Friday reading

Deb begins to suspect that other people are making plans for her which initially confuses her

I should have guessed Rose would find me. She doesn’t give up easily. There she was sitting on Hilda’s doorstep one evening when I returned from work.

Look at you, she grinned. In a suit and all.

I cringed, feeling caught out. Not just because of the suit. What I mean how I mean I didn’t—

In answer to your first question, I came to see you. In answer to the second, I got your address from Ellen, and I got her address from Mark, and thirdly, I know you didn’t expect me but it wouldn’t have been a surprise if you did. And I thought you might skip again if you knew I was coming.

I stood there, nodding as she ticked off her replies on her fingers.

Aren’t you going to invite me in? Her head tilted and her face went solemn.

I knew that, like me, she was recalling our last meeting and my angry refusal to live with her.

After a tense silence I dug my keys out of my bag and opened the door. Hilda had a strict No Visitors rule but I coasted on the basis that I was a sort of head girl in her house by then. Besides, she wouldn’t be home for another hour and I was sure there was time for me to change and for us to leave before she got back. Rose followed me up the stairs. In my room she dropped her backpack on the floor and sprawled on the bed while I took off the prim suit and white blouse.

There were no flies on Hilda. Next morning, she caught me sneaking a cup of coffee and a slice of toast upstairs.

Tell your friend to come down and eat breakfast in the kitchen like a civilised person, she said.

Ok, I mumbled, as my cheeks flushed with embarrassment and irritation at being caught out.

When Rose came down Hilda shook hands with her and said, I’ve made an exception for you for one night but you cannot stay here indefinitely. I don’t want the other girls to get ideas.

Fair cop, said Rose. I’ll move to a hostel until Deb is ready to come back to London with me.

What? I looked from one to the other of these strong women. I was beginning to get the weirdest inkling that they had set me up. Did you plan this? I asked them.

No, they both said, a bit too simultaneously for my liking.

I’m still a free agent, I said, weakly. I was thinking of travelling next year, when I have enough saved.

Good idea, Rose said. I’ll come with you.

I glanced around at the back door, feeling a sudden urge to run but Hilda’s cat sat there, staring me down.

You have to stop running some time, Hilda said. Or you’ll meet yourself on the way back.

I had no answer to that. All day her words buzzed around in my head, while I sorted and distributed the incoming post, franked the outgoing post, did the sandwich run to the local shop, returned files to the cabinet and retrieved other ones. My work was all comings and goings. Maybe that’s why it sort of suited me. I rarely sat down in one place. The idea of meeting myself on the stairs took hold to the point that I actually expected to run into a person who resembled me to the life. Would I know the me-her if I did meet her and what would I say to her? I must have been cracking up.

Photo by Maksym Kaharlytskyi on Unsplash

Only that Rose was waiting for me across the street from the office that evening I might have kept on walking to the train station and not come back. Neither of us said a word as we travelled to Hilda’s. Later, in the pub, Rose told me she’d found a place to stay.

You’re not seriously going to wait me out, are you? I asked her.

No, I need to work. I just wanted to see you, to try again and persuade you to come with me. I know I have no rights over you. The thing is I still have feelings for you and I hoped you might still have some for me.

I didn’t mean to cry but suddenly there were tears streaking my face. Mortifying in the middle of a crowd, everyone else having a good time, so I scrubbed my cheeks with a crumpled tissue, not knowing what to say. Rose laid her hand on my knee, which was almost equally mortifying. I shot her a look to say as much. She shook her head and left her hand where it was. I took another swig of rum and coke. For a moment the heat of the alcohol replaced the scald of the tears. For a moment. Then they came back. I felt as if all the tears of the world were raining through me at that moment. Nothing could check them. We didn’t have nearly enough tissues between us to absorb them. Rose asked the barman if he had a paper napkin or two to mop up a spill. He handed her a grubby wiping cloth. She handed it back and returned to the table saying it was time to go.

She hung around for a couple more days and we talked a lot. Finally, we agreed that I would stay on at Hilda’s and in the job for the time being and that she would visit me at weekends or vice versa. The ‘time being’ turned out to be eight months, at the end of which I was ready to move down here and be with her. She was working in an art gallery and doing her own painting on the side. I found another office job. Hilda’s company had given me a good reference and a parting gift.

With Rose’s encouragement I decided to sign up for an evening course in fabric design. Now and again I relapsed into the disorienting sensation that i was two and might meet myself coming round a corner or passing me on the up escalator in the tube while I descended. I now recognised this as an echo of the odd impression I used to have of being accompanied by a second self. I would be hypervigilant on the street or in the train my antennae twitching for the approach of this familiar stranger or other me. Whether she would be smiling or scowling I couldn’t tell. I might catch sight of her and make to hail her when she would be gone, swift and silent as a reflection glimpsed in a window.

You more or less know the rest, Marge. When we decided to have a baby I said the father had to be someone we knew. I couldn’t impose a nameless parent on my baby after all the time I had spent unravelling the mystery of my own birth. We chose Tristan, Rose’s brother, which meant I had to be the birth mother.

I was happy about that because I really wanted to be the one who carried her and gave birth to her, to feel that she was part of my body for a time. Someone truly my own. Mama egotism I know. From the moment she drew breath we could see the strength of her character, and with every day we see she has clear ideas of her own. Those eyes, sometimes solemn, sometimes laughing, catch me out all the time, as much as to say I will never fool her and I shouldn’t try. I’ve promised her faithfully I never will. Everything will be open between us. No secrets no evasions no half-truths no unreal expectations.

I deliberated for a while over whether to tell Jim and Ellen about Pearl. Part of me wanted to spread the good news, another part feared it might knock him off the waggon again. In the end Rose persuaded me to let them know. After all, he’s her grandfather, she said. So I wrote to them. They sent a card and a lovely gift immediately.

A few weeks later this letter arrived.

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