The Book of You - Claire Kendal

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I do use it and that’s all you notice; it doesn’t occur to you that I’ve only thrown you this treat in the hope that it will lure you into going away.

      ‘I’d like that, if it’s special to you, Clarissa. All I want is to make you happy, you know. If you’d just let me.’ You attempt a smile.

      ‘Goodbye, Rafe.’ I force myself to use your name again, and when your smile becomes deeper and more real I’m amazed and a little guilty that such a crude trick can work.

      Hardly daring to believe I’ve got away, I step carefully down the hill, checking periodically that the distance between us is increasing. Each time, you are looking back and raising your hand, so I have to make myself wave half-heartedly in response.

      From now on, I’ll take taxis to the station in the mornings and check through the windows to make sure you aren’t following. Next time I’m faced with you, I’ll consider the long term and obey the leaflets. I’ll refuse to speak or I’ll tell you for the zillionth time – in no uncertain terms – to leave me alone. Even my mother would think such circumstances warranted bad manners. Not that I would dream of worrying my parents by telling them about you.

      My teeth chatter as I stand on the platform, anxious that you will materialise while I listen to the apologetic announcements about cancellations and delays due to the extreme weather.

      I lean against the wall and scribble as quickly as I can in my new notebook. It’s my first entry. The notebook is tiny, so that I can always carry it with me, as the leaflets advise. The pages are lined and wire-bound. The cover is matt black. The people on the helplines say I need a complete record. They say I mustn’t miss out anything and I should try to write as soon as I can after each incident, no matter how small. But your incidents are never small.

      I am shivering so violently I regret not drying my hair. I rushed out the door to avoid being late after over-sleeping because of bad dreams – about you, always about you. There would have been time to dry it, though I couldn’t have predicted that as perfectly as I can predict you. My hair feels like a wand of ice, channelling the cold through my skin and into my veins, a spell freezing flesh into stone.

      There had to be a world where he wasn’t, and she thought perhaps she’d entered it at last. Portraits of stern-looking judges hung on the wall opposite the marble staircase. Climbing to the first floor, Clarissa felt as if they were watching her; but she couldn’t give up the hope that this could be a place where she wasn’t spied on, a place she could keep him from.

      She let the jury officer inspect her passport and pink summons, then sat down on one of the padded blue chairs. The room was wonderfully warm. Her toes thawed. Her hair dried. It seemed a magic place, away from his eyes. Only jurors were allowed in, and they needed to tap a code into a keypad before they could even get through the door.

      She jumped at the crackle of the jury officer’s microphone. ‘Will the following people please come and stand by the desk, for a two-week trial that is about to begin in Court 6?’

      Two whole weeks in the safe haven of a courtroom. Two whole weeks away from work and away from him. Her heart was beating fast in the hope that she’d hear her name. She sank back in her chair in disappointment when it never came.

      At lunchtime, she made herself leave the sanctuary of the court building; she knew she needed fresh air. She hesitated just outside the revolving doors, scanning up and down the street. She worried he might be hiding between two custodial services vans, parked a few metres up the road. She plunged past them quickly, holding her breath. When she saw that he wasn’t crouched by one of the bumpers she exhaled in relief.

      She wandered through the outside market, watching local workers buying quick wholefood or ethnic lunches from stalls, glimpsing barristers sitting around a large table in an expensive Italian restaurant.

      Checking over her shoulder, she disappeared into the familiar comfort of a sewing shop. As always, she was drawn to the children’s fabrics. Mermaids floated absently as little girls swam after them, under enchantment; she imagined a toddler’s peasant dress, its tiers alternating between plum and fuchsia seas.

      Henry would have hated it. Twee, he would have said. Sentimental, he would have said. Too pretty, he would have said. Unoriginal, he would have said. Plain colours are best, he would have said. Perhaps it was just as well that the failure to make a baby had driven them apart.

      She aimed herself firmly at the thread display, then searched her bag for the scrap of mossy green quilter’s cotton traced with crimson blossoms. She found it, chose the best match for the background colour, and headed for the till with two spools.

      ‘What will you be sewing?’ the girl asked.

      Clarissa saw eyelids vibrating beneath pale brown lashes, a gaze she couldn’t escape, lips dripping cuckoo spit: flashes of Rafe’s one night in her bed.

      She would exorcise him. ‘New bedding,’ she said.

      It would feel lovely against her skin. And she was surprised by a funny spark of curiosity about who might someday sleep beneath the tiny crimson blossoms with her.

       Monday, 2 February, 2.15 p.m.

      I am trying to piece it all together. I am trying to fill in the gaps. I am trying to recollect the things you did before this morning, when I started to record it all. I don’t want to miss out a single bit of evidence – I can’t afford to. But doing this forces me to relive it. Doing this keeps you with me, which is exactly where I don’t want you to be.

       Monday, 10 November, 8.00 p.m. (Three Months Ago)

      It is the night that I make the very big mistake of sleeping with you and I am in the bookshop. The shop is open just to your invited guests, to celebrate the publication of your new book about fairy tales. Only a couple of your English Department colleagues have turned up. Encouraged by my presence, they are whispering venomously about Henry. I am pretending not to notice by picking up books and acting as though I’m intensely interested in them, though the words are jumbled and about as comprehensible to me as Greek.

      I’m still not sure why I’ve come, or what possesses me to mix the red and white wines you press upon me. Probably loneliness and loss: Henry has just moved from Bath to take up the professorship at Cambridge he’s been plotting all his life to get. Compassion also plays a part; you sent me three invitations.

      I can’t leave until after your reading. At last, I am seated in the back row, listening to you recite from your chapter on ‘The Test of the True Bride’. You finish and your handful of colleagues asks polite questions. I am not an academic; I say nothing. As soon as the smattering of applause dies out I weave my way towards the door to escape, only to be stopped by your plea that I not leave yet. I sneak up to the art section and sit on the grubby beige carpet with a book about Munch. I turn to The Kiss, the early version where the lovers are naked.

      I visibly startle when your shadow falls on the page and your voice cuts through the first floor’s deserted silence. ‘If I hadn’t found you you might have been locked in all night.’ You are standing above me, peering down from what seems to be a very great height and smiling.

      I quickly close the Munch and set it aside. ‘I’m not sure that would have been such a terrible fate, sleeping with the artists.’ I wave your heavy book like an actress overdoing her use of props. It makes my wrist ache. ‘This is wonderful. It was so kind of you to give me a copy. And you read brilliantly. I loved the passage you chose.’

      ‘I loved the painting you chose, Clarissa.’ You set down the overstuffed briefcase you’re carrying in one hand and the two glasses of wine you’re balancing in the other.

      I laugh. ‘Have you got a body in that briefcase?’

      Your eyes flick to the briefcase’s lockable catch, as if to check it’s properly closed, and it occurs to me that you have secrets you don’t want

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