by Beth Moran
Marilyn shifted about a bit, and fiddled with her hair in the mirror.
“Your sister’s here, isn’t she?” I asked. “The one who looks after Pete and Nancy every choir practice. Who believes being in a choir means you actually do some singing, rather than sit about knitting and tapping your feet.”
“No comment.” She pulled back her shoulders and smoothed down her dress. “But if any of you lot blab, that’s the last time you’ll taste my chocolate squares.”
“Our lips are sealed,” Leona called out across the room. “Right, girls?”
Hester burst in, wearing a black suit with a silver shirt underneath. “They’d better not be! No sealed lips here, thank you. Apart from you.” She pointed at Marilyn.
We lined up ready to take our places downstairs, skirts rustling with anticipation. Hester stood at the head of the queue and raised her chin. “Sing as if this is the last time you ever will, not the first.”
“I hope it is the last time we sing this carol!” Janice said. “I’m right sick of it. Those glowing hearts and angel voices. In all our trials born to be our friend – this’ll be a trial if we sing it much longer.”
“As I was saying,” Hester rapped out. “Sing as if it’s the last time you will ever get to sing. And as if it is the first time you truly understand these words. A thrill of hope! O night divine! Think about how the best song you ever heard made you feel. How your heart sped up and your skin tingled and your ears strained to catch every glorious, beautiful note. Ladies, you have the chance to lift eighty spirits out of the mundane clamour and clatter of life. To make them forget their stress and their sorrow, their broken dreams and bad-tempered bosses. To switch off their phone and step into something timeless and magnificent. Give it everything you’ve got. And do not sing one note like startled chickens, drowning hippopotami, or lifelong losers!”
She paused, looking around at the choir all spruced up like Christmas trees, then whipped one hand out from behind her back and stuck a silver tinsel wig on top of her helmet hair. “Rock it out, choir! You’re going to blow their novelty Christmas socks off.”
In the candlelit hall, featuring an eight-foot tree decorated with silver bows on one side, and a squished together group of children in tea-towel headdresses and angel wings on the other, we did indeed, ladies and gentlemen, rock it out. I watched carefully, but to my surprise saw no blown-off novelty socks.
The best four minutes and thirty-eight seconds of my life. I looked out at the crowd, on their feet, clapping and cheering, and I felt just about as full of personal power as it is possible to get.
There being no available chairs, we scooted round and leaned against the back wall for the last few minutes of the service. Dylan gave a short talk dressed in a pair of faded jeans and a jumper with a badly knitted snowman on the front. He was engaging and funny, warm and earnest. I felt a pinch of pride at my friend’s ability to capture the crowd and hold their attention while he spoke about the power of hope.
Note my casual use of the word friend. Not like the rest of the sad and sorry women of Grace Chapel who had a pathetic and ridiculous crush on the manly minister.
I absolutely did not think that the best thing about Dylan’s talk was having an excuse to stare at his scruffy hair, crinkly eyes, and broad shoulders for twelve minutes. That never even crossed my mind, no sir.
I cornered Polly in the side hall afterwards. She was hunched over and huddled up, her baby bump the only part of her that wasn’t skin and bones. A man I assumed to be her husband loomed at her side. He had slicked-back hair and a smart shirt on over skinny jeans. When I said hello, he held out one hand to shake mine.
“Hi. I’m Tony. Polly’s husband.”
“Faith.” Pleased to meet you, scumbag. It’s good to remind myself that evil, violent women-haters come in all shapes and brands of denim.
“Polly, Rosa is leaving in a few minutes and she needs the dress back. Are you able to come and get changed now?”
I caught her eyes darting to Tony, the flash of fear, the need for approval. “Um. Is that okay? I’ll only be a couple of minutes.”
Tony snickered. It sounded like a hissing cockroach. “Of course. Take your time. I’ll be right here waiting.”
We excused our way through the clusters of people enjoying their mince pies and mulled wine, and went upstairs.
“Where’s everybody else?” Polly made a beeline for her bag, sitting on one of the chairs in the corner of the room.
“Probably enjoying the refreshments. I lied about having to get changed. Rosa’s happy to pick up the dresses at rehearsal next week.”
“What?” Instantly Polly’s shoulders pulled up tight around her chin as she crossed her arms over her bump.
I ignored her. “Can you unzip me, please?”
After a moment’s hesitation, Polly unzipped me out of my dress. Shrugging it off, I pulled on my jeans and turned to face her, leaving my four-inch collarbone scar and my terrifying stomach slash-scar on full display. “Did you listen to Dylan’s talk, about hope?”
Polly visibly cringed now, her eyes looking anywhere but at my mutilated body.
“I know you feel trapped. You feel as though you have no hope. You think it is your fault. That if you act better, stop forgetting things, listen to his instructions properly, stop being so irritating… then he won’t hurt you any more. It is a lie, Polly. He is never going to stop. I know you think you love him, you need him. But you have to think of your baby now. I can help you.” My voice broke. “Please let me help you.”
She bent down, hands fumbling with the buttons on her maternity dress. “How dare you speak to me like that? How dare you say these things about me? About Tony? He is a good husband. He loves me. You know nothing about it. Or me. I am not one of those women. I am not! Don’t ever speak to me about this again.”
She ripped off her outfit as she spoke, revealing a glimpse of the purple blotches I had spotted earlier before she pulled on her high-necked, long-sleeved sweater and frumpy black trousers. “Stay out of my business, Faith! How dare you suggest I would put my baby in danger!”
I kept my voice soft, my tears in check. “Don’t you think your baby is in danger when he hits you?”
“Shut up!”
“I just want to help you, Polly. I know what it’s like. I’ve been in your situation –”
“I am nothing like you!” she screamed, grabbing her bag and throwing the dress at me as she pushed past. “Nothing.”
Chapter Eleven
My second scar, the stomach slash-scar, was given to me ten months after the first. Nearly a year of bowing, scraping, surrendering, and disappearing inside myself as Snake ruled our household with a tattooed fist and crack-fuelled temper. Sam lurched from day to day, seeking oblivion from the pain of the past and the present in the only way he knew how. I worked, cowered in my bedroom, and tried, tried, tried to keep the peace, my sanity, and my brother alive.
The money tin grew heavier.
I had to get out of there.
Beside myself with stress, exhaustion, and wretched self-loathing, I began walking. At first, to get away from the poisoned fumes swirling through every room of Grandma’s house, to avoid the yellowed, withered near-corpses queuing up for another hit of death. To escape the stench of despair, including my own.
But after a while, as my muscles embraced the miles and my body grew sturdier, my breathing deep again, I found my eyes began to open. To the vibrancy of the rapeseed in the meadow, or the tomato-coloured chest of the robin on a branch. The perfect swirl of snail shells, clinging to verdant hedgerows. The beauty in the butter-coloured cornfields framed with thickets, the silvery-brown stream bubbling by.
My ears, dimmed by the slap of cruel words amid jarring chaos, retuned themselves to the melody of birdsong, the soothing paradiddle of rain on the treetops, the laughter of the river as it cavorted under the open sky.
My expanding, unclogging lungs sucked in the scent of the honeysuckle, the sw
eet and sour of the autumn muck-spreading, the deep musk of moss upon the chestnut trunks.
Slowly, as the weeks went by, as the fresh promise of spring gave way to summer, I mapped the hills and hideaways with my worn-down trainers and I remembered. I remembered, and in many ways became aware for the first time, that life is not all murky shadows, turmoil, and unravelling ruin. There is life beyond fear and loss and foul menace. I learned to appreciate the caress of sunshine on my skin, treasure the peace of a stunning vista, and relish the anonymity of a summer storm.
Yes, walking saved my life. Pacing, pounding, moving, journeying amongst a million of nature’s companions. None of whom demanded anything of me, judged me, or tried to control me.
So after the second scar, walking gave me the strength to walk right out.
Snake decided I was hiding something. He refused to believe my walks were just walking. Every man who crossed my path became a suspect, and as I increasingly developed the strength to avoid his bed, he grew even more distrustful. Pumping himself full of paranoia-inducing, mind-destroying chemicals only made things worse, and he convinced himself I had become pregnant. On a particularly bad trip one night, he tried to destroy the non-existent evidence of my affair with a bread knife.
Snake drove off in a fury, leaving me curled up on the bedroom floor. Sam patched the gash – mercifully shallow but still bleeding profusely – with surgical tape and Disney princess plasters. Once finished, he gathered my paltry belongings and threw them into an old school bag. It was time.
“Come with me, Sam.”
“What?” He paused, kneeling on the bedroom floor to tie my shoes.
“Come with me. Start again, just you and me. No Snake and no drugs.”
“This is our house. Grandma’s house,” he said. “No it isn’t.
Not any more. You know that. And it’s destroyed anyway. The house doesn’t matter. We matter. Staying alive matters. Being free from him matters.”
He lifted his gaze to meet mine, raw fear swirling amidst the desolation in his eyes.
“Come with me, Sam. Don’t make me do this alone.” I placed my hand upon the top of his arm.
A tear ran down his emaciated face. He bowed his head.
“Please, Sam. We can do this. Please. If I leave you here, you’ll die, and then I’ll have no one.”
He finished tying my shoe.
“You can do this, Rachel. Go and find the life she saved us for.”
“I don’t want to go without you.”
There was a long silence. “If I come, I’ll bring this with us. Not Snake, but someone just like him. I’m the problem here. You’re better off without me. You know you’re better off without me.”
Reaching forwards, he picked my phone up off the bed. I stood up gingerly, slowly balancing my bag on one shoulder. For the second time, my brother phoned the police to save me. The last thing I heard as I let myself out was his careful recitation of the long, dangerous list of illegal substances currently stored in Grandma’s pantry.
They arrested Sam that afternoon, round about the time I bought my train ticket to London. He eventually got transferred to a secure hospital, where once free of drugs he learned to draw, then paint, to ease the panic in his head.
Snake spent a couple of nights in jail before his evil henchmen posted bail and he got straight back to business. Two months later he skipped town for good.
Would I have returned then, had I known? Returned to the wreckage of my childhood home? The House of Hideous Memories?
Left my current job in London, waiting tables for depraved old men who called me Anna, wearing next to no clothes and a bleak smile?
Perhaps.
I now lived alone, on pennies plus the tips earned allowing greasy, gross men to fawn over me, sleeping in a bedsit with intermittent electricity, reliably non-existent heating, and a bathroom I shared with eight other people, all of whom terrified me to the point of vomiting.
But I thought I was free. Believed myself to be in control, having started again with a new life, calling myself a new name. I would not, and did not, go home to save my life. So why did I go back three years later? The same reason I did most things – to save my brother.
In the end I spent the first half of Christmas Day with Sam and April. We walked four miles through the fields in the morning before cooking roast chicken and pecan pie in my cramped kitchen while Sam dozed on the sofa. To give her credit, April pulled her weight in between her numerous smoking breaks. She had even bought me a present – a wedding planner book. I had to smile as I pictured myself wrapping it back up and giving it to Larissa, but I begrudgingly appreciated the thought, and what it had cost her.
Perry arrived at four to take me to HCC for a late dinner with his parents. He shook hands with a deflated Sam and grinned at April, waiting for them to leave before saying, “I’ve got an idea. Why don’t we skip dinner and stay here? We can veg out on the sofa watching cheesy Christmas specials and eat junk food until we can’t get up again.”
“An excellent plan. Let’s do it,” I said, playing along with the joke.
He pretended to hand me his phone. “You call Mother and let her know we can’t be bothered to come while I open the chocolates.”
“On second thoughts, I’ll get my coat.”
Parked outside sat a shiny red car. It had a tiny back seat and a soft top, so I guess that made it expensive.
“Wow. Is this your Christmas present?”
Perry grinned at me. “No. It’s yours.” He held out the keys. “Happy Christmas, Faith.”
My astonishment puffed out in a cloud of wintry vapour.
“What?”
“I’m giving you this car for Christmas.”
“But I can’t afford a car. I can’t afford the insurance, or tax. I can’t afford the petrol.”
“The insurance is set for the year. As is the tax. And you can finally use the credit card I gave you for wedding purchases to buy petrol. You can’t refuse. It’s part of the present.”
I ogled this ridiculous, ostentatious, flashy car and tried to pull my jaw back up into an acceptable position. Perry could easily afford it. I knew men like him bought their girlfriends things like this for Christmas. I even knew he wouldn’t mind a couple of books, a jumper, and a homemade voucher promising to cook him a monthly slap-up meal in return.
“I’m sorry. This car is… something else. But I can’t accept it.”
“Go on, tell me why. I have a perfect counter-argument for every possible reason you might use to reject this.”
“Perry, I can’t drive.”
He smiled, leaning forwards to kiss me as he opened the passenger door and took out two magnetic learner plates. “First time for everything.”
Maybe, but despite his protests, today was not going to be the first time I took the wheel. Let alone the wheel of a fifty-thousand pound sports car. We compromised: he would drive, if I kept the present.
“Fine. But I’m choosing who gives me lessons.” I slid into the passenger seat. “And Perry? Thank you. I really, really appreciate this.”
“You’re welcome. I consider you absolutely worth it.”
Really? I consider you absolutely wrong.
Dinner included sixteen Uppertons and me. I managed to wangle a seat near my bridesmaid, Natasha, but that meant sitting opposite Great-Uncle Russell. At least two hundred years old, it soon became apparent that he had lost his inhibitions, his social graces, and quite possibly his marbles, along with all his hair and most of his teeth.
He complimented Perry several times on his fine choice of “filly”, declaring redheads to be “red hot like a chilli pepper”. This caused my skin to provide a visual demonstration of red-hotness, so when he asked me about my “bloodline” the extreme discomfort was perhaps a little less apparent.
“Yes, Faith,” Larissa said. “Tell us about your family.”
I had been skilfully sidestepping this question for months. This time I knew I had to say something.
“My mum died when I was six, so my grandma brought me up after that. I also have a brother, Sam. He’s an artist.”
“Oh, how awful!” Natasha exclaimed. “Not that your brother’s an artist. Your mum. How did she die?”
Did Uppertons not do tact or discretion?
“It was pretty sudden. She had an accident.” She accidentally decided to run away the night her live-in monster’s football match got cancelled, so he came home early and caught her.
“And what about your poor father?” another relative asked, whose name I’d forgotten, confirming the whole table now listened to the conversation.
“Children are better off being raised by a woman.” Great-Uncle Russell nodded at me. “Sensible decision, parcelling you off to Grandma’s.”
“That must have been terrible for him.” Natasha looked at me with wide eyes. I tried not to visibly squirm. “Losing your mother and then you moving away.”
I took a steadying breath, reciting my rehearsed response in a hollow voice. “We were living with my stepdad. I didn’t know him very well, so moving to Grandma’s felt best.”
“So you don’t see your real dad? Where does he live?”
Like I said: no tact in this family. Or ability to read body language, apparently. I scanned the room in panic, wishing fervently to be back on the other side of the bar.
“Um. Excuse me, I need to make a phone call.” Pushing back my chair, I made a scrambled exit from the private dining room, collapsing back against the wall outside while my pulse stabilized. I heard Larissa’s strident tones sail out after me: “Honestly, Peregrine. It’s not too late to reconsider.”
I ducked into one of the smaller meeting rooms, leaning my head against the cold glass of the full-length window and closing my eyes.
“Faith!” a man’s voice whispered. Turning round, I saw Mike, the waiter, standing near the doorway.
“Hi, Mike. Happy Christmas. How’s it going?”
“I’m spending the day serving other people Christmas dinner. Could be better.”
