The Book of You. Claire Kendal

she looked too long at them.

      Despite its remarkable features, his face was neutral, perhaps even expressionless. ‘I think you’re right,’ he said. ‘I think she’ll be back.’

      And she was, though her eyes were rimmed in red and she had to swallow hard several times as she spoke.

      ‘They made me lie down on the floor. They threw a quilt over me. They started … kicking me, hitting me. I was in a ball, trying to shield my breasts, my head. I thought they were actually going to kill me, and they’d covered my face so they wouldn’t have to see me while they did it. I started screaming that I’d call my grandfather, that he’d give me the money.

      ‘Sparkle took the quilt away, handed me my phone. “Dial,” he said. I told my grandfather I was desperate, that I needed fifteen hundred pounds, but he said no. I thought they’d start beating on me again then but Sparkle said I could pay him back by dealing for him. He gave me three hundred pounds’ worth, so I could get started. Then he drove me to the train station and let me go.’

       Thursday, 5 February, 8.30 p.m.

      At eight thirty the doorbell rings. And rings and rings and rings. I’ve known since this morning that you’d come after me for jilting you at the ballet. I don’t answer, of course. But I do experiment: I take the intercom phone off its cradle but this fails to disable the buzzer; worse yet, your voice is now incessant. Without a word I put the intercom back in its place and refuse to pick it up again.

      I go into my bedroom and grab the handset for my landline. I press the 9 once. I press it twice. Remembering my call to the emergency operator last Friday, I pause before pressing it a third time.

      I am fifteen again, reporting the bag theft. The policewoman is firing her questions at me and I’m wishing that my parents were beside me instead of in the waiting area with Rowena and the shouting relatives of criminals. Had my bag really been stolen? Perhaps I’d simply lost it and feared telling my parents the truth? Surely they’d be upset by the expense and inconvenience such carelessness would cause: getting the locks changed, replacing my school books, giving me another week’s worth of lunch money? I said that my parents would never mind about such things. I said I could never fear them. I said they cared only about my safety. The policewoman’s incredulity seemed to deepen with every word I spoke. I managed to persuade her to let me drag Rowena in, but the policewoman regarded her as an unreliable witness, a loyal friend to me whose confirmation of my story couldn’t be trusted.

      They didn’t find the girl who assaulted me. Of course they didn’t. I doubt they even looked for her.

       The police cannot act unless there is evidence that a crime has been committed.

      I press the red button instead of the third 9 and toss the handset on my bed, knowing I can’t go to the police yet. I still don’t have enough evidence. And by the time they got here you’d be gone – then they wouldn’t take me seriously. You’re not stupid enough to let them catch you at my front door. Maybe they’d even charge me with wasting police time for making another inappropriate 999 call only six days after the last one. They’d think you’re a phantom just like that girl who punched me on the seafront.

      By nine o’clock the endless scream of the bell is more than I can stand. I pick up the intercom phone but I say nothing. Knowing it won’t be long, I wait for your voice.

      ‘Clarissa?’ you say. ‘Clarissa? I waited for you, Clarissa. Is something wrong, Clarissa? How could you be so horrible to me, Clarissa? I thought you’d be sorry after how you treated me last night, but now this.’

      Until you, I loved my name. I don’t want you to take that away from me too. I can’t let you do that, though I cringe each time you repeat it.

      The way you veer between solicitousness and anger, conciliating and scolding, makes me so fearful I hug myself and rock back and forth.

      I go into the bathroom and shut the door, though it hardly does anything to block out the noise. I turn on the tap at full force and that helps, but doesn’t completely drown you out. I shake lavender bath salts over the tub: Gary’s Christmas present, which is the same every year, making us both laugh as he hands it over. I do not feel like laughing right now. I drop my clothes on the floor and as soon as the bath’s full enough for the water to cover my ears I get in with a clumsy splash.

      That does the trick entirely. I can’t hear you at all now. But the bath salts do nothing to relax me and after only a few minutes I’m weak and faint from the heat, and the steam is making it impossible to breathe. Not being able to hear anything at all is frightening in a different way. I have a tiny kernel of hope that when I break the water’s surface and re-emerge there will be silence, but you are still there, of course, making your noise. I get out too quickly and feel dizzy.

      The nice word for you is methodical. Obsessive compulsive is the meaner phrase, and one you’ve truly earned. Nobody lives up to that one better than you. You press the buzzer for a shrill sixty seconds exactly, then allow me precisely two minutes of precious quiet before repeating the cycle. You probably keep a stopwatch in your bag of tools. It’s a good thing Miss Norton is near deaf and goes to bed early, taking her hearing aids out before sleep. I am grateful that I’m not in a public place where you can ambush me like you did with Rowena.

      I swaddle myself in towels and go into my bedroom. Again I shut the door and again it does almost nothing to muzzle the screech of the bell. I turn on the radio. They’re playing a Chopin Prelude. I turn up the volume and you’re seriously muffled but for the pauses between the piano’s notes. It’s only when I crawl under the bedclothes and pull them over my head that you entirely disappear.

      Soon though, my ears are hurting in a different way. This music was not meant to be blasted. You have ruined the Chopin for me for ever. To have it at such a high decibel level, competing absurdly with your finger on the buzzer, makes it ugly and uncivilised – it was never meant to be used as a weapon. I’m suffocating again, unable to get enough air into my lungs with the comforter over my nose, and I must quickly abandon this homemade sensory deprivation unit too. Once more, there is the stab of you in my eardrums.

      By ten I cannot endure another minute. I grab the intercom phone. You win again. It is impossible to stay silent.

      ‘I will never let you in. I don’t want to go out with you; I never asked for that ticket; I’d never have shown up at that restaurant last night if I’d known you’d be there.’

      You say, ‘I don’t want to upset you, Clarissa.’ You say, ‘I’m just trying to make you happy, Clarissa.’ You say, ‘That’s all I want. But you’ve hurt me, Clarissa.’ You say, ‘I know you’re lonely, Clarissa. I’m lonely too.’ You say, ‘I’m just trying to help us both, Clarissa.’ You say, ‘I know your heart’s been broken, Clarissa. Mine’s been broken too. Again and again by you.’ You say, ‘I’m going now, Clarissa.’

      I jerk the handset onto its cradle in such distress it falls off and dangles and I have to put it back. The new noiselessness is so quiet it makes a low hum in my ears. But I can’t get rid of my anxiety that you are still standing there.

       Friday

      It was difficult to focus on Azarola’s barrister after barely sleeping the night before.

      ‘Please confirm your description of the man you said they picked up en route to London.’ Mr Williams made Clarissa think of an actor in a legal drama who’d mastered his lines and moves. ‘You said “About five foot nine, mixed race, slight build, with long plaits”.’

      Azarola leaned forward. He was well over six feet. His skin was golden, his eyes were hazel, and his hair was straight and short and thick and medium brown. His shoulders and chest were broad, like Robert’s, beneath his fitted black sweater, which she thought looked