Sarah Waters - The Night Watch

There was no reason, she thought, as she climbed the stairs, for feeling self-conscious about it. Julia had never said, for example, that she would prefer it if Helen left her study alone. The subject had never arisen between them; on the contrary, there were times when Julia had gone out to some meeting or other and had telephoned to say, 'I'm sorry Helen, I've been an idiot and left a paper behind. Would you mind running up to my room and fishing it out?' That showed she didn't mind the thought even of Helen going through the drawers of her desk; and certainly, though the drawers had keys to them, the keys were never turned.

Still, there was something furtive, something troubling, about visiting Julia's study when Julia wasn't there. It was like going alone to your parents' bedroom when you were a child: you suspected that things went on there-precise, unguessable things, that were both about you and yet excluded you utterly… So Helen felt, anyway. She'd feel this even while, as now, she was simply standing in the room-not lifting up papers or peering gingerly into unsealed envelopes-just standing still in the middle of the room and looking around.

The room took up almost all of the attic floor. It was dim, quiet, with sloping ceilings-a real writer's garret, she and Julia liked to joke. The walls were a pale shade of olive; the carpet was a genuine Turkey rug, only slightly worn. A desk like a bank-manager's, and a swivel chair, were in front of one of the windows; an aged leather sofa was in front of the other-for Julia wrote in bursts, and in between liked to doze or read. A table at the sofa's end held dirty cups and glasses, a saucer of biscuit crumbs, an ash-tray, ash. The cups and stubs of cigarettes had Julia's lipstick on them. A tumbler had a smudge left by her thumb. Everywhere, in fact, there were bits of Julia-Julia's dark hairs on the sofa cushions and the floor; her kicked-off espadrilles beneath the desk; a clipping of nail beside the waste-paper basket, an eye-lash, powder from her face…

If I were to hear , Helen said to herself, that Julia had died today, I'd come in here, in exactly this way, and all this rubbish would be the stuff of tragedy . As it was, she gazed from thing to thing and felt the chafing within her of a familiar but uneasy mix of emotions: fondness, annoyance, and fear. She thought of the haphazard way in which Julia had used to write, in that studio flat in Mecklenburgh Square she'd been describing to Viv, today, on the fire-escape. She remembered lying on a divan bed while Julia worked at a rickety table by the light of a single candle-her hand, as it rested on the page, seeming to cradle the flame, her palm a mirror, her handsome face lit up… She would come to bed at last, after writing for hours like that, and lie tired-out but sleepless, distracted and remote; Helen would sometimes softly lay a hand on her forehead and seem to be able to feel the words jostling and buzzing about behind it like so many bees. She didn't mind. She almost liked it. Because the novel after all was only a novel; the people in it weren't real; it was she, Helen, who was real, she who was able to lie at Julia's side like that and touch her face…

She moved closer to Julia's desk. It was, like everything of Julia's, untidy, the blotting-paper over-inked, a pot of treasury-tags upturned, a heap of papers mixed with dirty handkerchiefs and envelopes, dried apple peel and tape. In the middle of it all was one of Julia's cheap blue Century notebooks. Sicken 2 , she had put on its cover: it held her plans for the novel she was working on now, a novel set in a nursing-home and called Sicken and So Die … Helen had come up with that title. She knew all the ins and outs of the complicated plot. She opened the book and looked inside it, and the apparently cryptic jottings- Inspector B to Maidstone – check RT , and Nurse Pringle – syrup, notneedle!! -made perfect sense to her. There was nothing here that she didn't understand. It was all as ordinary and as familiar to her as her own lopsided face.

Why, then, did Julia seem to recede from her, the closer she drew to objects like this? And where the hell was Julia now? She opened the notebook again and began to look more desperately through its pages, as if searching for clues. She picked up an inky handkerchief and shook it out. She looked beneath the blotting-pad. She opened drawers. She lifted a paper, an envelope, a book-

Underneath the book was the Radio Times from a fortnight before, folded open at the article about Julia.

URSULA WARING introduces Julia Standing's thrilling new novel-

And there, of course, was the little photograph. Julia had gone to a Mayfair man to have it done, and Helen had gone with her, 'for the fun of it'… The afternoon had been no fun at all. Helen had felt like a dowdy schoolgirl accompanying a good-looking friend to the hairdresser's-holding Julia's bag while the man made her pose and move about; having to watch while he smartened her hair, tilted her jaw, took her hands in his, the better to place them… The finished pictures were flattering, though Julia pretended not to like them; they made her look glamorous-but not glamourous, Helen thought, in the way she really, effortlessly was-as she lounged about the flat, say, in her unironed trousers and patched shirts. They made her look marriagable ; Helen didn't know if there was any better term. And she had thought, in great dismay, of all the ordinary people who must have picked up the Radio Times and opened it at Julia's face and said to themselves, idly and admiringly, 'What a handsome woman!' She'd pictured them as so many grubby fingers, rubbing down the image on a coin; or as quarrelling birds, pecking at Julia, taking her away, crumb by crumb…

She had been secretly glad when that issue had gone out of date and been replaced by another. Now, however, she looked at the magazine-at Julia's picture, at Ursula Waring's name-and all the old anxiety rose up in her as if fresh. She got into a squat, and closed her eyes, and bowed her head until her brow met the edge of Julia's desk; she moved her face so that the edge ground into her and hurt her. I'd suffer more pain than this , she thought as she did it, to be sure of Julia! She thought of the things she'd readily give up-the tip of a finger, a toe, a day from the end of her life. She thought there ought to be a system-a sort of medieval system-whereby people could earn the things they passionately wanted by being flogged or branded or cut. She almost wished that Julia had failed. She thought the words: I wish she'd failed! What a little shit she must be! How the hell had she got to this place?-this place where she wished things like that on Julia? But it's only , she said wretchedly to herself, because I love her -

As she said the words, she heard the rattling of Julia's key in the lock of their front door. She scrambled to her feet, switched off the light and dashed downstairs; she went into the kitchen and pretended to be doing something at the sink-turning on the tap, filling a glass with water and emptying it out again. She didn't look round. She was thinking, Don't make a fuss . Everything's all right . Be perfectly natural . Be quite calm .

Then Julia came to her, and kissed her; and she smelt wine and cigarette smoke on Julia's mouth, and saw the bright, flushed, pleased expression on her face. And then her heart-for all that she was trying so desperately to hold back its jaws-her heart shut tight inside her, like a trap.

Julia said, 'Darling! I'm so sorry.'

Helen spoke coldly. 'What are you sorry for?'

'It's so late! I meant to be back hours ago. I had no idea.'

'Where have you been?'