she climbed over the iron gate at the far end to clear away crumpled cans or greasy fast-food wrappings.

Tonight, it was pitch-black there. The people who’d seemed to share her walk home from the train station had somehow melted away without her noticing; she’d loitered too long with the woman on the bridge. Regretting her decision to give up on the taxi queue, she considered doubling back. But she quickly calculated that that wouldn’t help matters—she’d be as alone and isolated retracing her steps as she’d be pressing on.

She tried to reason with herself that Rafe knew nothing about her daily trips to Bristol; he had no reason to suspect she’d be walking home from the station in the evenings. Nonetheless, she couldn’t help but imagine shadows moving along the walls, where they’d leaned all the old gravestones; those who’d wept over them were long dead; they’d probably never imagined that the carefully wrought markers would be ripped from their places.

She plunged ahead, only just holding herself back from running in case she slipped on the icy footpath. She was certain he would suddenly step into her line of sight, materializing out of the starless night.

She only began to breathe freely when she reached her street. She wouldn’t walk anymore on her own after daylight. Not anywhere. No matter how long she had to wait for a taxi. And when she did walk, she would go only to places that were dependably teeming with people.

Friday, February 6, 6:15 p.m.

A small padded envelope waits for me on the shelf in the communal entrance hall. In it is a tiny box. You’ve wrapped it in gold embossed paper and decorated it carefully with curled silver ribbons. You’ve enclosed a heavy cream-colored card imprinted with a rose.
I notice what you love. Wear this for me.

My hands tremble as I climb the stairs to my flat, tearing open the box as I move, tripping on the landing at the sight of the ring I was caught by that night back in November, as if under a spell. You would never have bought it if you’d known I was thinking of Henry while I looked at it. I wasn’t thinking of you. Not you. Never you. My visions of you are only dark.

Madly, I think that the tips of my fingers will bleed as they brush over the small circle of cold platinum and the tiny diamonds that encrust it. The ring has flown to me like an evil boomerang.

As soon as I’m in my flat, I shove it all back into the envelope, including the card, slapping on parcel tape and fresh stamps, scribbling your name and the university address on it, crossing out my own. Above all else, I can’t let you think I’ve accepted something so costly from you. I’ll post it back to you first thing tomorrow morning.

But as soon as I begin to stuff the parcel into my bag in readiness, one of the leaflet’s commands freezes my hand.

Retain all letters, packages, and items, even if they are alarming or distressing.

I have to hold on to the ring, however much money you spent on it. The ring is a gift, after all. Just not in the way you intended. I will add it to my growing collection of evidence. A grim assortment but not yet irrefutable as proof.

W
EEK
T
WO

The Fire Dance

Monday

C
LARISSA WAS WATCHING
Robert. He was leafing through the jury file. He stopped at a photo of the van’s interior, studied it, and scribbled a note for the usher to take to the judge.

Mr. Belford was peering dubiously at Miss Lockyer. “A story,” he was saying, “of systematic beatings and torture, and violent acts of rape and forcible restraint. But hardly a mark on the victim.”

The judge interrupted with his usual formal courtesy, asking them to look at Robert’s photo. Behind the driver’s seat, nestled on top of a greasy and crumpled fast-food wrapping, was a green disposable lighter.

Mr. Morden was beaming at Robert. Nobody had noticed that lighter before. It exactly fit with Miss Lockyer’s account of Godfrey burning her earring in the van.

I
T WAS ANOTHER
of the many breaks occasioned by Mr. Morden and Mr. Belford’s whispered arguments. Clarissa sat in her usual chair. Robert had taken to sitting opposite her, in the corner of the unnaturally bright, glaringly white little annex.

“Poor girl,” Robert said, not in the least afraid to state his sympathy directly.

Clarissa wondered how many men would speak up like that, in front of the others. “Yes,” she said, nodding a little, her expression slightly sad. “Poor thing.” And then, “I can’t believe you found that lighter. Are you a detective in your day job?”

“I’m a fireman.” He shrugged it off, modestly. “Most people don’t look around for potential causes of fires. It’s what I’ve been doing since I was twenty. Half my life.”

The usher was back already, calling them to return.

Clarissa picked up her bag and cardigan. She’d never met a fireman before. She’d surrounded herself with academics, though she’d decided not to be one herself. But it wasn’t lost on her that she’d run straight into the arms of one, in Henry, even if he was mostly a poet. She thought what Robert did was interesting and important.

“It’s just a job,” he said, as if he’d read her mind and was putting her straight. He spoke matter-of-factly, but in his friendly, even way. “We all do our part.”

“Y
OU ARE YOURSELF
capable of violence, aren’t you, Miss Lockyer?”

Miss Lockyer shook her head at Mr. Belford’s question as if it wasn’t worthy of an answer, Mr. Morden jumped to his feet to object in absolute fury, and the jury found themselves walking out once more.

A
GAIN
C
LARISSA WAS
seated opposite Annie and Robert in the little annex.

She was remembering Wednesday night. The soap dispenser slipping from her fingers and shattering against the cloakroom tiles instead of Rafe’s skull.

You’d never be able to hurt me, Clarissa. I know you.

“I’m not sure I’d be able to damage another person,” she said, “but I’m beginning to wish I could.”

“You don’t look like you could damage a moth,” Annie said.

Robert was looking hard at Clarissa. “Hurting someone isn’t about physical strength. You’ve never been in a situation where you’ve had to. Anyone could do violence, Clarissa. I promise you could, too, if you needed to.”

“Have you, Robert?” Annie asked.

His face was expressionless. He didn’t answer.

“I didn’t really need to ask,” Annie said. “Of course you have.”

M
R
. B
ELFORD GAVE
the impression that he hadn’t taken his eyes off Miss Lockyer during the jury’s absence—a kestrel hovering above a field mouse, waiting for his chance.

“Is it correct that your ex-partner has a new girlfriend?”

Clarissa looked in concern at Annie, whose husband had just left her for another woman. She thought of Rowena, too. And of Henry’s wife.

Miss Lockyer gazed at her hands.

Clarissa wondered what she would feel when Henry found someone else. She knew she’d feel a stab if he went through successful fertility treatment with a new girlfriend, and she should be bigger than that. Not that he’d be quick to put himself through such a thing again. Henry wanted people to think testosterone oozed from his every pore. He’d made her vow never to tell anyone that his small population of misshapen sperm all possessed five heads and ten tails and swam in demented circles, bumping into each other.

Mr. Belford prompted the still-silent Miss Lockyer. “Did you threaten to kill her?”

“Of course not.”

He shook his head, making it clear that her responses were so absurd it was not worth speaking further to her.

S
HE’D BEEN SO
focused on Miss Lockyer and Mr. Belford and her note-taking, she hadn’t looked at the public gallery. A movement in the back row caught her attention.

A pale man leaned forward from where he’d been resting his pale head against the pale wall, looking only at Clarissa, forcing her to see him looking.

As Robert paused to let her exit the jury box before him, she stumbled, her cheeks growing warm, her breath speeding up, her heart pumping so fast she thought it must be visible, pounding beneath her dress.

Monday, February 9, 5:55 p.m.

I sit in the jurors’ room, pretending to be so lost in my book I don’t notice that everyone has gone. The jury officer is looking at me, loudly packing up her things. Finally, she tells me that the room needs to be vacated for the night and I see I cannot put you off anymore.

Just as I expect, you are waiting for me right outside the court building. I march past you to the end of the road and turn left, acting as if you aren’t here.

“Clarissa.” You’ve caught up to me. “It’s ridiculous of you not to speak to me, Clarissa.”

I halt in front of the coffee stall, closed for the day now like everything else. I have never seen it so quiet, but there are a few people around. It still gives me the safety of public space.

“Darling, please talk to me.”

I can’t help myself. The leaflets’ commands of silence are impossible. “I’m not your darling.” You step closer. “Don’t come near me.” My voice is shrill. I try to lower it. “Don’t you ever come here again. You had no right.”

“It’s a public gallery.”

Unless I stop you from ever coming again, I won’t be able to enter that jury box and continue with the trial. Court 12 will become a trap, a place where I’m pinned down and on display for you. I realize how powerfully I care about the trial, how much it matters, that I’m actually immensely proud to be serving on a jury—it’s something I’d always hoped to do. Corny thoughts about public duty and citizenship are banging around in my head even in your presence.

“If you come again, I’ll tell them I know you. They may call off the whole trial. They don’t want jurors disturbed by people they know. I need to concentrate.”

“The testimony upset you, Clarissa—I saw that it did.”

You are right. I hate your being right about me. I hate that I wasn’t even aware of you, watching. I hate that I don’t quite know what I would have done if I’d noticed you there while Court 12 was still in the throes of its ugly business instead of its last seconds.

“There’s no law against the friends of jurors sitting in the public gallery.”

“You aren’t my friend.”

“You’re right.” You correct yourself. “Lover.”

“You’re not—” I bite my lip. You look so sad anyone else would pity you.

“I thought you’d be happy to see me.”

“I’m not.” It isn’t so difficult to be mean. I’m almost shaking with anger. My mother never could have imagined a man like you.

“I’m not seeing Rowena anymore.”

“I don’t care who you see or don’t see.”

“You’re cruel, Clarissa. I was worried. You were ill.”

“I lied to you. I wasn’t ill. I didn’t want you to follow me that morning. I didn’t want you to find me. I didn’t want you to know I was here. I have a right for you not to know where I am. I don’t like being followed.” This is better: firm and honest.

“That was an evil thing to do. I thought better of you.”

“I don’t care what you think of me. I don’t want you to think of me at all.”

“Your mobile still isn’t on.”

“I changed the number. You’re the reason I changed it. I want nothing to do with you. I’ve told you this a million times.”

“I went into every courtroom in the building until I found you.”

I move my head slowly from side to side. “Don’t you see that that’s not normal?”

“No. No, I don’t. It shows how much you mean to me.”

You hold your arms out, as if expecting for me to fall into them, and I step back. How can you imagine that I’d want that? “Did you like the ring, Clarissa?”

“No.”

“You’ve kept it, though. So you must like it.”

“Don’t send me any more things. I want you to stay away from me.” As I start to walk away, you grab my arm. I jerk it free. “Don’t touch me. You make me sick. The things you do make me sick.”

“You can’t just sleep with me and then change your mind. You can’t make me feel what you have and then ignore me.”

A phrase from one of the leaflets stabs at me.

One-third of all stalkers have been intimate with their victim.

“It was only one night. It meant nothing to me. It was the biggest mistake I’ve ever made, and I wouldn’t have made it if I hadn’t been drunk. Or worse. Was there something worse?” For once you don’t have anything to say. “Why can’t I remember any of it?” And still nothing. “Why were there marks on me?” For once I have more to say than you do. “Why was I so sick afterward?”

At last you speak, though I wish for your silence again as soon as the words are out of your mouth. “You were crazy with passion for me, Clarissa. You were out of control, the way you responded, the things you begged me to do to you.”

“I was unconscious.” I clutch my bag, trying to stop my hands from trembling. The coffee I drank during lunch is halfway up my throat. I swallow it back down. “Did you put something in my wine?”

“Now you’re sounding mad. You wanted me, Clarissa. You wanted me as much as I wanted you. Why are you trying to deny it? You were lying back and enjoying it.”

“I didn’t want you. Not then and certainly not now.”

Your mouth twists. Your hands are in fists, releasing, clenching, releasing again. “Bitch.” Your face is scrunched in hatred, but you struggle to smooth it away. “I didn’t mean that, Clarissa. I’m sorry. You’ve upset me too much. Say you forgive me. I didn’t know what I was saying.”

The leaflets stab at me again.

Eight women die every month in England as a result of domestic abuse.

I wish those leaflets didn’t keep ambushing me. I don’t want to think about them. I don’t want to imagine they can be right. The leaflets are like friends whispering uncomfortable truths that I don’t want to hear. I want to think that those numbers are just made up.
Eight women die every month.

“I’m going now. If you follow me, I’ll walk straight back into the court building and tell the security guards. They haven’t left yet.”

“Say you forgive me and I’ll go.”

“I’ll never forgive you. If I ever see you in that courtroom again, I’ll report you to the judge.”

“I didn’t mean it, Clarissa, calling you that.”

“And I’ll tell them at work, too, that you did it, that you followed me here, that you upset me so much I couldn’t go through with something so important.” I am merciless. I am no longer quaking, and the nausea has gone. I know what I need to say to keep you out of Court 12. “I’ll make a formal complaint to Personnel. They take seriously their responsibilities to employees who are on jury service.” This is perfectly true. “I can see that you don’t want work to know what you’re doing.” And this is true, too. Your eyes light up, confirming I’m right—you never send me emails on the university system.

“You
are
a bitch. You’re not the woman I thought you were.”

“You’re right. I’m not. You don’t know me at all. Just leave me alone. That’s all I want from you.”

I walk away, and this time you don’t follow.

They say you shouldn’t equivocate. They say you should be direct and firm. They say you should never try to soften the blow. They say that “No!” is a one-word sentence. They say to use it with force. They say you should never elaborate on “No.”