Audrey Niffenegger - Her Fearful Symmetry

“I’m Julia Poole. I live downstairs. I heard footsteps…” He was looking at her curiously. Julia realised what he must see: an unwashed, too-thin, stringy-haired girl in ratty clothes. “Who are you?”

“I’m Theo Wells. Martin and Marijke’s son. I haven’t heard from Dad in over two weeks. Or Mum. They’re usually so-communicative. They haven’t been answering their phones. And now I come here and he’s gone. Do you understand how peculiar that is, that he should be gone? I can’t-I don’t understand it.”

Julia smiled. “He went to Amsterdam to find your mom.”

Theo shook his head. “He walked out of the flat voluntarily? He got on a bus or a train? No. The last time I saw him I had trouble coaxing him out of the bathroom.”

“He got better. He took medicine and he gradually got better. He went to find Marijke.”

Theo sat down at Martin’s desk. Julia could not get over how much he resembled Martin: younger, less hunched, larger in his movements, but still so like Martin in his face and hands. Genes are strange. She had always thought so. She wondered if he was like Martin in other, less conventional ways.

Theo said, “He hated taking antidepressants. He was afraid of the side effects. We tried to talk him into it. He always refused.” Theo passed his hands over his face and Julia wondered if she and Valentina had affected people like this, if they were unable to see one without thinking of the other. This is what the Mouse hated so much. The layering, the intertwining. When someone looked at her and saw me. Julia looked at Theo and saw Martin. This excited her.

“He didn’t know. I tricked him.” She couldn’t tell if Theo approved of this or not. He seemed lost in thought. “Is that your motorcycle?” she asked.

“Hmm? Yes.”

“Can I have a ride?”

Theo smiled. “How old are you?”

“Old enough.” Julia blushed. He thinks I’m, like, twelve. “I’m your age.”

He raised both eyebrows. “I am, ” she said.

“Prove it, then.”

“Stay here,” Julia ordered. “Do not leave without me.”

“No worries, I have to pick up a few things. If I can find them,” Theo said, glancing at the boxes.

Julia raced downstairs. She stripped off her clothes and showered, then stood in Elspeth’s closet, confused. What would Valentina wear? No, forget that. What would I wear? She emerged clad in jeans, Elspeth’s chocolate suede high-heeled boots and a pink T-shirt. She put on lipstick, blow-dried her hair and went back upstairs.

Theo was kneeling beside a pile of boxes. “This is pointless,” he said.

“Probably,” said Julia.

Theo turned to look at her. “Well,” he said. “Would you like a motorbike ride? I have an extra helmet.”

“Why yes,” said Julia. “I would.”

A T FIRST Valentina was almost nothing and she knew almost nothing. She was cold. She moved aimlessly through the flat, waiting with a sense of anticipation.

Time passed very slowly in the flat. Valentina paid no attention at first, but as the months went by and she began to understand that she was dead, that Elspeth had somehow gone away, that now she was stuck with Julia forever; when she started to grasp what might have happened to her, time slowed until Valentina felt as though the air in the flat had turned to glass.

The Kitten was her constant companion now. They spent days following pools of sunlight, lolling together on the carpets; they watched television with Julia in the evenings and sat in the window seat at night while Julia slept, staring out over the moonlit cemetery. It’s like an endless dream, where nothing ever happens and you can fly. Julia seemed to be watching for her, waiting; sometimes Julia would say her name uncertainly, or look in Valentina’s direction, and at those times Valentina would remove herself to another room: she did not want Julia to know she was there. Valentina was ashamed.

Summer ended and autumn arrived. On a cold rainy evening Valentina saw Robert come up the front walk. In the garden was a For Sale sign; Martin and Marijke had put their apartment on the market. Julia was upstairs helping Theo unpack and repack boxes for the move.

Robert let himself into the flat. The small typed card with Elspeth’s name on it was still tacked to the door, causing him a spasm of sadness. He had taken off his muddy shoes downstairs, and walked noiselessly through the hall into the front room. He turned on the light by the piano and looked around. “Valentina?”

She stood by the window. She waited to see what he would do.

“Valentina-I’m sorry. I didn’t know.”

She had been longing to see him for months. Now he was here, and she was disappointed.

Robert stood in the middle of the room, his head tilted as though listening, his hands hanging empty at his sides. Nothing moved. There was no cold presence, only vacancy.

“Valentina?”

She wondered if he had loved her.

He waited. Finally, receiving no encouragement, he turned and padded out of the flat. She watched until she saw him walking up the path and through the gate, dark against the darkness. Where are you going, Robert? Who will be waiting for you when you get there?

J ULIA WALKED down Long Acre, window-shopping. It was a sunny day in January, a Saturday, and she’d woken up that morning with an urge to go somewhere there would be people; she had gravitated to the shops thinking she might buy a present for Theo, or something cute to wear when she went to visit him at the weekend. Julia was dressed carelessly in yesterday’s jeans and a sweatshirt under one of Elspeth’s coats. She felt extra thin, as though she were barely occupying her clothes. She walked like an astronaut, swaggering in furry moon boots. She wandered into a tiny shop in Neal’s Yard that was full of pink things: hi-top sneakers, feather boas, vinyl miniskirts. Mouse would have been in love with all this, she thought. Julia imagined herself and Valentina in fluffy angora sweaters and Day-Glo green fishnet stockings. She held the sweater to her chest in front of the mirror, and was repelled by her own reflection; the girl that peered out of the mirror looked like Valentina with the flu. Julia turned away and returned the sweater to the rack without trying it on.

Back on the pavement she stood for a moment, thinking about a Pret she had passed a few streets back and trying to remember which direction she had come from. A girl brushed past her. There was something, perhaps, about the smell of the girl, which was compounded of lavender soap, sweat and baby powder, that made Julia notice her. The girl was walking fast, dodging tourists. She moved without hesitating, circumventing Big Issue vendors and buskers instinctively. The girl had dark chestnut hair that bounced in ringlets as she walked. She wore a bright red dress and a little fur capelet. Julia began to follow her.

As she followed the girl she became more and more agitated. Sherlock Holmes says you can’t disguise a back. Or maybe it’s Peter Wimsey. Anyway, from the back that girl sure looks just like the Mouse. She doesn’t walk like her, though. Valentina would never have moved with such forthright strides through a crowd. The girl ducked into Stanfords, the map shop, and Julia did too.

“Please, I’m looking for a map of East Sussex?” The girl’s voice was a rich alto, unmistakably Oxbridge.

“D’you want the road map or Ordnance Survey?” asked the shop assistant.

“Ordnance Survey, I think.”

Julia loitered at a table full of books about Australia while the girl followed the assistant downstairs. A few minutes later, the girl came up the stairs holding a shopping bag and Julia got a good look at her face.