Precocious by Joanna Barnard Read Free Book Online Page B

them, to try to make you laugh, while mentally I say sorry, sorry, to these blameless ghosts.
    We kick stones into the canal.
    Every now and then you make a show of getting their names confused.
    ‘Hmm. Jason? Which one was he, again? The tennis coach, or the junkie?’
    ‘He wasn’t a junkie. He just smoked too much weed. It made him kind of – moody.’
    ‘Hmm. You liked the little weed smokers when you were at school, as I recall.’
    I ignore this.
    ‘Anyway, that wasn’t Jason, that was Spencer.’
    ‘Spencer? What kind of name is that? Isn’t that a surname?’
    ‘At least it’s not an old man’s name,
Henry
.’
    ‘Was he the one with the snakeskin shoes?’
    ‘
That
was Jason.’
    ‘So which one was the tennis coach?’
    ‘Adam.’
    ‘Who did you have the most fun with?’
    ‘Tom.’
    ‘Whose heart did you break?’
    I laugh and look you in the eye. ‘What do you think? All of them.’
    ‘And which one broke your heart?’
    ‘That story’s for another time.’
    ‘Who is the man you have been most attracted to?’
    ‘Are you hoping that
you
will be the answer to one of these questions?’
    ‘Absolutely not.’
    We wander in companionable silence for a while. I keep glancing at you, trying to photograph your face. I want to ask when I’ll see you again.
    ‘And now you have Dave.’
    ‘Yes. Now I have Dave.’ I touch my wedding ring.
    ‘And he’s perfect?’
    I laugh. ‘He is. It’s me I’m not sure about.’
    ‘What do you mean?’
    ‘It’s just … I feel like he’s always trying to change me.’ Even as I hear the whine in my own voice when talking about Dave, a little electric shock of guilt runs through me. But I continue, ‘I mean, he’s always trying to improve me.’
    ‘Not possible!’ you smile.
    There it is. The nearest thing to a compliment I know I am going to get, and I am going to hold onto it if it kills me. So many of your words I’ve let whisper away.
    Not possible
. I am un-improvable. I could cheer. Of course, it was a glib, throwaway comment – not meant, not literally anyway, and as quickly said as forgotten (especially with your ailing memory).
    Suddenly we are at your car, and those two nice words, and the fact that you held my hand momentarily – I suddenly know I can live on these for weeks. As we say goodbye, without so much as a kiss on the cheek, by the canal that won’t be orange for much longer, I know I may have to.
    I drive for a while, through the city I thought I couldn’t wait to get away from when I was eighteen and couldn’t wait to return to after three years in London.
    I think about the canal, watch buildings loom whose histories you’ve chronicled for me, from the cathedral to the town hall; disused mills and designer hotels. You know about things; I love that. You know about wine and architecture. Politics and art. You’re so unlike me, with the butterfly mentality that always made you laugh.
    On one of what seemed like hundreds of shared car journeys back then, as part of my continuing efforts to get you to open up to me, I quoted John Donne at you.
    ‘No man is an island,’ I said sagely.
    ‘Ah. Getting into the metaphysical poets now are we, my little bookworm?’
    ‘Yes, as a matter of fact I think, as a group, they infused new life into English poetry.’
    ‘Hmm. Tell me more about that then.’
    Long pause.
    ‘I can’t. I have absolutely no idea what I’m talking about.’
    You leaned over then, and playfully tickled my neck.
    ‘You’ll be fine when you go to university,’ you said (I noted the ‘when’, not ‘if’; your confidence in me always gave me a thrill). ‘So full of curiosity.’
    It was the summer of the bomb when I went to university, and when I came back, a new city was rising. Somehow the fact of its having been wounded made me protective towards it, as though towards an injured (but still scrappy) puppy.
    Manchester has always been a bold sort of city – cocky, even – mistrusted by the mill