by kendra Smith
9
Maddie
Maddie wiped her feet on the front doormat and scrabbled in her bag for her key. Even though it was hot, a wind was picking up and some gloomy grey clouds were hanging low over the trees. Olive was in a strange mood; that was for sure. It was the last day of July, a week after choir practice had ended. The summer stretched endlessly ahead of her. No school. No routine. Endless summer days of – what? She stopped searching for her key all of a sudden, lost in the thought of how she was meant to fill her days as a distant roll of thunder rumbled in the sky.
As she was walking towards the kitchen, Taffie bounded up to her and started yapping. She was sure she’d left him in the back room earlier. She could hear another roll of thunder, heralding a downpour later. She glanced out the kitchen window, looked up to a sky covered in bruised blue clouds.
Taffie barked again. ‘What is it, Taffie?’ He was acting a bit odd. She bent down and gave him a rub on his tummy. He barked and tried to lick her face. ‘No! Taffie, you should have seen these silly dogs at Olive’s care home! They were eating all the cakes from the old ladies’ laps!’
She knelt down and patted Taffie on the head, enjoying his fluffy fur. He wagged his tail excitedly. Out of the corner of her eye she spotted something glistening by the side of the chest of drawers. She reached under the chest and felt around – it was small and she pulled it out. A pearl earring. How funny. She didn’t own any pearl earrings. She sat on the floor for a long time, hugging her knees as Taffie nestled at her feet. She held the earring, rolled it between her thumb and forefinger, and thought about Olive. A tiny little ember flickered inside her. She got up, popped the earring into a small bowl on the kitchen table, went to her laptop and flicked open the lid.
She logged into Facebook and scrolled along her home page. She sent Ed a private message:
Are you OK? Have not heard from you in while. Send news! Mum x
Then she deleted the last bit and changed it to: ‘Mum and Dad x’.
‘There you are!’ She flew backwards in her chair as her heart hammered in her chest. Tim was back. He strode along the kitchen tiles, his shoes clipping as he walked. She tried not to find it irritating but with each ‘clip-clop’ she realised she was listening out for the rhythm of it.
He pecked her on the cheek and sat down at the kitchen table across from her.
‘Heard from Ed?’
‘Um, no, I’ve just messaged him again. I’m getting a bit worried now, Tim.’
‘He’s fine – what can go wrong? Relax.’
She knew the conversation wouldn’t go where she wanted it to, as they both had hugely different views on how to parent Ed. Ever since—
‘So… what have you been up to?’
She looked up at him. ‘Sorry miles away.’ She forced a smile. ‘Went to see Olive, you know, your aunt!’ She’d seen people do it – they were able to have a go at someone but present it as a joke. The minute she said it she knew she’d gone too far. Tim scraped his chair back. ‘We moved her here, Maddie, so that we could both see her! You know that. I’m at work all the time. I work very hard. Things are very stressful right now.’ His mouth started to twitch.
‘I know, Tim, but the consultant today said things aren’t looking good. She’s deteriorating quite a bit.’
‘What do you mean deteriorating? She’s got everything she needs. That place is rated “outstanding”.’
‘It’s not about how it’s rated, Tim,’ she snapped, then took a deep breath as his eyes widened at her. ‘I mean mentally, things are getting a bit worse – Alzheimer’s. The doctor has identified it, but Olive doesn’t want to know. She said it would be over her dead body that she’d go into the Dementia Wing, but I do think she needs more help.’
‘I wouldn’t bother, Maddie, I doubt she’ll be around for too much longer. C’mon, let’s get in the car – for a spin.’
Maddie sat completely still, staring at the way the knots of wood twisted round on the kitchen table, at the salt and pepper pots in the middle. The neatness of it all. She could just see the tiny earring glinting at her. And she wanted to scream at her husband. She wanted to tell him that Olive needed to see family, that she was lonely, that he was her only living relative – and who the fuck did the earring belong to? She wanted to say all those things, but as she looked up at him, and saw that expression in his eye she knew so well, she decided to say nothing at all.
*
It was the silence up to the front door that nearly made her turn round and run back to the car. She couldn’t bear another minute of it. They’d been out in his ‘dream machine’ for a spin, the new car he was test-driving, but neither of them were having a fantasy road trip. It was more like a nightmare. It was pouring. Plants, leaves, trees, the pavement, everything wet and soggy; rain had been lashing down on the windscreen for the past forty minutes. She couldn’t get Tim’s dismissiveness of Olive out of her mind.
Even though it was still daylight at 8 p.m., dusk had been marshalled early by the gathering storm clouds and occasional flashes of lightning. The air was sweet with the earthy scent of moist soil, and the soggy blood-red petals on the geraniums by the front door hung down, droopy from the downpour.
Tim methodically pulled each key from his key ring round and round looking for the house key as she stood next to him, shivering in the porch, moisture trickling down the back of her neck. Once he’d located the right key, he put it in the lock with an ‘ah’.
Before he went in, he stopped and turned around to face her. ‘Maddie, I know I haven’t always been the best husband, but you know your place is here, with me.’ She forced a smile as he patted her on the arm. Perhaps he could sense the tension. Pat, pat, pat. She glanced at his neatly cut fingernails.
Maybe they did need to go away. A holiday of some sort, maybe one of those couples’ places? Actually, that might be bloody dreadful. But she decided to keep an open mind and have a look later, once they were curled up on the sofa with a hot chocolate and out of this miserable rain.
As they walked into the kitchen, she could see it. Water spread out all over the floor by the fridge, the freezer door ajar.
‘Jesus Christ, Maddie, when did you last defrost the freezer?’
How was this her fault? Water was seeping all over the floor from the freezer.
‘You must have left the freezer door open.’ She turned to him as she tiptoed through the mess.
‘I really don’t think I did. Well, if you had been a bit more observant! None of this would have happened!’
Observant? Maddie’s heart quickened in annoyance, standing there in an inch of water. There was the woman she was, and the woman she wanted to be, and she was finding more and more that they were not quite the same. Suddenly, she wasn’t sure any weekends away were going to fix that.
‘What are you talking about? Don’t be utterly ridiculous!’
‘Don’t call me ridiculous, Maddie, after all I’ve done for you!’
That faulty fuse inside her fizzed just a little more and she blinked. She had to bite her lower lip not to say anything more. How many years would she have to pay for this?
Her phone beeped. She was desperate for news of Ed; she dashed over to see if it was him. It was! Only when she clicked on the icon there was a message saying:
This is not Ed.
‘Tim, quick, look at this, I think he’s been hacked! Look!’
Tim took the phone from her and read the message. His face turned pale.
‘No. He hasn’t been hacked, Maddie, he’s in hospital.’
Maddie snatched the phone from Tim’s hand.
Hello this is Johnny – I’m a mate of Ed’s. I had no other way of contacting his family. He is all right, but he needs to stay in hospital for a few days. He’s had a bang to the head from a surfboard in a storm and blacked out. The staff have put him under 24-hour surveillance. Has he had any history of fitting? Can you let me know? My number is…
But she couldn’t read it for the
tears…
‘I need to go, Tim!’
‘What? Where?’
‘To Bali, of course!’
‘That’s insane. You?’
She jerked her head to the left to look at him. ‘Why not?’
‘Well, because, you’re needed here – he’ll be fine, Mads. Besides, you wouldn’t cope.’
And there, in that one moment, was the defining difference between them. She would have run, barefoot if necessary – across hot coals if she had to – to the airport and got on the next flight to see her son. And not just that, Tim thought she couldn’t do it. You? She couldn’t turn back the clock, but she could make a decision that would affect the rest of her life.
‘I’m going,’ she said, swiping her wallet off the table.
10
‘This is your captain speaking. We are about to start our descent into Denpasar International Airport. Please return your seats to the upright position…’
Maddie shifted in her seat. The flight had been sixteen hours with a stopover in Singapore. Never, ever, had she wanted a shower so much in her life. It was the longest she had sat next to someone who kept falling asleep on her shoulder. It was hard not to stare at her neighbour’s bright pink nail polish. Maddie looked over at the girl sleeping peacefully in the narrow seats. How on earth could she manage that? The girl’s skin was alabaster smooth in the hazy dimness of the aeroplane light; silver bangles up her arm, the chipped polish on her fingers and the tie-dyed loose trousers. There was also a delicate belly button ring piercing mahogany skin. She looked away. God… Maddie yanked at her Marks and Spencer jeggings – she felt about seventy. Suddenly a mental image of Ed made her jerk upright. What if he wasn’t breathing? What if…
No. She would not go there. She could do this.
Tim had been strangely detached. I think you should stay here.
‘Here?’ She’d swept her arm theatrically across the kitchen, as something had snapped inside her. ‘Who needs me?’ she’d whispered, too scared to yell, as it would have unleashed such a torrent of pent-up emotion. ‘The dog? You? You spend more time on the road during the week, and then the golf course at the weekend. Tim, this is Ed we’re talking about, our child… the child we brought up!’ And then the tears had come.
‘Don’t, Maddie.’
His look said it all. She’d been sent right back to why he had been kind to her, what they’d been through, the wedding. Maddie fiddled with her seatbelt and tried to get comfortable. She remembered how that had come about – remembered when Tim had thrown the catalogue at her one day: ‘Catch this!’ he’d said.
She’d caught it in both hands and stared at the woman on the front in the ivory tulle ball gown. ‘What’s this?’ She’d been shocked and mildly thrilled at the same time. Who didn’t dream of their wedding when they were twenty-one?
‘Wedding dresses!’ He’d smiled at her.
‘Why?’ She’d been part-flattered, part-terrified.
‘Well, look, you need… Maddie, you’ll need one if you want to marry me.’ He’d pushed his glasses up his nose, triumphant. And that had been it. The proposal. She’d often dreamed of how it would be: a surprise, a dinner, a trip away. The fairy tale. But no, a catalogue.
She’d pointed at one she liked, swept up in the excitement of it all. Hadn’t really given herself a moment to think. Wasn’t it all too much?
‘Not that! You’ll look like a tart,’ he’d snapped at her as she stared at the beautiful beaded off-the-shoulder dress and then back at him. Surely he was joking?
So she’d chosen another, despite a tiny nagging doubt that really, shouldn’t she wear what she wanted? No matter, if it bothered him that much then she’d go along with it. It was only a dress after all, wasn’t it? And he’d already given her a great deal. She should be thankful.
She’d ended up with a high-neck white dress. Not ivory. She’d felt like a paper doily when he’d squeezed her hand so hard her wedding ring dug into her skin. She’d held her tongue, made herself a secret pact. If I can just get through two years, that’s all I need. Many people fall in love slowly, don’t they? No, a nagging voice had said in her head.
Then the baby. A bit of a distraction, a baby, might bring them together. And now she had to go to him.
How will you cope? he’d said as she’d left that morning in the taxi for Heathrow.
I’ll cope, she’d said as she shut the taxi door firmly and felt a horrible nausea settling over her about what she was about to do.
She studied the tiny picture of the plane on the screen in front of her. They were over the Indonesian islands now, descending slowly. She’d barley left Hampshire before, let alone the UK. Ed needed her. She was going to take a deep breath, hold her nose and jump right in at the deep end.
*
The plane then started a much swifter descent and a loud noise rumbled in her ears. Her stomach did a little flip as she peered out the windows. It was dark outside – 9 p.m. local time the captain had said. She could see millions of little lights on the ground. It was a beautiful multi-coloured fairyland. Her nerves were getting the better of her, especially as the plane was descending at quite a rate, leaving her stomach about fifty feet above.
The first thing she noticed as she stepped out of the airplane door and onto the metal steps was the heat. All thirty degrees of it. And the humidity made her almost choke.
Tim had said she’d panicked. Well, of course she had. Wasn’t that the very essence of being a mother? Panic first, love second. Those were the rules. And anyway, it was different for Tim. She sighed as she gingerly stepped onto the metal stairs outside the plane and gripped the railing firmly.
*
‘Where you go, lady?’
She glanced at the taxi driver as she clambered into a blue cab, which looked like it had seen better days. She searched for a seatbelt in the back seat, but there didn’t seem to be any as the driver sped, erratically, off to the right. ‘Jesus!’
Maddie searched in her bag for the name of Ed’s hotel. When she’d told him the name, he turned around quickly.
‘Not for lady like you,’ he said curtly.
What on earth did he mean? I need to find Ed, she thought, winding the window down and enjoying the breeze on her face. She breathed in a heady smell of something flowery followed by something quite sour; she screwed her nose up at the unpleasant smell.
After what seemed like quite a short distance, they were in a crowded, noisy road. Motorbikes sped past them, sounding like they were about to break down any minute, a high-pitched whiny noise, the smell of diesel in the air; there were neon-lit bars, pumping out music and spilling out tourists onto the pavement. A motorbike whizzed next to the taxi. There was a woman riding side-saddle at the back, her legs dangling dangerously, grinning like a lunatic. At 3 a.m. in Little Rowland even the ‘twenty-four-hour’ garage was shut.
The taxi took a turn to the left, down a dark street, then abruptly took a smaller lane to the right and stopped. ‘Here hostel is,’ the taxi driver said to her, then he turned around. ‘Seventy thousand rupiah.’
There was a sign in pink neon above the door: ‘The Luna Bali Hostel’. The ‘l’ was un-lit. She walked towards the dimly lit entrance and suddenly felt overwhelmed. Taking a deep breath, she strode into the bright foyer at 3 a.m. in the middle of Kuta Beach, in Bali, in her Marks and Spencer casualwear and wondered what on earth she was doing.
An older Asian woman, possibly in her sixties, was at a grubby wooden desk. She looked up at Maddie and scratched her grey hair as Maddie approached.
‘Yes?’ Gold hooped earrings dangled in her ears.
‘My son is staying here. Do you know him?’ She swiped to a photo on her phone.
Paint was peeling in the top corner of the wall. A moth fluttered about by the light in the middle of the ceiling.
The woman looked up, then said, ‘Room 3, but he no there. Hospital. Hurt; he surfing. He go yesterday. You pay room?’
Maddie frowned. ‘
Which hospital?’
‘You pay for room.’
A gold tooth gleamed where her incisor should have been. Maddie handed over the money and the woman stuffed it in a drawer. ‘You come. I show you room.’
Maddie followed the woman as she shuffled through a small archway along the corridor leading to gardens at the back of the hostel. The path was lit with tiny lanterns enclosing tea lights on each side and she could smell both the cloying scent of the trees and the slightly dubious smells of what was possibly a nearby toilet.
Her phoned pinged. Tim. She quickly texted him back. She could really do with him right now.
The woman opened the door and then turned to Maddie. ‘You need torch for here. No light after twelve, power no good.’ Then she turned on her heels. Maddie stood in the doorway in the dim light and felt almost nauseous with fatigue. Ed needed her.
She groped a bit forward in the dark and could just make out what looked like an unmade bed. The light from the candles on the pathway coming through the open door was enough to give her a sense of shapes, but no more. She reached into her bag, took out her phone again and swiped up for the torch. Just as she did that, a figure emerged from the bed, sat bolt upright and said in a very strong Australian accent, ‘Who the fuck are you?’
11
‘Bloody hell, woman! I nearly had a heart attack!’
