by Daisy Pearce
She smiles at me. ‘Hi!’
Frankie introduces us. ‘Stella, Heidi, Heidi, Stella. Heidi runs the café here,’ he tells me, taking a menu from the counter and handing it to me.
‘It’s my baby,’ she says, smiling.
‘How long have you had it?’
She looks at Frankie, frowning in concentration. ‘A few years, maybe? It seems longer.’
‘Every second I spend with you seems like an eternity, my dear,’ Frankie says without looking up, but smiling just a little.
‘Ha. Ha,’ she deadpans, rolling her eyes at me as if to say how do you put up with this?
I can’t take my eyes off her. She looks like a comic-book heroine, richly pigmented. I feel a sudden stab of envy. I will never look that exotic, that abundantly confident. Once, maybe, when I was younger and brighter. Not now. Heidi bends forward, the bright plume of her hair like an exclamation mark. Frankie is saying something which makes her laugh and I feel a painful jealousy at their intimacy, a needle slowly inserted into skin.
We order breakfast and two coffees and take a table by the window looking out to sea.
‘How’s the not drinking going?’ he asks.
‘Harder than I thought.’ I look into my lap. I’ve picked up a napkin and begun to twist it between my fingers. I force myself to stop. I don’t want to look mad. Don’t look mad, I tell myself, pretend to be normal. Sometimes I feel sick with the panic.
‘It’s the boredom, mostly. The days go on forever. Hours and hours and hours. The worst for me is the evening, right after dinner. I really miss that glass of wine, you know? It helped me relax.’ I laugh bitterly. ‘Ha, listen to me – “It helps me relax” – what a cliché.’
Frankie shrugs and sips his coffee, wiping his moustache with his fingers. On the beach a toddler is running heedlessly along the sand in the ramshackle way of toddlers everywhere, feet tangled and spilling, head raised to the roof of the sky, laughing. We watch for a while, silently.
‘Do you have support? Meetings? Alcoholics Anonymous or something? It’s hard to do something like this by yourself. As far as I understand it – and I do understand it, Stella, my uncle died of cirrhosis and was still necking the bottle at the end – boredom is one of the biggest triggers for any relapse when it comes to addiction. You can’t underestimate it. It sounds trashy, but you need to keep busy.’
I shake my head. I can’t remember how we’ve got into this conversation, and I open my mouth to tell him to stop, to tell him I don’t need his input, and then I have one of those weird memory jags which happen sometimes, a tiny implosion in the brain. I remember Carmel’s new job, and the cake I’d made. Something so small and yet – yet there is something else, below the surface of that memory, something circling, circling, a shark beneath the water.
‘I’m sorry, what did you say?’
Frankie puts down his cup, looking at me earnestly. ‘I said, what about finding a therapist down here? Or if you don’t feel as though you can face it you can go online. Pretty sure the Internet is hooked up at the house. You need something. Everyone needs something.’
‘No. It’s fine, really. I can do this.’ I think of the ghostly shape I’d seen in the mirror. ‘The doctor has given me some pills to take. He said the best thing is to recharge for a little while. Take it easy.’
Frankie blinks. ‘The best thing for what? For alcoholism?’
‘Yes.’
‘He said the best thing for alcoholism is a holiday?’
I stare flatly at him, looking exactly like my mother when she was angry.
‘Do I sound incredulous? That’s because I am. I’m surprised you were just given some pills and told to take a break.’
‘He said “recharge”,’ I correct him, but inside, deep inside and whispering like the wind in a cave, something stirs. I’d thought the same, of course. Is that it? I’d thought as Doctor Wilson had handed me the little brown bottle and given me his obdurate advice: no more booze, take a break. Is that it?
‘You know what? I think the Victorians had it right. Fresh air, sunshine, the sea. Bracing walks and freezing water temperatures. That’s what you need.’
‘Wasn’t the life expectancy of the Victorians something like thirty years old?’
‘No one likes a smartass, Stella.’
I thank Frankie for breakfast and insist on getting the bill. We tussle good-naturedly over it for a few moments before he shrugs, palms tilted upwards.
‘Sure, okay then. But I’ll get you out for a walk on the beach one day soon, yes? It’s the best time of year, when all the crowds have gone. Please have a think about what I said, about keeping busy.’
We are outside now, facing away from the wind. The sun is warm on the places where my skin is exposed: my hands, the back of my neck, my cheeks. I want to lift my face to it.
‘Do you think it was me?’
‘Do I think what was you?’
‘The taps. It’s just you’ve mentioned keeping busy twice now and I just – it sounds like you think I’m a fantasist.’
Frankie says nothing. He puts his hands in his pockets. ‘Stella, taps don’t just run by themselves. Not the way you described, at least. Not all of them at once, at varying flows. It’s impossible. I mean, look, if you want we’ll go and get that plumber I mentioned, I’m happy to do that and get Marco to pay for it, really. But I think you’ll be embarrassed when he doesn’t find anything wrong. I think it’ll make you feel worse instead of better.’
‘I know what I saw, what I heard.’
Frankie remains silent.
‘Look, I don’t know what else Marco has told you about me, but I can promise you I’m perfectly okay. You don’t need to keep checking up on me, pep-talking me.’
‘Now you do sound crazy. Marco hasn’t said a word about you, other than in the kitchen on the day we met. I’m looking out for you because it must be hard up there. If you want me to stop, I’ll be glad to.’
I can see he is telling the truth and immediately feel like shit. My thoughts are foggy, like a bad head cold. I can’t think straight. Instead, I hold out my hand and he shakes it.
‘Sorry, Frankie. I didn’t mean to judge you. But really, I’m fine, everything is fine.’
Chapter 14
I see it as soon as I open the garden gate. Something has been left on the doorstep. As I approach I feel suspicion; my nerves are trembling wires crawling the length of my spine. Looking about me, there is just the long grass, the house and sprawling, wind-sculpted trees. The object is small and plain and as I get closer I see it is just an egg box. Just that, sitting there. I lift it and flip the lid. Eggs, of course. Eggs of differing pastel hues; one the purple-grey of a faded bruise, another a tawny brown, lightly freckled. A tiny feather still clings to it so I peel it carefully away and the wind lifts it from my fingers. Beneath the box and anchored by its weight, there is a note. I unfold it with slightly trembling hands. I have noticed I am shaking a lot these days. Delirium tremens, I suppose. Isn’t sobriety interesting, isn’t it fun?
‘Pay AttenTIon’ is printed in blocky black writing. Just those words, with no signature. I do not recognise the writing. I go inside feeling shaken and a little intruded upon.
I prop the door open and hang up my coat. Inside, that strange smell again, a briny, waspish odour. I stand still in the dim hallway for a moment, just breathing, just taking it in. My head feels cloudy and opaque as I walk into the kitchen.
All the cupboards and drawers have been opened, the contents emptied and lined up on the floor in neat rows. The inventory takes up most of the stone floor. I put my hand out to steady myself, looking around me with mounting dismay.
Everything has been lined up in order of size – espresso cups at the front, eggcups then teacups and glasses until the chunky Cornishware mugs at the back. Then there are the dinner plates, tea plates and saucers, saucepans, frying pans, woks and steamers, cleaning products and tea towels carefully folded, and a long line of tinned goods. Ther
e is an almost perfect circle of candles to my left, some used and little more than thick stumps of tallow, others still wrapped. It reminds me of an installation I’d attended as an art student, hungry and always broke. The exhibition had been called ‘Galenskap’ and featured everyday objects neatly displayed in intricate patterns across the gallery floor. Galenskap: a Swedish word meaning ‘madness’.
I stare for almost a full minute, my skin tight with gooseflesh. A movement catches my eye and I jerk, gasping. It is a moth, trapped against the windowpane. It is bracken-coloured and as big as a cotton reel.
I have been forgetting so much. So much.
I find myself kneeling in front of the cupboards, piling everything back inside. I am trying to remember this morning, the moments before I left the house. I had gone upstairs to the bathroom, hadn’t I? While Frankie had waited. Had Frankie done this? Had I done this? Is that even possible, to do this and not know it? Perhaps whoever had brought the eggs around – the eggs and that eerie little note underneath, the one which sounded so much like a threat – had let themselves inside to do this, to scare me. But then why leave the eggs on the doorstep if they had keys? Round and round it goes, none of it making sense. I sit back on my haunches, my hands pressed together at my mouth as though I am praying. I think back to the moment in the bathroom, the moment I had taken the bottle of pills from the cupboard. I had poured two into my hand and put them on the windowsill. Had I taken them? I don’t remember. I dust my hands off on my thighs and head upstairs to the bathroom. The sun is bright and golden and the clarity of the sea air coming in through the bathroom window is wonderful and the pills are not where I’d left them.
Where you thought you left them, I tell myself. They are not on the windowsill. I check the floor and lift the towel hanging there but they have disappeared. You must have taken them, I think. But I don’t know. I don’t know. I open up the cabinet and reach for the bottle. The bottle is not there. Now my heart starts to race, tick, tick, tick. Where is it? I rake the contents out of the small cupboard into the sink; packets of aspirin and waxy lip balm and throat lozenges grown sticky and furred with mould. I search the room, look behind the bath and in the little cupboard next to the radiator. I look in the cabinet, in the pockets of the dressing gown hanging on the back of the door and behind the toilet where I find another of those puddles of dirty stagnant water. But I cannot find the little brown bottle with no label. With growing unease, I search the bedroom, stripping the bed, pulling the covers from the pillows. I look under the rug and in the wardrobe and behind the curtains. I even go downstairs and look in the fridge. I cannot find it, and now I begin to really panic, almost relieved I have something concrete to hang my anxiety on. I pace the small rooms and back to the bathroom, checking and double-checking in frustration. I think I have found it when I lift my handbag and hear a rattle but it is just my keys loose at the bottom. I sit down at the kitchen table and rest my head on the surface, ignoring the growing sense of dislocation as adrenalin is dumped into my system. I think again of how much simpler my life was just over a year ago, living with Carmel, having fun. And again, that brain zap, my head turning inwards to that day in our flat – the day of Carmel’s new job – and the outside world dims around me like the flame of a gas lamp lowering.
Chapter 15
Carmel had been standing at Blackfriars waiting for her train when she found out. A dull, drizzly English lunchtime. It was me she called first.
‘I got the job.’
‘You’re kidding.’
‘I’ll take your congratulations as implied. Soon I will be known as Mademoiselle Silky Bollocks and you will have to call me Your Highness.’
I laughed. ‘Amazing. I always knew you’d do it. When do you start?’
‘A month. They’re flying me to Paris again to sign the contracts. God. God, this is really happening!’
‘It is.’
‘God bless them. God bless France. Liberté, égalité, fraternité and all that.’
‘Yes. Très bien.’
‘Uh – je ne comprends pas.’
‘Mais-oui.’
‘This needs work. Are you home? I’m heading back now.’
‘Oui. Let’s go out and celebrate.’
‘Not the pub. Something proper. Dinner?’
I had looked over at the doorway where Marco was standing, his arms folded across his bare chest. Dark hairs coiled like wire wool on his skin. He had called me that morning, persuaded me to let him come over, told me he had cancelled all his meetings. He told me he was desperate to see me, compared it to a thirst. A need. ‘I need you,’ he had said, and laughing I had replied, ‘All right, okay then. Yes.’ We had barely been apart in the last two months. That’s how it happens for some people, he’d told me, and I’d said how what happens and he’d said, ‘Love.’ He’d twined his fingers on mine, bearing down with a pressure just short of pain. It had turned the beds of my nails white. ‘Love,’ he had continued, pressing himself against me. ‘I love you.’
‘We’re all going out for dinner tonight when she gets back, and I’m baking a cake,’ I enthused when Carmel had hung up. ‘I’m baking a cake in the shape of a bra.’
‘You can’t cook, Stella,’ he said, leaning against the fridge and tucking his hands beneath his naked armpits, ‘and can’t you put the heating on? It’s freezing.’
The poky second-floor flat was permanently cold, and in the winter a knife-sharp draught blew in through the gaps in the windows. I ignored him, pulling open the kitchen cupboards. We rarely had much food in, and today was no exception. I picked up a bag of caster sugar which had formed into a hard, solid rock.
‘It’s a brilliant job and good money. She’s done well.’
‘Yes, but it’s not your brilliant job, is it? What are you so pleased for?’
‘Because she has worked hard for this. I’m allowed to be pleased for her.’
‘We all work hard, Stella. I started off working seventeen-hour days. After my dad died I took on his business at nineteen years old. No one baked me a cake.’
He wrapped his arms around me, pulling me close. His hands dug into the soft flesh of my middle.
‘Aw, poor guy.’ I pouted. ‘Would you like me to bake you a cake too? Would man baby like a cakey?’
‘What I’d like,’ he’d said, turning me easily in his arms so we were face-to-face, ‘is for you to get out of this rut you’re in.’ He ran his hands down my back, drawing me closer, a frown tightening his features. ‘You’re too thin.’
‘I’m fine.’
‘You’re not. Look at this.’ He lifted my T-shirt gently, pointing at the flare of my ribs. ‘There’s nothing on you.’
‘I’ve always been skinny.’
‘No, you haven’t.’
I looked at him, confused, and he smiled.
‘Katie Marigold’s nickname was “Pudge”, wasn’t it?’
‘Oh. Yeah, I suppose it was.’
That’s what Daddy Marigold had called her, at least. I’d been a plump little kid, ‘delightfully chubby’, as so many articles had referred to me. It was an asset, a part of my appeal. As I edged closer towards my teens some of that fat dropped away, shed by my nerves and hormones, pushing food around my plate with the back of my fork. Mum had wanted me to go on a high-calorie diet, terrified I would lose my trademark dimples. I stubbornly resisted. By that time Katie Marigold was an albatross around my neck.
‘Maybe I should make a cake just for you.’ Marco laughed, slapping me playfully on the behind as I turned away. ‘Get some flesh back on your bones.’
‘I don’t want a cake, Marco. I just want to make this one. Now go on, piss off. I need to make a list. I need to get ingredients. Most of all I need to concentrate.’
‘Why are we celebrating London’s biggest slut whoring knickers again?’
‘Marco, please.’
‘Okay, okay. Don’t know why you don’t just buy one. All that time and effort, you know you’ll only end up binning it.�
��
‘I can do this.’
‘Fine, I’ll get out of your way. I’ll pick you up at seven. Don’t burn the bloody thing.’
But Marco hadn’t arrived at seven. I had been waiting, pacing the hallway in heels which clattered noisily. I was sore that he’d stood me up. When it was nearly eight o’clock, I called Carmel.
‘Where are you?’ Carmel demanded. ‘We’re all waiting.’
‘Bloody Marco hasn’t turned up.’
‘What do you mean? He’s here. He’s been here nearly an hour.’
I blinked.
‘Do you want me to put him on the phone?’
‘No, I – no, I think I must have got confused. I’ll come now.’
I had left the building, carrying the cake in a box, my stomach already knotted. I hadn’t always been absent-minded, and it worried me in a way I couldn’t articulate, like being lost in a forest full of mist and lights and false turns.
By the time I reached the restaurant, my head had started to ache. It was a very specific pain, pin-sharp, and it deadened my thoughts. Marco stood and helped me take my jacket off, took the cake from my hands.
‘Where were you?’
‘Here,’ he responded. ‘Like I said I would be.’
‘But you didn’t. You didn’t say that.’
‘Stella, I did.’
‘But you didn’t. Why do you think I was waiting at the flat for you?’
I became aware that people were looking over at us and forced myself to smile, to lower my voice.
‘But why would I say that? Look. The restaurant is here.’ He picked up a pepper grinder and placed it on the table. Then he picked up his fork and showed it to me. ‘This fork is my flat, see? That goes here, near the restaurant. Now, watch this. See this drink? I’m going to put that all the way over here because that is your flat. Now. Why would I come so far out of my way?’
‘Because you bloody said so, that’s why.’
