The Girl Before You. Nicola Rayner

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, a premonition of an accident before it happens. My mother is the same – she would watch Ruth on her pony through splayed fingers and only I, standing next to her, would hear the sharp intake of 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