1980
1
That Saturday – an early winter’s afternoon on Hampstead Heath – Elise had actually been waiting for someone else. It was a set-up through John, her flatmate and landlord. She wasn’t quite sure why she was there for a man she’d never met, but she often went with other people’s suggestions. In the end the bloke hadn’t shown, and as she came out of a clearing into the last low beam of light, Elise saw a woman standing with a sweep of trees behind her, their leaves the colour of cinnamon on the Turkish-blue sky. The scale of the trees against the woman’s body was immense but correct. They looked part of an exquisite giant headpiece, as if she was a goddess or Nature’s queen. She turned to Elise across the span of land, acknowledging her with a smile, as if Elise was a page in her court, a lucky fellow being given his mistress’ ear.
And maybe a man did come to the Heath for Elise, running late, in a scarf and a padded jacket, pacing through the falling leaves? Elise would never know. She smiled back at the woman, who began to move towards her – and the plan had been disturbed. Elise turned and walked away. She looked once over her shoulder, and the woman was following her. Elise was used to people following her. Aged ten, eavesdropping on the adult conversation in the kitchen, she’d heard her mother’s friend say, That one’s going to be a heartbreaker! and she’d never forgotten it. When you’re a child, people will tell you what you are, how you’re going to be, and often you remember it. Beauty had come to Elise; they told her it had. She never talked about it or did anything about it, although she was asked to model and all that kind of thing; being stopped on the street at thirteen, fourteen. She never did it, never called back. But there it was. Despite the scrutiny, she still felt invisible, until Constance Holden looked at her on Hampstead Heath by the cinnamon trees.
*
They left the Heath and approached the long wall of railings that bordered a cemetery, and Elise thought about what was going to happen. She’d never been with a woman before. She stopped, not turning round, waiting like she was the wolf in the game of Grandmother’s Footsteps. She imagined hurling a railing like a javelin as far as an Olympian, deep into the graves where skeletons would shatter. It would show this woman that she was strong.
She turned and the woman was still there, arms folded, looking a little sheepish. She was certainly older than Elise, but Elise was twenty and most of the adults in her life were older than her. She was probably in her thirties. Elise took in her clothes: a man’s shirt, long overcoat open to show slim, uncomplicated jeans, a pair of brogues. No obvious make-up, a small silver ball in the lobe of each ear. A delicate wristwatch on a beautiful wrist. Elise placed her hand round the cemetery railing and spoke because she believed she was safe in this public space. This woman couldn’t molest her, nor spear her with her own railing. And after all, Elise’s life-model class had been cancelled so she had nothing else to do.
‘One day I’m going to die. And that’ll be it,’ Elise said, pointing her finger between the railings. She made no comment on the fact that the woman had been following her.
The woman hugged her arms tighter to herself and laughed, and her laugh made her look confident, a vixen upright on her hind legs. Elise looked over the woman’s left shoulder to the gravestones pushing through the earth like crooked teeth. They were on the poor side of the plots here, far from the tombs of splotched marble belonging to dead pioneers of industry, and somewhere near them, their wives, angled in the soil. Beyond was a crematorium brick chimney, tall and erect, thankfully not puffing smoke.
‘You’re not going to die for a very long time,’ said the woman, and her voice ran through Elise like a shot of iron.
They stared at each other. ‘Is there something I can do for you?’ said Elise.
*
They quickly found an all-hours greasy spoon but didn’t eat anything. The woman said her name was Connie. Elise told her that her name was Elise Morceau. They had mugs of tea, sitting opposite each other, warming their fingers on the cheap china. The woman looked at Elise as if she wasn’t real. ‘I don’t normally do this,’ she said. ‘Do you?’
‘It’s OK,’ said Elise. Then she said, ‘Do what?’
Connie looked up from her mug. ‘This. Just meeting like that. Walking together.’
‘No, I guess not.’ Elise looked at Connie and could see her trying to hide a yearning for answers. ‘I don’t normally do this either,’ she said, and Connie visibly relaxed.
They talked a little about where they lived – Connie, nearby, Elise in Brixton. ‘Have you always been south of the river?’ Connie asked.
‘Yeah.’
‘You were born there?’
Elise looked at her. ‘Yeah.’
‘How old are you?’
‘Twenty-eight,’ said Elise.
Connie frowned. ‘I don’t believe you. How old are you?’
‘How old are you?’
‘I’m thirty-six. That is my real age. And Connie is my real name.’
‘I’m twenty,’ said Elise. ‘And I’m Elise.’
‘Do you work in London?’
‘I work in a cafe in Pimlico. It’s called Seedling. And as an usher at the National Theatre. And a life model at the RCA.’
‘A diverse portfolio,’ said Connie.
‘Do you work in the centre?’ said Elise, and Connie straightened up a little as if she was being mocked by the strange phrasing.
‘I work at home,’ said Connie. ‘I’m a writer.’
‘What do you write?’
‘Stories.’
‘What kind of stories?’
‘Fucking good ones,’ said Connie, laughing.
‘You sure about that?’ said Elise.
‘Sometimes.’
‘Would I find you in a library?’
‘You would. And bookshops.’
‘That’s pretty cool,’ said Elise.
Connie stared into her tea again. ‘I guess it is.’ She looked up. ‘Can I take you for dinner?’
*
The next Friday, before their Saturday dinner, Elise took herself to Brixton Library and found the H in fiction. There was the book: Wax Heart, published the year previously. Elise took it out, noting that lots of people had done so before her. A tagline on the back jacket stated: ‘the book everyone’s talking about.’
When John returned from work that night, she told him that she’d met Constance Holden the novelist, who wrote Wax Heart. She edited the bit about meeting on the Heath, not wanting to give the impression of being the sort of person who got picked up in parks. She met people at refined soirees where novelists went. John acknowledged her experience only mildly, seeing as Constance Holden didn’t write novels about heists, with raised lettering on their covers, the inevitable outline of a man running from a burning building. Nor had he studied her at school. Basically, he had never heard of her.
That evening, Elise read Wax Heart. It was intense, harsh, passionate and full of sentences she wanted to underline. Elise found her allegiance switching from woman to man as she read it; poor Beatrice, the blighted weirdo married to a man who led her a merry dance. But how seductive, how reasonable Frederick could be. Beatrice was in love with a man who would bring her danger. But in love, nevertheless: in love, in love. Would she escape? What would happen to her daughter, Gaby, in the aftermath? It was compelling, propulsive, violent and revelatory, a sort of anti-love story that seemed full of heart.