Fragile

by Sarah Hilary

  ‘You think it’s normal?’ I demanded. ‘What we’re doing? This . . . coexisting.’

  ‘I think it’s mutually beneficial.’ He reached to refill my cup. The press only held enough for two but he’d been careful when he refilled his own cup; half-measures for the pair of us. ‘Or it was.’

  ‘That’s it, then.’ My throat hollowed. ‘You’re firing me. Because Carolyn slept with Joe.’

  ‘I can’t fire you.’ His calmness was infuriating, like trying to dig my fingers into marble. ‘We don’t have a contract of employment.’ He added the last of the milk to my cup.

  ‘Then you’re threatening me. “Or it was.” What does that mean?’

  ‘It means Carolyn will not stay away.’ He moved the jug, clearing space on the table between us. ‘And since you find that impossible, I expect you’ll have to leave.’ He raised his eyes at the last second, letting me see the sadness there.

  I didn’t trust it, or him. ‘Carolyn likes to play games . . . And you don’t? This whole house is a game. I’m a game, to you. Although I expect you’d call it an experiment.’

  He scratched at the side of his head, the movement so abrupt I tensed in my chair, measuring the distance to the back door, trying to remember if I’d locked it after putting out the rubbish.

  ‘Nell,’ he said sadly.

  ‘You didn’t want to know my first name, it made you uncomfortable. Miss Ballard. You didn’t want any evidence I was in the house, only for me to be invisible. And I wanted the same.’

  ‘You’re not invisible.’

  ‘Not to her,’ I agreed.

  ‘Not to anyone. Never to me.’

  ‘I don’t understand what you’re saying. What are you saying?’

  ‘I’m saying I’m ashamed of my wife and how she acts.’ He bent his head, curling a hand to the nape of his neck. ‘And of myself.’ I saw his knuckles whiten. ‘I can’t judge her, I’m not fit for that. We were married and now we’re not, but I chose her. We chose one another. Do you understand what I am telling you?’

  Did I? I saw Joe at the side of the lake, his wrists wet with its darkness. Hadn’t I chosen him? Over Rosie, over everything? Hadn’t that been the start of this whole mess?

  ‘You don’t have to let Carolyn in here. You could change the locks. There’s a locksmith’s right around the corner.’ He was silent. ‘It will be worse,’ I warned. ‘Now Joe’s back.’

  ‘Yes,’ he agreed.

  It was why he was here in the kitchen, drinking coffee. Because Carolyn had told him about Meagan and Joe. Because he knew what Carolyn was like, when boys like Joe were around. Things would get worse before they got better.

  ‘Do you want me to leave?’

  ‘You have nowhere to go.’

  ‘That’s true, but it’s not your problem.’

  ‘It is.’ He looked at me then, the way no one ever had before. He looked into my eyes and said, ‘It is my problem.’

  25

  Rosie was with us, in Starling Villas. I dreamt of her skin, the apricot fuzz of her cheeks. Each freckle on her arm was miraculous to me. She made being alive look so easy.

  In Lyle’s, I would study her as she slept, to try and learn the trick. Her chest sinking and lifting, wrinkles running across her nose and eyelids. Once or twice, her eyes would open and I’d smile down at her, but she was sleeping and didn’t see. Joe slept the same way, deeply, easily. I’d hold my hand a hair’s breadth above his chest to catch the rhythm of it. Heat came off him, harder than Rosie’s, a real fever to it. When I looked back on those nights, it seemed I never slept, always awake and watching. That couldn’t be true. There must’ve been times when I slept and they watched me but I couldn’t catch hold of that memory, only of lying with my body tense between them, studying each small quiver of Rosie’s face, feeling the fever of Joe at my back.

  Now, Robin slept with his sketch of me at his side. What were his dreams? Was Carolyn there, was he dreaming about his once-happy life with her? Bare feet on blades of grass, idling by an infinity pool, wine chilling in a bucket where condensation crawled like fat white lice. What did his naked feet look like? There wasn’t an inch of Joe I didn’t know, not even his dreams. Except now I wondered if that were ever true, if he’d ever belonged to me or if he was Meagan’s from the start. It didn’t matter, now. Not now.

  ‘It is my problem,’ Robin had said, looking at me the way no one ever had. ‘It is.’

  I knew why Joe was here. Summer was dying, winter on its way. At Lyle’s, Meagan let him hibernate during the cold months. Rosie would burrow under his blankets, giggling. He let her, because she was so warm, but she didn’t like him to sleep, prising his eyes open with her fingers, hoping to play. When the snow came, she didn’t understand why he wouldn’t race in it with the rest of us. She took his scarf and tied it around the snowman we built, ‘This’s Joe,’ hugging the snowman until its head rolled free. After Rosie was gone, I sought out the cold. But Joe wasn’t like me, and now I was different too. Because of Robin. I wasn’t afraid of the winter the way Joe was, but nor did I believe any longer that I deserved to be out in the cold, away from any comfort or love. Because of Robin. Joe wanted a safe place to spend the winter. He’d do anything at all to find one. How could I forget a thing like that?

  In Hungry’s, Meagan was seated at my table in the window, alone. She’d summoned me with a text sent from Joe’s phone, an unequivocal threat of what would happen if I didn’t jump to her command, the way I once did at Lyle’s. In the diner, she wore yesterday’s shabby coat over a faded dress, her hair grizzled grey around her face. The white hairs we’d plucked had grown back, sticking up from her scalp like wires. Her eyes were hooded, their lids full of lines like the ancient awning folded above Hungry’s window, a packet of fags at her elbow and a disposable lighter between her fingers. ‘You’ve fallen on your feet,’ she said.

  ‘Where’s Joe?’

  ‘Sleeping. You know how he loves his bed.’ She grinned, her teeth long and rotten. She was the reason I never took up smoking, even when I was on the streets and it would’ve been an easy way to keep warm. She’d chosen this table, my table, so she could watch the house. At her elbow an empty cup sat, stained like her teeth.

  ‘I’ll get you another tea, shall I?’

  ‘All right, Lady Bountiful.’ She relaxed, letting go of the stress that was squaring her shoulders.

  I walked away from her, to the counter where Gilbert was polishing glasses with a tea towel.

  ‘Coffee, please. And a cup of strong tea.’ Strong enough to dye what was left of her teeth, that’s how she took her tea. Strong enough to make the spoon stand up.

  With my back to her, I replayed the details in my head. The shabby coat, her tension then her relief. ‘Lady Bountiful’, but she hadn’t been sure of my role across the road, not until I’d offered to buy her a second cup of tea. She was hoping for a share of my good fortune, but she knew nothing about my life in Starling Villas. All she had was guesswork and a grudge.

  I counted out the cash to pay for the drinks.

  ‘I’ll bring them over,’ Gilbert said. ‘The coffee, and the tea.’

  ‘Thank you.’ We smiled at one another.

  With a twinge of pleasure, I remembered the lemon meringue pie, a gift for his regulars. Hungry’s was my place. Meagan might be sitting at the table in the window but it was my table, just as Starling Villas was my home. She was the stranger here. Let her be the one on her guard.

  I walked back to her, holding my purse in my hand, setting it down on the table as I pulled out a chair. She didn’t look directly at the purse but her head turned towards it, the way a gull’s turns to the sound of chip papers. She was stony broke, as I’d been before I got my job with Robin. Worse, since Meagan undoubtedly had debts. She’d never been good with money. At Lyle’s that had been one of my areas of expertise, making ends meet, scrimping and saving and budgeting for rare treats like my fruit cake. She’d always loved my fruit cake.

 
; I scooped my purse into my pocket, saying brightly, ‘So Joe’s sleeping? Did you find somewhere nice to stay?’

  ‘Not nice, but it’ll do.’ Her eyes pecked at my face, wondering at my good mood. ‘For now.’

  Gilbert brought the drinks, setting the coffee at my elbow and the tea at hers. He and I shared another smile. I saw Meagan’s mouth tighten around the shape of her teeth as if a sour taste had flooded her mouth. ‘How long are you in London?’ I asked.

  ‘Depends. Not long, I expect.’

  ‘Joe won’t want to stay once the weather changes.’ I stirred my coffee, froth lacing the handle of my spoon. ‘You know how he hates the cold.’

  ‘Everyone hates the cold.’

  ‘Do they?’ I lifted the spoon from my cup. ‘I don’t.’ Licked the spoon clean. ‘I like it.’

  ‘You didn’t like it on the streets.’ Her voice was sharp, stabbing at me. ‘Joe said.’

  She smelt of mildew, like Lyle’s.

  ‘Joe hated the cold.’ I settled the spoon in my saucer, picking up the cup. ‘I didn’t mind.’

  I punctuated the sentence with one of Carolyn’s polished full stops, letting Meagan know that I’d learnt new tricks since the ones she’d drummed into me all those years ago.

  ‘We’re both pleased for you, how you’ve fallen on your feet. It’s a long way from Lyle’s is London.’ Her lips creased at the rim of the cup. ‘A long way from that pool of yours.’ She pressed her lips together. ‘You always wanted a place to call home, didn’t you? Somewhere you were needed. Plenty of my kids were happy to be spongers, but not you. Not in your nature.’ Summing me up in a handful of words.

  I’d forgotten how good she was at that, reducing each of us to a nickname. Sunshine. Death Knell. Rosie, and Rosier. My mind skipped to the lake, dipping under its surface into the darkness. I let it go, to give myself time to think. She intended to blackmail me, I’d known that as soon as I saw her in Starling Villas. She hadn’t forgiven me for the stories I’d started, the rumours that ruined her. Least of all for stealing Joe from under her nose. And she imagined I was onto a good thing with the Wilders. She’d seen money in the house, never mind the ancient stove and cracked tiles. She knew how much a house was worth. One like Starling Villas, in a street like this, was worth millions. She’d smelt money as soon as she set foot inside, wanting her share.

  ‘It’s a long way from the lake,’ I agreed. ‘And a long time ago.’

  ‘It’s back in the papers.’ She’d reached the crux of it now, settling in the chair, sucking at her tea. ‘Some rich bitch from Surrey bought Lyle’s, thinks she can turn it into a holiday home. The shops are opening back up. Regeneration, they’re calling it.’

  I tried to imagine Lyle’s turned into a holiday home. Farrow and Ball’d to within an inch of its life. Fireplaces with their original tiles restored, silk flower arrangements in place of coals. Sash windows curtained in pale linen, Welsh blankets on the beds, sea-scented candles almost masking the smell of mildew. Almost.

  ‘Never thought I’d see the back of it,’ Meagan said.

  As if Lyle’s had belonged to her, and she’d been trying to sell it. Baking bread to entice viewers, changing the flowerbeds as seasons came and went. What would attract someone to a house like that? You could sense the kids as soon as you stepped through the door, their neglect and sorrow.

  ‘This’s a nice place.’ She nodded across my shoulder towards Starling Villas. ‘You’ve done well for yourself. Especially if he’s as handsome as her.’ Robin, she meant. ‘More money than sense if they’re employing live-in help; that’s a risk around here. A stranger in their home? You could be anyone.’ She chuckled. ‘I’m guessing they don’t know the half of it.’

  She’d intercepted my texts, I realized. She was the one who’d texted back, pretending to be Joe. He’d never have acted on his own. This ‘rescue’ was all Meagan. She didn’t know the Wilders were divorced, she thought the pair of them were living in Starling Villas, with me. I waited to see how much more she knew.

  Information was power, she had taught me that. I saw Robin bending over his books, boxes all about him. Carolyn had said I should take a look inside the boxes.

  ‘Of course, they’re strangers too.’ She showed her tombstone teeth. ‘It cuts both ways. That book of rules? Did you know what you were getting yourself into?’

  Robin’s rota. She’d read it while she was waiting for me to come home from the park. She’d seen his instructions so neatly typed, page after page of them, and drawn her own conclusions. The coffee was bittersweet, exactly how I liked it. I sipped it, not answering her question.

  ‘Whose rules, exactly?’ She tapped a thumb at the table. ‘Well, no need to tell me. I’ve seen enough women like her, so brittle you could snap her in two. She’s been broken, and she’s put herself back together again. From what Joe told me, that’s not a happy marriage. Not by a long shot.’ Measuring me with a stare. ‘He’ll do the same to you, girl. A man like that? From what Joe told me, you need to watch out for yourself.’

  I smiled, but didn’t speak.

  In response, her mouth made a sour shape.

  ‘What happened to your common sense? Left it on someone’s settee, did you? Joe’s told me all about the games you got up to. Sleeping around, you wrecking every good thing you found. That’s what you’re doing over the road, I expect. Punishing yourself. Letting him punish you.’ Her eyes slitted on my face. ‘Found yourself a gaoler, girlie?’

  Gilbert was watching from the counter, polishing the inside of a coffee cup. Meagan kept her voice pitched low. I was certain my face gave nothing away.

  ‘She’s back in the papers.’ Meagan reached for her lighter. She couldn’t smoke in here but she could play with the lighter, turning it in her fingers. ‘Little Rosie Bond.’

  She pushed her free hand into the pocket of her coat, pulling out a folded square of newsprint which she smoothed flat on the table. The light snagged on Rosie’s smile, that gap between her front teeth. I didn’t need to look at the photo of her face. Every day I lived with it, with her.

  ‘The other kids are selling their stories again.’ Meagan kept her thumb on the edge of the photo where Rosie’s pigtail brushed the tip of her shoulder. ‘Making money out of it.’

  I cradled my cup in my hands. ‘And you’d like to make some money too.’

  She narrowed her stare at my calmness. ‘There’re stories I could’ve told. Still could.’

  ‘Well, there you are then. Make some money.’

  Calling her bluff.

  We looked at one another. Meagan moved her thumb, sliding Rosie’s face out of the sunshine. I thought she was going to screw the press cutting in her fist but she folded it along its old creases, returning it to her pocket. ‘Bloody towels,’ she said then.

  I fixed a polite smile on my face, swallowing the urge I’d had to strike her when I thought she was about to crush the press cutting.

  ‘Joe tried to hide them in the airing cupboard. Soft lad should’ve chucked them. I’d hardly’ve missed a couple of old towels. It was you did most of the laundry in any case.’

  ‘Not just the laundry. I did most of everything.’

  ‘Little mum.’ Meagan twisted her mouth, mocking me. ‘That’s what she called you. “She’s my mum! I’m her favourite!” You were, too.’ She made Rosie’s voice sound whiny, spoilt.

  It was what she thought, I realized, even after all this time. That Rosie was just a brat. Noise, and a stomach to be filled. Nothing more than that, nothing special or precious.

  ‘Why did you do it?’ I asked.

  Her face guttered, mouth sinking into its wrinkles. ‘What?’

  ‘Why did you become a foster mum when you hate kids so much? Why did they let you?’

  She barked a laugh. ‘Have you seen the state of the world, of Wales? Girls your age having babies, everyone having babies, thinking it’ll fix things. Bad marriages or boredom, or benefits.’

  She leaned to drill her stare
to my face. ‘Rosie’s family wanted a doll, someone they could dress up and trot out to get attention. Piercing her ears, putting her in those dresses that scratched the skin off her, remember?’

  I remembered. Frosted lace petticoats under shiny pink satin, Rosie lost under the stiff puff of it all, scars on her little hips from the weight of the dresses, when she wasn’t even three years old.

  ‘I took her in.’ Meagan’s eyes flinted. ‘That was me. You might’ve coddled her and tucked her up in bed, read her those nonsense stories of yours. But it was me saved her from that pair.’

  ‘And look what happened.’

  ‘Oh no!’ She screwed her thumb at the table. ‘No, lady. Because he told me, didn’t he? Joe told me what happened that day at the pool. Took him two years, but he told me.’

  I finished my coffee with my heart thumping in my chest.

  Oh Joe. Joe. What did you do?

  ‘So there it is.’ Meagan nodded, satisfied. ‘Now you know. Why I’m here, and what I want. Justice for Rosie, and some bloody justice for me. I’ve spent years with the curtains twitching, being called all sorts in the street, stones coming through my windows. And for what? Your dirty secret to be safe.’ A grim smile lit her face. ‘Well, lady, it’s not safe now. It’s a long way from safe.’

  I’d have challenged her then, demanded to know what proof she had. Joe could have lied, or she could’ve coerced a false confession. I’d have called her bluff in spite of my throat closing up, the air suddenly too solid to breathe, but I didn’t get the chance.

  The double doors opened and there was Joe – two tiny reflections in Meagan’s eyes, like golden chips of glass. No feathers in his fringe, no cowboy stance. Just a swirl of dust from the street, scurrying leaves into the diner.

  Meagan nodded across my shoulder. ‘You’re late.’

  ‘Sorry.’ He slid into the seat next to her, hiding his hands in the pockets of his jeans.

  I said his name but he wouldn’t look at me, keeping his head down. He smelt sickly sweet. The pain in my chest deepened. I thought of the black foliage growing across the windows in Robin’s garden room. That’s how it felt – as if my lungs were infected, mapped by poisonous branches. If they X-rayed me, they’d see a map of all my rottenness.