Rosamund Lupton - Afterwards

I was cooking a late supper when you arrived home. Adam had fallen asleep half an hour before.

You came up behind me and kissed me and I smelt beer on your breath. For a moment we met as a couple.

‘Jenny not here?’ you asked.

‘Daphne’s dad is driving her home now. He just called.’

‘Decent of him.’

You put your arms around me. ‘Sorry that took a while, but I wanted to do some damage limitation. Been in that wine bar by the church, schmoozing the teachers. Mrs Healey especially. I really could have done without that this evening.’

You didn’t see my face.

‘I asked her not to discipline him, but to let us handle it and she agreed.’

I turned and then we argued.

You thought Adam standing up for Mr Hyman wasn’t from loyalty and courage, but because of ‘ some kind of brainwashing by that man .’ You thought Silas Hyman had an unnatural hold over Adam.

Then Jenny came into the kitchen, ending our row. We’ve never argued in front of the children, have we? Not when it matters. They are our cease-fire treaty.

‘ Scrap the UN ,’ you’d said once. ‘ Warring countries should just get a teenage daughter in the room. ’

We’ve arrived at the burns unit and you’re scrupulously washing your hands, following the diagrammed instructions to the letter. Sarah does the same. Then a nurse lets you in through the locked door.

As we reach Jenny’s side-ward I brace myself. You turn to Sarah.

‘It’s not the hate-mailer who did this to her.’

Your voice is furious and it startles her.

A nurse is taking the last of the dressings off Jenny’s face.

Her face is blistered beyond recognition, far worse than in A &E. I quickly turn away. Because I can’t bear to look at her. And because I’ll have to tell Jenny what I’ve seen, rather than just glimpsed, because surely you can withhold your knowledge of something if you’ve only just glimpsed it? And not made sure of it by looking again?

But you don’t look away.

The nurse sees your distress.

‘Blistering the day afterwards is quite normal,’ she says. ‘It doesn’t mean that her burns have got any worse.’

You lean towards Jenny, your face close to hers, and then you kiss the air above her as if it will float down on top of her.

And in that kiss I know why you’re adamant that it can’t be the hate-mailer.

Because if it is the hate-mailer, you haven’t protected Jenny. You haven’t stopped him from doing this. And that would mean it’s your fault. You’d be responsible for her eyes and mouth needing to be sluiced, for her blistered face; for her limbs wrapped up in God-knows-what; for her decimated airways.

For her possible death.

A burden you can’t pick up.

‘It’s not your fault,’ I say, going to you, putting my arms around you. ‘Really, my darling, whoever did this, it’s not your fault .’

I understand now why you haven’t just been suspicious of Mr Hyman but grabbed onto him, certain that it’s him. Anyone but the hate-mailer.

And maybe you are right.

I remember again Maisie saying, ‘ That man should never have been allowed near our children ,’ and seeing that she hated him. Maisie, who always thinks the best of everyone and is kind to a fault.

Maisie must have seen something bad in him too.

‘You’ve always been naïve,’ Nanny Voice says.

Perhaps I’ve just been blind.

As we wait at Jenny’s bedside for DI Baker, I think back to the rest of that prize-giving/homecoming evening. I don’t think there’ll be anything useful but I need to escape from here back into the sanctuary of our old life; memory as respite care.

Jenny was on the downstairs computer with Facebook open. She’d had her long hair cut while you were away and it no longer shielded her face when she leant forward.

‘Rowena’s revising this evening,’ I said as I passed her.

‘I thought her place at Oxford was a cert,’ Jenny replied, not hearing my subtext of criticism.

‘She still wants to get the best A-level grades she can. They are really important for your CV as well as university.’

‘Well, bully for her, Mum,’ she said. ‘Night,’ she called, as you went upstairs.

‘Night, sweet prince,’ you called back, as you have done since she was about five. Only now it’s you who was going to bed before her.

I joined you in our room.

‘It would be nice if she knew where that quotation came from. She’s got her English A level in about seven weeks and she doesn’t have a clue.’

‘I thought her set text was Othello .’

‘That’s not the point. She should know her tragedies.’

You started laughing.

‘I just want her to do well. So at least she has a shot at university.’

‘Yes, I know,’ you said affectionately. You kissed me. And the sum of our marriage was bigger than our differences.

Our argument about Adam was still there, as present as his warm sleeping body in the bedroom next to ours; just as my anxiety about Jenny hovered somewhere in the house, as she played on her social networking site rather than open a book. But I was just so pleased you were home.

You told me about your trip and I told you about small details while you’d been away, omitting Mr Hyman and Adam, which had pretty much dominated, but wanting this time with you for myself.

A little later on, while you went to have ‘ a hot shower that isn’t from a bucket ’, the latent anxiety stalking the house tracked me down. I thought about Rowena. At Sidley House, she had been top of every subject, in almost every team, star of the assemblies, and now she was off to Oxford to read Science while our daughter would be lucky to pass a single A level.

My anxiety fanned outwards into jealousy. I knew from Maisie how much Donald adored his family. I was sure that if it had been Rowena bravely standing up in the church, Donald would have supported her and been proud . The perfect family.

I took off my make-up, which I’d put on so carefully earlier. Your face has got more famous over the years, but mine has just got older, and I’m always conscious of this when you’ve been away and we re-meet each other.

I remembered Maisie’s peculiar remark about her appearance. Perhaps it was because I was looking in the mirror. Or maybe it was because I was searching for a flaw in the perfect family. Anyhow, for whatever reason, I remembered again her ‘ bulimic hog’ comment and it burrowed away until it connected with other apparently innocuous incidents – the way she checked herself in our hall mirror on the way out, and then hurriedly looked away. ‘ God, what a crone ,’ she’d say. ‘ Beyond Botox! ’ The bruise on her cheek from a ‘ trip against the garden shed – that’s the problem with two left feet! ’ The cracked wrist: ‘ Went dashing out on the icy pavement, in court shoes . My own silly fault. Just went flying, what a twit! ’

One by one none of these incidents had seemed worrying, but put together at my dressing-table mirror they became a dense murky network of something sinister.

But I made myself stop. I’d been looking for flaws but my imagination had conjured up something so much worse. Because surely it was imaginary.

So, enough, I said to myself, sternly. Ugly jealousy makes for ugly imagery. Enough.

I’d hoped thinking back would be a little respite, but it hasn’t worked out that way. Because that uncomfortable memory about Maisie is still with me now, as if my mind won’t let me fold it flat and put it away. And it’s pulling at another – the memory I couldn’t retrieve earlier, the one that frayed before when I’d tried to hold it.