Excerpt: Eternity's Sunrise

The two girls. Sue and Anne. I need new names for them. They make unlikely friends but they do. The one finds out that a man she is in love with, or thinks that she is in love with, has committed suicide. She has a relationship with another man she is not attracted to and gets terrible toothache every time she sees him. The other, she’s bright and individual and has a straight-laced button down Christian roommate. Her brother is killed on his bicycle when she and Sue are at their home. It’s a terrible thing, truly terrible. This boy, who everyone loved. I still can’t believe it really. He was also unusual, quirky, made himself sound like a working class lad when he wasn’t, when his father taught Latin and Greek at his school and his mother taught physics and then came home and cared for her beautiful garden and cooked for all of us and organised charity events and took care of everything, everyone, the perfect, capable, unfailingly strong mother, so proud of her son. He was on his way, scholarship and all, to Cambridge. Or was it Oxford, I forget. Earning a few pounds extra to go abroad for a while before university, working at a pub, cycled home late at night, driven over by a drunk. I remember the knock on the door. Past one in the morning. Maybe later. I was in Anne’s room. John was late, but that wasn’t unusual. That knock on the door. I woke immediately. Perhaps I was awake already, perhaps Anne and I were chatting quietly, giggling, girl talk. We loved to chat. I loved her. Where is she now? We lost touch. Lives too different. Chatting quietly there, in the dark, and that knock knock knock. Loud and solemn. Too loud. The spaces between like pauses, like the intake of breath, a deep breath, not wanting to breathe out, not wanting to go on, not wanting to disturb this family, to have the father switch on the porch light, open the door, still wrapping his dressing gown around, his heart thumping, knowing, knowing, something, praying in the back of his mind somewhere, not so loud as to be heard, but praying, no, the pause between the knocks a wish that this was not to be, but it was, to shatter this family, to break a mother’s heart as she stood there, her long grey hair falling like cold water down her back, her eyes so wide they are like two dark fists, and the girls, Anne an me, sitting bolt upright in bed, hearing the low rumble of a policeman’s voice, a kindly voice, a voice trying to make it alright when it couldn’t be alright, how could it, their son was dead.

And then the screaming, it was Anne, the both of us now at the top of the stairs so we could hear what was going on, and we did, and then she screamed, a wail of pain like I’d never heard before, her body fighting as I held her, rocked her, held her tighter when she fought me, her fists against my back, no, no, no, no, no.

Over her weeping I heard the policeman say, “I’m afraid you’ll have to identify the body”. The body. His seventeen-year-old, long, angular, quirky, boy body. His smile, a smile for everyone. John had the ability to make the most avoided person in a room feel liked, feel included. He’d made friends with the old janitor at his school. A man decrepit in body and feeble in mind, no good for anything but cleaning toilets. But John sought him out, hung out with him in the late afternoon after school. He’d sometimes leave earlier than he needed in the morning, so he could say hello and a few words to this janitor before he started class. Just because he knew the man was lonely. Because he knew no-one talked to him, least of all the boys at the school.

I held Anne, her weeping quieter, her fight over, a folding-in inside of her, it was too much. I couldn’t imagine going to view the body. I couldn’t imagine that, so I didn’t. We went downstairs into the arms of her mother. Arms I knew could hardly hold us at all and so I held her instead, the both of them, and then I made tea. Anne and Rachel, her younger sister, sat on the couch. Rachel’s face white and solid as if made of marble. It hasn’t sunk in yet I thought. I didn’t think. It was too awful to think so I kept myself busy with the tea, making it strong as tar, too much sugar, hot, for everyone. The night a blur of weeping and tea, salty tea with my own tears which I felt I shouldn’t be having, not now, I needed to be strong for them, for them all and I wanted someone else to do it because I wanted to curl up and cry and be held and rocked. I wanted to wake up and it all to have been a bad dream.

The policemen in their car and their knocking and our wailing must have woken the neighbours, thank god, I thought, as Philip walked in, his mother behind, bustling, taking charge, big strong arms, Philip’s rowers arms, his mother refilling the kettle, so I could let go, just for a moment. Philip, John’s best friend, a boy-man I’d fallen in love with, until one day he took me aside and said, “I like you very much. Just not that way,” and he said it so kindly I could stop being in love with him and just be friends. Perhaps I loved him more truly after that.

None of us slept that night. Anne’s father came home finally. He looked shrunken, as if his bones had collapsed inside of his body. His face, usually so boyish and button-shining, a twinkle in his bright eyes, was the face of an old man. His wife found her strength and went to him and took him to their room. I do not know what happened behind that closed door, I do not want to imagine.

The days. The endless days. Into nights. The waves of crying of fury, of disbelief. I think we all lived on tea and toast for over a week.

It simply could not be. Not this boy. Anyone but this boy. “It should have been me,” Anne wept at night, “it should have been me.” The mother would have gladly given her life too, over and over again. The father the same. The two of them were broken. They died a little the both of them, maybe more than a little. Whoever it is who gathers the souls together not only gathered John’s, but a little piece of each one of his family’s souls. Never to return. I know this, even though I have lost touch with all of them, I knew them for years afterwards, and I could tell, they were not as before. Something deep had broken off and flown away, far far away.

The days, the endless days. Soupy with grief. The moments, the minutes, the hours of suddenly feeling nothing, nothing at all. As if the body could not carry so much sadness and had to shut down. Moments, minutes, hours, of feeling quite all right, and then thinking, “I can’t feel all right, I can’t” and so I made myself weep again, and John’s mother watched and said, “Poor Sue, poor poor Sue’ and I felt guilty for making her think I was the one who needed comforting.

Like a dream. The days moved by thickly, endless visitors, the aunts and uncles the cousins, so many of them, every single one broken for they loved John, they all loved John. I sometimes wondered if life would ever change back to how it was. I wondered if we’d live like this forever, moving like sleep-walkers between each other, staggering into arms for a moment, pulling away because it was too much, the holding made one remember the pain, it was better to hold oneself together, pulling everything inside, making ourselves into a shield, hiding the wretchedness, the pumping hearts. We were all walking wounded, a slow seepage inside, held in by skin. I cannot know what it was like for John’s parents. I cannot know what it was like for Anne. But I was there, soaking up the atmosphere like old blotting paper until I too was wrung dry, empty, finished, and then it was the day of the funeral.

The All Saints church in Henley. The church in Marlow was too small. A great church, the All Saints, church choirs from all over the country came to sing, orchestras came to play. Great stone walls, bell tower, rolling meadow all around. It held maybe five hundred people, maybe more. And still it was not big enough. The pews were filled, crammed, people standing in the aisles, a crowd packed outside, the grounds filled with people. The whole village came. John’s school where he was prefect, head boy, his father’s school, one of the best in the country, came. Every single boy and teacher and principal and their families came. All the people John had ever spoken a kind word to came, and there were hundreds. There were so many people Anne and I could hardly move, could hardly get close to the lacquered black coffin. We stood back, and then further back, somehow knowing this time was not ours, it was theirs, this great crowd, every person there. It was their time to grieve. We had had ours, and we would continue to have our time, but now, it was theirs, from first-form boys looking stunned and stuffed into their smart black suits to the janitor, in his grey best, standing at the back of the church, hands wringing.

John’s death had happened during the summer holiday. Anne and I went back to university, back to our women’s residence, with it’s dry and echoey corridors and gaggles of girls and stoney faced hall-mistress. We heard that his killer, the drunk driver, had been incarcerated for man-slaughter. It was over. John’s father went back to teaching Latin and Greek, his mother back to teaching physics. They pulled up their socks and stiffened their lips and they and carried on. They had children and people who needed them. But their life had flickered and dimmed and while perhaps they did not weep in public anymore, I am sure they did behind the closed door of their bedroom, in that too-quiet house. Even Rachel began to disappear from this house, finding excuses not to come home where the absence of her adored brother was like an incurable, contagious illness. Anne went back to her studies, French and English, to her dry-faced Christian room mate, and I went back to my little room next to theirs and shut the door. I pulled the little grate over the gas flame and filled the copper kettle from my sink. I put it on the flame and waited for it to boil. I was alone. No one was weeping. No one needed me. I didn’t know how I would go on.

Day Five

Chris had yellow hair that sprouted out of his head in thin, limply-hanging curls. When he smiled his teeth picked up the colour of his hair, were mis-matched and crooked but it was an appealing, mischievous smile. He wore layers – thick, yellowing woolen jumpers over pastel-coloured flannel shirts and over all this maybe a blue satin waistcoat that had seen better days. Tweed pants, brown leather shoes. And always, a long, hand-knitted scarf his grandmother had given him. She gave him a new one every year, and every year he carefully folded the old one up and put it away in the bottom of his chest of drawers, and faithfully wore the new one, which was just like the old one, ten foot long and stripes of every colour that did not go together. He wrote poetry and had a PHd in chemistry. I thought he was funky. Bohemian. Brilliant, of course. I liked them brilliant. I was bohemian too so we seemed a good match. If I had also been brilliant I’d have known something was wrong from the start.

He smelled. Old wool, wet wool. Sweat. Long damp trudges up craggy Cornish mountains composing verse. My girl in red, So beautiful, So sad, he wrote to me. A scribbled poem on pale yellow hand-made Japanese paper. There was more to the poem but I was only interested in the beautiful part. I wasn’t sad. Was I?

My room. My own room. The fireplace where I could make my own tea. The bay window looking out over Clifton. The parquet floor, the little sink in the corner. My refuge. I liked having visitors, even when they climbed in through the window like Muttter did once, bringing me a single red rose, slightly battered. But when Chris came I always felt I had to air the room out afterwards, and when he was in the room I felt awkward, a fake, too young, too stupid, awry, off-kilter, as if I was a jigsaw piece trying to slot into the wrong spot. Chris came on weekends, driving up in his tiny maroon fibre-glass bodied sports car. A kit car, he said, and I nodded, as if I knew what that meant. I wondered if fibre-glass wasn’t rather unsafe, but I kept my thought to myself and climbed in.

Where to, doll? Chris asked, squealing the wheels down Hannover street towards the M3. I don’t know, I said, surprise me. He grinned, that crooked grin, those teeth.His hair looked like it hadn’t been washed in weeks. I wound the window down a bit, breathed in the smell of rain and hay. Square fields flashing past. Rolling. So green they looked artificial. The vast, perfect rolls of hay dotted over as if an artist had placed them carefully, so they’d catch the afternoon light, just so. Copses of trees, forests in miniature. My hair flicked into my mouth, my eyes. I liked this, here now. Driving. Going. Moving. Nothing to do but watch the cars flit behind us as we passed them, the pretty villages, idyllic-looking, as if out of a child’s storybook: steepled churches, old stone houses huddled together, the market square surrounded by shops, a butcher, a baker, a candlestick maker. In the fields cows gathered close, munching, not munching, lying down, standing up. The herds seem to have one mind, whatever one cow was doing the rest did. Swallows danced and gathered and swooped in the paling sky. October, the air cooling, the light icy. I loved this time of year, it smelled of beginnings. John’s face flashed into my minds eye. Flashed past. I couldn’t do anything more. Anne seemed okay. She cried sometimes. Spoke to her parents every day. If I wanted to I could hear what she said – the residence telephone was right outside my door. I tried not to listen and sometimes I put my ear against the door. “I love you mum,” she said. A pause while her father got on the line.” I love you daddy, ” she said, her voice breaking, “I love you.” I wondered what it was like to have a father. To call him Daddy. To love him. To have a mother who folded you in her arms and adored you for who you were and said so. I’d go to Marlow with Anne for half-term. I didn’t want to, not this time. I couldn’t face that house. That once-perfect house, with the once-perfect mother and the once-perfect father and the once perfect three, now only two, children. The quiet. Trying to be cheerful. Pretending we could all go on and do as we did before: chat and laugh and sit for hours over the Sunday roast discussing Socrates or Thatcher and the ongoing, endless hilarity of small boys trying to learn Latin or larger girls trying to learn physics. Pretending we weren’t in the aftermath of a war, hang-shouldered and bootless, looking for our comrade, the air impenetrable.
Penny for your thoughts? Chris asked.
Nothing much, I said, rolling the window back up, shifting in my seat, my bottom was getting numb. The low car seats were unforgiving, a bit rickety, as if badly rigged for ejection, like a Batmobile. I wondered if Chris’ ‘kit’ hadn’t supplied the right seats, or if he’d found them in a junkyard. He put his hand on my thigh. I stared at it. He had bony fingers, very pale skin, freckles, slightly old-looking. He was twenty-seven, I was eighteen. I put my hand over his hand. I figured it was what he wanted, and he smiled, so I knew I was right. After a few minutes I took my hand off, used it to brush the hair out of my eyes so it looked like it had happened just like that, without me planning it. I wondered if he’d want to have sex. He usually did. I hoped it would be somewhere warm, not like last time, on a dog-smelling rug outside, me watching the leaves of an ancient oak tree, counting the serrations on the leaves, wondering if the thing poking into my back was an acorn or a stone.
You alright Doll? Chris asked, his hand now on my arm, and then back on the wheel, his head turned to me, the car slowing, windscreen wipers on, drizzling. At least it wouldn’t be outside, I thought. Too wet. And couldn’t be sure. Chris seemed impervious to the damp, underneath all those layers.
Just thinking about John, I said. His lips pursed. He slowed the car. Put his hand back on mine and this time I didn’t try to take it away.
I’m sorry, he said. I waited for more, but there wasn’t any more. I was grateful he didn’t try to fill the space with words. There wasn’t anything to say, not anymore. Not about that.
Tell me about your father, he said.
What?
Your father, tell me about him.
You mean the accident? I’ve already told you. I didn’t want to have this conversation again. Not now. I wanted to stare out the window and watch the world go by, I wanted to be in suspended animation, not talk about my father. I had nothing to say about him. There was no point.
What do you remember about him?
I think I’ve said. I don’t remember much.
Tell me again.
Where are we going? I asked, trying to change the subject. Chris’ lips pursed again. He glanced at me, waited for me to look. I pretended not to see. I stared straight ahead at a truck in front of us, slowing, flashing his indicator, turning, the back wobbling and creaking, filled with slatted wooden boxes. Chickens, I thought. Poor things. I could smell them, the musty feather and fear smell.
To my grandmother’s. It’s not far, another half-hour. We can stop at a pub on the way if you’re hungry, but there’s food there.
I felt my insides soften. His grandmother’s. This was to be a social visit. No sex. Tea and buttered crumpets maybe. My stomach grumbled.
Let’s go straight there, I said, my mouth salivating. I’d always wanted to meet his grandmother, the way Chris had talked about her she seemed quirky and wonderful and funny, not like my grandmother who was quirky but definitely not wonderful or funny, not intentionally. She was a fright in crimplene and had lost her marbles one Christmas dinner three years ago, falling face forward into her christmas pudding, waking up moments later to a whole new world of Johnny Noo Noos and the Ding Dongs. I couldn’t remember one nice word she’d ever said to me, either before or after her world-view change and I doubted there would be one coming. In fact I wondered if I’d ever see her again, shut away as she was in an institution for the mad, the bad and the terminal.
It’s okay if you don’t want to talk, Chris said. I understand. Sometimes it’s too difficult.
Fuck him, I thought, feeling irritated that he kept hammering at me. It wasn’t too difficult. I’d told him everything already. I’d enjoyed telling him, who doesn’t, sharing their story to willing ears, to pea-coloured eyes that looked like they listened, a mouth that looked like it cared. But to keep having it poked at as if there was something more, better, deeper, something that you needed to know, have waved in front of you like a bit of flayed meat on a stick? As if what was really important was what you didn’t remember, what you didn’t know, as if who you were right now wasn’t enough. I tried to think of something to say. Something to stab him with.
How’s the poetry going? Anything published?
Chris shifted gear, accelerated, moved into the passing lane almost side-swiping a lumbering green Volvo.
My editor wants some changes, Chris said as he slowed down, heading for the slip road to Tiverton.
Oh? Good one’s?
No. I need a new editor.
Right.
We drove on in silence, the rain thickening. The glass was steaming up. Chris’ wet-wool-and-sweat smell snaked around me. I pulled myself closer to the door and then worried that it might fall open with my weight. My tongue explored a back tooth. I stared at the lines of water running down my window trying to ignore Chris’ disappointment. It was adding to the fug, a pinching at the back of my head, a vinegary feeling in my throat. I slumped. Tiredness washing over. Something throbbed slightly inside my mouth where my tongue had explored. He was only trying to be kind, I told myself, pulling my body upright, opening the window a little for some fresh air as we slowed through a small village, people huddled in doorways, apple bright cheeks, chatting, smiling, watching our peculier little sports car dip and curve over the cobblestones.
I loved your poem to me, I half-lied. I had liked that he called me beautiful. I liked watching the disapproving frown of our residence-matron as she handed me the envelope scrawled with his spidery, elegant handwriting, addressed to The Girl in Red, my name underneath. It made me feel important, grown up, a woman. Someone’s mistress, wild, naughty. Maybe French, as in a Guy de Maupassant novel.
You did? Chris said brightly, tossing his virulent scarf off his chest. It caught in the wheel, flipped off and then back onto his chest. I thought of Isadora Duncan, dragged to the road by her silk scarf, knotted in the spokes of the car’s wheels. Tragic. It was a word Chris had used in his poem about me.
I’m glad, he said. His arms straightened, his hands caressing the wheel. He looked like a race-car driver from the 20’s.
We exited the village, and then slowed down beside a string of small white and very quaint thatched cottages on the outskirts. Chris parked with a flourish, all spin and neat angles, none of which was needed since we had miles of parking space and the car was the smallest car on the road other than a mini.
We’re here, he said, running his hand through his limp curls.
I jiggled the car handle. I could never get it to work and it couldn’t be opened from the outside. Chris always used my inadequacy to lean over and open it for me, pressing his wooly body into mine but he was out the car already, stretching his arms to the sky, making a fake-yawning sound. He leaned back in, his scarf dragging in the gutter, soaking up mud-coloured rain water.
OK, doll? Need some help?
I just thought, I said, and it was true, I had, maybe we should have brought something?
Like what?
For your grandmother. We could go back to the village, some fruit or a bottle of wine, or, I don’t know, something?
She’s not here, he said. My insides wavered like an unstable card castle. She’ll be here later, I thought quickly, trying to shore the castle up.
We’ve got the place to ourselves, Chris added, winking at me. For the whole day. Night too, if we want. Chris grinned at me, his too-pink lips like a girls, his body-odour re-filling the car as he climbed back in and leaned over me to open my door, his sodden scarf draped heavily across my lap, his unshaven cheek brushing as if by mistake against mine and the gentle throbbing in my mouth now a massive, incessant and unbearable toothache.

Day Six.

The first time was easy, just as Anne had said. It happened one innocuous night in the autumn term. We'd gone to Ice Dreamz after supper. It hadn't been a good day. Old fusty had gone on and on about the Carthaginian wars. The Romans were their usual rampaging selves, off to add another bit to the empire just because they could. Thousands and thousands died on both sides and in the end Rome won of course. The only interesting bit was Hannibal marching his elephants over the Pyrenees, but Old Fusty said we could 'read up on that bit' and just droned on and on about siege engines and Roman fighting manoeuvres. In the library that afternoon I'd discovered the Carthaginians had used women's hair to make catapults. I decided I'd make sure my essay topic, 'Innovations in Roman Warfare Tactics' included the marvellous culture of the Phoenicians that Rome had crushed like a bully rubbing out the wings of a butterfly between his fingers.
Anne and I had supper together, well as together as you can in a women's communal residence. Often I took my food to my room. This time I battled it out in the kitchen with everyone else. Supper was my usual: salmon fish cakes made from mashed tinned salmon, finely chopped onion and parsley, a beaten egg and some wheatgerm. I was still on my Adele Davis kick. Get the protein in. Anne had opened a tin of Heinz tomato soup. She was on another diet. The Heinz tomato soup diet. She'd scooped some cottage cheese in and I rather liked the look of it. It made my beige coloured fish cakes seem stodgy and drab. The other girls from the hall were clattering about, whipping up cream and jelly desserts, pulling trays of sizzling sausages out of the oven, thickly buttering great slabs of white bread. I made a space for myself at the table, as far away from all the girly fuss as I could. I ate my fish cakes slowly, trying to make them last. I pointedly stared at the lumpen plates of food the other girls were preparing for themselves.
You can't just have that, one of the women said, you'll fade away to nothing at all!
It's very healthy, I said, swallowing down another dry mouthful, smiling at Anne who had finished her soup and was trying to lick the bowl.
That's disgusting, didn't your mother ever teach you any manners? one of the other women said, scraping bacon fat from a charred frying pan onto her mashed potatoes.
No, Anne said, licking her bowl again. My mother realised there were more important things in life to learn.
Did she now? And what would that be?
Knowing when to keep your big trap shut.
I almost choked on my last bit of fish cake and the whole kitchen, other than me and Anne, went 'Ooooh' in a high-pitched theatrical voice. Anne grinned and suddenly everything was back to normal, as if nothing at all had happened. Anne had a way about her. She appeared so without guile or malice, slightly awkward and goofy, she could get away with murder and people still thought, 'Oh, what a nice girl.' She was the kind of girl mother's wanted their son's to marry. A good, clean, girl. She wasn't pretty enough to be a threat, wasn't ugly enough to be pitied and she could talk to everyone no matter how stupid or intelligent they were, from the stone-faced matron to the completely dotty Professor of Medieval Languages. She even managed to have long, friendly and interesting conversations with Delia, her very holy room-mate. Anne was like her brother John in this way, only she didn't maintain her nice-ness all the time. I sometimes wondered if I was the only one who knew that Anne had a sink-drain filthy mouth when she got angry and also a deft and ribald wit, which could slice anyone to pieces should she wish, which she never did.
I washed up my meagre plate, feeling my stomach twitch at the sight of someone's bananas bubbling away in a syrup of butter and Demerara sugar. Anne had already gone, the kitchen doors swinging behind her.
Hey, I said, catching up. Want a cup of tea? I didn't feel like working on innovative Roman warfare tactics. I didn't feel like being alone in my square room.
Let's go to Dreamz, she said, thumping resolutely down the hall. I skipped to her, almost slipping on the mirror-polished floor. I suddenly feeling a lot better, a nice tingle in my stomach, my mouth watering, the night young and delectably dark, a flash of candlelight and saxophone music in the background, happy chatter of people, the cute waiter, Oh yes, let's go do Dreamz, I said.

I ordered the Hawaiian Dream. Two scoops of mango, one each of vanilla, strawberry and coconut, a great pool of chocolate sauce and freshly sliced mangoes like half-moons swimming around. Anne had a coffee, chocolate and butterscotch sundae, all sprinkles and glace cherries and a mountainous swirl of whipped cream. I had whipped cream too but it quickly melted into white ribbons in the chocolate. The place was only half-full, couples canoodling in the corners, small groups of twos or threes here and there, students like us running away into the dark warmth of the coolest café in Clifton. Handily it was but steps from our residence. They were playing Miles Davis, I was staring into space, my mouth an extravaganza of sweetness, wondering if the guy in the corner on his own was looking at me. It all looked blurry and mysterious. I smiled, waving my long silver spoon to and fro in the air like a metronome.
What are you looking at? Anne asked, tipping her glass into her mouth, staring into the bottom as if somehow there must be some more there if she looked harder.
God, you've finished already! I said. You should have had one of these, they last longer. She looked at my still half full bowl glumly for a moment. Maybe I will, she said.
You're having two? I was incredulous. The thought of allowing myself two was a sheer impossibility, like being told the moon was made of cheese. Treats were carefully parsed out. One, and only one, chocolate bar. On the weekends. Two digestive biscuits for tea. Pudding on Sundays at Anne's parents. Her mum made the best rhubarb crumbles, brown and bubbling around the edge. She always looked personally wounded when I refused dessert on weekdays.
Why not? Anne said. In for a penny, in for a pound. I'll wait until you're finished in case you want another.
Another? I blurted, spitting creamy chocolate sauce. A splodge landed on her cheek and she didn't notice so I leaned over and wiped it off with my napkin just as the guy in the corner sidled past to get to the door.
Fekkin' lezzies, he mumbled under his breath.
Anne and I stared at each other, goggle-eyed for a moment, and then we burst out laughing.
He wasn't even cute, I said.
Fuck no! Frog-faced creepo dipshit with acne. He's probably one of yours. Or Geography. They're all turds.
Got to be Geography. At least mine are intelligent.
Intelligent? Like Frank you mean? Oh yes, super bright.
I laughed. Frank was doing Latin and French and so shared some lectures with Anne. He'd formed a crush on her inspite being told, publicly and loudly in the dead-quiet of the library, “Quite frankly I'd rather go out with the hunchback of Notre Dam”. Somehow coming from her it sounded like a complement and he hadn't given up.
Yeah well. You can't be a complete idiot and do Classics.
That's a matter of opinion. Not meaning you of course darling. Shall we go to bed now? she winked mischievously, rubbing her knee lasciviously against mine. In that moment I had one of those realisations that feel like they come from somewhere vast and all-knowing, certainly wiser than I could ever be by myself: Anne was a woman any man would be lucky to have and yet very few would ever find this out.
I stared at my empty cut-glass bowl. Let's have another one first, I said, rubbing her knee back.

We staggered back to the residence, past-midnight, bloated, giggling and loopy with sugar. We pulled ourselves together as we marched towards matron. She turned to the huge clock behind her, frowned. Fingers tapping noisily on her desk.
Now girls, she said, and then she saw Anne and adjusted her face.
My dear, you should know better, she said kindly.
I'm sorry, Mrs. Lerner It won't happen again. We were hoping a change of environment would help us study, Anne said, tapping her satchel which was, as per usual, stuffed to bursting. I swear she could have gone on a jungle expedition with that bag and survived. She had everything in there from extra clothes to bags of nuts and even a screwdriver, not to mention a great quantity of books.
Mrs. Lerner? How do you know her name? I whispered as we tried to tip toe down the deathly quiet corridor to our rooms.
I just asked.
Oh, I said, feeling bereft and small and unloving. Unlovely, now that I thought about my bursting, queasy stomach.
I don't feel well, I said. I shouldn't have had another one. The dark night, my unwritten essay and my cold bed and another day of Roman warfare lumbered towards me. I wanted to go back to Dreamz, to start again, when all was possibility, a wide open road just waiting to be stepped on. Instead I was going to go to my room and crawl into a hole and feel sorry for myself.
You can do what I do, Anne said as we hovered by my door.
What's that?
Just throw it up.
Throw it up?
Vomit. It's easy.
You mean like the Romans?
Exactly. Night night, she said, sashaying awkwardly to her and Delia's room at the end of the corridor.

I lay in bed under the covers. Fully clothed, my jeans unbuttoned because I felt so fat. I'd turned my fire on but it barely heated the room. The radiators were turned off at ten thirty, when we were all supposed to be washed and tucked neatly into bed. The window rattled, drafts scuttling through on all sides. I wanted a bath but that was not allowed. No baths after nine pm. There wouldn't be any hot water anyway, not even in my little sink which was rust-stained and grimy with my own toothbrushing and cup washing. I shivered, rubbed my arms, turned my face into the pillow. I tried to think of something good. Something to look forward to. Something to cheer me up. Men. I thought about Terence for a moment. I still couldn't believe he was dead. I wondered if I should have called again, told whoever it was on the other end of the phone who I was, that Terence had loved me, had promised to introduce me to his friends, his theatre people, his poet and musician buddies, showing me the life I should be having, not this dry husk of mind-numbing lectures and pimple-faced boys. I didn't even know how he had killed himself. I imagined him, half naked, with a pen in his hand like Marat, bleeding to death in his bath. A tear fell out of my eye and onto my pillow. Two deaths in one year. It seemed a bit much. I waited for another tear, willing it out, but it never came. I turned over uncomfortably in my clothes, trying to find something else to think about. I avoided thinking about Chris and then couldn't stop myself. Our next date was on the weekend. He was in South Carolina giving a lecture on covalent reaction chemistry. I'd had no letters from him this week. I leaned over to my night-table and turned on the light. I pulled the drawer open where I kept his letters. I took out the top one, the one written on pale yellow, hand-made Japanese paper.

In the quiet I listen to the darkness, watching over you,
wanting you
But I compose myself to better hear the voice of your tragic soul

No wonder his editor wanted changes, I thought. It's really bad. Then I read the lines again, trying to find comfort, something to go to sleep to, Chris' wooly body and elf face and two-day old stubble far from my mind, just the words, disembodied, written by a lover, someone chisel faced and dark-eyed, someone who smells of soap and not wet wool, someone like... Phillip. That's better. Phillip was definitely chisel-faced and always smelled like he'd just come from the shower, his thick brown hair damp around the edges. But he didn't love me. Not that way. That's what he'd said. Not that way. Another tear squeezed out, ran down the side of my nose, hovering on my lip. I licked it up, the salt proof of my desolation.

My stomach weighed down, so uncomfortable I shifted onto my back, my blouse riding up in a bunch underneath my shoulder-blades. I couldn't bear it. Any of it. My stuffed stomach, my useless thoughts burrowing around like a rat in a cage, trying to find someone to love me like I wanted to be loved. I pulled myself to sitting. I swung my legs over the bed, my jeans cutting into my waist. I shoved them off. Stared at my pudgy, mottled and now goosebumpy thighs. I got up, put my dressing gown on and walked out into the corridor as quietly as I could.

No one was up. Even matron would be asleep, the front door locked, the nightwatchman curled up in his cubicle, snoring. The bathroom smelled of shampoo and old towels. I went to the cubicle at far end, thinking if anyone came in they'd probably go to the closest one to the door. I lifted the toilet seat, knelt down on the icy white tiles. I put two fingers down my throat, but nothing happened. It just hurt. It's easy, Anne had said. I should have asked her how she did it. I tried with my fingers again. I retched a bit but nothing came out. I felt irritation rise in me, a familiar feeling whenever I discovered I couldn't do something. I always assumed I could do anything if I really wanted to. I stood up, bent over and squeezed my stomach upwards in one great heave. I could feel it coming, the slippy thickness of icecream, warm now, almost reaching my throat, and then falling back down again. I doubled over, pulled up again, harder, and more suddenly, as if someone had punched me in the stomach. And then it all came, as easily as it went in, a great woosh of pureed chocolate and ice cream and cream and fruit. One part of me was completely engaged in vomiting, pushing again and again until it was all out, another part was way up there, in the corner somewhere, watching dispassionately, curious, noticing that in the thick puree were pieces of mango, unchewed, undigested, noticing that the brand of the toilet manufacturer was Bolding Molton, noticing that puke was getting on my hair, remembering my brother once pulling a strand of it out and putting it in his mouth, saying “Mmm, yum, oxtail soup”.
When I was quite sure I was completely empty, I flushed the toilet. I stood a moment listening in case anyone had come in, but there was no sound but the gurgle of the cistern filling up. I opened the cubicle door. I went over to the mirrors. The flickering neon light made me look green. Or was it the vomiting? Red eyes stared back at me. Holding me there. I felt as if a stranger was looking at me, someone who knew something I didn't, someone who wanted to tell me what that something was but held it in because I wouldn't understand. I brushed the hair away from my face. It was sticky at the ends. I washed my hands, splashed water on my face and walked back to my room, not trying to be quiet anymore, not caring at all, feeling as if I had entered a new dimension, a new life, dangerous and exciting. I fell into bed and curled up tightly. My fire flickered low, giving the room an eery, blue tinge. My mind was solid black, unenterable. No thoughts. Nothing. And then I was fast asleep.

Day seven

I’d met Chris the same time as I met Terence at the JACT Greek Summer School in Cheltenham. One of those languid, endless English summers. A summer for filmy cotton dresses and picnics on tartan blankets thrown over sun-warmed grassy meadows, cows lowing and curious, blinking their long eyelashes at us. A summer for blackberry picking and getting tipsy in the late afternoon on sweet glasses of Pimms, a summer for fat, misshapen strawberries and piles of clotted cream, for days that never ended, still light after ten, a summer for long romantic novels and the anticipation of my life about to start. Life with a capital L. I was enrolled to go to Bristol University in the autumn, booked on a flight to Athens in August for my seventeenth birthday.
I knew I had to brush up on my Ancient Greek. It was, as they say, all Greek to me, inspite of Donal McNulty’s confidence. I’d scraped through the A level on luck alone, Donal – Greek tutor, Mastermind participant, a medievalist, classicist and Ottoman Empire specialist with curling eyebrows so thick they knotted into each other, a face like the side of a cliff and an eye for my mother - tut tutting and saying it must have been because I’d slept in late and had to rush that morning to get to the examination room. I let him believe it. For months I’d not had the courage to tell him I was falling behind, that I hadn’t a clue what he was talking about any more. Four moods, three voices, three persons and four tenses, not to mention a multitude of subsections of tenses. My brain was a thorny, impenetrable bush of terms: aorist, optative, pluperfect, subjunctive, articulate and inarticulate infinitives. Inarticulate infinitive? It sounded like I felt, four moods and all. I packed myself off to a two-week intensive immersion in Ancient Greek, ticking the ‘beginner’ box. I wasn’t going to pretend. I’d better get my shit together.
I stood in line with every one else, along the ancient mossy wall of the classroom buildings. They enclosed an internal square, and a small fountain bubbled quietly in the middle. I’d already found my bed in the women’s dormitory; I’d already spotted Alison with her red hair, bushy-tailed smile and eyes that promised we’d get into trouble for having too much fun. She stood behind me, whispering outlandish descriptions into my ear of any poor soul who landed under her wicked gaze. I had to cross my legs to stop myself peeing my pants. I wore my shiny black hip-huggers, the ones with an embroidered red heart near my ankle. My white cheesecloth top was knotted underneath my breasts. I’d lost twenty pounds in the months studying for my A levels and I wasn’t going to put all that agony to waste. I had dangly silver earrings from all three holes in one ear, a single fake diamond in the other ear. Alison’s breath tickled my neck, blowing my earrings this way and that like wind-charms.
He’s a ferret. I swear he’s a ferret, she whispered, elbowing me in the ribs. I glanced up, and sure enough, a short, beady-eyed and pokey-nosed guy wearing a pale brown, weirdly furry, slightly moth-eaten looking t-shirt snaked his way towards the sign-up table with mincing steps. I laughed so hard I sprayed the yellow haired man in front of me and as I stepped back and turned my face away in embarrassment I caught the eyes of another man leaning against the far wall. He dark-haired, dark eyed, wore black from head to toe and was smoking a cigarette, looking at me. He winked so neatly and without any other shift in his face, I thought I’d imagined it. I backstepped, crushing Alison’s foot and then in my attempt to get off her foot I tipped sideways into the guy I’d splattered with my saliva.
God. I’m so sorry, I said to sky blue eyes and a pale, stubblechinned face grinning like an old gnome. He had curls that looked like they badly needed a wash and he wore far too many clothes for a baking July day. As I fluttered and flustered I realised he wasn’t old, he just looked it. He was, perhaps, in his mid-twenties.
Christopher de Ath, he said, putting out his hand, clearly taking both Alison and me in with his twinkly eyes.
Susan Newman, I said, wishing I had a more interesting name as I felt his papery palm holding mine, wishing the man across the way would stop looking at me, wishing he wouldn’t stop looking. I pulled myself upward, trying to make myself look taller, trying to make the gap between my pants and my blouse wider.
De Ath? What sort of name is that? Alison demanded, hands on hips, looking like a petite, angular haute couture model. I was glad I was standing between her and the man watching. It’s just ‘Death’ with a space in it! Alison then made as if to offer her own hand for shaking but Christopher just raised one eyebrow, hand firmly clasped to mine. She tipped her chin up and crossed her arms. Well, if you don’t want to introduce yourself to me, that’s is your prerogative I suppose.
When liberty comes with hands dabbled in blood it is hard to shake hands with her, Christopher said, finally releasing me. The palm of my hand felt slightly roughened, as if brushed by sandpaper. I glanced sideways but the man in black wasn’t there. I scanned the line of people, the small gatherings around the fountain, but he’d disappeared into thin air. Fuck. Maybe he was just dropping someone off. Maybe he was someone’s father, uncle, husband. There were all ages here. I’d thought we’d all be young, which mostly we were but there was also a mishmash of fuddy-duddy men in their 60’s and straight-laced, middle-aged women.
I felt the air thicken as if I were standing in a pot of congealing milk. Alison was on one side, Christopher the other and neither were saying a word. I looked anxiously over Christopher’s shoulder. The line was moving and it would be his turn next. I wanted him to go on, to leave us so I could find a way to put my new friend back in a good mood.
Oscar Wilde, she said after an endless pause. Christopher grinned. And then Alison threw her head back and let out a laugh so infectious I was giggling, not knowing what was so funny, not knowing what had passed between these two and feeling a bit stupid. I knew who Oscar Wilde was, of course. Or did I? I knew he was a dead homosexual and a writer. Was he? As I struggled to look like I knew the quote myself, Alison and Christopher had already exchanged names, dormitory room directions and had made a date to meet later, after dinner. For all three of us. At some pub around the corner that I hadn’t even noticed was there.

The first two days passed in a slew of subordinate clauses and dependent sentences, Alison trying to help me memorise noun declensions and the endless intricacies of grammar: where the construction allows both the indicative and the optative, the indicative follows primary, and the optative follows secondary tenses. It was hopeless. I was hopeless. All I could think of was the man who’d winked at me. I knew he was here, I’d seen a dark shoulder dip past my classroom door into the room opposite where the ‘Lower Advanced’ were studying the seventh century lyric poets. He was never in the canteen, never hanging about in the courtyard between classes. Alison and Chris and I – he’d insisted on Chris, not Christopher – stuck together even though we were in different levels, Alison in ‘Upper Intermediate’, Chris in ‘Upper Advanced’ of course and me in rock bottom pre-pre-lower negative brain-celled thick beginnerland. We ate together, lolled around on the hot flagstones around the fountain after lunch together and got drunk after dinner on shandy in the Dirty Duck. Afterwards, Alison and I whispered late into the night in our dormitory, giggling so hard we had to double up in one narrow bed with the sheet over our heads to try and muffle the sound. Alison wore cute baby-blue pyjamas with deer scampering over them, the same colour as her hair. I wore the old-fashioned looking off-white nighty my mother had made for me. I felt like a Victorian matron.
Do you like him I asked? I mean, you know, I whispered.
Christopher? He smells like a drowned sheep, she said. And he’s besotted with you.
Oh no he isn’t, he’s far more interested in you, I said, believing it to be true. That’s impossible, she said. What makes you think that?
You’re funny. And clever, I said, feeling the warmth of her breath against my skin, her face inches from mine, just a dark outline. And, even though I hate to admit it, you’re prettier than me. I could feel her grinning, planning some kind of ambush with her sharp elbows and long toes. I drew back, almost falling out of the bed. Instead, she threw the sheet off and turned over on her back, her hands behind her head. The room was filled with the quiet muffled sleep grunts of eight other girls and women, the creaks of appalling bedsprings and a shhh sound of pages turning somewhere at the far end of the room.
Yeah. Maybe. But you’ve got sex appeal, Alison said to the ceiling. It’s what men want. They couldn’t give a damn about brains and prettiness. Not when it really comes down to it.
I protested, told her she was absolutely wrong, that she’d beat me in any contest where men were concerned, that she was more attractive than I could ever be. All the while I secretly held what she’d said deep inside, a small, fiercely burning fire low in my belly. I knew men looked at me in a certain way, but I thought they looked at all women like this. It didn’t really mean anything. Or that’s what I pretended to myself. Now that Alison had spoken the words, I knew I’d been lying. I knew men wanted me, that they wanted to fuck me. Me in particular. Ever since I was fourteen and had miraculously transformed from a frumpy adolescent in Aran sweaters to a bell-bottomed teenager with hair down to her waist. I still thought I was that greasy-skinned frump, but some part of me knew that overnight I’d been handed a kind of magic power over men, a power I had no idea how to handle, I just tossed it around without much thought, like an over-confident juggler flinging chainsaws about. I’d already lost my virginity and had been endlessly groped in the backseat of cars and had been kissed so violently my lips chapped and I had nearly chipped a tooth. None of this had felt particularly good, but I didn’t know it was supposed to.
Alison turned over, shoved her bottom into my hip and made fake snoring sounds.
Night night, I whispered, hovering on the edge of the mattress, not moving, waiting for her to say something funny, something that told me she was alright. She didn’t, and soon I could hear from her breathing that she was asleep. I crept over to my bed, ignored the disapproving stare of a poe-faced girl in Upper Advanced who had the bed on the other side of mine. I couldn’t sleep. The night sky was so bright and the curtains over the windows so thin it almost felt like daylight pouring through. I promised myself I’d find a way to meet the man in black. Maybe he was ugly up close. Maybe I’d imagined that wink. Maybe I should let Chris kiss me, he’d tried to, a friendly kiss goodnight but he’d pulled in Alison at the last moment and all three of us had ended up with our noses squished together, mouths in the wrong place, making such a noise that one of the teachers had come out in his tattered dressing gown and slippers and shusshed us, saying ‘Pitiful, just pitiful. Why do I even bother? Next year I’m going to Marbella’ as he stomped back to his quarters.