Tom and I saw more and more of each other and eventually he knew all there was to know about me. He had a knack of making me open up and talk about myself in a way I hadn’t really done before. Nothing ever seemed to faze him. He was kind and understanding and didn’t seem to mind if I was having a bad day and couldn’t face something we’d planned. He made me feel safe, loved and accepted, so much so that I began to believe there was perhaps a normal future out there for me after all.
The only cloud on the horizon was Maria, my oldest and dearest friend, who seemed distrustful of Tom and fiercely protective of me.
Maria and I met at school when we were seven or eight and soon became inseparable. The minute I clapped eyes on her with her cloud of wild hair and her eyes with their glint of wickedness I knew she’d be a friend for life. Like me she was a full boarder. She’d lost her Italian mother when she was six and a half. Now there was just her and her father. In the words of the self-obsessed and pretentious girls we were back then he “simply adored her” but trying to balance the pressure of work with single parenthood had become increasingly difficult for him so, like me, she ended up spending a great deal of her time at Thorpwood House. We were soulmates, both olive skinned and dark haired and we would spend hours weaving a glittering future for ourselves, one full of glamor and adventure. We just knew we were destined to have lives more exciting and successful than our classmates, which just goes to show how wrong you can be. We’d live a star-spangled life together in New York or Paris, or somewhere equally exotic, with parties, money and men. It didn’t happen for either of us but the grounding of my childish dreams was perhaps just a little bit harsher than hers.
Thorpwood House was not entirely the bastion of morality and learning the staff promoted and the parents so readily bought into. By the time we were fourteen we were already the stuff of teachers’ nightmares. Overprivileged and underdisciplined if I’m honest, with a total disregard for authority, all arch looks and smart mouthed comments. Bright and irreverent, we were rapidly becoming rebels, bunking off into the village to buy booze. Even once hitchhiking into the town.
It’s funny: objectively I understand I was once that girl but can’t imagine how it felt emotionally to be that confident, unfettered and free. I wonder what she would have been had she lived.
Of all my school friends Maria was the one who visited me in hospital, played my favorite music, talked to me for hours about everything and anything she felt might reach my unconscious mind.
“Isabella”—she always used the Italian form of my name—“please, you’ve got to wake up.” Her hand cold and anxious in mine.
Sometimes even now I hear her voice in my dreams and find myself sitting bolt upright, wide awake, expecting to see her troubled face at my bedside.
Maria stoically continued to visit me in hospital and throughout my time in the rehab unit, and I would see her trying not to look shocked or cry as I drooled and twitched and mumbled my way through her visits. I was such good company.
I never returned to Thorpwood House and inevitably our lives took very different paths, but we always stayed in touch, making the effort to meet up as often as we could. By the time I met Tom she was already married to Stuart, an accountant, and was expecting their first baby. When I first told her about Tom she was instantly suspicious of him. Even after they’d met a few times she remained wary and said he seemed a bit too good to be true. Her comments hurt me, and though she would have vehemently denied it, I have always suspected she thought him too good to be with someone like me. I wonder whether she would have felt the same were I not as I am.
Eventually she came around, helped by the fact that Stuart and Tom became friends, and she was matron of honour at our wedding. When I look at the photos and see her with her mass of hair blowing in the breeze, smiling fit to burst, I know she was genuinely happy for me and I can forgive her fierce overprotectiveness. I am sad to leave Maria behind. She has promised we will still see each other as often as before but I know the distance will make things harder for us both.
The last few boxes are done and the removal van is pulling away down the drive. Tom has gone into the village to pick up something for supper. This is it; he has dragged me, not exactly kicking and screaming but with some definite reluctance, into a new chapter of my life. I’m left with the feeling I should have put up more of a fight but it seems I no longer know how to assert myself. Sometimes I feel as though I’m not really here at all.
I shut Major and Mina in the kitchen with a litter tray and some food. They’re wild-eyed and restless and Mina starts to make a feral keening noise that’s hard to bear. They’re indoor cats anyway, because of where we lived, so I’m not sure why they’re finding this enforced captivity quite so intolerable.
“Look,” I say to them, “this is going to be so much nicer for you, so just put up with it for a week or so and then you can go outside and explore.”
They eye me malevolently and I fear our special relationship has been irrevocably damaged. I do have some sympathy with them as I haven’t yet dispelled my own aversion to this kitchen. God knows how we’re going to eat.
6
JULY 2004
“Farewell remorse! All good to me is lost; evil be thou my good”
—Milton, Paradise Lost
He wiped the sweat from his eyes and stopped to catch his breath. Talk about a dead weight. He pulled off his T-shirt and used it to mop the droplets from his face and his chest. He ran his hand down the smooth contours of his body, lingering for a moment on his nipples. He loved his own perfection.
The last roll of insulation was unloaded, the last of the Thermalite blocks stacked. He originally wasn’t going to bother with all this but better safe than sorry, particularly when this time he was taking things to fruition. There’d be no mistakes this time.
It had taken ten trips to different DIY outlets to get all he needed. Now it was finally done and it was definitely going to be worth it. He hadn’t decided on the space he would need; would he go for functionality or would he consider comfort? It was hardly going to be a hotel suite but he didn’t want to be a complete monster—at least not to start with. He pictured a secret boxed-in room, a snug little hideaway just for the two of them. He experienced a tremor of anticipation that was almost sexual.
He took a moment out to remember the girls back at uni. They’d all fancied him. He’d felt their hot hungry gazes, their animalistic longing. Sometimes he’d pick an ugly one just for the hell of it and treat her to his special smile. Sexual but not predatory, masculine but never aggressive. He’d spent a long time studying people, their body language, their expressions, and it had all paid off. He may not be like them, but he knew how they ticked.
He’d been so tempted to try it again, so tempted by the little blondes but he never had. He’d never forgotten though how good it had felt for that one life-changing moment. And now he would feel that again.
The cat was ready in its box. Poor old pussy, but once it had served its purpose he’d let it go. He had no interest in what animals could offer, not anymore.
Funny how things came full circle. His father had taken him to the animal sanctuary once in a misplaced attempt to teach him that “animals have feelings too.” He’d seen the kittens mewling and peeing, the baby rabbits, the fledglings with skin like his mother’s scalp, but he still couldn’t see the point. They were weak and helpless and what could possibly be more worthless than that.