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RACHEL
The immediate aftermath was the first in a series of new body blows.
Nicky swept everything up from the table, all her hard work, gathered it hastily and tried to push it
into her bag. Her movements were rough and clumsy.
‘Don’t,’ I said. ‘Please don’t.’
I felt as though she was falling apart right in front of my eyes. I wondered if that’s what it had been
like when she first went to Esther’s, to live in the cottage, right after it happened, when I was a baby,
when her grief must have been unbearable.
And I realised that in the future I would wonder about everything.
From now on it would be impossible to unpick every detail of my history, every assumption that
had led to me building a sense of my own identity, and of Ben’s identity. My past had been crumpled
up and thrown into the fire, and I would have to sort through the ashes, with only Nicky as my guide.
Nicky, who had lied to me for a very long time; Nicky, who said that she’d lied to protect me; Nicky,
who I needed.
‘I should leave,’ she said. ‘You’re better off without me. You know, I would never, ever hurt Ben.
Can I just say that? I would never hurt Ben.’
Her distress pushed her voice to an acute pitch, and I went to comfort her.
‘I know you wouldn’t.’
She let her bag slide down her shoulder and onto the table, and the papers spilled back out of it.
Her head fell onto my shoulder and her body shook.
Are you surprised at my reaction to her? At my willingness to accept what I’d heard and offer her
comfort?
It wasn’t the end of it. Of course it wasn’t. If I think back to that day I can remember the stages I
went through. I suppose it was like the stages of grief, although this was different. This was the
processing of what felt like a betrayal, this was the seeping away of trust.
After the door had clicked shut behind an adrenalin-pumped Clemo and a Zhang who couldn’t meet
my eye for the first time, that first interaction Nicky and I had was of course a reflex, an urge to keep
Nicky by me, to deny that anything had changed. She’d been my rock, always, and I couldn’t
contemplate any other existence. It wasn’t in my DNA. Or I’d thought it wasn’t.
After that exchange we separated. Nicky unpacking her bag robotically, calling on those massive
reserves of strength to anchor her to my table, to keep her going as she delved deeper and deeper into
whatever the web had to offer her.
I went to my safe place, to Ben’s room, and I immersed myself in him, as was my habit. It was the
only place I felt secure. His bedroom had become my womb.
This was my second stage.
I sank onto the beanbag on the floor of his room and I felt as if I was cast adrift in a small wooden
boat, shrouded by a watery grey mist. And suspended within each of the millions of fine droplets that
made up the mist, was the news, the bombshell that I’d just heard. And in this stage it simply
surrounded me, existing, but not yet understood. And within it I felt baseless, disorientated and lost.
The third state was the inevitable churning of my mind, the processing of what I’d learned, and of
its implications, the moment the droplets of mist began to settle on my skin and permeate it. It was
when the knowledge became part of me and it was irreversible. I had to face up to it.