Sofka Zinovieff - Putney

In her memory, the woods marked the point where a childhood friendship turned into something more exciting. There was a new fear of being found out. Without discussing it, they both assumed that even Ed and Ellie’s tolerance would have limits if they learned what was going on. It was true that her parents were frequently absent or at least absent-minded, but the simplicity of their earlier meetings had disappeared. Daphne loved her mother and father and she had no doubt about their affection for her, but she didn’t feel at the centre of their worlds. True, Ellie had given up working soon after the junta seized power in Greece, but it was to concentrate on the political fight, not to be with her children. Daphne pictured the colonels with bulbous noses, waxed moustaches and red eyes, like the baddies in comics. Helping bring down a dictatorship was more important than building a career in some stupid London legal firm, Ellie said, and Ed earned enough to provide for the whole family. However, her mother became even busier than before, taking up many cases on a pro-bono basis to help exiles and supporters of the cause. There were interminable meetings, often held in the kitchen, which filled with the shouts of angry people and their fug of smoke and coffee fumes.

Ellie’s preoccupations did not change much when, after seven years, the colonels were locked up and Greece was free. Her trips to Paris continued and she attended an apparently endless stream of protests with radicals, feminists, anti-apartheid groups and CND. ‘What will you do with me and Theo when the nuclear family is abolished and women are finally free?’ Daphne once asked her mother, half-teasing, half-concerned.

Ed was more predictable as a parent, though he too was wrapped up in his own concerns. He claimed children should find their own way to grow up – a philosophy that suited him. When he was writing a book, he was so distant as to be almost like a ghost in the house, forgetting meal times and spending half the day in his dressing gown, which was so extravagantly embroidered he resembled a walking tapestry. ‘Be a darling and pipe down,’ he’d say to Daphne or Theo if they were making too much noise.

Daphne was never quite sure what Ed’s academic post at King’s consisted of, but there were references to students’ theses and to colleagues. Various people (predominantly rather attractive young women, as Ralph pointed out) came to the house carrying sheaves of typed pages and pensive expressions. So although Daphne couldn’t be sure if her father would be closeted in his study and refusing to emerge, hosting a group of writers and students in the kitchen, or away at work, she was less worried about him interfering with her plans than about her mother.

She knew both her parents had affairs. Even without eavesdropping, she was sure that when certain ‘friends’ of both Ed and Ellie made a fuss of her, it was because she was their lover’s child. She saw letters and witnessed rows. None of it surprised her. On the other hand, Daphne felt increasingly wary of Nina, especially when she had a baby a year or so after the wedding. Sometimes, on returning home from a furtive encounter with Ralph, Daphne found Nina drinking coffee with Ellie.

‘Come and see darling little Jason,’ Ellie would coo. ‘Would you like to hold him?’ And Daphne would say she was too tired or had homework and tried to keep out of the way. She didn’t analyse her discomfort or admit to jealousy.

Although Ralph never appeared to feel a conflict between his love for Daphne and his family obligations, it became harder to find time together. They were both imaginative in finding solutions. One day after school, when she was nearly thirteen, he took her to a barber in Battersea. Before the appointment, they sat in Maurice, holding each other across the seats and kissing. The gear-stick dug into her leg, but she didn’t care. She wanted to kiss him so much it gave her a tummy ache. Sometimes it was all she thought about for an entire day.

‘You’ll look so beautiful. It suits you to be brave and unusual,’ he said as they walked to the small barbershop, with its red-and-white-striped pole and photographs of men with bushy moustaches, sideburns and puffed-up quiffs. She didn’t need persuading. She liked the idea of being daring, revelling in the fear and excitement as when jumping from the highest diving board into the pool. The barber hesitated before cropping her mass of hair, but then enjoyed himself getting the short back and sides just right with his clipper. Afterwards, Ralph stroked her scalp up and down. ‘Like an animal’s fur. You’re my otter,’ he said, sniffing her as though she’d been transformed into another species. ‘A sleek, water animal.’ When she got home, Ellie and Ed were shocked to see their daughter shorn and boy-like. But they came around to it, appreciating a radical gesture. At school, people laughed and mocked her. ‘You should use the boys’ toilets now,’ jeered one girl. ‘Lezzer, lezzer,’ chanted a group of boys with shoulder-length hair.

Ralph was ecstatic about Daphne’s new appearance and treated the haircut like another of their secrets.

‘Do you really like it?’

‘Ah, my darling girl!’ He smiled at her, pulling her in close to him and sniffing her hair.

‘Then why do you like Nina’s hair so long?’ She had noticed him stroking Nina’s lustrous mane absent-mindedly when the previous weekend they came over to lunch at Barnabas Road with little Jason. He looked puzzled for a moment. ‘Your hair is the most beautiful thing. You’re a spirit from another world, my Daff. You are magical and mysterious. You can’t be compared with anyone. Don’t even think of it.’

He kept some long locks of her hair, picked up from the barber’s floor and plaited into a tight, dark braid. Sometimes he put it in an inside pocket of his jacket and carried it around with him – a risky memento. Once, when they were together, he brought it out with a flourish. ‘It’s like having you with me,’ he said. ‘Or at least a tiny part of you.’ He held it to his nose, sniffed deeply and, exaggerating the impact, swayed as if he was about to swoon. ‘I love you, Daff. Damn it. I love you.’

She turned on the hot tap again, keeping the temperature in the bath at the maximum she could bear, a wasteful trickle draining out through the overflow. Beyond the steamy scent of sandalwood oil, she could make out onions being sautéed, the aroma floating up the stairs and under the door. It was Michael’s week for shopping, cooking and washing-up and she was taking full advantage of his dogged preparation of a mushroom risotto.

Despite being submerged to the ears in her scalding bath, she couldn’t relax. The unexpected communication from Daphne after such a long silence had been a shock. She spotted the Facebook message that morning on the bus as she travelled slowly across rush-hour London towards the lab. It gave her such a jolt she let out a noise. The man next to her turned curiously, so she had to smile at him and show there was nothing wrong. And she wasn’t clear what exactly was wrong. Yet she was disturbed by this casual reaching out across the years. It had dug up complex memories she’d taken a long time to entomb and cover with a heavy slab of stone. After all, she and Daphne had been so close. She was always hearing from colleagues and friends about the mild gratifications of middle-aged reunions enabled by social media. And yet she still couldn’t make up her mind how to reply.

Jane looked down at her body as it pinkened in the hot water. She was happy with what she saw – so much happier than she’d been when she was young, when she had been close to Daphne. The long-standing regime of daily, lunch-hour swims had tautened her limbs and even a fifty-year-old abdomen that had stretched through two pregnancies was smooth and flat. She had hardly noticed when the menopause came and went, only glad that the inconvenience of periods had ended. At weekends she ran, and was even considering training for the London Marathon, maybe with Michael, if she could persuade him. She liked what she’d become. Strange, then, that this rush of memories about Daphne had thrown her into the kind of mental turmoil she associated with the agonies of her podgy, lank-haired adolescence.