After I sent the email I thought about my childhood, which is not something I have done actively for many years. When I left for university Elaine made me a box which, when she gave it to me, I planned to throw away at the first opportunity. Somehow though this has never happened and it travels with me, living always tucked somewhere out of sight, at the back of a drawer.
I got it out now and laid its contents along the kitchen table. Elaine had stuck a note to the underside of the box’s lid which I knew by heart, but still read: ‘For all the times you need to remember that you are loved’, she had written in her neat, round hand. Inside there was a photo of me standing outside their house dressed in my school uniform on the first day I left from their house. Another of a barbeque in their back garden: Barry has his top off tending the meat and Elaine and I are in stripy deckchairs, laughing at something he’s saying. There’s an eighteenth-birthday card from them and my letter of acceptance to university. There’re the ticket stubs from the time Barry and I went to Thorpe Park, and Elaine’s handwritten recipe for spaghetti Bolognese, which was always my favourite.
Then there are the other pictures, in which I can’t really recognise myself. A chubby baby on the lap of a small, pretty woman with her hair cut in a bowl and a nervous smile on her face. We look as if we are in a back garden somewhere and there is a tiny round paddling pool in the corner of the shot. A lock of hair in an envelope with my name written across the front, which Elaine told me was found in the drawer next to my mum’s bed. I like to run my finger along this word, written in a small spidery hand that almost looks scared of taking up too much space on the paper. It has made slight indentations in the envelope which makes me think she must have pressed hard.
A dog-eared book called Learn Your ABC whose pages I have turned many times, looking for codes and secret messages I have never found, although there is something familiar about the pictures, like a dream I can only half remember. A tiny, battered red car which I was apparently holding when they took me away, even though I was ten, so it seems unlikely it could have meant anything much to me. And finally a photo of an old black dog which, Elaine told me, was the only decoration in the room which passed as my bedroom in my mother’s flat. Elaine liked to think it had been a pet of my mother’s and she had given the photo to me as she didn’t have anything else to give. But Elaine has always liked to think the best of people and I never wanted to shatter her illusion. Really that photograph was stuck on the wall when I first walked into my room, left by the people before me. I dragged my mattress over to where it was and I would often lie and stare at it, wondering at lives in which dogs not only existed but were photographed. It always gives me a jolt to see it there at the bottom of my box and it always makes a mockery of what Elaine wrote on the lid. But for some reason I never throw it away because sometimes it’s the only thing I properly recognise.
My mother might be dead by now. It is a very strange thought: that she could simply not be in the world and I don’t know. But she was certainly heading that way the last time I saw her. She was in hospital, yellow against the white sheets, her mouth a cavernous black and her eyes so sunken they looked like they would never return. After that I told my social workers to stop informing me when she was ill and they didn’t question my decision. I was at that point taking my A levels and I had a bright future ahead of me and Elaine was with me, so it didn’t look like I needed to be bothered any more. All my mother ever did anyway was cry and apologise and try to take my hand, which repulsed me so much I would have to wash them afterwards. She made little sense and often I thought the kindest thing would be to hold a pillow over her skeletal face.
I was checking flight arrival times from South Africa on Saturday afternoon when there was a knock at my door. I looked up from the screen and could almost see through the door to where V was standing. Because of course it had to be her. My emails had no doubt been all that was needed and she had come straight from the airport to me. I closed the computer and went to the door. But it was Kaitlyn, holding a bottle of wine in her hand.
‘Sorry,’ she said, ‘there’s a few of us next door at Lottie’s and we’ve misplaced the corkscrew. I don’t suppose you have one.’
I opened the door a bit wider. ‘Yes.’
She followed me into the kitchen. ‘Wow, I really like what you’ve done in here.’
‘Thanks. I’ve got a gardener coming to soften the back.’ I got the corkscrew out of the drawer and held it out to her.
‘Did you choose the colours?’
‘Yes.’ Seeing Kaitlyn in the house was a bit strange, almost like watching a film even though you know it’s really happening.
‘Can I have a look at the sitting room?’
‘OK.’ We traipsed back to the drawing room where Kaitlyn exclaimed at how gorgeous it was. It didn’t seem right that she should see Verity’s house before she did and I desperately wanted her to leave. I could have easily picked her up and deposited her outside the front door, without any fuss.
She walked to the mantelpiece and picked up the photograph of V and me dressed in evening wear, photographed at one of Calthorpe’s Christmas parties. We’re both smiling out at the camera, my hand resting on the small of her back, not that you can see that. ‘So this is Verity?’
‘Yes.’ I had to keep my hands by my side to stop myself from marching over and ripping the photograph from her hands.
‘Very pretty.’
‘Anyway, you wanted the corkscrew.’
She laughed. ‘Sorry, yes.’ We went back into the kitchen where Kaitlyn picked the corkscrew up off the counter. But she didn’t leave. ‘Verity’s not here again then?’
And it all felt too much. The fact that she wasn’t Verity and she was standing in her house talking about her. ‘No.’
‘Do you want to come back with me? Lottie wouldn’t mind. And you have provided the corkscrew.’
‘No, thanks. I’ve got a bit of work to catch up on.’ I motioned to the laptop on the table.
‘Oh come on, Mike. All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.’
I tried to smile but it felt like the corners of my mouth were being pulled downwards by some internal magnet.
‘Are you OK?’ Her voice was wonderfully tender. I tried to nod, but it was like the movement dislodged something in my head and I felt my eyes fill terribly with tears. She stepped towards me and put her hand on my arm. ‘Shit, has something happened, Mike?’
‘I don’t really know,’ I said, hearing my voice crack, the allure of actually speaking to another human being about what was in my head too strong to ignore.
‘Sit down.’ She led me towards the table, bringing the wine and two glasses with her. She opened the bottle and poured us both some, sitting down beside me. ‘Now tell me everything.’
I took a gulp of the warm liquid, the very idea of telling Kaitlyn everything too appalling to even consider.
‘It’s Verity, isn’t it? Something’s happened. Have you split up?’
‘No, but we’ve had a row. Or more like a disagreement.’
‘Has she moved out?’
‘Not permanently.’
Kaitlyn sipped at her wine. ‘I thought it was odd how she was never around. What was the disagreement about?’
I tried to sift through everything in my brain to find a way to answer Kaitlyn’s question. ‘Sort of how we should live.’
‘Does she want to get married? Weddings often do that to people.’
I looked up at Kaitlyn, trying to work out what she was talking about and realised she must have meant Verity’s wedding, which I’d told her was her sister’s wedding. My brain was starting to feel like a blender and I reached for the bottle to replenish my glass. ‘No, no. We both want to get married.’
‘Oh.’ Kaitlyn held her eyes on my face. ‘Well, what then?’
‘It’s hard to put into words. I did something when I was in America she’s finding hard to forgive.’
Kaitlyn smiled. ‘Oh right, I get it.’
‘No,’ I said too quickly, ‘I don’t think you do. What I did was irrelevant.’
‘All men say that,’ Kaitlyn said, drinking her wine.