Lily's House

by Cassandra Parkin

  The cat’s waiting by the door, but I refuse to be moved by her luminous green eyes or the softness of her fur as she comes back presses against my leg. I get up, shoo her back inside the room and close the door on her pink little meow of outrage, pressing my hand against the latch so I can feel the click as it closes.

  It’s a relief to be here in the cool of the stairwell. I take the climb slowly, relishing the familiar shapes of the steps. The fifth from the bottom has an inclusion that’s remained hard and rough over the long years of use – not enough to hurt, just enough to feel different and interesting when I scrunch my toes around it. The third step from the top slopes down and back, threatening to tip you backwards into space. The coil of the bannister as I reach the landing is as fat and satisfying as ever. All these things are home to me.

  The flat smells comfortingly of chicken. I need to pick the meat off the bones and put it in the fridge. But first I have to talk to Marianne, who hovers like a wraith in the doorway of her room, her too-short pyjama bottoms clinging around her calves and her cloudy hair tumbled about her face.

  “Mum,” she says. “I need you to listen.”

  “What’s the matter? You should be asleep, it’s getting late—”

  “Mum! Shut up!”

  The sharp imperious gesture is so unexpected that I’m shocked into silence.

  “You need to listen, okay? And you can’t talk until I’ve finished. That’s the rule. All right?”

  “What?”

  “Are you going to keep the rule?”

  “Marianne—”

  “Shush! Are you going to keep the rule?”

  I nod.

  “Okay. So, Mum.” Her hands very careful and deliberate. “You need to leave Dad.”

  I begin to speak, but she shakes her head and pushes my hands back down.

  “No. You promised you’d listen. You need to leave him. You stay here. You’ll be safe here. I’ll go home on my own. I’ll keep an eye on him, we’ll be all right. I’ll come and see you every other weekend. And all the holidays.” Her hands tremble. It’s costing her everything she has to say these words. I try to take her into my arms but she won’t have it. “No, stop, you promised! I’ll be fine, I promise, he won’t hurt me, he never has, it’s only you he does it to. You said yourself you shouldn’t hit someone you love, not ever. So you have to stay here. And then he can’t do it any more.” She takes a deep breath. “All right, that’s it, I’ve finished talking now.”

  “Marianne, my darling. What are you talking about? Your dad has never, ever—”

  “Yes, he does! I know he does! Stop lying! You try and hide it from me but I know he does, okay? I’m not a little kid any more. I know you don’t fall down stairs and walk into cupboards.”

  “I – that’s really what – you sleepwalk, you see things, you know that.”

  “It’s not okay for him to hit you,” Marianne repeats, and although she’s trembling, I can feel the inexorable strength in her. “Maybe Lily knew and that’s why she left you this place. So you’d have somewhere to go. I think she wanted you to come home.”

  Chapter Twenty-Four - Daniel

  The first time it happens is when Marianne is about eighteen months old. I’ve spent the day in London in a succession of tedious Head Office meetings, which are somehow going to enhance my skillset and allow me to progress in my career. (Somehow.) I could have stayed overnight, they were willing to pay for it, but I’ve chosen to come home. I’ve scurried across London and bullied my way into crowded Tube cars and shouldered fellow passengers out of the way to make the earlier train, which gets me home just in time to put Marianne to bed. Her little face as she sees me come through the door is the one golden moment in the day.

  I kiss Daniel’s face, which is smudged with tiredness. I peel Marianne’s grimy T-shirt off over her head, and watch her stump around the bathroom on chubby legs, bending over to inspect the toilet brush, various scraps of tissue and the discarded plastic shell that once held a contact lens. I wash my hands before I put her in her bath, watching her splash busily about, pouring water from cup to cup. Bath. Teeth. Pyjamas. Story. Kisses. Nightlight. More kisses. A drink of water. Still more kisses. A stealthy descent down the stairs, to where the adults live. Daniel is slumped on the sofa with his eyes closed.

  “What do you want for dinner?” I ask, meaning, Have you bothered to make any dinner, or have you left it to me, as usual? The things I say to Daniel increasingly come with a dissatisfied subtext. How many nappies have we got left? Are there any potatoes? Does Marianne’s bag need packing for playgroup?

  “I haven’t really thought about it,” he replies, giving me a smile that’s meant to make up for this. Normally it’s enough to calm me down. Normally I smile back and sort it out. Normally I’m not this angry. I stamp into the kitchen, opening and shutting cupboard doors, trying to assemble the bare makings of a meal for two. Frozen sausages. An elderly onion. Tinned tomatoes, tinned kidney beans. Sausage casserole it is. Herbs. Garlic. Do we have enough bread? Of course we bloody don’t.

  “We need more bread,” I shout to Daniel, without bothering to go into the sitting room. He hates it when I do this because if he wants to reply, he has to get up to come and talk to me. I’m aware that I’m being rude. I don’t care. He slouches resentfully in the doorway.

  “Why do we need bread?”

  Because you didn’t go to the shop and buy any.

  “Because we don’t have enough.”

  Daniel rummages in the bread bin.

  “We’ve got four slices.”

  “And that’s not enough.” I turn away and get on with chopping the onion. Daniel touches me on the arm to get my attention.

  “We don’t need more than two slices each. Do we? What are we having? Sausage casserole? Two slices is plenty.”

  I lay the knife down and sweep the onion into the casserole dish.

  “Marianne might like toast in the morning.”

  “She’ll be fine with cereal.”

  “Okay, then I want toast in the morning.”

  “Can’t you have cereal instead?”

  It’s too much.

  “Why should I have to have bloody cereal? I don’t want bloody cereal, okay? I want toast! That’s all I want!” I want Daniel to be frightened by my rage, but instead he looks baffled.

  “How can you have such a strong opinion about breakfast?”

  “All right. All right. I don’t just want toast. I want toast, and I want someone else to worry about whether we’ve got enough bread, and I want dinner cooked for me for once, instead of having to come in from work and do everything, every night, all the bloody time. I mean, what do you actually contribute? You don’t cook, you don’t clean, you don’t do the washing—”

  He looks like a hurt puppy now, and this should be enough to make me stop, but tonight I have no pity left in me. I want to hurt him. I want to make him feel useless and a burden. I want to make him sorry.

  He holds up his hands as if I’m physically attacking him. “Jen, that’s not fair! I do contribute! I look after our daughter.”

  “Yes, and she’s eighteen months old! She goes to playgroup every day, morning and afternoon, five days a week – even though she’s the youngest there by a bloody mile, you couldn’t wait to get her out of the house so you could have your mates round and mess around in that music room, full of equipment that I paid for, incidentally – and of course you don’t have to do anything else, you’ve walked three minutes up the road with a pushchair so that gets you off the hook for the whole bloody day, you can leave me to sort out everything else—”

  I can see I’m getting to him, but it’s not until the blow smashes into my face, slamming my head back against the corner of the cupboard door and turning the edges of my vision black, that I realise how successful I’ve been. We stand in dazed silence, staring at each other. Then Daniel looks towards the kitchen door. Marianne stands in the doorway with her best teddy bear under her arm and two fingers jam
med in her mouth.

  “Are you all right, Mummy?” Her pudgy hands move along with her perfect little mouth, making sure we both know what she’s saying. It’s the first time I’ve seen her do this. It’s the longest sentence I’ve ever heard her say. Daniel stares at me beseechingly. I have never seen him look so loving, or so remorseful.

  “We’re fine, baby,” I tell her. My head swims as I scoop her up, but I can’t stop to think about that. I have to be strong. “Come on. Back to bed.”

  Marianne touches her fingertips to the tender orbit of flesh along my cheekbone.

  “I know, baby. Mummy bashed her head on the cupboard. Don’t worry, Daddy will look after me. But we have to get you back to bed first. No, it’s too late for another story, but you can have one more cuddle, and then you have to go to sleep, all right? You’ve got playgroup in the morning. Night night now, baby. No, really, night night. Sleep now.” Her eyelashes are already casting shadows against her cheeks. “That’s right. See you in the morning.”

  I have to hold on to the bannister to make it down the stairs. I can feel the beat of my pulse thudding in the lump on the back of my head, in the ache along my cheekbone. I should go and look at it, see how bad the damage is, but I don’t want to. I’d rather not know. I’ll wait for the morning, when everything will seem better. Right now we have to talk. Daniel hit me. Did he mean to? Yes, of course he did. But no, that can’t be right. I was yelling at him. What did I think was going to happen? I even wanted him to, maybe. Maybe I was deliberately that awful so he’d hit me and then I could…

  Daniel isn’t in the sitting room. He isn’t in the kitchen either. Not in the hall. Not in the music room. Where has he gone?

  He’s in the bedroom, throwing clothes wildly around in a flailing attempt to pack a suitcase.

  “What are you doing?” I grab his arm to make him stop, then flinch back when he tries to stroke my face.

  “You see?” His eyes are wild and panicky, as wild and panicky as I feel inside. “You don’t even want me to touch you. I can’t even touch you. I can’t touch you ever again.”

  “It’s not that. It hurts a bit, that’s all.”

  “I don’t blame you. I don’t deserve to touch you. I don’t deserve to stay here in this house with you and Marianne. I don’t deserve either of you. I’m so sorry. I’ll go.”

  “What? Where are you going?”

  “I don’t know, somewhere, I’ll find a hotel or sleep on a mate’s floor or something. Or I’ll go to my mum and dad’s.”

  “But what are you going to tell them?”

  “That you asked me to leave. I’ll say you asked me to leave because I… oh God, I don’t even want to say what I did. I can’t even say it. So on top of everything else, I’m a coward. How am I going to tell my mum and dad? What are they going to think of me? I’ll have to tell them why you threw me out. I’ve ruined everything.”

  “No, you haven’t. You haven’t got to tell them anything. It’s all right. We can get past this.”

  I can feel the words coming out of my mouth, so I must mean them. I must genuinely believe we can get past this. This must be me speaking. It will feel real soon.

  “But I—” Daniel presses his hand over his mouth so I can’t understand what he’s saying. His eyes are huge and terrified. I take his hand away from his face, and this time he lets me touch him.

  “It was my fault.” I stroke his hand gently, seeing him relax and begin to believe. Such power I have over him; the power to make things right or wrong, the power to keep our family together or destroy it. “I was being a bitch. I shouldn’t have said any of those things.”

  “Yes, you should. You’re right. I don’t do enough round the house. I’m a useless husband.”

  “You’re not. You’re a wonderful husband.”

  “No, I’m not, I’m useless. I don’t know how to cook, I don’t know how to clean. I don’t bring in any money. I haven’t written anything new for months. I don’t get to enough rehearsals, I don’t know how much longer the rest of them are even going to put up with it. They need someone who can commit properly.”

  “Because you’re looking after our daughter. It’s a hard job, the hardest job in the world.”

  Where has all my anger gone? Half an hour ago I was desperate for him to acknowledge all these things that seemed so true. Now he’s saying everything I’ve nursed in the darkness of my heart, and all I want is to kill the words stone dead. I upset him so much that he hit me. I nearly destroyed everything we have.

  “You’d both be better off without me.”

  “Of course we wouldn’t! I love you. We both love you. You know that.”

  He takes my hand and rubs it against his cheek. His tears are warm on my fingers.

  “You and Marianne,” he says, “you’re all I’ve got. All I’ve got. The only thing in my life I’ve ever done right. If you left me, what would I even be? I don’t know what I’d do. That’s why I was so upset when you said I—”

  “Don’t. Please. I’m so ashamed. I shouldn’t have said any of that.”

  And it’s true. I do feel ashamed. It’s hot and burning in my chest. How could I have been so awful to my husband that he had to hit me to make me stop talking?

  “You’re only saying what’s true.” His nose is running and he wipes it with his sleeve. “Do you think I don’t notice when you come home and start cleaning and tidying and cooking dinner and stuff? It makes me so ashamed. And then I feel so useless and then I can’t write or play properly, and I start wondering what you’re even doing with a loser like me. I mean, would you even still be with me if it wasn’t for Marianne?”

  “Don’t even ask that. You know that’s not true.”

  Except it just might be. It’s one of the thoughts I haven’t dared let myself think, because there is Marianne, small and innocent, sleeping quietly in her bedroom lit by the soft pink of her glow-lamp. She is what matters. I can’t let her family be destroyed. What if there was no Marianne? Imagining a different life is imagining her gone, which is unbearable, so I don’t let myself think it.

  “Look what I did to you.” He touches my face and the back of my head with his fingertips. I try not to react but I can’t help it; when he touches the duck-egg beneath my hair the world turns black around the edges and I clutch his T-shirt.

  “And I haven’t even looked after you. I let you take Marianne back to bed by yourself. I should have sat you down and got you a cold compress. I’m a waste of space. I’m useless and I hit my wife. Why am I even still alive? I should be dead.”

  He collapses at my feet, his head against my knees like a tired child. My anger has slunk away like a kicked dog. All I feel is tenderness. I kneel down too, stroking his face and arms to show I mean him no harm. He looks at me and winces.

  “You look so pale. Should I take you to hospital?”

  Maybe he should. I feel dizzy and light-headed, as if I’m not quite in my body at all. But then we’d have to wake Marianne again, or – worse – call Daniel’s parents and ask them to babysit while he takes me. Would they see through our subterfuge that I fell and hit my head? Would they find this convincing? The thought of them realising what happened between Daniel and I is shameful. Tonight is our own dark and terrible secret, a holy mystery that, paradoxically, will bring us closer together.

  “I’ll be all right. You’ll see. I’m made tough.”

  “You’re amazing. You’re so amazing. I don’t deserve you. And I swear this will never, ever happen again. Oh, Jen, I thought I’d lost you. I should have known better. I should have known you’d never leave me and Marianne—”

  And he’s right. I really won’t leave him and Marianne. I’ve learned something about myself tonight. I am strong and powerful, far more than I ever imagined. I nearly broke Daniel. I took a gentle, kind, loving, slightly feckless man and turned him for a brief minute into someone else. If I chose to, I could do it again. I’ve found the key that unlocks another, darker Daniel, and if I make him
come out again, it could destroy us all. I sit on the floor of our bedroom and promise myself that I will never, ever, ever repeat the words I said tonight. It’s too frightening. Meanwhile, Daniel leaves the room and returns with an overfilled bowl of too-hot water and a scrumpled wad of tissue that he uses to dab painfully at the back of my head, spilling water on the carpet as he does so. I see him looking at me to see if I’ll say anything about the mess, his face anxious and vulnerable. I’m ashamed of how deeply I’ve hurt him. He hit me, but he was only fighting back.

  He dabs the back of my head, and I tell myself that as long as there’s no blood there, I don’t need to go to hospital. I hold my breath as he dips the tissue back into the water. It instantly dissolves into a mass of floating shreds, but there’s no blood. I must be all right after all. Only a bad bump. Nothing to worry about. Daniel takes my hands between his.

  “I love you,” he tells me. “I love you more than anything else in this world except Marianne. You’ve given me everything in my whole life that’s worthwhile and I swear I’ll never, ever… and I know you’re right and I’m not good enough for you… I was so scared you were going to leave me that I… I couldn’t help it…” I stroke his face gently. “Oh, Jen. Are you sure you forgive me?”

  I blink, and that must be enough for him, because suddenly he’s all over me, sweeping me up and carrying me to the bed, pulling at my clothes in a frenzy.

  We haven’t had sex like this ever, not even when we first met. The strange thing is that despite the headache and the soreness in my cheek, I’m as eager for it as he. Everything he does makes me hungry for more. I take his hand and press it hard between my legs, and when he finally touches me the way I want, I bite him because it feels so good. His face is contorted with need and from the way he presses his fingers over my mouth, I know I must be making noise. Afterwards, we lie in each other’s arms and I feel the movement of his chest where his blood still pounds.

  It’s not his fault. I made him do it. Of course women who have been hit always say this, but the truth is that it really wasn’t his fault; I really did make him do it. My head is a perfectly divided vessel with two chambers. One holds the knowledge that you should always, always leave a violent partner because they will inevitably do it again; the other, my unshakeable understanding that, alone of all the women in the universe, I really did bring it on myself. I’ve always thought not leaving was weak. Now I understand it takes a special kind of strength. The strength to take responsibility for my part in a terrible incident, to ensure Daniel’s mistake never happens again. I am the singular exception to an otherwise perfect rule. Context is everything.