Her Fearful Symmetry

Robert cleared a space in the piles of paper and sat down on his desk. He offered her the swivel chair and she spun around 360 degrees with her bare feet stuck out in front of her, holding the mug of tea carefully level. She looked so childish that Robert found it painful to watch her. I think dead girls are the least of my problems at the moment.

Valentina said, “You don’t have very much furniture.”

“No. This place is far too big for me. And too expensive, really.”

“How come you live here, then?”

“It’s all Elspeth’s fault.”

Valentina grinned at him and spun around again. “Same here.” She stretched out one bare foot and stopped her revolution, then spun slowly in the other direction. “Did you move here because she was here?”

“We met in the front garden, actually. I was poking around because there was a To Let sign and I’d been looking for a flat that bordered the cemetery, because I wanted one of those little doors, you know, in the garden wall…So there I was, writing down the estate agent’s number, when Elspeth hops out of the front door and says she’s got the key and would I like to see the flat? Of course, I say Yes, please, because I did want to see it. And she showed me round. And it’s immediately obvious that it’s far too large, but there’s nothing like an attractive woman in an empty flat…” Robert was lost in his story and temporarily oblivious to Valentina. “So I ended up moving in. Though I must say, I was so thickheaded that it took me years to work out that she’d picked me up and not vice versa. I was very young.”

“When was that?”

Robert calculated. “Almost thirteen years ago.”

“Oh.” We were eight years old then. Valentina had a sudden thought. “Why didn’t you live together? I mean, these apartments are huge. It seems funny to have two giant flats for two single people. And it’s not like you have a lot of stuff.”

“No. I don’t, do I?” Robert stared at Valentina’s knees. “Elspeth wasn’t keen. She’d lived with someone once and hated it. I think she felt differently towards the end, when I was taking care of her all the time. I think she realised that it could have worked, us living together. I’m fairly self- sufficient and so was she. She liked to be alone, knowing I was nearby if she wanted me.”

“Our mom is like that.”

“Is she?”

“I think Dad is always kind of confused, you know, sometimes Mom seems like she’s just visiting, she’s super detached, and then she’ll be, like, really fun and sort of more present, you know?” Valentina peered up at him. “Was Elspeth like that?”

Robert paused to sort out her syntax. “Yes,” he said. “Sometimes she was far away, even when she was right there.” He was thinking of a certain way Elspeth had, after they’d made love, of seeming to forget him even as he lay sweat-sticky collapsed over her.

“Yeah, totally. Did Elspeth like to boss everyone? Our mom is always in charge of everything all the time.”

“Hmm. I suppose she did, but then, I enjoy being bossed. I come from a family of aunts, I spent my childhood being ordered about by women.” He smiled at her. “I get the impression that Julia bosses you.”

“I don’t like it.” Valentina made a face. “I don’t want to boss anyone and I don’t want to be bossed.”

“That seems reasonable.”

“What time is it?” Valentina asked. She sat up and put her mug on the desk, suddenly anxious.

Robert glanced at his watch. “Half seven,” he told her.

“Seven thirty? I’ve got to go.” She stood up.

“Wait,” he said. “What’s wrong?” He slid off the desk and stood facing her.

“Julia will freak if she wakes up and can’t find me.”

Robert hesitated. She’ll come back. Let her go. He felt acutely alone even before Valentina turned to leave. He followed her to his back door. She put her hand on the doorknob. Awkwardness overcame them.

“Would you like to have dinner with me sometime?” he asked her.

“Yes.”

“This Saturday?”

“Okay.” She continued to stand there, waiting. It occurred to Robert that he might kiss her, so he did. The kiss surprised him because it had been so long since he’d kissed anyone but Elspeth. It surprised Valentina because she had hardly ever kissed anyone that way-to her, kissing had always been more theoretical than physical. Afterwards she stood with her eyes closed, lips parted, face tilted. Robert thought, She’s going to break my heart and I’m going to let her. Valentina let herself out and padded up the steps. He heard their door latch. Robert stood there trying to sort out what had just happened, failed and gave in to giddy confusion. He made himself a drink and went to bed.

The following Saturday evening Robert presented himself at the twins’ front door wearing a suit. Valentina slipped out and said, “Let’s go.” He had a glimpse of Julia in the hall mirrors, standing forlorn in dim light. He started to wave to her but Valentina was hurrying down the stairs so he followed. He glanced up just as Julia poked her head into the hallway. She scowled at him and closed the door.

He had ordered a minicab. “Andrew Edmunds, in Soho,” he told the driver. They sped through Highgate Village, Kentish Town. Robert looked more attentively at Valentina and saw that she was wearing Elspeth’s clothes, a black velvet dress and a white cashmere wrap which awoke memories of other evenings, years ago. Even the shoes had been Elspeth’s. What does she mean by that? Then he realised that Valentina might not have brought evening clothes with her from America. He thought rather irritably that Elspeth had left the twins more than enough money to buy new clothes. Valentina seemed older in Elspeth’s clothes, as though she had taken on bits of Elspeth. She was staring out of the window. “I never know where I am.”

Robert glanced past her and said, “Camden Town.”

Valentina sighed. “It all looks alike. And there’s so much of it.”

“Don’t you like London?”

She shook her head. “I want to like it. It isn’t home, though.”

It hadn’t occurred to Robert that she wouldn’t stay once the year was up; now he felt an urgency, a need to convince her of London’s desirability. “I can’t imagine living anywhere else. But then, I grew up here. I think if I left I’d feel a bit cut off. All my memories are here.”

“Well, exactly. That’s how I feel about Chicago.”

He smiled at her earnestness. “Aren’t you terribly young to be so nostalgic? I’m a fusty old historian, I’ve a right to be calcified. But you ought to be out having adventures.”

“How old are you?” she asked.

“I’ll be thirty-seven the week after next,” he told her. He noticed that she did not contradict his description of himself as old.

Valentina smiled. “We should have a party for you.”

At first Robert thought she meant we to mean the two of them, himself and her; then he realised she meant herself and Julia. He imagined Julia’s likely reaction and said, “I think we’re having tea and cake at the cemetery; why don’t you come by and meet everyone?”

“Okay.” She smiled. “I’ve never been to a birthday party at a cemetery.”

“Oh, it isn’t a party, just ourselves having a slightly more elaborate tea than usual. There won’t be presents or anything of that sort.”

They began to exchange birthday stories: “We went to the circus for the first time…” “I ended up in hospital having my stomach pumped…” “Julia was so mad…” “My father showed up that morning and I had never met him before-”

“What?”

Robert paused, unsure whether he had meant to tell her this story so early in their acquaintance. He kept forgetting they barely knew one another. “Erm, well. My parents weren’t actually married to each other. In fact my father had another family, in Birmingham. They were his proper family-they still are-and they don’t know about my mum and me. I didn’t meet him until my fifth birthday. He showed up in a Lamborghini and took us out on a day trip to Brighton. It was the first time I ever saw the sea.”

“That’s so weird. How come he waited all that time to see you?”

“He’s a very self-absorbed man, and he doesn’t like children. It’s funny, too, because I have five half-siblings. My mother says he came to meet me because she finally asked him for money. After that he would come round occasionally, bring us impractical presents…He’s quite entertaining, and completely undependable. When I was younger I used to worry that he was going to take me away from my mum and I’d never see her again.”

Valentina looked at Robert. Is he joking? If he was, she couldn’t detect it. The cab pulled up in front of the restaurant. Valentina had expected it to be large, well upholstered and quiet, but found herself in a tiny crowded room full of age-blackened wood and low ceilings. She had a rare sensation of being too big. This is the real London, where the Londoners eat. A welter of emotions hit her: triumph at finally being a nontourist; satisfaction because she was here and Julia wasn’t; inadequacy to the task of conversing with Robert. What do you say to someone when he says he thought his dad was going to kidnap him? What would Julia say? Once they were seated at a small table squeezed between an exuberant party of City people and a literary agent wooing an editor, Valentina said, “Why would he do that?”

Robert looked at her over the menu and said, “Sorry?”

“Um, your dad? You said…?”

“Oh, right. I know now that he never would’ve, but he was always joking about it, saying how great it was, just him and me, and how he was going to take me up north…To me he was like a goblin. I was quite frightened of him until I was in my teens.”

Valentina looked at him wide-eyed, then took refuge in her menu, at a loss for a reply. He seems so calm about it. I guess no matter what your family is like, you’re not surprised. She had the feeling, now very familiar to her, of being absurdly young and midwestern.