by Nikki Smith
I run my hand over the back of his chair, asking him silently what he thinks I should do. I remember him bringing me here when I was about eight, my feet not touching the floor when he sat me at his desk, giving me some pens and paper to draw with whilst he talked to a client. I always assumed I’d come and work with him, but after Caroline and Rob’s hastily arranged wedding, I didn’t have any choice but to leave. I only came back because Dad had begged me to. I’d thought I could step in as a saviour, not just for the business, but for him; the man I’d idolised since I was small, the person I’d assumed was invincible. Yet when I’d seen him in that bed, swallowed up by the duvet, an emaciated pile of skin and bones, it had made me realise that the only thing I could do for him was the one thing he was asking for – the one thing I’d failed to save him from. I lock his door as I leave, putting the key back in Alice’s drawer. Another thing I’m going to have to discuss with Caroline. There’s no point in keeping it empty forever.
I pick up my handbag off the floor in my office, putting my finger on the new pane of glass – the glazier has polished it so well that it almost looks as if it isn’t there at all; I could actually be standing on the pavement with the people walking past on their way home. They don’t even glance in my direction, the window an invisible barrier, unable to see what is right in front of them. I text Paul as I leave.
Need to go and see Mum quickly on way home. Girls OK?
My mobile buzzes almost immediately.
All fine.
I pause by my car, leaning against it and then flinching away as the heat from the metal scorches my skin.
Good day?
I’m inside, seat-belt fastened before he replies.
Yup. Nothing exciting to report.
I turn on the engine, holding my breath whilst the first blast of hot air passes, waiting for the air-conditioning to kick in, weighing up how to ask my next question.
Any new clients?
I push my mobile into the holder on the dashboard whilst I wait for his answer and pull out of the small car park, driving towards Dad’s house, or Mum’s house as it is now, my brain having to correct the thought that rises up unconsciously. The route is so familiar I wonder if I could do it with my eyes shut. I glance at my phone periodically throughout the short journey but there’s no reply until I pull up in the driveway.
No. Quiet day.
I don’t reply as I get out of the car, switching my phone off as I leave it on the seat, my vision blurring as I blink back tears. I put the keys Dad gave me in my pocket, lifting the heavy brass handle and knocking sharply on the wood instead. I can hear my mother’s footsteps as she comes towards the door, the click of her shoes across the floorboards. She’s one of the only people I know who wears heels in the house when she’s alone, refusing to succumb to a pair of slippers or bare feet. ‘It’s the start of a slippery slope, Joanna.’ Words she repeats so often that if I cut myself open, I think I would find them engraved beneath my skin.
She opens the door with the chain on, one of the only visible signs that things have changed in the house since Dad died.
‘Joanna.’
‘Mum.’ For a moment I wonder if she’s going to leave me on the step, but then she opens the door and moves so that I can come inside.
‘I wasn’t expecting you.’
‘I know. I won’t stay long. I just needed to talk to you after – after the other day.’
She ushers me into the kitchen and I sit down at the table.
‘Can I get you anything to drink? Cup of tea? Glass of wine?’
I watch her carefully as she speaks, wondering if she’s spoken to Caroline yet, whether my sister has told her what she’s told me.
I shake my head. ‘I’m fine, honestly.’
She shrugs, as if my refusal is in some way a personal snub, and stands awkwardly, picking up a cloth to wipe the already-clean counter, needing something to occupy her hands.
‘Why do you want me to sell the business, Mum?’
She hesitates, pausing the cloth on the upwards arc of one of its circles before turning to me. ‘Because I think it’s the best thing to do for all of us.’
‘Do you need the money?’ I ask. Her body stiffens, as if my words physically pass through her like an electric shock. ‘If you’re struggling, then I’ll sell it.’ She continues to wipe the counter as if she hasn’t even heard what I’ve said. ‘Mum?’
‘You always were so close,’ she says. ‘You and your father. You used to follow him around when he came home from work when you were little. Do you remember?’ I shake my head. ‘Literally kept a couple of steps behind him as he walked around the kitchen. Insisted on always sitting next to him when we ate dinner. It was almost as if Caroline and I didn’t exist.’
I look at her but she keeps her eyes on the counter, avoiding my gaze. I’ve never understood how we could have lived together in the same house, experienced the same events and yet seen them completely differently. Almost as if we’d never been looking at the same things at all.
‘It wasn’t like that,’ I say.
She turns towards me and I watch as her eyes well up, her face changing into someone I barely recognise. She suddenly looks old, her lip trembling almost imperceptibly as I realise she’s fighting back tears. I stiffen, a physical reaction to her unfamiliar display of emotion, and wonder if I’ve made a mistake coming here.
‘I’ll organise to get some valuations done,’ I offer. ‘I know Dad wouldn’t have wanted to sell the business but he wouldn’t have wanted you to sell the house.’
‘Your father was a complicated person, Joanna. He wasn’t the idol you set him up to be.’ I shift uncomfortably in my chair, trying to ignore the memories of doing the same thing at this table whilst I avoided eating whatever meal she’d put in front of me.
‘It felt like he was the only one who cared about me.’ My voice is shaky.
‘Not enough to stop him having an affair.’ I look at her and something crumples inside me as I see she’s telling the truth. ‘I’m only saying this now because I want you to know he wasn’t perfect. None of us are. You think you owe him something, but you don’t. He should never have asked you to do what you did. It wasn’t your responsibility. But he knew how much he meant to you and he exploited that. He asked me when he realised the cancer was terminal and I refused. So, he stopped asking me and begged you to come back to help him with the business instead. But I always knew that was just an excuse. He wanted you to be here because he knew you wouldn’t say no to him like I did. For such a strong man, he was a coward at the end.’
My whole body feels numb. ‘That’s not true.’
‘I wouldn’t say it if it wasn’t.’
‘I want to sell the business because every time I think about it it reminds me of him, and of what I’ve done. Surely you can understand that?’ Her voice trembles. ‘We both know how it feels to think that you’ve taken someone else’s life. It changes you in a way that no one else will ever understand. I only did what he asked because I didn’t want you to have to come back the next day and do it all over again. I wanted to protect you from the horror of that, at least.’
I can see she’s telling the truth; her words an acknowledgement of the maternal instinct that she’d never let burn brightly but had let smoulder, impossible to extinguish completely. I suddenly have a vague memory of when she used to read me a story at night; the time when I had her all to myself, transfixed by her story as I snuggled up to her, breathing in the smell of her perfume, watching the way her chest rose and fell as she spoke the words out loud. I’d forgotten we’d ever been that close.
‘Why didn’t you tell me?’ I ask.
‘I didn’t want you to feel like a failure,’ she says quietly. ‘I know how close you and your dad were, and I wanted you to believe you’d given him what he wanted.’
‘Does Caroline know?’ I ask.
She shakes her head. ‘You and your sister are very different people, but we both care about you. W
e used to spend hours with you, trying to get you to eat something. Caroline could have been out with her friends but she chose to stay here, with you. She used to sit next to you whilst you watched TV, trying to get you to eat three pieces of popcorn. Do you remember that?’
The image of a velour mustard-yellow sofa springs into my head. I remember feeling uncomfortable, constantly needing to shift position, stuffing cushions underneath my bottom to stop my bones digging into my skin.
I bite my lip, not allowing myself to reply.
She shakes her head. ‘You seem to hate me and I’m just trying to do my best. Don’t hate your sister too, you need each other.’
‘I don’t hate her.’
My mother stares at me for a moment, not speaking, before turning round, picking up the cloth to wash it out in the sink.
‘You moved away just before Adam was born,’ she says accusingly. ‘Caroline thought you’d come back, but you never did. You barely even visited us.’
I shut my eyes, blocking out a memory that I refuse to think about at the moment. She’s emotionally blackmailing me, twisting the past into unfamiliar shapes that don’t fit in the way I remember. I don’t like thinking about when I was ill. All those days in bed and on the sofa merge together into one blur interspersed by flashes of cutlery and tiny pieces of cut-up pieces of cheddar and my mouth full of stomach acid, the desire to feel empty superseding all others, even the urge to breathe.
‘Me moving away didn’t have anything to do with Caroline.’
‘Rubbish. You never liked Rob but you never made an effort to get to know him properly.’
I want to ask her how she can be so naive. She doesn’t know him at all. Rob is dangerous when he doesn’t get what he wants, I know that from experience.
WEDNESDAY
Caroline
Rob’s desperation for me to go round to Jo’s again sits between us like an unwanted birthday present. He keeps trying to unwrap it and I want to put it away in a cupboard, desperate to forget about it. As her sister, he thinks I have the perfect excuse to be there if anyone happens to see me. He says it’ll kill two birds with one stone; I can find out where she has put the boxes and also retrieve the recording device he’d had to leave behind when he’d left in a rush.
He doesn’t know that I’ve already tried again to find them, looking for them when I visited on Sunday. I hadn’t spotted them then, so I’m not sure another visit will help. The more he’d talked about it, the more I’d realised what he’d actually been asking, the meaning of his words seeping in slowly through the pores of my skin, and I’d felt something slide in my stomach. I’d thought of Adam and repeated the distance of seven thousand, seven hundred and ninety miles to myself in my head, grateful for every single last one of them. I know what Rob’s capable of if I refuse, but his one piece of leverage is too far away for him to get to easily, and certainly not by the end of the day, which at the moment is as far ahead as I can focus.
I could tell him my sister has lied about being pregnant, that if he uses the information judiciously it’ll get him what he wants. But I’m not going to, not yet. Our interests may be aligned, but the eventual outcome might not be what he thinks it will be. His eagerness for Jo to sell the business has become an obsession, but then everything is with him. I was once. In a way I still am, but over the years his desire for me has twisted into something so much darker.
When he’d suggested picking me up at lunchtime to go round there again, I’d changed the subject and he’d walked out of the room. I’d heard the car revving as he drove off to work, leaving me alone in the kitchen. He knows the waiting is almost worse than the inevitable confrontation as my imagination is capable of conjuring up scenarios that wouldn’t even occur to him. I look out of the window at our empty driveway; the sky a brilliant blue colour; an abnormally blank canvas. It’s been the same for days now, no sign of the clouds that skid across it like plumes of smoke, almost as if it’s waiting for someone to decide what to paint, the future uncertain. I wrap my arms around myself, rubbing the goosebumps that have risen on my skin. Usually, I unfurl as it gets warmer, like a new leaf, knowing I’ll get to spend more time in my greenhouse, but at the moment I shiver at the thought of what is to come.
I shut my eyes and imagine the temperature in Bali. It’s probably around eighty degrees at the moment; I’d researched it before Adam left. I’m hoping he will send me something soon – I’m not sure how much longer I can wait. I’d been the patient one when Rob and I had first met; he’d been the one who had wanted us to move in together immediately, the one who had declared he couldn’t live without me. Now it’s me who wants time to go faster. I open the drawer under the kitchen counter and take out the neat stack of tea towels, sorting them into piles of different colours to distract me from going upstairs and looking at what I’ve hidden under the mattress. He could come back at any moment. Sometimes he does, just to check on me, leaving the car on the road so I don’t see it, the first sign of his presence being the sound of his keys in the front door. I stay in the kitchen, imagining myself in Adam’s old room instead, sitting on the bed with the duvet thrown back, my hand pressed against the sheet, reassuring what’s underneath that I’m still here. That I haven’t forgotten.
His car pulls into the drive later than usual after I get home from work. I edge over to the window to look out. He hasn’t got anything in either hand as he opens the door and steps out, and I let out the breath I’m holding, but a small voice in my head tells me that sometimes it’s better to know what’s coming. I glance over the kitchen surfaces as his key turns in the lock, checking everything has been tidied away, that his cup of tea in his blue mug is waiting on the counter, struggling to contain my sense of rising panic as he walks into the room.
‘Good day?’ I ask. If I pretend everything is normal, sometimes I can persuade myself it is.
He doesn’t answer. I walk over to the fridge and open it, staring at what’s in front of me, trying to decide what to make for dinner. He comes to stand next to me and pushes it shut, the noise of the seal sounding louder than it should in the silence.
‘I don’t think you really want anything, do you?’ he asks. I know it’s not a question and don’t reply. He’d cleared out the entire fridge and cupboards after Adam left, leaving me without any food for two days and had refused to let me leave the house. I’d been so hungry I’d picked the leaves off the sweet violet plant in the sitting room and eaten them, chewing each one for as long as I could, hoping the nutty flavour would ease the cramps in my stomach.
‘Did your father say anything to you, you know, towards the end?’ he asks. I glance at him as I make myself a coffee, not adding my usual spoonful of sugar to the hot liquid as he doesn’t like me having any.
‘What do you mean?’
‘I just wondered if he’d explained why he decided to leave Jo the business.’ He narrows his eyes as he looks at me, trying to work out if I’m hiding something. I focus on the brown granules dissolving as I stir them.
‘I’m not sure he really knew I was even there.’ He continues to stare at me, unsure if I’m telling the truth. I focus on the image of a man with an oxygen mask over his face, not allowing any other thoughts to creep into my head.
‘Those boxes,’ he says, and my heart sinks. ‘I think something of mine might be in them.’ He’s still watching me. A cold feeling spreads across my chest, like a shadow passing across the sun.
‘What?’ I ask.
‘I gave your father some of the plans of the site to look over a few months ago and he never returned them.’ We both know he’s lying.
‘Jo would have found them when she cleared out Dad’s office,’ I say.
‘She wouldn’t have realised what they were. I checked the boxes she put into storage when I came into the office to take you out to lunch – they’re not in there, so she must have taken them home. That’s why I need you to find out where she’s put them.’ He smiles at me, as if he’s given me something val
uable by sharing this secret and I’m supposed to respond with gratitude.
‘Why don’t I just ask her?’ I say, watching his reaction.
He hesitates. ‘I don’t want her to know she’s got them. If she sees the price those houses will be worth after the site’s developed, she’s never going to sell. She won’t want you investing in something that benefits me in any way. You know your sister and I have never exactly seen eye to eye.’
‘Jo can’t tell me what to do with my share of the company.’
‘Are you saying you won’t go?’ he asks. He stands behind me, sliding his hands inside my T-shirt and across the front of my bra, a gesture that once used to end up with us both upstairs, but that was so long ago my body can’t remember. It recoils, an automatic gesture I have no control over and I don’t look up, concentrating on trying not to move as he holds onto me more tightly. ‘Even if I ask nicely?’ he says, burying his head in what’s left of my hair. I wonder if I should bother getting some milk, or whether crossing the kitchen at this moment is too risky, like walking across a frozen lake, waiting for the ice to crack.
‘I’d rather not,’ I say.
He takes his hands away, scraping my skin, stung by my rejection. As I turn around, I see he’s gripping the edge of the counter so hard his knuckles have turned white.
‘Have it your own way,’ he says and walks out of the room, leaving his cup on the counter and the scent of coffee bitter in my nostrils.
I wake up when it’s still dark, confused at what has disturbed me, but am instantly alert as soon as I realise Rob’s not in bed beside to me. There’s a noise I don’t recognise. A high-pitched whistling. It’s coming from over by my chest of drawers. I turn my head. No, I’m mistaken. It’s under the bed. I reach out my hand to switch on my lamp but there’s a sudden shrill burst next to my ear and I freeze, unsure what to do. I keep very still and am conscious of a faint rustling that seems to be coming from in front of me, like a multitude of tiny whispering voices, and then something touches the back of my hand. A feather-light tap, but enough to make me flinch. I reach for the switch on my lamp at the same time as something crawls across my head and drops down onto my shoulder, sending an involuntary shudder down my back.
