Fragile

by Sarah Hilary

  Lying there, it was all so clear to me. As if the fall had shaken something free in my head.

  My mother, all those miles away and years ago, giving me up because she was to be married and there would be a new family. I was surplus to requirement, but that was okay. Better to be given up than kept by someone who couldn’t love you. My father, long gone, uninterested or unknowing. The other one with the pram, his new baby tucked inside. It didn’t matter. Better to live like this, with Joe, loved and needed. Rosie’s fingers would hurt when she poked the plaster, but I’d let her do it. A black eye was the worst of my worries. I’d steal make-up to cover it or Joe would steal it for me, because he was good at that. I’d have to keep him away from Meagan until the mark faded because he could dance and dodge and shoplift, but he couldn’t stand still when her eyes were on him, too quick to do whatever she asked. Her hand between his shoulders, pushing him at the door – ‘That witch from Social Services needs charming’ – and he let her, always he let her. He was trained to take orders, but it wasn’t just that. Lying on the slate with my right eye swelling shut, I saw how it was with Joe and Meagan. He needed someone who showed him no kindness. One person who wasn’t dazzled by his beauty, someone to bear witness without weakness to the actual fact of him. The rest of the world stopped looking when they saw his smile, as if he was nothing more than a mouth and a pair of eyes you could drown in. He was sick of people looking and not seeing.

  The gulls came closer, tightening their circle above us, wings slicing the blue of the sky. In his last foster home, he’d told me, the woman fed him cream cakes, telling everyone those were his favourites when actually they made him ill. He hated cream cakes. She made up this story about the kind of boy he was, wetting her hankie to wipe cream from his chin. He was sick of always being the favourite, it set his teeth on edge, as he wasn’t Joe at all. Meagan never fed him cream cakes, never gave an inch. She was like the stone under this mountain, unmoving.

  ‘Nell . . .’

  ‘I’m here, I’m okay.’

  I loved Joe. Fiercely, proudly, selfishly. Meagan couldn’t touch us, no matter how much she wanted to work her fingers between us, pull us apart. We were too tight. I’d stand between her cruelty and his need for it, and I’d keep us safe. Joe and Rosie and me. This blood would need a lot of lies. The blood and the plaster, my dizziness. I began inventing lies, as I lay there. Sunstroke and my period – the raging weakness that engulfed me once a month. It wasn’t Joe’s fault I’d fallen. I’d climbed too fast, so sure of myself.

  Two gulls spun close, their wings curving like a mouth. For a second, Meagan’s face leered down at me: There’s something up with him. Something missing.

  ‘Nell . . .’

  ‘I’m okay.’

  ‘You’re crying.’ The slither of slate under Joe’s knees.

  ‘It hurts.’ My voice sounded faraway, further than the birds sweeping at the sky.

  ‘I’m here. I won’t leave you.’

  ‘I know.’

  No ambulance, no stitches. Just a scar, and this sickness lodged in my throat, alongside the lies we’d invent for Meagan. ‘I know.’

  24

  ‘What happened yesterday?’

  It wasn’t yet 7 a.m. but Robin was waiting in the kitchen, sitting where yesterday Joe had sat, his hands folded on the table. ‘My wife says you had relatives visiting.’

  He used the word wife like a whip, punishing me.

  ‘Shall I make breakfast?’ I reached for the apron, tying it around my waist. ‘Or coffee, at least.’

  The table bore three rings from yesterday’s teacups. Petroleum jelly would get rid of the marks, a trick Meagan had taught me. Where was she this morning, and where was Joe? I needed to speak with him, alone. I needed to know how much danger we were in.

  ‘You gave out my address, to your aunt.’ Robin turned in his chair to watch as I filled the kettle at the sink. ‘Did you ask her to come?’

  With my back turned, it was easier to hear the emotion in his voice. His anger wasn’t the same as that time in the bedroom with the silver gown. This was less predictable, a real threat. I reached for the press, spooning in enough grounds for two servings. ‘I don’t have an aunt.’

  ‘Then I don’t understand.’ He was silent for a second. ‘Was my wife mistaken?’

  ‘She was misinformed.’ I lit the stove and faced him, the kettle heating at my back. ‘Meagan Flack said she was my aunt so that Mrs Wilder would let her in the house.’

  My turn to use the whip: Mrs Wilder made him wince. I was thinking of Meagan, hidden outside Starling Villas, waiting until I left the house before she knocked on the door. Wanting to take me by surprise on my return. Had I answered the door to her, I’d never have let her in the house, with or without Joe in tow.

  ‘And your cousin. Joe, is it?’ He rested an elbow on the table, his wrist hanging, fingers loose. I saw the effort it cost him not to make a fist. ‘Was that also misinformation?’

  ‘We’re not related but we grew up together, in a foster home.’ I held his gaze. ‘Meagan Flack’s foster home. That’s where I learnt to cook and clean, and to do without.’

  His eyes slid from mine, moving around the kitchen. He hadn’t expected an argument, thinking to find me contrite, full of explanations and apologies. His quiet anger scared me, I could see its smoke rising behind his eyes. Smoke killed more people than fire, wasn’t that what they said?

  ‘If you’re happy with my housekeeping, you have Meagan to thank. She left it all for me to do, from the age of eight. I had to stand on a stool for the cooking and washing up. She left me to look after the other children too, although that doesn’t interest you. You haven’t any need of those skills.’

  He looked at me then, his stare darkening. ‘Why are you so angry?’

  ‘I’m not angry,’ I thrust back. ‘You’re angry.’

  The kettle screeched and I turned away, glad of the excuse to hide my burning face. How Carolyn would have loved this scene. How she’d have laughed at its squalid drama, its domesticity. I switched off the stove and was about to pick up the kettle when he reached around my shoulder to take it from me. ‘Sit down.’ He spoke quietly, but his voice was inflexible.

  ‘I should make coffee.’ My voice shook. ‘I can do that.’

  ‘So can I. Sit down.’

  There it was then – he could make his own coffee, and no doubt his own meals. He could clean and cook and do without. My self-righteous speech throbbed in my throat. I wasn’t needed here, not really. I sat at the table, folding my hands out of sight, watching as he worked the coffee press. He was in his shirtsleeves, the muscles in his shoulders moving as blue shadows, the nape of his neck narrowing as he bent over the coffee press. I felt the heat of tears in my eyes, like grief.

  Rosie, I thought. Little, little Rosie.

  It was so cold the night she disappeared, the night I stayed, looking for her. A shiver of stars crept across the lake but it was too dark to separate sky from mountains, or mountains from slag heaps. Waiting for the first breath of dawn to stir in the darkness like an animal waking. The lake breathing at my feet, as if it too were sleeping and might wake. All night I stayed, my eyes open on the water. When the first clouds covered the stars, the lake turned grey. So grey I could’ve reached out and twitched it away, caught it in my fingers and pulled and pulled until it was all gone except what lay underneath the surface, also curled, as if asleep.

  I’d lost everything. Not only at the lake two summers ago but here and now, in Starling Villas. Everything I’d worked so hard to make, this small happiness, the frail living I’d scratched for myself under his roof. All lost.

  ‘Drink this.’ Robin set the coffee in front of me.

  I drew my hands from my lap but didn’t touch the cup. I didn’t deserve its small heat, the pleasure of sipping to settle the queasiness in my stomach. Hard labour was what I deserved, a mattress that drilled its springs into my spine, an attic black with damp.

  He se
t a second cup of coffee down on the table and sat beside me. ‘Nell . . .’

  ‘No.’ I was afraid of sobbing or shouting, saw myself shoving at the table, spilling coffee and smashing cups. ‘No.’

  ‘No, that’s not your name?’ He took up his cup and drank a mouthful. ‘Or no, you don’t want to drink your coffee?’

  ‘Don’t be nice to me. It was better before.’

  ‘I wasn’t nice to you’ – another mouthful – ‘before?’

  ‘You weren’t anything. As if I were invisible.’

  He frowned. ‘And that was better?’

  I nodded, setting my teeth. I was panicking, that was all. Joe and Meagan had made me jumpy and now Robin’s sympathy, his curiosity, was making me panic. ‘I’m all right. I am.’

  He held his cup between his fingers. I told myself his anger was still circling, waiting for me to make a move.

  ‘It upset me, seeing them here. I didn’t ask them to come. Joe, perhaps. But not her, never her.’

  ‘Meagan – Flack?’ He tested the name, disliking it.

  ‘She’s not a good person. I didn’t want her knowing where I was.’

  ‘Why?’ He asked the question with the bluntness of a scholar in need of facts.

  ‘She does harm.’ I curled my hand around my cup, drawing his gaze from my face. ‘A child disappeared from her foster home. Rosie Bond. She was only six, but Meagan let her go out alone. I couldn’t watch her the way I wanted to, because I had so much else to do.’

  ‘Cleaning and cooking.’ He frowned. ‘Caring for the younger children.’

  ‘It was too much. Even though I was fifteen by then, it was too much for one person.’

  ‘Joe didn’t help?’ He drank his coffee, as if Joe’s name had left a bad taste in his mouth.

  I told myself to take care. Robin wasn’t judging Joe. He was judging me, the veracity of my answers. If I made a mistake, he’d decide the whole story – everything I’d ever said to him – was a lie. I’d never had to tell the truth so carefully before, to someone who listened so completely.

  ‘He tried to help.’ It sounded feeble, as if Joe were a halfwit.

  ‘Carolyn’s very taken with him.’ His eyes met mine, a glimmer of humour there. ‘With Joe.’

  The red bracelet, in his sheets. In his bed. Be careful, Nell.

  ‘I texted him.’ I brought the cup to my lips. ‘Which I wouldn’t have done had I known he was with her. So I’m sorry for that.’

  ‘It doesn’t matter.’ He moved his hand, dismissing my apology. ‘Only that it’s upset you.’

  ‘And Carolyn.’

  ‘Oh, she’s not upset. Rather the opposite.’ He smoothed his thumb at the table, the way he had in the library with Carolyn, as if there was a mark on the wood and he could wipe it away.

  How strange we are, I wanted to say. You and I sitting here, discussing your wife’s attraction to my friend who’s young enough to be her son. Whose bracelet was in your bed. A week ago, you hardly spoke a word to me, nor I to you. Now look at us. And why? Because of Carolyn, or Joe?

  ‘I’m sorry. I’ll ask him to go home. I don’t think they intend to stay in London long, in any case.’

  ‘Really?’ He wiped his thumb at the table. ‘That’s not the impression Carolyn gave. She said she offered them the spare room.’ I flinched, and he frowned. ‘I’m trying to understand the situation.’

  But he would never understand, how could he? I had been there, and I didn’t understand. Joe sitting at this table, at Meagan’s elbow. Her crooked smile and smoker’s teeth, his procuress. Taking his hand and smiling at Carolyn, seeing every year of her age under the expensive knives and acid, and seeing the vanity and loneliness and insecurity that spurred it. Everything she knew how to exploit. She’d made a living from manipulating weakness in others. I remembered her telling the Bonds just before Rosie’s fifth birthday, ‘She won’t want cake or presents but it’s a shame to see her in shabby clothes, such a little princess as she is,’ and they handed over cash instead of toys. Rosie got a cake because I baked it, but she never saw a penny of that cash.

  ‘Where are they staying in London?’ Robin was refilling his cup. ‘Do you know?’

  ‘Somewhere nearby, Meagan said. A small hotel.’

  ‘And they live in North Wales?’

  ‘It’s where the foster home was.’ I paused to sip at my coffee. ‘Joe and I moved away after what happened to Rosie.’

  ‘You said Rosie disappeared.’ He added milk to his cup. ‘When was this?’

  ‘Two years ago.’

  He looked up, surprised. ‘You were just a child yourself.’

  ‘I was fifteen, nearly sixteen.’

  ‘And Joe?’

  ‘He was sixteen.’

  ‘You were children.’ He frowned as he stirred his coffee. ‘You weren’t put into new homes?’

  I shook my head. ‘We ran away.’ Such a small sentence to describe our escape from Meagan, which had been desperate and painful, like the peeling of skin. ‘We had no choice.’

  Robin scratched at his eyebrow then stopped, self-consciously. I knew he wanted to ask about the scar above my right eye. I didn’t think he’d allow himself to ask such a personal question but, ‘You have a scar, here.’ He pointed to his eyebrow. ‘How did that happen?’ He thought it was Joe, I could tell. That Joe had pushed me around, like Meagan.

  ‘I was climbing. I loved climbing.’

  ‘This was when you were living at the foster home? Was it dangerous?’

  ‘The climbing? No. I was showing off.’

  I touched the scar, remembering Rosie’s fingers, her plaintive, ‘I want a scar!’ when she saw it. And Meagan’s fury, her warnings. She’d known Joe and I were up to no good and no good would come of us, ever. ‘You’re scarred for life,’ she’d hissed. ‘I hope you’re happy.’ I didn’t care about the scar but I hated her turning on Joe, ‘You treat this place like a bloody playground! You need to grow up!’

  Robin was watching me. ‘I may be mistaken.’ He turned his cup in his hands. ‘But were you homeless for a time, before you came here?’

  I imagined he might’ve been one of the men who walked past me, day after day, for six long weeks. Avoiding my eyes, stepping around my feet. It hurt to think that, putting me back on the defensive. ‘Is that Carolyn’s theory? Because I haven’t many clothes, and I was desperate enough to take this job?’

  ‘Did you need to be desperate to do that?’

  ‘Are you serious?’

  He studied me, unsure of his ground. ‘I know the wages aren’t great, but the room . . .’

  So he was one of those men. Even if he’d never walked past me, he’d walked past others just like me, begging on the street. Picking up his pace when he saw us, taking out his phone so he didn’t have to look at us. He hadn’t any idea, living here with his books and papers, what my life, our lives, had been. It hurt to realize it, more than Carolyn’s confession about their life together, more even than seeing Joe with Meagan yesterday.

  ‘You let her paint me.’ I set my cup down, resentful of the pain he’d put in my chest. ‘Why did you do that? It was humiliating, horrible.’

  ‘I thought you wanted the money.’ He was unblinking, but I could see his anger circling, closer to the surface now.

  ‘Like a whore, then. You think I’m a whore.’

  He straightened in the chair, voice stiffening. ‘I wouldn’t have you here if I thought that.’

  ‘Carolyn would. She thinks I’m a whore.’

  ‘Stop – saying that word.’

  ‘Because it makes you uncomfortable? You let her make me uncomfortable, without any good reason for it. You didn’t enjoy sketching me, so why do it? This is your home. You could’ve told her no, that it wasn’t right. You could have asked me what I thought, whether I wanted to do it.’

  ‘And you could have said no.’ He pressed the ball of his thumb to the table. ‘Why didn’t you?’

  Something else he didn’t understa
nd. Power. All the power in this house rested with him, and with her. He was waiting for an answer. Truth, or dare.

  ‘I was afraid of what you’d do if I didn’t.’

  ‘You’re not afraid of anything.’

  I laughed, incredulous. ‘I’m afraid all the time! Every day. Afraid of being homeless, having to go back on the streets. Of breaking your plates or killing your plants, or cracking your horrible mirror. In case you throw me out. I’m afraid of your wife, what she wants from me. She wants me gone, I know that much. She won’t leave me alone, she follows me round the house to insult and humiliate me. What does she want from me? What do you want?’

  ‘I wanted a personal assistant.’ His voice had iced over. ‘You talked me into taking you on as a housekeeper.’

  ‘So this isn’t a game you play. You and Carolyn.’

  He went very still, watching me.

  ‘That’s what she told me. Oh, and something else. She told me to sleep with you.’

  I wasn’t aware of raising my voice but the lamp took my words and flung them back at us. I swept an arm at the table as if I could sweep the words to the floor. Blood was raging in my cheeks. He studied me as if the colour in my face confirmed a theory he’d had about me from our first meeting. He was holding in a sigh, I could see its shape in his throat. ‘You think I’m lying.’

  ‘No.’ He moved two fingers, putting my whisper to one side. ‘But I did think you’d have the good sense not to pay attention to a word my ex-wife says.’

  ‘Because of course you employed me for my good sense.’

  ‘What else?’ He challenged me with a stare.

  ‘Someone with sense wouldn’t work for a pittance, cash in hand, off the record.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘I know nothing about you. We’re strangers, yet I’m living in here, cooking your meals—’

  ‘You’re a good cook.’

  ‘—cooking your meals, spending your money, sleeping under your roof.’

  ‘You’re very good with money.’ He wasn’t paying me a compliment, simply acknowledging a fact. ‘And I don’t use the rooms at the top of the house.’