by Wendy Clarke
The double glazing is misted as usual, the bottom running with water, but I’m used to that. What I’m not used to is seeing something drawn on the glass. Getting up, I go over to the window to take a closer look.
I stare at it and then my body starts to tremble.
Drawn in the condensation, about four centimetres in height, is a zodiac sign just like the one circled in the newspaper that was put through our door.
Gemini.
* * *
I hear my name being called and look up. I don’t know how long I’ve been standing by the window, my forehead pressed to the glass. It might only be minutes, but I suspect it’s longer. For the first time in a long while, my counting hasn’t worked and my limbs are frozen. I should be doing something, but I can’t remember what it is. The only thing I know is what is in front of me.
Even when I hear the front door bang shut, I don’t realise the significance. There are voices in the hall. Charlie barking. Noah crying. I hear it all as if from a distance. I’m not in my little terraced house in Brighton, I’m in the woods with Freya and she won’t let me leave.
‘Jesus, Kelly. I’ve been phoning you. Why didn’t you pick up? I thought something had happened.’
I can see from Mitch’s face that something’s wrong, but my mind won’t process what it is.
‘Mummy! Mummy!’ Isabella is behind him, trying to push past.
‘Go upstairs, Izzy. Take Sophie with you and you can watch some TV in our room.’
‘I don’t want her to come, she’s stupid.’
Taking Isabella by the shoulders, Mitch turns her around. ‘Do as you’re told before I change my mind.’
There’s the sound of running feet on the stairs and then it’s just Noah’s crying I can hear.
‘You didn’t pick the children up. Where were you? When Mrs Allen couldn’t get hold of you, she rang me at the site. Jesus Christ, I can’t even get into the room.’
Noah is dangling in the striped bouncer that’s attached to the top of the door frame. His face is red and angry, his fine hair plastered to his forehead. Only the tips of his toes touch the ground, and with each bounce, he spins around, his cries becoming louder.
‘Kelly? Talk to me.’
I turn my head to look at my husband, watching as he crouches down in front of the baby. Gently, he rests him over his shoulder and pulls his legs out of the padded seat. Once released, Noah presses his face into Mitch’s neck, covering him in tears and snot.
The crying stops, but the silence is crowded with all the things Mitch wants to say but is holding back.
‘How long has he been in this thing?’
I look at Noah and the blood starts to return to my body. ‘I’m not sure.’
‘Not sure? What’s wrong with you?’
Mitch walks up and down the room, his hand cradling Noah’s head, and I can see he’s trying to make sense of it. The baby’s crying again, bumping his head against his shoulder.
‘Does he need a feed?’ he asks.
‘I don’t know. Maybe.’
‘Do you want me to make up a bottle?’ He’s looking at me strangely and I can hear the effort it’s taking for him to keep his voice normal.
I turn back to the window. ‘I’ll feed him in a minute.’
‘Kelly. What’s the matter? You’ve never forgotten the girls before. Has something happened?’
Without answering, I step back from the window, pointing a finger at the wet glass. ‘Look.’
‘What?’
‘There.’ My voice is rising in frustration. ‘Can’t you see it?’
Mitch leans forward and looks at what I’m showing him. Two horizontal lines separated by two vertical ones, like a roman pillar.
‘You know what it is, don’t you?’
He throws up his hands in exasperation. ‘A gate? A tree trunk? Why are we playing guessing games when our kid’s been screaming his head off?’
I jab my finger at the glass. ‘It’s a sign of the zodiac… Gemini.’
Mitch is looking at me as if I’ve totally lost it. ‘Great. Brilliant. Hurray.’
As he moves away from the window, I grab his arm. I’ve got to make him understand. He’s got to know I’m not making this up. ‘I found it when I came back from shopping.’
‘What are you trying to tell me? That someone came into our house and drew on our window. Something that could be absolutely anything.’
‘It’s not absolutely anything. It’s a sign. Freya was a Gemini. She hung herself from a tree with two hideous trunks just like this.’
Mitch rubs the top of his head. ‘Not this again. Jesus, the girl is dead, Kelly. Are you telling me you believe in ghosts now?’ He gives a hollow laugh. ‘Or is it just the ones that draw on windows.’
‘No. Oh, I don’t know. All I know for certain is it wasn’t here when I went out, but it was here when I came home.’ I’m blinking back tears. ‘You have to believe me.’
He lets out a long breath. ‘Did you lock the doors when you went out?’
‘Of course, I did. I always do.’
‘Then you must know that nobody has been in our house.’
But even as he’s saying this, I remember how my turning of the key had locked the door, rather than unlocking it.
I grab at the sleeve of his sweatshirt. ‘It was unlocked! I remember now.’
Mitch looks down at my hand, the fingers gripping the soft material. ‘Are you sure? It wasn’t what you said a second ago.’
I look up at him with wild eyes. ‘It must have been my mother. She must have come in and…’
‘And what, Kelly?’ Carefully, he releases my fingers from his sleeve. ‘She drives all the way here just to draw something on our window?’ He runs a tentative hand down my arm, and I see the effort it takes to keep his voice gentle. Scared of how I might react to what he’s going to say. ‘Do you think you might have drawn it yourself?’
Upstairs, I can hear the children singing along to some cartoon or other. Noah’s damp head is resting on Mitch’s shoulder and there’s an unmistakeable smell coming from his nappy. The realisation of what I’ve done is finally sinking in. I’ve been tired before, worried, but never have I been neglectful of my children.
I was so sure but now doubt is worming its way in. ‘Why would I do that?’
‘Because you’re exhausted. Because your father has just died, and you’ve recently been back to the place where terrible things happened to you. It’s brought it all back. Maybe you were just doodling.’
‘Doodling?’
‘Yes, like when you’re on the phone. Come on. You’ve got to admit it’s possible.’
‘I suppose so.’
‘But, Kelly, you have to snap out of it. Noah needs you. The girls need you. Maybe you should see a doctor?’
‘I don’t need a doctor. I just forgot the time. I…’
But there’s nothing I can say that will make it better. We both know that what I did was inexcusable.
‘Then take some time out. After you’ve fed the baby, I’ll look after the kids and you can go for a run. The fresh air will do you good.’ He’s talking to me in the slow, patient voice he uses with the children and I know it’s because he’s unsure of what I’ll say and do next.
I massage my temples. ‘All right.’
‘Good girl.’
Mitch hands Noah to me and looks relieved when I kiss his head.
‘I’m sorry,’ I whisper into my baby’s hair. ‘I’m so sorry.’
46
Kelly Now
The tide is high and there’s an ozone smell of sea spray as the waves rush up the beach and burst onto the breakwater. As I run, my blood pulses in my ears, each footfall keeping in time with my counting.
I’m relieved to be out of the house. Glad to be alone with my thoughts.
A vicious gust of wind whips my hair across my face and almost pushes me into the blue railings, but I don’t care. Since I saw the Gemini symbol on my window, I’ve been numb, bu
t the unforgiving weather is allowing me to feel again. Even if it’s just the sting of salt on my lips and the bite of the wind on my cheeks.
My feet find their stride and I try to rationalise what happened earlier. I know Mitch must be right. The symbol couldn’t have got there by itself, so it was clearly me who put it there. Stressed with Noah’s crying, I must have run my finger down the pane while thinking of something else, not realising I was doing it. And it’s no coincidence it was the Gemini sign I drew, for since the newspapers came through my door – the ones that were meant for someone else – I’ve found myself wandering into the newsagent’s on my way home from dropping off the children. While June’s been busy with customers, I’ve taken the local paper out of the stand and flicked to the back pages where the horoscope is. Reading both mine and Freya’s as we used to all those years ago.
Pulling my sleeve over my hand, I scrub away the tears and carry on towards the West Pier, its naked metal framework bringing back memories of the target frames of the rifle range.
I stop and catch my breath, leaning my arms on the railing and watching the flock of starlings in their aerial show. Swooping and circling the pier, like a storm cloud, before settling to roost. I should turn around and go back but I’m scared to. My home used to be my place of security but now nowhere feels safe. The one thing I’ve always known for certain is that, in any circumstance, I would do the best for my children. Love and protect them. Today, that didn’t happen, and although Mitch hasn’t said anything, as I left the house, I read in his eyes what he was thinking. That I’m a bad mother. If he’s right that I drew the Gemini sign myself, then I’m going crazy. If he’s wrong…
I wrap my arms around my body as Freya used to do. The alternative doesn’t bear thinking about.
The waves are turning on the beach, the horizon barely visible where the grey sky meets the sea. I remember the day I arrived in Brighton, desperate to move out of my parents’ home but some inexplicable part of my brain preventing me from moving further than the next county. I took the first job I could get in a club under the King’s Road arches and, almost immediately, the tension that I’d lived with for years, started to ease.
That first evening shift was a long one, not finishing until three in the morning. As I’d collected the last of the glasses and started to wipe the tables, I’d tried not to think about the fact that I had nowhere to stay. Nowhere to sleep that night. If one of the other girls hadn’t taken pity on me, I might well have been joining the homeless in their sleeping bags beneath the pier. It was just a sofa bed in her small living room, and she’d made it clear it was only until I got myself sorted, but it was better than the alternative.
And it was certainly better than living at home in the weeks and months after Freya died. For, even when she was no longer there, the wheels kept turning and it became clear that the thing I told my parents the afternoon of her death was not going to go away. Of course, I feel bad about it now – know what harm I could have done if I’d been believed. However much I hated my maths teacher, he didn’t deserve the hell I must have put him through.
The school was quick to act. Mr Seymore was questioned and had denied everything. The evening I’d said I’d seen the two of them at the rifle range he’d been at a departmental meeting. It was my mother who’d told me that. She said I was a liar and that everyone knew it. It was Ethan Jackson Freya had been with and now she was gone because of my jealousy.
From that day on, my mother talked to me only when she had to. Every day, I heard her crying behind her bedroom door and who could blame her. Her daughter was a liar and the child she’d loved the most was dead. Freya became a taboo subject and they never even told me when the funeral was. I didn’t care; I just wanted to forget Freya had ever existed.
When I was moved to a new school, St Hilda’s, I felt nothing but relief as, if I’d stayed where I was, I’d have been treated as a pariah. I’d sit in lessons, in my stiff uniform with its long, pleated blue skirt and blazer, and invent a better life for myself. Telling the girls I lived in a modern house on some smart estate. Foster-children didn’t feature in my fantasy life and I had a mum and dad who loved me. I didn’t care about the white lie as I was never going to be inviting them back.
Each day, after the bus dropped me back in town, I’d shut myself in my room and count down the months and years until I could escape. I might as well have been dead myself.
When my father left, a few months after Freya’s death, I wasn’t surprised. It was clear she’d been the only thing keeping him at home. But, for my mum, it was like being bereaved all over again and I’m ashamed to admit I was glad. Because now she’d know what it felt like to be unloved.
As soon as I was old enough, I left the miserable house with its low thatched roof and never went back… until Mitch decided to interfere in my life, that is.
It’s getting dark now, the West Pier silhouetted against the indigo sky. It’s beautiful, and in other circumstance I’d appreciate it more, but my head is too full of memories. I know I’ve not been coping well since giving birth to Noah and it’s affected the way I’ve been thinking. Mitch isn’t the only one who wants to help a lonely child come to terms with what happened. I’m beginning to think that the only way I’ll be able to lay this ghost to rest is by going to see my mother again. I’ll tell her the truth about what happened the night Freya died and, when she’s heard me out, I’ll confront her with the things that have been happening recently. Tell her she’s to stay away from me and my family.
With a last look at the pier, I set off for home. When I reach the crossing and wait for the lights to change, I’m no longer looking for a flash of blonde hair through the windscreens of the waiting cars. It’s as though a weight has lifted and that’s because I’ve made a decision. The right decision.
Without looking back, I run the quickest way home. I’m eager to tell Mitch what I’ve decided, but when I reach the front door, I see him through the window. He’s pacing the room, his mobile pressed to his ear. His face is like thunder.
As I let myself in, I hear Mitch’s raised voice. He’s stopped pacing now and is sitting on the arm of the chair, his mouth set.
‘Sue me for what, for fuck’s sake,’ he shouts into the phone. ‘If it wasn’t for me, he wouldn’t even have a job.’
‘Daddy swore,’ Isabela says, enjoying it immensely. ‘He said the F-word.’
I shush her and, taking both girls by the hand, usher them into the kitchen where I fix them a drink. When Mitch is angry, having children in the room will not make him regulate his colourful vocabulary. While Isabella chats about her day and I put the kettle on, she climbs onto the worktop, even though she knows she’s not allowed. By the time I’ve noticed, she’s drawn a smiley face on the misted window.
‘This is like the sticker Miss King gave Sophie. It’s not fair – she has twenty million stickers on the chart and I’ve only got five.’
‘I’m sure that’s not true, Izzy. Anyway, you shouldn’t be drawing on the windows, it will leave a mark.’ I stare at the face she’s drawn, remembering the symbol that I saw on the window of the living room. Maybe I have the answer to the riddle.
‘Izzy, have you ever drawn something like this?’ I draw two vertical lines down the window, adding a horizontal one top and bottom.
She looks at me as though I’ve asked her to wear something pink. ‘Why would I do that, Mummy? It’s stupid. It’s not even a picture.’
Not wanting to be left out, Sophie clambers up too. Twisting round, she copies what I’ve drawn, then looks to me for approval. Now there are two Gemini signs side by side.
‘What about you, Sophie? Did you draw this on the living room window?’
She shakes her blonde head, and in that small gesture my hope that it might have been one of the children melts away.
Pulling my sleeve over my hand, I quickly rub the pictures off, not wanting Mitch to see. I know he thinks I’m making things up and, with the mood he’s clearly in
tonight, I don’t want to make things worse.
It isn’t long before he comes into the kitchen and throws the mobile on the table.
‘Little shit!’
‘Mitch, don’t,’ I say, nodding towards the children.
‘The bastard’s only gone and injured himself.’ He presses his fist against his forehead.
‘Who? Who’s injured themselves?’
‘This new kid, Dale. I asked him to fix a loose hoarding. It’s something even an idiot could do, but he fucked up. It fell on him and damn near knocked him out… or so he says. Threatening to sue me for compensation.’ He sinks down on one of the kitchen chairs, the colour draining from his face. ‘Christ, if that isn’t all I need.’
He’s looking at me, waiting for me to say something reassuring. But I don’t.
All I can think about is going to my mother’s tomorrow and what I’m going to say to her.
47
Kelly Now
My mother’s house is colder than I remember it being when I was a child. Reaching behind me, I feel the radiator, but it’s not on and it occurs to me that, after my father left, she may very well have been short of money. It’s not something that I would have known or even cared about but now I find that, just as I did on the day of the funeral, I’m feeling sorry for her.
Noah is asleep in his car seat on the settee beside me. I had to bring him as, even after what happened yesterday, I don’t trust anyone else to look after my child. I hadn’t wanted my mother to touch him, but when she’d been unable to hide her delight at seeing her grandson for the first time, I’d reluctantly given in and allowed her to hold him. As she’d walked up and down, whispering endearments, I’d had to close my eyes against the pain. Her loving voice was the one she’d saved for the foster-children. I don’t remember her ever using that gentle tone with me.
My mother has made tea. The cups sit between us on the coffee table, but neither of us have drunk any. I haven’t told her why I’m here yet and it’s as if the quiet room is waiting.
