The Child Inside Read Online Free PDF Page B

their easy drugs and their easy sex. I see myself so enchanted; passing around the joint, sniffing up the coke, knocking back the tequila, doing whatever I could to be like them. I was infatuated , almost. But it didn’t work. Not really. I only had to speak to one of them to know that I didn’t belong. But these women now, they’d have been perfectly at home in Vanessa’s living room. They’d have been to the right schools, spoken the right language.
    And yet Vanessa herself, how different she was.
    Vanessa didn’t cut me and measure me. Vanessa didn’t judge me or shut me out. She was far, far above all these people and above those people, too, back then; those needy, drugged-up kids filling up her house weekend after weekend.
    But Vanessa went and died, and I didn’t even get to say goodbye.
    I leave as soon as I politely can, but instead of going straight home I take a detour. I can’t help myself. It is not far from Richmond to Kew, and within minutes I am driving slowly through the quiet streets to Mrs Reiber’s house.
    I can’t stop thinking about Vanessa, and about that old woman, questioning myself over and over: is it her? Is it Vanessa’s mother? It is as though a door has opened in my mind and the past has come spilling out. I cannot just shut it again. I cannot just let it go.
    Andrew says I am obsessive. He says it all the time. He hurls it at me as an accusation when we’re rowing, and when we’re not rowing he aims it lower, in a voice of pseudo-concern, though really it’s to undermine me and keep me down.
    Rachel, don’t be so obsessive about things.
    Rachel, you’re obsessing again.
    Andrew with his cool, calm reasonableness. Andrew who doesn’t fight properly, out in the open, but stands before me like an implacable wall, frustrating me all the further. Andrew who freezes me out with his silence, and turns away from me in bed.
    But Andrew isn’t here to stop me now. He isn’t here to know.
    I crawl past Mrs Reiber’s house. Twice I drive around the block. I do not know what my purpose is.
    On my third time round I pull up, opposite the house. There is nowhere to park on the street, so I block someone’s drive, and I turn off the engine, and the lights. I feel like some kind of stalker. I feel like I am half-mad, but there is no one to see me, no one to know. And so I sit there, and I stare at the house, and I ask myself again and again: is it her? There is a light on in the living room, and another upstairs. The curtains are all drawn. I wonder what she is doing in there; I wonder if she is alone.
    Sometimes, after Vanessa died, I’d get a bus into Oakley and walk past her house. I could get a bus there from near my college, and sometimes I did, instead of going home. I’d get off the bus, walk to the cricket green and sit myself on a bench. Her house was one of only five town houses, the second one in from the right. On the first floor, where the living room was, there was a small balcony, overlooking the green, with full-length windows that you could open and step out of. From my bench on the green the glass looked black, but the light moved across it so that it seemed to move, like sunlight on oil. I imagined I could see her there, waving. I imagined she knew I was there. I wanted her to know.
    And then I’d walk down into the village, past the sweet shop and the baker’s and the smart ladies’ dress shop; I’d walk where she would have walked. And it was as if she was in the air all around me. I expected to turn a corner and see her.
    Suddenly I realize that the person whose driveway I am parked across is watching me. The front-room curtains have been pulled apart and there is a man standing there, with his hands on his hips. Quickly I dig my phone out of my bag and put it to my ear, as if I am making a call, then I put it away again and start up the car. He watches me the whole time. I look over my shoulder, careful not to catch his eye, and pull away.
    And then I drive