by Nikki Smith
‘I’m sorry if I upset Grace. I didn’t mean for her to see us arguing.’ Her apology takes me off guard. I know I should accept it, but I don’t want to open the door to let her back in, to pretend that everything is normal. She’s ripped away a plaster that had been covering up a wound that had been slowly healing after so many years apart and I’m not sure I can face going through that pain again. I want her to leave my office so I can try to focus on work. Anything to keep my mind off Paul.
‘It’s fine,’ I say. ‘I’d better get on.’
She doesn’t move. ‘We need to discuss what you’re going to do with the business,’ she adds.
‘I haven’t decided,’ I tell her.
‘You won’t even talk about it?’ she asks. I knew she had an ulterior motive for apologising. When I was a teenager, she’d smuggled me packets of cigarettes that I’d used to hide in my bedroom, not old enough to buy them myself, waiting for me to smoke the first one out of the window before asking me to cover for her by telling Mum she was with her friends instead of out in some bar, knowing that by that point I didn’t have a choice.
‘What do you want me to say, Caroline? I don’t want to sell. It’s not what Dad would have wanted.’
She leans forward towards me, folding her hands together on the desk. ‘But what do you want?’ she asks.
The question takes me by surprise and I have to swallow before I answer. ‘It doesn’t matter what I want. Dad would never have sold it.’
‘You don’t have to defend him now he’s gone,’ she says quietly. ‘He’s not your responsibility.’
‘What are you talking about?’ I snap.
‘You idolised him, Jo. You always have. When we were growing up, Mum and I were the enemy and you and Dad were always right.’
I frown, crossing my ankles under the desk, pressing them together. ‘That’s not true. Have you any idea what it was like growing up with you? The golden child? Mum’s favourite the whole time?’
‘That’s not how it was.’
‘That’s how it felt.’ I shuffle in my seat, exasperated by the way she can make me feel fourteen again, being lectured by my older sister who always seemed to take Mum’s side.
She hesitates. ‘I’ve apologised for upsetting Grace. You yelled at me, too. Can you not just consider for a moment that Mum and I might have good reasons for wanting to sell?’
‘I’m sure you do. You want to get your hands on the money and use it to add an extension or something onto your already perfect house.’ I raise my voice, furious that she thinks she can justify selling something that I’ve spent the last three years restructuring into a highly profitable business. Something that Dad had poured his life into. ‘And I’d like to remind you that with Dad’s shares I own seventy per cent of it,’ I add. ‘Which means I get seventy per cent of whatever it’s sold for. You get ten. Surely that makes it hardly worth selling, from your point of view.’
‘Fifty thousand.’
‘What?’
‘That’s what I’d get out of it,’ she says quietly. ‘Ten per cent of the business. It’s worth at least half a million. Mum showed me the figures from when it was last valued.’
I had no idea it was worth that much. I had no idea it had even been valued. My head begins to throb. Had Dad organised that, or had my mother done it without telling me?
‘And there’s every possibility Mum will have to sell the house if she can’t get rid of the business. You know Dad didn’t have a pension. He invested everything in the company.’ I stare at her, trying to work out if she’s lying. I can’t believe Mum wouldn’t have told me if she needed to sell the house.
‘Mum knows where I am if she wants to talk to me.’ I pick up my bag, needing to get outside, somewhere where I can get space to think.
‘Jo?’ she calls after me. I freeze, tempted to ignore her, reminding myself that whatever I say now will have reverberations for the future.
‘Mum wants us to go and see her.’
I turn around. ‘I’m busy.’
‘How about Friday?’ she continues. ‘We could go over in the afternoon. There’s nothing in your diary; I’ve checked. Just you, me and her. A chance for us all to talk.’
I hesitate. ‘I’ll think about it.’
‘You can’t see it, can you?’ she says quietly, and I’m surprised to see her eyes fill with tears. ‘Even when it’s staring you in the face.’ She blinks, furiously, and I sense she’s waiting for me to say something, throwing me a rope that she’s waiting to see if I’ll grab hold of; a way into her life. But I don’t reply and she pulls it away, clearing her throat. ‘Don’t you think Mum’s been through enough? She doesn’t understand why Dad would have done this in the first place. Neither do I. It feels so . . . vindictive.’
She looks at me, waiting for an explanation but I can’t tell her the truth. She doesn’t know I’d happily hand over every last share in the company if we could go back a month and swap places. She should be grateful; Dad’s instructions hadn’t been a punishment – he had spared her.
‘Is that what you were trying to find in his study? A reason?’ I leave the question hanging in the air as I lean against the door frame for support, my legs trembling.
She hesitates. ‘I needed to know what his will said,’ she says, a flush spreading across her cheeks.
I shake my head. ‘You’re unbelievable,’ I say. ‘Couldn’t you have waited to hear it from the solicitor rather than sneaking round behind my back?’
‘You’re the one who has been sneaking around,’ she replies. ‘You’ve spent the last three years trying to impress Dad. I’ve worked with him for seven times longer than that and he never listened to me the way he did to you. You asked him to leave you the business, didn’t you?’
I sit back down on my chair, putting my head in my hands as it starts to spin with the unfairness of her accusations. I know she thinks I’m being a hypochondriac, something I used in order to listen to her whispering to Mum when I first stopped eating. Words as light as feathers that she didn’t think I could hear, sounds that had stuck in my throat, choking me when I’d tried to swallow them. I remember her sitting next to me on the bed when I was ill, the tiny amount of heat my emaciated body had generated not sufficient to keep out the cold. She’d been fascinated and repelled by me at the same time; craving the attention I was getting yet unable to look at what I’d become. She’d wrapped the duvet around me, tucking in the edges; a gesture that I was pathetically grateful for, a kindness she rarely demonstrated unless my mother was watching.
I close my eyes, trying to block out the images of beds and duvets that rise up in my head, the same ones that return over and over again in my nightmares. I can hear Caroline saying my name but I’m already back in the sitting room at my parents’ house and all I can see is the thin cotton of the pillowcase between my fingers, soft and shiny from having been washed so many times, the floral pattern faded. I can smell my mother’s Summer Fresh fabric conditioner, the scent not strong enough to mask the horrible sweetness coming from the bed, an odour of acetone that stays with me long after I leave the room. I shut my eyes as I don’t want to see but it doesn’t help; I can’t block out what is in front of me. The small bulge in the centre of the pillow barely noticeable, considering what’s beneath it.
I had tried not to look as his hands had lifted themselves off the duvet, pale sticks of bone struggling to reach for mine, unable to stop himself despite all his previous assurances. It hadn’t lasted long, the frantic struggling, but he’d said he wouldn’t fight at all and I’d wanted to let go, the pillow only held in place by the promise I’d made, the look in his eyes as I’d agreed to do it, the one thing I still recognised in his ravaged body. The silence that followed had been so huge and black and dark that I’d prayed for it to swallow me up, to take me wherever I’d sent him. I’d retreated away from the bed, at first backwards, one step at a time, then had turned and run out of the room, trying to escape the horror of what I’d done.
TUESDAY
Caroline
I hear voices outside on our driveway after he shuts the front door, and have to hold onto the windowsill as I draw back our bedroom curtains a fraction, enough to look outside without him being able to see me. I breathe slowly, ensuring the material doesn’t flutter when I exhale. He’s talking to someone, their familiar red jacket causing my stomach to turn over. Not today, I think. Please not today. I promise to be a better wife this evening if it comes tomorrow instead, attempting to bargain with an entity that I’m not convinced exists. It’s never helped me before, despite my frantic pleas, and on one occasion, screams so loud that even one of my neighbours had asked if everything was all right the following day.
I watch as the postman walks away, wheeling his trolley back to the pavement as my husband examines the pile of letters in his hand. He flicks through them, like a pack of cards, lifting up the front one and placing it behind the others as if he’s shuffling them in slow motion. I can’t see exactly what he’s holding from where I’m standing as I haven’t got my contact lenses in. I think he’s about to get into his car when suddenly he turns around and looks straight up at the window I’m looking out of.
I don’t make any sudden movement. My face is hidden behind the curtain and the gap that I’d made when I’d opened it is so small, I’m sure he can’t see me. Can he? I can feel my heart hammering as acid rises in my throat. I listen, attempting to ignore the blood rushing in my ears, trying to work out what he’s doing. Everything goes quiet until I hear his key turn in the lock and I run, silently, to the bed, sliding under the covers, hiding my face in the duvet as if I’m half-asleep. It sounds like he’s moving around the hall and then I can hear him as he starts to walk up the stairs. Oh God, he hasn’t even stopped to take his shoes off. Across the landing. Should I lie on my left side, or right? What looks most natural? Which side do I normally face when I sleep? Away from him. I turn over, grabbing one hand with the other for comfort.
He walks into the bedroom up to the side of the bed and I keep my eyes shut.
‘You didn’t tell me he was writing to us?’ he says loudly.
I open my eyes slowly, pretending he’s woken me up, trying to keep my expression neutral.
‘What?’ I mumble.
‘You didn’t tell me he was writing to us. Has he sent anything else?’
‘I don’t know what –’
‘Don’t act dumb.’ He frowns and throws a postcard down in front of me as I push myself up onto the pillows, rubbing my eyes. I don’t reach for it. I know that’s what he wants me to do. As much as I’m desperate to see the words, I put my hands back under the duvet where he can’t see them, clasping them together. He stares at me, waiting to see what I do next.
‘Is it from Adam?’ I ask.
‘Why don’t you have a look?’ he says, sitting down on the side of the bed and I glance at him, trying to see if he’s holding anything else. I think his hands are empty but it’s hard to tell without my lenses in. ‘Go on,’ he says, ‘look at it.’
I slide my hands out slowly from under the covers and reach for the postcard that’s lying like a splash of colour on the expanse of white material. Holding it close to my face I can see it’s a picture of a temple in the middle of a lake, surrounded by orange and pink flowering bushes. I’m reminded of the picture I saw on Jo’s noticeboard on Friday. I can feel him watching me.
‘Have you read it?’ I ask.
‘What do you think?’ he replies.
I turn it over slowly, desperate not to reveal any sign of my eagerness in my tone or the way I move. I scan the page.
Dear Mum & Dad,
Massive, incredible sea shores, yachts of unbelievable –
He pulls it out of my hand.
‘Has he written to you before?’ he asks.
‘No,’ I lie. ‘This is the first time I’ve heard from him.’
‘He hasn’t called you?’
‘You know he hasn’t. You look at my phone.’ He relaxes slightly as I swallow to keep down the acid rising up in my throat. Then he reaches inside his suit jacket and brings out a lighter. I recognise it as the one we keep in the drawer in the hall. He watches my face as he flicks the spark wheel so the flame appears and holds it in front of my face. I stare at him, committing the words I saw on the postcard to memory, keeping my face neutral.
He moves the lighter to the edge of the card and the orange light travels up the side, the picture of the temple crumpling and twisting into blackness before it disappears. I stay completely still. As the heat reaches his skin, he drops what’s left of the card onto the bed, the flame continuing to burn, and I throw back the duvet on top of it. There’s a pungent smell of burning feathers. I don’t say anything else as he flicks the wheel on the lighter a couple more times, not taking his eyes off me. Then he stands up, sticks it in his pocket and walks to the bedroom door. I suppress the shudder that crawls across my back.
‘You tell me if he sends anything else.’
I nod.
I listen to the car as it leaves the drive, waiting a few minutes before getting up and checking through the curtains that he really has gone. Then I go downstairs, find a piece of paper and write down what was on the postcard. As much as I’d seen. I stare at it, and take it upstairs with me, lifting up the mattress in Adam’s old room, putting the piece of paper on top of the things that are already there. Everything in one place. I run my fingers along the edge of the object under the postcard. It’s still there, waiting for me. I need it to stay where it is for just a little bit longer.
He comes back from work early and I can hear him opening drawers and then slamming them shut. A couple of expletives. He’d only come into the kitchen briefly before disappearing into the study and shutting the door. The dinner I’ve cooked is going to get cold and he hates that.
I think about Jo at home with Grace and Livvi; how the girl who once refused to eat is currently having dinner with her family and I am here, in a house that chills me to the bone despite the heat. I saw how she’d looked at me when I’d made that comment about Mum having to sell the house. A flicker of guilt that I hope has fractured her resolve, a small chink that I can force open into a large fissure.
My heart races as I watch the digits on the oven clock. Two minutes pass. I look out of the window to the faint outline of my greenhouse at the bottom of the garden, wishing I was inside it and not in this room. Three. I close my eyes, remembering the smell of the earth, feeling my heartbeat slow down. Four. I think about what’s in there and remind myself things could be so much worse. Five. I hesitate, then walk over to the study door and knock, gently.
‘Your tea’s ready. I just wanted to let you know.’ There’s no reply and I’m about to walk away but then he answers.
‘I’ll be out in a minute.’
‘I can bring it in there, if you want?’ I can hear his laptop beep as it starts up.
‘Fine.’
I take the plate of sausages, mashed potato and peas and put it onto a tray with his cutlery, a glass of squash and a bottle of tomato ketchup. Walking up to the study door, I try to hold the tray steady in one hand whilst I turn the handle, ignoring the sound of blood rushing in my ears. He’s sitting with his laptop open in front of him, staring at the screen. I put the tray down beside him on the desk and turn to walk away when he grabs my hand. His eyes narrow and he looks at me accusingly.
‘Are you absolutely sure you couldn’t see where Jo put those boxes?’
‘Yes. I checked everywhere.’ I don’t understand why he’s still asking; we both know Dad hadn’t made another will. ‘Why do you need them? What are you loo
king for?’ The questions slip out without me thinking about it and he stares at me, unused to any kind of interrogation. A jolt of adrenaline runs through me as I realise what I’ve done; a moment of terror at what the possible consequences will be, like spinning a coin and waiting to see which side it lands on as I glance down at where he’s still holding my hand. To my surprise, he lets go. His laptop whirrs into life and he fixes his eyes on the screen as a multicoloured circle rotates in front of him. A small square containing fuzzy shapes appears and he clicks his mouse. I can hear voices, tinny to start with until he turns up the volume on the computer speaker, and listens, grinning. It’s still difficult to hear anything clearly but I take a sharp breath as the shapes in the square suddenly sharpen and the familiar face of a girl and her mother fill the screen; Livvi’s brown eyes staring directly at me.
I took something of yours yesterday. Not something you’ll notice. You were fiddling with it as you were talking and put it down on the table before you walked away. I only picked it up to look at it; wanting to put my fingers where yours had been. I pressed the push button on the bottom of the biro and watched the thrust device drive the ink cartridge against the spring, the tiny silver metal spiral contracting tightly before the ball point emerged, the tension in the coil mirrored by a similar feeling in my stomach. The impact that one thing has on another is obvious through the transparency of the barrel. One tiny change can affect the outcome of everything else – The Butterfly Effect, I think they call it. The clicking noise was addictive, the sound transforming into words that arrived in my head out of nowhere – you are, you aren’t, you are, you aren’t – a kind of twisted onomatopoeia that took over my brain and I had to force myself to put the pen down, the desire to keep pressing it leaving me nauseous. I put it in my pocket. You won’t miss it. You won’t even remember you had it. It’s amazing how quickly you forget one thing when it’s replaced by another. A bit like relationships. If you’re with the wrong person, sometimes you just need a little bit of help to see it, and then you can move on with someone more suitable. Someone like me.
