Nicci French - The Memory Game

Lots of Claud’s organising during the day – fetching food from Westbury, clearing up, deciding who was sleeping where and I hardly saw Theo at all. Then, after supper, when it was starting to get dark, we caught each other’s eye and met outside and took each other’s hands without even speaking and walked around the lawn and through the trees almost all the way to Cree’s Top. We sat down beside each other and kissed and touched. Theo unfastened some of my clothes and he touched my body through the clothes he hadn’t taken off and I touched his body with my trembling hands and I hoped he couldn’t feel the trembling and didn’t care anyway. I Can still feel ripples everywhere and if I close my eyes I can feel just where he touched me, every bit, every spot. We said we loved each other. We lay holding each other and I felt like I wanted to cry but didn’t. Then we walked back very slowly and it was the last crescent of the moon, the thinnest sliver you could imagine. Then we kissed very deeply and said good-night and I tiptoed up the stairs and wrote this and I know I won’t be able to sleep at all.

July 25

I was almost right. I lay for hours and then slept and was woken early by the birds at half past four and I’ve felt half asleep and half in a dream all day. Boring boring boring day. Lucky Alan and Martha just getting the party and not having to get it ready. Everybody miserable as per yesterday. With the addition of Mr Weston who came with the marquee and bricks and things for the barbecue and he was in a very bad mood. And Claud was telling Mr Weston what to do and then they were both in a bad mood. I couldn’t help giggling. (Natalie a complete misery, natcherly.) First Claud said get the barbecue prepared, then suddenly the tent needs to be put up, then by the end of the day the barbecue hasn’t even been done, Claud says first thing tomorrow will be okay, Mr Weston in a complete state et cetera, et cetera. Lots of shouting. Tomorrow is the party and will be total chaos with everybody going all over the place, about ten million people arriving, people staying in different places, the day beginning with all of us sent on errands to every corner of Shropshire by His Highness Claud of Martello. But these are all the boring bits. Theodore and I talked secretly about it and we are not going to go to the party at all (!!!). While Claud is serving hot dogs from the el nouveau barbecudos, Theo and I are going to slip away and go to the woods and I am going to give myself to him completely and I can’t bear it, I’m so happy and so scared.

When I had read it, I wasn’t exactly crying, I don’t know what I was doing, but my cheeks were wet. I didn’t feel weak or anything. I had a deliberate five-minute howl, felt better, washed my face and rang up Caspar. When he answered, I was suddenly not entirely sure why I’d rung and I asked him if we could have a drink together, and he said yes, when?, and I said now, and he said that the problem was that he had a child asleep upstairs in bed and I suggested that I come over with a bottle of wine and I promised to be polite and well-behaved, not to make a scene, I didn’t want sympathy or advice and he said, stop, don’t make any more promises. All right. So I went.

‘You’re a patient man,’ I said to Caspar, when my bicycle was in his hall and my bottle of wine was on his kitchen table.

‘I’m patient with you ,’ he said. ‘Don’t rely on it, though.’

‘I’ve been a trial to you, I know. I’m very sorry.’

‘I’m probably attracted to damaged women. It will be interesting to see how I cope with a happy Jane Martello.’

‘Happy?’ I said. ‘Let’s not get carried away.’

I told him about my evening and described, in somewhat general and vague terms, my reading of the old diary.

‘Are you still looking for something, Jane?’

‘No, of course not, I’m putting it all behind me, but I suppose I hoped there would be some amazing confirming detail in there. It still seems so strange. I want something else, I want somebody to tell me it’s all right.’

There was a long silence which I half hoped Caspar would fill with reassurances but he didn’t. He just smiled in a curious way and toyed with his glass, then took a sip of wine.

‘And yet,’ he said, ‘you turned down the chance to join that recovered memory support group. They were all there to support you. Why did you reject that?’

I laughed and took my cigarettes out of my pocket, thought of Fanny upstairs and put them back.

‘A few reasons, I suppose. One of them was something you said.’

‘Me?’ said Caspar, raising his hands in mock alarm.

‘When we spoke that time before you came to the public meeting about the hostel… You said something about a study that showed that once people had made a public commitment to something, then even evidence that contradicted their stand would only make them more committed to it. That’s how it went isn’t it?’

‘Yes.’

‘I want to be reassured but I want to be right and reassured.’

‘Then I can’t reassure you.’

‘I don’t know about that.’

We both placed our glasses on the table and I don’t know who made the first move but we were against each other, kissing each other hard, running our hands over each other. I pushed open the buttons of his shirt, pop, pop, pop, and pulled my mouth from his and ran my lips in the soft down of his chest. He lifted my sweater over my head and pushed my bra up off my breasts without even undoing it.

‘Wait,’ I gasped. ‘Let me undo my boots.’

My boots were fastened like Victorian stays. He shook his head and I felt his hands on my knees and then moving up my legs. No tights, thank God. He reached my knickers, took a double-handed grip and pulled them down, over my boots and off. I fell back on the sofa, my skirt above my waist and he was inside me.

Later, we went to the bedroom and took off our entangled, twisted clothes and examined each other’s bodies all over in precise detail and made love again and I felt, almost for the first time, that sex was something I could become really good at. We lay together for hours, talking, until at about five Caspar murmured something about Fanny and I kissed him deeply and got up and got dressed, then kissed him deeply again and left. As I cycled in the dark early morning, I thought with sweet contempt of all the people who were in bed asleep.

The day before the trial, a couple of photographers had lurked outside my house and snapped at me as I’d come out to buy a carton of milk. I’d put my hand over my face, knowing as I did so how that would look in the next day’s papers. I could imagine the captions: ‘The hidden face of the accuser’, ‘The defiant daughter-in-law’.

I didn’t attend the trial itself, such as it was. I knew that I would be summoned if required. On the morning it began and ended, I left for the office very early – before seven – to avoid any further press attention, but still a journalist managed to collar me. ‘Are you going to the trial?’ he shouted, and I blundered past him, pushing my bike, saying nothing.

On the way home, I saw it on the news-stand in block capitals: NOVELIST: ‘I KILLED MY DAUGHTER’. I braked to a halt, and bought a Standard. An old handsome photograph of Alan dominated the front page. Sweat broke out on my forehead and my breath came in short, frantic gulps.

I biked home, fumbled the Chubb lock. A package had been squeezed through my letter-box, and I recognised the handwriting: Paul’s. This must be his video. All I needed.

The house was chilly, so I switched the heating on early and made my way to the kitchen. I put on the kettle and placed two slices of bread in the toaster. The answering machine was flashing messages at me but I didn’t play them back. I was pretty sure they’d be from journalists, asking for my comment. The paper, still folded in my bag, was like a magnet, but I resisted it at first. I spread bitter marmalade (given to me the year before by Martha) onto toast and poured boiling water over a tea bag. I sat at the table in my coat and took a gulp of weak tea.