so suspicious the day she’d dropped Bea home. She was introduced to me as Trish. ‘Of course, you know Verity,’ Ailsa said. ‘She’s the one you almost called the police on that time.’ We had a giggle after she’d scurried off. ‘Fillers no?’ Ailsa said, and I nodded energetically. Another occasion, we met a tall woman wearing, as was later explained to me, ‘invisible’ braces on her front teeth, who told us in three different ways how proud she was of her daughter, ‘dear Soph’, who had scaled some academic pinnacle despite setbacks – bullying by people jealous of her? – along the way. As we walked off, Ailsa said, ‘She always makes me feel bad about myself. Am I a terrible person?’ I told her I thought she wasn’t. ‘Do you think I’m jealous of Soph’s achievements?’
‘No, I think she wants us to feel that, and maybe we should feel sorry for her for wanting it so badly. To be honest,’ I added, to Ailsa’s delight, ‘she can fuck right off.’
Was there something I missed? Clues? I don’t recall her talking directly about her marriage – the omission is itself telling – though she talked almost obsessively about her friends, often anguished by small slights. Someone had a coffee morning and didn’t invite her. Delilah had put her down in front of Tom. ‘She referred to having designed our garden, and I said, “It’s a collaboration,” and she said, “Yes babe, of course,” but it was just the way she said it, the way she looked at him? You know? It’s so typical. She always has to have one over on me. It’s always him and her against the world.’
We can’t all afford to sweat the small stuff, but I found it touching that she did. I enjoyed the novelty of involvement in that kind of trivially emotional nitty-gritty. It didn’t occur to me this might have concealed something darker and more troubling.
There were moments when her responses were slightly off – ‘Oh, sweetheart!’ she might say, drawing the words out with an unnatural emphasis as if her mind was elsewhere. She’d told me more about Wilson’s, how one of the effects was anxiety, and, though it was managed with medication, her mental health was something she referred to darkly now and then. I knew, of course (though she didn’t know I knew), about the self-help literature by her bed (Bit Sad Today), the evening primrose, the black onion oil and the prescription pills. The primrose and the black onion were reported to be good for anxiety and depression (I’d Googled); the pills were Cuprimine (for the Wilson’s) and citalopram, an SSRI.
One conversation in particular sticks in my mind. We were having coffee in one of the cafes facing the common when she told me she had conceived Melissa very easily, ‘too easily’, but that later when it was time to ‘extend the family’ (an odd phrase, I thought at the time), it had become difficult. She had longed ‘achingly’ for another child and, in the end, had taken the fertility drug Clomid, and ‘to my delight’ discovered she was pregnant with twins. It wasn’t that I thought her revelation wasn’t genuine. I was sure it was. I just had the sense it was oft repeated, that her telling of it had become pat. Even the final sentence seemed loaded with cliché. ‘The morning after they were born, I remember holding both of them in my arms, these tiny weightless bundles, and feeling complete. You know?’
I put my cup down on the table. The milk had separated and I’d noticed a yellow globule of oil on the surface. The sight reached inside me, revolved in my stomach.
‘I mean I make it sound so glorious, but it didn’t last.’ She sounded genuine again. ‘What I haven’t mentioned was how traumatic the births were.’
‘Traumatic? You mean premature?’
‘Actually, only a little bit early – twins usually are, but nothing too dramatic. Why do you ask?’
‘No reason.’ I pulled myself together.
‘You know, I’d great plans for a water birth and whale music – the whole shebang. But it was so long and difficult and painful, and the epidural came so late, and they had to use forceps – I think we were all traumatised by the time Bea – she came first – finally struggled into the world.’ She began to recite the rest like a list: