Surprise Me

‘Sylvie? Dan? Are you coming in for tea?’ A cheery voice hails us and we both jerk round in shock to see the birthday girl’s mother, a woman called Gill, waving at us from the door of the party room. ‘We’ve got nibbles for parents, Prosecco …’

‘Maybe in a minute!’ calls back Dan politely. ‘By which I mean, “Can’t you see we’re busy?”’ he adds in a voice that only I can hear.

‘Don’t be like that,’ I say reprovingly. ‘She’s offering Prosecco.’

‘I don’t want Prosecco, I want you. Now.’ His eyes are running over me with a greed I haven’t seen in years; an urgency that makes me shiver. He grips me by the hips and he’s breathing hard and I think he would have me right here, right now. But we’re in Battersea Park, at a children’s party. Sometimes I think Dan forgets these things.

‘We’ve got another sixty-seven years and some,’ I remind him. ‘We’ll find another moment.’

‘I don’t want another moment.’ He buries his face in my neck.

‘Dan!’ I bat at him. ‘We’ll get arrested.’

‘Fine.’ He rolls his eyes comically. ‘Fine. Let’s go and drink our Prosecco. You could wash your face, too,’ he adds as we start slowly walking up the balloon-decorated path. ‘Not that “blood-stained zombie” isn’t a good look.’

‘Or else I could scare the children,’ I suggest. ‘I could be the slasher zombie clown.’

‘I like it.’ He nods, and reaches a hand to ruffle the nape of my neck. ‘I like this, too. I like it a lot.’

‘Good.’

‘A lot.’ He can’t seem to remove his hand from my shorn neck and his voice has descended to a kind of dark growl, and I suddenly think: Oh my God, was Dan a short-hair guy all the time and I never even knew?

‘The girls hate it, of course,’ I tell him.

‘Of course they do.’ Dan looks amused. ‘And Mrs Kendrick?’

‘Hates it too. Oh, that’s the other thing,’ I add, ‘I’m thinking of leaving my job.’

Dan stops dead and stares at me incredulously.

‘OK,’ he says at last. ‘Where is my wife and what have you done with her?’

‘Why?’ I meet his gaze head-on; challengingly. ‘Do you want her back?’ I have another sudden image of the princess-haired, bubble-Sylvie that I was. She already feels a lifetime ago.

‘No,’ says Dan without missing a beat. ‘You can keep her. This is the version I like.’

‘Me too.’ He still can’t keep his hands off my bare nape and I don’t want him to stop. My whole neck is tingling. My whole me is tingling. I should have cut my hair off years ago.

We’ve reached the party building by now. I can hear the shrieks of children and the chatter of parents and all the conversations that will swallow us up as soon as we enter. Dan pauses on the doorstep, his fingers resting on the back of my neck and I can see a deeply concentrating, scrubcious look pass over his face.

‘It’s not easy, is it?’ he says heavily, as though coming to some almighty conclusion. ‘Marriage. Love. It’s not easy.’

As he says it, Tilda’s words come back to me, and they’ve never seemed so true.

‘If love is easy …’ I hesitate. ‘You’re not doing it right.’

Dan looks down at me silently, and even though I’m not psychic Sylvie any more, I can see emotions jumbling through his eyes. Old anger. Tenderness. Love.

‘Well then, we must be fucking masters.’ He suddenly pulls me to him and kisses me hard, almost fiercely, like a statement of intent. A vow, almost. Then, at last, he releases me. ‘Come on. Let’s get that Prosecco.’

EIGHTEEN

The house is all alone on a cliff, with huge glass windows framing the sea view and a vast linen wrap-around sofa, and beautifully scented air. I’m sitting on one end of the sofa and Lynn is sitting facing me.

Jocelyn, I mean. I know she’s Joss. That’s what I call her, to her face. But as I stare at her, all I can think is: Lynn.

It’s like looking at a Magic Eye picture. There’s Joss. Famous Joss Burton, founder of Maze, whom I’ve seen on book covers and in magazine articles, with her trademark white streak of hair and dark, intelligent eyes. And then, glimmering underneath, there’s Lynn. Traces of my Lynn. In her smile, especially. Her laugh. The way she crinkles up her nose in thought. The way she uses her hands when she talks.

She’s Lynn. My made-up Lynn, come to life, never imaginary at all. It’s like seeing Father Christmas and my fairy godmother, all wrapped up in one elegant, real-life woman.

It’s not the first time I’ve seen her as an adult. We met up for the first time a month ago. But I’m still finding it surreal, being here; being with her.

‘I used to talk to you every day,’ I say, my hands wrapped around a cup of Maze chamomile tisane. ‘I used to tell you my problems. I used to lie in bed and conjure you up and just … talk to you.’

‘Was I helpful?’ Joss smiles in that way I remember: warm and just a little bit teasing.

‘Yes.’ I smile back. ‘You always made me feel better.’

‘Good. More tea?’

‘Thanks.’

As Joss pours fresh tisane into my cup, I glance towards the stunning view of a cliff top giving way to endless pale-grey December sky with churning sea beneath. I’m deliberately testing myself and, to my own satisfaction, my heart remains quite steady. I’ve had a full course of therapy and lots of practice – and while I’ll never be the type to dance merrily across a tightrope, I’m a lot better with heights now. A lot better.

And I still see the counsellor who helped me. Once a week, I knock on her door, looking forward to the session, knowing I should have done this years ago. Because it turns out she’s pretty good at talking about issues other than heights. Like fathers. Imaginary friends. Old alleged affairs. That kind of thing.

Of course, I’ve read everything now. First I read Through the High Maze, cover to cover, twice over, searching for clues; reading between the lines. Then I went into Avory Milton and read Joss’s whole account of the episode with Daddy. It took a morning, because I kept breaking off. I couldn’t believe it. I wouldn’t believe it. I did believe it. I hated myself for believing it.

It was weeks before everything properly shook down in my head. And now I think …

What do I think?

I exhale as my thoughts describe the same circle they have done constantly, ever since that day I went to see Mary Smith-Sullivan.

I think Joss is a truthful person. That’s what I think. Whether every single detail is accurate, I can’t know. But she’s truthful. Mary Smith-Sullivan isn’t as convinced. She keeps saying to me: ‘It’s her word against his.’ Which is right, and it’s her job as a lawyer to protect her client and I understand that.

But the thing is, it’s Joss’s words which feel true. As I read her story, little details of what he’d said and how he’d behaved kept jumping out at me. I kept thinking: That’s Daddy. And: Yes, that’s just how it was. And then I found myself thinking: How would our sixteen-year-old holiday neighbour know Daddy so well? And it led me logically to one place.

I came to that conclusion four months ago and went to bed feeling numb. I couldn’t even talk to Dan about it. But the next day I woke up with my mind totally clear, and before I’d even left for work, I’d written a letter to Joss. She phoned me up as soon as she got it and we spoke for an hour. I cried. I’m not sure if she did, because she’s one of those very tranquil people who has found their way through the maelstrom. (That’s a quote from Through the High Maze.) But her voice shook. Her voice definitely shook. She said she’d thought of me a lot, over the years.