RACHEL
Monday, 15 July 2013
Morning
CATHY CALLED ME BACK just as I was leaving the flat this morning and gave me a
stiff little hug. I thought she was going to tell me that she wasn’t kicking me out
after all, but instead she slipped a typewritten note into my hand, giving me
formal notice of my eviction, including a departure date. She couldn’t meet my
eye. I felt sorry for her, I honestly did, though not quite as sorry as for myself.
She gave me a sad smile and said, ‘I hate to do this to you, Rachel, I honestly
do.’ The whole thing felt very awkward. We were standing in the hallway,
which, despite my best efforts with the bleach, still smelled a bit of sick. I felt
like crying, but I didn’t want to make her feel worse than she already did, so I
just smiled cheerily and said, ‘Not at all, it’s honestly no problem,’ as though
she’d just asked me to do her a small favour.
On the train, the tears come, and I don’t care if people are watching me; for all
they know, my dog might have been run over. I might have been diagnosed with
a terminal illness. I might be a barren, divorced, soon-to-be-homeless alcoholic.
It’s ridiculous, when I think about it. How did I find myself here? I wonder
where it started, my decline; I wonder at what point I could have halted it.
Where did I take the wrong turn? Not when I met Tom, who saved me from
grief, after Dad died. Not when we married, carefree, drenched in bliss, on an
oddly wintry May day seven years ago. I was happy, solvent, successful. Not
when we moved into number twenty-three, a roomier, lovelier house than I’d
imagined I’d live in at the tender age of twenty-six. I remember those first days
so clearly, walking around, shoeless, feeling the warmth of wooden floorboards
underfoot, relishing the space, the emptiness of all those rooms waiting to be
filled. Tom and I, making plans: what we’d plant in the garden, what we’d hang
on the walls, what colour to paint the spare room – already, even then, in my
head, the baby’s room.
Maybe it was then. Maybe that was the moment when things started to go
wrong, the moment when I imagined us no longer a couple, but a family; and
after that, once I had that picture in my head, just the two of us could never be
enough. Was it then that Tom started to look at me differently, his
disappointment mirroring my own? After all he gave up for me, for the two of us
to be together, I let him think that he wasn’t enough.
I let the tears flow as far as Northcote, then I pull myself together, wipe my
eyes and start writing a list of things to do today on the back of Cathy’s eviction
letter:
Holborn Library
Email Mum
Email Martin, reference???
Find out about AA meetings – central London/Ashbury
Tell Cathy about job?
When the train stops at the signal, I look up and see Jason standing on the
terrace, looking down at the track. I feel as though he’s looking right at me, and I
get the oddest sensation – I feel as though he’s looked at me like that before; I
feel as though he’s really seen me. I imagine him smiling at me, and for some
reason I feel afraid.
He turns away and the train moves on.
Evening
I’m sitting in A&E at University College Hospital. I was knocked down by a taxi
while crossing Gray’s Inn Road. I was sober as a judge, I’d just like to point out,
although I was in a bit of a state, distracted, panicky almost. I’m having an inchlong
cut above my right eye stitched up by an extremely handsome junior doctor
who is disappointingly brusque and businesslike. When he’s finished stitching,
he notices the bump on my head.
‘It’s not new,’ I tell him.
‘It looks pretty new,’ he says.
‘Well, not new today.’
‘Been in the wars, have we?’
‘I bumped it, getting into a car.’
He examines my head for a good few seconds and then says, ‘Is that so?’ He
stands back and looks me in the eye. ‘It doesn’t look like it. It looks more like
someone’s hit you with something,’ he says, and I go cold. I have a memory of
ducking down to avoid a blow, raising my hands. Is that a real memory? The
doctor approaches again and peers more closely at the wound. ‘Something sharp,
serrated maybe …’
‘No,’ I say. ‘It was a car. I bumped it getting into a car.’ I’m trying to convince
myself as much as him.
‘OK.’ He smiles at me then and steps back again, crouching down a little so
that our eyes are level. ‘Are you all right …’ he consults his notes, ‘Rachel?’
‘Yes.’
He looks at me for a long time; he doesn’t believe me. He’s concerned.
Perhaps he thinks I’m a battered wife. ‘Right. I’m going to clean this up for you,
because it looks a bit nasty. Is there someone I can call for you? Your husband?’
‘I’m divorced,’ I tell him.
‘Someone else then?’ He doesn’t care that I’m divorced.
‘My friend, please, she’ll be worried about me.’ I give him Cathy’s name and
number. Cathy won’t be worried at all – I’m not even late home yet – but I’m
hoping that the news that I’ve been hit by a taxi might make her take pity on me
and forgive me for what happened yesterday. She’ll probably think the reason I
got knocked down is because I was drunk. I wonder if I can ask the doctor to do
a blood test or something, so that I can provide her with proof of my sobriety. I
smile up at him, but he isn’t looking at me, he’s making notes. It’s a ridiculous
idea anyway.
It was my fault, the taxi driver wasn’t to blame. I stepped right out – ran right
out, actually – in front of the cab. I don’t know where I thought I was running to.
I wasn’t thinking at all, I suppose, at least not about myself. I was thinking about
Jess. Who isn’t Jess, she’s Megan Hipwell, and she’s missing.
I’d been in the library on Theobalds Road. I’d just emailed my mother (I
didn’t tell her anything of significance, it was a sort of test-the-waters email, to
gauge how maternal she’s feeling towards me at the moment) via my Yahoo
account. On Yahoo’s front page there are news stories, tailored to your postcode
or whatever – God only knows how they know my postcode, but they do. And
there was a picture of her, Jess, my Jess, the perfect blonde, next to a headline
which read CONCERN FOR MISSING WITNEY WOMAN.
At first I wasn’t sure. It looked like her, she looked exactly the way she looks
in my head, but I doubted myself. Then I read the story and I saw the street name
and I knew.
Buckinghamshire Police are becoming increasingly concerned for the welfare of a missing twentynine-
year-old woman, Megan Hipwell, of Blenheim Road, Witney. Ms Hipwell was last seen by her
husband, Scott Hipwell, on Saturday night when she left the couple’s home to visit a friend at around
seven o’clock. Her disappearance is ‘completely out of character’, Mr Hipwell said. Ms Hipwell was
wearing jeans and a red T-shirt. She is five foot four, slim, with blonde hair and blue eyes. Anyone
with information regarding Ms Hipwell is requested to contact Buckinghamshire Police.
She’s missing. Jess is missing. Megan is missing. Since Saturday. I googled
her – the story appeared in the Witney Argus, but with no further details. I
thought about seeing Jason – Scott – this morning, standing on the terrace,
looking at me, smiling at me. I grabbed my bag and got to my feet and ran out of
the library, into the road, right into the path of a black cab.
‘Rachel? Rachel?’ The good-looking doctor is trying to get my attention.
‘Your friend is here to pick you up.’
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