'I don't remember. What are rows ever about? Something stupid. Maybe it was the final straw.'
'What a cliche that is.'
'Well, there you are. Maybe I used a cliche that offended you or picked up the wrong spoon. We had a row. You said that that was it. I thought you were joking and I, well, I went out. But when I got back you were gathering up your stuff. Most of it, anyway. You took everything you could fit into your car and then you drove off.'
'Is this true?'
'Look around you, Abbie. Who else would want your C D player apart from you?'
'So you're saying it was just one of our rows.'
'One of our worse rows.'
I felt bleak and cold. There seemed no reason for concealing anything now.
'I've forgotten a lot of things,' I said. 'But I remember that our worse rows usually ended with you lashing out at me.'
'That's not true.'
'Did you hit me?'
'No,' said Terry. But the expression on his face was both defensive and ashamed.
'You know, that was one of the reasons why the police didn't believe me. I'm a victim. I've got a history. I'm a woman who has been hit. I called the police before. Do you remember that evening? Maybe you don't remember it. You'd been drinking and there was some sort of row. I don't remember what that one was about either. Was it the one where I'd washed a shirt of yours that you wanted to wear and it was still wet? And I said if it was a problem, why didn't you wash it yourself ? Was it that one? Or was it one of the ones where you said I ruined your life by going on at you? There were a lot of those. It's hard to tell those ones apart. But it ended with you grabbing the kitchen knife and me calling the police.'
'No, I don't remember that,' Terry said. 'You're exaggerating.'
'No! I'm not exaggerating, I'm not making it up. I'm saying what happens when you get drunk. First you get cheerful, then aggressively cheerful, then maudlin and self-pitying, and by the fourth drink you're angry. And if I'm there, you're angry with me. And I'm not going to sit here like some vengeful woman and list the things I've seen you do when you're drunk. But for some reason that I've never been able to work out, you get off on it. And then, for some reason I've also never been able to fathom, I believe you when you cry and say it'll never, not ever, happen again.'
Terry stubbed out his cigarette and lit another. Was that his fourth, or his fifth?
'Abbie, this is a pretty good fucking imitation of the row we had.'
'Then I wish that I remembered it, because I rather like the woman I was who pulled herself together and walked out.'
'Yes,' said Terry, sounding suddenly almost as tired as I was. 'I rather liked her as well. You know, I'm sorry I didn't come and see you in the hospital. I was going to when I heard about it, and then stuff came up and then suddenly you were in my bath.'
'That's all right,' I said. 'So where are my things?'
'I don't know.'
'What do you mean?'
'You left me, remember?'
'When did I leave you?'
'When?'
'What date?'
'Oh. On Saturday.'
'Which Saturday?'
He cast me a glance, as if he suspected this was some elaborate charade. 'Saturday January the twelfth. Around midday,' he added.
'But that was sixteen days ago! I don't remember it.' Once again, I felt close to tears. 'Didn't I leave a forwarding address?'
'You went to stay with Sadie, I think. But that was just for a night.'
'And after that?'
'No idea.'
'Oh, my God,' I said, and just held my head in my hands. 'So where do I go now?'
'You could stay here for a bit, if you want. It would be all right. Just until you got things sorted out. We could talk things over .. . You know.'
I looked at Terry sitting there in his cloud of cigarette smoke. And I thought of that woman, the woman I couldn't remember, me, who had taken the decision and walked out sixteen days earlier.
'No,' I said. 'No. I've got things to sort out. All sorts of things.'
I looked around. Didn't someone say that if you leave something somewhere, it shows you want to come back? For sort of the same reason, I felt I had to take something away. Anything. There was a
IOI
small globe on the mantelpiece. Terry had given it to me on the only birthday of mine we had spent together. I took hold of it. He looked quizzical.
'It's mine,' I said. 'You gave it to me. It was my birthday present.'
I moved towards the door and then I remembered something. 'Sorry, Terry,' I said. 'I haven't got my purse. I haven't got anything. Could you lend me some money? Ten pounds. Twenty. Anything.'
With a vast sigh, Terry got up and walked across to where his jacket was hanging over the back of the sofa. He searched through his wallet. 'I can give you fifteen,' he said. 'I'm sorry. But I'll need the rest tonight.'
'That's all right.'
And he counted the money out as if he were paying the paper bill. A ten-pound note, three pound coins and then a mass of silver and copper. I took it all.
Three
I spent 2.80 on the Underground, and put a twenty-pence piece into the open violin case of a busker who was standing at the bottom of the escalator, playing 'Yesterday' and trying to catch people's eyes as they flowed past him on their way home from work. I spent another fiver on a bottle of red wine when I reached Kennington. Now I had just seven pounds left, stuffed into my back pocket. I kept feeling it to make sure it was still there, one folded note and five coins. I had a plastic bag full of the unfamiliar clothes I'd been found in six days ago; only six days. I had a globe. As I stumbled along the street, head down against the wind and nose turning red, I felt dangerously unencumbered. It was as if without all the ordinary stuff of my previous life I was weightless and inexplicable and could drift away like a feather.
I had let myself dream of this: walking down the cold street with a bottle of wine to see a dear friend. Now I kept glancing around to see who was walking beside me, behind me. Why had I never noticed before how strange people look, especially in winter when they're muffled and buttoned up into themselves? My old shoes kept slipping on the ice. At one point a man put out his hand to steady me as we crossed the road. I wrenched my arm away and he stared at me in surprise.
'Be in, be in, be in,' I said, as I pressed the bell to Sadie's basement flat and waited. I should have phoned in advance. What if she was out somewhere, or away? But she was never out at this time of day. Pippa was only six or seven weeks old and Sadie was euphorically housebound. I pressed the bell again.
'Coming!' called a voice. I could see her figure through the frosted glass. 'Who is it?'
'Me. Abbie.'
'Abbie! I thought you were still in hospital! Hang on.'
I heard her cursing and fiddling with the locks and the door swung open and there she was, with Pippa in her arms, swaddled in thick towels and only a section of wrinkled pink face showing.
'I was just giving her a bath' she began, then stopped. 'Jesus! Look at you!'
'I should have phoned in advance. I just .. . sorry, I needed to see you.'
'Jesus!' she said again, stepping back to let me inside.
A sour-sweet heat hit me as Sadie closed the door behind us. Mustard and talcum powder and milk and vomit and soap. I closed my eyes and took a deep breath.
'Bliss,' I said, and put my face towards Pippa. 'Hello, sweetie, do you remember me?' Pippa opened her
