Page 55 of The Women

‘Well, yes, but …’ Samantha checks her watch. It is ten to. She should go. She wants to go, but she cannot stand up.

‘He picked you up,’ Aisha is saying, ‘and took you for a drive in the vintage Porsche Carrera.’

‘No spoiler,’ Jenny chips in. ‘Cream leather seats.’

Samantha closes her eyes. She feels sick.

But Aisha hasn’t finished and continues with something like relish. ‘He took you to a bar. But shock horror, the bar was rammed. So he suggested his place. And he drove you to his incredible house, with his art and his vinyl and his fireplace. And, let me see, he put a record on. Miles Davis’sKind of Blue?’

‘You got the Miles Davis,’ Jenny drawls. ‘I got the Coltrane.A Love Supreme.I thought it was the most amazing thing I’d ever heard. I thought he was the most sophisticated man I’d ever met, when actually he’s no more than a randy dog.’

Dog.Those men are dogs, they hunt their prey by day.Samantha stands so quickly her chair falls back, crashes on the floor of the cafeteria. ‘I’m sorry, but why the hell are you both here? Why are you so interested in me and Peter? I mean, it’s a bit of a coincidence, isn’t it, both of you here in this college when I just happen to be your tutor?’

Aisha stands up too, holds up her hands. ‘We told you, we didn’t know you were teaching that course when we signed up. I signed up for the last one, but it got cancelled.’

Samantha shakes her head. ‘I’m sorry, I don’t buy that at all. I think you came here so you could … I don’t know. I don’t know what you’re trying to do, the pair of you. I mean, why do you even live round here? That’s just … it’s just weird.’

‘Samantha,’ Aisha says. ‘I was with Peter for five years. I know this area, I love it. So does Jenny. For the same reasons. Me and Jenny know Richmond and each other because of Peter. If it weren’t for him, we’d just be two women who got pissed together in a pub once. We wouldn’t have become friends. And when we decided to rent a place together, we looked round here because we liked it, that’s all. I know it might seem like a coincidence, but it isn’t. We live here, this is our local college and it was me who fancied a creative-writing course, not an unusual thing for a postgrad with a passion for English. I dragged Jenny along so I’d have a mate to come with me. That’s all, I swear to God. There’s no way we thought there’d be any connection to Peter, because he works at UCL; he’s got nothing to do with this college.’ She bends down to help Samantha right the chair. ‘Look, I’m sorry. We got carried away. We’re in a different place with it all, but we’ve been where you are now and we shouldn’t have—’

‘We shouldn’t have made light of it.’ Jenny is looking up at Samantha with her round green eyes. ‘Sorry, Sam, that was well out of order. But everything Aisha says is true. We didn’t come here to mess you up or interfere in your life, honestly we didn’t, and if you sit down, we’ll tell you properly. We’re only trying to help, I promise. We just want to make sure your eyes are open. You don’t know what he’s capable of. Trust us.’

Trust. Fine word. Samantha pulls her satchel strap over her head. The gesture feels petulant already; her cheeks heat with embarrassment at her own angry display. ‘Look, things have changed, all right? He told me they’d changed and I believe him. He didn’t ask you two to move in, did he? He didn’t ask either of you to marry him. And he didn’t have a baby then either. I know it’s not particularly edifying, but he’s moved on from all that now.’ Her heart is hammering. Sweat trickles down her sides. She has to get away. She has to get away from their eyes.

‘He didn’t seduce you the first night, did he?’ Aisha is staring at her, her brown eyes almost black, glowing.

‘What?’ Samantha takes a step back. ‘What has that got to do with anything?’

‘He didn’t sleep with you, did he? That first night?’

‘Let me guess,’ Jenny interrupts, her voice too loud for Samantha’s comfort. ‘He asked you all about yourself, told you that you were beautiful and intelligent and generally fucking amazing. Did he offer you the magic pills? Or was it the sprinkles? And the next day, did he take you to see him perform – oops, I mean lecture? And did you watch him and feel like it was all for you, that he was the most incredible person you’d ever met, and now he’d fallen in love with you, with you above everyone else, and you couldn’t quite believe it?’

Samantha glances towards Aisha for support, but Aisha’s face is motionless.

Samantha backs away. ‘He wants me to marry him. It was his idea to have a baby.’

Jenny laughs. But the sheen on her hardened green eyes gives her away. ‘That’s because when we found out what he was, we both dumped him. Aisha dumped him that night, legend that she is, and I dumped him the next night, and he couldn’t fucking believe it, couldn’t believe that he, the almighty Professor Bridges, had been rejected. Twice in twenty-four hours.

‘And suddenly he was alone and old and he finally understood what it meant to be dropped, and that if it’d happened once, it could happen again and probablywouldhappen again. Just like a normal person. He’s intelligent enough to know that he’snota normal person – he’s a very good-looking, very clever little shit. And he knows he’s a shit. He panicked, Sam. That’s all this is. He’s terrified of being alone, can’t stand it even for one week. He’d never end a relationship without first starting another. Can’t bear not to be admired, desired, revered … he can’t bear it. And he found you, all young and lovely and ripe, and he thought he’d knock you up and put a ring on your finger before you—’

But Samantha doesn’t hear the rest. She is running across the courtyard towards the crèche, their words landing like bricks in the water, sinking, sinking, down and down, to the dark riverbed of her subconscious where she knows, already knows, they will lurk, waiting for her to stop, waiting for silence, to begin their poisonous decomposition. Peter found her, all young and lovely and ripe,before her colour changed. He picked her up the day after Jenny ended things with him, two days after Aisha, his long-term girlfriend, left him. My God, it’s too much to … How can a person move on so quickly? A machine switching to a new power source, oh God oh God, and now this is part of what she knows about him and it’s too late to unhear what Aisha has said, what Jenny has said. She cannot unhear it. Cannot unsee their urgent, laughing faces, the blaze of scorned fury in their eyes. She has seen those eyes before, in the face of her own mother, and in some cruel twist, it appears that it is Jenny, bolshie, man-hating Jenny, who wrote those poems, not to get at her, but to get at Peter – her warped revenge for his crimes against women.

She reaches the nursery half weeping with stress. At the sight of her, the nursery assistant’s brow wrinkles with confusion. She gets up from the floor and walks slowly towards her.

‘Samantha, hello. Are you all right?’

‘Sorry I’m late,’ Samantha says breathlessly. ‘Lost track of time.’

But the nursery nurse is still scrutinising her. ‘Did you forget something?’

The blood drains to her feet. The woman’s name badge says Gail. She has a cold sore on her top lip.

‘I’m here to pick up Emily,’ Samantha says, in those last moments of understanding. ‘Emily Bridges? My daughter?’

Gail’s face clouds. ‘Suzanne said you’d asked her to bring her to you. She said you were busy with a student and wanted to feed her yourself.’ Her voice falters. ‘She had your number in her phone. She said you were mates. You seemed … We called you from her phone but you didn’t pick up, so she left a message … She was likeHi, hon, it’s only me, like you totally knew her, and she said you were busy with the … Didn’t she bring her? Oh my God, she didn’t. Oh God, I’m so sorry, this is only my sixth week and I’ve totally messed up. Oh my God, I’m such an idiot, I can’t believe I … but I thought you were mates, you seemed like mates … Oh shit, what’ve I done? I’m so, so sorry. Samantha … Samantha?’

Twenty-Three

‘Help!’ Samantha is running across the college courtyard. ‘Help!’ She is running through the automatic glass doors, into the cafeteria. ‘Somebody help me! Help, help, oh my God.’

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