‘Frances, what’s going on? Please talk to me.’
I look up. His face is so linear; the long line of his nose, the sharp edges of his cheekbones flaring against his skin. He is a man of angles and mathematics, cold logic. He compartmentalises; that’s always been his problem. Isolates himself. I open my mouth to tell him the truth of it – I wanted a baby and you took my chance away and you’re spending all our savings on a girl on a screen and you lied to me, you lied, you lied – but then he says something that knocks me back on my heels.
‘Do you remember when we first met, Frances?’
I stare at him. ‘Yes. You took me to the cinema. We watched Slumdog Millionaire.’
‘No. That was our first date. Before that. When we met.’
I stiffen. Why is he bringing this up now? I feel a cold frost creeping up my arms. ‘Yes,’ I say. My voice is very small.
William reaches up a hand and tucks a stray hair behind my ear very, very gently. ‘It’s almost like you had a twin,’ he continues, in that same soft voice, ‘but you killed her. Isn’t it?’
I don’t speak. I just look at him. There is no trace of the person I was when William and I first met. I razed her to the ground.
‘You remember the old you, Frances? What do you think she would make of you now? I often wonder.’
‘I don’t. I don’t ever think about it.’ Not true. That bright blue paint in long, looping spatters. The way the word had been written in letters four feet high across the hallway. Whore. ‘Why are you bringing this up, William?’
‘Alex said you’d been looking through the old photos. He mentioned that you’d been asking questions about it. About me, and my old friends. About Edie. I suppose I thought if you wanted to rake over my past we may as well do yours as well.’
‘That’s not fair.’
‘No?’
‘No! I was – that wasn’t me. Not who I am, not really.’ If you keep telling yourself that, one day it will be true, I think coldly.
When I think back to the day I met William Thorn for the first time, the memory is slippery and black as an eel. It comes to me in a series of images: the big house in a small town on Osborne Road, brickwork and windows blackened by soot, the sound of the door buzzer like an angry insect, the bed that sagged in the middle, the coldness of the mattress in the winter, a pile of used tissues, waking with the taste of cocaine in the back of my throat, cold sores, the thinness of the curtains that let the light through. Tiny flats with paper-thin walls. Worn carpet. The couple next door who had grinding, panicky sex that seemed to last forever. They spoke a fast, urgent language that might have been Polish. I don’t know.
A man followed me home one night. I remember blurred lights and chewing gum, my jaw clenched and aching. MDMA. No, speed. It doesn’t matter. He started talking to me, the man. Telling me I looked familiar. He started off nice but it soon turned nasty. What’s your name? Where do you work? We know each other, don’t we? Have we fucked? We have, haven’t we? Hey, hey, look at me. Look at me. We’re just talking. Don’t be shy. You do it for money, eh? I remember you. Sweet girl. Nice tits. Don’t – don’t ignore me. Come on, come on, baby. Are you still at that place – Osborne Road, yeah? You heading there now? You working there now? Fifty. Fifty. It’s all I’ve got. It’s cash. You can get something nice with that. Hey, where you going? You don’t need to be rude.
Running home, inside, up the stairs. Keys in my fist, jutting out between my fingers. Imagine a world with no men in it, and you could walk at night and simply not worry. I double-lock my bedroom door. In the morning, blue paint, all the way down the hallway. A single word: Whore. There were handprints all over the bannisters in that same blue, the colour of lapis lazuli. Looking at it made me feel sick. The man who lived downstairs came to help me scrub it off, rubber gloves and white spirit, his terrible jokes, designed to make me smile. William means ‘resolute protector’. I found that out after he’d introduced himself. I looked it up. Small towns strangle you; so many hands at your throat. I moved away, big city this time. I kept William’s number, hidden away between the pages of a book. I didn’t find it for another seventeen months and then I didn’t call him for another three. Mud sticks. That’s all I know.
‘Do you know why I’m bringing this up now?’ he asks me.
I shake my head.
‘Because the past is the past. I know you’re probably wondering why I didn’t tell you about Edie, but honestly, Frances – cross my heart – I never think about her. I didn’t treat her well, and when I dumped her she was mad about it. Talked about getting her mum’s knife and cutting me’ – when he says that I have a brief flash of Samantha holding the knife against me, the blood blooming on my T-shirt – ‘having me beaten up. All kinds of stuff. We were teenagers. You must remember what that was like?’
‘It was very different for me,’ I remind him. ‘I had to grow up very fast. I had no family.’
‘No, but look how far you’ve come. You’re a warrior, Frances Thorn.’ He smiles but I’m not mollified. I can still feel the hot pulse of my fury.
‘Do you love me, William?’
‘More than anything.’
‘What have you been spending our money on?’
‘What money?’ Smooth. Careful.
‘The money we put aside for the baby.’
‘Okay.’ He presses the palms of his hands together and holds his fingertips to his lips. He’s looking at me earnestly. ‘I might have lost a little on the poker. I thought I’d be able to pay it back before you noticed and, you know, I’m an arsehole, I should have told yo—’
‘William—’
‘I know. I know. I’m a sad old man. But that money was just sitting there anyway, not doing anything.’
‘But you promised me. “We’ll try for a baby this year.” You swore.’
‘I did, I know. I know.’
‘You’ll have to pay it back. We’ll need it, won’t we? For when the baby comes.’
He’s silent and for a moment I forget about Kim – my trump card in her pale pink bra and sheer knickers – and watch him shift uneasily in the beam of my irritation.
‘William?’
‘I never promised you that.’
I stare at him, tears brimming. Even though I’ve already figured this out it still hurts to hear it from him.
He looks away from me. ‘Can’t we just wait and see what happens?’
‘That is what we’ve been doing!’ I yell, piston-straight, my head pounding. ‘And here we are, still doing it six years later! You lied to me then and you’re lying to me now!’
‘Frances, I swear to you—’
‘You don’t know what it’s like, to feel like this,’ I tell him. I’m forcing myself to be composed but it’s hard, it’s hard. ‘To want something so much it hurts. You have no idea!’ He studies me, head tilted. ‘You were never going to agree, were you? You’re just here waiting out the clock, right? If we wait another year I’ll be giving birth at thirty-five. By the time the baby goes to school I’ll be forty. By the time it goes to university I’ll be sixty. Even if I leave you and I’m lucky enough to meet someone else I would have kids with, how long will that process take? Four years? Six? Longer?’