Fragile

by Sarah Hilary

  ‘You don’t know that.’ Last night, his accusations about Robin had angered me but this morning I was calm. ‘And anyway, people change.’

  ‘Not you. I know you. You won’t let yourself be happy, or even just safe. It’s why I had to leave, why I went back to her.’

  ‘Meagan Flack, bastion of safety.’

  ‘At least she lets me forget.’ He pushed his hands between his knees, shivering like me. ‘You’ll never do that. You want us to be miserable for the rest of our lives.’

  I considered the truth of what he’d said. ‘Once, perhaps. But not now.’ I reached to touch his cold hand. ‘I wanted us to be together because of what we did, together. I thought . . . I couldn’t carry that alone, Joe.’

  ‘You can’t put it down, either. But you should. We were kids, we were just kids.’

  ‘We were older than her.’ It broke my heart to have to say it. ‘She trusted us.’

  He pulled free of my hand and bent forward, over his feet. ‘You trusted me, once.’

  ‘I loved you, Joe.’ I wanted to make him smile, and to remember. He didn’t seem able to remember, not the way I did. ‘You were my whole world.’

  ‘I wasn’t enough, though, was I?’ He scuffed his heel at the step. ‘Nothing will ever be enough for you, that’s what Meagan says.’

  ‘It doesn’t matter what she says, if you’re not going back to her.’

  He turned his head to look at me, propping his cheek on his knee. ‘Aren’t you afraid of what she’ll do? You were, yesterday.’

  ‘Yes.’ I couldn’t find the words to explain how my fear had changed. ‘You see, I wanted to stay here with Robin. I thought that might be possible, before Meagan came.’

  ‘You’re in love with him.’ Joe watched me. ‘Aren’t you?’

  ‘It doesn’t matter,’ I said. ‘Because I can’t stay now.’

  ‘Has he said that?’

  I shook my head. ‘But it’s true. I can’t stay because she’ll hurt us, and Robin doesn’t deserve that.’

  ‘Even if it’s true, what Carolyn says about him?’

  I thought of Robin’s hands, seeing the sika deer pressing their freckled faces there. ‘People change, Joe. I’m trying to.’

  He didn’t speak for a moment, then he said, ‘If I left with her, with Carolyn . . . If we went away, you could stay. If it was just the two of you.’

  ‘I don’t see how. Not with Meagan out there. She hates me, you’re right about that.’

  ‘Because we ran away. She’s lonely, Nell. She’s scared, too.’ He rubbed his cheek on his knee, looking for a second like the boy I’d been in love with. ‘But I can’t do it any longer. I can’t go back with her because she doesn’t trust me. She loves me, but she doesn’t trust me. There was this boy at her flat, she thought I was going to hurt him. That’s who she thinks I am. I can’t bear her thinking it, it makes me too sad.’ He blinked, straightening up. ‘I’m so sad, Nell.’

  ‘Don’t be.’ I reached for his hand again, but he was fidgeting in his pockets for another joint. ‘You know I’d help you if I could.’

  ‘We tried, didn’t we? Running away. Being together, just the two of us. It doesn’t work. You’re too hard, Nell. Too hard on yourself, and on us. Carolyn . . . She’s not like that.’

  I wanted to argue, but I could see he was serious and what did I know of the woman Carolyn was, with Joe? She’d shown me cruelty, but she saw me as a threat. Joe was different.

  ‘I can be with her,’ he said. ‘She trusts me. I’m just a boy, to her. A bit stupid but nothing worse. Not wicked. Not evil. And if she wasn’t here, you could be with Robin—’

  ‘No one thinks you’re evil, Joe.’

  He shook my words away, tilting his head to squint up at Starling Villas. ‘This place gives me the creeps, I’m glad we’re going.’ His eyes swam. ‘Before the cold comes.’

  Robin was in the library in his shirtsleeves, sorting books. He’d emptied two shelves, the ones immediately above the brick of banknotes. The boxes had been pushed to the edges of the room, out of the way of his work. I stood and watched from the doorway, the way his hips and wrists turned. There was such peace in watching him. Then I went to the sitting room and opened a drawer in the bureau, taking out a plain white postcard. Picking up a pen, I wrote out the advert neatly, all in capitals: ‘Live-in housekeeper for London home. Usual duties, own room.’ I added the contact details before pocketing the postcard, and sliding shut the bureau’s drawer.

  Climbing the stairs to my attic, I paused on the first floor, listening for the sound of Carolyn and Joe. The door to the guest bedroom was shut but I could hear someone moving in there. Carolyn, I assumed, getting dressed. She’d go out of the house, newly glossy, and she wouldn’t come back. That was my version of the story Joe had told. Carolyn would leave Starling Villas and never return. Meagan would come to the door, having no compunction about that, and she’d take Joe away with her to Wales. I’d be alone in the house with Robin.

  The thought squeezed the air from my lungs, bending me double, the feeling as fierce as grief. The postcard’s stiff corner stabbed at my hip, the banister rail creaking under my hands. I straightened, climbing one step at a time, up to his attic.

  I didn’t look at the rug or the walls or the mattress. Kneeling, I dragged my red rucksack from its hiding place and began filling it. There wasn’t much to pack. I kept my eyes on my hands, unblinking. The slam of the front door stopped me, the sound rolling like a stone inside the house.

  I sat back on my heels, listening.

  For some reason, I expected shouting, or screaming. Joe not wanting to go, Meagan furious with him for ruining her plans. Or else it was Carolyn slamming out of the house, walking away with Joe’s story in tatters behind her, leaving Robin in the library, staying wide of whatever mess the three of them had made. I hoped he was staying in the library.

  No further sound reached me. Of course, adults don’t shout and scream, not even Carolyn Wilder or Meagan Flack.

  I pulled the rucksack into my lap, allowing myself one last look at the beautiful rug and the Tiffany lamp with its tissue paper pane, my brightly varnished walls shining with the faces of long-dead stars, the little caravan of brass camels. The slam of the door had toppled one of the camels. I set her back on her feet, joining the others in the long march across the tapestry desert, their shadows on the wall as intricate as lace. Then I climbed upright and went to the window, checking that it was shut. I searched for my fat white pigeon, but she was nowhere to be seen. Just a gull on the next roof looking out at the Thames, its yellow beak drawn like a dagger towards the water.

  Voices from the dining room hissed at me as I passed. Whose, I couldn’t tell. Robin and Carolyn, fighting? The hissing had the high, dangerous sound of gas escaping.

  I left the house, walking with my head down, concentrating on the task in hand. My rucksack weighed next to nothing, casting a pink shadow on the walls and windows of the shops I passed.

  When I reached the newsagent’s, I took the postcard from my pocket. ‘May I put this in the window, please?’

  ‘Twenty pounds for the month.’ The newsagent didn’t read the postcard, ringing up the total on the cash register before I could query it or change my mind.

  Taking out my purse to pay, I discovered Robin’s keys and sixty pounds in ten-pound notes, half the week’s shopping allowance. I paid for the advert from my own money, watching the man pin the card in the window. I refused to think about the person who might respond, the next woman or girl at Starling Villas. I couldn’t be responsible for her fate, only for my own. It crossed my mind to keep the sixty pounds, feeling sure Robin wouldn’t begrudge it, but what if he thought me a thief? Bad enough I was running away without a word of thanks or explanation. I couldn’t bear the thought of his bad opinion, even at the cost of stepping back inside Starling Villas. I’d write a note and leave it in the kitchen, together with the money and the keys.

  ‘Dear Robin,’ I would write becau
se, ‘Dear Dr Wilder,’ was too formal after last night. ‘Dear Robin, I’m sorry I had to leave so suddenly. Here’s the rest of the week’s shopping money, and the keys. I’ve paid for a postcard in the newsagent’s so it shouldn’t be long before you have a new housekeeper. Oh, and the cheese shop has a young Boulette d’Avesnes, just in.’

  The note I composed was more ridiculous with each step I took. By the time I’d reached the Villas, I’d decided not to write anything, simply to leave the cash on the kitchen table, weighted down by the coffee press. He would find it and know that whatever else I was, I wasn’t a thief.

  Stopping at the railings, I looked down into the concrete well.

  Joe was gone, just a wisp of ash blowing back and forth, trapped by the narrow space. I was suddenly scared of being trapped the same way, and abandoned the kitchen steps for the front door.

  In the window of Hungry’s, Gilbert raised a hand, waving a greeting.

  I waved back, then turned and walked by the railings to the front door, climbing the steps where ten days ago I’d seen the girl with the pigtail come swaying down from the house.

  The silence inside was oppressive, a blue-black throbbing like the tricks our eyes play in total darkness. I closed the door and stood listening, trying to take the temperature of the rooms. The hissing had stopped, but the silence was somehow worse. The dining room—

  That’s where the danger was. A stillness, but not empty. Like the cupboards at Lyle’s where Rosie would hide for a game, folding herself away, trying to stay quiet. The room was packed with the sound of someone holding his or her breath. My heart beat hard in my chest. The door to the dining room seemed to swell, pressing further into the hall, seeping across the cracked tiles, towards my feet. I walked to meet it, the keys held tight, their metal teeth spiking my fist. ‘Robin?’

  Reaching the door, I stopped, as if the handle was hot and might brand my fingers.

  I breathed through my nose, keeping my mouth clamped shut, because I knew what was waiting behind the door. I’d known for days. Because I’d brought it here.

  No one thinks you’re evil, Joe.

  I shook my head, wanting to turn and run. Out of the house and the street, away. Away with us.

  Oh Joe, I thought. Oh Joe, what’ve you done?

  33

  Carolyn was in the corner of the dining room. Lying at a right angle between the floor and wall, broken. I couldn’t look at her, she was just a shape at the edge of my eye, a darkness. Her black dress, that silver streak of hair falling over her face. I opened my mouth, making no sound.

  They looked up at me, Robin and Joe, kneeling to either side of her like sentries.

  Robin’s hands were dark, stained. I hardly saw him.

  I couldn’t see Carolyn, or Robin.

  I could only see Joe kneeling with his hands buried in the shadows at her sides that spread like wetness up to his wrists.

  34

  I ran from the dining room. I don’t know why I didn’t run shouting into the street, or to Hungry’s where I could’ve asked Gilbert to call the police or an ambulance. Instead, I ran to the kitchen, a blind stumble down the stairs, to clutch at the table where his rota sat.

  The bronze lamp breathed its heat over me. I was shaking, I couldn’t stop. When I brought my hands in front of my face, they were blue with shock.

  ‘Nell?’ Footsteps on the stairs, coming down.

  I spun towards the window, putting the table between us, snatching my hands behind my back.

  ‘Nell.’ Robin with his face pale, palms dark. ‘It was an accident.’

  I shook my head at him. I could smell the lake, like coins.

  ‘Sit down. You’re in shock.’ He pointed at a chair. Then he looked at the hand he was pointing and his face changed, seeing blood in his palm and across his fingers. ‘She was raving . . .’ He moved, coming around the table towards me, his temple striking the lampshade lightly, making it swing.

  I shrank from him, shaking my head.

  ‘Sit down,’ he repeated, clipping the words.

  I did as I was told, because he scared me. The blood scared me. He moved past me to the sink, running the taps, rubbing at the stain in his palm. ‘Joe’s calling an ambulance.’

  ‘No.’

  My voice surprised me, sounding so much less afraid than I felt.

  Robin turned his head to look at me, scrubbing his hands as steam rose from the sink.

  ‘Joe won’t call anyone.’ The star-shaped scar throbbed at my temple. ‘He never does. He’ll leave.’

  We stared at one another. Robin flinched, snatching his hands from the hot water with a curse. He reached for a tea towel, wadding it under the tap until it was drenched. Then he twisted it, wringing out the worst of the water. ‘Wait here.’

  He crossed the kitchen, away from me. The lamp was still swinging and I realized he must’ve been moving quickly the whole time, it was only that everything had slowed down in my head.

  I heard his feet running up the stairs, across the tiles to the dining room. I sat and stared at the doorway, seeing him there, tall and dark, a trick of the light, retinal ghost.

  Had they fought? Robin and Carolyn? Had they fought over Joe? Her blood was on his hands but Joe was there too, standing sentry with Robin. Tilting my head to stop the threat of tears, I found myself staring at the ceiling, knowing the room above me was the dining room. I pictured Robin kneeling, pressing the wet cloth to her broken head. Joe rooted to the spot, blinking at what’d been done. Was he begging Robin not to call the police? The whole house shook with her death. I imagined a stain spreading across the ceiling, gathering wetness until it had no choice but to drip, thick and heavy, into my lap. I blinked, and the ceiling was clear.

  Robin didn’t return to the kitchen. I sat where he’d put me, obedient as a child, waiting for him to come back. An hour passed or longer, I couldn’t tell. I was afraid to get up, afraid to turn my head to track the sunlight through the window where traffic ran in chilly bars across the back of my neck.

  My postcard was in the newsagent’s window, pinned to the sheet of cork. Already a woman might have stopped to read it, searching for the address on her phone, turning her head when she discovered how close it was, wondering why she couldn’t see the house when the dot on her phone’s map showed it right there between the restaurant and the office block whose fluorescent lights flickered and burnt against the blank of its windows.

  You’re too late, I wanted to shout to her. We’re all too late.

  It had happened, the thing I’d feared for two years.

  Rosie, and Joe. Death. I’d brought it here. The kitchen’s shadows lapped at my feet.

  The house was sick with silence, and I was part of it. Living with the dead, just as she’d said we must learn to do in an old house, this house. Starling Villas.

  When at last I gathered the courage to go upstairs, I found the dining room empty.

  Carolyn was gone. Not just her corpse but her smell, that expensive opaline scratch in the air. No body, no fair hair cobwebbing the corner where she died. No Robin, and no Joe.

  There was only the russet smell of her blood. I knelt and put my hand to the place. The floor’s boards were knotted, indifferent to the chill of my palm. Where was she?

  I ran my finger along the seam of the boards, searching. Along the skirting and up the wall, but I couldn’t find her, anywhere. The wood was damp from the wet cloth Robin had used to wash it. I could smell old coins. He’d left the stained cloth on the floor, the job half done. A stickiness lay there under the cloth, a shadow. I flinched from it then ventured my hand back to the spot, petting the blood as if otherwise it might bite. I waited for my heart to calm in my chest, then I set to work.

  Doing what I knew how to do. Cleaning. The floor and wall, the skirting board. Everywhere her blood had splashed and speckled and sprayed, I wiped and rubbed, wrung and rinsed, and wiped and rubbed again. When that was done, I cleaned myself.

  In the small sink, in th
e attic bathroom. My hands first, which were emptier than they’d ever been, scrubbing between my fingers and under my nails. My face next, scraping back my hair in one hand, holding my head under the water until it boomed.

  35

  I had every chance to leave Starling Villas. No one barred my way, I could have left at any time. The front door opened onto a street which was rarely empty, the office block lousy with CCTV. I could have stopped a dozen cars with a single scream. I don’t know why I didn’t. I’d been about to leave before it happened, my rucksack packed and ready. But now I found I could barely move.

  In my attic, I curled on the mattress, exhausted, as if hot tar ran through my veins instead of blood. I squeezed shut my eyes, willing sleep to come and take me. I didn’t want to be conscious, to have to think about what they’d done. Robin and Joe. Her head wild with hair, that silver streak like a blade. Each time I saw her, it was worse. Bloodier, more violent.

  You didn’t look, I reminded myself, you didn’t see.

  It was true. I’d shut my eyes after that first glance but she was in my head, matting the inside of my skull. My scalp itched madly, as if her hair was growing out of it instead of my own. My hands smelt of iron, I could taste her blood on my tongue.

  ‘He’s a monster,’ her voice hissed, flooding my body with its poison. ‘You have no idea.’

  Sleep took me, at last. How else could I explain the fact of sunset when I woke, the window red above me? Robin would be wanting his supper. Guilt brought me upright, but it was a servant’s guilt, not a human being’s; I was thinking of him, not her. I washed my face and hands, smoothing my hair and clothes. The mirror was bleak with my reflection. Yesterday’s stranger had gone into hiding. My own face looked back at me, ugly and deceitful.