You by Joanna Briscoe Page B

river to the English department to teach the fourth form.
    Instead, she saw the straight line of her mother’s body against the green as Dora walked beside Elisabeth Dahl, her denim skirt protruding stiffly behind her, her necklace reflecting afternoon light. The two women were engrossed in conversation, both gazing ahead as they talked, paused and gestured. Dora wiped her hand across her face, and Elisabeth placed her palm on Dora’s back, then dropped it. Dora moved away very slightly. Cecilia stiffened. They came closer towards the wood where she was hidden in tree shadow, Dora’s face pale and frowning, her fingers twitching as she walked.
    Cecilia, alert for ramifications involving Mr Dahl, absorbed the tone of Elisabeth’s speech without hearing her words, and watched her decisive movements. There was an intensity to her interaction with her mother that was confusing. She wore a black skirt over black boots, a dark red scarf rising and subsiding behind her. Cecilia gazed in utter fascination. This was the body that had been held and, quite astonishingly, penetrated by James Dahl, the head enclosing a mind that contained every detail of him. Cecilia felt almost incapacitated with jealous curiosity.
     
    ‘I saw you with Elisabeth Dahl,’ said Cecilia that evening, a statement that had stalled in her mind before prodding at the atmosphere of the kitchen. The lights were low. The catflap banged.
    Dora paused. Her skin pinkened. ‘Right,’ she said.
    ‘I didn’t know you – know you knew her so well.’
    ‘I don’t,’ said Dora, turning round and facing Cecilia, her expression failing to relax. ‘Not really.’
    ‘You were walking across the lawn by the Copse. Talking,’ said Cecilia. She focused on the flapjack crumbs on the table. She stood awkwardly by a chair, attempting to lean casually.
    The redness rising through Dora’s thin skin was visible even in the lamplight.
    ‘So why were you talking to her?’
    ‘I often talk to the teachers. Colleagues.’
    ‘But you were talking – intensely.’
    ‘Was I?’ said Dora quietly. She drew in her breath. She turned around and began to put on the hand cream that she kept by the sink.
    ‘It was about something!’ said Cecilia, stabbing at the edge of the table.
    ‘Well – We were discussing Gabriel Sardo staying sometimes at weekends. She’s his tutor and will be his housemistress. He . . . he doesn’t want to board at weekends.’
    ‘Right,’ said Cecilia, pausing.
    ‘They – Gabriel’s parents are moving to Dublin.’
    ‘You mean Speedy? Speedy Sardo?’
    Gabriel Sardo, known as Speedy throughout Haye House, was a pupil in Cecilia’s year. She had never spoken to him. He was smoulderingly modish: gangling and confidently taciturn. The idea of him at Wind Tor House was so unexpected that she could barely contemplate it.
    ‘Why – why would she ask you?’ said Cecilia, stumbling now. ‘Why here, I mean? How?’
    ‘Elisabeth is his tutor,’ said Dora, speaking more calmly. ‘I –’ she said, glancing to one side, ‘agreed, offered. Just weekends he can’t get over to Dublin. Do you mind?’
    Cecilia shook her head. ‘I mean – I don’t know,’ she said. ‘I don’t know him.’
    ‘Cool,’ said Benedict, arriving in the kitchen and shrugging.
    ‘Weedy Speedy,’ called Tom.
    ‘But I don’t see why you would say yes to that,’ said Cecilia.
    ‘Why not?’ said Dora.
    ‘Why? Just because she asks you.’
    Dora paused. Cecilia watched her swallow. ‘It’s only occasionally. Gabriel is a nice boy. We could do with the money, Celie.’
    ‘I know,’ said Cecilia, rifling through employment plans with shame.
    ‘Don’t worry about it, though.’
    ‘You were talking to her for a long –’ said Cecilia, tailing off in the face of Dora’s expression. She glanced at the floor.
    ‘I know that,’ said Dora, and Cecilia glimpsed, as she so rarely did in her mother, a streak of determination, a chip of ice.
     
    After supper,