carpet fluff and that I’d imagined the whole thing, but of
course, there it was. It was pretty faint, but I could just about
make out that it said ‘London, EC2’.
At first I was relieved it wasn’t local, but then I realized that
doesn’t mean a thing. If you wanted to remain anonymous –
and clearly, they do – you’d travel somewhere else to send it,
wouldn’t you? EC2 is a central London postcode. It’d be easy to
travel into town and pop something in the post there. Where it was posted is irrelevant. What’s more worrying is that whoever
sent it knows where I live.
I hope to God Helen is right and that the person behind this
is a coward at heart. Someone who gets pleasure from upset-
ting people from a distance. Why are there so many haters in
the world?
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A sudden burst of clapping brings me back to the moment.
Acne Man must have finished. Should I go next and bring the
pub thing up? What’s the point of dragging myself here if I
don’t? And who knows, it might make me feel better, saying it
aloud. After all, telling Helen about Simon and my twisted pen
pal helped a bit. None of it’s gone away, of course, but it’s true
what they say: a problem shared is a problem halved. Well,
maybe not halved exactly, but certainly reduced. Confession is
good for the soul.
At last the clapping dies down and silence settles upon us
like a welcome breeze on a hot day. I know that if I don’t speak
now, someone else will pick up the baton and run with it and
I’ll have missed my chance.
‘I went into the Flinstead Arms last week,’ I hear myself say-
ing. The atmosphere in the room shifts up a gear.
‘I couldn’t think of an excuse not to and I thought I’d be fine.’
The woman with protruding eyes leans forward slightly, as if
she doesn’t want to miss a single thing. As if my words are drops
of neat vodka.
‘I nearly ordered half a pint of beer.’
Acne Man taps his right foot on the floor and stares at my
knees. He’s already knocked it back in his head and is ordering
another – a pint this time. Helen smiles at me with her eyes,
but she’s twisting her fingers in her lap and making the knuck-
les click.
Only Rosie and Jeremy seem unfazed. It’s as if they’ve been
expecting it, just waiting for me to slip up so they can brandish
the Big Book in front of me and say, We told you so – now will you listen to us and do this thing properly?
But I’m glad I’ve told them. I’m glad it’s out in the open, even
if it is only within these four walls. I just wish I could be as
honest with Josh.
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She’s not beautiful. Not by a long chalk, but there’s something rather sensual about her mouth. And then there are those long, slender legs.
Those pert little tits. I can just about see what he saw in her.
Why do I do this to myself? Why do I keep imagining them
together? It’s unhealthy. Masochistic.
Every day I tell myself I’m going to stop. But here I am again.
Watching. Waiting. Biding my time till the moment is right. Till the perfect opportunity presents itself.
Revenge. The anticipation of it. The playing it out in my mind.
It’s almost like . . . an addiction.
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22
‘Where do you want this set up?’ Josh says. ‘I’m guessing the
living room has the best light.’
He’s been up into the attic and brought down the old easel
that used to belong to his mother.
‘It’s probably best if I paint it in situ. I need to get the colours right.’
Finalizing the sketches and meeting Josh for walks along the
beach that invariably end up with more sex in the beach hut
have been the only things keeping me focused these last few
days. But now that I’m finally ready to start on the preliminary
painting, my nerves are in shatters. It’s been ages since I’ve
done this type of work. Would Richard have commissioned me
if he knew I hadn’t painted for seven long years?
Josh carries the easel into the small, middle room where the
only light that comes in is via the wall lights and the transom
windows above the two internal doors. He helps me slot the
canvas into place.
A couple of minutes later he returns with a portable radio.
‘In case you fancy a bit of background music as you work,’
he says.
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WHO DID YOU TELL?
Alone in the room, surrounded by my brushes and sponges,
my tubes of paint and my plastic pallets, I take a deep breath.
This is the moment I’ve been anticipating for days. It’s also the
moment I’ve been dreading.
I try to visualize the finished product. Once I’m happy with
the painting on canvas – if I’m happy with it – and once I’ve got Richard’s agreement to go ahead, I’ll take a photo, print it out
and draw a grid over it. Then I’ll draw a larger grid of equal
ratio on to the wall itself so that I can transfer what I see in my
reference photo square by square. It’s like painting by numbers
except it’ll be my own painting I’m copying.
There is, of course, an easier way of transferring an image on
to a large surface, and that’s using a digital projector, but it’s
expensive and, besides, the grid method is a brilliant way of
training your eye to break down images into small, interlock-
ing shapes. I’ll have to get the ratios spot on, though. There has
to be the exact same number of equally spaced lines on the
wall as there are on the photo – identical, perfect squares –
otherwise, the finished product will look distorted.
It’s time- consuming, intricate work, but if it was good enough
for the Old Masters, then it’s good enough for me, and Richard
has already said that I must take as long as I need. He’s not after
a rushed job, and nor am I. This house is a labour of love for
him. He cares about aesthetics. He cares about the small details.
Josh does too. I can tell from the quality of their workman-
ship. Which makes the task ahead of me seem even more
daunting.
I can’t begin to imagine what they’d make of Mum’s house,
with its dated anaglypta wallpaper and Artexed ceilings. I’ve
stopped suggesting she redecorate because, try as she might,
she can’t stop herself harking back to the squat thing. As if
someone who’s lived in a squat isn’t allowed to have an opin-
ion about home decor. I suppose one day the house will be
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LESLEY K AR A
mine – then I can do what I want with it. Unless she’s left it all
to Wells in India or Donke
ys in Peril. I wouldn’t put it past her.
Suddenly, I feel terribly ashamed. My mother is a good per-
son. A worthy person. She used to teach challenging children.
Children who’d been expelled from school. She doesn’t deserve
a fuck- up like me. She wanted someone called Hilary. Someone
who would have benefited from her steady influence, who would
have followed her into teaching or social work or another public-
spirited career. Someone who would have made her proud.
I swallow hard. She was proud of me once. Proud of the
paintings I used to do. Maybe it’s not too late.
We call it a day around three. Josh suggests a swim – he knows
my costume is in my bag because he saw it earlier, when I was
searching for my lip balm – and although I’m weary from my
first day’s painting, it’s that good type of weariness, the one
that comes after doing something you want to be doing. Turns
out I can still paint, after all.
I’m expecting it to be cold, but as I walk into the water it’s
still a shock to the system. The chill coils round my ankles and
creeps up my calves like a pair of icy socks. It doesn’t seem like
such a good idea now that I’m actually here, even though the
late- afternoon sun is warm on my back and there’s hardly a
breath of wind. But I’m not going to chicken out now.
‘Don’t just launch yourself in,’ Josh says. ‘Wade in slowly.
Get your body and mind acclimatized first.’ He’s up to his waist
already, splashing water on to his arms. ‘It’s the first time this
year I’ve been in without a wetsuit.’
As the water reaches my thighs I gasp. Josh laughs. ‘Told you
it’d put that flame out.’
Right, then: it’s now or never. I dip below the surface of the
water. It’s even colder than I imagined, a real adrenalin rush
that makes me gasp. I propel myself forwards and, within
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WHO DID YOU TELL?
seconds, Josh is swimming alongside me. I’d never have done
this on my own, not at this time of year, but he makes me feel
safe. There’s never a moment when I think he might ambush
me from under the water or splash me. For Josh, swimming is
a serious business.
I have a sudden image of him teaching a child to float. Our
child. Talking to her in that gentle voice of his, a reassuring
hand under the small of her back. My God, what am I think-
ing? I can barely look after myself, let alone a child.
I keep swimming, but now another child threatens to come
into focus. I won’t let it. I won’t. But it pushes its way through,
its little feet kicking and thrashing against the footplate of its
pushchair, its face contorted in distress. And then the noise of
its cry. That panicky, staccato burst that makes my ears pound.
Not now, please. Not here. I turn back towards the shore, anxious to get out of the water and dry off.
‘I don’t want to get out of my depth,’ I manage to say between
breaths.
‘You won’t,’ Josh says. ‘Not if you swim parallel to the shore.’
At last, the image fades. The crying becomes the squawking of
a distant gull and I feel strong enough to swim alongside him.
How do you feel?’ he asks.
Broken. Adrift. At the mercy of forces beyond my control.
The sudden swell of an unwanted memory crashing into me
like a wave.
‘Freezing,’ I tell him.
But with each stroke it becomes just a little easier, till it’s
bordering on being strangely pleasant, in a sharp, biting, maso-
chistically invigorating sort of way. The water is smooth and silky
on my arms and shoulders. Every so often, I pause and stand
up, just to reassure myself that I can still feel soft sand beneath
my feet.
Josh dives under the water and surfaces a few feet in front of
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me. His wet hair clings to his head like a swimming cap and he
runs his hands through it, pushing it back so that it’s off his
forehead.
‘Maybe I should get a short back and sides like you,’ he says.
‘No. I love your hair.’ Shit. It’s too soon to be bandying words
like ‘love’ about, even if I am just referring to his hair. Change the subject. Quick. I take a deep breath through my nostrils.
‘That ozone smell’s great, isn’t it? Takes me back to being a little girl, on daytrips to the beach.’
The way my voice is coming out, all breathy with the cold
and the physical exertion of the swimming, I must sound like
a little girl to his ears.
‘Except it isn’t ozone,’ Josh says. His face glistens with water,
little drops of it trapped on his eyelashes. ‘What you’re smelling
is actually the gas that comes off decomposing plankton and
seaweed. That’s why it has that sulphurous whiff. It’s called
dimethyl sulphide.’
‘Now who’s being romantic?’
Josh grins and launches himself head first into the water
again. The last thing I see are the pink soles of his feet. I wait for him to reappear, but he doesn’t. A stray cloud covers the sun
and fear sneaks up my spine, vertebra by vertebra. How can he
do that? How can he swim under for so long? I take a step for-
ward. My foot slides across the slippery surface of a large
smooth stone embedded in the sand, and as I try to right myself
I realize my toes aren’t touching the bottom and I almost lose
my balance. Water rushes up my nostrils and before I can snort
it out some of it’s gone down the back of my throat.
I tread water till I’ve coughed and spluttered the pungent,
arms, and then the long, graceful curve of his back, break the
surface. At least he didn’t witness me spitting and snotting into
the sea.
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WHO DID YOU TELL?
I swim over to him in my pedestrian breaststroke.
‘I want to be able to swim like you.’
He pulls me towards him and encloses me in his strong, wet
arms. ‘I’ll teach you,’ he says. ‘I taught my mum how to swim too.’
‘Really?’
‘Yeah, she had a mean front crawl.’
‘I can’t do that.’
‘Sure you can. Go on, have a try.’
I do my useless version for as long as I’m able, which isn’t
long at all, not in this choppy water.
‘Hmm,’ he says, grinning. ‘We’re going to have to do a lot of
work on your breathing technique. You need to roll further for
your breaths and breathe on alternate sides, if you can. You’ve
got to find a pattern that matches the waves and breathe as fast
as you can, suck the air in quick. You are breathing out under-
water, aren’t you?’
‘No, I’m holding my breath when my face is under.’
‘Well, that’s where you’re going wrong. You’ve got to exha
le
while your face is in the water, or you’re going to get out of
breath and tire too fast. The most important thing to remem-
ber when you’re swimming in the sea is that if you get into
trouble, try not to panic. Tread water for a while, or float. The
more relaxed you are, the less oxygen you’ll need.’
‘I’m not sure I’ll be any good at it.’
‘Don’t worry,’ he says. ‘By the end of summer I’ll have you
leaping through the water like a dolphin.’
The end of summer. It sounds so final.
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23
The second I turn my key and push open the porch door, I
smell it. Joint, by Roccobarrocco. Simon’s aftershave. And even
though I know it isn’t his – of course it isn’t, it’s just the
postman – the sudden and powerful surge of memories that
come with it still makes me gasp.
I drop my bag on the hall floor and walk towards the living
room and the clacking sound of knitting needles. The door is
ajar and, as I approach, I see Mum, sitting in her usual arm-
chair by the fireplace, balls of flesh- coloured wool nestled in
her lap like hairless kittens. On the coffee table in front of her
are two empty cups and saucers.
Oh no, Pam isn’t here, is she? Mum’s informant. That’s all I
need. I’ve only met her a couple of times, and on both occasions
she looked at me as if I were some kind of alien. Pam’s daughter,
it goes without saying, isn’t a hopeless alcoholic without a penny
to her name. Pam’s daughter is a proper grown- up. A maths
teacher, married with two boys. Lives in a semi on the new estate
on the outskirts of Mistden, which, if you listen to Pam, you’d
think was the pinnacle of success.
And to think, all that could have been mine . . .
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WHO DID YOU TELL?
I walk further into the room and turn, reluctantly, towards
the sofa. But whoever was here is now gone. Only a slight
indentation in the cushion remains.
‘You’ve had a visitor.’
Mum lances a ball of wool with her needles and drops it into
the basket at her feet. ‘Yes, she came back. The girl who used to
live here. Well, young woman, I suppose I should say. She kept
saying how different it looked.’
My eyes scan the room. Something about this doesn’t feel