by Clare Boyd
He stood next to her in front of the mirror of their en suite bathroom, and smiled at her reflection. Her expression remained impassive.
She applied eye-cream, apparently to lessen her eye bags. John did not see any eye bags. She smelt of coconut oil and perfumed lotion. Her legs were shiny. Her long blonde hair was centre-parted and blow-dried. John thought she looked good enough to package up and ship off to Harrods. But her reflection did not stir him. This depressed him.
As soon as he began brushing his teeth, she turned off her electric toothbrush and unrolled a flannel. She stood there with her hip sticking out, waiting for something.
‘What?’ He spat out his toothpaste.
She immediately ran the tap and began washing the basin.
‘It’s disgusting how you leave the sink filthy after you’ve brushed your teeth.’
‘Do I?’ John was genuinely baffled. She had never said anything before.
‘I spend my whole bloody life cleaning up after you lot.’
Her movements were jerky and fast as she wiped. His muscles tensed. He stayed quiet and still. He recognised another shift in her mood.
‘While you fiddle around on your laptop planning coffee mornings with Francesca, I’m stressed out of my head trying to earn money for this family, and the last thing I need after a long day is to tidy up your crap.’
‘I’m sorry you’re tired,’ he said, clocking that the coffee morning with Francesca had roused her jealousy, stepping cautiously. How could he have been so careless, mentioning Millfords like that? He should have predicted her jealousy.
‘Don’t you dare turn this around!’ she screeched, staring at him, bug-eyed, her cheeks hollowed out by the down-lighters.
‘I wasn’t,’ he mumbled, defending himself in a rash, unthinking moment. As the words escaped, he instantly regretted them.
Dilys’ face darkened, and she tightened the sharp knuckles of her hand and punched them hard into his right eye. Blobs of distorted light crowded his vision, the pain ricocheted through his skull, shaking his brain. He couldn’t breathe for a moment.
‘Shit,’ he hissed, covering his eye, bending over his knees to stop himself from passing out, shame flushing his cheeks as though she had punched those too. ‘Shit!’ he repeated, holding back his natural instinct to retaliate. He had too much strength in him to react.
Dilys dropped her fist, rubbing at it as she stalked out of the en suite. ‘I’m sick of you talking down to me all the time,’ she spat.
The door to their bedroom slammed.
Light-headed from shock, he lay down on their bed, cupping his hand over his throbbing socket. He fell asleep with the light on.
At some point in the middle of the night, he felt her hand pushing down on his chest, and her nakedness straddling him. In a barely conscious daze they had sex, as another small piece of his self-worth crumpled and died inside.
Afterwards, Dilys slept next to him, but John lay there awake, furious with himself for being aroused after her violence. His cowardliness shocked him, and the worming, slimy shame made him sick to his stomach.
Eventually, he became too tired to think and his eyelids drooped. But, as sleep began to envelop him, he was jolted by a shadowed vision of Robert hovering over him in the dark.
‘Do you want to go on a midnight adventure?’ Robert had whispered in John’s ear, waking him up.
‘I’m too sleepy.’
‘I’m going to spy on Mummy.’
‘In bed?’
‘She went down to the pool. I saw with my binoculars.’
‘Why is Mummy by the pool? It’s dark,’ John asked, rubbing his eyes.
‘She always goes. I want to show you. Come on.’
‘But what if Valentina catches us?’
‘Stop being such a wuss.’
‘I’m not a wuss.’
‘Come down to the pool then.’
John had trotted after his brother, undetected through the house, his heart pounding in his skinny chest, his striped pyjama bottoms wet from the grass as they ran across the lawn.
They both stopped just before the lawn met the crazy-paving flagstones. John could see that the poolhouse light was on and he sensed that there was something very wrong about his mother being inside.
‘Let’s go back. I’m scared,’ John whispered.
‘Come on. I want to show you.’
John dithered as he watched his brother move stealthily towards the poolhouse. And then he followed his big brother.
On tiptoes, Robert was peering in through the window, stock-still, watching something that John knew he never wanted to see.
John opened his eyes into the pitch black, and twisted in the sheets, reeling from the confusion and fear that this half-dream brought. The memory was part of his deeper being, but it shocked him as if it was new. He was disoriented, petrified, but had no nightmare to refer to. Breath. Breathe. Where’s my breath? In the dark, in the silence, while the world slept, his chest tightened vicelike over his heart, which was vibrating like a rocket taking off, as waves of pins and needles infected his flesh. Terror shredded his logical thought processes. He couldn’t see anything but blinding spots in front of his eyes. His back was soaked with sweat. It was hard to believe that he wasn’t dying. Surely this was what dying felt like. Instinctively, he reached for his phone to call an ambulance. As he scrabbled on his bedside table in panic, the phone clattered to the floor. His hands had cramped into paralysed, deformed claws. He left it. His lips had turned too numb to talk anyway.
He had been here before.
After Robert had died, they had started. The doctor said they were ‘anxiety attacks’. In and out, his chest was heaving; he wouldn’t get through it. In and out. In and out. Clear the mind. Breathe. He pictured Francesca’s smile. His heartbeat slowed, he regained some form of connection between his mind and his body. He lay there, blinking in the dark, staggered by what his body – or mind – had just put him through. If that was just an anxiety attack, what was a real heart attack like? What was dying like? What had Robert been through as he had jumped? What had the expression in those deep-set blue eyes been telling him that night? Tears poured down his cheeks. How would he ever be able to forgive himself?
Very carefully he climbed out of bed. He was too scared to go back to sleep.
‘Where are you going?’ Dilys said, in a clear, irritated voice, as though she had not been asleep.
‘Nowhere, just getting a glass of water,’ he said.
He stayed awake all night, waiting for the light, trying not to think about his past, wishing that Francesca was by his side, craving her calming, understanding presence.
Chapter Thirteen
15 years ago
Francesca stopped her work on the lantern she was painting, to take a call from Robert.
‘I need you to do something for me,’ Robert said, sounding far away and harried.
‘What time is it there?’
‘Can you do something for me?’
‘Are you okay?’
‘Jesus. Fran. I’m fine. Can you find my sleeping pills in the bathroom cabinet and then…’
‘Go home? I can’t, I’m on set in Bristol.’
‘SHIT!’
‘You can’t sleep?’
‘It’s so light all the fucking time. There’s a fucking midnight sun, for Christ’s sake.’
‘Calm down, Robert.’
‘I can’t calm down. I’m going fucking insane here.’
‘I thought you’d packed your pills.’
‘They’ve run out.’
‘Why don’t you go to a doctor there and get some more?’
‘I can’t do that. You have to Fed Ex me some more. Today.’
‘Are you serious? To Northern Alaska? You’re back home in five days. Can’t you find some over-the-counter herbal pills?’
‘Fuck. If you won’t help me, I’ll sort it out myself.’
And he hung up.
She stared at her phone for a
ges, distracted from the lamp she was supposed to be aging. Then she called John.
‘Sorry, are you busy?’
‘I’m in my shed. But I could do with a break.’
‘How’s Billy?’
‘He’s just jumped off a building to save Poppy.’
‘He’s such a dude.’
‘What’s up?’
‘Do you know anything about the sleeping pills Robert takes?’
‘Yes. He’s mentioned them.’
‘They’ve run out and now he wants me to send them to him in Alaska.’
‘Can’t he get some in a pharmacy over there?’
‘He said he can’t. He got really angry about it. Do you think I should send them to him? I mean, is it even legal?’
‘Don’t even think about it. He’s being an idiot.’
Francesca was relieved.
‘Thanks, John. I’m glad you said that. I just wanted to check. Good luck with saving Poppy.’
Chapter Fourteen
Francesca
[email protected]
RE: Robert Tennant
Dear Dr Baqri,
Following my husband’s death, I have become aware that Robert was a patient of yours. In the light of this, I would like to apply for his medical records. Would you please let me know how I go about doing this? I am registered as his next of kin.
With best wishes,
Francesca Tennant
There was something wrong about contacting Dr Baqri behind John’s back. It felt sneaky. And, strangely, it felt like a betrayal of Robert, too.
After sending the email, the house fell too quiet. I wasn’t used to countryside-quiet. I felt very alone.
I decided to Skype my mother, whom I had been avoiding since I’d moved. If Dr Baqri emailed back, it would flash up on my screen.
‘Show me the kitchen,’ Mum said, once connection had been made.
I picked up my laptop and panned around the sitting room of my new house, lingering on the big bunch of blue hydrangeas.
‘Camilla dropped them by yesterday.’
Mum puckered her lips to take a sip from her beer bottle. ‘Lovely.’ And then another sip. ‘Let’s see the rest of the house.’
Reluctantly, I took her on a computer tour, into the kitchen, and then up to the bedrooms, and back downstairs again, running an upbeat commentary on all the changes I had made since we had moved in a week before.
Despite the time I had spent rearranging the bits and bobs on the surfaces, reconfiguring the furniture, hanging pictures, restacking Alice’s large collection of puzzles on her shelves, nothing from the old flat looked right in the new space.
‘Oh, Franny-pants, it looks awesome.’
My mother’s screen was placed in front of her cleavage, where tanned wrinkle lines fanned out in a bloom from her top. I could see up her nose. The psychedelic print of the large scarf that was draped across the wall behind her made me dizzy.
‘It’s so perfect, isn’t it?’ I said, but I wanted to cry.
Wrong, wrong, wrong. Everything was wrong: the confined, low-ceilinged, damp, creaky cottage; the quietness of the village; the old ladies who stared at me; the dingy local shop with dusty greeting cards; the hairy chin of my next-door neighbour that made Alice gawp; the twee wooden ‘Don’t park on the grass’ and ‘Don’t let your dog off the lead’ and ‘Make sure to clip your hedge with nail scissors’ signs everywhere (well, not exactly as bad as the latter, but still); the twenty-minute motorway drive to the nearest town; the scuffling of field mice in the loft, and the huge spider in the bath. The list of small dislikes was endless, amounting to a great big dislike of everything about the country. The logistics of the sale and the move had been utterly exhausting, and I doubted it had been worth it.
‘Your dad and I can’t wait to come and stay.’
‘When d’you think you can?’ I asked, trying not to sound too desperate.
‘Dad’s coccyx is still bad, love, and money’s a bit tight at the mo. But we’ll get our thinking caps on, okay?’
‘Sure.’ I tried hard to smile. ‘Managed to get hold of Emily recently?’
Mum sighed. ‘One brief conversation with her in some deserted beach in San Jose. Did you see what she’s done to her hair in those pictures she sent?’
My younger sister had shaved her long, dark hair off for charity. She had raised £2950 for a school in Costa Rica. I envied her. Wild and free, with a grubby backpack and dirty toes, roaming the world, doing good things for other people.
After Aspect Film’s closure, I should have gone with my first instincts, bundled Alice up, packed sunscreen and escaped when I could.
‘I think it suits her.’
My mother had a coughing fit. For someone who had promoted an alternative life, she did not seem to enjoy the fact that Emily had chosen a truly alternative one. She recovered herself and said, ‘I’m very glad I’ve got one settled daughter, at least.’
Settled? Is that how she viewed my life, after what I had been through?
To antagonise her, I decided to praise my in-laws.
‘It’s been good to have the Tennants around the corner, actually. They’ve been really helpful. I might have felt a bit isolated otherwise.’
I was not going to tell my mother about the pill bottle.
Mum peered into the screen. ‘Do you feel isolated, Franny?’
‘No, I said I might have felt isolated, if they weren’t nearby.’
‘When your dad and I first left London, I thought we’d made the biggest mistake of our lives.’
‘Really, Mum? I never knew.’
I related to that. When I had closed the door to the cleared-out flat for the last time, the blood had rushed from my head to my toes and I had bent over my knees to regain balance. Lucy had found me like that, and she had coaxed me away, down the stairs. The shadows from the plain trees on the pavements had danced at my feet. The strange fluttering leaves had been a focus, or a guide, to get me from the steps to the car. I drove away in a daze, my senses dulled, drugged on sadness and confusion, while Lucy chatted away from the passenger seat next to me and Alice sang happily in the backseat, unaware of what we had just done. The sounds of their voices drifted in and out, in and out, as though someone was turning the volume up and down. I assume I replied to their questions, if there had been any, but as we drove across Hornsey Bridge, Robert’s voice in my head was louder than they could ever have been. He was pleading with me: ‘Please don’t leave me, don’t leave me, don’t leave me, please don’t leave me.’ It was louder still as we passed Highgate Cemetery, where his body lay, or possibly now turned. He would never have wanted Alice and me to be so close to his family.
Mum said, ‘I was trying so hard to put a positive spin on it but I even missed the traffic noises of London.’
I laughed. ‘Me, too, a bit.’
‘You’ll get used to it. Just think of Alice.’
‘Yes, the fresh air will be good for her. The school’s lovely. And having little Bea around the corner is going to be great.’
A week before we moved, at the end of the summer term, Alice’s nursery had thrown a big leaving party for her. They had pinned a painted banner across the hall saying, ‘We will miss you, Alice!’ and she had stared at it in awe and said, ‘I’m famous, Mummy!’ Every night since then, she had cried about how much she missed her old nursery and her best friend Tilly.
‘It sounds perfect there, honey.’
‘It is perfect,’ I said, trying the idea out, but then faltered, adding pointlessly, ‘I think we might have mice.’
‘Call Camilla. She’ll know someone.’
‘I will.’
‘There you go then. All right, love. I’ll say goodbye. Marty and Debs are coming over for a barbeque.’
After I’d pressed ‘End’, I sat staring at my screen. Pointlessly, I clicked into my emails to look for a reply from Dr Baqri, knowing I would have seen a message pop up earlier if he had responded. I pressed r
efresh. Nothing.
The screensaver photograph of Robert and Alice kicked in. I was overfamiliar with the image: the beaming smile on her face, his big strong arms around her little tummy, brushed with sand, his handsome wide face, with the deep eye sockets and dark hair. Now he was dead, was he omnipresent? Did he know me better than he ever had when he was alive? I had a vision of the coffin, being carried by John and Patrick, and four friends in black suits, and I could smell the hot wool of my black funeral dress. The photograph in front of me, reminding me of how Robert had lived and breathed, became two-dimensional, fake almost, the back light blurring his edges, as though he had never been alive in the first place. The failure to keep the memory of his physical presence, his touch and smell, strong in my mind scared me.
I closed my laptop. It was so quiet in the house I could hear the fridge buzzing from the kitchen. Alice had conked out at seven o’clock, which was unheard of. She liked her new bedroom, at least. I had painted one wall with a colour I had used on a film set years ago. A colour I had craved, like some people might feel thirsty for a drink. The film had been a love story, and the main character’s bedroom had been hot pink. The young man in the paint shop in the local market town, Wisborough, had thought I was mad when I asked him if I could mix it myself in the back room.
In bed later, I listened to the incessant scratch, scratch, scratch of the mice above me. Did they never sleep? Maybe they weren’t mice at all. For all I knew, they could have been birds making a nest in the guttering. Or rats, I thought with a shiver. I put the pillow over my head, and finally drifted off, only to wake a few hours later dripping in sweat. I opened the window, changed my nightie and put a towel on my pillow. The scuffling above continued. I didn’t like to think of their teeth and their tails. With every little scratch, their claws burrowed deeper into my thoughts, and snippets of memory came back to me. The sound of Robert opening up the pill bottle in the bathroom at our flat in London: that rattle and crack and rattle, the running of the tap – a soundtrack. When I thought back, carefully, homing in on the details of his behaviour, a clearer picture began to form of his usage of those pills. If I was honest with myself, it was not limited to filming periods only. He took them often, and sometimes in the day, before a stressful meeting, after a long lunch. As I reassessed the patterns, I recalled that this pill bottle, with its grubby label, had lurked in every scene of our past, like a sinister motif in a film noir. It was subtle but re-occurring, and it peppered our lives: in his suitcase, in his briefcase, in his bedside cabinet, in his desk drawers, in hotel bathrooms. It had been everywhere, but I had not wanted to see it. I had not wanted to see it.
