Fragile

by Sarah Hilary

  ‘Make the change!’

  ‘What change?’ she wanted to shout. ‘We all just go back to what we know.’

  Look at Joe and that rich bitch. Nell with her buckets and saucepans. Each one of them heading straight back towards their old trouble. Starling Villas was no different to Lyle’s, not really. There was money in the house, though. She’d thought that would be enough. But seeing Nell had set the meanness back between her teeth, a red cloud of rage in her head. So she’d get some money, keep the wolves away for a while, but Joe would run through it fast enough and then what? Neither of them had Nell’s staying power, or her talent for starting over. She’d made a home for herself in Starling Villas and so what if she was making a mistake, if Dr Wilder turned out to be a toad when she kissed him? She’d find a way to make it work because that’s what she did, who she was. A born survivor, Little Nell. Nothing Meagan did could alter that, it was all just scrabbling at the slag.

  ‘It’s not too late, never too late!’

  She sucked smoke into her lungs, tapping ash from the window and watching it float to the street below. She was owed more than money, and not just by Joe and Nell. That rich bitch in her big house, her smug husband with his book of rules, what did they know about survival? Not a fraction of what Nell knew, or Meagan. They’d never had to fight for anything, any more than this pair below her with ash on their anoraks, shouting about Jesus, as if he’d ever helped anyone.

  ‘We help ourselves, sunshine.’ She drew smoke into her lungs and held it there until her eyes watered.

  Seeing London in all its grasping, ghoulish glory laid out like a feast she’d never have. Not even Nell could scratch a living for herself here without resorting to an apron and a stove. What chance did Meagan stand? The money wasn’t enough. She gripped the filter with her lips, tasting its bitterness. It wasn’t nearly enough.

  32

  Carolyn was in the garden room, smoking a cigarette. ‘Oh.’ Her nostrils thinned. ‘It’s you.’

  It was beyond her power to pull a face at me. Thanks to the attentions of her plastic surgeon, she was obliged to wear the same expression, day and night. In bed with Joe, she must have looked the same, vaguely surprised and supercilious. It was strange only because she seemed to think I too was unchanged, that she could continue looking down her nose at me, after last night.

  ‘I’m afraid you missed breakfast.’ I watered the nearest plant. ‘And lunch.’

  ‘I don’t want food.’ Her eyes were pink. She reeked of Joe’s drugs. ‘Bring me coffee.’ She pulled her silk dressing gown tighter, sucking on the cigarette. ‘A pot of coffee.’

  I shook my head. ‘I’m busy, helping Robin.’

  She let out a brittle laugh. ‘That’s what we’re calling it, is it? Help.’

  ‘We’re in the library.’ I watered another plant. ‘Moving books around. Perhaps you could go out for lunch? I’m sure Joe would like that.’

  She ground her cigarette into the saucer under the plant I’d watered. Her hand was shaking. I saw her bare feet on the tiles, and that the hem of her gown needed stitching, like her camisole. She folded her arms in an effort to stop the shaking. The sight of the bones in her wrists flooded me with shame; she was just a woman, older than me but no less breakable. ‘I’ll make coffee when I can.’

  She read the pity from my face, her mouth wrenching. The platinum streak in her hair looked cheap, tattered and tarnished. She’d tried to hide it behind her ear. For Carolyn, everything was a deal to be struck, that’s what I’d thought. Look how she’d bartered last night. But sleeping with Joe hadn’t fixed anything, only made it more obvious, more exposed.

  ‘I’ll make coffee. And toast, if you’d like.’

  She gave me a look of loathing before shaking her head. ‘You’d better get on with helping Robin, since it’s what you’re paid to do.’ She wanted her power back, to put me in my place.

  I pictured her in the Shunt Lounge, one of a hundred bodies pressed together in a bid to be lost under the thud of the music. Maybe she was there that night we seduced Intercity, and I’d failed to see her, too pleased with my own power. Trading the chill of Lyle’s for London’s heat, trying on Meagan’s mask only to find it fitted too snugly. I’d lost three months to that disguise, wanting to be as tough and manipulative as Meagan, who always got what she wanted, always came out on top. Look where it led me. To a life on the streets, Joe fading at my side, fear taking hold of him just as it had hold of Carolyn now, stiffening her shoulders against my pity. How frantically she wanted not to care, mistaking hardness for strength. But it’s the hearts that bend which can’t be broken. Had she never learnt that?

  ‘I’d help him,’ I told her. ‘Even if Robin wasn’t paying me.’

  ‘Then you’re a fool.’ She tilted her chin. ‘You know nothing about him. This schoolgirl crush . . . You think you’re the first to fall for his professor act? The cardigans and books, the sadness?’ Her eyes blinked, refocusing. ‘It’s an act. At least I own it, when I’m playing the game. Robin doesn’t even know he’s doing it, it’s been so long.’

  I heard her out, not taking my eyes from her face.

  ‘You’ve seen his rules,’ she insisted. ‘His rota. There’s nothing he won’t control.’

  ‘I don’t mind rules.’ I set the watering can down. ‘I’m comfortable with them. It’s what I know.’

  ‘You know nothing.’ She spat the words.

  What did I know? That I couldn’t be alone for fear of being consumed or out of control, the way I was when I seduced Intercity, in danger of becoming Meagan – mean, selfish, vicious. I knew that I needed a home, rules, stability. Starling Villas was a refuge from the streets, and it was hard labour, hard won. Did Carolyn imagine I’d stumbled in here blindly, mistaking captivity for sanctuary? If so, she knew nothing about me. We stared at one another. I was waiting for her to slap me, all those casual cruelties leading up to this moment. Outright war.

  ‘You think you’re so clever.’ She didn’t sneer. Her mouth moved, painfully. ‘I thought the same thing, years ago. I was too clever to fall for romance, that’s what I told myself. I didn’t care about good looks or roses or declarations of love. I wanted something serious. He’s so serious, isn’t he? And so sad.’ Her hands fidgeted for a fresh cigarette. ‘Except it’s not true.’ She turned the unlit cigarette between her fingers. ‘He’s a monster, like me.’ She looked haunted, out of focus, as if another woman stood to one side of her. Her ghost, watching everything she did. Watching me. ‘You’ve no idea what we’re capable of. What we’ve done.’

  ‘What have you done?’

  ‘This.’ She gestured at the distance between our bodies, hers and mine. ‘I tried to tell you. You’re not the first, or the last. He likes new people because they don’t know the truth about him, but you won’t stay new for long. You and me, and Joe . . . You think it’s normal, or healthy?’

  ‘We’re adults.’ I heard the echo of my voice, pious as a child’s.

  Carolyn didn’t laugh at me. ‘It’s different for them. Robin, and Joe. They can survive it. Men always can, they just keep coming back for more. But not me, and not you. Not for much longer. You’re beautiful because you’re young, haven’t you realized that yet? It won’t last. Not for us.’

  ‘You make their lives sound easy.’ Robin’s dark head bent over his books, the pale of Joe’s wrists where the summer’s tan was fading. ‘I don’t believe that’s true.’

  ‘He’s got his books. His plants.’ She thrust a hand at the garden room. ‘It doesn’t matter how grey he gets, or how stooped. He’ll always have girls like you thinking he’s special. Wanting to help him, believing you can make him happy. As if happy is all he wants.’

  My heart was pinched by cold. ‘What about Joe?’

  ‘Joe’s an addict.’ She moved her fingers, dismissing him. ‘Joe’s nothing.’

  ‘He’s my friend.’

  ‘Don’t you mean your cousin?’ Challenging me with her stare.


  ‘You knew that wasn’t true, yesterday. You knew and you didn’t care.’

  ‘Nobody cares in this house. Nothing’s real, that’s the whole point. It’s why we come here, it’s why you came.’ Fretting the cigarette. ‘To hide or to punish yourself, whatever it is you’re doing.’

  She understood that much, then. All about us, the plants breathed, green and black.

  ‘What’s that thing they say about old houses?’ Her eyes moved across my face as if it were a page she was reading from: ‘In an old house, you learn to live with the dead. That’s what you’re doing, isn’t it, learning to live with the dead.’ She shut her eyes. ‘Joe told me, about Rosie.’

  My throat filled with the rotten taste of spores, unbreathable. I reached for the watering can, holding it to my chest as if it might shield me from what she said next.

  ‘I suppose that’s when you learnt to be a carer, being a mother to all those children.’ She lit the cigarette at last, draughting smoke into a bolt of light where it shimmered, and died. ‘Good little girl. Mummy. Servant.’ She sucked on the cigarette, running her stare over me again. ‘Seducer . . . Hag. Oh, not you, or not yet. That appalling old witch who thinks she owns Joe. God!’ Her shoulders shook with a laugh ‘Look at us, we’re a casting call for the Ages of Women.’

  I found my voice. ‘Whatever he told you about Rosie, we loved her. We did.’

  The idea of her knowing anything at all made me sick. What was wrong with Joe, leaking our secrets to our enemies, not caring who knew her name, or the rest of it?

  But Carolyn had lost interest, smoking with her arms folded and her mouth arched, its old smile restored. She had what she’d wanted, the balance of power restored in her favour. ‘You’d better run along. Books, in the library. He doesn’t like to be kept waiting.’

  I climbed the stairs to my attic, wiping my fingers as if I could be free of her words.

  A monster, she’d said. Robin was a monster, I had no idea what he’d done. Shutting the door, I stood with my weight against it, breathing in the attic’s brown varnish and black chimneys.

  Living with the dead. Her words scratched in my mouth, lodging between my teeth.

  What was I doing, calling this place home? The rug worn by countless feet, brass camels polished by fingers long since crooked and knotted with age. I’d papered the walls with programmes to plays no one had seen in a century, all the actors gone to the grave, forgotten. Everything in the attic belonged in the past, nothing was mine. Nothing.

  He’s a monster . . . You have no idea.

  I crossed the room and knelt, searching for the pink silk keychain. My hands trembled as I lifted it from its hiding place. The twin faces smiled at me, gap-toothed and pretty. I held the frame in my hand, making myself look at their faces. I’d let myself forget about them, tied up in my new happiness, but they’d been here all this time, smiling patiently, waiting for me to wake up.

  I didn’t return to the library where Robin was waiting. Instead, I took my coat from the hook by the kitchen door and left the house, climbing the steps to street level.

  Traffic flowed in front of me, an unbroken tide of cars. In Hungry’s, I could see Gilbert moving between the tables, the weight of him so solid through the clouded windows. I wanted a gap in the traffic to open and let me through so I could sit in the steamy air and drink a hot sweet cup of tea.

  Turning east, I walked away from Starling Villas.

  After taking a dozen steps, I stopped and turned, trying to see the house. It had vanished, lost between the restaurant and office block. ‘In this house,’ she’d said, ‘nothing’s real.’

  I was on the lookout for Meagan, knowing she was camped nearby, expecting the stink of her cigarettes or the sickly damp of her dress. Joe would have his instructions, I was sure of that. He might be lying in Carolyn’s bed for the day but he’d have to report to Meagan before she paid for another night at the cheap hotel she’d found. She’d want to know what success he was having, and how much of it was headed her way. I thought of Carolyn’s eyes on my face, the flat way she’d delivered her warning of the fate of everyone in Starling Villas.

  The windows of the cheese shop buzzed with light. Inside, Bradley was handing change to an elderly gentleman in a regimental tie. He did a little dance with me, each stepping out of the other’s way until he smiled and shook his head. ‘Save the next one for me!’

  Bradley shed the plastic gloves he’d worn to serve the man. ‘Good morning, Nell.’

  ‘Good morning.’

  ‘It’s not your usual day for shopping.’

  ‘I’m not shopping.’

  He raised his eyebrows and began tidying the display beside the till, little jars of honey and quince, muslin bags of bay leaves and spices. ‘Then how may I help?’

  ‘Did you know the woman who worked for Dr Wilder? His last housekeeper, Mrs Mistry.’

  ‘She shopped in here, so yes. I imagine I must’ve met her a few times.’

  ‘She had two little girls, twins.’

  ‘Did she?’ He shook his head. ‘I never saw her with them.’

  ‘These were her house keys.’ I held up the pink keychain. ‘She left them behind when she went.’

  Bradley stacked the jars of honey into a pyramid. There was a new smell in the shop, of musk and damp spicy heat. He didn’t speak.

  I was waiting for one of the jars to fall, holding my breath for the smash of it, a sticky mess at my feet. ‘You said, “I wasn’t aware she had left.” And you asked me if I was taking care in the house. Why did you ask me that?’

  ‘I was being neighbourly, I expect.’ He glanced past my shoulder as if a customer had entered the shop, but it was just the two of us and the beaming pyramid of honey.

  ‘You weren’t warning me? Because that’s how it sounded. And then this.’ I jostled the keychain. ‘Turning up at the house weeks after she went. Why didn’t she return for it? Where did she go? Did he fire her, does he fire all his housekeepers?’

  ‘I’m afraid I wouldn’t know.’ Bradley stopped what he was doing, as if by keeping calm himself he could persuade me to do the same. ‘I wonder, was there anything you wanted to buy? We have the Boulette d’Avesnes, just in.’ He indicated a cluster of fiery cones, new to the cold cabinet. ‘An acquired taste but Dr Wilder is a fan, I believe.’

  I shook my head, but Bradley continued: ‘Very young, quite delicious. With bread and white beer is best. A simple meal, but complex. It stays with you.’

  I struggled to decode his meaning, suspecting a message just for me – Very young, simple, stays with you – but he was smiling at the cheese, lost in admiration for his work here. The bond between us that first day, as he’d filled the box with white-shelled eggs – I’d imagined it. There was never any connection. No secret messages or special meaning, just the chasms of class and age and occupation. He was only ever being polite, and a good salesman. Why would he know anything of what went on inside Starling Villas?

  ‘Thank you.’ I shook my head against the sudden sting of tears. ‘I’ll let Dr Wilder know.’

  Joe was sitting on the stone steps of Starling Villas that led down to the kitchen door. In last night’s T-shirt and jeans, with goosebumps on his arms. His hair was flat on one side of his head, pillow creases in his cheek. He was smoking a joint.

  ‘I won’t go back to her,’ he said.

  ‘Carolyn?’

  ‘Meagan.’ He looked down at his bare feet. ‘I can’t go back with her.’

  I sat beside him on the step. Below us, the stone well was spattered with pigeon droppings and cigarette butts. The kitchen looked different from this side of the window, small and drab and ugly. Joe handed me the joint and I took it, tasting him on the rollup. Last night’s supper, and sex.

  ‘What does Carolyn say?’ I asked.

  ‘She wants me to stay,’ Joe said. He moved his feet on the step, shivering.

  I passed back the joint, watching as he took another drag. I didn’t tell him that I didn’t
believe him, or ask why he’d told Carolyn about Rosie, or what he thought was going to happen here in Starling Villas. He was too sad. And so distinctly separate from the boy I’d known, as if a second Joe sat between us, a ghost-Joe like the ghost-Carolyn in the garden room.

  ‘She wants me to stay.’ He leaned into me, shutting his eyes. ‘We’re going on holiday to Greece or Italy, somewhere hot. She likes the sun as much as I do.’

  I looked through the window to where the kitchen waited. Remembering the story I’d told to myself, of how Robin would tire of my home invasion.

  I’d decided I needed to harden my heart against Robin, but it seemed Joe wanted to soften his own heart to Carolyn. Stories were how we survived, whether or not those stories were true. I shut my eyes and let Joe tell me his story about Carolyn.

  ‘She hates Meagan, says I shouldn’t let her blackmail me. I should call her bluff. Meagan’s bluffing, that’s what Carolyn says. She won’t go to the police and even if she does, we were kids, under her care. She’s to blame for what happened, because she was never there for us. She didn’t do her job, leaving it all to us when we were just kids and what did we know?’

  He rattled through the words, trying them for size against the depth of the trouble he was in. We were in. ‘Meagan gave me drugs too, or cash for them. Sleeping pills—’

  ‘Where is she?’ I interrupted, shivering. ‘Meagan.’

  ‘Not far. Reina Sofia, it’s a guesthouse, greasy. Horrible.’ He smoked until the paper was ashes, flicking it away with his fingers. ‘I can’t go back, Nell. I won’t. She wants – she hates you, so much.’ He rubbed his fingers on his jeans. ‘Carolyn wants me to stay.’

  ‘Carolyn doesn’t live here.’

  ‘I don’t mean here.’ He kicked a heel at the step. ‘We’re going away. You should, too. Before you ruin it, the way you always do.’ He shot me a look. ‘I’m serious, you should go. Robin’s not like Brian. Carolyn told me about his rules . . . It’s not safe here.’