That’s the real reason I came here, of course. I wanted to see the other Veronica Harper.
Roni
Brighton, 2016
I have been keeping watch across the street since six o’clock so I can see who comes to the party and I will not miss her. As time went by and she did not show up, I started to think she wouldn’t. That she would do the sensible thing and stay away from a part of her past she wants to forget. That would be it for me if she did stay away, though, I realised, there would be no way of finding her.
When I saw her approach, walk up to the red door, and pause, staring up at the building in front of her as though deciding whether to ring or not, I was almost sick with anticipation and dread. She had the same gait as she had when we were seventeen. She was the same height, and although her hair was straight and short and she looked like she was wearing glasses, I knew instantly it was her.
I approached slowly, my heart ricocheting in my ears, my breathing as loud as that of a long-distance runner.
‘I wondered if you’d show up,’ I say to her. She doesn’t move, but she has heard me because her entire body becomes rigid where she stands. ‘I should say, I hoped you would turn up. You’re the only reason why I came here.’
She doesn’t move at all. She stands rictus-still and lets me talk. When I finish what I have said, she still does not immediately move or talk.
‘That sounds like you’re blaming me for the poor choice you made this evening,’ she eventually says.
‘I hope it doesn’t. It was my roundabout way of saying I wanted to see you desperately, and if it meant coming here to do it, then that was what I had to do.’
The other Veronika Harper, the one who has a ‘k’ instead of a ‘c’, slowly turns around to face me. I’ve imagined this moment a million times in my head. We would see each other, our eyes would meet and we would throw our arms around each other, bury our faces in each other’s necks and cry. We would cry away the years we’ve been apart, we would sob aside our separate lives and we would find a way to come back together. To be true friends again. I have recreated this scene so many times in my head, I can almost feel my arms around her, her tears on my neck, my cry-punctuated confessions.
As it is, the best either of us can do is offer a small, uncomfortable smile, try but fail to make eye contact, move down the steps to the pavement and stand near each other, seeming awkward and out of place.
‘I don’t even know why I’m here,’ she admits. ‘It was such a shock, I guess, getting the invite and to find that they were here … living so close to where I live. It never even occurred to me to search for them, you know? That part of my life was over so I didn’t expect to hear from them again … And then they’re in Brighton. And life is carrying on as always for them. I don’t know, maybe I came to look people in the eye and see if they remember.’
Oh. I thought she might be here to see me. I thought that might have featured in her reasons for allowing herself to be pulled into such a painful segment of her past. And she lives here, in Brighton.
‘It’s good to see you,’ I offer. ‘Like I said, I only came to see you. I came to say I’m sorry. That’s the reason I wanted to find you. I’ve wanted to say it for years and years. I’m so very, very sorry.’
In the silence after my apology, I have been staring at her shoes, too cowardly to face her properly. She is wearing white Converse trainers that have seen many, many better days. I wonder if, like me, she avoids ballet shoes like the plague. The mere thought of fitting them on my feet turns every part of my stomach. I wonder if it’s the same for her. Because, even though what we went through seemed the same, sometimes felt like carbon copies of the other’s experiences, it was different. Every experience couldn’t be swept away or minimised by lumping us together to become faceless ‘survivors’ of a horrific man’s perversions. Maybe, after all these years, Nika has found a way to dance again.
Her white Converse shoes have musical notes written in black marker along the bottom rim. ‘Are those notes to a song?’ I ask.
‘Yes,’ she replies. That confirms it: she isn’t going to accept my apology; she is probably going to avoid talking about anything that might lead to an apology. As part of my conceit that there is a way to put this right, I thought it would be easy. Not easy, simple. I thought I would be able to say the words, mean the words, and all would be forgiven. In my arrogance, I thought forgiveness would only entail finding Nika, the act of seeing her, the moment of reunion, the utterance of those golden words. I should have made my confession when I had the chance, I should have allowed myself to be absolved. It is hubris to believe you can achieve forgiveness without any help from God.
‘I used to see you in the papers and magazines,’ I offer as a way to make her talk. It will probably outrage her, encourage her to engage.
‘That was never me,’ she states quite plainly. ‘That was someone who looked remarkably like me and had a similar name. What about you, what have you been doing?’
‘You wouldn’t believe me if I told you,’ I say. Out of everyone, she is the one who, having been there, probably won’t believe the transformation in me.
‘Right, OK,’ is her reply before she shuts her mouth and keeps her gaze lowered.
‘What, you’re not even going to ask?’ I’m affronted. More of my vanity, my need to have people as interested in me as I am in them. Actually, no, it is my need to have Nika as interested in me as I am in her.
‘No, I am not even going to ask. I’m sure you have your reasons for not telling me and I respect those reasons, even if I don’t know them.’
‘I became a nun,’ I say.
‘See? If you didn’t want to tell me, why bother bringing it up? And then take the piss out of me. What was the point? Did that moment of piss-take really give you such a lift that it was worth it?’
‘I’m not … taking the you-know-what. I became a nun. Honest to God.’
That does it, that makes her look at me again. ‘You became a nun?’
I grin at her, take the chance to look over her face, note her wrinkles, her blemishes, the shaping of her look through her glasses. ‘I received a calling of sorts and followed it.’
‘I thought your calling was to be a dancer? All either of us ever wanted to be was a dancer. That was why we became friends. That was all we ever talked about.’
‘Things change.’
Nika
Brighton, 2016
Veronica Harper, a nun. I suppose stranger things have happened. But a nun? I never would have guessed.
I’ve missed her. I’m ashamed to admit that to anyone, especially myself. But I’ve missed Roni. Even when I couldn’t talk to her, when I refused to hold her hand, she was special to me. Our friendship lived at the very core of who I was. Without Roni, for a very long time, I did not feel alive, real or part of normal life. That is why it hurt so much, of course. Why I couldn’t simply brush it off and be understanding as I had been in the past. Roni was a part of me and when she let me down, I lost that part in the most painful separation I’d ever experienced.
Roni
Brighton, 2016
‘Where are you staying tonight?’ Nika asks me.
‘How do you know I don’t live in Brighton?’ I ask. I bristle at the implication that it’s obvious I am not quite ‘Brighton cool’. This dress I am wearing, it may not be the skimpy garbs from yesteryear, but it can pass muster. The same with my coat. I could be ‘Brighton’ if I wanted.
‘You don’t live in Brighton,’ she tells me. ‘I was going to ask you if you wanted to stay at my flat, but if you live in Brighton, you go right ahead and go home. We can always do a girly catch-up tomorrow.’
‘I don’t live in Brighton, you’re right. I would love to stay if that is still on offer?’
‘Yes, sure, why not.’
I’m not thinking when I breach the gap between us and curl my hand around hers. I do it because it’s instinctive. I love the feel of her skin against mine. Her ski
n has a special code, one that only I can read. When I touch her, I am transformed. I remember all the good things about her. I want to lean over and press my lips against hers. Not in a sexual way; it would be the quickest way to connect with her, to let her know how much I missed her, how incomplete I was without her. I’ve prayed for her every night since I last saw her, even before I decided to become a nun I would ask God to keep her safe, to protect her from harm. Now I know, after all those years of not seeing anything about her after she left her famous boyfriend, that she’s alive and well, and I want to kiss her. I want to express in the most physical way possible that I love her. She’s my name twin and my reflection.
‘I really missed you,’ I say.
Carefully, without drama or venom, she tugs her hand out of mine. I am cold now we’re not touching. ‘I didn’t miss you,’ she says.
‘Wow, thanks.’
‘I didn’t. I simply kept finding other fucked-up humans to take your place.’
13
Roni
Brighton, 2016
‘I only have one duvet because I don’t have visitors to stay,’ she says. The walk back to her flat has been silent. It reminds me of the time we walked back to the bus stop from Big T’s house and the silent disappointment that Nika seemed to be carrying with her. As we have walked her body language has changed, cooled. She seemed to be regretting the decision to let me into her life so soon, possibly worried that I will believe it is all forgiven. I certainly don’t believe that. I realised how puny, insignificant and inadequate the word ‘sorry’ was when it left my mouth earlier. I do not think I am forgiven at all.
‘I’ll use my coat, it’s fine.’
‘If you want, you can sleep in my bed.’
I can tell this is one of the first times she’s let someone in here. The flat is barely decorated. It has stuff – sofa, TV, armchair – fully equipped kitchen area off the living room, but nothing personal. She could be a nun, her surroundings are so sparse. She has CDs lined up along the mantelpiece, lots of brightly coloured spines on either side of a portable CD player and radio. The alcove on the far side of the fireplace has a few novels stacked up, most of them old and well read. There is no rug on the floor, the curtains look like they come with the flat. She has a guitar propped up by the armchair, a newspaper discarded on the sofa, a neat stack of mail on the bar that separates the kitchen from the living room.
Everything is orderly.
‘You live like a nun,’ I say. ‘Actually, it’s like you don’t live here at all.’
Nika rubs her hand over her eyes. ‘You can always leave. If you want to be insulting and rude, I will happily point you in the direction of the door and we can wait another twenty-odd years to catch up, yes?’
‘No. Sorry. Sorry. That came out really, really wrong. I’m a little overwhelmed with seeing you. Almost seeing them. Can I hug you?’
She shakes her head, and takes a definite step away from me. ‘No, no you can’t.’ She takes another step away, until she is at the entrance to the kitchen area. ‘Do you want a cup of tea or coffee? I have milk and sugar and everything so I can make it properly.’
‘I’m sorry,’ I tell her.
‘You said that already. Look, I’m going to make a cup of coffee. It’ll probably keep me up all night but I don’t care.’ Nika is nervous, I think. Her movements are agitated, she can’t keep still: while she waits for the kettle to boil, while she lines up two mugs, heaps coffee into both, takes out the milk, she jiggles, moves. It reminds me of the conversation with Mother Superior and the way my leg would not stop jiggling. It reminds me of the way her leg jiggled when she told me he’d come to her house and had charmed her parents into sending her back to him.
I hear a short, electronic buzz and seconds later she reaches into her back pocket and takes out her phone. She stares at it, obviously reading the message. Rather than reply, she tosses the phone on to the side, shaking her head in what looks like despair. Boyfriend? Lover? Fiancé? Husband? Which one has sent her even further into a spin? The rolling boil of the kettle fills the room and then the steam billows out of the spout and she turns it off before it automatically shuts out.
‘I was scared,’ I try again. I think of Judas, of what he did, why he did. Why I think he might have done what he did. ‘No, that’s not right. I was terrified. I was—’
‘Can we not do this now?’ Nika interrupts. She almost throws the kettle back on to its stand. ‘I thought I could talk to you and listen and stuff like that, but I can’t. I can’t. It’s as simple as that.’ Nika tosses the teaspoon she is stirring the coffee with on to the side. ‘You can sleep in my bed, we can even go and sit in there right now with our coffees and chat about our lives, but let’s not do that other bit now. Not tonight.’
When? I want to ask. This truth is burning a hole in my soul, it needs to be let out. When? When will I be allowed to do that?
‘No boyfriend or anything on the scene then?’ I ask her.
Her bedroom is just as empty and devoid of any love or emotion as the living room. It is functional, like my cell in the monastery and my rooms in the various convents I lived in. She is choosing to live like this. I wonder why. Is that what happens when you are like me, when you are like her: you strip yourself of nice things, you shed all the shackles of ‘stuff’? The side lamp is on, and we are at opposite ends of the bed, our knees drawn up, and coffee mugs in our hands.
She glances briefly at the phone that now sits on the bedside table. ‘No. Nothing like that.’ She’s lying. It’s so obvious there’s someone, but it’s not viable. ‘What about you?’
‘Yes, well, I used to wear a wedding ring, of course, since I was a bride of Christ. Not any more, obviously.’
‘Why did you leave?’
‘You don’t want to know.’
‘What, were you caught shagging one of the priests?’
‘No! The very idea!’
‘Why then?’
‘Because of you. I wanted to make things right with you. I didn’t know how I was going to do that, or where to find you, but I did know I couldn’t do that and be a Sister or a nun. I was a nun in training, then became a Sister and then went back to being a nun. Either way, I couldn’t do it if I wanted to make things right.’
Light from the side lamp doesn’t radiate very far, but her discomfort at the idea I did something because of her is clear. She stares down into the depths of her cup, strokes a lock of her hair behind her ear. ‘Why did you become a nun in the first place?’ she asks. She is still staring into her cup as a distraction from the woman sitting at the foot of her bed, as a way to avoid looking at me.
‘That’s a long story.’ She probably doesn’t want to know how she features in it so I decide to cut that bit out. ‘I met a nun. I don’t know what she was doing in a park late at night, but there she was.’
‘What were you doing in a park late at night?’
I hesitate. Will she think less of me for knowing I was chasing the silence, the escape from the raging in my head? Probably. I still judge myself for it. I have been taught over the years to have compassion, for myself as much as anyone else, but that is one of the things I struggle with. That and what I did to Nika. Honesty, though, is necessary if I’m going to tell the story properly. ‘I’d stolen my mother’s bottle of sleeping pills and I had a bottle of wine and I was going to kill myself. I was sitting in the park contemplating it.’ It seems such a long time ago that I had those feelings swirling through me. I was so desperate. The need in me to stop the noise, find the silence, was like nothing I’d ever felt before.
She doesn’t seem to react to what I have said, except for the wince of what looks like remembered pain. Was she there, too? Did she get to the edge like I had? ‘The nun – and she was dressed like a nun with the robes, the tabard and the wimple, not a Sister – sat down beside me and asked me to swap my bottle of pills for her book. Two days later when I finished the book I wanted to become a nun.’
‘You
read the Bible in two days? Impressive.’
‘She didn’t give me the Bible. She actually gave me To Kill a Mockingbird, said every word was a blessing and she read it whenever she felt like I did.’
‘To Kill a Mockingbird made you want to become a nun? Bloody hell, I never got that when I read it! Not sure I want to read it again now.’
‘No, it wasn’t specifically the book. Well, it was, but it wasn’t. It was the power of the book. There was something inside it that felt so real, like I could be anyone in the book, I could be anyone I wanted to be ever. And it was so silent in my head when I was reading. There was this bit where the pretty-much atheist character in it said it was a sin to kill a mockingbird and I realised what the nun meant when she gave me the book about every word being a blessing. I had another option because I would be killing a mockingbird if I killed myself. Then I thought of the woman who gave me the book. She knew what was going on in my head and being a nun gave her the confidence to speak to me at such a desperate time. If an ordinary person had given me that book I would have told them where to go, I think. I listened to her because of who she was, what she was dressed like. I wanted to explore what it was like to be like that.
‘It wasn’t completely out of the blue, I’ve always believed in God, I’ve always been interested in what was “out there” and there seemed to be so much beauty and peace in God. The nun and the book reminded me of that.’ And it was another way to chase the silence. After reading the book, I knew that God and the silence would find me. I would also be able to atone for what I had done to Nika while living the simple life and chasing the silence.
‘It’s safe to read To Kill a Mockingbird, then? It won’t make me want to give up my life to God or anything like that?’ Nika says. I know she’s said it to break up the atmosphere of seriousness and solemnity that’s built up in this room, but still, it makes me bridle a little that she seems to be mocking me slightly.