The Grip Lit Collection

by Claire Douglas

  I pour myself a glass of wine from the half-empty bottle in the fridge, even though it’s only eleven o’clock. Edgy and unnerved, I down it in one gulp. Then I ring Ben. He picks up the phone straight away, an edge of panic to his voice. I never usually phone him when he’s working. I blurt out everything while doing laps around the kitchen table, hoping he can explain it away, but already knowing that’s impossible. What other explanation could there be?

  He’s silent for too long, before spluttering, ‘What did she look like?’

  ‘She’s in her late fifties I think, she has a Scottish accent, similar to yours, Ben. And she said she saw you last week, in London. You said you were in Scotland last week so I don’t understand.’

  ‘I was in Scotland last week.’

  His impatient tone doesn’t deter me as it might once have done. ‘And she also mentioned a brother of yours, living in Bristol. What’s going on? Do you and Beatrice have a brother?’

  ‘Of course we don’t,’ he snaps. ‘Look, Abi, I’m at work, I can’t talk about this here. I’m coming home.’

  ‘You can’t leave. What will your boss say?’ My voice is shrill and echoey in the quiet kitchen. He sounds so angry, so shocked that I’m beginning to think this must be a trick, that whoever wrote on Lucy’s Facebook page and sent me the flowers on my birthday, has also sent me a middle-aged woman pretending to be Ben’s mum. Am I losing my grip on reality, just as Beatrice said? Are the messages from my dead sister and visits from Ben’s dead mum all in my imagination? The woman, Morag, looks nothing like Ben, Beatrice or the young mother called Daisy in the photograph in the drawing room. And if Morag is their mum, who the hell is the woman in the picture? And why would they lie about her? ‘She said she will come back tonight. She mentioned a Martin waiting in the car. She said her name was Morag. That’s an unusual name, Ben.’

  ‘I don’t know her, for fuck’s sake,’ he hisses. ‘Don’t you believe me?’

  ‘I don’t know what to think …’ But he’s already hung up. I throw my mobile on to the antique armchair and pour myself another glass of wine, but after one sip I gag and rush over to the Belfast sink. I take gulps of air and lean over the sink until the nausea passes, then I slump on to the armchair, my legs shaking. My phone vibrates under my bottom and I pull it out from underneath me, hoping that it’s Ben ringing to apologize, to explain away this woman who claims she’s his mum. But it’s Nia. I quickly recount what has happened and promise that I will call her back tonight. I can’t face talking to anyone other than Ben at the moment.

  Less than an hour later I hear Ben’s Fiat pull up outside the house. I’m sitting at the bottom of the stairs as he rushes in, his face pale, his tie askew. He jolts when he sees me, and his eyes soften. ‘Oh, Abi.’ He joins me on the step and wraps his arms around me, hugging me to him, murmuring into my hair that everything is going to be all right. Usually I love being in his arms, take comfort in being soothed by him. It makes me feel safe. But not now. Now it irritates me that he’s assuming, yet again, that the problem is mine. I pull away from him.

  ‘What’s going on, Ben? And don’t try and tell me I imagined that bloody woman, because I didn’t. She was there,’ I point in the direction of the door. ‘In the flesh. And she said she was your mother.’

  He wrinkles his nose, smelling the alcohol on my breath. ‘Have you been drinking?’

  ‘I’ve had a couple of sips of wine. And no,’ I say when his expression suggests that my drinking might be the reason I’m seeing his dead mother, ‘I hadn’t been drinking before she arrived.’

  ‘I don’t understand it, Abi. It makes no sense.’ He shakes his head, looking anguished. ‘Why would someone pretend to be my mum?’

  I sigh. ‘I don’t know, Ben. You tell me.’

  He shrugs and runs his hands through his hair. ‘Are you sure this happened, Abi? Could you have been mistaken? Maybe she didn’t say she was my mum. Maybe she said something else.’

  Anger builds, but I try to keep my voice calm, even as I say, ‘I know I’ve had problems with my mental health in the past. I know I attempted suicide. My illness means I can be paranoid, maybe I even sabotage my life out of guilt at times, I don’t know. But I’ve never been delusional, Ben. I’ve never imagined talking to someone, having a conversation with someone standing in front of me, only for it to be a figment of my imagination.’ I grab his hand. It’s clammy. ‘You have to believe me.’

  ‘I don’t know, Abi. It’s all so strange.’

  ‘She said she was going to come back this evening, about eight o’clock. Let’s see what she says then.’ I glance at him, trying to read his expression, to see if he’s lying. I remember Jodie’s words. The freaky twins, she called them. She believes they are hiding something. Is this it?

  ‘That’s true,’ he mumbles. I notice the beads of sweat on his forehead, his clammy palms, the shirt collar that he keeps fingering away from his throat as if it’s choking him and I realize he’s fretting. I only wish I knew what he was fretting about.

  I don’t believe this woman is a figment of my imagination. I know I saw her, talked to her. She told me she was Ben’s mum. She didn’t seem the type of person who would play such a mean trick in order to mess with my head. She looked like a mum; a lovely, rosy-cheeked, kind mum. She had a Scottish accent, she seemed genuine.

  But as eight o’clock approaches, I’m on tenterhooks.

  Beatrice, Pam and Cass are still not back from Frome, so Ben and I roam about the house, each pretending we aren’t listening out for that knock on the door. We have our dinner together – a lasagne that Eva popped in earlier to make – and a glass of wine. We don’t listen to any music, or turn the television on.

  Eight o’clock comes and goes. Nine o’clock, ten o’clock and nothing. By eleven Beatrice comes home with Pam and Cass, shattering the silence as they kick off their shoes and hang up their coats, laughing as they do so. I hear them clatter down the stairs into the kitchen, chattering over each other, discussing some artist I’ve never heard of.

  ‘She’s not coming back, is she?’ I say as we get ready for bed at midnight. Ben is standing in the middle of the room with his boxer shorts on, reminding me that we haven’t had sex since he got back from Scotland.

  ‘Of course she’s not,’ he mutters, and I see it, the look on his face. He’s almost grey, ashen, with what? Disappointment in me?

  I pull the nightdress over my head, loathing his sideways looks of concern, with the words he refuses to say. At best he thinks I’m deluded. Mentally unstable. At worst he thinks I’m making it up. Either way, he doesn’t believe me.

  ‘You know,’ I say, gathering up my jeans and jumper. ‘I’m going to sleep alone tonight.’

  ‘No,’ he says coming over to me. ‘You can’t go. I’m sorry, I do believe you. I don’t understand it, that’s all.’ He takes my clothes from me, places them on the chair, ushers me into bed and climbs in beside me. ‘I love you so much,’ he says into my neck, and as he takes my nightdress off he makes me forget the anger and the hurt as he kisses my questions away.

  Ben rings work to say he’s sick the next day, and I know he’s waiting to see if this mystery woman, this Morag, turns up again. It gives me hope that he might believe me after all. He makes me promise not to tell Beatrice, as she will only worry. When he’s out washing his precious car, I ring Nia, apologize for not calling back last night. I tell her everything.

  She listens without interrupting. In the background I can hear the hubbub of her office; the ring of phones, the indistinct natter of her colleagues, the faint sound of Radio One. I imagine her funky, open-plan office in Covent Garden with the glass partitions and the fashion photographs adorning the walls, and I’m suddenly envious. I close my eyes, wishing that I could turn the clock back, that my life had never changed so irrevocably, that we are all living in our Balham terrace and the only thing I have to ring Nia about is to discuss which new club we are going to try out tonight.

  ‘Do you think
I’m going mad, Nia? Do you think I could have imagined it?’

  ‘You’re not going mad, Abi. I don’t want to hear you say that again.’ She says it so forcefully, so matter-of-factly, that I long to believe her. ‘I can’t tell you how sorry I am for what happened when I came to visit. But I never thought you were going mad. I was worried that if you stopped taking your antidepressants you would … you would …’

  She doesn’t have to finish her sentence for me to know exactly what she’s trying to say, that the memories of finding me in that bathtub haven’t left her. Will probably never leave her, and I feel terrible about that.

  ‘Oh, Nia,’ I whisper.

  ‘Anyway. Let’s not dwell.’ I want to laugh. That is Nia’s mantra in life and not for the first time I wish I was as confident as her. ‘You know, Abi, I think he does believe you and that’s why he’s home today. That’s why he’s out washing his car right now. He’s expecting her to come back and he wants to be there when she does.’

  I move to my bedroom window, mobile clamped to my ear. On the street below, Ben sweeps a large soapy sponge across the bonnet of his car, but he seems distracted, his head snapping around every time he hears the far-off sound of an engine. He drops the sponge into a bucket, causing soap suds to splash on to the pavement, and walks around to the back of the car to open the boot. What are you doing, Ben? I hear a car chug into the road. My stomach tightens. It’s the red Mondeo from yesterday. It parks outside a house further up the street, engine still running. Ben hears the car and steps away from his Fiat. For a couple of seconds he hovers on the pavement in his short-sleeved Fred Perry, as if undecided. When he glances up at my window, I instinctively move out of sight. I don’t think he’s seen me. When I look again I see him swinging his long legs into the passenger seat of the Mondeo.

  ‘The Mondeo has turned up,’ I whisper into the phone, not sure why I’m lowering my voice when there is nobody else in the house. ‘Ben’s got into it.’ I hold on to the windowsill, my head spinning as the car pulls away from the kerb. The last thing I see, as it drives past the house and disappears from view, is Ben’s pale face at the window, looking up at me. His eyes briefly meet mine and then he’s gone. ‘Oh God, he’s seen me.’ I’m finding it hard to swallow, my mouth is so dry. ‘What’s going on, Nia?’

  ‘For some reason Ben’s lying to you, Abi. He’s gone willingly with whoever is driving that car, so he obviously knows the woman who called yesterday, in spite of what he tells you.’

  I groan and think about the woman, this Morag, and something occurs to me for the first time. ‘Why didn’t she ask for Beatrice?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Yesterday, she knocked on the door and asked to see Ben. If she is their mother, why didn’t she ask to see Beatrice, her daughter?’

  ‘I don’t know, but listen. You have to go and look in his car.’

  ‘What? I can’t do that.’

  ‘Don’t you want to find out why he’s lying?’

  I swallow but my throat is dry. From the window I can see that the boot of Ben’s Fiat is still open and sticking up in the air. I tell myself I’m doing him a favour by going to his car and closing the boot. I haven’t got keys, but at least if I close the boot nobody will know that the car isn’t locked.

  ‘Okay,’ I say.

  ‘Go, go, go,’ she says, sounding like a sergeant major. I run down the stairs and into the street, looking both ways to make sure nobody is watching me before daring to approach his car, mobile still to my ear. ‘Are you there?’ she says. ‘Are you at the car?’

  ‘Yes.’ I ping the windscreen wipers back against the windscreen and walk around to the boot.

  ‘You have to have a good look inside the car, for clues,’ barks Nia, channelling her inner Miss Marple.

  ‘For goodness’ sake, Nia,’ I snap. This is wrong, snooping around his car. I don’t want to think badly of Ben, I love him and I can’t bear the thought that he might be lying to me, that he would rather let me think I’m going crazy than tell me the truth.

  Nia, sensing my ambivalence, says quietly, ‘I can imagine this is horrible for you, Abi. But something isn’t right here. And you know it.’

  ‘Jodie thinks so,’ I admit, tears springing to my eyes. I fill her in on what Jodie told me.

  ‘He’s hiding something, they both are.’

  I nod, although I know Nia can’t see me. A tear drips down my face and I tell her I will call her back soon. She’s disappointed, but makes me promise to call if I find anything out that explains Ben’s strange behaviour. I assure her I will.

  ‘And, Abi …’ She pauses, as if debating whether to be honest with me.

  ‘What is it? You can tell me, Nia. You’re the only one I trust at this moment.’ It’s not until I say it that it hits me how true it is.

  ‘Okay. When I came to stay with you last month, I thought something seemed off with the two of them. I couldn’t put my finger on it, I still can’t. I know you were worried about Beatrice … but there was something about Ben …’ she hesitates. ‘I can’t put my finger on it. But it was enough to make me concerned about leaving you with them. Please be careful.’ Her words unnerve me, but I tell her that I’m fine and end the call. My fingers are trembling as I place my mobile in the back pocket of my jeans. I poke my head over the parcel shelf to see into the main body of the car, but it’s remarkably tidy. Ben’s neatness almost borders on OCD, he won’t even let me eat in the car. What was I hoping to find?

  And I realize then that I have no choice but to trust him. I’m sure he will tell me what’s going on when he gets back, there must be a simple explanation for it all. There has to be. Because I can’t bear the thought of losing Ben, he’s been my life raft these last few months, keeping me afloat. He’s the reason I can get up in the morning, that I can face the day without Lucy. I can’t bear to think about what it means for us, for me, if he’s been lying.

  I’m reaching up to close the boot when I notice something out of the corner of my eye. At first I think it’s a speck of flint, or fabric poking out from under the matting where the spare wheel is kept, but on further inspection I can see that it is pink and paper-thin, contrasting sharply with the black interior. I give it a tug. It’s stiff like the corner of a piece of paper. Blood rushes to my head as I feel desperately around for the latch, but before I even manage to wrench it open I have an idea of what it is. But I still gasp in shock. I still stumble backwards as if I’ve been punched. Because nestled on top of the spare wheel, lifting and falling gently in the breeze, are three pink envelopes, dog-eared with age, my name and university address scribbled on them in Lucy’s familiar scrawl. And next to them, curled up in the spare wheel is a silver bracelet, its rich blue sapphires glinting in the late afternoon sun.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  There is a chill in the air as Beatrice steps off the bus. The sun is hiding behind a large ash-grey cloud, taking with it the little warmth that is left of the day. She wraps her chunky knitted cardigan around her body, a burst of wind whipping at the silk of her tea-dress so that her bare knees are exposed, her toes retracting in her pumps. She falters at the estate agent’s window to peruse the flats available to rent. Why does she continue to do this, to torture herself?

  He’s leaving me. He’s really leaving me.

  It’s been days since he told her, but only now is she beginning to believe it. She’s lost him, the last of her family. The one thing she has dreaded for years is actually happening, and as the realization dawns on her, something unexpected shifts inside her. Relief. She has been so desperate to cling on to him, terrified of losing him, but now she’s experiencing a certain kind of freedom that she hasn’t felt in years.

  ‘Wait up.’ She turns to see Cass running towards her, the camera that hangs around her neck bouncing against her chest. ‘Are you okay, Bea?’ she pants, worry etched into her lovely elfin face. Loyal, beautiful Cass.

  Beatrice bites the inside of her lip to stop herself fr
om crying, from telling Cass everything. All these years she’s kept their secret, even though it has been eating her up inside, as if she’s a pumpkin with its flesh hollowed out so that eventually it sags and decays, withering into mush. She needs someone to fill her up again, to replace her insides, to make her glow. She’s already shed one skin, one persona. She thought Beatrice Price would be something different entirely, but at the end of the day she’s still the same person, except maybe she’s not, maybe she’s worse than the person she was trying to escape from.

  Cass is still staring at her quizzically, her head to one side. She’s so young, so fresh, so guileless. She knows Cass would never hurt her, but would she still care about her if she knew the truth? Would anyone?

  ‘I’m sorry, Cass. I didn’t mean to walk off, I’m in my own world.’

  Cass smiles in relief and links her arm through Beatrice’s. ‘Are you upset about Ben?’

  Beatrice nods and they walk the rest of the way in silence. As they turn the corner into their street Cass asks if they should have a game of tennis before it gets dark. ‘Why not,’ Beatrice says, knowing that this is Cass’s way of trying to cheer her up, of taking her mind off Ben and his imminent departure.

  When they reach the gate to the house, Beatrice pauses. Abi is rushing out the front door grappling with a large holdall. Her face is deathly pale, her eyes red and alarm bells begin to ring in Beatrice’s head. ‘Abi?’ She pushes open the gate with a creak. Abi stops on the pathway when she notices them, her face anguished, almost fearful. ‘Where are you going? Are you okay?’ Have you finally lost it, Abi?

  Abi blinks at them, her face changing from fear to anger, her big green eyes wild, and Beatrice instinctively pulls away from Cass. Lowering her voice, she urges her to go into the house. Cass glances from one to the other wordlessly, but does as she’s told; always compliant, thinks Beatrice, always so trusting.