by Fiona Harper
When they’ve finished, they bundle up the towels and wait. But it’s only a minute or two before the water starts to pool again. Jason frowns and walks up and down the corridor, Heather watching him silently.
‘I think it’s coming from under here,’ he says, stopping in front of the door to the spare room, and before she can prevent him, he tries the handle. Heather leaps forward. Sure enough, she can see clear water seeping from underneath the door, spreading in every direction once it meets the cheap laminate flooring of the hall. He turns to look at her. ‘Have you got the key?’
Her mouth moves and no sound comes out.
‘Because if you’ve got anything of value in there, we really ought to move it.’
Heather is about to say there’s nothing she wants from that room, that she’d be happy if it was all swept away on the tide and never seen again, but then an icy feeling spikes through her. Her mother’s papers. The newspaper clippings she knows must be in there but hasn’t found yet – they’re her only hope for answers. She nods, so far past the point of panic that she’s reached an eerie state of numbness, and runs to get the key from the desk.
She pauses as she slides it into the lock, her hands shaking. Her voice shakes too when she speaks. ‘There are important family papers in here, in… um, storage,’ and because she can’t think of any other explanation for what he’s about to see, because she can already imagine the water sneaking in and turning the secrets of her past to soggy mush, she turns the key and opens the door, knowing that this will be the last time she’ll ever be able to daydream about her upstairs neighbour, that after this the engulfing shame will prevent even that. Maybe she’ll move, find a studio flat closer to work.
But Jason doesn’t say anything, doesn’t react at all. He doesn’t move either, scanning the room before he dives in. He points to the left-hand side of the room, where the painted lining paper is glistening slightly. ‘It’s coming down the wall over there,’ he says, and glances at her apologetically. ‘Must be my dodgy shower after all. Sorry.’
Heather just shakes her head and dives for the nearest box of stuff. For the first time in her life, she’s grateful for her mother’s addiction to plastic storage containers. Not all the stuff is stored that way – some is in cardboard boxes and bin liners – but a lot of it is. Switching herself onto automatic, she grabs a crate from the left-hand side of the room and places it against the far wall in the hallway, and then another and another, trying to clear a path as quickly as she can to the more vulnerable items.
It’s only when she becomes aware that Jason is following her lead, that he’s silently collecting crates and boxes and adding them to the stack against the wall, that ‘coping mode’ begins to subside and the reality of the situation seeps back in.
‘This… This isn’t my stuff,’ she says breathlessly as she picks up another item and clutches it to her chest. ‘It’s my mother’s.’
Jason just nods. Either he’s concentrating on the job in hand or he’s so appalled that he’s speechless, but his phone beeps before she can explain any further or tell him this stuff has nothing to do with her. Absolutely nothing at all.
‘The plumber’s outside,’ he says, glancing up at her. ‘I’ll go and let him in.’
Heather keeps working when the plumber comes in. She doesn’t look at him. It seems one stranger in her flat this evening is as much as she can handle. Thankfully, they don’t stay long. Once Jason has shown him her spare bedroom and the steady glistening waterfall down the wall, they both plod upstairs to his flat, presumably to deal with the source of the problem.
Now she’s alone again, Heather ventures deeper into the room, to the bit where the water came in and, as sod’s law would have it, where the most chaotic section of the hoard is.
The two men don’t return for ages, giving her a chance to deal with the worst of the soggy mess, the most shameful area. Deep in the corner she finds a cardboard box so wet it’s barely holding together. She removes the top layer and finds a collection of framed prints of big-eyed children she presumes her mother rescued from a charity shop or a car-boot fair, but underneath she hits pay dirt.
There are scores of newspaper clippings in the bottom of the box. She picks the top one up. Even though it’s so wet that the tiny black words on the front are merging into those on the back, she can still read the headline: LOCAL GIRL FOUND. Maybe she can dry it out? With a hairdryer or maybe on the radiator? The flat will boil if she turns the central heating on, given the fact that June is actually behaving like June and not October for once, but she doesn’t care about that.
However, as she tries to unfold it, revealing the same school photograph of herself that was used in the first report, the paper starts to disintegrate. ‘No, no, no!’ she chants, frantically trying to hold it in such a way as to prevent any further damage, but the newsprint is too fragile now, stretched to its limit by the weight of the invading water, and her younger self starts to melt into her fingers.
‘Everything okay in there?’
Heather jumps, destroying the clipping further. She turns to find Jason standing in the doorway and she nods. He goes on to explain that the plumber has done a stopgap fix she doesn’t really understand, involving pipes and connections, and adds that he’ll be back on Monday to do a proper job. Jason then looks down at the grey mush in her hands. ‘Is that important?’
She looks down. It’s all gone, all that information, that possibility of working out why her mother did what she did and how Heather can stop herself turning out the same way. She feels like crying but instead she just shakes her head, her expression neutral, revealing nothing. She drops the soggy article into the cardboard box and picks it up. ‘It’s just old newspapers… Stuff my mum saved.’
‘Well, there’s no use stacking these with the rest and making them damp too. I’ll put it out by the bin if you like?’
He holds out his hands. Heather can’t seem to make herself pass him the box.
‘The whole lot is ruined, right?’
She nods. It can’t be anything but. The bottom of the box, which is pressing against her midriff and making a damp circle on her pyjamas, is wetter than the top. The pages of newsprint are practically floating in there.
She wants to tell him to leave it, to let her keep this one thing, even if he doesn’t understand – causing her to sound more like her mother than she’d ever wish to – but how can she? She has no sane explanation for doing so, not unless she spills the whole sorry story of her family from the time she was small, and that idea is even more abhorrent than discarding the box of what now looks like papier-mâché ready for pasting.
He gently eases it from her hands and disappears out of the front door. With nothing to clutch onto any longer, Heather hugs her arms around her middle, pressing the cold wet patch the box has left on her pyjama top against the goose pimples on her stomach. When Jason comes back, he finds her shivering, still in the same spot.
‘Oh, my God, you’re freezing!’ he says. ‘Come on, I’m making you a cup of tea.’ He places his hands on her shoulders and steers her towards her kitchen. She’s about to ask how he knows where it is, but then guesses it’s probably because his flat has a similar layout. He makes her sit down at the table then notices she’s trembling and so peels off his dressing gown and rests it on her shoulders – which leaves him in only the pyjama bottoms, revealing a toned and slightly tanned chest. Heather swallows and looks away, trying to hide the rising heat in her cheeks. If you’d have asked her yesterday to bet on the likelihood of there being a half-naked man in her kitchen, she’d have laughed so hard she’d have probably run out of oxygen and died.
He places two steaming mugs on the table, then sits down across from her. ‘Okay?’ he asks.
‘Yes,’ she says quietly. ‘Thank you so much for your help. I don’t know what I’d have done…’
‘Well, the fault did kind of arise in my flat,’ he says, giving her a rueful smile. ‘I could hardly do otherwise.’ He pa
uses for a moment then glances towards the hallway. ‘Do you think your stuff is going to be alright?’
‘It’s not mine!’ Heather says before remembering she doesn’t need to snap. ‘I mean, it belongs to my mother.’
‘That makes sense.’ Heather frowns, which he must spot because he adds: ‘Well, the room was so… What I mean is, the rest of your flat is spotless.’ He grimaces at her, apologizing for the implication of his words, and steers himself in a safer direction. ‘Did you say something about storing it for her?’
She shakes her head. ‘She died two years ago. It was… what was left in her house…’ She looks across the table at him. There’s a question in his eyes. She shrugs. ‘I just haven’t been able to face going through any of it.’
His mouth curves into the smallest of smiles. Not a happy one, or even a sympathetic one, but one of recognition. He nods. ‘It’s weird, isn’t it? How things connect you to people, to memories?’
Heather smiles back. What else can she do? He thinks he’s understood her but he hasn’t. He thinks she’s just like her mother. ‘I suppose I’d better try and mop up some more of that mess,’ she says, pushing her chair back. Just the thought of walking past the stuff in the hallway is making her feel jittery, but the sooner it goes back in there, the better.
Jason stands too. ‘Leave it,’ he says. ‘I spoke to Carlton. He’s arranging for a couple of his lads to come round and sort it out. There’s not much more we can do to make it any better at the moment. Besides, after all the drama, I’m starving. Do you want to grab some breakfast?’
‘Breakfast?’
He nods at the window. Heather’s been so busy focusing on the inside of her flat that she hasn’t thought to look outside. The sky is no longer dark; it’s a washed-out grey with a hint of blue. ‘I know a truckers’ café down on the A2 that’ll be open at this time of morning. How does a bacon sandwich sound?’
Heather’s stomach takes the opportunity to answer for her. Loudly.
Jason laughs. ‘Well, that’s agreed then. I’ll nip upstairs and get dressed and I’ll be back down here in ten.’
It’s only when he mentions clothes that Heather remembers he’s wearing next to nothing. Somehow, between him boiling the kettle and making breakfast plans, that must have slipped her mind.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
SUITCASE
It’s large and grey, big enough to climb inside and hide, but only if you’re little. At first glance, it looks like mottled grey leather, but closer inspection reveals it’s just imitation: thick, spongey plastic that tears more easily than it should. There are no wheels, just one handle at the top for carrying and two large buckled straps, but they’re more for show than anything else. If you need to depart quickly, you can leave them undone.
THEN
Heather is walking along the landing to the bathroom when she hears a noise in her mum and dad’s bedroom that makes her jump. She knows it’s not her mother in there because she’s watching TV downstairs. Heather can hear her shouting at Ian and Cindy in EastEnders for being such idiots. And it can’t be her dad because he’s at the office again, and Faith has gone up to London to see a play with her English class. That means someone else is in there. A stranger or a robber.
She glances towards the stairs. She’s the only person here to keep her mother safe, so even though she’s scared, she creeps along the landing, making hardly any noise.
The door to the bedroom is open, but instead of peeking round it, Heather sneaks up to where it joins the wall, and looks through the crack. There is a suitcase open on the bed and someone is piling things into it. Someone is stealing their stuff!
Heather jumps out from behind the door to confront them, preparing to scream the house down, but when she sees who it is, she stops. ‘Daddy?’
Her father is holding a carefully folded pair of trousers in his hands. He looks up as he places them gently into the case, where there is already a thin layer of clothes. ‘Hey, Sweetpea,’ he says with that sad look in his eyes.
‘I thought you were at work tonight,’ Heather says, then launches herself onto the bed and crawls up to the suitcase so she can see inside better.
‘I was,’ he says as he walks over to one of the big piles of clothes on top of the chest of drawers that almost reach the ceiling. He pulls a couple of shirts from somewhere near the middle. Even though they’re horribly creased, he lays them out on the bed and folds them. To Heather, it seems as if he’s performing the task in slow motion.
‘What are you doing?’ she asks, pushing herself onto all fours and bouncing so the mattress wobbles.
His hands are in the case, and he stops and looks up at his daughter. Only his eyes move. His hands grip the edges of the shirt. ‘I’m going away for a little while,’ he says quietly. ‘Don’t bounce on the bed, darling. It’s making it quite hard to pack.’
Heather tries her best to stay still. ‘For work?
He turns and reaches for a T-shirt from another pile, but this time he doesn’t do the slow-motion folding and just shoves it in any old how. ‘Heather, I—’
‘Oh, there you are.’
Heather turns to see her mother standing in the doorway.
‘Stephen? What are you doing?’
Heather jumps up, excited. ‘That’s what I said!’
Her mother’s head spins round. It’s as if she’s only just noticed her there. ‘Heather,’ she says, frowning. ‘Go and do your homework.’
‘I can’t,’ Heather replies. ‘I don’t get homework on weekdays. I’m too little.’
‘Well, then go and play in Faith’s room!’
Heather shakes her head. No way. Faith will kill her if she goes in there without permission. It says so on a sign she put on the door with BluTack. Heather turns to her father, hoping he’ll understand, but he sighs and says, ‘I think your mum and I could do with a little time to ourselves, Sweetpea.’
Heather scowls at them both. Not fair. She’s always being told to go away while people talk about secret things. She’s starting to get really fed up with it. She folds her arms and jumps off the bed with a thump and then stomps all the way along the landing and down the first part of the stairs, but when she reaches the little halfway landing, she stops, thinks for a moment, and turns round. Carefully and quietly she creeps back up the way she came, stopping just short of the bedroom door, and tucks herself into a narrow gap in the row of piles that lines the landing, hiding just like a super-secret spy would do.
Her mother is crying. ‘No, no, no,’ she says in between sobs. ‘Please. I’ll do better. I’ll try really, really hard!’
Her father sighs. ‘You’ve been saying that every month for the last few years.’
‘I know. I know I have, but this time I mean it, Stephen. I just let things get out of control for a while. You know things got harder for me after that thing with Heather.’
At the mention of her name, Heather’s stomach goes cold. A good spy would stay hidden, but she can’t resist getting closer. She can see her mother’s hand palm down on the mattress, but the rest of her is blocked by the door. Her father is standing by the suitcase. He hasn’t moved. It’s as if he’s guarding it.
‘I know,’ he says softly, ‘and that’s why I haven’t pushed it for so long but, seriously, Chris…’ His voice starts to crack. ‘I just don’t think I can take it any more. I can’t live like this. No one should have to.’
The only reply is a strangled little sob. Heather’s father disappears from view, and there is a squeak of springs as the mattress dips. Heather guesses her father has sat down next to her mother and has put his arm around her.
Heather holds her breath. It’s just dawned on her what all this is about, why her daddy is filling a suitcase. Tears roll down her cheeks. She wants to run back into the bedroom and cling onto him, to both of them, but now she knows she should move, but she can’t.
No one says anything for the longest time, and then her father lets out a shaky breath. ‘Okay,’ h
e says. He sounds weary – the kind of heavy-lidded tiredness Heather feels when she tries to stay up until midnight on New Year’s Eve. ‘But only if we all work to get the house cleared out – and I mean properly cleared out.’
Her mother starts crying again, but this time they sound like happier tears.
Faith told Heather once that where we only have one word for snow in English, in Inuit there are fifteen. Her sister says it’s because they live with snow so much they have names for all the different kinds, from big fat wet flakes to the dusty powder that flies in your face when you try to walk to school. Heather wonders if somebody should come up with some more English words for tears. There’s definitely a difference between the happy, sticky kind that come with a smile, like these ones, and the fat, silent ones that mean their mother is going to lie on the sofa for days and days and not get up.
‘I will!’ her mum says, and there’s a squishy kind of sound that makes Heather think her mother is kissing her father over and over on his face. ‘I’ll put in extra time, starting tomorrow—’
‘Chris. Chris…?’
‘What?’
‘You just trying harder isn’t going to work,’ Heather’s dad says seriously. ‘We’ve gone down that path before, haven’t we? Many, many times. I think I should take a couple of weeks off work and we’ll do the whole house together. It has to be gone, all of it, or I’m not staying.’ He pauses for a moment. ‘And I can’t leave the girls here either.’
There’s a long, thick silence then, the kind that only happens when people are talking to each other with their eyes. Heather’s feet finally unglue themselves from the landing carpet and she runs into the room and throws her arms around her parents. ‘I’ll help,’ she says, tears flowing down her face too. ‘I’ll be the best tidying helper ever!’
