Over that weekend, there was no mention of Emily’s invisible friend. Apparently, ‘Conrad’ had stayed at home, and not followed us to Scarborough. Dominic felt vindicated: over a candlelit bottle of wine, when Emily had gone to bed, he expounded his theory.
‘It proves she needed attention, that’s all. It’s done us a world of good to be here, together, as a family.’A family.
I did not reply. Is that how he thought of us? It occurred to me that he, too, had been playing a part. The generous father; the bringer of mirth. He liked himself in the role, I thought. He liked the feeling of being in charge, of fixing what was damaged.
Damaged. That feeling of doubt returned. The feeling that Dom had known who I was before he got involved with me. It would not have been difficult to find out a little about my history. My name had not changed, and at fourteen, he would have been quite old enough to follow the details of Conrad’s case. What had Dominic seen in me? Could it have been my damage, and not my resilience, that had first attracted him?
‘Hey.’ His voice was caressing. ‘You’re not zoning out on me, are you?’
I looked up. His familiar face was so kind; so sincere; so warm in the candlelight. And yet a part of me struggled to escape, just as I longed for acceptance.
‘Dominic. Did you know who I was before we started dating?’
He frowned. ‘Why do you ask?’
‘I wonder what you see in me.’
He laughed at that, a good rich laugh that should have chased my doubts away. ‘What I see in you? Are you joking? You’re gorgeous, Becks. Way out of my league. I still can’t believe I’m with you.’
‘Not – damaged? Something to be fixed?’
He pulled a comic face. ‘Oh, Becks. If only you could see yourself. You’re by far the most wonderful thing that has ever happened to me. You’re tough, and strong, and clever, and all I ever dreamt of –’ He took my hands in his, and pulled me gently towards him. He smelt of wine, and of the sea, and of something else, like ozone and sweat. And I accepted his embrace and pushed away that feeling of doubt, born from a lifetime of feeling that I didn’t deserve to be happy.
We made love that night to the sound of the sea, and afterwards, I should have slept, except that everything was wrong; the shadows on the painted wall; the sound of the ancient plumbing. Victorian boarding houses have Victorian plumbing, I thought, but that sound was too familiar; too sinister to be ignored. I got up at one in the morning and went to check on Emily; she had a little room of her own, with an en-suite bathroom. I opened the bedroom door, and listened for her breathing. It was light and regular; I could just see the top of her head from underneath the duvet. Just as I started to close the door, I heard a sound from the bathroom.
Rrrrrrrrk –
Those Victorian pipes, of course. But it sounded so familiar. I stopped. The bathroom door was shut. Quietly, I came into the room, and turned on the bathroom light. Behind me, Emily slept on; the light from the passageway caught her cheek and torched her hair into autumn fire. I opened the bathroom door and looked in. I saw Emily’s toiletries on a shelf; her bathrobe, with the kitten print, was neatly hung up behind the door. And I saw that the toilet seat was shut, held in place by a number of items piled with a haphazard urgency: a Bible from the bedside drawer; a bundle of holiday brochures.
Who had taught her to do that? I thought. Who had brought Mr Smallface into my daughter’s little life?
From the pipes, that sound again, like a dog with a bone in its throat. Rrrrrk. Rrk-Rebecc-aaaa –
I shut the bathroom door and fled.
12
King Henry’s Grammar School for Boys, June 14th, 1989
Returning to my life after that, I found myself experiencing a strange kind of paralysis. Things were good again at home; Dominic was happy, and there were no more of those furtive phone calls to his sisters. Work, too, was good. That summer term at King Henry’s was like the summer Conrad died; all sunshine on the surface, and the giant presence of what was to come no more than a shadow at my feet. Emily seemed happy at school, although she still spoke of ‘Conrad’, and weighed down the toilet seat with books before she went to bed. I wanted to find out the reasons behind her behaviour, but Dominic’s opinion was that we should simply ignore it, and try to encourage her to be more outgoing, and to try some new activities.
I allowed him to persuade me, not quite believing his tactic would work. Like the child I had once been, Emily had always been quiet and introspective. The idea that she would respond to a programme of outdoor activities, cooking, TV and board games seemed almost unbelievable. And yet, to my surprise, she did. The gift of a shiny new bicycle, presented to her strategically at the start of the half-term holiday, served to tempt her out of doors, after which Dom announced his long-delayed plan to redecorate her bedroom. This meant that, while he was working there, repainting the walls in her favourite colour (pink) and converting her bed into a fantasy tent, draped with gauzy fabric, she would have no choice but to vacate her room and spend more time playing out in the garden.
Thus, under Dominic’s influence, Emily spent less time alone, and more time in the kitchen with him, or riding her new bicycle, or watching TV in the living room. She even invited a couple of friends to come and sleep over one weekend, which entailed a great deal of giggling and pillow fights and sugary snacks.
I knew I should be pleased for her. My daughter was adjusting. And yet I could not shake off the idea that, somehow, I was missing something. Was it simply jealousy of her affection for Dominic? Or was it that persistent fear that he was controlling both of us?
Back at King Henry’s, the Middle School exams took up most of my time. Written exams took place in the Gym, and oral exams in the theatre. Scoones was in charge of the latter, and he took immense pleasure in the role, allocating each member of staff a dressing room in which to conduct the face-to-face language interviews, while the rest of the boys worked in silence in the main part of the theatre. The interviews were all recorded onto a stack of cassette tapes, then taken home and marked according to the new GCSE guidelines. This was far more unwieldy and time-consuming than marking scripts and took up most of my evenings, much to Dominic’s disgust.
‘I thought we were trying to make more time together with Emily,’ he said.
‘I know. It won’t be for long,’ I said. ‘I just need to mark these oral exams.’
‘Twenty minutes per candidate – with how many candidates? Sixty? That’s twenty hours’ solid marking, even before you get on to the written papers.’
He was right, of course, which made it all the more annoying. Under the pretext of being in charge of exam administration, Scoones had offloaded most of his marking onto a junior member of staff. This was Departmental policy, I discovered, and I was torn between the desire to complain, and the knowledge that if I did, I would be viewed as a malcontent, or weak, or not a team player. And so I accepted the extra work, and ploughed through the stack of cassette tapes, noting with sly satisfaction that Scoones’s French was considerably less fluent than mine. As a result, Scoones was complacent – even almost avuncular. Sinclair, too, was approving, and Lenormand quite sympathetic. Only Higgs still kept aloof. But finally, I was starting to feel as if I could be accepted.