by Nikki Smith
SATURDAY
Jo
When I come downstairs this morning, Paul’s talking quietly on his phone, sitting at the kitchen table with his back to me, his knee jiggling in the way it does when I know he’s stressed. He goes quiet as I open the door, his low murmurs switching to a series of monosyllabic replies that make it impossible for me to decipher the remainder of the conversation. I turn on the tap to fill the kettle, staring out of the window down our drive and across the road to the house opposite. I squint against the sun to see into Anna’s kitchen window as her silhouette slides into view, her mobile tucked between her ear and her shoulder as she clears some plates off her draining board. She’s smiling, her face reflecting a happiness I haven’t felt for a long time and she doesn’t look in my direction as I continue to watch her, only stopping when the water runs out of the spout of the kettle and over my wrist. I shake my hand, wiping my arm with the tea towel as Paul ends his conversation, finishing the call with a mumbled, ‘You too.’ When I look again, I see Anna has put her phone down before disappearing from my view. I flick the switch down on the kettle.
‘Who was that?’ I ask.
He hesitates as I get a couple of mugs out of the cupboard.
‘Your mum,’ he replies.
‘My mum?’ I repeat. ‘Why did she call you?’
He doesn’t meet my gaze. ‘She wants to know if she can meet up to talk things over.’
‘With me?’ The noise of the kettle reaches a crescendo as it hits boiling point.
‘Yes.’ I hand him his mug, unsure whether to believe him. I can’t remember the last time my mother phoned him. She always calls me.
‘Drink up,’ he says quickly, ‘and I’ll tell the girls to get a move on. We want to be there before ten to avoid the crowds.’ I nod, watching as he slides his phone into the pocket of his shorts, experiencing a flutter of annoyance that I can’t see the number of the incoming caller.
The track to the National Trust property is bone dry, clouds of dust rise up like smoke in front of the windscreen, the parched earth letting out sharp sighs at being disturbed by the line of vehicles driving into the car park. Livvi jumps out as soon as we pull into a space, keen to get going. Grace shuffles across the back seat reluctantly, waiting until I open her door before she slides out. I run my finger over the hot paintwork, examining the shiny trail that’s hidden underneath the dirt.
‘Ready?’ I say. She nods.
‘You OK?’ Paul asks her. ‘You were a bit quiet in the car.’
‘I’m fine,’ she replies, hurrying ahead to catch up with her sister. We are swept along in a tide of buggies through the stone-walled entrance and funnelled past the reception counter where the girls are handed stickers to put on their T-shirts, emerging into the gardens with the other visitors like a breaking wave. Grace crumples hers up and puts it in her pocket, Livvi presses hers onto her chest, the three years between them sometimes seeming like so much more. It had been the same with Caroline and I; the four years between us hadn’t been so noticeable when I’d been six or seven, but by the time she turned fifteen it felt like she’d chosen to step into a different universe, leaving me behind, one filled with boys and fashion and things I had no interest in.
Several paths criss-cross over the grass, bordered by lime trees, all leading down towards the large house. Being out of the direct sunlight is a relief and I’m almost tempted to get out the rug and not go any further, stopping here to eat our hastily concocted picnic.
A couple of families hover behind us as we walk, impatient to overtake, the rubber wheels of their prams echoing on the rough tarmac. I step off the path onto the grass to let them go by and Paul stares as they walk past, his eyes drawn to one of the small figures lying beneath the hood. I know what he’s thinking. Guilt prods me in the chest with sharp fingers, reminding me of the letter in my jacket pocket. I need to talk to him. But not here, not in front of the girls.
I shout at Livvi, who is running ahead, to slow down, telling Paul that I don’t want to lose sight of her, an excuse to cover the real reason I want the girls with me, their presence diluting the tension that hangs in the air between us.
I reach for Livvi’s hand as she circles back and head inside the Edwardian building, relieved to be somewhere cool, the smell of furniture wax and dried flowers a welcome change from the sickly sweet heat. The rooms are huge, all high ceilings and ornate decoration. Livvi pulls on my arm, pointing at a black-and-white photograph of a woman with two children. Paul and Grace are on the other side of the room, admiring a small piano.
‘So, they didn’t actually go into school?’ Livvi repeats, the concept clearly bewildering.
‘No. They were taught here, in the house.’
‘Did they not own a car?’
I blink, trying to assimilate my scant historical knowledge, watching Paul glance at his phone screen whilst Grace reaches up to touch a giant gold clock on the mantelpiece.
‘It wasn’t really about that,’ I say. Paul runs his hand through his hair before texting something and putting his phone back in his pocket.
‘They should have shared lifts,’ she says. ‘Like we do with Anna.’
‘What?’ I’m not concentrating on what she’s saying, too busy watching Paul.
‘Like sometimes Anna collects us if Dad’s busy. Like she did last week. And sometimes we bring Jess and Maddie home.’ The noise of Paul’s ringtone cuts through the low murmurs of conversation in the room and he pulls it out of his pocket, embarrassed, fighting to mute the sound. He glances at me and I look away, wishing he’d just turn the bloody thing off.
Livvi takes her time examining the various objects in the room and I don’t hurry her, reluctant to follow Paul who disappears with Grace down a corridor into another part of the house. Livvi crouches down in front of a glass cabinet, looking at the china ornaments and a man walks over and stands next to her, pointing at one of the ballet dancers.
‘She looks a bit like you.’ He’s wearing a distinctive Balmain T-shirt and a watch with a heavy metal strap that is stretched tightly round his thick forearm, digging into his suntanned skin. Livvi turns towards him and smiles.
‘I don’t have pointe shoes yet.’
‘Don’t you? I bet you’re good enough.’ He’s about my age but I can’t see anyone else with him. I wonder if his family are in a different room.
‘Miss Alex says I have to be eleven.’
He nods, glancing at her and then back at the figure in the cabinet. ‘Not long to wait, then?’
She grins. ‘I’m only seven but I’m almost eight. Miss Alex says sometimes you get them early if you’re really good.’
He smiles at me, and I smile back, wanting to be polite. There’s something about him that seems familiar even though I’m sure we’ve never met before. It makes me feel uncomfortable and I move a bit closer to Livvi, putting my arm round her shoulders.
‘We’d better go and find Grace and Daddy, sweetheart.’ I look up as Paul walks back into the room, almost tripping over on a rug as he marches across the floor.
‘Come on,’ he says. ‘Grace and I are waiting.’
I raise my eyebrows. ‘Calm down, we’re not in a rush. Livvi’s just looking at the china figures.’
‘They’re so pretty, Daddy, aren’t they?’
He reaches for her hand and I notice he’s trembling.
‘They are. But it’s time to move on now.’
The man standing next to Livvi looks at her. ‘She’s beautiful but she’s very fragile, isn’t she? That’s why they’ve put her behind the glass. So she doesn’t get broken.’
‘Let’s go, Livs.’ Paul frowns as he takes her hand, pulling it with more force than is necessary as we walk out of the room. I linger in the vast hallway, admiring a tapestry but Paul strides ahead, straight out of the front door. I have to hurry to catch up with him.
‘You don’t need to go so fast,’ I say as he looks back towards the house.
‘I want to get outsi
de. Have some lunch. Grace is hungry and I’m desperate for the Gents. Do you want to take the girls and go and set up the picnic over there?’ He points at the expanse of lawn which is dotted with oversized deckchairs.
‘Sure,’ I reply. He hands me the rucksack and I watch as he disappears behind the Edwardian building, heading towards the toilets at the entrance. I walk over the lawn with the girls, looking for a space under one of the overhanging trees around the edge. Livvi points at the ice-cream van that’s positioned on the other side of the grass.
‘Can we get one?’ she asks.
‘You’ll have to ask Dad,’ I tell her, glancing over at the van, realising that Paul needn’t have gone all the way back to the entrance. There’s a block of Portaloos less than a hundred yards away.
We roll out of the car when we get home, the girls half-asleep, a combination of the drive and the late afternoon heat. Livvi’s fingers are sticky with ice cream and the back of Grace’s legs are pink from the sun. As I go to shut the car door, I notice something on the floor under the passenger seat and reach down to pick it up. A small, white portable mobile phone charger. I frown. It’s not mine. I try to remember who else has been in the car recently. I don’t think Paul owns anything like that. I turn it over in my hand and put it in my pocket to remind myself to ask Paul about it later, unease fluttering in the bottom of my stomach.
Paul and the girls throw open the back door to sit outside whilst I pour myself a glass of elderflower cordial and walk upstairs, picking up a jumble of clothes off Livvi’s bedroom floor, sniffing them to work out which ones to dump in the washing basket, folding the rest into a pile on her dressing table. Her bed is untouched from where she got out of it this morning; the shape of her head still imprinted in the pillow. I plump it up and straighten out her pink duvet, tucking her teddy inside so its face peers out over the top of the cover. Clearing up after them usually irritates me, but today I want to do it. Anything to help keep my mind off the conversation I need to have with Paul.
Grace’s room is tidier, she’s always been the neat one. Her bed is made, her curtains drawn, fastened nicely with their matching star tiebacks, her reading books stacked in a pile on her bedside table. I sit down on her bed and lean back on her pillow, smiling as I look up at the ceiling to where she’s stuck luminous glow-in-the-dark stars above her bed. I’m still worried about her. I couldn’t get an appointment with the doctor until next week and I know she’s still not sleeping properly.
I’m so tempted to shut my eyes and doze, but I can’t. As I get up, I feel something hard under my head. I reach my hand under the pillow and pull out Grace’s iPad. I frown. It’s not in its usual cover, which annoys me as she knows that’s where she’s supposed to keep it. We’d bought her a thick rubber one at an extortionate cost as it had been the only one to guarantee the screen wouldn’t smash even if it was dropped from a height of five feet, and had agreed all devices would be kept downstairs to charge at night. I go down to the kitchen and see it sitting by the plugged-in charger. I’d presumed the iPad was inside it, but clearly Grace had taken it out, leaving the cover downstairs and taking the iPad with her into her bedroom. No wonder she’s so tired if she’s been playing with it rather than sleeping at night. I shove it back roughly into its case. What on earth has she been doing on it? I type in her password. At least she hasn’t changed that.
Has she been talking to someone online? She’s had lectures at school about the importance of keeping her personal information private. How the nice twelve-year-old boy from a school down the road who asks to meet her might not actually be who he says he is. I take a couple of deep breaths, trying to slow my rising heart rate as I shake the thoughts of grooming and paedophiles out of my head.
I check her Internet browser history. A few searches for books on Amazon, pages on how to train your dog to do circus tricks and various music videos on YouTube. Nothing that raises cause for concern. Nothing in her emails, received or sent. I glance through her messages. Full of emojis and gifs, words abbreviated to numbers in an almost indecipherable language; but only conversations with Maddie and a few other girls in her class, and all before nine o’clock.
I scroll down a bit further and a couple of initials catch my eye. GT. I click on the bold letters and flick through multiple messages, long swathes of white writing in blue boxes, dating all the way back to a month ago. And not a single reply to any of them. I put my hand over my mouth to hold in the sob that rises up in my throat. All this time. I wish she’d told me. She’s been writing him texts and hasn’t said a word to me about it. I see the words of her first message without even meaning to read it.
I miss you. I had history today and we’re learning about World War II but it was more fun when you told me about it. I’m sorry about Mum and Auntie Caroline arguing. I really hope it wasn’t my fault.
GT. Grandpa Thomas. My eyes blur as I shut down the browser screens, take the iPad out of its case, carry it upstairs and slide it back under her pillow before going to sit on the closed toilet lid in the bathroom, burying my face in a handful of loo roll until Buddy comes in and pushes his nose into my legs. I kneel down on floor beside him, wiping away the tears that run down my face as he whines at my distress.
I try phoning my mother, but it goes straight to voicemail. I don’t bother leaving a message, she’ll see the missed call. As I open up the dishwasher to unload it, I curse as I realise everything is still dirty. I thought I’d put it on this morning before we left. It’s been playing up this week – the other day I’d come home to find it had switched itself off before the cycle had finished. I need to get someone out to look at it but I’m waiting to see if it breaks completely as we could really do without spending the money at the moment.
Paul walks into the kitchen and I get out the mobile phone charger from my pocket, putting it on the counter.
‘This was in your car,’ I say.
He frowns, picking it up and turning it over in his hand. ‘It’s not mine,’ he replies after a pause.
‘Well, it’s not mine either,’ I retort. ‘It was under the passenger seat.’
He shrugs and turns away, reaching for a glass in the cupboard. ‘Maybe it belongs to one of Grace’s friends?’ he asks, turning on the tap and taking a sip of water. His face is flushed. After twelve years together I can tell when he’s lying to me. An image of the earring I found on the landing pops into my head. Grace had confirmed that neither Maddie nor Katie had pierced ears.
‘Most of them don’t own a phone,’ I say flatly. ‘Let alone a charger. Are you sure you don’t know anything about it?’
He shakes his head as Buddy dashes into the kitchen, one side of his coat much darker than the other, the smell of fox poo pungent on his fur.
‘Jesus, Buddy. What have you been rolling in?’ Paul tries to grab his collar as a combination of the stench in this heat and the fact that I barely touched any of the picnic at lunch overwhelms me and I dash out of the kitchen into the cloakroom, vomiting up the glass of elderflower I’ve just drunk, the sweet taste now acrid in my mouth. I pull off some toilet roll to wipe my mouth and splash my face with cold water, taking deep breaths.
Being sick terrifies me; the way my stomach feels so gloriously empty afterwards is a sensation that I used to crave above all others and one that I know I could slip back into coveting with so little effort. It’s waiting for me, if I let it, reaching out to remind me it’s still here even after all these years. I hold my wrists under the tap, the water refreshingly cool against my skin as I catch a glance of myself in the mirror, tracing my wet fingers across my cheekbones, one of the places I used to scrutinize to work out if I was putting on weight.
‘I’ve hosed him off outside with some shampoo,’ Paul says as I walk back into the kitchen. The look on his face reminds me of what I just saw when I stared in the mirror. The dishonesty of someone who’s hiding something. I can hear the girls shouting outside in the garden and hope they stay out there whilst I say what I need to. I
can’t put it off any longer.
‘Paul, there’s something I need to –’ He walks over to me and tucks a piece of my hair behind my ear.
‘You should have told me before,’ he says. ‘I wish you had.’ I frown, wondering if he’s found the letter, a flush of embarrassment rising on my cheeks.
‘I thought you’d –’ I start to say before he wraps me in a hug that cuts me off, mid-sentence.
‘You know how much I wanted this. I thought you’d been avoiding the topic as you weren’t keen, but I’m over the moon.’ He grins at me, and I’m speechless. ‘We can keep it quiet for now if you don’t want to say anything to the girls yet,’ he continues.
Behind him, through the window, I see Anna walking up our drive. She waves but her eyes don’t meet mine – she’s staring directly at the back of Paul’s head and I frown, the mobile charger on the counter catching my eye, taunting me with its presence, unanswered questions rising up in my head.
‘Aren’t you pleased?’ He stares into my eyes and for the first time in weeks I feel I have his full attention. I think of the letter in my jacket pocket upstairs and swallow, wondering if I can pretend that it never arrived.
‘It’s early days,’ I hear myself say, feeling something disintegrate between us as I commit to the lie, ‘only a few weeks, so let’s not say anything to anyone for now.’ He hugs me again as Anna taps on the window and I smile, making sure she can see Paul embrace me as I point towards the back door to let her inside.
SUNDAY
Caroline
My mother wipes her face with her napkin, but I can see she’s missed a bit, a small spot of gravy is still visible on her chin and I know Rob has noticed it too. He’s on his best behaviour this afternoon, holding out the dish of roast potatoes so Mum can help herself, but she shakes her head and he has to swap it quickly for the one filled with broccoli, his lips pinched whilst she takes her time picking out a couple of limp stems. He clears his throat at regular intervals, a way of relieving his irritation, unused to having to hide his impatience in his own home.
