The Story of You

‘You were,’ he said, taking it and tipping it upside down.

‘No, I wasn’t.’

‘I thought you were – cute, complicated …’

I rolled my eyes. ‘Oh, weren’t we all?’

‘I’m not surprised that you work for the Mental Health Service – the sidelined in our society … You always liked the underdog.’

‘Me and you, too, then, hey?’

When I’d last seen Joe, three years ago, he’d been living with his girlfriend in Preston but seemed a bit lost, career-wise, working in a sports shop. In our brief email exchange during the last few days, he’d told me he was now teaching English to NEETs (Not in Education, Employment or Training) – kids who’d spent most of their lives skiving off school or inside, basically, and wanted to turn their lives around. He absolutely loved it, he said. The perfect job, if you took away the mounds of paperwork, which was exactly how I felt about my work.

‘I can’t say I’m surprised, either, Joe. All that energy had to go somewhere.’

‘We were a pair of little revolutionaries.’ He grinned.

‘Were we? I can’t remember. I just remember you used to say to me –’ I assumed the younger voice of Joe’s radical years – ‘it’s evolution, Robbie, not revolution.’

‘Did I? God, what a dick. I was so intense!’

‘Oh, Joe, you’re still intense.’

‘How would you know?’ He said, tapping my thigh, as if chastising me for not getting in touch. I ignored it.

‘Actually, you saying that really helped when things were grim,’ I said, seriously. ‘I sometimes say it to my clients.’

‘Really?’

‘Yeah, just to remind them that recovery … it takes time. Step by step. Rome wasn’t built in a day and all that.’

He smiled. He knew what I was getting at.

The room was growing dim, it was getting late, and I was here, having a heart-to-heart, the very thing I’d promised myself not to do. I stood up.

‘Look, I really should be going now,’ I said. ‘I’ll just go downstairs and say, “Hi” to your dad, okay?’

But Joe suddenly got up from the bed and went rooting in a drawer for something.

‘What are you doing?’ I asked.

‘Trying to make you stay.’

‘Joseph Sawyer,’ I said. ‘I wasn’t supposed to come in the first place!’

He turned around. He looked hurt.

‘But why?’

Why did he not get it?

‘Because,’ I sighed, exasperated. ‘Because … oh, God, it doesn’t matter.’ I’m really glad I did come.

He had something in his hand. He put it behind him and, walking backwards, picked up the bottle of JD off the table with his free hand and handed it to me. He always did have this way of making you do things. ‘Come on, drink up,’ he said. ‘This is going to take you right back.’

That’s what I’m worried about.

But then, there was a sound like someone loading a gun, a click, the whirr of a tape being rewound and then, the bluesy, achey riffs of Led Zeppelin’s ‘Since I’ve Been Loving You’ – we used to listen to this track, this album, all the time – and when I saw Joe’s face, the look in his eyes (well on his way to drunk, mainly), I understood that – even if I didn’t want to – Joe needed to. He needed to be anywhere but here.

We swayed – it’s one of those songs that make it impossible not to – but rather awkwardly, like the first self-conscious dancers on the floor at a wedding reception, and I suddenly felt old. It didn’t feel like it used to feel, and when we smiled at one another, it was because we both knew this. I took off my shoes and we danced, passing the bottle between us. It felt like undressing, like a layer of tension was being peeled back. Joe held both arms out, his eyes shimmering with tears.

‘Come here,’ he said. ‘Please? I need a hug.’

I wrapped both arms around his neck then; his suit jacket felt stiff and restrictive and so I took it off for him. We leaned our heads on each other’s shoulders and, as we danced, I could feel his whole body shudder. And I just held him like that, and let him cry as I stroked his hair. The song finished, I was still holding him. He looked up at me.

‘Do you want to go for a walk?’ He said. ‘I can’t stay here.’

We didn’t talk about where to go, we just went; it was like our feet remembered the old route and took us there: down the long, sloping lawn, through the front gate and out onto the path. I didn’t know what time it was, but everything was awash with a lilac hue and the tide was out, leaving sweeping, silver channels like liquid mercury. The air smelt like the inside of mussel shells. Were we drunk? I should hope so, the amount of Jack Daniel’s we’d put away. We were holding hands – it just felt like the right thing to do. We turned left at the gate and out of the cul-de-sac that wraps itself around the bottom of the vicarage. The houses get lower, the closer you get to the sea around here, so you have the big old houses like Joe’s and our old pink one, up on the hills, with a bottom tier of white bungalows petering out to the sea. And this is where we were now, walking – not entirely in a straight line – hand in hand, among the white underskirt of Kilterdale, with the lilac sky and the black shadows and the low houses with their big, glowing fly’s-eye windows; and I didn’t know whether it was because the houses were so low that the sky seemed so big, but it did; so big and empty, like everyone had deserted.

We passed Joe’s hip flask between us. We’d filled it with the remainder of the Jack Daniel’s and then sneaked into the kitchen and put some Coke in there, too, because we didn’t want complete amnesia, just a blurring of the edges, and I could tell the edges were already blurred because we were getting onto fundamentals.

‘So … relationships,’ said Joe. ‘You got some nice guy to look after you?’

‘We just ended, actually.’

‘Oh, shit. Sorry. Why?’ There was a pause, where I knew what Joe was going to say next. Such a mix of self-absorption and selflessness, I haven’t seen in anyone since. ‘Was he just not as good as me?’

‘No, he was just still married to another woman …’

‘Robyn King,’ he said, ‘a marriage-wrecker?’

‘Oh, no, he was separated. He had been for a long time. He was just eking out the longest, most painful divorce in the history of divorces, and I was his therapist. It was never going to work.’

‘There you go, you see – I said you always liked the underdog.’

‘I forgot how the only time you’re sarcastic is when you’re drunk.’

‘It is my mother’s funeral.’

‘Like that’s an excuse.’

We got to the stile that takes you over the fields to the other end of the village.

‘So, what about you?’ I asked. We were trapped in the stile, so were facing each other, our faces inches apart. ‘You were with a girl called Kate, last time I saw you. What happened? Not as good as me?’ I said grinning.

He’d been drinking from the flask again and he laughed, coughed.

Stop flirting, shut up.

‘Nice girl,’ he said, ‘but she had thick ankles and I just couldn’t get over it.

‘See, I told you she wasn’t as good as me,’ I said, flashing my dainty ankles (my body improves as it peters to the ends) and resolving, really, to stop the flirting. I was getting carried away.

We stayed sitting on the stile for a bit, passing the flask to and fro. Beyond the fields, were the cliffs, and beyond the cliffs, you could hear the sea.

‘You could be seventeen in this light,’ said Joe. He had his hand over mine, and all I could feel was that hand, as though that warm area of skin was all that existed.

‘Don’t say that,’ I said.

‘Kiss me,’ he said suddenly, and I laughed.

‘Joe, I can’t kiss you!’

‘Who cares? Why not?’

‘That’s why.’ Because you don’t care, I thought, because why would you? On a day like today? Whereas for me, I was thinking to myself as I looked at the lovely shape of his mouth, it’s not that simple, Robyn, and you know it.

He groaned. ‘Come on,’ he said, and we carried on walking over the fields. A pale disc moon was now intensifying in the sky. The poor old trees, after centuries of being blown mercilessly by North Sea gales, now leaned permanently over.

I leaned over, too.

‘What are you doing?’ said Joe.

‘Checking they’re really like that, or if I’m actually that drunk.’

‘You’re actually that drunk. Now give me some of that,’ and he took the flask from me. It was much colder now and we held onto one another, for warmth as much as anything else, dodging the turf-covered rocks and the sheep shit. Now and again, one of us would trip spectacularly, the other hoisting them up, and then we’d carry on, oblivious, conversation rolling like the fields themselves.

‘You heard me talking to my mum,’ said Joe. ‘That’s a bit embarrassing.’

‘Joe, I used to go into my mum’s wardrobe, put on her clothes, then prance around the house, pretending to be her. How’s that for embarrassing?’

‘And did it help?’

I loved that Joe didn’t bat an eyelid. Andy would have given me that look, the one that said, ‘Robyn, I really like you, but sometimes you scare me.’

‘At the time, yes, and if chucking things at the wall helps you, or getting paralytic, or dressing up in your mum’s clothes, then you should do that, too.’

‘Excellent. I’ll think of you when I’m wearing one of my mum’s skirts and maybe a nice blouse.’ He was holding out his hand for me to take it. ‘Shall we go through the farm, like old times?’

The cold air and the walk had made the booze go more to my head now, and I didn’t really care where we went or what we did. I just knew I didn’t want to go home yet.

We trudged up the lane. The farmhouse had most of its lights on and there were sheets hanging on the washing line, billowing against the sky, like a child’s idea of a ghost. Chickens were roaming around outside, doing their odd little jerking movements, like clockwork toys, and to our left, behind the milking shed, was the barn, the one that all the kids used to play in, much to the annoyance of Mr Fry, who’d come and shine his great big torch in your eyes and swear his head off.

‘Come on,’ said Joe, pulling me towards it. ‘It’s bloody freezing, let’s go inside.’

‘We’ll get done,’ I said.

Joe grabbed hold of my face; he was laughing. He put his forehead so it was touching mine.

‘Done? You’re so sweet,’ he said. Then he kissed me once, hard on the lips, and I startled – Joe’s face, that mouth, suddenly right there, like the last sixteen years hadn’t happened at all. I lifted my face instinctively for more, but he was pulling me by the hand. ‘We’re not sixteen any more, you know,’ he said. ‘And, anyway, what happened to the naughty Robyn King I know and love?’

‘She grew up,’ I said, not knowing if he heard me. He took me inside anyway. The bales were piled right up to the ceiling, then graduated like steps to a cluster on the floor. There was an old wardrobe, timber stacked up on one side of it; to the right, there was a tractor – or the skeleton of a tractor – about to be mended or tended to, with all its doors and metalwork removed. It was huge and looming and really quite sinister. It reminded me of a prehistoric creature, about to stir and let out a deafening roar.

We leaned back on the bottom rung of hay, and finished what was in the flask. I wasn’t wearing tights, and my legs were goose-pimpled. Joe took off his suit jacket and lay it over them. We lay back like that for a while, next to one another, just looking up at the stars that throbbed in the gaps of the corrugated-iron roof.

Then Joe said, ‘I found her, you know.’

I turned my head to him. ‘Your mum?’

‘Yes. She’d stayed up after Dad went to bed. I got up to go to the toilet in the middle of the night and the light was still on in the front room. She was sitting in the chair, but sort of half sitting on it, half slumped over, and I thought, that’s a funny position for anyone to go to sleep in – with her body all twisted, half her bum on the seat. And then I moved her hair from her face. God, it was horrible, Robbie. Her skin was grey, it looked like putty, and it had, like, slid off her face. And she was just absent, gone. All that was left was this shell …’

I took Joe’s hand and stroked it with my thumb.

‘I’m so scared I’ll never be able to get that picture out of my mind,’ he said.

I leaned over and I hugged him then. ‘You will,’ I said. ‘It takes time, but you will.’

‘Promise?’

‘It’s evolution, not revolution, remember?’

He nudged me and gave a little laugh.

‘It is,’ I said.

We stayed like that, lying down, our arms wrapped around each other, my cheek against his. I inhaled his smell. I already knew.

What did it matter? Who did care, anyway? Wasn’t this what it was about, life? Seizing the day, just being; not thinking so much all the time? It was funny, I thought, how sometimes there was nothing like death to make you feel so alive.

He pulled away from me and we hesitated, then I lifted my hands to his face. He lifted his eyes to mine. I couldn’t stop staring at that face, seeing how his eyes, or rather the person inside those eyes – his gaze – was the same. Did he see the same thing in me? Does that ever change?

‘You’re strong,’ I said. ‘Stronger than you know.’

‘Not stronger than you, everything you’ve been through, all of that.’

‘We’ve been through,’ I said. ‘You are strong.’

Silence, except for somewhere in the distance I could hear a chicken squawking. It was incongruous, a rude interruption.

‘What did we do to each other?’ he said, the words toppling out, ‘that means nothing, nobody …’ I kissed him then and the curve of his lips, the way it moved with mine, the little dance we did, it was so familiar, it shocked me; and when I looked at his face, his lovely face, I recognized it so much, it was like looking at myself. We lay back on the straw: it scratched and prickled the backs of my thighs and my arms like anything, but I couldn’t have cared less, I didn’t care about anything, I wasn’t thinking anything – that was the beauty of it. And I looked into Joe’s eyes and told myself that he didn’t want to think either – not today. We kissed, but in a frenzy, as if we had no control over our movements because we were in shock, in shock that this was happening at all; at least, that’s what it felt like. Involuntary. A brilliant, beautiful shock. I turned on my back, Joe was next to me and I wriggled my bum, so I could lift my skirt up, and started to take off my knickers.

‘What are you doing?’ whispered Joe.

‘What?’ I said, pausing.

He ran a finger down my arm.

‘I want to savour you more than that yet,’ he said. ‘I’ve got lots more kissing to get through yet. Lift up your bum, come on.’

I shifted so I could do as I was told, and he gently pulled down my dress, then arranged it on my legs and lay down next to me. I looked at him, a bit unsure then, but he moved the hair from my face, gently slipping one hand under my head, so I didn’t have to crane my neck to reach him, and kissed me – sweet, sweet kisses, on my forehead, my eyelids, my mouth. My throat had gone dry and I was trembling. He reached down and, very softly, ran the tip of his finger up my leg, just getting to my knickers, before he sent it in little circle movements across and between my thighs and, then, just as I felt I might explode, back down again. I buried my face in his chest and dug my heels into the straw, so I could bear it, this feeling that was so familiar and yet so wonderful that I doubted I could ever have had it before – like déjà vu.

He looked beautiful in the half-light – his eyes shone. The tractor skeleton loomed over us, the height of two men. But I wasn’t scared one bit; I was safe. I leaned down to undo his flies, but he put his hand over mine, stopping me; he took my hand and kissed it, then lay it across my chest. I gave a low growl of frustration and he smiled. Then he continued stroking the other leg up to my knickers again, this time stroking underneath me, a feathery, gentle touch, barely detectable through the fabric, which was wet. He pushed the material to the side, slid one finger inside me, then another, and I gasped – I couldn’t help it – and when I looked at him, my eyes wide, disbelieving, Joe looked so happy as my whole body bucked, then shuddered. I could bear it no longer. I pulled at his trousers but my hands were shaking so much that I couldn’t do it, so he kicked off his shoes, sat up and wriggled out of them.

‘I haven’t got one,’ he said.

‘It’s okay,’ I said, pulling his shoulders back. ‘It’s okay. It’s fine, honestly.’ I sat up and kissed him on the neck. ‘Just come here, please … For God’s sake.’

‘Robyn …’

‘Come on!’

I took my knickers off and flung them to the side; we were both giggling now and shivering, half with cold, half with desire.

I lay back down and then Joe was inside me, the length of his whole, warm, strong body against mine. I wanted to cry, I was so happy, and I cried out again. When I flung my head to the side, I saw that a chicken had wandered into the barn. I could make out its fat, black body silhouetted; its shadow was long on the straw floor, and in the moonlight its lidless eye was blinking at me.

Chapter Seven

‘Right, how do you like your eggs, Robyn?’

The atmosphere at the breakfast table at Dad’s the next day was frosty, to say the least. Denise was the martyred waitress, wafting dramatically in and out of the beaded curtain separating the dining room from the kitchen (I swear she only had it fitted so Dad could actually hear her go in and out of there). Dad was doing what he always did when there was an atmosphere: hiding behind his newspaper.

I watched him, reading the sports pages, picking his nose, unable to even believe myself, that I could possibly feel this bad. I’m not a big drinker, normally. I don’t like the feeling of being out of control. This wasn’t always the case. At university, I was that girl with traffic cones in my room, that girl to get in any old minicab. I once held up the traffic on Blackfriars Bridge when drunk (and spent a night in a police cell for the privilege). But there’s only so long you can carry on like that before you realize it’s not fair to have everyone worry constantly about you, even if you’re not worrying about yourself. Now, I never drink so much I’m out of control. Last night, I did. Maybe I felt safe? Still, I wasn’t going to let Denise have the satisfaction of knowing that.

I sat motionless at the dining table, my throbbing head slowly catching up with the pleasant dull ache between my thighs. If I sort of pursed my lips and closed my eyes, I could still smell Joe on my top lip: his muskiness, Jack Daniel’s. When Denise came marching back from the kitchen, I felt like she’d caught me in the act.

She plonked a cup of tea down in front of me.

‘You look like you need that,’ she said. The slogan on it said: DO YOU TAKE ME FOR A MUG? I chose not to take this personally. Then she rattled through the beaded curtain, to make my poached eggs. I might have helped, but feared that, if I moved, I’d most definitely be sick.

From behind his newspaper, Dad tutted. ‘How come madam here gets to choose what type of eggs she gets? It’s not a bloody hotel, you know …’

‘Really?’ said Denise from the kitchen. ‘You could have fooled me.’

I apologized for waking people up; it’s much easier that way. Apparently, I’d come in at after 3 a.m., then set the smoke alarm off by making a bacon sandwich. Denise said my dress was left in a heap by the toilet, still in the shape that I’d stepped out of it (and I could go and pick it up when I was ready, too).

‘Did you get back to sleep, Denny, love?’ Dad said.

‘No, but it’s fine,’ she said. (Fine, fine, fine.) ‘I’ll have a nap later, if I get the chance.’

Denise was huffing and puffing and clattering in the kitchen. I was taking slow, tentative slurps of tea, looking through the French doors at the dull grey sky and the grey concrete. When Mum was alive, that garden was a mass of wild flowers and colour; six months after Denise moved in (which was only two after Mum died, Christmas ’96, just to add insult to injury), she had it paved over – apparently because she had a ‘bad back and found it hard to garden’. Maybe it was this which angered me – this feeling I can’t seem to shake, that Dad has let Denise pave over him, us. Maybe it was the thought that if Mum could see those grey slabs, she’d be so disappointed, or that last night had ignited something in me, set some kind of change in motion. Whatever it was, I felt daring. I was not leaving this house without the ashes.

‘Right, so,’ I announced suddenly, pressing my palms on the table for extra emphasis. From behind his newspaper, I saw Dad’s eyelids flicker with alarm. ‘Where are Mum’s ashes? ’Cause I’m not going home without them.’

Dad coughed and put his paper down. Denise came out, carrying my eggs, a miasma of Elnett and frying fat, the tops of her jeans swish-swishing. She stopped when she got to the table, holding the plate in her hands.

‘Well, Bruce, have you told her?’ She’d overdrawn one of her brows with eye pencil, so it went too far towards her temple. It made her look even more mad than usual.

‘Told me what?’

‘He can’t find them, Robyn,’ she said, putting my plate down.

I felt my throat constrict with panic.

‘What do you mean, you can’t find them?’ I said, my voice wobbling. ‘Dad, are you saying that you have actually lost Mum?’

‘Don’t be bloody ridiculous,’ he said.

‘Well, where are they, then? Denise, any ideas?’

I didn’t hate Denise but I didn’t trust her either. Mum was a hard act to follow and she knew it. I always got the sense with her that she’d never got over one vital fact: Dad had never wanted to end it with Mum; it ended because she died. It would have been easier for Denise if it had been divorce.

‘Because I don’t mean to be rude, and please don’t take this the wrong way, but I know you’ve sometimes found it difficult, looking at …’ Dad was boring holes into me with his eyes. I stopped just in time. ‘Just, maybe you moved them, that’s all?’

The realization that, yes, I was accusing her of hiding my mother’s ashes, made Denise’s throat flush red – was that anger, or guilt? ‘Don’t look at me,’ she said. ‘I have polished that urn every single day. I do it at the same time as I do my cats and trophies.’

That was nice, I thought, ranking all that remained of my mother with her badminton trophies and ceramic cats. And, anyway, I didn’t believe her.

‘Also, if you three girls can’t look after your mother’s ashes yourselves, well …’ She flounced off in the direction of the kitchen again. ‘I’ve done my bit.’

‘Denise, excuse me!’

Dad slammed his newspaper shut. It made me jump. ‘That is enough, Robyn, thank you. Stop talking about the ashes in front of Denise. It’s bad manners.’

Bad manners? My mum’s memory was now a bad manner?

‘And in front of your dad,’ added Denise. ‘It only upsets him.’

This was unbelievable.

‘Look, I’m not saying anyone’s put them anywhere,’ I said, finally, even though this was exactly what I was saying. ‘I just … I need them.’ And, as soon as I started talking, I became more resolute that this was absolutely what had to happen. ‘By August, by the time you move out.’ Dad was still glaring at me, petrified about what I might say next. ‘Mum wouldn’t want to be in any other house but this one; so, if she can’t be here, I want her with me.’

Chapter Eight

Dear Lily

I’ve so many emotions flying around, I don’t know what to do with myself. I’m telling myself, I’m always like this when I’ve been back to Kilterdale, and this time was so much more poignant – for obvious reasons – but I’m sitting here, writing this on the train, crying my eyes out. God knows what the other passengers think of me.