Bobbi? I said.
Melissa sent it to me.
She held up the print-out. I could see it was double-spaced, with long paragraphs like an essay.
Sent you what? I said.
For a second she laughed, or maybe exhaled a breath she had been holding very tightly, and then she threw the pages at me. I caught them awkwardly against my chest. Looking down I saw the words printed in a light sans-serif font. My words. It was my story.
Bobbi, I said.
Were you ever going to tell me?
I stood there. My eyes ran over the lines I could see at the top of the page, the page where I described myself getting sick at a house party without Bobbi when I was still a teenager.
I’m sorry, I said.
Sorry for what? said Bobbi. I’m so curious. Sorry for writing it? I doubt you are.
No. I don’t know.
It’s funny. I think I’ve learned more about your feelings in the last twenty minutes than in the last four years.
I felt light-headed, staring down at the manuscript until the words wriggled like insects. It was the first draft, the one I had sent to Valerie. She must have let Melissa read it.
It’s fictionalised, I said.
Bobbi stood up from her chair and looked my body up and down critically. A strange energy wound itself up in my chest, as if we were going to fight.
I heard you’re getting good money for it, she said.
Yeah.
Fuck you.
I actually need the money, I said. I realise that’s an alien concept for you, Bobbi.
She grabbed the pages out of my hands then, and the back of the staple tugged against my index finger and broke the skin. She held the manuscript in front of me.
You know, she said. It’s actually a good story.
Thanks.
Then she tore the pages in half, threw them in the trash and said: I don’t want to live with you any more. She packed up her things that night. I sat in my room listening. I heard her wheel the suitcase out into the hall. I heard her close the door.
*
The next morning my mother picked me up outside the apartment building. I got into the car and strapped my seat belt on. She had the classical station on the radio, but she turned it off when I shut the door. It was eight in the morning and I complained about having to get up so early.
Oh, I’m sorry, she said. We could have given the hospital a ring and arranged for you to have a lie-in, would that have been better?
I thought the scan was tomorrow.
It’s this afternoon.
Fuck, I said mildly.
She placed a litre bottle of water on my lap and said: you can start that any time you like. I unscrewed the cap. No preparation was necessary for the scan except drinking a lot of water, but I still felt like the whole thing had been thrown at me unexpectedly. We didn’t speak for a while, and then my mother glanced at me sideways.
It was funny meeting you like that yesterday, she said. You looked like a real young lady.
As opposed to what?
She didn’t answer at first, we were going round a roundabout. I stared out the windscreen at the passing cars.
You looked very elegant together, she said. Like film stars.
Oh, that’s Nick. He’s just glamorous.
My mother reached suddenly and grabbed my hand. The car was stopped in traffic. Her grip was tighter than I expected, almost hard. Mum, I said. Then she let me go. She tidied her hair back with her fingers and then settled her hands on the steering wheel.
You’re a wild woman, she said.
I learned from the best.
She laughed. Oh, I’m afraid I’m no match for you, Frances. You’ll have to figure things out all on your own.
27
In the hospital I was advised to drink even more water, so much that I was in active discomfort while sitting in the waiting room. The place was busy. My mother bought me a bar of chocolate from the vending machine and I sat there tapping my pen against the front cover of Middlemarch, which I had to read for a class on the English novel. The cover depicted a sad-eyed lady from Victorian times doing something with flowers. I doubted Victorian women actually touched flowers as often as art from the period suggested they did.
While I was waiting, a man came in with two little girls, one of them in a pushchair. The older girl climbed onto the seat next to me and leaned over her father’s shoulder to say something, although he wasn’t listening. The girl wriggled around to get his attention, so her light-up sneakers pushed against my handbag and then my arm. When her father finally turned around he said: Rebecca, look what you’re doing! You’re kicking that woman’s arm! I tried to catch his eye and say: it’s fine, it’s no problem. But he didn’t look at me. To him, my arm was not important. He was only concerned with making his child feel bad, making her feel ashamed. I thought about the way Nick handled his little dog whom he loved so much, and then I stopped thinking about it.