by Nikki Smith
‘And if that doesn’t work, we’re going to have to find a way to approach Jo.’ His words send quivers of panic down my spine. I don’t want him anywhere near my sister.
He opens the front door and follows me upstairs. I clean my teeth as fast as possible, expecting him to appear behind me at any moment. He removed the bolt from the bathroom door a while ago, a way of ensuring I’m accessible at all times. I fight to get my pyjamas on, catching my toe in the hem, the cotton threads breaking before I curl up beneath the duvet. I wait for him to turn towards me, but he doesn’t – he stays on his side, nowhere near touching distance. My limbs relax as he begins to snore; I’d prepared myself for something so much worse. He can’t bear to hear me receive compliments from anyone else. I stay awake as long as I can, but as the warmth spreads through me, I drift off, surrendering to sleep.
In the morning, the first thing I notice is that he’s no longer lying next to me, the bed on his side empty apart from something on top of the duvet, something metallic that flashes in the sunshine edging through the gap in the curtains. As I sit up to see what it is, I notice my pillow is covered in red streaks. I bend down to examine them more closely, unable to see anything clearly without my contact lenses in. They’re not marks at all. My heart races as I pick up a thick strand of hair between my fingers, running my other hand through what’s left on my head. A tear escapes down my cheek as I realise what the object is on the duvet. My kitchen scissors.
I never fitted in at the last place I worked. I stayed less than a week. Left on the Thursday and never went back. They didn’t ask why. It had been like being back at school all over again. I knew they didn’t like me but it’s what they didn’t say that I heard the most. The way they cut me out of their conversations, keeping the topic on something I couldn’t get involved in, any attempt to change it met with a return to the original, a never-ending loop from which I couldn’t escape. And when I did manage to speak, the loaded pause afterwards, long enough to make me question what I’d said, running over my words again and again in my head to make sure they made sense, long enough to plant the suggestion of doubt in everyone else’s mind too. The way they stood in a group, everyone huddled together, leaving a space that was too small for me to fit in, forcing me to take a step backwards, the odd one out in an otherwise perfect circle. The way they looked at me; their lips raised in a smile, always a smile, but no effort to disguise the crease between their eyebrows, one that deepened as I spoke, as if my words were a jigsaw puzzle with missing pieces that they couldn’t be expected to find. I couldn’t confront them. There was nothing solid for me to grab hold of. Only the way they made me feel; as invisible and as all-encompassing as air. You’ll never make me feel like that. When we’re together, I know you’ll listen to every word I say.
THURSDAY
Jo
I wake up at four and lie there for an hour, unable to go back to sleep, too preoccupied by the thoughts running around inside my head. Glancing across at Paul, I check he’s still dead to the world before sliding out of bed, silently pulling on my leggings and a T-shirt. I creep into Grace’s room to get Buddy, changing my mind when I see she’s got her arms wrapped tightly around him. I’ve grown used to the sight of him curled up on her bed at night, barely able to distinguish between his soft brown fur and her hair, the pale blonde colour she’d had as a baby long since disappeared. He looks up at me, his tail thumps weakly a couple of times but he doesn’t move, and I let myself out of the house, alone.
The air feels warm as I set off at a slow jog down the drive, as if it has retained some of the heat from the previous day, and as I pass the lavender bushes, I’m aware of their faint scent in my nostrils. Dad would have said it was perfect gardening weather; the time of year you have to be most vigilant. Everything is fighting to grow and you have to be ruthless in choosing what survives. Why me? I ask him silently. I only came back because you said you needed me to help you. Had you planned this from the start?
I run to clear my head. I used to do it every day after I’d first met Paul, logging my time and speed in a diary in order to calculate how many calories I’d burned off. There weren’t apps that did it for you back then. I’d written the figures in a notebook I’d kept by my bed, a way of playing mind games with myself, seeing if I could stick to a strict daily calorie allowance but knowing I had the extra ones from my exercise as a backup in case I slipped up. Or if Paul chose what to cook or if he bought dessert. There were only so many times I could insist on a smaller portion or throw half of mine away without causing offence. If I exceeded my permitted total, I punished myself by lowering the number of calories I was allowed the following day. Compared to what I’d put myself through as a teenager; four years of binging and purging and laxatives, this was relatively measured behaviour. I hadn’t told him what I was doing, what I’d done for so many years that it had become an ingrained habit, part of who I was, not even something that I noticed anymore; a life governed by measuring and weighing and counting.
I’d turned over one morning beside him in bed after forgetting to set my alarm, choosing to thread my legs in between his rather than force them into a pair of trainers. In the months that followed I’d written in my food diary less and less frequently, the calculations in my head becoming fewer and fewer, until eventually I’d stopped doing them at all. I’d put the diary away in the bottom of a drawer, releasing it like an anchor that fell away through a bottomless ocean but the urge to punish my body has stayed with me, like having a tap dripping constantly in the background. I can block it out most of the time, but I’m never able to turn it off completely and in the past few months the sound has got louder again. Last night I’d picked up a crisp out of the bowl on the table, my first conscious thought being the thirteen calories it contained, rather than the salt and vinegar flavour, as I’d put it in my mouth.
I run down the road, along the footpath behind the small row of shops, through the woods, pounding the ground with my feet, trying to rid myself of the tight ball that burns in my chest, accelerating my pace, pushing myself to the brink of exhaustion. I’m out of practice. I stop by a tree, my throat raw, my breath coming in gasps, kicking the trunk until my toes hurt and the fronts of my trainers are covered in bark. I refuse to let myself cry, swallowing the metallic taste in my mouth. I glance at my watch. Six o’clock. I’m sweating like it’s the middle of the day. I need to get back to get ready for work and take the girls to school. The thought of facing Caroline in the office makes it more difficult to breathe as I set off again, but I don’t have a choice.
I’m back at the house before six-thirty. Paul doesn’t say anything, standing at the sink cleaning his teeth as I turn on the shower.
‘I needed to clear my head,’ I say, pulling a towel round me. He nods, not asking why. ‘Is Grace awake?’
‘I haven’t seen her yet. I thought I’d leave her to have a lie in after last night.’ We’d both fallen silent when she’d appeared downstairs long after we’d put her to bed, the click of the old-fashioned latch on the kitchen door interrupting our conversation. She’d stood in the doorway in her pyjamas, staring at us with a blank expression. Paul had reached for her hand to take her back to her room, leading her back upstairs as something cold had buried itself in my chest.
‘Can you try and talk to her later?’ I ask him. ‘She’s been making excuses to try and get out of going to school this week. She might listen to you.’ He nods, drying off his newly shaved face with a towel before patting it with aftershave, examining himself in the mirror.
Paul goes straight outside to his office when we get downstairs and I sit on my own at the kitchen table, not wanting any breakfast, the cup of tea he’s made me turning colder the longer I stare at it. My lips feel greasy after taking the first sip – he’s added too much milk. Livvi walks into the kitchen, her red hair unbrushed, the similarity to my sister and mother difficult to ignore.
‘Where’s Daddy?’ she asks.
‘He’s gone out to h
is office, sweetheart. I’m taking you to school.’
She yawns. ‘Can I have Nutella on my toast?’
‘Sure,’ I say, getting it out of the cupboard. ‘Is your sister awake?’
‘I don’t know,’ she says. I slide a piece of bread into the toaster. ‘She was in the night, though.’
I frown. ‘Did you hear her come downstairs?’ I’d checked on Livvi after Paul had taken Grace back to bed and had thought she’d been asleep.
‘No. But she woke me up,’ Livvi says.
‘She came into your bedroom?’
‘No, I heard her talking.’
The weight that I’d felt pressing on my chest earlier returns. ‘Could you hear what she said?’ I ask.
Livvi hesitates whilst she dips her finger into the jar of Nutella. ‘Nope. I can’t remember.’ The toast pops up, making me jump. I put it on a plate and take it over to the table.
‘Maybe she was talking in her sleep?’ I say, watching Livvi’s face.
She spreads on a thick layer of the chocolate spread. ‘Maybe. Jess says she does that. But if she’s asleep, then how does she know?’ I put the lid on the jar to stop her taking any more out. Perhaps I should speak to the doctor. If Grace isn’t sleeping it might explain why she looks exhausted. I need to remember to phone the surgery when they open as it’s impossible to get an appointment without a few days’ notice. I pour a glass of orange juice and put it beside Livvi’s plate.
‘She wasn’t happy with that man, though,’ she says, staring at me as she licks the dark stripes off her fingers.
I freeze. ‘What man?’
‘The one in her room. She told him to get off her chair.’ I suppress the shiver that runs down my spine, my face hidden behind the fridge door as I put the carton of juice back.
‘You heard her say that?’ I keep my voice deliberately light.
‘Yes, that’s what woke me up. She shouted. And Buddy barked. Didn’t you hear him?’
I try to think. I can’t remember hearing anything, but our room is at the other end of the long corridor. She’d been fast asleep when I’d gone in at five-thirty. I’m about to go and wake her when the door creaks and Buddy walks into the kitchen, tail wagging, followed by Grace who looks as if she hasn’t slept at all, her blue eyes a steel-grey colour. She yawns as she sits down.
‘Did you sleep OK, sweetheart?’ I ask, already knowing the answer. She nods, slowly. ‘You don’t remember coming down here last night?’
She frowns at me. ‘No. I didn’t come down. Can I have some toast?’ she asks. I look at her as I put another slice in the toaster. Maybe she really doesn’t remember. I hope Paul manages to talk to her this afternoon. I tip my cup of tea down the sink; my stomach turning at the sight of the thin skin that’s formed on top of the cold liquid.
The alarm system beeps as I unlock the door to our office building and enter the keypad code to make it stop. I’m the first one here, arriving before Alice, our secretary, which is unusual. I wonder if Caroline is going to come in at all. She can’t avoid me indefinitely. I look across reception to Dad’s office; his door locked, his brass nameplate still attached to the outside: Thomas J. Wright in large black letters. Dad had insisted on having it but Caroline and I don’t have one, preferring the anonymity. We need to sort out his things, but neither of us has been able to face touching them since he died.
I put down my bag, open Alice’s drawer to get the key for his door and force myself to go into the stationery cupboard, every step hampered by the fact that my legs feel heavy, almost as if I’m carrying him with me. I don’t want to do it but it might be easier when there’s no one here to watch, no witnesses to the destruction of a place he’d considered sacred, lovingly tended for over forty years. I pull out a bundle of flat-packed boxes that we use for filing, snipping off the plastic straps that hold them together, folding the cardboard along the scored lines and tucking the edges into the slots to make them up. I tell myself I can manage to fill at least two, that it can be a gradual process, as if this will somehow lessen the pain. I carry them into Dad’s room, emptying his shelf of A4 files, keeping a record on a separate piece of paper of what I’m putting into each box in case we ever need it again. I wonder if the process will be cathartic, whether I’ll be able to remove the guilt that is sitting in my chest and pack it away too, or whether I’ll be forced to carry it around with me forever, a burden so much heavier than my father, even before he was ill.
The sudden burst of traffic noise interrupts the silence.
‘Caroline?’ I shout. There’s no reply but I hear a door slam. I leave the second box half packed and walk into reception where my mother is standing, a smile painted onto her face in familiar red lipstick.
‘Hello, Joanna.’
‘Mum.’ I edge around her to get back to my office, into familiar territory, unwilling to have this confrontation in the open. ‘I wasn’t expecting you.’
‘I thought I’d pop in. I was hoping to catch up with Caroline, actually, but I can see she’s not here.’ I watch her face as she speaks, unsure if she’s lying. The truth isn’t something that is solid and fixed for my mother. She has a way of stretching and twisting it to make her own version which doesn’t always resemble the original.
‘No, she’s not in yet.’ My mother hovers in the doorway, and I don’t offer her a seat. She’ll take one if she wants one, but I’m not going to encourage her to stay. She glances across reception through Dad’s door, noting the filing box I’ve left on his desk.
‘Packing up his things already?’ she asks. I look down at some correspondence, pretending to read it, hoping she doesn’t notice the flush that rises on my cheeks.
‘Yes. Let me know if there’s anything you want to keep, otherwise I was just going to put it all into storage. We’ll keep his paperwork here, all the rest I’ll take home. Unless you want it?’
My mother doesn’t answer, and I wonder if she’s even heard what I said. She taps her nails on my door handle, not moving.
‘I wanted to ask if you’d thought any more about what we discussed at the solicitor’s?’ she asks. I stare at her. So, this is the real reason she’s come.
‘We didn’t discuss anything, Mum. You walked out of the meeting before we’d had a chance to do that.’
‘It came as a shock,’ she says. ‘I’m sure you can understand. After forty years of marriage, it’s not easy to hear that your husband has kept things from you.’ She presses her lips together and for a moment I think I see a crack in her veneer, but then it’s gone. My guilt is making me imagine things; she wants me to feel sorry for her.
‘I don’t know what I’m going to do with the business yet,’ I tell her. ‘I’m thinking about it. But I don’t want to sell it.’
My mother walks across reception into Dad’s office, picks up the silver photo frame off his desk and brings it back into my room, putting it down in front of me.
‘Look. We’re all there. Our family. Your father, me, you and Caroline. We need to stick together. That’s what he would have wanted.’ I look at her, and something inside me breaks.
‘How would you know what he wanted, Mum? You weren’t interested in the business. That photo doesn’t show the reality of our family. We haven’t been close for years. Perhaps if there’d been a picture of you and Caroline together . . .’
‘How dare you.’ She cuts me off and stares at me, her eyes searching inside my head for what I’m trying to hide; something so black and ugly that I’m surprised she can’t spot it. I glare back, trying to disguise the fact that my hands are trembling. ‘You were the one who decided to leave us, Joanna. You disappeared for years with barely a visit and only the odd phone call until –’
We’re interrupted by the sound of the office door opening and I look up as Caroline walks in. She’s had her hair cut. I’ve never seen it short before but it suits her. My mother reaches into her pocket for a tissue, pretending I’ve upset her but I ignore it. I’ve seen her do this before. She’s a bett
er actress than either me or my sister. Caroline puts her arm round my mother’s shoulders as she dabs her eyes. The familiar feeling of being the odd one out again reignites a fire that’s been smouldering for years and I slam my hand down on the desk.
‘I’m not the one here who’s done anything wrong,’ I shout. ‘I haven’t taken the morning off work to go to the bloody hairdresser’s. I’m not the one who went through Dad’s things in his study.’ Caroline flushes. ‘I saw that folder Mum had at the solicitor’s,’ I continue, looking at my sister. ‘You took it, didn’t you?’
There’s an uncomfortable silence.
‘I’m starting to think it would be better if we kept our distance for a while,’ I say. ‘You know your niece doesn’t even want to see you at the moment?’ My sister’s eyes widen. ‘Grace keeps asking if you’re coming over. She’s scared you’ll start shouting again.’ Caroline stares at me, her fingers reaching to tuck her newly cut hair behind her ear, the same motion over and over, as if she can’t get it to stay where she wants. ‘I thought we were making progress,’ I say. ‘I thought we were starting to – oh, forget it.’ I pick up my bag and walk out of the office, not wanting to go back until I’m absolutely sure my mother has gone.
I pull into our drive after leaving work and take a couple of deep breaths before getting out of the car. I check my phone but there are no messages from my mother. Caroline had left a note in the office to let me know she was going out on viewings this afternoon so I hadn’t had to face her but we can’t continue to run the business like this. Alice had left her packed lunch in a carrier bag under her desk yesterday, untouched, disappearing outside to get something to eat just to keep out of our way.
I pick up one of the filing boxes full of Dad’s belongings off the back seat and walk into the house. For a split second, I think the hall smells different and try to work out what it reminds me of; as if someone has put out a new diffuser, but I know that’s impossible. Paul wouldn’t know what a diffuser is. By the time I’ve put the box down, whatever was there has gone, and I can only detect the faint scent of school shoes, washing powder and Buddy’s fur.
