“It isn’t a story, Richard. It’s my family.”
“No, of course, sorry.” He was still trying to remember when she turned away from him and dropped the tablecloth around her feet. She opened the case again, took out a clean pair of knickers and pulled them on. She found her jeans, sniffed the crotch, and stepped into them. She didn’t look at Richard because she couldn’t bear to see the dawning of that little piece of knowledge.
Flora picked up a bra, tried to hook it together, missed the catches, tried again, and heard him say a short, embarrassed “Oh.” When the bra caught, she squatted beside the bed and fought her way into a T-shirt that had been lying there. Richard leaned forwards and gently took hold of her wrist. The black shoulder socket she had drawn on him flexed as his arm moved, and he said, “I’m sorry. About your mother.”
“There’s nothing to be sorry about,” Flora said brightly. “She might not be dead.”
“But,” Richard said, “I thought she—”
“The newspapers,” Flora spoke over him, “got it wrong.”
“—drowned . . . a long time ago,” Richard finished.
“I . . .” Flora started. “She’s lost, that’s all.” The coconut smell and the golden honey colour came again, her mother turning in sunlight. “We don’t know what happened. And it was eleven years ago. But now she’s back. Daddy saw her in Hadleigh.” Flora couldn’t hide her excitement.
“What?” Richard still had hold of her wrist.
“I can’t go into it now. I just have to get home. He needs me.” She sat on the bed beside him. She knew she wouldn’t see Richard again, because he would look at her differently now that he had learned who she was. She hated it when her parents became the thing men found most interesting about her.
“Let me drive you.” His hand slipped from her wrist and held her fingers. “Is Hadleigh where your father lives?”
“Nearby. I’ll get the last train; it’s no problem. You probably need to get back too.” She was aware of the change in his posture at these words, a realization of what she might mean.
“When does it go?” Richard stood up, pressed his phone.
“About ten, I think.”
“That’s in fifteen minutes. Flora, you won’t make it. Take my car.”
Chapter 2
THE SWIMMING PAVILION, 2ND JUNE 1992, 4:04 AM
Dear Gil,
It’s four in the morning and I can’t sleep. I found a pad of this yellow paper and I thought I’d write you a letter. A letter putting down all the things I haven’t been able to say in person—the truth about our marriage from the beginning. I’m sure I’ll write things you’ll claim I imagined, dreamed, made up; but this is how I see it. This, here, is my truth.
If I asked, could you say when we first met?
I can tell you. It was the 6th of April, 1976, although I’m being easygoing with the word ‘met.’ It was a Tuesday. Sunny and warm, with an excitement that spring had arrived and was going to stay. Louise and I had been sitting on the lawn outside the university library ignoring the notices to keep off the grass and talking about what we were going to do with the rest of our lives. Of course, neither of us knew what it would be, but we both agreed it would be different from our mothers’ lives (keeping house, looking after children, not working), which we dismissed as parochial and pointless.
“I’m not worried about having money,” Louise said.
“Or things,” I said.
“God, no. Things—children, husbands, houses, men—just tie you down. Stop you doing what you want to do. It’s all about education now. That was the problem with our mothers—no education. No degree. What use were they to anyone?”
“No use at all,” I said. (We were so critical, so uncompromising.) I lay back on the grass. “But I’d like to keep having sex. Now and again.”
“Of course. We can have as much as we want when we’re away. No strings. No commitment. They have it; why shouldn’t we?”
By “they,” Louise meant “men.”
When we finished university, Louise and I were going to see what the world had to offer (places, people, and—inconsistently—men of course). We spent our evenings studying maps of South America, Australia, China, tracing routes, making plans, and drinking cheap red wine.
That afternoon, Louise went to her history class and I went to fetch my bicycle from the racks. There, I found a note tucked between the brake cable and the handlebars of the man’s bike I’d bought from a fellow student. The note, which was folded in four, said (I memorised it): “Sir, in future, please be more careful when locking your bicycle. You appear to have attached yours to mine, and now I have to walk home in the rain without an umbrella.”