Look What You Made Me Do

by Nikki Smith

  I turn the oven onto its lowest setting and dish out the sausages and mash I’ve cooked onto two plates, covering them with saucepan lids so they’ll still be warm when he gets home. On one of our first dates, he’d cooked me the same meal, I remember sitting in his flat and eating it off my knees as he didn’t have a proper dining-room table. He hadn’t touched his food, saying he wasn’t hungry, not taking his eyes off me as he watched me eat mine, and I’d smiled, not wanting to offend him, swallowing forkful after forkful even though I hadn’t wanted to finish such a large portion. He’d said I needed spoiling. That I deserved someone who would put my needs above their own and keep me safe. I’d remembered his words a couple of years later when I’d burned a pair of his trousers whilst ironing them and he’d pressed one of my fingertips onto the metal plate to show me how hot it was. I’d heard the sizzling my skin had made before I’d felt the pain, a blinding light which had filled my head until I’d cried out, unable to help myself, and he’d let go.

  I walk around each room one last time, checking everything is where it should be.

  I want to leave the house looking perfect.

  I was taught diaphragmatic breathing when I went to counselling as a way of dealing with stress. I’m supposed to shut my eyes, put one hand on my tummy and the other on my chest, inhaling deeply through my nose and then out through my mouth, concentrating on the feeling of my stomach rising and falling. It used to help shrivel the balloon of anxiety that expanded beneath my ribs. I’m trying the technique now, in my bedroom, but it isn’t working. I don’t think anything will after what you did yesterday. I should never have gone with you when you asked. You acted surprised when we arrived at the house and no one answered the door, but now I realise you’d known all along there wouldn’t be anyone there. You let us in with the vendor’s keys we’d collected from the estate agent, smiling at me, already an expectation you were going to get what you wanted before you even opened the door. I have to keep stopping as I write this, sticking the top of my biro into the palm of my hand so I can focus on the pain instead of the images in my head. At some point between stepping over the threshold and feeling your hot coffee breath on my lips you turned into a monster. I push the biro point into my skin again, watching a red dot rise up in a perfect hemisphere, swallowing the blue ink, trying to block out the memory of the frayed hem on the bottom of the curtain next to my head, loose threads splayed over the carpet like dead spiders’ legs. I hold my pillow over my face, the familiar scent of my mum’s fabric softener the only thing that stops the smell of you that has impregnated my nostrils, despite the number of times I’ve showered. You wrote what you did all over my skin, indelibly marking me so you’ll be part of me forever, no matter where I am, or who I’m with.

  FRIDAY

  Jo

  I’ve made Paul spend the last two nights on the sofa since he got back. This morning he sneaks back into our bedroom just before I wake the girls up, a whispered prior arrangement so he can give Livvi her birthday presents. I don’t want to ruin her day. They are still oblivious as to what he’s done, my desire to blurt it out outweighed by my unwillingness to hurt them. He puts a cup of tea down on my bedside table; another peace offering I refuse to touch.

  He says the people he owes money to won’t come back. That they’ve given him a week to come up with a plan, but I don’t believe anything he says anymore. He’d double locked the back door when I’d come downstairs yesterday morning and has been sleeping with the key next him on the sofa. I haven’t told him I’m selling the business – I’m sure it’s only a matter of time before he suggests it; I know it’s the only possibility he has of getting the amount of money he needs. I want him to ask me, to give me another reason to stay angry, to bolster my courage to push him further away, out of the house completely. I want to ask him how he can have been so stupid, but whatever he says won’t help me to understand; his assurances that he’ll never do anything like this again already slipping through my fingers.

  He’s angry with me too; I’d told him about the baby deliberately, wanting to hurt him. I’d seen the bewilderment on his face and could tell he hadn’t believed me until I’d fetched the letter out of my jacket upstairs and had thrust the crumpled piece of paper into his hand, watching whilst he read the doctor’s diagnosis of early menopause. A single tear had slid down his face as he’d absorbed the information and something inside my chest had turned cold, as if a fire that had previously been burning out of control had been extinguished.

  I’d wished, too late, that I could take it back. I hadn’t set out to hurt him. I’d hit back because he’d hurt me.

  ‘I’m so sorry,’ he’d said but I hadn’t asked if he was saying it to me or to himself.

  Livvi appears at the end of our bed, followed by Grace; the excitement of her birthday enough to camouflage the silence between Paul and me as she opens her presents. If I strip off his skin I’m not sure whether I’ll find the person I married underneath, or whether I’ll keep peeling away layers until there is nothing left and I’ll realise he never existed in the first place; the man lying beside me a stranger dressed in a set of pyjama bottoms my husband used to wear. I wish we could go back, but I realise now this is how marriages end – not in a raging argument, but in the slipping apart of lives that once ran parallel, a failure to realise it’s too late to find a way back to reach one another.

  He watches Livvi as she pulls the wrapping paper off a parcel and I can see he’s wondering if it will be the last time he’ll be here to see this, whether next year she’ll be opening one set of gifts with me, and another set with him somewhere else. There’s a silent pause after she unwraps the last one, and I know what we’re all remembering as we look at the mountain of discarded paper and ribbon. Buddy would have dived into the middle of it as he had done on the morning of Grace’s birthday last year, grabbing a mouthful of blue tissue paper; Paul had chased him around the room in order to retrieve it.

  I get up, gathering all the rubbish in my arms before the memory has time to solidify into something that will taint the atmosphere.

  ‘School,’ I say. ‘You girls need to get ready.’

  I put my head round Grace’s door on the way downstairs, checking she’s got her uniform on as, recently, she’s disappeared in here and got lost in other more important activities, but today she’s dressed and is busy doing her hair.

  ‘I can do that if you want,’ I say to her as she pulls it up into a ponytail.

  ‘No, it’s fine, Mum.’ I feel the invisible rope between us loosen a fraction and it makes me want to grab on to it more tightly, pulling it back in for just a few more months, even though I know that’s impossible.

  ‘Grandma and Auntie Caroline might pop over this evening to give Livvi their presents.’ I watch as she visibly stiffens in front of the mirror, briefly pausing her hairbrush before beginning the rhythmic strokes again. ‘Are you OK with that?’ She nods, a black band between her teeth. ‘Are you sure? You still seem a bit off whenever I mention Auntie Caroline’s name.’ She takes the band out of her mouth and stretches it with her fingers to the point I’m convinced it’s going to snap.

  ‘No, I’m not.’

  ‘Because I can tell her she can’t come if you don’t want her to?’ I grit my teeth, hoping it will give me an excuse not to have her in the house.

  ‘It’s fine, Mum. You know how much Livvi adores her and Uncle Rob and I really want this to be a nice birthday for her.’ She tucks a few loose strands behind her ear as she looks in the mirror. ‘I don’t have a problem with Auntie Caroline. It’s Uncle Rob.’

  A cold feeling presses on my chest. ‘What d’you mean?’ She turns towards me and I think she’s listening to see if anyone else can hear her, but Livvi and Paul are both downstairs. I push her bedroom door shut just in case. ‘What about Rob? Has he done something to you?’ I can barely get the words out. She shakes her head.

  ‘Not to me.’ I swallow to get rid of the sharp taste of apples in my mouth.
Grace sits down on her bed and I walk over to her, taking her hand in mine.

  ‘What then?’

  ‘He’s the reason Grandpa got angry with me. He was on a video and Grandpa was watching him.’

  I frown. ‘What kind of video?’

  ‘A video that Grandpa had up on his computer screen when I went into his study. I didn’t know he didn’t want me to see it. He got so cross. I’d never heard him shout like that before.’

  ‘Grandpa shouted at you?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘When was this? Why didn’t you tell me?’

  ‘A few weeks before he died. He told me not to tell you and I said I wouldn’t and then he got really ill and I didn’t think it was right to say anything. I think that’s why he’s come back, Mum. Because he’s still angry with me. I shouldn’t have gone into his study. I was only trying to find him to get him to play Patience with me.’

  I swallow. ‘What did you actually see?’

  ‘The screen was a bit fuzzy and there wasn’t any sound but this girl came out of a house and Uncle Rob was following her. She was running and he was running after her. When he caught up with her, he put his arm around her shoulders and it looked like she was trying to get away from him and then Grandpa saw me watching by the door so I didn’t see anything else.’

  ‘Did you recognise the girl who Uncle Rob was with?’

  ‘No. But it wasn’t Auntie Caroline. She was much younger. About the same age as Adam.’

  I wait in the car for the girls to say goodbye to Paul before leaving for school, not wanting to be in the same room as him unless I absolutely have to, but my mind keeps slipping back to what Grace said. About the same age as Adam. Nineteen? Younger? I’d been fifteen when he’d slipped his hand under the blanket that covered my legs on the sofa. Stop it. Get the girls to school first and then you can think about it.

  My leg trembles as I press down on the accelerator and I force myself to smile as Grace and Livvi clamber into the back, fixing a grin onto my face like I did all those years ago whenever anyone asked me if I was OK. Fine, I always said. I’m completely fine. And they’d believed me. They hadn’t been able to see that I was drowning, legs kicking frantically in the blackness, face upturned to the sky, my nose the only thing still above water, about to go under at any second.

  I’m aware Livvi is talking to me as I pull up opposite the school gates, but I have to ask her to repeat what she’s said, reassuring her that I have remembered the Tupperware box full of shop-bought cupcakes that she wants to take in to hand out to her class. I pass them to her through the passenger window as she stands on the pavement, her hands so full she can’t manage to take Buddy’s blanket off the back seat and bring it into school, as she has done every other day this week.

  As she shuts the door, I feel myself gasping for breath, as if I can’t get enough oxygen into my lungs. I force myself to concentrate on the road ahead as I drive away, making my mind as blank as the tarmac that I can hear humming beneath the car wheels.

  I open the door to Caroline’s office as soon as I arrive but it’s empty and Alice shakes her head.

  ‘She’s out. Got a couple of viewings this morning.’

  I sit down at my desk, keeping my office door open so I can see when she walks past. It wasn’t Auntie Caroline. Maybe Grace had been mistaken. Maybe it had been a really old video when they’d both been younger. Caroline had only been nineteen when they’d got together. I know I’m trying to convince myself and the excuses balance precariously in my head, ready to tip over at the slightest touch. My mobile screen lights up. A message from Paul.

  We need to talk.

  I text back.

  I have nothing to say.

  There’s a brief pause when my screen goes black before it lights up again.

  Can you collect the girls from school this afternoon? I won’t be around as am trying to sort stuff out.

  I don’t reply.

  There’s a noise in reception and I call out to Caroline as she walks past.

  ‘Can I borrow you for a minute?’ She pauses in the doorway, her face expectant. She thinks I’m going to tell her something about the sale of the business. That the solicitor has been in touch. ‘Come in,’ I say. ‘And shut the door.’

  She walks inside, putting a paper bag down on my desk in front of her. ‘Almond croissants,’ she says. ‘I haven’t had any breakfast. Want one?’ I shake my head. The thought of any food at the moment makes me nauseous. Old habits die hard; my determination not to eat had always been strongest when I’d been stressed. She sits down, tears off a piece and my stomach grumbles in protest.

  ‘Grace told me something this morning that I need to ask you about,’ I say. She nods, her fingers covered in flakes. ‘She said a couple of months ago she saw Dad watching a video of Rob.’ Caroline continues to look at me, a slight crease between her eyebrows, but otherwise giving no sign that she’s heard this information before. ‘He got really cross when he realised she was watching it,’ I say carefully.

  ‘And?’ She pulls off another piece of croissant, brushing something off her cheek as she puts it into her mouth. ‘Are you sure you don’t want some of this?’

  I nod, swallowing the saliva that fills my mouth.

  ‘Grace said there was someone with Rob in the video.’ I point at her cheek. ‘You’ve got a bit on your face.’

  ‘Who?’ She pulls a folded paper napkin out of the bag and licks the corner of it before rubbing her skin. ‘Better?’

  I nod without really looking, needing to get out what I’m going to say, already feeling as if I shouldn’t have started this conversation. He’s her husband. She’s not going to tell me anything.

  ‘Grace didn’t recognise them, but she said it was a girl, about the same age as Adam.’ I stare at my sister, who looks back at me, her posture suddenly rigid. ‘You’ve still got some flakes on your cheek,’ I add, lifting up my hand to brush them off but she flinches when my fingertips touch her skin. I realise they aren’t flakes at all. The yellow I can see is discoloured skin and there’s a line of purple running along the edge where she’s smudged her foundation with the napkin.

  She covers her cheek with one hand, looking down at my desk.

  ‘What happened to you?’ I ask. She hesitates and in the second before she tells me that she caught it on her utility-room door, I realise I don’t need her to explain. The tiny fraction of time is enough for me to see what she’s living with. How Rob hadn’t ever changed from the person who’d sat beside me on that sofa, one hand under that blanket, his fingers marking my flesh. What had aroused him most wasn’t where he’d touched me, it had been seeing the fear in my eyes and although he hadn’t come near me again, I’d known he wouldn’t be able to hide that desire for long. The bruise on her face tells me I was right. She waits for me to nod, another person to add to the list of people who have swallowed her excuses, not wanting to get involved.

  Neither of us speak, the silence settling around us, covering up the past. I reach for the paper bag on the desk, raising my eyebrows in a question and she nods, just once. I tear off a piece of croissant and put it in my mouth, an unspoken message to let her know if I can take this step, she can too.

  ‘Do you want to stay with him?’ I ask. Her eyes well up as she shakes her head. ‘Is he at work?’ She nods. ‘Why don’t you go and pick up some of your things? You can stay at ours.’

  She doesn’t move for so long I’m about to repeat the question, but then she speaks so quietly it’s almost imperceptible.

  ‘The business,’ she says. ‘I wouldn’t have made you sell it.’

  I interrupt before she can finish. ‘It doesn’t matter.’

  ‘You don’t understand,’ she says. ‘Rob wanted the money. He’s trying to buy another site that he wants to develop.’

  ‘Let’s focus on one thing at a time,’ I say. ‘Go home and grab what you need for a few days.’

  She takes a deep breath. ‘Can you come with me?’ she asks.r />
  I hesitate. ‘I need to check someone can pick up the girls,’ I say. ‘I’ll meet you outside.’ She nods again, and I put the remainder of the almond croissant in my mouth. I start to dial Anna’s number as Caroline gets to her feet. ‘Would you mind driving?’ my sister asks. ‘I can’t face it.’

  ‘Sure,’ I say. I fish around in my handbag for my car keys and push them across the desk. She picks them up and glides out, as sleek as ever, shoulders back. If I hadn’t seen the bruise, I’d have assumed her life was perfect.

  ‘Hi, Jo,’ Anna answers.

  ‘Hi. I just – I just wondered if you’d be able to do me a favour and collect the girls from school this afternoon? I’m sorry to ask but Paul isn’t around.’

  ‘It’s honestly not a problem. It might give Grace and Maddie the opportunity to make up.’

  ‘Thanks so much. I should be home by three-thirty.’ I walk out of reception, squinting in the brightness. Caroline’s already standing by my car, the passenger door open, fiddling with my keys. As I head towards her, she shuts the door, pressing the keys to lock the vehicle.

  ‘I’ve changed my mind,’ she says. ‘I think it might be better if I went by myself.’

  ‘Are you sure? I’m happy to come with you if you want.’

  She shakes her head. ‘Rob won’t even be there. He’ll still be at work.’ She looks at me. ‘And if he does come back, it’s better if I’m on my own.’ She swallows. ‘Can you do me a favour and cover my two-thirty appointment?’

  I nod. Anna’s collecting the girls for me so I don’t need to rush back. ‘I really think you should have someone with you,’ I say.

  She looks at me and smiles, briefly. ‘Trust me, Jo. I need to deal with this by myself.’ She doesn’t look worried, but the faint outline of the bruise on her face tells me she should be.