In a Cottage, In a Wood Page 3

  ‘Because Mummy said you must be nice to her today and you said God, I’ll try but I’m not promising anything. And then Mummy hit you on the arm.’

  Steve barks a sharp embarrassed laugh. ‘Well …’

  Neve smiles weakly.

  ‘I’m fine, Lot,’ she says. ‘Nothing wrong with me, look.’ She holds her arms up and does a strange little turn. She’s not sure why she has done it.

  Lottie runs back into the living room, mind already elsewhere. Steve ferociously begins organizing snacks, head bent as he chops carrots and decants houmous into a Tupperware pot.

  Neve makes herself coffee and toast.

  ‘Anyway,’ says Steve now in a low voice. ‘Sorry about the … thing … that happened. Must have been rough to see.’

  ‘Thanks,’ murmurs Neve. ‘It was.’

  Half an hour later the family are ready to go. Maisie arches her back and complains as she is strapped into the buggy, while Lou says encouraging things with a bright, cheerful voice that feels like nails on glass to Neve’s ear.

  They call goodbye to Neve, who collapses with relief onto the sofa and takes out her phone, grateful that she remembered to charge it when she got home.

  Her thumb moves across the screen and before she can stop herself she has stroked up Daniel’s number. She hovers over it, filled with a dragging desire to speak to him.

  Before she can change her mind she taps out a message.

  Can I come round 2 pick up few things?

  She hesitates and then adds an N and an X. Just the one.

  Neve is suddenly desperate to tell him what happened last night and once again begins to shuffle through the pack of images in her head.

  She thinks about the first sight of her, Isabelle, looking across the water. It seems strange now that Neve’s first thought wasn’t that she was a potential suicide. Ridiculous, in fact. But she’d been cold and tired. Still a bit drunk, not to mention a little humiliated by what had happened with Whatsisname. She wasn’t really thinking straight.

  With a shiver she remembers those last seconds; the cold lips on her cheek and the whispered words in her ear.

  What had she said? She should remember a soon-to-be-dead woman’s last words. Isn’t that the very least she can do?

  Neve holds her head tightly in her hands and stares at the wooden floorboards splashed with pale winter sun, trying to dredge up the exact memory.

  But it has gone.

  So instead she taps on Safari and searches for local news about a woman jumping off a bridge. Of course there is nothing. She realizes as she is doing it that this is not even news for London. She wonders how many people have thrown themselves into the Thames in the last year. Probably loads.

  Her phone pings with a text and she snatches it up.

  Not around much this week and away for Xmas. Can we make it in the NY.

  There’s no question mark. No D. And no X.

  And before she gets any warning that it is coming, she is crying. Hard, hot tears course down her face and she clamps her arms around herself, rocking with grief.

  6

  Neve’s office is set to close for Christmas a couple of days later.

  Portland Cavendish Crafts is a publisher of specialist magazines on Gray’s Inn Road. Across from the reception desk at which Neve sits for eight mind-numbingly boring hours every day is a stand filled with various magazines with cheerful titles in colourful fonts, titles such as Cross Stitch Crazy and Creative Craft Weekly.

  When she had first started here, she’d vaguely thought she might become a journalist. Wasn’t this the kind of career thing successful people said? They were all, ‘Oh, I started out making tea and now I am the Controller of the BBC,’ and the like. She imagined herself laughing fondly about the funny old magazines she used to write for, before she was taken on in some blurrily defined way for a more glamorous position elsewhere.

  She doesn’t particularly want to be a journalist anyway, which is a good thing because five years on she’s still answering the telephone and saying, ‘PCC, can I help you?’

  More often than not she says, ‘No, I’m sorry, this isn’t the Police or the Press Complaints Commission,’ and, ‘No, that’s IPC. It’s a different magazine company.’

  The rest of the time she photocopies things and tries to do as little work as humanly possible while still getting paid a salary. A terrible salary, but it had been just enough to live on when she was with Daniel.

  Now that she is staying with Lou and Steve, it’s almost but not quite enough to live on. But it certainly isn’t enough to live on judging by the flat shares she sees circled pointedly in Biro by Steve on the dining room table.

  This is one of the things that causes icy licks of fear in Neve’s stomach late at night.

  Now she attends to the few admin jobs required before the office closes and ponders miserably the thought of a whole week under Lou and Steve’s feet.

  His prim parents are coming for Christmas Day and she can already feel the claustrophobia of sitting around the table and wishing someone else would have a second glass of wine.

  She hears a loud out-breath now and looks up to see Miri, bent over the photocopier. Her friend is tiny – barely five feet – and with her swollen body is now almost as wide as she is tall. She kneads a fist into her back and groans quietly.

  Neve told Miri all about the woman on the bridge as soon as she was back at work. Once, Miri would have been agog at a story like this but late pregnancy has made her formerly feisty friend oddly fearful about the world. Miri looked away from her as she described the moment Isabelle jumped off the bridge; Neve had sensed she didn’t really want to hear it, even though she had made the right noises and hugged her friend awkwardly, the hard bullet of her belly nudging Neve’s side.

  A few moments later she had scurried away, eyes gleaming. It made Neve feel as though she was the one who had done something shocking and violent.

  She’s gazing balefully at her friend now when someone comes through the double doors and stops by the desk. It’s Fraser, the editor of Modeller Monthly, a magazine filled with stories about model trains that is, bafflingly to Neve, one of CPP’s best sellers.

  He’s only in his thirties but favours tweedy academic-looking jackets and, with his unfashionable glasses and thin pale hair, looks much older. He behaves as though he’s the editor of a major broadsheet and heaven help anyone who cracks jokes about the readership, as Neve has done many times.

  It’s why, she thinks, he likes to throw his weight around with her, and gets her to do silly little admin jobs he’s perfectly capable of doing himself.

  She pretends not to notice him, so he has to clear his throat. It’s childish, but she takes her pleasures where she can in this job. Looking up, she rewards him with a beaming smile, all teeth and sparkly eyes, which makes the tips of his ears flush almost purple.

  ‘Uh, yes, Neve,’ he says, quickly, ‘I wonder if I can trouble you to do something for me.’

  Neve leans over, conspiratorial, and says, ‘Fraser, you know that serving your needs is what I live for.’

  She’s hoping Miri will hear and that they can snigger about it later, but she glances over to see that Miri has finished her copying job and gone.

  ‘I did actually email you about this earlier,’ Fraser says pointedly and Neve, chastised, lets her grin slide away.

  ‘Phones have been crazy,’ she lies.

  ‘Yes, well, anyway, there was a problem with some of the subs for Creative Stamp Monthly and Weave It,’ he says. ‘I need you to send out a standard apology letter to the readers affected.’ He pauses and his eyes gleam as he adds, ‘There are quite a few. Should keep you busy for a while.’ He hands her a sheet of paper, dense with names and addresses.

  Neve takes it from him and murmurs that she will get on to it. As he moves away with his quick, pigeon-toed walk, she watches him go and thinks there’s no sport in this job any more. She is suddenly filled with an overwhelming weariness.


  She turns the switchboard to the answering machine and goes to the Ladies to hide for a while. Inside the cubicle she blows her nose furiously until the desire to cry passes.

  When she is washing her hands she hears a flushing toilet. She’d thought she was the only one in there and is relieved when it’s Miri who emerges from the cubicle.

  ‘Christ on a bike,’ says her friend. ‘I swear it would be easier to wear a nappy and be done with it. That’s the sixth time I’ve had to pee since nine.’ She pauses and sees Neve’s blotchy face. ‘Oh, what’s the matter, honey? Thinking about Mum and Dad?’

  One of the many reasons Neve loves Miri is that her friend is capable of mentioning Neve’s orphan state.

  Neve shrugs and washes her hands. When she speaks, her voice is thick and snotty.

  ‘Not really. Just … this place, you know? Can’t believe I’m still here sometimes.’

  Miri washes her hands and regards her in the mirror, her brow creased and her eyes soft.

  ‘Well you’re not alone there,’ she says kindly. ‘Anyway, not long now until the holidays.’

  Neve snorts, impatiently.

  ‘Yeah, I’m really excited about Christmas,’ she says, deadpan, then makes a doomy face in the mirror.

  ‘Spending it with Mr and Mrs Tight Arse?’ says Miri doing a pert, rabbitty gesture with hands bent like paws.

  ‘Yep,’ says Neve. ‘Yay.’

  Miri sighs. ‘You know I’d have you to mine in a shot,’ she says, ‘but I have several million aunties and uncles coming over in order to create my own festive hell.’ She slips into a broad Indian accent and waggles her head, ‘You need to eat a bit more, Amira-Ji, or that baby is going to come out a lanky bean like his father.’

  Neve laughs as she throws the tissue into the bin.

  ‘Arjan is dreading it,’ continues Miri with a sigh. ‘It’s his first one where he hasn’t been on call and he’d rather be there. Can you imagine preferring to help sick people than have a family gathering? That’s my lot for you.’ Miri holds her hand up with a flourish, as though revealing words on a banner. ‘The Sharma family: Not quite as much fun as a winter vomiting virus.’

  Neve laughs and feels cheered up, a little.

  Miri pauses before speaking. ‘Hey, I’ve been meaning to ask you. Did you find out anything else about that woman? The one who killed herself?’

  Neve shakes her head, mood instantly sinking again. ‘I tried Googling it,’ she says. ‘But I think too many people in London top themselves for it to be news.’

  Miri makes a disapproving sound in her throat. ‘That’s depressing. Still,’ she says, perking up, ‘for all you know, they may have rescued her. Why don’t you ring the police and ask someone? You have the right to know. You were there, after all.’

  Neve takes her mobile out into the stairwell for privacy.

  It takes ages for her to be put through to anyone who can help. She starts off with 999, then is directed to another department. Finally, after being on hold for almost five minutes, she’s connected with a bored-sounding woman who tells her someone will look on the system for further information and then puts her on hold again.

  Neve sighs and entertains the possibility of hanging up. But no, she needs to see this through.

  Eventually a different woman comes to the phone. She sounds a little warmer.

  ‘Hello, you were asking about the suicide from Waterloo Bridge on December twenty-first?’ she says.

  ‘Yes, that’s right.’ Neve’s heart speeds up and she finds herself clutching the receiver, her hand damp. There’s a pause.

  ‘I’m afraid a body was found the following morning.’

  ‘Oh …’ Neve puffs out the word in a sigh. She didn’t know what else she had been expecting, but the news still feels electric and cold in her stomach.

  ‘Did you know the individual?’ the woman continues brightly.

  ‘Well, no, I was just there. You see …’

  She finds herself recounting the whole thing again, while the woman on the other end of the phone clucks, ‘Oh dear’ and ‘What a shame,’ at key points.

  When she has finished, the woman lowers her voice a fraction before speaking again. ‘Look,’ she says. ‘It’s very common in these situations to feel guilty and think you could have done something. But put it this way, this was someone who was serious.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ says Neve, sitting forward in her chair.

  ‘Well,’ there’s a pause, ‘she made certain provisions to make sure she sank quickly.’

  Neve quickly scans her memories of what the woman, Isabelle, had looked like. There was no coat that could be filled with stones, à la Virginia Woolf. She wasn’t carrying anything. So how on earth did she weigh herself down enough to drown? She pictures that silky dress, clinging to Isabelle’s thin frame. The swishiness of it and the jarring sense that it was from another, more glamorous time.

  ‘I just don’t get it,’ she says miserably. ‘She was only wearing an evening dress.’

  There’s a brief silence and then the woman speaks all in a rush. ‘Look, I’m not sure whether I ought to release this information without the family’s permission but you were the one who had to see it all so, well …’

  She clears her throat and lowers her voice further. ‘It was the hem of her dress, you see,’ she says. ‘She’d sewed lead curtain tape all around the bottom of it. This was enough extra weight for someone of that size to sink.’

  Neve’s stomach lurches. ‘Oh God,’ she says. ‘That’s awful.’

  ‘Yes, it’s terrible,’ says the woman. ‘She had obviously done her homework. In that stretch of the Thames, most people are rescued before there’s any prospect of drowning, you see. Such a shame. She really meant business, the poor thing.’

  7

  ‘No more for me, thanks Stephen.’ Steve’s mother Celia puts a small, neat hand, tipped with shell-pink polish, on top of her glass of wine. She has been nursing the same glass for the last two hours.

  Her husband Bill is engaging their son in a lengthy discussion about the shortcomings of the M4 and the A406. This is a follow-on from the same conversation earlier.

  Steve nods and is trying to look interested, while simultaneously shooting looks at his small daughter, who is sitting with a mutinous expression on her face. Lottie has been recently reprimanded by her grandmother for whining and looks ready to blow at any moment.

  They are sitting at the table with the wreckage of Christmas dinner in front of them. The gold tablecloth is a battleground of spilled peas, which Lottie had refused to eat, rings from glasses and small lumpy mounds of red wax from the festive candle that is melting like a squashed volcano in the middle of the table.

  Neve stifles a yawn.

  Today seems to have been going on for an eternity. At five a.m. she was woken from a dream about Daniel by the study door opening and the sound of feet padding across the floorboards.

  She’d kept her eyes firmly closed, then felt laboured breathing hot on her cheek. After a moment Lottie had announced in a stage whisper that, ‘Mummy and Daddy say it is too early to see if Santa has been.’

  ‘That’s because it is too early,’ Neve had groggily replied. Then, when Lottie showed no sign of going back to bed, ‘Why don’t you go and have a look on your own?’

  She hadn’t even been aware, really, of what she was saying; she’d only wanted Lottie to go away. And she certainly didn’t remember saying, ‘Yes, you definitely are allowed to get started on the presents,’ as was later claimed by the little curly-haired Judas.

  But it turned out she had committed a crime of major proportions an hour later when she heard raised voices from the sitting room.

  Lottie had gaily skipped away and unwrapped everything under the tree, including everyone else’s gifts. She had eaten a whole selection box and was starting on the handmade Belgian chocolates meant for her grandma before anyone else got up.

  Lou had been tearful because a special moment – when
the family all discovered the presents together – had been ruined. She had been planning to film the whole thing. Lou was, in Neve’s opinion, an obsessive chronicler of her family life. She would have unfollowed her sister on Facebook because of this, had she been able to get away with it.

  Steve, surveying his guilty-faced daughter, and the colourful piles of ripped paper, wore an expression that wasn’t at all Christian. Neve was in the doghouse.

  He spent the rest of the morning cooking and refused all offers of help, while retaining a beleaguered air.

  Lou has been brittle with tension all day. She doesn’t like Celia and Bill, Neve knows this. But she seems to think that if she refrains from criticizing them, even to Neve, then she will somehow find a deeper reservoir of tolerance.

  Neve has resolved to be the model guest for the rest of the day. When Bill resorts to one of his favourite topics of conversation – namely, the fact that the ‘UK is an island with limited resources and it’s time something was done about our border controls’ – Neve smiles sweetly and suggests she clear the table and wash up.

  Celia regards her as she hands over her smeared plate.

  ‘So how is the flat hunting going, Neve?’ she says. Neve hears Lou quietly sigh.

  ‘Bit slowly,’ she says with a small laugh. ‘Everywhere is so expensive. But I am looking!’ She sets her jaw as she picks up more plates, hoping for a quick exit from this conversation. But Celia isn’t finished.

  ‘Have you ever thought about moving back to your home town?’ she says. ‘Do you have any people there? Remind me. I mean,’ she adds, hurriedly, ‘I know you don’t have your mum and dad any more, but is there anyone else? Wider family?’

  Lou shoots her a panicked look. Celia knows full well that Lou and Neve are the only ones left. Steve has two siblings with five children between them, several aunts and uncles, and his grandparents only died in the last couple of years. He’s positively rotten with family, thinks Neve. He has no idea what it is like to be an island that only contains two, yet is still somehow crowded.