Queen K, page 6
The overhead light snapped on. She was standing there, wearing the hat.
‘Are you OK, Alex? I’m sorry, I know you have mixed feelings about going away to school. Sorry if that was insensitive of me.’
She just stood there in her hat.
‘Alex?’
‘I can’t answer you,’ she said, ‘because I’m not here.’
She sat down on the floor and from where I was on the bed I couldn’t, in fact, see her; all I could see was the hat.
‘I think you’re a little overtired. I think this has all been a bit overwhelming for you. I understand, it’s a big change, I know it seems scary, but you never know, you might love—’
‘Mel. Can you get me my retainer case from the bathroom? I want to take my braces out.’
‘You want me to bring the case in here? Shouldn’t you take them out in the bathroom?’
‘Please, Mel. I want to take them out now. They’re hurting me.’
‘OK, OK. Hold on.’
I went into her bathroom.
‘It’s in the cupboard,’ I heard her say.
‘Which cupboard?’ But she didn’t answer. I rummaged around, eventually I found it. When I returned to the bedroom Alex had gone. There was just the hat on the floor.
‘Got it!’ I called. I put the case on her bedside table.
‘Alex?’
I sat on the bed to wait, scrolled through my phone.
But after five minutes she hadn’t appeared. I wandered out into the corridor, looked around. I went to the living area, looked in the kitchen, looked up in the study. I went back to her bedroom. Only the hat. On the way down to my bedroom I passed Sebastian.
‘Are the doors locked?’ I asked him. ‘I mean, the doors leading outside. You can still get out though, can’t you, from the inside, without a key …’
‘Where are you thinking of going?’ he said. ‘Sounds exciting.’
‘No …’ I hesitated. She was probably just in her parents’ room or something. ‘Night,’ I said.
I had washed my face and was in bed when she came to my room. I had taken my contact lenses out for the night so when the door opened her form was blurry, but I knew it was her. I reached for my glasses.
She came over to the bed.
‘What happened?’ I asked.
‘Sorry, Mel. I didn’t mean to scare you.’
But she had scared me, a little.
Her eyes were red, I could tell she had been crying. I stroked the side of her arm.
‘Where were you?’
‘I hid in the cupboard in my room.’
‘You were in the room the whole time?’
Quiet in the cupboard, while I had sat waiting for her, while I had said her name.
‘Why did you do that, Alex?’
‘I don’t know. I felt upset.’
‘Come on,’ I said, lifting the duvet. ‘In you hop. I’m sorry that you are going away to school. You won’t be homesick forever.’
She told me again that she would miss me. I felt grateful that she didn’t blame me for my role in the whole thing, in the whole exercise of sending her away. She didn’t blame them, either. Their harm was subtle and only just beginning to show itself, had yet to reach its full unwitting capaciousness.
Sweet, puppylike little girl. Cuddled into my arms. I could never have imagined that she would grow up into someone so cunning and methodical. And elaborate too, so elaborate, in her choice of punishment.
PART TWO
Monaco
5
Three years went by before I next saw Alex and her family. ‘I worked for this family that were kind of … intense,’ I’d tell people. ‘The husband and wife were sort of obsessive about each other. I don’t think it was easy on their kid.’
Mostly people were interested in what their house was like, if they’d had a private jet, how much money they spent. ‘Did they have diamond hubcaps?’ someone asked. ‘And how about cigar jewellery, have you heard of that? For £200k you can buy a ruby ring to put round your cigar while you smoke it – did the oligarch guy have one of those?’
So to some extent they faded back into cliché in my mind, too, but something did remain, some remnant of curiosity and unease, so that when I got a call from my director – I was one of her old hands by now – and was told that they wanted me to tutor Alexandra again before she began her GCSEs, I said, ‘Sounds fine, OK, sign me up.’
Put something in front of me and I’ll do it. Show me a burrow, into which I can crawl. That’s how I felt at that time. So, I’m going off to work in the South of France for two months, am I? OK, I’ll do it, and while I’m doing it, I won’t think about what comes after it.
And the good thing about new places and sights, about novelties, is that they are large enough to occupy your vision for a while. Their driver picked me up at the airport in Nice and drove me along the coast road: umbrella pines, soft air filled with scents. He dropped me outside an imposing apartment block near the Fontvieille Marina in Monte Carlo and a concierge in the marbleclad lobby directed me up to the penthouse. It wasn’t hard to find; it had its own button in the lift.
Sebastian opened the door to me. ‘Here she is!’ he said. ‘Honey!’ He leaned his head to one side, he opened his arms, I stepped into his hug. The remembered smell of his cologne, the same grey of his suit. ‘I’m happy to see you,’ I said, and meant it. I would be here for the next two months, and I would eat three good meals a day, and I would have a comfortable bedroom and a nice bathroom, and I felt a sudden expansion within myself, an unrolling. ‘Come and say hi to Alex,’ Sebastian said.
He gave my suitcase to a grey-haired woman in uniform and led me through an apartment that seemed to go on forever, I peered through doorways into large rooms ending in sliding glass doors that opened onto what looked like one big panoramic terrace. I saw a dining room with purple wallpaper lit by an onyx chandelier.
‘Kata’s up in the mountains,’ Sebastian told me over his shoulder. I had a vision of her, stately and loungewear-clad in some cave, holding a staff, a mountain hermit. ‘A wellness clinic,’ Sebastian said. ‘She’ll be back in a few days.’
He stopped and knocked on a door.
‘Alex, honey! Mel’s here.’
I heard a key turning in a lock. The door opened and there she was.
I was a little shocked. But I knew some teenagers could go through painfully thin phases.
‘Hi, sweetheart,’ I said gently. ‘It’s nice to see you again.’
‘Hi, Mel.’
I reached out my hand to seal the greeting, to touch her on her upper arm, but as soon as she noticed my hand and where it was headed she cringed away, she actually took a step backwards.
Sebastian shot me a glance and crinkled his eyes, shook his head slightly as if to say, ‘Don’t worry, don’t take it personally.’
He stepped towards her and stroked her gently on the side of her head. She let him. He gave her a kiss on the cheek. She let him do that too.
‘OK guys,’ he said. ‘You have some catching up to do. I’ll leave you to it. I’ll send Irina with some tea.’
I followed her into her bedroom. It had none of the clutter of the teenage rooms I was used to working in, none of the posters, the scattered clothes, the photos of friends. A bed, a desk, two chairs. She’d got all her textbooks out in advance of my arrival. She began to speak quietly, taking me through the work she’d been set that summer. She’d already made a start on it. I looked at her neatly arranged folders, the planner where she’d written down everything she had to do, ticking things off as she went along. It was obvious that, as before, Alex had no need of a tutor. She was bright, and she was disciplined. She could get through all this by herself. Still, it would make my job very easy, I supposed.
‘You can sit down if you like,’ she said.
I would have expected her to look different: she had changed, after all, from child into teen. She was fainter than when I had known her before, lying on her bed in her room in Courchevel, puppy-plump and sulky. She took up less space in the world. Her thinness was not gangly, in the manner of a teenager going through a growth spurt. Her shoulders stooped inside a thin blouse. The only word I could think of was not a word you would usually associate with someone young: frail.
‘How was your journey? Was it OK?’
She gave a little smile, shyly eager to please, and I wondered if she felt bad for recoiling from me when I’d reached out to greet her.
‘Oh, yes, it was fine,’ I said. ‘It’s nice to see you again.’
She looked down at her books. My chair was quite close to hers. ‘So, how’s school been?’ I asked. ‘You’ve been there three years now?’
She didn’t answer. I reached for one of her textbooks, my upper body leaning in her direction and as I did so she shifted and I heard the scrape of her chair as she moved it further away from me.
I felt a little hurt. More than a little, actually. She was physically recoiling from me. I knew I shouldn’t take it so hard. That it had more to do with her than it had to do with me. But I couldn’t help it. It seemed one more proof of a loveless world.
*
On my first morning I woke up extra early and padded down the corridor to the kitchen, got myself some coffee to take back to my bedroom – my bedroom, always my favourite part of a new tutoring job: the comfortable little world that was to be my home for the stretch of time ahead. I always felt relaxed then, all worries deferred until the time I had to leave, two whole months, in this case. I took my coffee and sat with it on the window seat, looking out at the wide boulevard and the apartment block opposite, the sun warming me while the coffee woke me, and it was easy to pretend in the stillness of the morning and with the rush of caffeine that this room and the ensuite that adjoined it were mine, my own little studio flat, and that the city out there was the city I lived in, that there stretched ahead a day of brunches and lunches, nipping here, nipping there, meeting friends, a gallery, a bar, buying fresh vegetables from a market and carrying them home in a straw basket in the sun.
I drank my coffee and took possession: this room was mine. I looked at the bed with its soft white sheets. The mattress was sensational. Hugely thick – it would have taken two strong people to turn it. And the linen was matching and ironed and changed once a week, by Irina. I thought of the Ikea mattresses I used to sleep on. A strip of foam laid across wooden slats.
I could hear Alex’s voice in the breakfast room before I entered, asking Irina for something. I sat down and took in all the breakfast offerings before focusing my attention on a wicker bowl with a white linen cloth draped across it and, sitting on top of the cloth, croissants: plain croissants and almond croissants and chocolate croissants.
‘Sebastian … Sebastian told me …’
She was looking at me with tenderness and concern. She hesitated before continuing.
‘About your mum.’
‘Oh,’ I said.
Sebastian had written to me a few months ago, had seen a message someone posted on my Facebook.
‘He told me this morning. Is she still in hospital? I’m really sorry, Mel. I hope you’re OK.’
‘No, she came out of hospital a few weeks ago,’ I said. ‘I’m fine. Thank you.’
I looked again at the tableau of croissants, the sugar-dusted almond croissant leaning at an angle to the regular croissant with its bronzed ridges, its whorls. I reached for the chocolate croissant. I was always going to have the chocolate croissant.
She was still looking at me, so I smiled, I blew her a kiss. ‘Thank you, sweetheart,’ I said. ‘It’s really OK.’ She smiled at my kiss and blew me one back.
Lessons rolled by peacefully and I was lying on my bed after dinner, reading a magazine, when I heard a tap on my door. She was there, saying, ‘Hi, Mel, I don’t want to disturb you, but Sebastian and I are gonna watch a movie and I thought I’d ask you if you’d like to join us …’
We had popcorn, in matching bowls. We drew the curtains, we each had a blanket. I looked at their profiles, flickered by the lights from the TV screen, and I thought, Yes, this is nice, the world shrunk down to just this room, with these warm presences. The corridor that would lead me afterwards to the peaceful comfort of my bedroom, where I would sleep the whole night through.
‘Well, I’ve gotta love and leave you guys, I’ve gotta make some calls,’ Sebastian said when the movie ended. The screensaver had come on, floating mountains and lakes and waterfalls, and Alex and I stayed where we were, at either end of the large grey sofa.
‘Mel, can I ask, what happened with your mum?’
‘She fell down the stairs. She’d been drinking. It was her own fault.’
I didn’t try to modulate my tone. I couldn’t see her face anyway, my eyes were closed, my head leaning against the sofa cushions.
The horror of that night came back to me. I shifted my head to the side but neither my closed eyes nor the sensation of my cheek against the cushion could stop it coming.
‘I’ve never been able to rely on her,’ I said. ‘I’ve got used to being alone.’
It was inappropriate, to share this much personal information with a student. She didn’t need to know that I had such a useless parent. But lying on that soft sofa, I lost all resistance. I lacked the will to cover anything up.
A few moments later I heard her little voice say, ‘But you aren’t all alone. You are here, with us.’
The blanket was so warm over me. I stayed where I was, eyes still closed, taking in what she had said. And then there was movement under the blanket and, for the first time since I’d arrived, we touched. She tapped my foot gently with hers. Our feet were bare. I opened my eyes and we did that thing where you lift your legs and press the soles of your feet to the other person’s feet, walk them around in the air.
We let our legs collapse back onto the sofa. A vision came back to me from Courchevel. A little girl alone in a bedroom, laptop open, with a glass of milk, and here she was, three years later, in a penthouse in Monaco, without parents or friends or siblings, with a butler and a housekeeper and tutor for company. But it was OK. We were here with her and our lives were lonely too.
‘What was it like for you at school?’ I asked her.
‘It was hard,’ she said. ‘And Mama made it so much harder.’
6
She could remember it vividly, the very first day, when she had been taken and deposited in that strange and foreign place.
Dmitri had driven them there. The school was in the countryside, a couple of hours outside London.
The car had progressed up a long, winding drive. Alex and her mother were sitting in the back of the car. The car had blacked-out windows so Alex knew no one could see in. But soon the car would stop and they would have to get out.
All up the drive there were girls, in groups, or in pairs, all seeming to know each other.
Her mother’s eyes feasted on them. She squeezed Alex’s arm. ‘Look!’ she said. ‘All your future friends!’
They got out of the car in a quad surrounded by old stone buildings. It was even busier here. Dmitri opened the boot and began getting out Alex’s stuff. They didn’t know where they should take it.
‘Little girl!’
Her mum was calling to a student who was walking past the car.
‘Can you tell us where we should go? My daughter is new here.’
‘What year is she in?’ asked the girl. She had red hair and freckles.
‘Year Eight,’ said Kata.
‘That’s my year. You should go in there.’ She pointed to the dark stone building behind her and started to move on.
‘What is your name?’ Kata called. ‘Your hair is a beautiful colour and you are very lucky to have those freckles.’
An odd note had crept into her voice. Something both tentative and obsequious.
‘Harriet,’ the girl said, looking from Kata to Alex. She bit her lip and her eyes glinted. She was obviously suppressing a smile. She began to move away again.
‘How lucky that you are in the same year,’ Kata said. ‘Harriet, come.’ Harriet paused. She looked over to a group of girls who were watching her and who seemed to be waiting for her. Her head was turned towards them so Alex couldn’t see her face but she knew she must have pulled an expression, something mocking and derogatory, because the group of girls watching her started to laugh. Harriet turned back towards Alex and her mum.
She spoke louder now, performing, obviously speaking so that the watching group of girls could hear her.
‘Yes?’ she said. ‘How can I be of service?’
Kata beamed.
‘Will you look after my daughter? I’m sure you two will be good friends. You see, Alex?’ she said, pulling Alex towards her. ‘It was such a good idea for you to come to this school.’
‘Dmitri,’ she said, ‘take Alex’s cases where Harriet directs you.’
Dmitri got a contraption out of the back of the car. A metal thing that unfolded, that had two wheels. He loaded Alex’s suitcases onto it.
Harriet looked back to her friends. They weren’t even attempting to hide their laughter.
‘You are welcome to come and stay with us anytime, Harriet,’ Kata said. ‘In Moscow, or in Monaco, or London’s maybe easier. Alex can tell you.’
Harriet led the way into the big stone building, followed by Dmitri.
Kata and Alex followed behind.
*
‘Hey, Alex!’ Alex heard behind her the next day as she was walking down a large unfamiliar hallway, wood-panelled, trailing at the edge of a group she knew were going to a maths lesson she was supposed to be in.
Their form teacher had instructed the class to make sure to guide the new girls to their lessons. There was one other new girl besides Alex. She was called Kate and she had long dark hair and a glossy fringe. Her schoolbag was covered with badges. Alex had thought they might stick together but Kate seemed to want to keep to herself.
‘Hey, Alex!’
Alex turned around. She saw a blonde girl she didn’t recognise. The blonde girl pushed her lips out into a grotesque pout. She turned to the girl next to her and began to speak in a thick Russian-American drawl, an uncanny imitation of Alex’s mum.
