by Clare Boyd
He finished his mouthful by sucking in a dangling spaghetti string. ‘Hmm?’
‘You know I was cutting back the laurels by the pool?’
‘Yes.’ He placed his hands either side of his bowl. His head seemed to grow even larger.
‘Elizabeth asked me to watch Hugo swim,’ I began. ‘And I kind of said something that offended her. And she slapped me.’
‘She slapped you?’
‘Yes.’ I put my hand on my cheek.
He picked up his fork. ‘No,’ he said.
‘You think I’m making it up?’
His fork was pointed at me. ‘You obviously upset her. What did you say to her?’
‘I was a bit shocked when she said they’re sending Isla to boarding school, that’s all.’
‘So you were being rude.’
‘I didn’t mean to be.’
He frowned and began eating again. Through a mouthful, he scoffed at me. ‘You’ve always been a hothead, with all your opinions.’
The bowl wobbled as I knocked it by accident, reaching for my water. ‘It just came out.’
‘I guess you want to keep your job? Our jobs?’
I sipped my water and tried to quell the rise of indignation. ‘To be honest, Dad, I wanted to tell her to stick the job,’ I mumbled.
He stood up, towering over me, pointing down at me. ‘Careful what you wish for.’
I looked up at him. ‘Sorry, Dad. I didn’t mean it.’
‘Just keep your head down, okay?’ He wiped sauce away from his mouth with a tea towel.
I dumped the leftovers into the bin, now feeling guilty about provoking Elizabeth; about how judgemental and outspoken I had been. ‘It’s going to be awkward tomorrow. She’s going to hate me now.’
‘You think she cares about you enough to hate you?’
I shrugged, feeling very small.
He cleared his throat. ‘Young lady, I do hope all this isn’t to do with your feelings for Lucas.’
Mortified, I shot back, ‘Feelings for Lucas?’
‘A little bird told me you used to rather like him.’
The ‘little bird’ must have been my mother, who had once read Lucas’s name on an open page of my diary. I had made her promise not to tell anyone and had trusted her to keep the secret.
‘When I was a teenager!’ But my face was bright red.
‘He’s very handsome, very wealthy and very kind. I wouldn’t blame you if you still did.’
‘For God’s sake, Dad. Elizabeth’s the one who’s in the wrong here.’ I left the dishes in the sink and hurried off to my room, cringing.
There was no air in my room. I opened the window, biting back the urge to yell at Elizabeth over the hedge, ‘Sorry, okay! Just SORRY!’
It was my place to be sorrier than her. We needed her more than she needed us. That was the way of the world, and my ranting and raving about it wasn’t going to change anything. It left me feeling powerless. So utterly powerless, I felt like giving up on being a good citizen altogether: finding some pot to smoke, drinking a bottle of gin on a park bench and sticking two fingers up at all the well-to-do passers-by. The thought of it cheered me up, and I went to sleep dreaming of an anarchic life, carefree, on the sidelines of society, and liberated from the Huxleys – in my head, at least.
Twelve
The girls’ bedrooms were in a wing of the old Victorian school building. There was a smell of furniture polish and stale uniforms. The floorboards creaked underneath the plastic carpets. Elizabeth, Isla and Lucas walked two steps behind the headmistress down a dark corridor towards a fire door. In Elizabeth’s pocket, her mobile pinged with a text. She prised off Isla’s hand to read it, knowing it would be a reply from Jude about the paintings.
Hi sis, can’t do this weekend. Doing a talk at the Bilbao in Spain. I can do 20th?
Isla was walking so close, Elizabeth kept tripping over her as she texted Jude back.
The party’s on the 4th. It has to be before then. How about next weekend, 13th/14th June?
‘Everything okay?’ Lucas said, under his breath.
‘Yes. All good,’ she replied, putting her phone away, crossing her fingers in her mind.
Mrs Hepburn opened the fire door to reveal a large room packed with pine cubicle beds and dressers. Elizabeth noticed a calendar pinned to the wall. A school crest headed each month. Every single day leading up to today’s date – 5 June – had been carefully crossed out in thick red pen. The end of term was decorated with drawings of rainbow explosions and dozens of happy faces.
‘We dislike the term “dormitory” as we feel it sounds a little stuffy. Isla would be sharing with four other girls in her first term,’ Mrs Hepburn said.
Isla began to cry and Mrs Hepburn tried to comfort her. ‘You’ll make lots of friends, and soon you’ll be telling Mummy and Daddy you don’t want to come home.’
Elizabeth thought of the calendar and doubted it very much. She didn’t like to see Mrs Hepburn’s hand touch Isla’s shoulder. It was Elizabeth’s job to console her daughter, not a stranger’s.
‘We’ll be back in a minute,’ she said, taking Isla’s hand and leading her along a never-ending corridor that reminded her of a scene in a horror film she’d watched about an orphanage that burned down with all the children inside.
They ended up in a stairwell of damp-smelling carpets and rendered walls. Isla sat down on the top step. Her head dropped forward and her little chest heaved with quiet sobs. Elizabeth sat down next to her.
‘Have one of these,’ she said, offering her a packet of Polo mints.
Isla didn’t take one.
‘I don’t want to sleep here in this school,’ she sniffed.
‘But you liked the big swimming pool? And the amazing theatre? Didn’t you?’
‘A bit.’
‘And all the girls seem very friendly.’
‘They look very tall.’
‘It’s bound to feel a bit scary,’ Elizabeth said weakly.
Isla turned her face to her and blinked her blue eyes and said, very quietly, ‘Why don’t you want me to live at home with you, Mummy?’
‘Darling! I do want you to live at home with me!’ Elizabeth cried, throwing her arms around her. More than anything in the world, she added silently.
‘Is it because I’m naughty?’
Her heart rocked in her chest. ‘Oh Isla! Is that what you think?’
‘You want to live with just Hugo. But he’s a telltale. He starts it, Mummy, but you never tell him off! And I don’t mean to be bad!’ She began to cry again.
‘Sweetheart. That’s not it at all. It’s got nothing to do with how naughty or good either of you are. It’s because you’re the big girl.’ She heard how ludicrous this sounded. Isla wasn’t a big girl. She was a baby, just as Heather had said.
‘I don’t want to be a big girl.’
Elizabeth looked outside, through the high, narrow windows, and saw the trees bent out of shape, permanently altered by the wind that blew relentlessly from the sea. ‘You’ll always be my little baby Isla.’ She hugged her daughter tighter.
‘Why do I have to go here then?’
‘Because it’s a good school and …’ Elizabeth’s sentence trailed off.
‘It smells funny.’
Tears filled her eyes and she laughed. ‘It does, doesn’t it.’
‘Tell that headmistress I’m not coming then.’ Isla put her head on Elizabeth’s pulled-up knees.
‘Okay, darling,’ Elizabeth said, stroking her daughter’s hair, wondering how she could possibly fulfil this promise.
* * *
When they returned to the bedroom, Lucas said to Isla, ‘The rooms are nicer than they were in my day!’ He laughed, then his phone rang. ‘Sorry, I’ve got to take this,’ he said, disengaging. Elizabeth wondered if these rooms triggered memories of his own school. From the stories he had told her, none of them would be good.
The loo cubicles, next door, smelt institutional. She noticed a baby
toothbrush on the side of a basin, and then a pull-up nappy stuffed into one of the bins. She imagined the child hiding it from her friends or being made fun of for bed-wetting. Isla still wet the bed occasionally, when she was anxious about something. Would she be that child on her first night?
At this, something broke in Elizabeth. It didn’t matter how plush the theatre was or how spectacular the swimming pool or how impressive the league tables; it didn’t change the fact that this school was an institution. It didn’t change the fact that Elizabeth would not be able to scoop Isla up in her arms and give her a warm, loving cuddle every morning and every afternoon, before and after school. Only at home could Isla get unstructured, untrained love on tap, taken for granted, shunned even, but unconditional. What else was Elizabeth there for if not to provide that every day for her day-dreaming, unconfident, sugar-addict daughter?
‘No, I’m sorry!’ she cried. ‘No, no, no way. I can’t do it, Lucas.’ She grabbed Isla’s hand and dragged her away down the horrid corridor. The Polo mints clattered to the floor.
A group of heroic girls with knobbly knees and skinny arms trotted past them in their baggy PE kits. Elizabeth stopped running and held her breath, trying to be as plucky as they were. Each girl said hello to them politely. Isla said hello back as Elizabeth tugged her along, almost off the floor, holding her breath all the way to the car, where Piotr was waiting.
Isla climbed into the front. ‘Mummy didn’t like that school,’ she explained to Piotr, and reached for her iPad. ‘She wants me to stay at home with Hugo.’
The computer game bleeped into the silence.
‘I’m afraid I found the tour a little overwhelming, Piotr,’ Elizabeth sniffed, searching the car’s side pockets for her tin of boiled sweets. When she found it empty, she buried her head in her hands and her emotions flooded out.
Piotr reached into the glove compartment and popped a white pill out of a foil blister pack. ‘Here,’ he said, handing it to her. ‘I have left. This. For you.’
She took it with a swig of water and pulled her phone out of her pocket. There, sitting on the screen, like a present, was a text from Jude.
W/e 13th good. See you then.
* * *
When they arrived home, they found Agata dishing out cottage pie for Hugo. Elizabeth nodded at her briefly and told Isla to sit down for supper. Then she went straight up to the bedroom.
She shut the door and backed herself against the wardrobe.
Lucas was close behind her.
‘That was totally bloody humiliating,’ he said, sitting down on her dressing table stool, swivelling it in half-circles, head in hands.
Out of the window beyond him, distant plumes of bonfire smoke punctuated the expanse of farmland. She thought of the horizon.
‘I don’t want Isla to go to that school.’
He threw his head back and groaned. ‘But we’ve been over it again and again!’ The tips of his fingers whitened on his knees, as though he were holding himself down. ‘How many times do we have to do this?’
‘I’m capable of looking after her now.’
‘And today proved that, did it?’
Elizabeth looked at her feet. Just socks, soft and vulnerable. Sticks and stones may break my bones but words will never hurt me. Sticks and stones may break my bones but words will never hurt me. ‘But I’m not having bad thoughts any more.’
‘Is that really true?’
Both Heather and Agata were pretty young women. Any wife would be wary. The bad thoughts had been within the bounds of normal. She was sure of it.
‘I swear it’s true.’
‘I get scared,’ he confessed.
‘Don’t be,’ she said, but she understood why he might be.
* * *
The material felt soft around her throat. The yellow bathroom stool was a little wobbly on the marble floor. It reminded her of the useless tiler who had laid the slabs unevenly. Mundane thoughts like this flickered across her mind, but without anxiety. It was a blessed relief to think and not feel. Nobody could get to her; she would be gone and she would be free of the desolate feelings. Her children would not grow up to hate her. She would be forever loved. Though she did not feel grand or dramatic about the act. It felt lighter than life or death. She had the sense that she was walking out of a door and away from unendurable thoughts, away from life’s expectations of her. Too high, too hard.
She had tied the cord onto the curtain rail, which was an oval chrome loop above the free-standing marble bath. Closing the curtain had been important to her, a pointless modesty that had been logistically complicated to arrange. She stepped up onto the stool and over the thick, expensive lip of the bath and let the noose take her weight. Its initial softness hardened to razor-sharp wire. It was agonising and petrifying as the air to her lungs was cut off, leaving her suffocating, her eyes popping out of her skull. Her legs kicked out for a surface to take the weight, to stop what she had started. By her own design, her tiptoes could not reach. The shower curtain flapped open.
A small figure in a white cotton nightie stood in the door frame: the angel who would save her.
* * *
He sighed. ‘I’m worried about leaving you alone.’
‘That’s why you’ve been working from home so much?’
He shrugged and nodded. His voice became hoarse. ‘I want to trust you, I really do.’
‘Agata is here to help me.’
‘Agata can’t possibly understand what’s going on inside your head!’
‘But you don’t either!’ she cried, pressing her fingers into her temples. ‘I’m telling you I’m fine but you won’t believe me!’
* * *
Through the shower curtain, Lucas’s arms enveloped her and lifted her up high, keeping her alive as he found a way to untie the cord. She coughed and vomited, and he wailed like an animal: about loving her, about the pointlessness of his life without her.
‘This is my fault,’ he said over and over again.
He brought her down to safety, right down to the floor, where they both collapsed. Elizabeth hid her face in his body and wept in his arms, choking and gasping. Her tears did not express regret or relief or love or gratitude, or even anger. They were tears of failure and humiliation. The shame of seeing Isla in the doorway was worse than death, proof to herself that she was a terrible human being. Proof that she didn’t deserve to live.
* * *
‘This is all my fault,’ he said, seeing into her thoughts, echoing those words of before. ‘I’m putting too much pressure on you. I’ll get my assistant to take over the party.’
‘No!’ Elizabeth wailed.
‘We’ve come so far since that night. I can’t go back there. I just can’t. None of us can.’
A memory came to her. Not of the night in the bathroom, but of before, way before. One of her mother’s boyfriends, an actor, who had spent six weeks in their flat, had told her off for not cleaning her room. He had been drunk and he had picked up a pair of her dirty knickers and laughed at her, calling her a filthy bitch. The mortification had burned onto her cheeks. Now the accusations were different but she felt branded by that same feeling. Over a quarter of a century later, she felt like a useless, dirty child.
‘You can’t take the party away from me, Lucas. I’ll prove myself to you. It will be incredible. Please,’ she begged, fumbling around in her jacket pocket for her mobile. ‘I’m calling the caterers now to confirm the menu. Jude’s coming on the thirteenth to fix the painting. And almost all of his arty friends have RSVP’d. It’s going well. It’s all under control,’ she said. Her hands were shaking. She dropped the phone.
He exhaled, then stood up and came around the bed towards her. He picked up her phone and handed it to her. ‘Okay.’ He sighed heavily. ‘But you realise how important this is, don’t you? To us? To our future? If you think you’re not coping, or if the thoughts come back, you have to tell me, okay?’
Tears came into her mouth, making it hard to sp
eak. She nodded. She had understood. ‘I won’t let you down,’ she said.
‘Leave all the school stuff to me then. I’ll take that burden off your shoulders, at least.’
She imagined dragging Isla out of a rough sea, her little hand slipping from her grasp.
‘I don’t want to let her go,’ she said, and closed her eyes tightly.
‘I know how much you love her.’
‘I’m a good mother,’ she whispered, but she wasn’t sure whether the words came out.
The metal chinks of his Rolex wristwatch rattled next to her ear as he held her face and kissed her on the cheek. ‘I’ll look after you,’ he said. ‘Whatever happens.’
* * *
It was a starry night. Elizabeth had looked out into the garden after hearing Lucas leave their bed. She tried to sleep. The bad thoughts she had promised him she wasn’t having were constant whispers in her brain: Lucas is having sex with Agata. Lucas is still in love with Heather. Lucas doesn’t love you. Lucas is taking Isla away from you as punishment. Lucas is having sex with Agata. Lucas is still in love with Heather. Lucas doesn’t love you. Lucas is taking Isla away from you as punishment. Lucas is having sex with Agata. Lucas is still in love with Heather. Lucas doesn’t love you. Lucas is taking Isla away from you as punishment. There was a dry, inflamed sensation on the skin of her throat, as though the unspoken muttering scratched there, trapped. She was hot, too. So hot. She got up again.
A light from outside shone eerily through the blinds, lighting her way out of the bedroom and to the kitchen, where she found the secret stash of pills.
She thought of the many different ways she could end the relentless circling in her mind.
There were two shotguns locked in the gun cupboard, brought out seasonally for clay pigeon shoots and for Lord Cecil-Johnson’s annual pheasant shoot. The key was hidden somewhere in Lucas’s study.
And a dressing gown cord hung in the bathroom.
Her fingers ran down the healed skin of her throat. She remembered how the softness of the towelling cord had become steel wire around her neck, and how her cheeks had bulged with blood.
