Look What You Made Me Do

by Nikki Smith

  ‘Are Grandma or Auntie Caroline coming for lunch?’ Grace asks, fiddling with the strap on her sandal.

  ‘Not today, sweetheart.’ I keep telling myself that things will get easier, that I’ll think about it less, but at the moment guilt fills my brain, pushing everything else into a tiny gap at the side, making my head hurt. There’s a buzzing sound and Grace lets out a shriek as the wasp lands on her arm. I tell her to keep still as I lean over the table and flick it off. She rubs her skin, checking it hasn’t stung her as we both look around, waiting for it to come back. I wonder how much longer Paul is going to be and squint through the open door of the pub, trying to spot him. I can see him talking to Anna at the bar, but it’s another couple of minutes before he finally appears outside with a tray of drinks and picks up a large glass of lager.

  ‘Remember you’re driving,’ I say. ‘Grace, can you go and get your sister?’

  She runs off down the garden, her shoe still undone.

  ‘Don’t lecture me, Jo,’ he retorts. ‘It’s one glass. It’s been a stressful day.’ I can feel the distance between us grow a couple of inches wider as we sit in silence.

  ‘Is something the matter?’ I ask, eventually.

  He rubs his forehead, avoiding eye contact. ‘Just work. I’ve got a few issues with my biggest client.’ He takes another mouthful of lager. ‘How was your mum?’

  ‘Same as always,’ I say. ‘She’s had Dad’s hospital bed taken away.’ As I hear myself say the words, I realise that although I knew it would happen, the reality feels like someone has detached a part of my body. It takes a huge effort to blink back the tears that prick the back of my eyes.

  I can’t get the image of the floral pattern on Dad’s pillowcase and duvet cover out of my head; my mother’s crass attempt to brighten the room that towards the end had just served to highlight the greyness of his skin. I want to be able to talk to Paul about it, but I can’t. He wouldn’t understand. No one would. And although I keep thinking he’s pulling away from me, perhaps I am the one who is actually retreating. Shutting myself off so he can’t see what I’m trying to hide.

  ‘Caroline was there as well,’ I add quickly, needing to change the subject. ‘We discussed the business. Mum wants to sell it.’

  He looks at me. ‘Are you OK with that?’

  ‘I don’t have a choice. When Mum inherits Dad’s shares, she’ll be able to do what she wants. It’s not what Dad would have wanted, but you know my mother.’

  He smiles, briefly. ‘Yes. I do.’ The wasp returns, circling round his head. ‘Bloody things. They’re everywhere at the moment,’ he says, attempting to swat it away. I grab his hand mid-air, waiting until the insect lands on the table, then pick up my glass and bring it down hard, squashing it underneath, its body making an unpleasant crunching noise as the buzzing noise stops. He raises his eyebrows.

  ‘That was a bit brutal.’

  ‘It should have learned the first time,’ I say, pushing it off the table onto the patio where it lands on the ground in a curled-up ball. ‘Are you around on Tuesday to get the girls from school?’ I ask, changing the subject. ‘I’ve got to go to the solicitor’s with my mother.’

  ‘Sure,’ he says, pulling out his phone and putting it down on the table. ‘Do you know how much you get if the business is sold?’

  ‘I’ve no idea,’ I reply, ‘but I own ten per cent of the company so it should be enough to keep us going until I find another job.’

  ‘You’ll find something else.’

  ‘That’s not the point. We moved back here because Dad asked me to help save the business, not get rid of it.’ Paul stares at me, his eyes asking the questions that we’ve been over so many times before. ‘He’d just been diagnosed, Paul. He was desperate. What did you want me to say?’

  ‘There are other accountants, Jo. He could have found someone else.’

  ‘He could. But I’m the only one who knew how much the estate agency meant to him. And you weren’t exactly overwhelmed with work. You agreed that you could carry on web designing from anywhere; we didn’t have to be in Bristol.’ I stop myself before I say anything else, feeling the need to defend a decision which we made jointly, but which recently Paul has twisted into sounding as if it had been all mine.

  Paul hesitates, whatever he was about to say interrupted by the waiter arriving with the food. I remind myself that my salad has at least a thousand less calories than the burgers and chips that now look so much more appealing. He stands up, as if relieved to be able to get away, the tension between us easing as he walks off, as though someone had lifted up a blanket.

  I carry my jacket upstairs with me and put it away in my wardrobe as I tuck the girls into bed later that evening. I’m going to have to talk to Paul at some point about the contents of the letter that rustles in the pocket, but I need to find the right time.

  ‘Paul?’ I say, as he goes upstairs to kiss Livvi and Grace goodnight. ‘When we got back from the funeral and I went over to Anna’s to pick up the girls, were the lights on when you came in?’

  He frowns. ‘I can’t remember. Why?’

  ‘Anna said they were.’

  He shrugs. ‘Perhaps you left them on?’

  I hesitate, convinced I hadn’t. ‘Maybe.’ I listen to his footsteps as he goes first into Livvi’s bedroom, and then into Grace’s. She’s been finding it difficult to sleep since Dad died. She confides in Paul more than she does in me; he seems to be able to reassure her when I can’t find the right words.

  Livvi’s more easily distracted. I think she’s too young to understand the finality of death. She’s drawn pictures for Dad and pinned them up on our noticeboard; blue skies with pink flowers and big yellow suns whose rays stretch right across the page. ‘So he can see them.’ I’d watched as Grace had stared at her, torn between wanting to impart her superior knowledge that Dad couldn’t see anything anymore and wanting to cling to the hope afforded by childhood that perhaps he still could. Finally, Grace had seen me looking at her and had stayed silent, averting her gaze when our eyes met.

  I sit on the sofa, waiting for Paul, but he doesn’t come back downstairs. I wonder if I’m being paranoid, but in the last few months it feels as if he’s been avoiding me at every possible opportunity. I pour myself another glass of wine and flick across the TV channels, unable to concentrate. Buddy jumps up beside me, pushing his nose into my hand, knowing something’s wrong and I can’t give him the reassurance he’s looking for.

  I put my empty glass in the dishwasher and scrape the remains of my barely touched dinner off my plate. Since Paul and I have been together, I’ve eaten three meals a day, determined to set a good example for the girls, but in the last couple of weeks I feel as if I’ve regressed back to the teenager I once was; restricting the calories I put into my body in an effort to try to keep control over the way my life is slipping through my fingers. The empty, gnawing feeling I’m left with isn’t strong enough to distract me from the guilt that sits at the bottom of my stomach. I don’t think Paul has noticed. He hasn’t seemed to notice much about what I do recently.

  As I walk up the stairs onto the landing, something glints on the wooden floorboards and I bend down to see what it is. Something metal is stuck in the small gap between them. I pick it out with my nail and put it on the palm of my hand. A gold earring in the shape of a flower. The butterfly is missing. I have no idea how it got there and as, instinctively, I reach my hand up to my ears, I’m not sure what I think I’m going to find. Mine aren’t pierced and never have been. One of Grace’s friends must have dropped it. I make a mental note to ask her whether any of them has mentioned losing one. The post digs into my skin when I close my fingers around it, sharper than I expected, leaving a small red dot of blood on my palm when I tip it onto my dressing table, a reminder of its presence.

  MONDAY

  Caroline

  Rob has left early this morning to play a game of squash before he goes to work. He says it helps to keep him fit but I met Tim, the
other property developer he’s playing against, at the firm’s Christmas party last year and can’t imagine he’ll make Rob run around much. Especially in this heat. Even at this time in the morning it feels too warm to do anything more energetic than walk. It should be an easy win, which is why he’s agreed to play; keeping fit is just an excuse. Apart from tennis elbow and an allergy to pet hair, my husband is pretty healthy for forty-nine.

  When Dad was dying, I’d wondered what would happen if Rob collapsed from a heart attack or got run over crossing the road. I’d imagined how his body would look, stiff and cold, the creases on his forehead frozen permanently into his skin. And then I’d felt guilty for thinking something so awful. As he always tells me, I wouldn’t be able to cope on my own. And he’s right; I wouldn’t – the house, the bills and the bank accounts are all in his name and up until recently I’ve had Adam. I would never abandon my son, and he knows it, holding the prospect of never seeing him again over me as a permanent threat. His words used to ring constantly in my ears, like an announcement proclaimed by church bells, a truth so solid it could never be broken. But their permanence has dissolved since Adam left to go travelling and I’m not sure what I can hear instead.

  I make myself a cup of tea and open the bin to dispose of the used teabag, frowning as I catch a glimpse of something familiar poking out from amongst the discarded orange peel and remains of last night’s dinner. I pull at it, and the T-shirt I’d been wearing yesterday reveals itself, the soft fabric covered in pieces of food. I take it out slowly, trying to keep the rubbish that’s been shoved on top of it from falling all over the floor. I hold it over the sink, scraping off the worst of the mess. At first, I think there’s a chance of getting the stains out if I leave it to soak for a few hours, but as I turn it over to check the damage, I realise that’s impossible as there’s a large hole ripped in the back. I run my fingers over the unsoiled edge of the material. He knows how much I loved it. Adam had bought it for me before he’d left. One of the only new items of clothing in my wardrobe this year. There’s a tightness at the back of my throat when I think about him and I have to swallow to stop it closing up, to prevent my body from physically shutting down, unable to function without him here.

  My mobile buzzes on the counter and I pick it up.

  ‘Everything OK?’

  I blink away the tears that blur my vision as I reply with a lie, trying to work out when the small things I’d agreed to at the beginning of our relationship – the maybe it’s not a good idea to eat chocolate if you’re trying to lose weight had tipped over into this. Or whether it had been a gradual descent into a nightmare, the boundaries blurred over time, and it’s been so long that I can’t remember how to wake up. I remind myself he hasn’t always been like this. That if I could cut him open, I might still be able to find what had used to make me burn with desire, his need to stare at me almost unbearable, my skin on fire.

  I push the T-shirt back into the bin, wincing as I dig around in the surrounding waste to scatter some of it over the top of the material to make it look as if I haven’t touched it. I wash my hands twice, scrubbing them with soap to get rid of the greasy residue, and then wipe round the sink to get rid of the blobs of food that are stuck to the edge. Even after I’ve cleaned everything, I can still smell something other than the orange blossom fragrance of the washing-up liquid on my fingers. Something faintly rancid.

  I look at my mobile that’s lying on the counter. I need to remember to take it with me; he’s got an app on his phone that tells him where I am and I know he checks it, even when I’m at work. I wish I didn’t have to go – I don’t want to have to face Jo; I don’t like having to hide things from her, despite the fact that I’ve done it for so long it has become ingrained, as much a part of me as the freckles I can see on my skin when I look in the mirror. Sometimes I’m not even sure what the truth is anymore. I worry that she can see through me, reading my thoughts I’d assumed were invisible, ones I hadn’t buried deep enough in the dark.

  I pull on my shoes as the post comes through the letterbox. Picking up the assortment of paper off the floor, I sort through it, discarding the junk mail, putting all the letters onto the counter for Rob to open when he gets home. The postcard is at the bottom of the pile. The photo on the front shows a stretch of turquoise ocean lapping at the edge of powder-white sand, a few beach huts scattered at one end in front of dense green foliage. I read it and smile in relief, the hard ball that’s been sitting in my stomach since my son left, dissolving slightly. He’d made it.

  Dear Mum & Dad,

  Namaste! Experienced epic diving at Pulukan. Lodgings are nice. Plan on investigating surfing on Nusa – heard it’s mental?!

  Love, Adam

  I shut my eyes and run my fingers over the letters he’s written in black biro, feeling the tiny indents in the surface of the card. He’d created those. I’m touching where his hands were a few days earlier. I hold it against my face but there’s no trace of his smell. I’m overwhelmed by a physical ache to be able to hold him, wishing he was here, but then think about Rob and I’m glad he’s not. He’s safe. No longer feeling an obligation to protect me. I get out his sweatshirt that’s hanging up amongst my clothes in my wardrobe underneath under one of my shirts so Rob won’t find it, burying my head in the material, breathing in his scent until it becomes so familiar, I can’t smell it anymore.

  I walk into the room next to ours that used to be his bedroom. It’s been stripped bare apart from his bed, his old chest of drawers replaced by one from IKEA and the walls re-painted. The dark patches left by now-discarded posters of unfamiliar bands are no longer visible. Rob has tried to erase him from our lives completely and the void in my heart is like a black hole that pulls in every single particle of joy from the rest of my body.

  I can see our entire lawn from the window in this room, all the way across to my greenhouse that sits at the bottom of the garden on one side of the fence, next-doors bi-folds on the other, their umbrella plant pushed up against the pane of glass. Dad’s got one of them in his study. Except he hasn’t, as he’s not here anymore. He hasn’t got anything. He had the same plant. I hate having to consign him grammatically to the past – it makes him feel even further away. I can see the tips of the leaves are all turning brown. It’s inside, dying, when only a few feet away from it stands the place I use for the sole purpose of generating life. I wish I could open their doors and bring it over here, but I know that’s impossible. Just as it’s impossible for me to tell Jo why I need her to sell the business. I’d been tempted to blurt it out after she told me Dad had died, but hadn’t been able to get the image of her holding his hand out of my head, her fingers pressing into his paper thin skin as if it was her property, something she’d take away with her, leaving nothing for anyone else.

  I take one last look at the postcard and then slide it as far as I can underneath the mattress on what is now our spare bed. We never have any guests to stay and I know Rob won’t look in here. He hates this room; it reminds him of the person he regarded as competition for my affection for the entire eighteen years he lived with us. My fingers encounter the edge of another familiar object which I touch briefly, letting it know I haven’t forgotten about it, not allowing myself to get it out, before I slip Adam’s postcard on top of it.

  As I get into the car, I notice the deep azure sky hasn’t changed colour since the day of Dad’s funeral, as if it’s in shock, refusing to move on, like us. The houses along our road are set back from the road, their sizeable front gardens all similar; the bright green striped lawns interspersed with beige gravel driveways and brick paths. Most have solar lights outside, illuminating the house names that can be difficult to see at night, camouflaged by the bushes and tall fences that form a boundary with the pavement. We don’t have a light; Rob says they’re an attraction to burglars, but I think it’s because he knows there is less chance of anyone witnessing what he does in the dark.

  I drive the short distance into town and par
k next to the office, taking the opportunity to nip into the sale that’s on this week in the small toy shop a few doors down before I head into work. My phone buzzes in my pocket. I look at the message.

  Where are you?

  I type a quick reply.

  Getting Livvi a birthday present.

  It buzzes again.

  You should have told me you were going shopping.

  I don’t reply, holding my phone in one hand as I walk past the shelves stacked high with different-sized boxes, their transparent plastic windows giving a sneak preview of the toys inside. I head past the dolls and remote-control cars round to where they keep the Sylvanian Family sets. I glance at the various shops, houses and vehicles, all accompanied by miniature animals, overwhelmed by the variety of options. I pick up a castle with a slide. Would she like that? I’m not very good at choosing things for other people. A quick glance at the price tag tells me it’s within Rob’s budget. I take it to the till where the owner wraps it in shiny paper, saving me the job, and puts it in a bag. I give her my card to pay when Katherine, Rob’s secretary, walks into the shop.

  ‘Caroline!’ She smiles as she spots me standing at the till. ‘Bought anything nice?’

  ‘Just a gift for my niece. Her birthday’s coming up soon.’ I tell her as my phone buzzes again.

  ‘I’m looking for presents too. I always leave it to the last minute.’ She laughs and I mumble sympathetically in response. ‘We’ll have to have a proper catch-up next week.’

  I stare at her blankly.

  ‘You are still coming?’ she says.

  ‘Am I?’ I say, not meaning to sound so surprised.

  ‘Rob said you could both make it. It’s only a few drinks and nibbles. Nothing formal. Simon wanted to do something to celebrate the planning permission coming through. Just pop in when you fancy.’