The Memory Game

think of Natalie. She was a loner, you know. She snooped round other people’s lives and she had boyfriends and went to parties, but she was always alone. I was her mother, but sometimes I felt she was a stranger. All the boys, oh they pretended to be grown up and independent, and they shrugged me away or were rude to me when their friends came round, but they needed me and they were always so transparent. Natalie, though, I often felt rejected by Natalie. I’d always thought we would have an intimate relationship, two women in a house of men.’

She stood up and cleared away our plates.

‘You make those phone calls you were talking about; I’m going to get those cuttings for your garden.’ Pulling on her jacket, she picked up a pair of secateurs and disappeared into the garden.

Mechanically, I did as Martha suggested, and hunted through my address book until I came across the name of Judith Parsons (nee Gill, one of my best friends from school). She was surprised and thrilled to hear from me: how was I in London, how were my sons, isn’t it awful how time flies, yes it would be wonderful to meet up — sometimes she and Brendon came to London and then she’d be sure to give me a ring. As we were about to say goodbye to each other I asked, casually, guiltily, oh, by the way, did she happen to have Chrissie Pilkington’s phone number. I was going to be working near where she lived for a few days and thought it would be jolly to catch up with her. Judith’s enthusiasm dampened slightly. Yes, she had the number, but she was Christina Colvin now: I jotted the details down in my address book, dialled again.

Christina Pilkington-now-Colvin was not so happy to hear from me. I could understand that. It had been twenty-five years since we’d last seen each other. I brought back memories she must have wanted suppressed. But she reluctantly agreed to have me round for tea later that afternoon. I wrote down directions, and just before I put the phone down she said, suddenly, ‘My husband will be there, Jane.’

Martha loaded the cuttings into the back of my car, then gestured towards the pile of children’s books on the table.

‘They’re for your grandchildren, Jane. One day.’ And then, at last, we hugged each other.

The Colvins lived just outside Oxford in a large neo-Tudor house, all timber and diamond windows, with a swimming pool in the garden, and an avenue of rhododendrons. I’ve always hated rhododendrons. Bright flowers and shiny leaves and nothing lives under them.

I would not have recognised Chrissie. When I knew her she was thin and tall, with startling blonde hair always piled on top of her head. Now she seemed shorter — or perhaps she seemed shorter because she was so much wider. Her substantial body was packed tightly into smart white trousers and a green shirt, and placed on high heels. Her wild skinny beauty was quite gone. I could see she was anxious beneath her make-up. We shook hands; neither of us could decide whether to kiss each other on the cheek, and as we were havering, a stout man in a grey suit came out of the house, hugged me warmly and said over the top of Chrissie’s half-hearted introduction:

‘How lovely for Chrissie to see an old schoolfriend. I’ve heard so much about you, Jane.’ I doubted that. ‘Tea? Or would you like something stronger?’

‘Tea would be fine, thank you.’

‘Right. Then I’ll leave you two lovely ladies to talk. You must have so much to catch up on.’

‘Ian’s a company director,’ said Chrissie, as if in explanation. We went into the house. I could hear a dutiful tinkling from a piano upstairs. ‘My daughter, Chloe. Leonore’s with a friend.’

We sat in the living room, among plumped up cushions and prints of flowers and landscapes. Chrissie didn’t offer me tea.

‘Why have you really come?’ she asked.

‘Have you heard about Natalie?’

She nodded.

‘That’s why I’ve come.’

Chrissie looked nervously round, as if her husband might be standing in the doorway. ‘I’ve nothing to say, Jane. That was over twenty years ago, and I don’t even want to think about it, let alone talk about it.’

‘Twenty-five years.’

‘Twenty-five years, then. Please, Jane.’

‘When did you last see Alan?’

‘I said I don’t want to talk about it. I don’t want to think about it.’

‘Does your husband know that when you were fifteen you had a sexual relationship with Alan Martello? Is he understanding about it?’

Chrissie started and looked me in the eyes. I felt sorry for her, but triumphant also because I could see that she was going to talk to me. She shrugged.

‘I haven’t seen Alan since Natalie disappeared. I don’t expect you to understand, but he was so… glamorous, if you can believe it. I was just a kid, and he was this famous man and he gave me things and told me how beautiful I was.’ She laughed bitterly. ‘It seems strange now, doesn’t it? When he wanted to sleep with me I didn’t stand a chance.’ She looked down at her perfect red nails and then said, almost smugly, ‘He nearly ruined my life. Why don’t you blame Alan, not me?’

‘Come on, Chrissie, don’t exaggerate. It was only sex. Didn’t you enjoy it at all?’

‘I don’t know. I don’t think about it.’

‘So why did you tell Natalie?’

Chrissie looked surprised.

‘I didn’t. She followed us to the woods once. And she saw us, you know.’

Chrissie had an air of prim triumph.

‘Did you see that she was there?’

‘Yes.’

‘So what happened?’

‘What do you expect? Alan started sort of wailing. He crawled over to Natalie and he started tugging her skirt, and saying that she was his darling girl and how could she ever forgive her old dad, and you know what men are like, and how Martha would suffer. It was pretty embarrassing really.’

‘What did Natalie do?’

‘She just walked away.’

‘What did Alan do then?’

Chrissie looked straight at me. For the first time I could see the provocative heedless look of the adolescent Chrissie.

‘He pushed me back onto the ground and fucked me. I think it had excited him. That was the last time, though.’ There was a chilly silence. ‘Now you can tell my husband all about it.’

‘You went out with Theo after that, didn’t you?’

‘Ask him.’

‘What about Natalie? You know she was pregnant, don’t you?’

‘I’ve seen the papers.’

‘Who do you think was the father?’

‘I don’t know. Whatever his name was—Luke McCann, I suppose.’

As I left, Chrissie’s successful husband waved cheerfully. ‘Do come again soon, Jane, it’s always nice to see Chrissie’s old chums.’

From the car, I saw Chrissie, a middle-aged woman wearing too much lipstick, and I saw what must have been Chloe, the piano-playing daughter, standing at an upstairs window. She looked just like the Chrissie of twenty-five years ago. That must have been hard for Chrissie to bear. I drove away with an embarrassing screech of tyres, and all the way back to London I thought about sex and its strangeness and embarrassments.