Страница 16 из 69
Margie was messing about, picking up leaves and showing me them. I picked her up, put my head down, and walked up the final hill to the park gate. My heart was thumping like a gallows drum. Margie realized where we were going and got excited, squealing and stiffening her body to be put down. I held on to her tightly. Luckily, a small boy had caught his coat on the cast-iron railing at the head of the stairs, and some parents were engaged in trying to untangle him. I slipped down the stairs to the basement without catching anyone’s eye.
Usually I just let Margie run in, but Mrs. McLaughlin waved me over and asked how I was: syrupy concern, head tilting and hand rubbing. They keep the playroom incredibly hot, so by now I was sweating heavily and could feel my blood pressure going through the roof.
“Fine, fine, fine,” I said, over and over, panting, trying to cool down and calm down at the same time. I looked far more distressed than I felt. All around the room parents tried hard not to look at me.
Margie ran off and tugged at a fire engine a small boy was holding. The boy’s hand slipped and he let go. Completely u
The boy stopped crying and crouched down, watching Margie play and putting his hand on top of the engine so that he was doing it too. Everyone looked ashamed because of what they had been thinking. A very young assistant ran forward and stroked Margie’s hair with ostentatious affection, smiling back at me and at Mrs. McLaughlin. God, it was awful. I muttered something ridiculous about loving my daughter very much and McLaughlin nodded wildly and I left. I don’t want to go back this afternoon.
I forgot about the press and came in the back way. There was only one camera crew this time. They scrabbled out of the van, but I sped up and managed to get through the gate before they got their stuff out. I could hear them over the wall, swearing in French. It’s frightening. Even when I’m sitting in the house, I sometimes break into a sweat, imagining I’m being watched.
I’ve just found a book about the psychology of love hidden under this desk. Susie hid the book but not the files she stole from Su
Otago Street: the cramped, new-built flat. We were the first people to live there and it was our first home together. They had knocked down the tenement block that had stood there previously. The whole area was subsiding, sliding slowly down the hill to the river. During our first week there, the lintel above the bathroom door began to skew. The windowsill in the living room shifted, and the front door got jammed open. The workmen said it was normal settlement for a new-build. We were just grateful that we were renting.
It was tiny. The bedroom was so small that the double bed touched three walls. We had to climb over it to open the window. We used to lie in the dark and listen to the river and talk about our day. Sometimes Susie would get up and make a plate of buttery toast and two mugs of tea and we’d sit up and watch late-night clubbers walk home across the Gibson Street bridge far below. I was her world then. She adored me. She did things, like the toast, gave gifts, thought of me all the time. She phoned me during the day to say she missed me. Sometimes we’d be watching television and I’d turn and find her just staring at me, doting. She wrote notes and stuck them around the house for me to find, saying she loved me, sending kisses.
She loved me more than I loved her then. It was a bit scary, how much she loved me. When I daydreamed about ending it- just for a distraction, not because I was going to- when I thought about it, I worried that she’d stalk me. She had never been in love before. I’d been in love twice before I met her and knew how to hold back and defend myself. I made a decision to be kind to Susie when I could have been otherwise; I deigned not to hurt her. I was only ever tempted once, when I saw Sandra again and we went back to her house. It felt wrong and cheap and stupid, and I was angry with her before she even made a move. I couldn’t touch her. I went back to Susie’s room in the med residence and had to resist the urge to make a huge fuss of her, because that’s a dead giveaway that you’ve been thinking about doing something wrong.
How did it happen, then, that her benevolent tin god ends up getting the tail end of her phonecard? How come I’m hanging about at the back of the court, acting calm as I hear that she loved a serial killer over me? When did the dynamic change to the point where she doesn’t even feel the need to explain to me that it isn’t the case?
I was still in charge before the wedding. I knew it and so did she. She even said it sometimes, that I didn’t love her as much as she loved me. We laughed about it and I reassured her. I said that I would never leave her; that I was set with her for life. I’d stroke her hair and roll the flesh on the top of her ears gently between my lips: tiny hairs, skin that had never rubbed against anything, never been sunburned.
Corfu was the first time she had ever been abroad, and she had that perfectly translucent skin little Scottish girls have. It was the softest skin I’d ever felt until Margie was born.
Before we were married. I remember that time so well: it’s the most vivid memory I have. Two days before the wedding, we sat in the car outside here, in Orchard Lane, looking at the SOLD sign looming over the high garden wall. I didn’t know this house existed until we came to view it. It’s hidden away, and the lane looks like a delivery slip because it cuts down the side of two large houses. Beyond the wall, in this overdeveloped, trendy square mile of a busy city, sits our fat little white house with our apple tree and fruit bushes and our three small hills of private green heaven. I love it here.
Susie pulled the car around and parked. We couldn’t see past the wall, but we sat together and imagined our way through the gate, across the garden, opening the French windows and walking into the kitchen. We imagined eating with the doors open in summer and gathering in the front room for Christmases with family. Not our own families, who are quite tricky and grim, but cheerful families who are nice to each other and enjoy a good time. I said I’d cook with our own fruit and plant carrots and cabbage. This house cost a fortune because of where it is. Susie’s father gave us a big chunk of the deposit. Said he’d been saving up. It should have made us suspicious but it didn’t.
As we sat in the car, Susie said that the storeroom next to the attic could be a small study for her, if I didn’t mind. I didn’t even remember it from the viewing. I’d been looking for a comfy television room, enough bedrooms so we didn’t ever have to move, and a nice bit of garden. I wasn’t looking for a study when we first saw it. We both knew she was the one with ambition. I said of course she should have it, and she started to cry because she was so happy. I held her hand across the gear stick, kissed her fingers, and called her sweet names while I thought of Sandra and all the other women; well, all six of them. It didn’t seem like that many. I mean, statistically, it isn’t that many. Compared with most people. I still had the upper hand at that point, I’m sure of it.