say.’
‘I’m going.’ I scraped my chair back. There was enough truth in what she said.
‘Sue’s not too well, I notice.’
I looked hard at her. I glimpsed a vestige of her old look – downcast eyes, gloating. Did she know, then? We’d tried to keep it quiet.
‘Pity you can’t eat her breakfast for her, isn’t it?’ I said.
I’d developed a habit, I suppose, of flouncing out on Karina. I said to myself, when I was a child I was afraid, I was torn between pity and fear, and besides, I was told to be her friend, I was made to be. Now I’m grown up and I don’t have to take it; especially since I don’t, actually, owe her money. I never thought she was dangerous, except to me: I didn’t know that her stubby fingers would tie my past to my future, so that now if I wake in the night, my mind goes right back there, to the narrow beds, the dry heat, the broken heart.
February came in. Decimalization of the currency was about to occur, and shopkeepers all over the city were in a panic; old ladies interviewed in bus queues said there’d never be honest money again. We were still occupied with the matter of Sue and what she carried inside; still the anguished, unproductive evenings over grey coffee. Julia refused to be drawn into it, saying that the solution was perfectly simple. Sue went home for the weekend again, taking the risk that her parents would guess. Her lack of appetite, she explained by saying that she had a tummy bug; ‘It’s going round at Tonbridge Hall.’ Her parents believed her. After all, she didn’t look pregnant. Her shoulders hunched protectively over her midriff, and her face was long and drawn. When she came back on Sunday evening, she must have met up with Roger and had it out with him, because she said she’d never trust any man again, as long as she lived. She was going to be a nun, she said. She locked herself into C2 and wouldn’t let anybody in.
‘I don’t know what to do,’ Claire moaned. ‘Shall I tell the warden? I could just say she was upset, that we’d had a bit of a tiff, that she needs someone to talk sense into her. I don’t want to cause trouble, but I can’t sleep in the corridor.’
‘No?’ I said.
Claire blushed hotly. ‘Well, if it came to it, I suppose I could.’
‘Have my bed,’ Julia said. ‘I can take myself elsewhere for the night.’
‘But my essay! My essay’s locked in there with her, and it’s due tomorrow.’
Julia rolled her eyes.
I went downstairs to the pigeonholes where our letters were kept. It was Sunday evening, and of course they were empty. But I had begun to believe all sorts of things. That the postman would come at strange times. That some other girl was taking my letters and hoarding them in her room, but that she would have a change of heart and give them back to me. It was as if I had forgotten the content of my telephone conversation with Niall, or not understood it. A clean break, he had said. As people speak of a sporting injury: ‘a clean break, it could have been worse’. The lie seemed written into my body; I felt pieces of my own bones, jagged and splintered and trying to work their way out through my skin. Although I could see there was nothing in the pigeonhole, I used to put my hand in and feel about: as if the essence of a letter might be there, a kind of braille that would blossom into meaning as my fingertips sought it out.
Since the morning I had breakfasted with Karina, I could no longer eat up my toast. It had disgusted me, to see her cram the bread into her mouth. I imagined I had seen a doughy mass churning on her tongue, a mess of crumbs and saliva. There was a quivering inside me, a low-level but constant nausea. Whenever I saw that the pigeonhole was empty, something seemed to turn over in my belly, something that felt alive.
I went back up to C Floor. Lynette and I crouched in the corridor outside Sue’s door and negotiated with her. At first she wouldn’t speak, but we were conciliatory, kind, gentle; in time, we talked out Claire’s essay. We could hear Sue’s snuffling sobs as she fed it under the door, a sheet at a time. Claire was delighted: but then she wanted us to talk out her toothbrush. We said, we’re not trained negotiators; we’re tired, we’ve had enough.
That night I was conscious of the stranger, Claire, tossing and muttering in the bed that was foot to foot with mine. I lay awake, listening to her, and thinking of her dirty teeth. About three o’clock, the hour at which even London is quiet, I became aware that she was saying her prayers.
It was Lynette who lent Sue the money to have a private termination; ‘The easiest way, at this stage,’ she said. She sat for a long time brooding over her chequebook, pen in hand. ‘I’d rather not have to do it,’ she said. ‘Claire always seemed to think we were on opposite sides. Whereas in fact, Carmel, my position is more complicated.’
The operation cost one hundred guineas. There was an elegance about the sum which suited Lynette. It is a depressing fact about the women of my generation: name them a year, ask them the fee for an abortion, and they’ll be able to tell you. They know the price of expectation, and how expectation dies. And if they don’t know, it’s because they repress and refuse the memory; you may be sure that they knew at the time.
Lynette, sitting at her desk, propped her chin on her hand. ‘It is overblown, I know,’ she said, ‘portentous, rather a general observation than anything one might apply to the individual . . . but sometimes I think . . . when one looks back to the war . . . one should just
‘Have you ever talked to Karina about the war?’
She smiled sadly. ‘She seems to know nothing about her family history. Which is perhaps just as well, really. Either it will be tragic, or discreditable.’
I left it. Left the topic. Said, ‘You’ll not get the money back, will you?’
‘Probably not,’ Lynette said. ‘But where else will she get it? I can do a favour for a friend.’
‘Will she think it’s a favour ten years from now?’
Lynette shrugged. ‘I’m not an astrologer. Perhaps we can arrange to meet. We’ll all meet up, shall we, and then we’ll see.’ She reached out for her diary, and circled the date. ‘Tea at the Ritz? Dinner at the Dorchester? Look, we may as well aspire; I don’t see you, ten years from now, digging into chips in a transport caff.’ She smiled again, less sadly. ‘But I bet Sue won’t make it. She’ll not be able to get a baby-sitter.’
Later, I was glad I’d heard her say that. It seemed to limit the damage: just to say, just to believe, that life goes on.
When Sue came back from the nursing home, she was tottering and white. With a sober tap on the door and a mutter of ‘She’s back’, Claire summoned us into C2. Sue, still with her coat on, sank on to her bed. Her mini-elephant rolled under her, and with a bleat of irritation she punched it feebly, knocking it to the floor.
