Sing me to Sleep

by Helen Moorhouse

  Chapter 16

  july 1997

  Ed and Jenny

  Jenny Mycroft leaned on the doorpost of her open back door and gazed out at her garden, listening.

  It was ablaze with early July sunshine, the reds and yellows of her flowerbeds vibrant, the purples of the lavender borders strong against the greens. She inhaled softly and held the breath, allowing herself to tune in intently, to listen to the complete silence that surrounded her. Outside, there was the faint chirrup of birds, the buzz of bees around the lavender plants.

  Inside, there was nothing. It was as if the silence were thick, as if it was in itself an entity. She held her breath until she could keep it inside her no more and then exhaled deeply before glancing at her watch. Eleven, she noted. Bee was in nursery; Ed in work; no one likely to call; no one nearby to call to. The house had been vacuumed, dusted, polished and tidied by half past ten. Jenny turned and swept the kitchen with her eyes. There must be something to do, she thought frantically, desperately trying to engage her brain. But nothing came. She sighed – a sigh which turned into a groan of sheer and utter boredom. Yesterday had been like this too, she remembered. And tomorrow would be as well . . . and the day after . . .

  And she had no one else to blame for this except herself.

  And Ed, of course. Getting his way as usual.

  It had been a wet Thursday, she remembered. She had been delayed at a regional manager’s meeting and had thought she would never be able to escape. The day had been marked with minor disasters: muddy and laddered tights, a broken heel tip, her hair in a frizzy mess from the rain. She couldn’t find the hotel where the meeting was to be held and had entered the meeting room late, tugging her skirt down to try to disguise the ever-widening hole at her knee, to a stony response from everyone else who had made it on time . . . and . . . she had managed to mark the laminate meeting-room floor with a series of small, irreparable indentations from her untipped heel.

  Jenny still cringed as she recalled it. Stepping back from the open back door and into her kitchen, she pulled a mug from the cupboard and spooned in coffee, blushing still at the memory.

  It had been close to nine that night when she had eventually made it home and into the shower to wash away the day. Once in her dressing gown, she had sunk into the sofa and gladly accepted the tea that Ed made her. He sat beside her on the arm of the sofa.

  “I mean, it wasn’t as if my suggestions were completely without foundation,” she ranted loudly at him, her voice filled with the outrage that she knew she should have expressed in that stuffy meeting room. “I told them expressly that in the past week we’d had specific requests for La Cage Aux Folles and Cyrano de Bergerac in our branch alone and that our other branches were getting similar enquiries.”

  Ed suppressed the urge to giggle at how high-pitched her voice was growing with each sentence. He rubbed her back in a slow, circular motion in an attempt to calm her.

  “And do you know what he said?” she hiccupped, turning to face her husband full on.

  He banished the smirk, but with some difficulty. “What?” he queried softly.

  “That stupid idiot Reynolds from Head Office looked at me like I’d run over his cat with a lawnmower and told me that there was no need to clutter up space with ‘foreign muck’ – he did the inverted commas with his fingers – can you believe that? He announced right there and then – representing a chain of video stores – that no one likes to read and watch a film at the same time and to direct enquiries like that to the appropriate English-speaking version. To The Birdcage and bloody Roxanne!”

  Ed couldn’t hold it in any longer. He suddenly laughed aloud, raising his hand in an apologetic gesture. Jenny opened her mouth in an expression of complete disbelief and whacked him, not so gently, on the arm.

  “I’m sorry!” he spluttered. “I’m so sorry!”

  Jenny looked close to tears again. “Not even you take me seriously, Ed,” she wailed. “Why do I bloody bother?”

  Ed settled, and looked down at her from his perch on the arm of the sofa with a bemused grin. “But that’s just it!” he said. “You don’t have to bother! You don’t have to do it!”

  Jenny frowned and looked away from him.

  “You don’t have to do it, you know that,” he repeated. “You know that we’re fine for money – please don’t accuse me of gloating when I say that – I don’t want to have The Row again. This time, just hear me out.”

  Jenny closed her mouth on the protest she had been about to make. In any case, it was a half-hearted one. She was tired, sore, humiliated and putty in his hands.

  “Why don’t you give up that awful job with that stupid name-badge and having to work on the counter at lunchtimes so that the part-time college kids get to go to Pret for an hour, and then you get stuck with a sandwich at your desk because you’re a regional-manager-slash-dogsbody and you have all the paperwork to do? Why don’t you just make a change? I mean, we’re lucky – we have money – we wouldn’t have to take Bee out of nursery and that would leave you all day to do things at your own pace – no pressure – to figure out what it is you want to do, whether it’s finally designing stuff or house interiors or stuffing envelopes – I won’t interfere. At the very least, why not take a month off and think about it, for heaven’s sake? They owe you a ton of leave and you don’t owe them a single thing.”

  Ed let a silence hang in the air for a moment, suppressing the excitement that he felt growing inside him. He could see Jenny softening, relenting. She had never done that before.

  “I might like to spend a bit more time with Bee,” she replied quietly, avoiding Ed’s gaze as she said it.

  Ed gauged his timing, waited a moment before speaking again. “You’d never have to wear tights again . . .” he said hesitantly, a slight smile to his voice.

  She smiled back, catching his eye for a second before looking away again, her face filling with mock indignation. “But, Ed, tights are so lovely and comfortable and sexy to boot – why would I never want to wear them again?” She paused and then said, this time almost playfully, “I suppose I could just give up, couldn’t I?”

  Ed nodded enthusiastically. “Do it,” he urged. “Start afresh. New job or new career or whatever you want to do – just do something. Learn to drive or do a course in origami or get some pigeons or run a flea circus – just get out of bloody Movie Kingdom and start your life – Jenny’s life! Not our life, or Bee’s life or my life – your life!”

  He reached out and took Jenny’s left hand, which was nearest to him, and squeezed it. “You’re brilliant, you are,” he said, gazing down into her eyes.

  She found it hard to return the stare, found it almost too intense.

  “You’re brilliant at something – we just don’t know what it is yet. So let’s find out, eh?”

  She looked back at him, searching his face for a hidden agenda. “No pressure, you said,” she began.

  He nodded emphatically.

  “And I do it at my own speed, right?”

  Ed crossed his heart and hoped to die, his forefinger held up in the air. “Tortoise or hare, whatever works,” he assured her.

  Jenny nodded then, slowly at first and then more emphatically. “I’ll do it then. Will I? Will I do it?”

  Ed nodded back vigorously, beaming as she spoke.

  “I’ll get out of there. Finally. Although what on earth will Dad say? He’s from the ‘get a job, keep a job’ school –”

  Ed interrupted her before she began to talk herself out of the decision. “Look – why don’t we open a bottle of champers? Go mad on a school night? Celebrate making a change?”

  And that was how it happened. That was how Jenny made her decision to leave the only job she had ever known and strike out on her own.

  She poured the water from the kettle onto the coffee grounds and stirred, glancing out the back door at the garden again, the waft of instant coffee filling her nostrils.

  And here she was – notice giv
en, holidays accounted for, a swift drink down the Merry Maiden on her last day and a card filled with grubby fivers from the whip-round.

  And now this.

  A clean house, coffee breaks whenever she wanted, Richard and Judy on tap should she choose to watch . . .

  And silence.

  And the sinking sensation that she knew she should be doing something – she just had absolutely no idea what.

  And, as did many other things in her life that she didn’t know, the idea scared her. As the days stretched out in front of her, and with them what she perceived as the rest of her life, empty and silent and punctuated by coffee and daytime TV, Jenny Mycroft was filled, yet again, with fear.

  Chapter 17

  August 1997

  Jenny and Guillaume

  Standing at her kitchen worktop, carefully assembling a cheeseboard, Jenny cringed – no – winced as the cackle cut the air yet again. Each time, there was a new added layer of hysteria, like Vicky was ramping up her ‘amused’ factor to fully prove to Guillaume, without a shadow of a doubt, that he was the funniest guy in the universe. And he, in turn, had seemed unable all evening to remove his hand from Vicky’s knee, eventually snaking an unmistakable route up her thigh, taking her tight lycra skirt with it as the second bottle of red was finished. Jenny was glad of the few minutes’ respite from the scene.

  The whole thing was Vicky’s idea. “Couples night,” she had gone so far as to call it. “A bite and a bottle round at Ed ‘n’ Jen’s.”

  “They’ve been going out over a month, now, Jen,” Ed had shrugged as Jenny sulked furiously over the very idea of it.

  “If they’re going to be a proper couple then it’s inevitable we’ll be spending time together – I mean Gui is my best mate and Vicky’s my sister – we can hardly just ignore them.”

  I could, Jenny thought firmly. I could quite happily let them get up to whatever it was they wanted, wherever they wanted and as often as they wanted – just so long as it wasn’t anywhere in my immediate vicinity. Or preferably within a ten-mile radius of me, in fact.

  As she carefully arranged some strawberries next to the Brie which was oozing perfectly, Jenny tried to figure out which of the pair she disliked more. Guillaume with his superior air and wandering digits, or Vicky in her tiny skirts with her shiny bob, cackling with that throaty voice that could shatter glass.

  As if on cue, Vicky brayed with laughter at something Guillaume said in the adjoining room and Jenny dug her nails into her palms. She stayed that way until the laughter died away, and then took a deep breath before fixing a smile on her features and picking up the cheeseboard and cheese knives. The grin unmoving, she climbed the steps out of the kitchen and padded along the hallway toward the living room.

  Jenny pushed the living-room door shut behind her with her shoulder and then knelt to place the heavy cheeseboard on the coffee table in the centre of the room, suppressing an urge to ‘tsk’ loudly as she noticed the glistening red ring on it where Vicky had plonked her wineglass directly on the dark wooden surface, completely ignoring her coaster. Jenny resisted the urge to wipe it straight away but itched to attend to it. It went against her upbringing to wreck something expensive through sheer thoughtlessness. She was suddenly unable to tolerate it and picked the glass hastily off the table surface and replaced it on the coaster, hopeful that the speed she had worked at would mean Vicky hadn’t seen her do it. Jenny glanced up at her sister-in-law to check, and blanched as she was greeted by a cold and hard stare in response. She had been observed.

  Vicky glared directly at her, her cheek twitching with barely perceptible involuntary rage for a second before suddenly transforming into one of relaxed enjoyment.

  “What’s this then?” Vicky bellowed suddenly, rapidly uncurling her legs from underneath her where she had tucked them on the sofa the better to fold herself against Guillaume’s shape. “Cheese, Jenny? Are we having cheese then?”

  Jenny stood up again and took a step back toward her armchair, watching her sister-in-law nervously as she did so before glancing at the men. Vicky’s comment – and the inherent sarcasm, although for the life of her Jenny couldn’t understand what fault she could find in a cheeseboard – had gone unnoticed by Guillaume and Ed who were deep in a discussion about football.

  “There’s a cheeseboard ready on the coffee table, folks,” Jenny addressed her husband and his friend timidly, still very much aware that Vicky’s stare was burning into her. There was something so unsettling about Ed’s sister and her warped attitudes.

  “Gee-yum!” barked Vicky, nudging her boyfriend with a sharp elbow. “Cheese!”

  He ignored her, he and Ed laughing loudly, trying to outdo each other with witty retorts as they squabbled about the merits of Chelsea versus Man United.

  “Gui!” cried Vicky suddenly – a particularly raucous shriek – her face distorted as she barked for attention.

  It worked. Guillaume turned away from where he had been fully engaged with Ed, his face puzzled. Vicky glared at him, her teeth grey, her lips stained from the red wine as if she had been eating liquorice, her eyes narrowed into slits and her pointed nose scrunched up in outrage.

  Jenny blinked and looked away, embarrassed.

  Vicky extended a talon – painted black tonight – in the direction of the food. “There’s cheese,” she said bluntly, continuing to stare directly at Guillaume.

  He, in turn, stared back for a second too long before following with his eyes the direction of her extended finger toward the cheeseboard and then back again to her pinched-up face.

  Watching from under her lashes, Jenny knew that at that moment something in their relationship had changed. Something had passed between them that was barely noticeable, but it was a gearshift.

  Guillaume nodded at Vicky who rearranged her features under his glare. The curl in the nose loosened, the snarl subsided, the eyes opened a little wider all of a sudden, as if to return her expression to what she thought was its original beautiful form. But still, there was a loud silence between them, an awkward electricity.

  It took Ed to break it. Jenny wasn’t sure if he did so intentionally or not but she couldn’t have been more grateful.

  “This looks great, Jen,” he said, shifting position so that he was on the edge of his own seat, looking at the tray and rubbing his hands for emphasis. “Is that Wensleydale?”he asked, his attempt at the Wallace character even worse than usual. “What a nice bit of cheese!” he continued, pushing his upper teeth out and rolling his eyes.

  Jenny cringed, but smiled at him gratefully for managing to change the vibe in the room.

  “Man, that was a shocking Wallace!” announced Guillaume, finally tearing his gaze away from Vicky.

  In an instant, Vicky’s expression switched to one of dismay then to yet another one of simmering rage as she watched Guillaume turn his back on her.

  Ed smirked back at Guillaume and slid off the couch onto his knees, walking the short distance to the coffee table on them before relaxing his bottom on his heels to peruse his favourite snack.

  “There actually is Wensleydale,” offered Jenny with a nervous laugh. “And some Brie and Red Leicester – that one you’ve got your knife on is a Somerset goat’s cheese, Ed . . .”

  “What’s that one?” Vicky piped up, suddenly interested, leaning in earnest over in the direction of the board, her chest thrust provocatively outwards as always. She stole a sideways glance to check if Guillaume was watching. Instead, he was oblivious to her, holding a grape between his teeth while rotating it with his tongue as he waited for Ed to finish scooping soft Brie onto a cracker so that he could take his turn. She turned back suddenly to glare in Jenny’s direction.

  “Is it supposed to look like that?” she sneered. “All gone off and stuff? Isn’t that mould on it? And what’s that one with the red bits? Like veins? Like your legs’ll look in twenty years I’ll bet, Jen!” She laughed uproariously at her own joke, looking at her boyfriend and brother to join her, scowli
ng when they didn’t.

  “That’s a Stilton,” replied Jenny quietly. “And the veiny one is a Port Wine Derby . . .” Her voice fell away as she realised that her sister-in-law wasn’t looking for an explanation, but was mocking her yet again.

  Vicky bent closer to the table and threw one bare leg over the other, leaning her elbow on her knee. She glanced again at Guillaume who was mock-fighting with Ed, duelling childishly with their cheese knives over a cut slice of Leicester. Displeasure flashed across her features and she scowled.

  “Only, well, a cheeseboard – it’s a bit old-fashioned, though, innit?” she sneered, turning her attention back to Jenny. “A bit like what Mum wheels out at Christmas with a glass of Harvey’s Bristol Cream – isn’t that right, Ed?”

  Her brother shrugged. “Suits me fine at Christmas too, sis,” he said through a mouthful of oatcake and Stilton.

  “Only I’d prefer something a bit classier, me,” Vicky continued. “A bit trendier – like a mini-burger maybe, or a chicken satay on a stick . . .”

  She was interrupted by a groan of pleasure from Guillaume and her eyes flicked away from Jenny in his direction, excited suddenly that she had said something that caused such a reaction.

  He rolled his eyes as he savoured what he ate. “Man, I just bloody love goat’s cheese! When I was back in South Africa, yeah? – I took a tour of the wine country – my God, but there was this winery just outside Paarl – they had their own herd, man – produced the most amazing cheese I have ever tasted. There I was, sitting outside on their sun terrace, with a glass of their own Chenin Blanc, eating this cheese – Pearl Mountain Winery – that’s what it was called. Ay-may-zing. You gotta go, man.”