Fragile

by Sarah Hilary

  ‘Carolyn—’

  ‘I’m talking about me.’ He rapped his knuckles on his collarbone. ‘Carolyn can defend her own actions. But you need to know. You have to have the truth. What was it you said that woman believed? There’s no way back once we’ve seen the worst of ourselves. Well, the rules were my way of getting back. To something resembling a decent man. Pathetic, no doubt, to you, but there it is. I’m not interested in controlling anyone other than myself. Not you and certainly not Carolyn, which would be a hiding to nothing.’

  He shut his eyes, before putting his stare back on my face. I saw the effort it took him not to flinch or look away. ‘I can’t live alone. I’ve tried. Loneliness just – I go in circles, straight back to where I was. Then you came and you weren’t like the others, that’s what I thought. You looked so different, you were more confident, more certain of yourself. You weren’t afraid of me, even after that scene with her dress when I almost . . . You were different.’ He tried to smile, but his mouth wouldn’t make the shape. Then his eyes heated. ‘But of course you came here for a reason, with a purpose. You and Joe. I was forgetting that. When he turned up, it all fell into place. You wanted to scam me, scam us. No doubt you’ve scammed a lot of people. I was a fool for allowing myself to imagine you were better, decent—’

  ‘So you slept with me, as revenge.’

  ‘No. I wanted you. I took what you were offering.’ He squared his shoulders. ‘I told myself once would be enough. That I deserved to be taught a lesson, to have my eyes opened. I expect I should be on my own, that’s best for all concerned. God only knows what I was hoping for. I suppose I thought if we kept to the rules we’d be all right, you and I.’

  ‘We were.’ A part of me ached with pity, and with shame. ‘We are.’

  He shook his head. ‘That’s why I didn’t want that woman in my house or your friend, Joe.’

  ‘I’m sorry—’

  ‘No. It was my mistake. I should have known it was a game, that you were up to something. I’ve pulled enough similar stunts myself. It was obvious how it would play out . . . And the art class, you deserve an apology for that.’ He took his hand from the desk and folded it away, into a fist. His eyes moved around the room, lost. ‘Perhaps Meagan is right and we’re not capable of change. I certainly seem incapable of learning from my past mistakes.’

  Bitterness now. I felt it flooding my own mouth. ‘Don’t say that. It isn’t true.’

  ‘Yet here we are.’ He bent his head, looking at his feet. ‘I apologize. For everything.’

  He’d gone away, that’s how it felt. Given up on all that we had. The old loneliness crowded in, suffocating me. I felt abandoned, as if someone else had told me about it, formally, in a letter: Your employer has moved away. No forwarding address.

  ‘What’s in the boxes?’ I asked it in a whisper, afraid of the answer.

  A frown came and went from his face. ‘I’ve no business showing you.’ But he reached for the nearest box, pulling out a white envelope. ‘Look, if you like. It’s all of a piece.’

  I pulled the paperwork from the envelope, seeing the royal crest. Family Court, it said. The date was decades old, but I could see names and ages. Children. All the worst things, Mrs Mistry had said, the ones that trap us.

  ‘I’m a magistrate. I suppose you’d say . . . I help decide where children should be placed. Those like you, who can’t stay with their own families. But I’m also an academic, and I’ve been asked to review old cases as part of a study to improve the way the Family Court operates . . .’

  I was aware of him speaking, but I couldn’t hear or see him standing in front of me. All I could see was Rosie the day she came to Lyle’s, so little and lost. And Joe, placed with foster parents who abused him, people who gave him nightmares so horrible he needed drugs to help him sleep. This was his work. Robin’s work. Deciding where children should be placed. He said it so lightly, as if it hardly mattered, as if he were talking about choosing plants to pot in his garden room, based on which needed least sun and water. Did he put as much thought into deciding which children to give to people like Meagan Flack? She wasn’t even the worst of them. Look what was done to Joe, and what it turned him into – an addict who sold himself to predators like the Wilders. Did Robin not see the irony, the pattern? A predator placing children with predators who by their actions turned those children into their preferred commodity? I felt sick.

  This was who he was. Robin Wilder. The man I’d fallen in love with, by my accident or his design. How could I tell him it was worse, far worse than the parties or the games?

  He hated himself for having sex with strangers, but this was a thousand times less forgivable. What he did for a living – I didn’t know if I could ever forgive him for this.

  ‘Were you with Joe, that night?’ I looked up from the paperwork. ‘I know Carolyn brought him here, from the club. She said you were here. That it was the pair of you together, with Joe.’

  Robin’s hand clenched on the box of papers. ‘Yes. I was here.’

  ‘Did you give him drugs?’

  His eyes were black. ‘No.’

  ‘Did you sleep with him?’

  He shook his head then stopped. ‘But I was here in the house. I did nothing to stop it.’

  ‘His bracelet was in your bed.’

  ‘It’s where they slept. I was meant to join them.’ He waited a beat. ‘I gave him a glass of wine and told him to make himself at home. I knew Carolyn had drugs. I don’t know why I didn’t join them. I usually do – you may as well know that.’ He didn’t break eye contact. ‘It wasn’t decency or shame that stopped me. It was disgust. I was disgusted with myself, and with them. And you’re right, it doesn’t make me a better person. If anything, it makes me worse. It certainly makes me a hypocrite.’

  ‘Drugs are why Rosie died.’ My voice sounded strange, faraway. ‘A child died. When Joe’s high he can’t help himself or anyone else. He’s a danger. And he gets high to forget what happened to him in the places people like you put us. Because we’re just names on pieces of paper.’ I dropped the envelope onto his desk. ‘We’re just a job of work, to people like you.’

  ‘Is that why you came here?’ He took his hand from the box. ‘As payback?’

  ‘I didn’t even know you were a magistrate! And anyway,’ I demanded, ‘what payback? I can’t get payback. I’m no one. You’re the one with all the power, playing God with our lives.’ My throat closed on my words. ‘I thought Carolyn was my enemy. I came here because she took Joe from me that night, and like you I can’t be alone. I wanted to find him, to be sure he was safe. But Carolyn wasn’t my enemy, it was you. You made all this – everything we have to live with, and survive. You made me.’

  Joe must have felt safe coming here, the way I did when I was cleaning and cooking because it was so familiar. It was what we knew, all we knew.

  Robin dropped his hand to his side. Silence stiffened around us. I wanted to scrub it away, to scour and scrub and burn it with bleach – the silence and the smell of Meagan’s cigarettes. Robin was telling the truth, at last. But so was I, or trying to. The only truth I understood. It turned the air into a solid thing, impossible to breathe. There was no room left for me, or for us. Our truth, like our secrets, took up too much of it.

  Then Robin said, ‘Nell, listen to me. Please.’ He was very still and pale. ‘You said I hide money in the house. That’s true, but it wasn’t a test for you. It was for me. I needed to know I could leave, walk out of here whenever I’d had enough. Most of my money’s tied up in the property. I kept the cash to remind myself I wasn’t trapped, even when it felt that way. Even when trapped was what I wanted. I’ve made so many mistakes. Terrible choices, unforgivable.’ He spread his hands on the table. ‘But never about you, Nell. Not you.’

  I couldn’t meet his eyes. His words washed over me. I retreated into silence, shocked by a sudden memory of Rosie’s funeral. All those churchgoers, Chapel people. I’d wanted to fall on my knees, dragging Joe
down with me to confess. But I didn’t, and I couldn’t start now. Robin was ready but I was not, too afraid of what it would mean for us, here and now.

  ‘I won’t make a meal of this,’ he said. ‘You know I’ve made mistakes. I’ve done things I regret, deeply. But I’m going to try and put that right. With your help, if you’ll let me.’ He stood in his shirtsleeves with a stain on his collar. I hadn’t noticed the stain until now. ‘You’ve done so much for me,’ he said. ‘I don’t want it to be like this between us. I want to be able to thank you, properly, for all you’ve done.’

  He hadn’t taken his eyes from my face. His attention was too much, like torchlight shone into the dark corner where we’d been hiding from one another, he with his boxes, me with my cloths and polishes. I must have waxed every piece of wood in the house, greased every hinge. I wanted him to shoulder the worst of the blame but I’d lied too, and I’d cheated. Stolen this job, slipped like a knife into the narrow heart of his house. And here he was, thanking me for everything I’d done.

  ‘Not everything.’ It was too much. ‘Not accusing you of murdering your wife.’

  ‘That was my fault,’ he said. ‘For staying quiet for so long. I was hiding, I know that. Carolyn taught me how to hide – but I’m not blaming her. I made the choices to do what I did, all the things I now regret. I need to learn to let it all go and start over, if I can. I’d like to let it go.’

  ‘What if I can’t?’ Panic clenched my stomach. ‘Carolyn, that night. Your boxes, your work. The things I’m hiding, or carrying. What if I can’t let those go?’

  ‘Then I’d like to help you. To let go, or to carry them.’ He stretched a hand for mine, seeing my tears before I felt them wetting my face. ‘Nell, please. Let me help, let me carry it with you.’

  But I was too deep in my defences, imagining myself at war. I wasn’t ready to give Rosie up, or Joe. Not even to this man whose hands I’d trusted long before I knew him.

  ‘These boxes . . .’ He gestured around us. ‘What I said about my work. It was clumsy of me, and insensitive.’

  I looked him in the eye. ‘I’d say the last thing you are is clumsy.’

  ‘Insensitive, then. Talking like that, about something that affected your whole life.’

  ‘It did.’ I’d misheard for a moment, thinking he’d said infected. ‘It really did.’

  ‘Then – I’d like to apologize, if you’ll let me.’

  ‘You don’t need my permission.’

  ‘To apologize, no. But I’d like the chance to explain, if I can.’ He leaned forward, elbows on his knees, hands hanging within easy reach of mine. ‘If you’ll let me.’

  ‘Explain?’ I looked at the tidy tide of boxes pushed back against the walls. ‘How can you do that, when you don’t understand? All you see are pieces of paper, not children. Not us.’

  ‘Then – help me to see.’ He paused. ‘Tell me about Rosie.’

  How could I? How could I make him see her, in all her colours? Dazzling and maddening, my Rosie. Not mine, not any more, but who else was carrying her? Not Joe. She was mine, alone.

  ‘No,’ I said softly. ‘No.’

  ‘She disappeared two years ago, from the foster home run by Meagan Flack. That’s what you said.’ Robin kept very still, speaking in a steady voice. ‘But you never said she died.’

  ‘There was a funeral. Candles and teddy bears and a coffin. There was a coffin.’

  Her parents, weeping. The whole village, ashen-faced. Joe with his eyes drugged huge. My skin feeling as if it didn’t fit on my face, as if our guilt must be obvious to anyone, everyone.

  ‘But there was no body, isn’t that right? They never found a body.’ Robin reached for my hands but I shook my head, hating how much he knew. Had Joe told him, or Carolyn? ‘The police dredged the pool but it was peppered by caves, passages out to sea. Subject to tidal currents, isn’t that what they said?’ He placed a space around each sentence, a gap into which I might speak if I could only loosen my tongue. ‘They found one of her shoes. Nell . . . Isn’t that right?’

  ‘There was a coffin.’ White wood with a wreath on top, her name spelt out in roses and forget-me-nots: R-O-S-I-E. A white shoebox inside, with her red sandal. Nothing else, nothing more.

  ‘The funeral was symbolic,’ Robin said, as if he understood. ‘Her parents wanted a ceremony, for closure. It was intended as a celebration, of her life. Some of the papers said it was too soon, even questioned the parents’ motives. I have to confess to looking it up online, after you told me about Rosie. There was the presumption of death, but no body.’

  I stood blindly before him. Rosie. Little, little Rosie. He watched me, and I knew he saw me. Finally, after all this time, he saw me.

  ‘You know, don’t you? What happened to her.’

  ‘Don’t,’ I warned him.

  ‘Don’t question you?’ He reached for my hands and this time I let him take them, my skin a distraction from what he was so nearly touching. ‘Don’t help you?’

  ‘You can’t help me. You can’t.’

  I see Joe kneeling at the edge of the lake where the water stirred, disturbed by a movement under the surface. Ripples running into rings, circling the same spot, swallowing the small hole.

  I’d made myself ask, ‘Where’s Rosie?’ but I knew. The answer was in Joe’s palms and the sunburnt nape of his neck. He hadn’t woken me when she came, hadn’t wanted her here with us. She was a nuisance, and told tales. He wouldn’t share me, not with anyone. I remember – touching the scar on my forehead, thinking of the ambulance that never came, all the excuses I’d made for him, bloody towels rancid from the sun, smelling of meat. And all the while the sun soaked into the water, joining the ripples circling there. Joe looked up at last and reached a hand for me, wordless.

  At the funeral, I was so sure our guilt was obvious to anyone who looked in our direction. The empty coffin, no culprit, no justice. ‘We’re right here!’ I wanted to shout, but I kept my mouth shut, standing at Joe’s side. I’d chosen him over Rosie and for that choice to make sense, I had to stay with him. He had to be more than my first love. The centre of my world – I elevated him to that role but Joe couldn’t sustain it, how could he? He wasn’t big enough or strong enough, even before the drugs. He was just Joe. A boy I once knew, or thought I did. I’d tried so hard to make him carry this, but he couldn’t and now there was only me.

  ‘Was it Joe?’ Robin asked. ‘Were you covering for him, or afraid of him?’

  I pulled free, moving so suddenly I nearly knocked a chair over. He reached to save it from falling, and I ran.

  Out of the library and up the stairs, not stopping until I reached the attic, tripping on the hem of the rug as I grabbed the nearest trunk, hauling it across the floor to jam against the door. It was heavy but I was frantic, needing to feel safe, shut in. Huddling against the barricade, I listened for the sound of him on the stairs, coming after me. Stupid to have told him Rosie’s name, or to have ever texted Joe. Stupid to have held Joe in my heart all this time when he gave me up the first chance he got. I was weeping, sick of myself. I’d done this, brought it all on myself.

  ‘Nell?’ He was right outside the attic door, his shadow soaking the gap between the door and frame.

  I recoiled, pricked with panic. I hadn’t heard him on the stairs.

  I watched the handle of the door, waiting to see it rattled by his fist, but he didn’t touch it. He said my name again, twice, before he gave up. I saw his shadow lift, and leave.

  He’d found us out, Joe and me, and I didn’t know what he’d do. I wanted to trust him but after everything I’d said, all the things I’d accused him of doing and being – I didn’t dare let him in.

  38

  ‘Nell. Nell!’

  I’d fallen asleep, my cheek against the trunk which was sliding in stages across the floor, shoving at me.

  ‘Nell!’ Robin was shouting, pushing hard at the attic door.

  I coughed, coming awake properly. Then I couldn’t
stop coughing, black soot in my eyes and throat, seeping from the gap under the door where he was fighting to get into the attic. Black soot, burning. Fire.

  ‘Nell, open the door!’ Robin was coughing too, the ends of his fingers reaching through the gap he’d made between the door and frame, where smoke was curling. ‘There’s a fire, the kitchen—’

  I hauled at the trunk, my feet skittering on the floor. Robin shoved and I dragged.

  Between us, we got the trunk away and then he was in the attic, his face streaked by smuts, tears in his eyes. He grabbed for me and I grabbed back, briefly. Then I broke away, pushing past him to see the fire punching up the staircase, orange fists of flame.

  ‘I called 999 . . .’ Robin snatched for breath, a hand at his chest. ‘They’re coming . . .’

  They’d never get through the flames. Its heat was warping the air, buckling and burning. How long was I asleep? I couldn’t believe how fast the fire had taken hold but there was the old stove, the cleaning products stashed under the stairs, his boxes of papers and his books. I’d feared a fire, from my first day here.

  I ran from the attic to the bathroom, grabbing the towel and bath mat, soaking them in the sink as fast as I could. Robin helped, the pair of us with soot freckling our faces. Together we shut the attic door, rolling the sodden towel and mat along the gap beneath it.

  Crossing to the window, I pushed it wide, putting one foot on the ledge outside.

  Robin stood and watched uncertainly, but I knew what I was doing. How often had I planned this escape route from Starling Villas to the river and mountains beyond? I waited until he was behind me then dropped from the window to the first of the roofs, sliding down the gutter’s edge, finding my footing against the chimney stack where the gulls liked to sit.

  The wail of fire engines cut through the fire’s roar.

  Robin was at my side, following my lead. Treading where I trod, trusting me. A shower of grit and stones rattled under our shoes, down the roof and over the edge into burning smoke.

  Our hands were steady, finding holding places and each other, all the way to the restaurant’s fire escape where we stood for a second, looking back at the burning house, blood thudding in our ears.