The Girl Before You. Nicola Rayner

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СКАЧАТЬ breath as the animal approached a jump, see the quick smile on her face when they landed safely on the other side.

      But Ruth loved jumping: the euphoria of leaving the ground, the purpose of it, the way the pony’s muscles would tense before taking off then stretch out as it soared. The knack was to lean forwards, not to try to contain it but to move with it, embrace the leap. I think she got that kind of thrill-seeking from our father; my mother and I have a different kind of courage.

      She left her shoes behind. I gave them to her, her Dorothy slippers, red and sparkling. She was wearing them for luck that night. She placed them on the beach so neatly – which was rare for Ruth – with her handbag next to them. The police told us that often happens when people go missing.

      A stinging wind picks up and, as I turn into our road, it really begins to pour. I run the last stretch, slapping my feet against the wet concrete. I think of the tiny being inside me and wonder if he or she can feel the impact as we run.

      Carla has started cooking as I get home. The sweet, woody smell of cumin seeds fills the kitchen. It needs a good clean, I notice as I come in, but there’ll be time enough for that once I’m off work. I bury my face between Carla’s shoulder blades and she curls an arm behind her to hug me.

      ‘Did you get those bits?’

      ‘No. Sorry.’ I reach for Carla’s glass of red wine on the counter, breathe in its oaky fumes. ‘Something happened.’ I hesitate. ‘A self-styled psychic. One of those. She wanted to talk about Ruth.’

      ‘It’s been ages since you’ve had that sort of thing.’ Carla frowns as she stirs the popping seeds. ‘Did she know her?’

      I take a small sip of wine. ‘No, not really. She was from St Anthony’s.’ I put the glass down, and try not to think of Ruth’s dress lying sodden and torn on the beach. ‘She could tell I was pregnant. We’re having a boy, apparently.’ I try to smile.

      Carla looks down at my belly, puts a possessive hand over it. ‘That is weird. You really can’t tell yet.’

      You would think, what with Carla being a therapist, that she would be familiar with the more esoteric aspects of human nature, but the fact is she’s the most down-to-earth person I know. We met in a group therapy session she was leading. It was instantaneous.

      At the end of the first session, I waited to talk to her. She was shuffling our questionnaires into a blue folder. I hadn’t planned what I would say and, as I approached her, she didn’t look up at me at first, just said: ‘I think you ought to join another group.’

      ‘Really? I like your group,’ I said petulantly.

      ‘I think you know why.’

      She looked up at me then. And she was right, I did. It was frightening falling for someone like that, after the last time.

      ‘I don’t know what to do about it,’ I whispered.

      She laughed at me: ‘Well, after you’ve quit my group, we’ll go for a drink and take it from there.’

      And, really, it was remarkably straightforward. I joined another group and we dated the British way, at the pub. I went back to her flat one afternoon, a few weeks after that first meeting, and never left.

      That night, the dream returns. The one I always have. We are running through St Anthony’s, up one of the roads that winds from the sea. Ruth is calling: ‘Come on, slowcoach. Last one there’s a rotten egg.’ But she is always ahead of me, pushing further on until, eventually, she moves almost out of sight. I see a flash of her red shoes, her red hair disappearing around the corner. I hear her feet ringing out on the pavement just in front of me. And then I realise I can’t hear them any more. It is silent. And I start to shout: ‘Ruth? Ruth?’ There is just the sound of my own voice returning to me.

      The panic begins then. And even though it is a dream, I can tell I have felt that particular sensation before. Because there’s more I need to ask her. There’s so much more to say.

      The way I’m moving is less like running now, more like drifting, floating above the ground like a helium balloon. And as I turn the final corner, right at the top of town, I come across her red shoes on the pavement. They have been left there placed parallel, as if on purpose, as if they were a sign.

      I wake gasping for air. The jolt of my waking stirs Carla. She murmurs something in her sleep, curves her body in a question mark around mine. It takes my eyes a few moments to adjust to the shadowed room. I lie in the dark, listening to Carla’s steady breathing, left with the sensation of the dream: that Ruth was just here; that she has only just gone. And, as always, at times like this – in the cold hours of night when I’ve woken with a jolt – the same old questions come flooding back. It’s as if they have been waiting for me.

      What was on her mind as she got into the water? And did she think of me as she fought for her life? How it might feel to carry on living in the world without her? But there’s always one question that’s louder than the others, more insistent: was my sister in the water on her own? Or was there someone with her? Someone who placed her shoes and bag on the ground so neatly. Someone who wanted her gone.

       Alice

      Alice puts the last of the previous evening’s plates in the dishwasher. After a broken night, she finally drifted to sleep at dawn, missing George as he scrambled out of bed to get to a morning radio interview. He hasn’t really paused since his career change in the way she hoped he might. He’s on his phone the whole time, only half there in the evenings or the weekends, always in another place while he’s in the room with her.

      She’s not much better. Often, the pair of them will sit together at the kitchen table at their laptops or side by side on the sofa tapping away on their own devices, which reminds her: she needs to email her newest client – the wife of one of George’s former colleagues. Alice frowns: George hadn’t been happy that she’d agreed to take on the case – a high-profile divorce between the Tory MP and his wife, a couple in their sixties who are separating after almost four decades of marriage. But she’s always got on well with the other woman, who, with her iron-straight bob and an unfussy, businesslike way of dressing, reminds Alice a little of herself.

      As she fetches a cloth and wipes down the kitchen table, she notices that the uneasy feeling from yesterday has persisted. The episode on the train has a dreamlike quality as she reflects back. She thinks again of Ruth shouting in George’s face. Was that the party where they’d first got together? He’s always quite foggy about it – all the booze, no doubt – but Alice had thought she could recall it pretty clearly. And yet she hadn’t remembered the girl before – perhaps that had been a different party …

      She’d wanted to impress George that night, for him to notice her. She’d dressed with him in mind. By that stage, of course, Christie had already snared Teddy – Alice smiles at the choice of the word ‘snared’ – but it’s one Christie, with her eye on Teddy’s castle in Scotland, might have used herself. Back then, the third-year boys had seemed like prizes to the freshers. She smirks at the thought now. Of course, George’s family has never had the sort of money that Teddy’s did – but certain doors would always be open to the Bells. George’s grandfather and his father were barristers. Perhaps that was why he’d ended up marrying a lawyer himself. They’re a family who make things happen – even his mother serves on the parish council in the Oxfordshire village where they live, where she held sway in her usual СКАЧАТЬ