Fragile

by Sarah Hilary

  Meagan’s first thought was, You’re not pulling any wool over my eyes, sunshine.

  She’d have preferred a kid with scars, or big ears. The ugly ones were easy to manage, didn’t get too many bright ideas about themselves for starters. She’d expected Joe to lord it round Lyle’s like a little prince, bagging the best seats, demanding the biggest helpings. She gave him the box room, to cut him down to size. ‘Not a lot of space but you’ve not a lot of things, have you?’

  Rubbing his nose in it, but the boy needed to know who he’d to thank for the new roof over his head, and that his tricks wouldn’t work here. ‘It’ll do you.’

  The box room was at the front of the house, just enough space for a single bed with a shelf over it, no desk or chair, no bedside cabinet or chest of drawers. A miserable, narrow cell of a room that all the kids hated. Joe went straight to the window, not more than four steps from the door. The sun was out and he stood in it, his fringe lit gold, shadows from his eyelashes lying along his cheeks, looking like a young Paul Newman. He picked the spot on purpose, striking a pose to help her see how handsome he was, that’s what she’d thought. But by the end of the first week, she’d learnt what was going on with Joe.

  He liked his little cell of a room because it got the sun. He was a slave to the sun, was Joe. ‘Sunshine,’ she started calling him, tongue in cheek. The social worker outstayed her welcome, giving tips on how to care for young Master Peach, warning of his sensitive stomach and the need to get him out into fresh air on account of a vitamin D deficiency: ‘The sunshine vitamin!’

  Meagan listened and pulled the right faces, and let the silly cow leave a bag of oranges after getting her to say she’d put in a good word at the next review. Day one and Joe was earning his keep, but it was too easy, like ripe plums dropping in her lap. Meagan didn’t trust easy. She felt better after Joe fought with Nell. Fighting was normal. Standing around striking heart-throb poses was neither normal nor useful, unless that smitten cow happened to be around.

  ‘You’d better share those oranges, sunshine.’

  He did as he was told, at any rate. But nothing Meagan said could stop him seeking out the sun. He followed it around the house like a cat. When she wanted to punish him, she shut him in a room without a window. Winter was hard work, Joe slowing down like a toy with a flat battery. Nell did most of his chores in the winter months, covering for him because she’d fallen so hard.

  ‘He needs to clean the bathroom.’ Meagan didn’t like the boy getting away with it, and was surprised the girl let him. ‘It’s filthy.’

  Nell was packing lunch boxes, ready for school.

  ‘I said he needs to clean the bathroom. Have you seen the state of it?’

  ‘He’ll do it. He’s helping Janine with her homework.’

  ‘I don’t have to wash my face in Janine’s homework. Tell him to get it sorted.’

  Later, when the bathroom was clean, it wasn’t Joe that smelt of bleach and scouring powder.

  ‘So much for feminism,’ Meagan mocked. ‘You’ll be dressing him next.’

  Or undressing him. She watched them that summer. Nell was fifteen and abruptly lovely, the way it took some girls. Joe looked more than ever like Paul Newman. The social worker had said something about unwanted adult attention, this being all the rage with social workers at the time. In Meagan’s experience, the fact he’d been groped by grown-ups meant there was an even chance Joe Peach was a pervert, or would grow into one. So yes, she watched them. But there was no warning Nell. Meagan tried to tell her there was something up, but she wouldn’t hear a word against Joe.

  ‘He’s not right in the head, you know that? Something’s missing.’

  ‘He’s just tired,’ Nell would say.

  ‘No.’ Meagan wanted to spell it out. ‘There’s something missing.’

  Three years of that – of Joe living like a prince in Lyle’s – before Rosie Bond went missing.

  Rosie who told tales, bringing her stories to Meagan like a kitten delivering a string of dead birds – ‘Joe didn’t pay for the sweets he bought’ – saucering her eyes as if she didn’t know she was dropping the boy in it. ‘And he’s got a new phone.’

  ‘He’s not right,’ Meagan told Nell. ‘He’ll have the police on us, is that what you want?’

  It was Joe she wanted to bawl out but he’d slipped off somewhere, leaving Nell to shoulder the blame and take the punishment.

  ‘I suppose he’s got you in on it. The pair of you’ll end up in that unit down in Abergele. That’s if he doesn’t wriggle off the hook. You’re a fool, girl. He’s got you round his little finger like the rest of the women in Wales.’

  ‘Except you,’ Nell said under her breath.

  ‘Too bloody right except me. You think I’m falling for the golden boy act at my age?’ Or any age. ‘I’ve had it up to here with batting bloody eyelashes. His tricks don’t work on me.’

  Joe came to Meagan’s room that night, to apologize. He didn’t bat his lashes, standing there in an old T-shirt, goosebumps on his bare arms. ‘I’m sorry, I’ll stop. Let me stay.’

  ‘And have the police on my back? Not bloody likely. I’m calling your case officer in the morning. You can bugger off back to Barmouth.’

  ‘I can’t. They won’t have me.’

  ‘Come off it. That old bastard with the busy hands? He’d love to have you back.’

  ‘No.’ Joe looked straight at her, eye to eye. ‘He wouldn’t.’

  The way he said it sent a shiver up her spine. It was the first time she’d seen him look straight at anything. His eyes were always sliding about, or else he was blinking, going into soft focus like someone’d put Vaseline on his lens.

  She’d been partial to a bit of Paul Newman in her youth, that sulky mouth and chin, the way he turned his eyes into lasers. Cat on a Hot Tin Roof was her favourite. Scowling about on his crutches, making Liz Taylor weak at the knees until she ran up the stairs, ‘Yessir!’ in the end. And here he was in front of her, not blue eyes but golden brown, sharing something special with her, that’s how it felt, something he’d shared with no one else, not even Nell. Trusting Meagan with his truth. No one had ever trusted Meagan that way before. It wove its way into her gut, warming her.

  ‘You bring the police in here, I’ll skin you alive. Is that clear?’

  ‘Yes.’ He crooked his mouth, shrugging his shoulders to make himself smaller. ‘I don’t know why I do it, not really.’

  ‘Don’t get deep with me, sunshine. I’m a foster mum, not a psychiatrist.’ But she narrowed her eyes at him. ‘D’you have a psychiatrist?’

  He shook his head. ‘Just you.’

  ‘Suppose I don’t tell your case worker about the shoplifting.’ She smoked for a bit, thinking about her options. ‘Where’s my incentive?’

  ‘I’ll stop. Or . . .’ He watched her face, picking his way through the words, searching for the right ones. ‘I’ll lift other stuff, better stuff.’

  They stared at one another for a long moment.

  ‘You’re a piece of work, Joe Peach.’ She tapped ash into a cup. ‘Did anyone ever tell you that?’

  He said again, ‘Just you.’

  Standing there in his T-shirt, making a gift of his guilt and his confession. Seducing her with the idea she was special, the only one he’d ever confided in. Oh, he was good, was Joe Peach. Rotten to the core with it and, God help her, she fell.

  Now, he was sitting at her kitchen table in this dump of a flat where she’d been run to ground, thanks to his little girlfriend’s lies. Well, it was her turn this time. Joe could earn his keep. He owed her, the debt two summers old.

  Dry as dust it’d been that afternoon, the kind of dry that stuck in your throat and made your armpits itch. The lawn was yellow, ladybirds crawling in the cracks. Bees were dying, it was all over the news. Not just nature at work; vandals broke into an orchard and destroyed the hives. A man wept on the TV news, saying he couldn’t understand why anyone would do such a thing. Police said the
vandals would’ve been stung badly during the attack. Meagan was surprised anyone cared that much about bees, dead or living. Rosie and the others dug graves in the flowerbeds to bury those that fell out of Lyle’s hollyhocks. They had to soak the soil before it was soft enough to dig, it’d been that long since they’d seen any rain. The sheets Nell pinned to the washing line crisped in the heat. All the kids had rashes. Meagan would’ve prayed for a storm if she’d been the praying sort. A headache was poking a black rod of pain behind her eyes.

  ‘Keep them quiet,’ she warned Nell. ‘I’ve a migraine coming on.’

  Nell fetched a glass of water and a sleeping pill, drawing the curtains. Meagan lay down, shutting her eyes.

  She was a good girl, Nell. A shame she was falling for Joe but she could’ve fallen for a lad in town, the one with the freckles and forearms who washed the hearses for the funeral home. They had it good at the funeral home, no noise or fuss, no kids. Air-conditioning. Meagan would’ve killed for air-conditioning that summer, the way the heat crept around the house.

  By mid-afternoon it was squatting outside her window, thick as soup through the curtains. She woke in a stupor, her face stiff from the migraine, hearing the clatter of kids in the house. Nell was supposed to be keeping them quiet. The weather made them scratchy, starting fights they hadn’t the energy to finish. Her eyelids felt as if coins were pressing there. She’d dreamt of the funeral home, lying in the dark listening to the trays slide in and out of the walls around her. Heat held her to the bed until she couldn’t bear the smell of her own skin, sweating cigarettes and cider. She pulled herself upright, keeping her eyes closed, feeling for the glass of water Nell left. Here – lukewarm, soapy. She reached for her cigarettes, swinging her feet to the floor. The curtains were hot to the touch, sun inching past hers to the narrow window of the box room. Joe’s room. He didn’t spend any time in there other than to sleep, preferring to sit with Nell in the big drawing room, or in the playroom where an old mattress was upended against one wall. It was a bit cooler down there, but not much. Heat had stuffed every corner of the house. This summer was hell on earth. She pushed the window wide to let the smoke out. That’s when she saw them, trailing home. An hour before the alarm was raised and the police turned up, shedding their respect for Meagan faster than a whore sheds her knickers. Nell and Joe, coming back from the pool. Where else would they go? But she said nothing. What could she say?

  ‘I reckon the three of them were at the pool while I was taking a nap. Not the swimming pool in town, the one at the old quarry. They call it a lake. Trespassing, yes.’

  That would’ve gone down like a bag of bricks. She told no lies, and asked no questions. Too many the police could’ve asked in return: ‘Have they ever gone off like that before, the three of them? Or the two older kids. Nell, is it? And Joe. Have you ever had cause to wonder where they were, or what they were up to?’

  ‘Well there was this one time, officer. With the blood.’

  ‘The blood, Mrs Flack? How much blood are we talking about?’

  ‘A lot of blood, but I didn’t like to ask any questions.’ She could hardly have admitted that.

  She’d caught Joe trying to bury the bloodstained towel in the airing cupboard. He’d invented some lie or other, the tips of his ears pink as a rabbit’s. She hadn’t the energy to pursue it back then; the heat that summer made everything an effort. She’d assumed it was Nell’s monthly, or else they’d been experimenting.

  ‘A lot of blood, officer, but I kept quiet about it.’ How would that have helped anything?

  She said nothing to the police that day or since, because she could see the stories coming down the line as soon as the kiddie went missing: Neglect. Shameful. Criminal.

  She’d lit a cigarette, was shaking out the match when she spied them. Heads together, so close they looked welded at the hip.

  Nell in last year’s sundress, faded to the colour of milk and too tight, showing off her new curves. Joe with his legs brown and scuffed at the knees. The sun on their heads, hair wet from the water.

  She looked for Rosie, following behind. But it was just Nell and Joe, moving in step, holding hands so hard she could see the whiteness of their knuckles from the window.

  17

  ‘You’re holding back.’ Carolyn’s hand was poised, paintbrush hovering over the canvas, her face freighted with accusation. ‘We’re painting you, not putting you on trial for murder.’

  I was on trial, all three of us knew it. There hadn’t been a day since I’d arrived at Starling Villas when I wasn’t being judged, against his standards or hers. What was his rota, if not a trial?

  Carolyn threw down the brush and crossed the room to put her hands on me. My shoulders, elbows, waist. Twisting me two inches to the right, prodding me an inch to the left, as if I were one of the lilies in her vase. Her fingers were hot through my clothes, the fever in her like Joe’s.

  ‘There. No, keep your shoulders down.’ A quick press of her palms as if she’d rather be using a cattle prod or wearing rubber gloves. ‘And your chin up.’ The tilt of two fingers.

  Robin didn’t speak. He was using charcoal, its flavour like ash in the back of my throat. I’d seen his eyes when her hands were on me, the blood-swell of his lips. I wished I hadn’t seen that.

  We were in his bedroom. They could have painted me in the garden room or the sitting room, or shackled to the stove in the basement. Instead, she’d posed me by his ugly mirror, her choice of background. The glass licked coldly at my neck. If I took a step back, it would swallow me.

  ‘And show some emotion, for God’s sake.’

  She crossed the room to her canvas. Her scent stayed in my nostrils, somehow shrill and green.

  Which emotion did she want from me? Shame? Rage? Guilt. Sweat soaked the armpits of my dress, the apron starchy at my waist; of course she had to paint me in my servant’s uniform. The light was in my eyes, I’d see its ghost for the rest of the day, an oblong shaped by the window’s frame. It would be there when I cooked their supper, and washed their dishes. I’d see it as I climbed the stairs to his attic and lay down on the mattress under the eaves. Even asleep it would be there behind my eyelids, waiting.

  ‘Better . . .’ Carolyn touched her brush to the canvas in short, dismissive strokes.

  Robin moved his charcoal across the page, the sound of it like whispering. I was grateful for the light blinding me, blanking out the room. He wet his thumb, rubbing at his sketchpad as if to wipe me out. Please, I thought, wipe me out. Make me less.

  My head filled with Rosie. Rosie and her crayons, one of the rare times she could be persuaded to sit still. Her crocodile with its basket of blue eggs, Meagan poking fun because it wasn’t an Easter bunny. How angry she’d been when Joe pinned the picture to the wall. The house wasn’t ours, we could be moved on any time she pleased. ‘Take that rubbish down!’ Rosie’s crocodile with its teeth studded by stars and flowers because that’s what Rosie loved to draw, that’s who she was. Meagan tore it from the wall, screwing it into a ball for the bin. It was Joe who rescued it. He smoothed it flat and ironed it between sheets of greaseproof paper, testing the heat of the iron by holding it to his cheek. I’d never seen him take such care over any task. I think that’s when I fell in love with him, my terrible Joe.

  In Starling Villas – the whisper of his charcoal and the shush of his thumb, wiping me out. Her tongue tsking her teeth, taking me down.

  At lunchtime, Hungry’s had the radio playing, a cowboy ballad of love and grits. I sipped my hot chocolate, its sweetness kissing my lips. The cowboy was singing about the wind, how he was riding into it or against it. He made it sound like sex, a tussle with a dusty lover. I wanted Joe to come through the double doors, swinging them wide like saloon doors, his thumbs through the belt loops of his fraying Levi’s, a duck feather in his fringe, framed by sunset. Every head would turn his way. Oblivious, he’d stand with his weight on his left hip, smoky eyes surveying the scene. Even Robin would look up from hi
s books and stare. Lovely Joe, with everyone looking, lusting. And he’d walk through it all to my side. To us.

  I set my empty glass aside and reached for the phone I’d found in the kitchen drawer in Starling Villas.

  ‘Dear Joe,’ I texted. ‘I thought I could do this without you, but I can’t. I need you and you owe me. I know you haven’t forgotten. How can anyone forget a thing like that?’ The words writhed on the screen. What choice had Carolyn left me? When I put up my hair, she laughed at my lovely neck. She hadn’t laughed at Joe’s, that night in the club. I could be free of her but I needed his help. If he’d kept his phone, if he hadn’t lost it or sold it for drugs. ‘Please, Joe. It’ll be easy, I promise.’

  I was only asking him for what he’d already done, that night he went home with her from the club. Carolyn would get a second helping of what she’d wanted that night, and then perhaps she’d leave me alone. I couldn’t see further than that – to what I wanted, or Robin might want. First I had to clear Carolyn out of my way. Joe could do it, easily. A simple solution, if love or sex was ever simple, if desire made any kind of sense.

  Back in the Villas, pollen scabbed the marble of the table and tiles. I fetched a damp cloth and knelt, the hard press of the floor finding old bruises on my knees. The afternoon sun poked shadows in the way of my work; I had to keep shifting to see the specks of pollen. When I stood, everything rose around me, rocking, so that I had to rest my head on the table until the dizziness passed. Strange, how quickly marble steals your heat for its own.

  Robin was alone in the library. She’d gone again, for now. I set his tray down quietly to remind him of the difference I made, the difference I was. As I laid the spoon in the saucer, he raised his eyes. I’d seen into his wife’s eyes this way when she was posing me for their pictures. His bedroom would need tidying, charcoal dust to be swept up, the mirror polished free of my shadow. Had she taken their artwork with her or would I find it in the room, left out for me to see? His drawing, and her painting. Would I recognize myself?