The Girl Before You. Nicola Rayner

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СКАЧАТЬ ago.’

      ‘Spooky,’ breathes Christie, ‘a doppelgänger – do you think we all have one? I remember hearing, actually …’

      ‘No,’ says Alice firmly, not about to surrender the conch so easily. ‘It wasn’t just a resemblance; it was more than that. I couldn’t help myself: I got up to say something. Now here’s the thing …’

      ‘Now here’s the thing,’ mimics George, stabbing the air with a fork.

      ‘Shut up, George,’ says Alice. She considers leaving the anecdote unfinished. Tonight, after all, is a celebration.

      But Christie, scraping her pudding plate with a teaspoon, is waiting for the end of the story.

      ‘What happened?’

      Alice pauses. ‘She disappeared,’ she says eventually. ‘I felt very odd – had a sort of turn – and when I looked again she had completely vanished.’

      Before taking a tablet, Alice tries to send herself to sleep by making lists in her head: clients she needs to email, thank-you letters to be written, ingredients for the week’s suppers or, on happier days, things she would like to do – perfect her Italian, learn how to knit. But today she can’t focus on the lists. Her attention keeps getting tugged back to the woman on the train and the look that flickered across her face.

      And just as she is sinking into sleep, half-dreaming, half-awake, Alice’s drifting mind alights on a memory of a party. She was on the periphery, uncertain of herself: a first year at this third-year gathering. She remembers spotting George. She had started to notice him at parties. On the other side of the room, his arm propped him up in the doorway as he surveyed the scene – with the careless arrogance, she had thought then, that only the obscenely good-looking or wealthy could afford. George, with his squat looks, hadn’t been particularly blessed in the former department, though he made up for it in self-belief; but he’d had Dan with him – tall and chiselled. Yes, it may well have been to him, next to George, that her eye was first drawn, before she noticed the approach of the girl with red hair, who charged towards George, holding her face inches away from his, and shouted something with such vehemence that Alice had flinched.

      Was that detail added by her drifting mind, in the process of a memory becoming a dream? Alice wonders, suddenly awake. Had George laughed in her face and had she, the girl, spat some invective at him before storming off? Had it been at this same party that George later appeared by Alice’s side with a warm glass of wine in his hand and said, ‘I saw you looking,’ in such a way that had made her laugh?

      ‘I think you knew her,’ Alice says aloud to her gently snoring husband.

      ‘What, darling?’ His arm, heavy with sleep, slumps over her body.

      ‘That girl,’ says Alice. ‘Ruth. I think you knew her.’

       Naomi

      It hasn’t happened for years. I’m in the Co-op staring at the fish, deciding between mackerel and cod, and the woman next to me in the cold section begins to fidget, interrupting my train of thought. She keeps glancing towards me as if she recognises me.

      ‘We’ve met before,’ she says at last.

      She has a Geordie accent, is small and birdlike, with a nest of wiry hair and steel-rimmed glasses perched on the end of her nose.

      ‘I don’t think so,’ I say politely. I reach for the mackerel, put it in my basket and begin to walk away.

      That is it for a moment. And then she remembers where she’s seen me.

      ‘I was there,’ she calls after me. ‘In St Anthony’s. The whole town … the whole town was looking for her.’

      I turn back. I should have known from her accent.

      ‘One of my friends found the dress. Red, wasn’t it?’

      I stand very still. ‘Green,’ I say.

      ‘I always thought it was red.’

      ‘No,’ I say. ‘That was her shoes.’

      ‘I worked that night at the ball.’ She takes a step towards me. ‘She kept coming to refill her glass. I felt dreadful when I heard she’d gone swimming afterwards. She never should, in that state.’

      Everyone with even the slightest connection to Ruth’s death loves to tell their story. She takes another step. Her hair is in a dreadful state close up: coarse and dry. Her teeth are yellowing. Her breath smells faintly of fish. Such small things, matters of hygiene, make my stomach turn at the moment.

      She says: ‘I’m so sorry. That’s all I wanted to say: I’m sorry. It must have been terrible.’

      ‘It was,’ I say.

      ‘I have a feeling,’ she continues in a low voice, ‘that in some way she’ll be back in your life before the year is out.’

      ‘Thank you.’ My voice sounds flat and strange. ‘But she’s gone.’

      ‘Well, maybe it’s just her spirit living on in you.’ She looks down at my belly, though I’m not showing yet. I’m only eight weeks in.

      ‘What do you mean?’

      ‘Like I said,’ she nods, ‘I have feelings about these things.’ She looks pleased with herself. ‘It’s a boy,’ she adds. ‘I know you and your partner would prefer a girl, but it’s a boy.’

      I look at the door.

      ‘It’s not over,’ she says.

      ‘It’ll never be over,’ I hear myself reply. ‘She was my sister.’ The hiss of the first syllable, the rap of the second. Not a soft, gentle word, really, in the way it’s not a soft, gentle thing – which you would think it might be, if you didn’t have a sister. Before, in my other life, it was a noun I had used and heard thousands of times. ‘Is Ruth Walker your sister?’ ‘Your sister is in trouble again.’ ‘You must be clever, like your sister.’ Words, questions, phrases that made me irritated or proud but can never be used lightly or unthinkingly now. I’ve got to get out of here.

      Walking away I’m careful not to look around, but I can feel her eyes on my back. My breath is trapped in my chest: a tense little pocket of air. I can’t always see panic approaching before it’s there, breathing down my neck. I place my basket on the floor as carefully as I can, and walk swiftly through the whirring cold section of the store and out through the sliding doors. As I glance back, I think she’s still there, standing like Lot’s wife, watching me go.

      The frosty air hits my face like a slap, but it staves off the panic. I grasp a bike railing for a second to steady myself and tell myself firmly: Naomi, calm the fuck down. I cling on as the dizziness subsides. The cars slosh past on South Ealing Road, their headlights piercing the drizzle. The moment passes. I pull my hood up, tuck my chin into my chest and pace home. It’s not far, but the fresh air clears my head. And I think of Ruth.

      She was fearless. I can never silence the small voice in me that reminds me something can go wrong – a flash, СКАЧАТЬ