Dear Amy

16

Wednesday night is late-night shopping in Cambridge, and I’d been elected by a jury of my peers at school to buy Rosa Vidowski her leaving present. This meant I was back in the car today, as I don’t like cycling late at night, and I’d parked under the Grand Arcade.

I’d no idea why I had been chosen to do this rather than anyone else. I would have made an excuse, but they caught me on the hop. So, after my obligatory and pointless visit to the Examiner offices, with its sudden thickets of letters from people who weren’t Bethan Avery but had something to say on the subject, I found myself aimlessly roaming around the china and fancy goods department of a large department store.

I listlessly sized up saccharine china figurines of beautiful women dancing, flirting, reading and fanning themselves, bedecked in the ribbons and stays of dead ages, the store lights making their glazings gleam. Apparently this was the sort of thing Rosa liked. I could not, for the life of me, imagine why. The glass cabinet that held them slowly revolved, showing them all up to their best ceramic advantage.

I glanced away at a table nearby, where several larger objects in china and metal were displayed. Quite a few of these were representations of women, awful art deco women, nude or almost nude, or wearing carved drapes under which their nipples stood out stiffly, and which were slit open to reveal long bronze or pewter legs. Soft porn in a perfectly respectable department store: some of them were even bent over, or exaggeratedly arched, to hold stupid trivial things in their long thin badly carved arms, objects like ashtrays or sockets for light bulbs.

I was growing angry; a hard, cold anger. I thought of Linda Moore’s book, describing Bethan’s ‘porcelain good looks’, and I looked back at the clay dolls going slowly around in their glass cabinets. They were connected, these china virgins and pewter whores, I knew it instinctively. They were opposite sides of the same coin; they defined women in lies and half-truths; they were Everywoman and consequently No Woman.

Maybe I read too much into things. Eddy always says I do. But how could I misread something so obvious, so tangible? I hefted my bag and walked off, leaving them all in their foolish poses.

I ended up purchasing a pair of fancy glass candlesticks, shot with blue and pink. Well, I liked them, so Rosa better had, too.

I paid for the candlesticks and joined the desultory queue on the escalator down, packing them into my big floppy black bag. I was heading for the doors when the perfume counters caught my eye. I was running out of my regular perfume and fancied a change. Since Eddy wasn’t going to be buying me the usual bottle of Coco for Christmas this year, maybe it was time to update my scent along with my last name.

These thoughts all made something hitch painfully under my ribs.

You could have him back, you know. If you called him, he’d come.

He would.

But would you have him, under such terms?

Perhaps it’s not how you think. Perhaps he’s lying on someone’s sofa right now, mourning your loss, his own foolishness. Perhaps he is missing you. If you don’t yield a little, check in with him, how would you ever know?

Lying on someone’s sofa? In their bed more like. You never did trust him. And with good reason, in the end.

I sighed so wearily that the woman on the escalator ahead of me turned to stare at me as I blinked back tears.

Shopping for things like make-up and perfume has always been tough going for me. I can’t stand a hard sell. So I had to drift lightly between counters, just taking a little squirt out of the tester bottles, then moving off quickly before I got hammered with a strident, ‘Can I help you?’ from one of the breezy girls behind the counters. Obviously they can’t help me. If I’d made my mind up, I wouldn’t have to test their wares, would I?

I was just sniffing something in an outrageously elaborate glass bottle when a man caught my eye. An anomalous enough creature to see in a perfume department, but I’d noticed him because he’d been looking at me keenly when I’d glanced up, then immediately looked away.

Hmm. So much for the art of flirting, I thought, rounding the counter and heading off for the next one, where I tested something that smelled like cat’s urine and violets. Urgh. Definitely not for me.

Or, more embarrassingly, perhaps he’d seen me on the television and wanted to strike up a conversation about it. I was constantly being asked about this ‘new evidence’ that had turned up in the column, and sometimes no amount of declaring that the police had sworn me to secrecy was enough to deter people.

I backtracked as I saw the girl behind the counter put down something in preparation for pouncing on me. I stepped backward and turned, and I saw that the man who’d been staring at me before hesitated, not knowing which way I was going.

He was dressed in a suit and long coat, and he had dark hair and a smooth face. He was following me.

I was breathless, light-headed with fear, and I paused near the counter, clutching the edge, perversely wishing the girl serving would engage with me now so I could whisper to her to call the police.

I stole a glance at him in one of the multitudinous mirrored surfaces on the counter.

It’s not the same man.

I couldn’t tell you exactly how I realized this, but I did. The shape of his face, his build, the way he held himself – it wasn’t the man who’d parked outside my house. I would have sworn on my life.

I started to breathe again.

It struck me then that he didn’t want to approach me, just to follow me. He must have been a store detective, who thought I was a shoplifter. I wanted to laugh suddenly with embarrassment and relief. On the other hand I felt strangely guilty – I don’t know why. I suspect there is a secret shoplifter in me who reacts the same way when confronted by authority. I pulled my bag up on my shoulder as the colour rose in my cheeks.

The cool night air was soft after the air conditioned heat of the shop. I paused outside the door, at something of a loss.

I hadn’t had a very good week so far, and this evening was proving no exception.

I would treat myself, I thought, heading off down Market Street. I would go into Heffers and buy myself a new novel. I would choose one packed with incident, erudition and sex, in a shiny dust jacket. It would be pleasantly heavy in my bag as I walked back to my car, and when I got home I would cuddle up on the sofa with it, with a packet of biscuits and a bottle of wine, and read it right through. It would be a sensual pleasure. The anticipation of it was already erasing my embarrassment.

I walked on past the brightly lit shop fronts, the coyly illuminated pubs and cafes, the stony grandeur of the colleges – Emmanuel, Pembroke, Peterhouse, St Catherine’s, Corpus, King’s, with gargoyles growling at me from their cornices, each splendidly overdressed in fluted railings and manicured lawns. I love this place – opulent, medieval and alien as it is, it nevertheless stretches out its arms and includes me. It was here that I first learned to breathe freely, to express my thoughts with confidence. Cambridge is my alma mater in truth, and I do tend to cling to her skirts, despite Eddy’s disgust. ‘It’s just a bloody school,’ he would say, as gown-clad academics hurried off to some Formal Hall at Christ’s and confused foreign students practically cycled under his front wheels on Downing Street and King’s Parade, only their lack of speed saving them. ‘A school with pretensions.’

‘Yes and no. It’s a world within the world.’

He would merely sigh impatiently. ‘You should try working in it. Your romantic memories of it would last two minutes.’

I didn’t reply. Mother Cecilia had been so happy when I’d told her I’d got in. The memory still made me smile.

It’s ironic that Eddy should be so cynical, as he is the one that never left. He is still a senior member of his college and we would turn up for Formal Halls together in their vast vaulted dining hall about three times a year. He was desperately angling to be elected a Fellow, though the disaster with Ara wasn’t likely to help his chances.

I spent an hour browsing through the bookshop, poring over covers full of blurb, hearing the books creak as I opened them, smelling fresh ink and cut paper. I forgot about my embarrassment with the store detective. It had been something and nothing, one of the momentary weirdnesses that life is full of.

When the staff at Heffers eventually threw me out at closing time, I had a bulky novel nestled in my bag and a small smile on my face. On the other side of the tiny cobbled street was Trinity College, dark but for the homely glow of the entrance. Porters moved within, sporting their trademark bowler hats, nodding acknowledgement at a lone student hurrying through the gateway into the inner quad. I looked up into the night sky. A few stars poked spikily out of the clear, sharp air. What a bizarre night. I felt disorientated, but it was not unpleasant. In fact, I actually felt carefree… as though a great weight had lifted from my shoulders. When I got back to the underground car park beneath the Grand Arcade I practically bounded down the steps.

My car was on the second sub level of the multi-storeyed edifice, and as I approached it I became dishearteningly aware that it had been a stupid place to park. The light was dim, the place was utterly deserted – the other shoppers had all gone home – and I was a long way from help or hope of it.

I gripped my car keys firmly and marched up to the Audi, attempting to look less intimidated than I felt. What a stupid, stupid, prizewinningly stupid place to park…

Then I was angry. Why couldn’t I park where I liked? I’d paid, hadn’t I? Was I expected to be under some kind of curfew after dusk, just because I was female?

I was at the car, and quickly opened it, after having a peep into the back seat. There was no one lurking in there. Once in the car, with the reassuring smell of upholstery and air freshener, I felt secure. I’d just have to remember to be more careful next time. I gunned the engine, its roaring alarmingly loud in the echoing concrete surroundings. Time to go home.

I glanced in the rear-view mirror.

The man from the department store was crossing the deserted concrete towards me. I craned around to stare at him.

He saw me looking and smiled at me, a big toothy grin, then waved a friendly hand, as though asking me to wait. His other hand was in his pocket, and his shadow, grotesquely elongated, was approaching the back of my car.

He wanted to tell me something.

I knew, with utter, iron certainty that I was in deadly danger.

I let out the handbrake and raked the gears into reverse. The tiny reflection of the man in my rear-view mirror started to run towards me, the smile dropping a few degrees. I squealed into reverse and he stepped back, mouthing something I didn’t hear but presumed was an obscenity.

Then I revved forward, shooting towards the exit ramp. In my mirror, I could see the man scurrying away, becoming smaller and smaller before vanishing down a stairwell, his coat trailing after him.

The whole incident had lasted perhaps three seconds.

I drew up to the road, my fingers trembling around the wheel. I checked my mirror again. The mirror reflected the car park, empty and harshly lit, framed in concrete. He was gone.

I swerved violently into the road and drove to the police station.

‘So what did they say?’ asked Lily.

The kids were in bed, and her mournful mother had retired upstairs with a low-voiced goodnight.

My hands shook around the mug of tea she’d made me.

‘They just asked me if I knew either of these men. I said no, and they said that unless they’d actually spoken to me, that was it. They said he sounded like a mugger.’

‘So it was definitely two different guys?’

‘Yep. I’d swear to it. This one was… more personable, if that makes any sense in the context of a weirdo that follows you into an underground car park. And I… I wouldn’t swear to it, but I think he was younger, too.’

Lily folded her arms and sighed furiously, making the little tendril of hair hanging down from the crown of her head blow upwards. I smiled weakly at her from the sofa and shrugged.

‘So you have to be raped or murdered before they can shift themselves to do anything?’

‘That’s it,’ I said, ‘in a nutshell.’ I leaned back into the soft cushions and closed my eyes.

She drummed her fingers on the armrest, regarding me thoughtfully, and as she did the rapid little tattoo she was beating out slowed, moved into something more speculative. ‘Fancy something stronger than tea?’

‘I’ve brought the car with me,’ I muttered dolefully.

‘That’s what taxis are for,’ she said, getting to her feet. ‘Red or white?’

She moved off into her kitchen and I rubbed my face with my hand. It was still trembling.

‘But here’s the thing, Margot,’ she called back from the kitchen. ‘Why would anyone follow you?’

I started, a little surprised. She knew all about the business with Bethan Avery, of course. ‘It must be something to do with the letters,’ I said. ‘I can’t imagine why else I’d be so interesting.’

‘And you told the police this?’

‘Well, yes.’

She reappeared at the kitchen door with a bottle of Sauvignon Blanc, which she was uncorking while she talked.

‘Margot, can I ask a question? Without you getting mad?’

Half of her mouth was screwed up in a tight little grimace.

I shrugged, or I might have shivered. ‘Sure.’

‘When was the last time you went to the doctor’s?’

I blinked. ‘About a fortnight ago. I don’t know. What’s that got to do with anything?’ But I saw, with horrible sureness, what she was getting at.

‘Don’t you think you should make another appointment?’

I licked my lips. No, I thought, I don’t.

‘I don’t see how it’s relevant,’ I said, trying to sound calm, measured and reasonable.

She nodded, as though a personal theory of hers was being proved.

‘Look,’ I said, ‘it’s not just me. There’s all sorts of… take Martin Forrester for instance, he doesn’t-’

‘I’m not being funny, Margot – really I’m not. It’s just that sometimes…’ She sighed, as though considering an unpleasant task. ‘Something can feel very right when you’re in it, and then…’ she trailed off, as though searching, ‘But it can turn out that the things driving your interest are not what you thought they were.’

‘I don’t understand,’ I said, a little coldly, even though I think I did. ‘There are other people who…’ I was about to add, ‘believe me’, but hearing the pining, apologetic slant in the words, I stopped myself.

She sighed.

‘But this Martin Forrester doesn’t know all about you, does he?’

You bitch, I thought, with something like wonder. This, I had not foreseen.

‘He doesn’t have to know about me,’ I said angrily. ‘This isn’t about me.’

‘I don’t know if you realize you’re doing it,’ said Lily, raising a silencing hand, ‘but the fact is that you keep doing the same thing. You start feeling better, feel better enough to stop the pills, and then once you do, things start to fall apart for you.’

‘They’re only sleeping pills…’

‘They’re not only sleeping pills. They’re anti-depressants. You were given them to help you sleep, true, and they’re a lower dose, but you’ve talked yourself into believing that they’re simply sleeping pills.’ She bit her lip. ‘You do this a lot, Margot. You minimize. You ignore the obvious and hope that sending your problems to Coventry will somehow make them evaporate.’

‘Maybe my problems would evaporate,’ I said with chilly preciseness, ‘if people would stop reminding me of them whenever I feel I am starting to outgrow them.’

‘That’s not fair.’ She was making an effort to keep her voice even, but the high spots of colour were starting to bloom in her cheeks, and her eyes were narrowing. The wine bottle had stilled in her hands. ‘I am merely suggesting that you have been off your pills for three weeks, and now you are being written letters by dead girls and followed by masked gunmen. You write for an advice column, for fuck’s sake – of course you’re going to get crank letters. It doesn’t mean you have to make it all about you.’

I was speechless, though my mouth opened, moving helplessly.

‘You think I’m making this up?’

Her lips thinned, and inside her head I could see that determination warred with diplomacy.

‘Margot, I’m not saying you are imagining these things, or at least imagining all of them. I am just asking you to consider the possibility that you being off your meds and these things suddenly happening to you might, conceivably, have a correlation.’ She held out her palms, as if to demonstrate she had no more concealed weapons. ‘That’s all.’

But she didn’t need any more concealed weapons. She’d already stuck me, hard enough for blood. I was recoiling, and all I could think was, I need to get out of this house right now.

‘Margot, no, don’t, don’t leave like this-’

I’d already snatched up my bag and pushed past her, through the door and back out into the night; with its freight of sinister and perhaps delusionary predators, its memories and its acid cold.