seized against their will.
‘I’ll never forget when Marion came to my Zumba class,’ she was saying. ‘It was last summer. Or was it the summer before? Or was it the one before then?’
Why was it always the one who knew the deceased the least, who talked the loudest at funerals?
I went on to the kitchen, where people were poring over clip-frame pictures of Marion, which I couldn’t quite bring myself to look at. Old Potty was there with his Mexican-wave eyebrows. I was contemplating slipping out, texting Joe later, then I saw Mrs Murphy looking dangerously like she was making a beeline for me, and decided on a tactical toilet break. I sloped upstairs.
The house had hardly changed in eighteen years. It had the same smell: furniture, polish and books. The wide, dark staircase seemed modest enough now, whereas it used to seem so grand to me, so full of mystique, probably because it led to Joe’s bedroom, which was the only place we could be alone, doing whatever we did in there – learning Zeppelin lyrics off by heart, discussing Potty’s eyebrows … Joe’s mum occasionally walking past with the Hoover.
‘Joseph, leave your door open, please, otherwise Robyn will have to go home!’
Behind that door, we’d be sitting, holding our breath, often in various stages of undress. It seemed like an age ago, another life ago. Like it didn’t even happen.
There was the same mahogany side table at the top of the stairs, with the photos on top. I paused to look at the one of all four boys, an eight-year-old Joe on the end, pulling a stupid face, desperate to dash off as soon as the picture was taken.
I gave myself a quick once-over in the long mirror just before you get to Joe’s room.
I was wearing a black Monsoon shift dress. Last time I looked in this mirror, the girl staring back at me was terrified, with peroxide hair: white face, white hair. I just remember that.
The door to Joe’s bedroom was half open, just a slice of the view of the rolling sheep-dotted fields, then the flat grey line of the sea. I couldn’t resist it. I went inside. It smelt different, of a guest room, but it was still completely Joe’s room. There was still the poster of Led Zeppelin’s album
Physical Graffiti
(Joe and I were alone and, it has to be said, slightly ridiculed in our appreciation of Led Zeppelin, which as teenagers was enough to make us believe we were destined for one another) and, above his bed, Béatrice Dalle in
Betty Blue
pouted back at me. Clearly, Joe’s older brothers had introduced him to
Betty Blue
and the wondrous sexiness that was Béatrice Dalle, since we were only little when the film came out, but I’d often looked at her in that poster; the tough, gap-toothed poutiness and the cleavage, and I’d wanted to
be
Béatrice Dalle at sixteen. I wanted to be French and insouciant and wild and sexy. I was kind of annoyed with this gawky, traumatised teenager, who just desperately missed her mum. I wandered around for a bit, examining Joe’s odd collection of boy trinkets: rocks and fossils, and then – I couldn’t believe he’d kept it this long! – the ‘ironic’ pen in the shape of a lady; when you tipped her up, her knickers came off. I’d brought it back from Palma Menorca for a laugh, in 1997. That year – the summer we got together – Joe went to Amsterdam and bought me a wooden clog specially engraved with my name. The fact he’d queued up to get that done (because ‘
Robyn
’ was never on any merchandise in the land) thrilled me. ‘He must
really
like me,’ I’d thought, ‘If he’s willing to queue in front of his mum and dad, to get a wooden
clog
signed.’
‘He’s got tenacity, that one,’ I remember Dad saying. A few months later, Joe wasn’t allowed to set foot in our house. But I still have that clog, and sometimes, when I’m feeling down, I just like to turn it over in my hand; feel its wooden, smooth simplicity.
I stood in front of his bed – it was the same metal,
‘I’ll never forget when Marion came to my Zumba class,’ she was saying. ‘It was last summer. Or was it the summer before? Or was it the one before then?’
Why was it always the one who knew the deceased the least, who talked the loudest at funerals?
I went on to the kitchen, where people were poring over clip-frame pictures of Marion, which I couldn’t quite bring myself to look at. Old Potty was there with his Mexican-wave eyebrows. I was contemplating slipping out, texting Joe later, then I saw Mrs Murphy looking dangerously like she was making a beeline for me, and decided on a tactical toilet break. I sloped upstairs.
The house had hardly changed in eighteen years. It had the same smell: furniture, polish and books. The wide, dark staircase seemed modest enough now, whereas it used to seem so grand to me, so full of mystique, probably because it led to Joe’s bedroom, which was the only place we could be alone, doing whatever we did in there – learning Zeppelin lyrics off by heart, discussing Potty’s eyebrows … Joe’s mum occasionally walking past with the Hoover.
‘Joseph, leave your door open, please, otherwise Robyn will have to go home!’
Behind that door, we’d be sitting, holding our breath, often in various stages of undress. It seemed like an age ago, another life ago. Like it didn’t even happen.
There was the same mahogany side table at the top of the stairs, with the photos on top. I paused to look at the one of all four boys, an eight-year-old Joe on the end, pulling a stupid face, desperate to dash off as soon as the picture was taken.
I gave myself a quick once-over in the long mirror just before you get to Joe’s room.
I was wearing a black Monsoon shift dress. Last time I looked in this mirror, the girl staring back at me was terrified, with peroxide hair: white face, white hair. I just remember that.
The door to Joe’s bedroom was half open, just a slice of the view of the rolling sheep-dotted fields, then the flat grey line of the sea. I couldn’t resist it. I went inside. It smelt different, of a guest room, but it was still completely Joe’s room. There was still the poster of Led Zeppelin’s album
Physical Graffiti
(Joe and I were alone and, it has to be said, slightly ridiculed in our appreciation of Led Zeppelin, which as teenagers was enough to make us believe we were destined for one another) and, above his bed, Béatrice Dalle in
Betty Blue
pouted back at me. Clearly, Joe’s older brothers had introduced him to
Betty Blue
and the wondrous sexiness that was Béatrice Dalle, since we were only little when the film came out, but I’d often looked at her in that poster; the tough, gap-toothed poutiness and the cleavage, and I’d wanted to
be
Béatrice Dalle at sixteen. I wanted to be French and insouciant and wild and sexy. I was kind of annoyed with this gawky, traumatised teenager, who just desperately missed her mum. I wandered around for a bit, examining Joe’s odd collection of boy trinkets: rocks and fossils, and then – I couldn’t believe he’d kept it this long! – the ‘ironic’ pen in the shape of a lady; when you tipped her up, her knickers came off. I’d brought it back from Palma Menorca for a laugh, in 1997. That year – the summer we got together – Joe went to Amsterdam and bought me a wooden clog specially engraved with my name. The fact he’d queued up to get that done (because ‘
Robyn
’ was never on any merchandise in the land) thrilled me. ‘He must
really
like me,’ I’d thought, ‘If he’s willing to queue in front of his mum and dad, to get a wooden
clog
signed.’
‘He’s got tenacity, that one,’ I remember Dad saying. A few months later, Joe wasn’t allowed to set foot in our house. But I still have that clog, and sometimes, when I’m feeling down, I just like to turn it over in my hand; feel its wooden, smooth simplicity.
I stood in front of his bed – it was the same metal,
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