by Nikki Smith
The girls are out in the garden bouncing on the trampoline, and I wave at them, kicking off my shoes that stick to my feet. I give Paul a kiss on the cheek as I sit down at the garden table, wondering if I imagine his slight flinch as my lips touch his skin.
‘Did Livvi remember to bring her recorder home?’ I ask.
‘I’m not sure. Why?’
‘She’s got a concert next week and is supposed to practise. The teacher said she’d remind them all when she sent them home.’
‘Livvi didn’t say anything to me about it,’ he replies, staring at his laptop.
‘I’m surprised you can read what’s on that screen,’ I say. ‘It’s so bright out here.’
He pushes the lid shut as I peer over his shoulder. I wonder how long the girls will be occupied on the trampoline, whether now is a good time to tell him what happened today with my mother, but before I can decide, he leans forward and takes my hand, squeezing it between his own.
‘They’ve had a ball since they got back this afternoon,’ he says, looking over at Livvi whose shrieks of laughter echo across the garden. ‘Have you thought any more about –’
‘Did you spray something in the hall?’ I cut him off, deliberately changing the subject; I can’t deal with that conversation on top of everything else.
‘What?’ Paul squints at me, the expression on my face hidden in the shade.
‘The house smelt funny when I came in,’ I say. ‘I wondered if you or the girls had sprayed air-freshener or something?’ He shakes his head and stands up, his earlier question apparently forgotten, but I see the vein on his forehead pulsating beneath his skin as he walks away stiffly towards the trampoline. He looks scared. And I have no idea why.
FRIDAY
Caroline
As Rob leaves for work, he tells me he’ll meet me at the office at twelve-thirty to pick me up. A surprise to make up for last night. My heart sinks but I smile as he kisses me goodbye and I lie in bed for a few minutes after hearing the front door shut, feeling my heartbeat slow down, readjusting into a normal rhythm.
I catch a glimpse of myself in the full-length mirrored wardrobe doors in our bedroom as I put my clothes on. The semi-circular red mark just above my left breast has faded to a silvery white; from the colour of blood to the colour of bone. Less obvious unless you’re looking for it, but a scar I can never get rid of. It will always be a part of me now, just like the other imperfections that originate from his handiwork, ways of permanently engraving himself into me. It feels smoother than the rest of my skin when I touch it, and it isn’t until I look closely that I can see the narrow strips of unmarked skin that run between each blemish, as if my body has tried to knit itself back together, tiny streams of normality that flow between the horror. I hate the fact each mark is shiny, that they catch the light when I put on my bra, emphasising their presence. I open my mouth and look in the mirror. I wonder if mine would leave a similar imprint. I tell myself it could have been worse; it could have been a full circle but I’d got away from him before he’d managed to close his mouth.
Before I get dressed, I walk into Adam’s old room, remembering a time when Rob had wanted our son, when he was still part of me, something he could claim responsibility for, before he turned into a living, breathing individual. I slide my hand under the mattress, feeling for the postcard I put there a few days ago. My fingers find the edge and I pull it out, leaving the other object where it is. I can’t deal with that yet, I’m not ready. Adam has to come first. Until I’m sure he’s safe and settled, I can’t risk getting it out.
I read his message again, even though I’ve memorised it off by heart, staring at the colour of the ocean in the photograph. A proper turquoise-blue. I press it against my face, trying to persuade myself that I can still feel the imprint of his hands on the paper. I haven’t mentioned his name for days and I say it out loud now, over and over, fracturing the silence in the room; a small cry of resistance to let him know he’s not forgotten. After a while the syllables lose their meaning and I force myself to stop. I know it won’t bring him back but as I slide the card under the mattress, I remind myself that I wouldn’t want it to.
I check my reflection once more before I leave for work. My short hair still takes me by surprise. I’d cut it at home myself to try and neaten up some of the mess before I’d gone to see the hairdresser, my tears mingling with the chopped strands and smears of toothpaste in the bathroom sink until it had all been a horrible wet mess that I’d had to dig out of the plughole and wrap in some toilet roll before throwing it in the bin. I’d driven to a salon where they wouldn’t recognise me and where I’ll never go back, sitting outside before they opened yesterday morning to get the first emergency appointment.
The stylist had frowned as she’d stood behind me, running her fingers through the uneven lengths as if they were a puzzle she could fit back together. I’d watched her eyes narrow in the mirror as I’d told her my story about letting a friend who was training to be a hairdresser have a go at doing it. The lies had slid off my tongue like so many others had before and she’d seen them for what they were, but had said nothing. I’d understood. It’s easier to swallow a mouthful of deceit than taste something unpalatable. She’d shaped it into a short bob with lots of layers to try to disguise the bits he’d cut off down to the scalp and had told me it would keep its shape as it grew out if I wanted to have it longer again. But I’m not sure I do. It gives him less to get hold of like this.
Jo has already arrived when I get to work, her office door firmly shut. She’s always busy at this time of the month finishing the accounts, but I wonder if she’s using it as an excuse not to talk to me. I debate whether to knock, but I don’t know what to say to her. She won’t believe me if I tell her I’m doing this for her own good, but if I don’t do what Rob has asked, there will be consequences for all of us, her included.
I think of Grace and feel my cheeks burn. I hadn’t meant to upset her. I should apologise, but I don’t know if Jo will give me the chance. I’d been losing Dad and the desperation I’d felt to be there for him in his last few days had hit me just at the wrong moment; my grief mingling with childhood jealousy. I’d worked with him since I’d left school but he and I had never got much beyond polite conversation; it had been like standing ankle deep in the shallow end of a swimming pool whilst having to watch Jo diving underwater. We’d hardly seen her for years until Dad’s diagnosis and yet, within weeks of moving back, she’d seemed closer to him than I’d ever been. She’d slotted back into our lives like the final piece of a jigsaw puzzle and I’d resented her for it, just like I’d resented how much time he’d spent with her when we were younger.
I hadn’t realised until a few months after she’d come back that he’d gone to see her in Bristol, had begged her to move a hundred miles across the country, saying he needed her financial expertise. She’d managed to turn a loss-making business into something highly profitable in less than two years; moving all the books and records into an online accounting system, redesigning the firm’s online presence, cutting our costs and making a sales assistant redundant whose lunches alone had cost the firm more than he’d ever brought in. I thought she’d done it because she wanted to prove to my mother as well as Dad that she was capable of it, but now I wonder whether it had been her plan to take over the business all along.
Rob appears in reception at twelve twenty-five.
‘Ready to go?’ he asks. I nod. He glances at Jo’s door. ‘Is she in?’
‘Yes, but she’s with a client.’ He walks over to Dad’s office, the desk where he used to sit clearly visible through the open door.
I hurry after him. ‘You shouldn’t go in there. Jo won’t like it.’
‘She’s busy,’ he retorts, glancing around the room. ‘Where are all his things?’
I frown, confused. ‘Jo’s sorting them out. Why?’
He doesn’t answer my question. ‘What’s she done with them?’
‘We’re filing some s
tuff here, but she’s taken the rest home.’
‘Filing it where?’
‘In the storage cupboard. What’s this about, Rob?’
‘Show me.’ I stare at him, not moving, and he prods my shoulder. ‘I said, show me.’ I hesitate as I walk out of Dad’s office into reception, thankful our secretary, Alice, isn’t at her desk, opening the door into the small filing room.
‘In here,’ I say, looking at the dozens of boxes stacked on the shelves. The most recent ones containing Dad’s paperwork are on the floor waiting to be filed. Rob crouches down and takes off their lids, flicking through the various documents.
‘What are you –?’ He puts his fingers to his lips and continues looking through the contents, searching for something. The conversation in Jo’s office stops. I shove the lids back on the boxes and step out into reception as she opens her door.
‘Jo. How are you?’ he asks.
‘Good, thanks.’ At least they are being cordial.
‘The girls?’
‘They’re fine.’ She shuts the door of my father’s old office, cutting off his view.
‘It’s Livvi’s birthday soon, isn’t it?’ he asks. ‘We need to drop her present over. Been a while since I’ve seen her.’
Jo nods but doesn’t suggest any dates, and I wonder if she’s noticed he hasn’t mentioned Grace. She looks at me. ‘Going out for lunch?’
I nod. ‘Won’t be long.’
Rob smiles at her as we walk out, but she doesn’t smile back.
‘Where are we going?’ I ask.
‘I told you, it’s a surprise.’ I don’t tell him that, based on previous experience, his words do nothing to reassure me. I open the passenger door to see a bunch of chrysanthemums wrapped in cellophane lying on the seat. The sticker shows they’ve been reduced in price, the red label still stuck on the side, and I notice their narrow orange petals are beginning to curl at the edges. He watches as I pick them up. I try to smile but my lips stick to my teeth and I push my face into the flowers as I lean down to smell them, their musty fragrance filling my nostrils.
‘Thank you. They’re lovely.’ I lift them up and put them carefully onto the back seat. ‘So they don’t get squashed,’ I add.
‘They aren’t for you,’ he says.
I bite my lip, feeling like an idiot. ‘Oh. I didn’t – why were you looking through Dad’s things?’
He doesn’t answer, putting his hand on my knee before he starts the engine and pulls away out of the car park, humming as he taps his fingers on the steering wheel. At the moment he’s like a child on a day out – full of excitement; but I know only too well how quickly that can change. Every decision I make; what I do, what I say, is based on my prediction of his most likely reaction after an analysis of all the probabilities. Over the years I’ve got better at it. Faster. More accurate. But he savours his capriciousness and when I get it wrong, I know only too well what can happen.
I look at the road, the tarmac ahead shimmering in a heat haze. Rob stops at a set of traffic lights and a couple of shoppers walk across in front of us, lowering their sunglasses against the brightness. I wonder what Adam is looking at, unable to imagine him on the other side of the world. It doesn’t seem two minutes since he was sitting in this car, travelling in silence when Rob had been driving, animated conversations cut short by our arrival at home when it had been just the two of us.
I think about turning on the radio but change my mind; Rob usually scoffs at my music preferences and switches stations anyway, so I concentrate instead on working out where we’re going, my stomach tightening as I recognise the familiar route.
He pulls up beside the pavement and turns off the engine, leaning towards me and sliding his arm gently round my waist. For a moment I lean my head against his shoulder, breathing in the smell of his suit, surrendering to the unfamiliar feeling of comfort, wishing I could bottle this version of him and take it home.
I hesitate as he pulls a key out of his jacket pocket and hands it to me. My stomach falls, my last hope of this being some kind of hastily organised gathering obliterated.
‘There’s something I need you to get for me. For us.’
I look at him blankly. ‘I don’t understand.’
‘Your mother told me your dad might have written another will. One that he signed more recently than the one you saw at the solicitor’s. I need you to see if you can find it.’
‘One more recent than a couple of weeks before he died? The solicitor would have told us.’
‘Not if she hadn’t drafted it. Your mother said he might have left it in his office. If Jo’s been clearing out his things, she might have taken it home with her. I need you to check.’
‘But I don’t –’
He cuts across me. ‘Just go inside and tell me if you can see any boxes that she’s taken home from the office.’
‘But Paul will be –’
‘Paul will be out walking their dog. It’s something he does every lunchtime and he’ll be gone for at least half an hour.’ I don’t dare ask him how he knows this.
‘What if someone –’
‘You’ve got an excuse to be there. You can say you came around with the spare key Jo gave you to leave her some flowers after your argument yesterday.’ He covers my hand with his own. ‘So, you’ll do it?’ he asks. I look at him and nod, slowly. I don’t have a choice.
‘Keep your mobile on,’ he says.
I nod. I get out of the car and walk up to the house, pausing for a few seconds after I open the door to listen, but there’s only silence. The coat rack hanging on the wall is overloaded; school blazers piled on top of one another. It’s too hot to wear anything other than short sleeves at the moment. I run my hand over one of the jackets that has fallen on the floor and pick it up, struggling to get the small thread loop at the base of the collar over one of the pegs.
I take my shoes off before I walk across the hall into the kitchen and put the flowers down on the island, knowing Jo won’t ever believe I bought them if she comes back. We both hate chrysanthemums. I open a cupboard, glancing at the white china plates and bowls that are stacked in piles, and then look inside the dishwasher that’s still full of clean crockery waiting to be emptied. I press the button on the front of the machine so the red light disappears. Rob’s insistence on not wasting money is so deeply ingrained it has become part of my character.
I glance at my watch. Twenty past one. I hesitate at one end of the kitchen before stepping off the travertine tiles that are cold under my feet and onto the wooden flooring. I look in the utility, in the hall, upstairs in the bedrooms and on the shelves in the family room, but can’t see any cardboard boxes.
I walk back through the kitchen, pausing in front of a drawing of a large sun and pink flowers that’s pinned to the noticeboard. I run my fingers over the rays that have been coloured in so thickly with yellow crayon that the wax has formed an embossed shiny layer on the surface of the paper and have a perverse desire to scratch through it with my nail, ruining its smoothness with a jagged pattern.
There’s something about the way it feels that reminds me of my skin, and I glance at the knife rack on the counter, pulling out one of the wooden handles, staring at the cold metal blade as I hold it against my wrist. It’s so tempting. One deep cut and I wouldn’t be here anymore. I wouldn’t have to do any of this. I’d slip away into oblivion as fast as the dark stain would spread across the pale tiles and into the lines of grout. It’s not as if I haven’t contemplated it before. It would take less than a second to slice through the centimetre of flesh before I hit my radial artery that I can feel pulsing below the surface.
Adam’s face flashes before me and I force myself to put the knife back in the block, my hands trembling. I take a last look at the picture where Livvi has scrawled her name across the bottom, pick up the bunch of flowers and walk back into the hall to put on my shoes, being careful not to knock her coat off its hook.
I open the car door and slide in, throwing the
flowers onto the back seat.
‘I can’t find them,’ I tell him. He thumps the steering wheel in frustration.
‘Are you a hundred per cent certain?’
‘Yes. I looked everywhere I could think of.’
‘They’ve got to be there somewhere. I’ll have to look when I’ve got more time.’
‘What if she comes home when you’re there? Or Paul walks in? Aren’t you worried they’ll find you?’
‘No,’ he says, smiling. ‘I’ve got the perfect place to hide.’
I decided not to tell you about the visits to the counsellor. I don’t want you tilting your head slightly to one side when you look at me, smiling with that ‘I understand what you’re going through’ expression, a mask to cover up your panic because you have no idea what to say. By simply uttering the words I’ll have changed myself from being just another person, to being another person with issues. Someone not to avoid, because you don’t avoid people like me anymore; it’s important to be inclusive, but someone to be wary of, to watch a bit more carefully than you do others, to keep an eye on what I’m doing, to excuse any odd behaviour as part of my problem when you don’t even know what my problem was in the first place. It all happened so long ago that I don’t think it’s important and I’ve changed. The panic attacks have stopped and I’m calmer with you around. I don’t want to be different. I want to blend in. I want to be one of those people who I see you look at, who laughs, who lives in the moment, every atom of their being immersed in what is going on. Not the person who is always thinking about what has gone before and what comes next. I know what comes next, anyway. I know we’re going to be together. You just don’t know it yet.
