Fear

by Nina Manning

  I walked into town and headed straight into Brian’s shop. I looked at the silver halter neck dress I had been eyeing up in the window for weeks and handed over almost half of my wages. The top I thought Todd would want to see me in was nothing in comparison to this beauty.

  Brian looked intrigued. ‘You wearing that tonight, doll? You’ll be the belle of the ball.’

  I smiled all the way home, clutching the brown paper bag with the dress in it, and thinking of Todd’s face when he saw me in it.

  19

  Now

  I didn’t receive any strange text messages over the weekend and so by Monday, with Kiefer’s birthday done and dusted, I hoped things would start to simmer down.

  But lying in bed at 6 a.m. on Monday, when I heard my phone ping, I felt my gut tighten.

  So many lives ruined

  I read the words and felt the weight of them.

  I resisted sending back a response and considered whether I should block the number. So far there was no malice in the messages.

  My mind started to wander, and I began to piece together the details of the events leading up to receiving the first text message. There had been a lingering feeling since that first message that read:

  Hope you enjoyed yourself last night

  Along with Penelope’s description of the man I was talking to in the Chambers and the location of the Bliss offices it was glaringly obvious to me who the sender was. But I had been distracting myself and trying not to consider why he would want to contact me after so long. I knew there was unfinished business. I had been holding onto the emotions from 1998 for two decades, unable to file them away under ‘history’ or ‘completed’ because they weren’t. That night so many lives changed but there hadn’t been any closure. I didn’t get to say goodbye. And I had carried that feeling with me all this time, like a letter I kept forgetting to post; it loitered around me every day.

  Damian began to stir beside me. I put my phone on to charge and got up and went to the shower. When I arrived back in the room he was gone. I could hear the sound of the kids making their usual morning racket, protests about which cereal they wanted and who was going to sit where. I felt a huge wave of relief that Damian was downstairs dealing with it and all I had to do was get dressed and walk to work.

  I could not face any breakfast this early. I had been drinking last night and now the clouds were moving in across my cranium and would stay there until later when I could have another drink or sleep it off. I already knew I wouldn’t be doing the latter.

  I walked through into the kitchen to grab my work bag and my stomach gurgled at the sight of the empty cereal bowls and toast crusts all over the island. I looked at Damian, who was deep into something on his phone. He was dressed in running gear.

  ‘Why are you wearing that?’ I asked him.

  Damian raised his head from his phone and looked down at himself.

  ‘I’m going running, Frank, it’s what people do.’

  ‘People, yes. Not you.’

  ‘You don’t know what I do any more.’ Damian put his phone in a small pocket on his gym top, turned and walked past me; as he did his arm brushed against mine in what felt like an aggressive manner.

  ‘Well,’ I turned to the kids. ‘Everyone have a wonderful day,’ I said in my sunniest voice. It felt painful to be so enthusiastic.

  ‘Bye, Mummy,’ Pixie said, giving me a cuddle, and I took a moment to let my daughter melt into my arms as I inhaled the scent of her hair.

  ‘Mummy.’ Maddox tried to cling on to me for too long and I could feel my outfit crumpling.

  ‘Okay, that’s enough, sticky fingers. Mummy loves you. See you tonight.’

  I rounded the end of our road and thought back to when this area was a lot more run down. We would rush around as kids and not care how it looked. Every road, path and patch of grass was our playground.

  It now housed a lot of families who, like Damian and I, even though we were surviving on one income, weren’t as stressed as we could have been had we not bagged a bargain ten years ago.

  I turned the corner which would take me over the bridge and into town. The Bliss offices were located at the top end of Bridgewater Way. I had been avoiding this end for many years. I knew what I would find there, and from a distance it was visible, so I always took the route straight up Mill Road and headed round. I knew I needed to face it soon. And I would. Just as soon as I could find the confidence to go back twenty years and face the past.

  On this particular morning, I took my usual route up Mill Road by all the main clothes shops and coffee houses. As I headed past the small hotel where I worked as a kid, I practically bumped into a woman coming out of one of the doors. She didn’t see me because she was fumbling for something in her handbag as she raced out of the door and straight into me. When she looked up, her hand still poised in her handbag, our eyes locked for a second and recognition flashed across her face. It was apparent it was too late to look away, to pretend she hadn’t seen me the way she had been doing for twenty years. There was a moment between us when we could have both said something, but neither of us did. It was over before it started as she pushed her way past me and down the street. I turned to watch her leave. I noticed how she was dressed: soft linen trousers with flat ballet shoes, her dark hair tied up in a messy bun that looked as though it took hours to perfect. The pangs of guilt and grief that resonated around my body were painful. I wanted to reach out and touch her, the way we used to do so effortlessly. I had always admired her and looked up to her like a big sister or motherly figure. Because back then, without my parents’ effort in any part of our upbringing, Reese was the one I would turn to; her advice, along with Kiefer’s, was what I had listened to the most.

  I was aching with nostalgia that was so painful, for the loss of what could have been. For all the stupid mistakes I made that affected so many lives, Reese’s, my parents’, Kiefer’s. So when I stumbled through the door of Bliss and found myself face to face with Mason, I was lost for words, my mind jumbled up with the morning’s incident and all the things I wished I had said but hadn’t.

  ‘Frankie?’ Mason spoke softly and I felt his hand on my shoulder. ‘Is everything okay?’ He ushered me into the doorway of his office.

  ‘I, yes, it’s fine. I just need to get some coffee.’ I couldn’t look at Mason, my mind was racing with so many thoughts.

  ‘Sit, I’ll make you one.’ He walked into his office. I followed shakily, closed the door and fell into the nearest seat on the end of his conference table. He brought me coffee. Then he sat down in the chair next to me.

  ‘Thanks,’ I mumbled, already feeling ridiculous for causing such a fuss when I should just get to my desk and get on with my work.

  ‘You can’t start the day like that. Take a moment, drink the coffee. Hopefully you’ll feel better.’

  Mason sat back in his chair and put his hands behind his head.

  I didn’t open up to Mason, even though I had an overwhelming desire to fall into his arms and for him to hold me and whisper into my hair that everything was going to be okay.

  Instead I just said. ‘I bumped into someone from my past this morning. Literally bumped into her. We haven’t spoken for twenty years. It’s really complicated, and it just set me back a bit, that’s all.’

  ‘I understand. Well, not fully, obviously, but I know how it feels when you see someone you can’t speak to or haven’t spoken to for so long, yet there are all these words forming in your mouth waiting to be said, going stale, going to waste.’

  I looked up at Mason over my coffee and he was looking past me as he spoke, and I realised he was off somewhere else entirely, thinking of the stories of his own life.

  ‘I’ll be fine. It was just a shock. This coffee is helping, though,’ I said, already feeling better.

  ‘Okay. Well, try not to mull it over too much. Sometimes we just need to be able to let go of the past.’

  I looked at Mason, waiting to see if he would offer s
omething else. He had told me he knew there was more to me than I was offering. Should I open up? Maybe he was the one who could help take away the pain and anxiety.

  ‘So, this trip away?’ Mason said quickly. ‘Did you get a chance to think about it?’

  I felt a sense of loss that we hadn’t been able to talk about the things I really needed to say. Perhaps there would be an opportunity in Belgium.

  ‘Yes, yes, absolutely,’ I said. I knew that time away from one another was exactly what Damian and I needed.

  ‘Have you been able to clear it with your husband? A few days away with the boss!’ Mason said jovially.

  I thought about Damian this morning and his lack of love, the way he insinuated I didn’t know him at all.

  ‘Absolutely,’ I smiled.

  I had heard my phone ping on the way to my desk, and when I sat down I opened my text messages.

  Enjoying your job?

  It was the same number again.

  I texted back an impulse text.

  Who the hell are you and stop sending cryptic texts? I can block you in an instant

  Thirty seconds passed before the reply came in.

  That’s exactly your style isn’t it? You think you can just make the problem go away?

  I tried to put the face to the texts. The face of the person I had been avoiding for so long who was the only person I could think of right now who must be responsible for the messages. Surely they were just as angry and confused as I was. I had been harbouring the guilt for so long. If only I had listened to Kiefer that day, everything could have been so different.

  20

  Now

  ‘You want to go away for three days with a man you have only just met?’

  I had just arrived home and decided to broach the subject straight away with Damian. Then I watched as his face turned a light beetroot colour.

  ‘He’s not just some man, though, is he, Damian, he is my employer and I have to go for work.’

  ‘Oh, right, you just have to swan off to Belgium for three days for work reasons whilst I stay here looking after the kids.’

  ‘Well, yeah? They are eight and nearly four. They can’t really look after themselves, can they?’

  ‘Glad you find it funny, Frank.’

  ‘So, are you saying I can’t go, Damian?’ I asked facetiously.

  ‘I’m just wondering why it suddenly came about and why silver fox man – yep, don’t worry, I Googled him – has suddenly decided he needs to sweep you off to Belgium for three days?’

  I looked at Damian with wide eyes.

  ‘You Googled him?’

  ‘Yes, Frank, it’s a thing. People do it.’

  ‘Okaaay. Well, I’m going to Belgium because Mason believes I have proved myself to be a worthy asset and he wants me to be in on the buying.’

  ‘A worthy asset, and what about your assets around here, like ummm, oh yeah, your kids? Maybe you should consider being here for them more instead of running out of the house at the crack of dawn.’ Damian ran his hands through his hair frantically.

  I took a deep breath and instead of exhaling all the venom I had wished to dump all over Damian I simply blew it away and turned to leave.

  I felt Damian’s hand reach down to grab mine. He squeezed it tightly. I felt shocked by his touch; it had been so long since we had touched one another through love or anger.

  ‘What’s going on, Frank?’ he whispered, as the kids were in the snug watching TV. He moved his head closer to mine. Damian and I both looked at his hand on mine at the same time just as he released his grip and took a step back.

  ‘I know it’s the time of year, Frankie. I know it’s a big anniversary this weekend. Why are you acting like this? When are you going to have some proper therapy?’

  ‘When were you going to mention Kiefer’s birthday?’

  ‘I can’t remember every little detail, can I? Besides, it’s all one isn’t it, his birthday, the crash?’

  ‘Yes, he died a few days after his birthday. What do you mean, it’s all one? They are two separate events, which I like to have time to think about individually. And besides, Damian, I have had my therapy,’ I said through gritted teeth.

  ‘Writing in those poxy diaries wasn’t therapy, Frankie.’

  ‘I did more than write in poxy diaries, Damian, and you know it. Have you ever looked in my diaries?’

  ‘No, of course not, what do you take me for? How would I be able to anyway when they are locked up in Fort bleeding Knox.’

  I thought of the safe I kept in the walk-in wardrobe in our room, where the diaries sat, untouched, unlooked at for nearly twenty years. I was suddenly drawn to them, an unhealthy desire to go back and reread the words of a messed-up teenager. But I wasn’t sure I could.

  ‘I need an early night,’ I said, and walked away up the stairs.

  I arrived in our bedroom and instantly, as though Damian had instigated the urge, I felt a pull towards the wardrobe. It had been so long; I felt I needed to remind myself that I had come so far. I was a mess back then. A total mess. I still cowered at siren sounds and I watched Damian like a hawk when he drove. I got my car checked over every three months at the garage. I wasn’t any good in a plane either these days. I didn’t take my first flight until I was twenty-four. Damian and I flew to Ibiza but as soon as I got inside that plane my throat seized up and my arms went weak and floppy.

  The grim metal outer casing of the safe glared at me. After I had finished writing in the final diary I locked them up in the safe that had belonged to my dad and they had remained there ever since. When Damian and I finally moved in together, I had to explain what was in there and that I had no intention of opening it again, yet I needed to keep them close to me.

  The code to the safe was a number that had been engraved on my brain since that night. For years, whenever I went anywhere, I would see portions of that number together, the first three digits or the last ones, it was freaky and bothered me for ages as though it was some weird sort of sign. I moved towards the safe and reached out. I turned the dial, a nudge to the left, a nudge to the right, until I heard the safe click open. Twenty years ago, I locked those diaries up, and I hadn’t seen them since. I wondered if they were even in there, whether Damian had worked out the combination, perhaps I shouted it out in my dreams. He’d probably seen every crazy thing I ever wrote in them.

  I pulled the handle just an inch and as I did so I got a flash of the contents; my heart leapt into my chest as I slammed the door. I moved away from the safe and sat on the end of the bed with my head bent, hands clutching the side of the mattress. Why couldn’t I bear to look at those diaries? Why couldn’t I find the strength to face the past?

  Damian was so very right about everything. I was far from well, and in a few days’ time, when the darkness came, I would be as ill-prepared as I was every single year.

  The next morning I made an effort to get up early and be ready by 7 a.m. to go into the kids’ rooms and wake them. Damian’s words had cut me last night and I wanted to make an effort, I needed them all to see that I was trying and that I was a good mother.

  I laid out pancakes and smoothies and I got the good maple syrup out of the cupboard. Pixie sat up, bleary eyed, and Maddox stayed in his pyjamas as he didn’t have preschool. They both looked like startled sparrows initially, sharing a conspicuous look with each other which I found endearing; they were a true brother and sister team and my heart pounded for the love they had for one another. Eventually, when they had got over the shock of Mummy cooking them breakfast on a school morning, they tucked in hungrily and Pixie started to chat away animatedly about what she had planned at school today. I listened intently, and nodded in all the right places, peppering her chitter with relevant questions.

  ‘Does this mean you can play with me today, Mummy? I want you to play with me, not Daddy.’ Maddox looked up at me with his beautiful brown eyes.

  ‘I’d love to, sweetie, but I have to go to work and so Daddy will play with y
ou now and I will play with you when I come home from work, how about that?’

  ‘Okay.’ Maddox looked down at his pancake.

  Damian walked in, greeted the kids and tried to steal a bit of Pixie’s pancake. She squealed and laughed at his audacity then he walked over to the stove and helped himself, pouring what I considered to be an indecent amount of maple syrup over three pancakes.

  ‘This is a novelty, having Mummy here for breakfast,’ Damian said and shimmied onto his stool by the island.

  ‘What’s a novelty?’ sang Pixie.

  ‘A novelty is something that is brand new that we haven’t experienced before,’ Damian addressed Pixie, ‘But it also means we like it,’ he said and looked at me. For a second something passed between us, something familiar, a look that was heavily laden with meaning and more than that, hope. Damian was pleading with me to continue this. But I already knew I would let everyone down again by the end of the day.

  I arrived at work at quarter to eight. As I reached my desk my phone let out its familiar ping. By now I was becoming accustomed to the messages which were coming in regularly.

  I sat down at my desk. There was no one in the office, not even Alan today and Carys the receptionist didn’t start until 8.30, and I hadn’t seen Mason in his office when I walked past. I sat down in my chair. Only some of the main lights were on, which meant half of the office was in partial darkness. The whole place felt eerily barren and I looked round at the vastness of the room and the large imposing desks and furniture, wondering if indeed I was alone.