Because there were photos, I appeared in the book. The atrocious Polaroids of our Christmas together, right before Serena appeared. They made a double page spread in the book. I had a raft of footnotes to myself. I am footnote girl.
Dear Timon,
One day I would like to come to Blackpool and see you at work. I wouldn’t tell you I was coming. I’d let it be a surprise. Wendy always tells me that surprises are the devil’s work and that we should avoid them—did she say that when you knew her? I think she wants an easy life and one shock-free.
I would walk in your fish restaurant and emporium and order something special. Scampi or, as some of the fish shops here do, lobster and chips. Something to make me stand out. I’ve got what they used to call a quiet face and, actually, haven’t done much out of the ordinary in my life, but I would order something special, and you would look up in surprise and, in an instant, you would realise it was me.
Dear Timon,
My brother is a soldier and I don’t think he’ll ever stop. He’s vigorous and vigilant and in his seventies and walks the streets cursing ne’er-do-wells and slackers, or anyone who looks like they’re heading that way. One day he’ll get himself into trouble. Somehow he thinks he must always do the right thing. I think someone—the army, I suppose—took great care to drill this attitude into him. He looks upon me, his only sister, as someone who has gone to seed. He’s given up on my ever doing the right thing. I’m a hopeless case according to him, selfish and really, I suppose I am. I’m not public-spirited. I don’t believe in it. We make our own way. Don’t we?
Dear Timon,
I told you last time about going on holiday with Astrid’s family. We were twelve and her family let me come along, but her father wasn’t keen on me. Her mother thought Astrid should be mixing more at school and I was the mixer. Did I tell you about the pony-trekking? They rigged Astrid into a special harness thing so she could hold on safe. She was delighted because we’d assumed she wouldn’t get a go (my friend has no legs at all but she’s a lovely girl and spirited). She made me laugh going up the narrow hill paths because I was going in front and she was shouting to me about how my horse was doing a shit as it trundled along. She gave a running talk about it and the pony people were cross and horrified, because—for some reason—because Astrid was disabled and they’d laid on special provision for her, she shouldn’t be rude and act up. She shouldn’t be laughing like a drain and going: ‘Jesus God! It’s a hole not a crack that the shit is coming out of! It is shitting out bricks!’
When we finished back at the stables Astrid’s pony, freed of its harness, skipped about happily and lay on the grass, rubbing its back. ‘It is glad to be free of me!’ Astrid laughed. ‘I can’t be such a weight!’
All of this came back to me when we were held captive by the visitors. We saw them rarely in those days we were prisoners. But we could hear them approach, the measured canter in the corridor beyond our door. Their steady trip-trapping sounded all wrong indoors. They walked on all fours, of course, but you could never think of mounting one. When we were in the ice fields, allowed to walk and exercise ourselves under careful, baleful supervision, Marlene and I saw the visitors run and they ran like creatures that had never been ridden in their lives. They drummed up a sheeny mist of ice chips as they pelted into the distance and I worried that they would crack the ice clean across and lose themselves. They ran in formation, but we couldn’t tell one from another. They never spoke of course, and when we were in their care and sharing their shapeless, cavernous rooms, they simply looked at us with mild curiosity. Whenever they had a finickity task to carry out, one that required manual dexterity, they would lower their noble heads and use the single, silver digit they had attached to their brows.
Dear Timon,
Wendy and I rode out on the bus to the coast, to sit on a scrubby beach looking up at the Forth Bridge. I took all your letters to read. I can’t tell you how happy I am to have a real correspondent. Yet I’m this plump, white-haired fiftyish spinster. You must have guessed that by now. I felt safe writing anything I wanted to you, because I knew you were listening.
Dear Timon,
Because I felt safe I wrote things about myself no one knows properly, not even Astrid who still lives close by. Because I knew you were listening I also felt free to invent, freely, wildly, because I never had to meet you, not really. We could stop this exchange any time and it could be like neither of us ever existed to the other.
Dear Timon,
I felt free, at first, to invent a different me, one you could fall for, one you would want. I laid her foundations and got you on the scent. Of course now I want to make a clean breast of it.
Dear Timon,
No clean breasts, no fresh slates. Whatever you’ve got written from me is the whole truth. It has to be, because it comes from me, and there is nothing more.
Dear Timon,
So I’m doing the dance of the Seven Veils, am I? Sorry, lovey, but I’m not sure
