To Dare Read online

  Softly, Terry takes her wrists, one in each hand, and pulls them slightly downwards. It is not hard, yet her body feels weighted. Leaning forward he sticks his face an inch before her own. She can smell beer and something stale on his breath. He is waiting for her to look at him. Slowly, she meets his eye. For a second, he holds her gaze. Two seconds. Three.

  Until suddenly, he snickers. “Well, Milly’s a dense cow also!”

  Now there is an explosion of laughter, first from Terry, then from Jasmine who has finally unfrozen and followed them into the kitchen, and eventually from Simone who smiles and tentatively joins in. Terry thinks he has been hilarious. He releases Simone’s wrists with a flourish and lifts Jasmine high into the air. She seems fine now, Simone notices. Unbothered by the tension that has preceded this moment and perhaps was only ever in Simone’s head. As her father starts throwing her up and down, she giggles profusely, louder with every flight.

  “Jassy,” Terry shouts as he launches her. “Jassy!”

  Simone feels her own chest relax. Everything’s fine. She was being paranoid again, typically, seeing problems that aren’t there. Terry’s always telling her she’s doing that. And he’s always had a dark sense of humour. Given his childhood, he does well really to be as balanced as he is. She should be more understanding of that, more mindful. Especially when he’s on a comedown. Especially with the move. Jasmine shrieks again and now Simone laughs a little louder, with careful pleasure. Noticing her mother, Jasmine giggles even more generously, gesticulating for her to join in. But as Simone moves closer, reaching for her daughter’s outstretched hands, Terry stops still. Face instantly devoid of lightness, he spins around and stares at her again, as though her presence is a rude, unwelcome intrusion, and they haven’t moments ago been laughing together. She feels she should back away or disappear into the floorboards.

  “Go on then,” he says.

  This time, the curtness to his tone is unmistakeable, not imagined, and the relief of the previous moment is replaced with a shooting panic. What does ‘go on then’ mean? What does he want her to do? Back away? Could he hear her thinking? The TV is still blaring, politicians arguing about something irrelevant, and the room feels unbearably loud. Confusion creeps. They were just playing, weren’t they? Laughing? Go on then. She’s worried she hasn’t heard him properly, or that she’s missed something, and if she asks for clarification he’ll think she wasn’t listening, that she’s making him look like a mug. She hesitates for a second. Two seconds. Three. But her anxiety is still misplaced. Again, she’s read things wrong.

  “Go on then,” he repeats, and this time he says it in a coaxing, sing-song voice, as if it’s a great joke, or as though he’s talking to Jasmine, as though Simone is a child herself. She is still unsure of the instruction, but he helps her now with a wave of his hand. Tentatively she picks up the dustpan and brush to which he is indicating. “Stupid Mummy,” Terry tells Jasmine, shaking his head as he hurls her into the air again.

  It is not the right time to tell Terry about the job. Maybe later, once he’s had a line or two. Or when their friends are round. Or once Dominic is home from school and has eaten the chocolates from the silly blonde woman next door.

  Veronica

  Veronica had managed to unpack all of the boxes, with the exception of the ones labelled for George’s study. Those were sitting neatly piled in the third bedroom atop the olive green carpet she had finally managed to convince him was coming back into fashion, and anyway a good colour for channelling the fields and calm-inducing pastures of their childhoods, which they did not see in the city. Despite being a stone’s throw from Regent’s Park, landscaped gardens fanned the mind with precise, ordered beauty; they didn’t drench the soul with wild terrain. She and George both agreed that during their teen years, they would have been lost without such wilderness. Their boarding schools, it turned out, were less than five miles apart in the Kent countryside and they have often spoken of how while she was performing in her school’s open-air drama festival, he may have been shooting down a frosted pitch, legs muddied and hands bloodied in worship of the fast-clasped rugby ball. Over a decade since his last match, George retained a steel pin in his left shoulder, a knee that was in constant need of physiotherapy and a nose that would never be quite as straight as God may have intended. But like her love of American rock music, and a series of dalliances with unsuitably young male English teachers, her husband wore these badges like the proofs they were: attestation to the years of privilege and opportunity and community and neglect.

  He had promised to tackle the boxes at the weekend, but for the time being Veronica had shut the bedroom door to hide them. It may have taken her until almost midnight, but tomorrow they would wake up in the house they had been visiting at various stages of demolition and resurrection every week for the past six months, and it would be just as they had dreamed it. Even the wedding china, which while they were in the flat languished in storage, had now been meticulously removed from bubble wrap and placed on the exact shelf of the exact cupboard that she had been planning. For his part, George had fitted the feet of every chair and table and moveable piece of furniture with thin felted cushions, so as to protect the dark oak floor. He had read all of the instructions for the gas and electricity metres, for the boiler, for the alarm system. And he had phoned the council to find out which days each of the different bins were collected. He had not, yet, touched her.

  Their bed had a high romantic headboard, waffled in cream, and the wardrobes and bedside tables were painted a slightly peeling white in the shabby chic style of Louis XIV. These were pieces they had garnered over a series of months, visiting showrooms and antique fairs, each fastidiously chosen to complement the sweeping floor to ceiling windows and luxurious cream shag rug at the end of the bed. The effect was a success. Despite the dust, which even a professional post-build cleaning crew and three attempts by herself had failed to dispel, the room exuded airiness, tranquillity, and, of course, amour. This last was an added pressure she had not accounted for. Since the miscarriage, everything was a pressure. Yet without discussing it, Veronica felt that both she and George had been viewing the house as a new start, building it up in their minds as the fresh slate upon which their dreams, their family, would materialise. The only problem was that now the house was complete, there was a call for action. Now they had to do something. Not something, one specific thing. And now, all they could do was lie on opposite sides of their soft, vast bed, petrified by the prospect of continued catastrophe, continued ways in which they had failed and would fail each other.

  She was not the woman he fell for. A long time ago, at their wedding, he had described her as indomitable.

  But she had never before desired and failed. Not openly. She had desired and pretended otherwise. She had feigned contentment with things fleeting, and steered her course away from the solidity she could not have. Only now they had said it to each other, out loud: they wanted a baby. And in voicing it, as though to mock her flat stomach, the longing inside her had swollen. It had made her yearn with a deepness that churned her chest to pieces and ruffled her exterior. She felt anxious where she was once fearless. She felt weak where she should be bold. She felt needy where she had been so independent. Because for a baby, she needed George. And in needing him, she had become repulsive.

  George was not asleep. They had put down their Kindles and switched off the lights, delighting in the feat of the integrated lighting system working exactly as they had planned it, and now they were lying in darkness. Both were aware that this moment was an overt First that ought to be marked with a christening – their first night in their new bed in their new home. But he was facing the wall away from her. And she was doing likewise. Besides, it was still at least four days until she would be ovulating. Veronica allowed the darkness to sink through her, heavy and enveloping. There was a sliver of light creeping through the very edges of the curtain from the lampposts outside, and every now and then there was a clip-clopp
ing of heels, or a slow car pulling respectfully to park, but otherwise the carefully crafted tranquillity of the room was undisturbed.

  Despite the acres of fields that had surrounded her boarding house, it was never as quiet as this. Aged twelve, she’d arrived late – during the autumn term of the second year when everybody else had begun a full three terms earlier. The decision had not been hers. Due to the demands of her father’s job, her parents were relocating to Oman, and her options, if they could be described as such, were to attend the international school there, which itself was weekly boarding, or to board full-time in the UK. She chose the latter, though even as she was doing so she was aware that it was not really from want. Mainly, it was because of her parents’ indifference to the outcome, an indifference that drove her to the much further afield, screw-you-if-that’s-how-little-you-care option, and passed unnoticed.

  At night, four to a dorm, she would listen to the sounds of pattering footsteps transgressing between rooms, the bell from the great clock three floors below them, the clattering about in the kitchens an hour before they had to rise, the owls, the crickets, the rumbling of distant trains, and the constant flushing of toilets. Compared to this, rowdy university halls had been nothing. City living had been a doddle. And now, the gentle noises of their new abode were positively serene.

  They had looked for a long time to find exactly this blend of urban interest and suburban calm. A plethora of estate agents had held their hands through Chelsea, Mayfair, Islington, Marylebone, but the moment they crested the eponymous hill, they were sold on Primrose. A tiny collection of roads and crescents and pretty squares, the area was like a country village supplanted into the city, except that every café and shop had shed its parochialism and was absolutely chic. Each house was painted a different shade of pastel, and blue plaques dotted the frontages in abundance, denoting which world-famous writer, poet, diplomat or explorer once occupied the honoured abode. People greeted each other in the streets, shopkeepers knew their customers by name, and as she and George had strolled smug through the sweet squares that converged onto beautifully kept communal spaces, they had both agreed that their discovery of this place was nothing short of fate. Because together, they got it. They were Primrose Hillbillies already.

  George sighed deeply. Veronica turned over and tentatively stroked his shoulder with the tips of her fingers. He smelled clean, freshly showered. He didn’t move. Perhaps he was already asleep after all, immersed in the soft folds of tranquillity. Moving closer to him, Veronica dared to wrap her body around his. As usual he was many degrees hotter than she was and she tucked her feet between his legs, noticing as she did so that the tops of her thighs had begun to itch again. Two different doctors were yet to diagnose why, but over the past few months she had developed this low-level creeping beneath her skin. Sometimes she barely noticed it, but other times it irritated like a mosquito bite stretched wide across her thighs, and then it took all of her will power to stop herself from scratching her skin to shreds. Veronica attempted to endure the itch now, so as not to bother George, but after many minutes she couldn’t resist one quick rub. Still George remained motionless, his breath steady. Until all at once, they both stiffened.

  From next door had come the abrupt sound of something thumping. Or rather, of someone being thumped. There was a distinct yelp, almost like a dog crying, but clearly not a dog, a woman, and then something unintelligible in a deeper tone. Another thud hit their adjoining wall, and instinctively, Veronica froze. Despite the extra soundproofing, it seemed as though the people were right inside hers and George’s bedroom, and as the woman next door moaned again, Veronica found herself physically recoiling. There began a series of moans, and a rhythmic pounding against the wall, then a shrill, penetrating wail, as though somebody, the woman, was gasping for breath, or pleading for something, and then that wailing sound was muffled. For at least five minutes this went on, while Veronica and George lay intertwined, unmoving. At last it stopped, but then, almost immediately, it was replaced by the blaring of 90s dance music and the unpalatable tones of a man singing along. It was another full three minutes before finally, Veronica whispered to George in the dark.

  “Are you asleep?”

  George sat up. “Of course not. What the hell was that?”

  Untangling herself from George’s legs, Veronica moved a little away from him, allowing them to avoid the confirmation that he had been faking sleep. The music was still blaring and the man continued to shout in accompaniment. Veronica turned on her bedside light and glanced at the clock: 3am. “I guess, that was the neighbours.”

  “The neighbours doing what? Jesus, that sounded… I mean—”

  “I know.”

  George got out of bed and strode over to the adjoining wall, as if he would find evidence there of what had just occurred. “Do we call somebody? Is she hurt? Or is that just, I don’t know, is that what rough sex sounds like?”

  For a moment, Veronica wondered if this was a dig at the current infrequency of their own sexual relations, or about the clinical, baby-optimising nature of them, but this wasn’t the moment for that argument. “I met her today.”

  “Oh yeah?”

  “She seemed quiet if anything. Not the type you’d expect to be, well, enjoying that.”

  “What did she look like?”

  “Very thin. Quite pretty but, I don’t know… bit… you know.”

  George shook his head. “Of all the houses to be next to.” He nodded his head towards the wall. “Did you meet him?”

  “No. But I heard a baby crying earlier.”

  “A baby? Living with that?”

  Next door, the song ended and another one swiftly began. The man continued to shout the words at the top of his voice. It sounded as though he was jumping too, or dancing, or using a bat to bang at the floorboards. George sat back down on the bed and put his head in his hands.

  “A year looking for a place, three months planning, six months of work, all that money, and we’re next to this.”

  Listening to him, Veronica felt a sudden wave of concern for her husband. It was rare to see George so defeated. He was the kind of man who controlled a room. If he had moments of despair or fear, even after all these years Veronica wasn’t immediately party to them. She tried not to reproach him for this, understanding well the importance of self-sufficiency. She may have been sent to boarding school at twelve, but he went at eight, the instructions of his father on parting – be a man – set hard and fast in his head. In any case, self-sufficiency was her hallmark too. She managed, despite change. She achieved, despite unreliability. If there was a problem, she fixed it. They were both fixers. Both good at ushering the world before them. Doubly powerful when their forces were combined. Until the doctor had told them that there was no heartbeat, and neither one of them could fix a thing.

  “Do you think she’s okay?” said Veronica.

  George looked up. “Maybe I should go round.”

  “No, don’t.”

  “She might be hurt.”

  “What are you going to do? Demand to see her? Tell him we’ve just heard him pummelling his wife? You can’t do that, and I don’t want you squaring up to him.”

  “I think I’d be okay,” George prickled.

  Veronica sighed. “I know, I know you would, but he sounds crazy. Besides, do we really want to start a confrontation with our new neighbours our first night in? We have to live next to these people. I think either we do nothing, or we call the police.”

  “So maybe we should call the police,” said George.

  Veronica nodded. “Maybe. But, what if we’re wrong? Maybe it sounded worse than it was. We don’t really know what happened. Maybe that was just them having sex.”

  George strode back around the bed to his side of it and unplugged his phone from the charger. He started searching on the screen. “Perhaps there’s a noise pollution unit or something. Maybe we can get them to check it out without actually getting the police involved.”
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br />   “Good idea,” agreed Veronica. It had been a while since she and George had been drawn together by something that wasn’t related to their own ‘situation’, and it felt good to be so united. “Although, do you think they’d tell them it was us who complained?”

  “You really don’t need to worry about them,” assured George, puzzled, she supposed, by her anxiety, her new weakness. “I’m here. Besides, men who batter their wives are usually cowards.”

  “I just don’t want to feel awkward every time I leave the house,” Veronica attempted to rationalise.

  George nodded. He had found a number to call. “I’ll ask them to keep it anonymous.”

  Veronica moved nearer to him and rested her hand on his shoulder as he called. She listened to him explain the situation to what turned out to be an answering machine, and then call another number and repeat the same thing to a respondent. She listened too to the still blaring music and wondered if the slip of a woman she had met earlier was lying on the floor somewhere, unconscious of its beat. Veronica felt herself shaking a little. She wondered what she would say when she saw the woman again. What was her name? Christ, she hadn’t even asked it. If the woman was dead and the police questioned her, she wouldn’t know what to tell them. They had talked about building work. She had given her chocolates. She should, surely, have noticed that something was wrong.

  “They’re going to drive by,” said George.

  “Pardon?”

  “The noise unit. They’re going to drive by, and if they can hear the noise from the street, they’ll knock on the door.”

  “Oh okay, that’s good,” breathed Veronica. “Well done.”

  George had always been tirelessly practical. He always got things done. In the low gleam of the bedside lights, they lay back in bed. The music continued to blare and there was no longer any pretence that either of them were asleep. Nevertheless, they remained on their far sides of the mattress. George’s chest rose and fell in a strained, artificial attempt at breathing deep. Veronica’s legs itched. She was starting a new teaching position the following morning and would surely now be a mess for it. At least she had already narrowed down her outfit – either a long red dress, or a shorter blue. But she’d wanted to be bright, sparky. Every now and then the man next door would explode into a short bout of shrieks, and Veronica’s breath would stick in her chest, and she would sense George tensing. Occasionally there was a lull in the music, and he would gradually relax, but then like a stab to the gut the music and the man would return with their abrasive beat.