‘OK. I have met someone.’ He turned and she stared. He looked just the same: thick sandy hair and eyebrows, blondish stubble, caramel eyes, shiftily refusing to meet her own. He sucked the last breath out of his fag and ground it out on the step, before coming back inside.
‘What I’m trying to say is . . . Christ, let’s have a proper drink.’ He uncorked a bottle of Shiraz, splashed it into glasses and sat down at the tiny Formica table. There was just room for three, one each side and the high chair at the end. She sat opposite him and tried not to drink the wine.
‘Why would he go to America?’ she said. ‘Why didn’t he say anything?’
Rod reached across the table and took her hand. ‘Forget Seth for a minute.’ His leather sleeve got into something sticky and she was glad. She pulled her hand away.
‘OK. Who is it?’ she said.
‘You don’t know her,’ he said, ‘and nothing’s happened and anyway, it’s not that really. I mean it’s not her. It’s just that she, she’s made me see . . .’ He got out his plastic pouch of Drum and made a roll-up, his fingers trembling so that the tobacco spilled.
‘See what?’ She focused on the mole on his cheek that shifted up and down, just minutely, as he spoke.
‘We hardly even knew each other when you got pregnant.’
‘With your help.’
‘And we never, like, made a real commitment, did we?’ He licked his Rizla and rolled the paper tight. He finished his glass of wine and poured another.
‘Didn’t we?’
‘Come on, Dodie,’ he said, ‘you know how it was. I said I’d stick by you and I did and then you were ill, but now . . . It’s not that I’m leaving you, I just need –’
‘What about Jake?’
‘– some headspace, you know? I’ll always be here for Jake. I’m taking off.’
She bit the knuckle of her thumb. ‘You’ll always be here but you’re taking off?’
‘Got a flight to New Zealand.’
‘You’ve got it?’
‘It was a good deal. It was a now or never thing.’
She gave in and swigged her wine. ‘When were you going to tell me?’
‘Tonight. Now. I’m telling you.’ He bared his teeth in an attempted smile. ‘I’ll only be gone a few weeks, a month. I promise. Three tops.’
‘Three months?’
He shrugged. ‘Round about.’
‘So,’ she said, ‘you’re leaving me. Us.’
‘I just need to get my head together. You know I love Jake – and you.’
‘When?’
‘Coupla weeks.’
‘Well, thanks for telling me.’ There was a Le Creuset casserole dish on the shelf. She could easily have brained him. ‘Is she going with you?’ she asked.
‘No! Shit, I shouldn’t have mentioned that, it’s just meeting her made me see I need a break, you know, time out.’ He waved his long arms about. He was too big for her tiny terraced house; it had never fitted him.
She had to get out of there and she stood, shaking off his attempt to hold her. ‘I’m going to make Stella tell me where Seth’s gone,’ she said, zipping up her jacket and cutting off his voice with a slam of the door.
There are more fireworks, a feeble celebration in the wet; she hears a laugh, catches a whiff of gunpowder. And Rod’s taxi arrives, and behind it a police car. The blue light pulses over the wet privet hedge, making it surge and retreat like a wave.
When he sees the body, Rod begins to heave and goes to the downstairs toilet, which means dodging Stella’s feet, which he misjudges, blundering against the legs and letting out a cry. The body rocks, the banister creaks. Dodie screws shut her eyes, sticks her fingers in her ears to block out the sounds of Rod retching and the faint rhythmic squeak of rope on banister.
A detective with a beige moustache takes an initial statement in the kitchen, and then leaves her with a policewoman, Donna, who makes tea. The carrot is still there on the chopping board, still half-sliced.
‘Did she live alone?’ Donna asks. She has bubbly blond curls and a face like a plastic dolly, way too pretty for her uniform.
Dodie hesitates. ‘Yes. My brother used to live here, but he’s in the States.’ She’s amazed how smoothly this comes out, as if it’s normal and she’s known it all the time. ‘She’s always been depressed. Sort of a bit ill. In the head.’
‘Ah,’ Donna says, cosily, ‘a history of depression.’
Dodie hears the body being taken down. Rod comes back, face ashen. A guy takes her fingerprints, and Rod’s, to rule them out. ‘My brother’s prints will be here as well,’ she says. She tells Donna about Seth and the relatives in America.
‘Address?’ Donna says.
‘I’d just popped round to get it from my mum.’ Popped, she thinks, popped? She’d never say that, not in real life.
Donna gives her a curious look and jots busily. ‘Empty nest syndrome?’ she speculates.
‘This her writing?’ A policeman wearing maggot-coloured gloves holds the bag from Stella’s head under Dodie’s nose. I die at my own hand and of my own free will. Stella M. Woods. It’s written on the bag, definitely in Stella’s writing. ‘Deceased two to three days,’ he adds.
A police van comes to take the body away. ‘Looks cut and dried to me,’ Donna says. ‘History of depression. Empty nest. Another cuppa? Shame there isn’t any sugar.’ Donna puts her cup down on the wood with no coaster; Stella would go mental. ‘It’s not up to me to speculate, of course. There’ll have to be an inquest.’
Dodie looks at the table. Stella’s last puzzle – the sun glinting off the Grand Canal, the laugh of the handsome gondolier, the stripy stockings – is complete.
‘I was here on Friday,’ Dodie says. ‘She was wearing the same dress.’
‘How did she seem?’
‘Weird,’ Dodie says weakly.
‘There you are then.’
‘But she was . . .’ she begins, always weird she nearly says, but it would seem disloyal. She starts to take apart the puzzle, then changes her mind, puts the pieces back one by one, there and there and there.
‘You get home now,’ Donna says. ‘Get some sugar inside you. Or a stiff brandy.’ She smiles and a dimple flickers in her cheek. ‘Try and get some shut-eye.’
Rod takes her arm as they go out. A policeman drives them home. It’s still raining and the wipers squeak a rhythm, cut and dried, suicide, cut and dried, suicide. ‘You OK?’ Rod says.
‘I should have gone back,’ she says. ‘On Friday, she sort of reached out . . .’
‘Don’t go there.’ Rod squeezes her knee as they round the corner.
The streets are all wet and glittering orange; the street-lights zizz past the windows like sparklers. In the house, Dodie runs straight up for a peek at Jake. Breathing, snug and warm and safe.
‘What a little sweetheart,’ the neighbour says, looking up from her knitting. ‘Not a peep out of him, not a peep.’ She finishes her row and squeaks her needles into the ball of yarn. ‘I hope everything’s all right?’ Her nostrils lift, testing the air for gossip.
‘Fine,’ Dodie says firmly.
The neighbour waits, eyes sharpening behind her specs.
‘We’re shattered,’ Rod says, and she takes the hint and leaves. ‘Any time,’ she says round the edge of the door. ‘Little angel, up there, any time.’
‘Thanks so much.’ Dodie sinks down onto a kitchen chair, elbows on the table. Rod’s face is grey. A terrible shock for him too, of course, to see, actually to stumble into the corpse. That’s an awful word. Not Stella any more, not a she or a her, but an it. A corpse in a velvet dress. Why would you start to cut up a carrot and then – but, it, despair, whatever, could strike as easily at that moment as at any other. It could strike you at any time. You could start chopping a carrot and then think, what for? What is the point of this? Your daughter could come round and then leave, leave you all alone with your half-chopped carrot and –
‘Coffee?’ Rod suggests.
‘This time of night?’
‘Think we’re going to sleep?’ He flicks the kettle switch, tips the stale grounds out of the cafetière and into the sink.
‘It’s my fault.’
‘Stop!’ He holds up a hand almost as if he’s about to strike her. ‘She was depressed. She was ill. It was nothing to do with you. Say it.’
‘It was nothing to do with me.’
Sometimes, she does love him despite –
She watches him spoon coffee, the bulk of him in her kitchen, the sexy shape of him. Will he still leave? The kettle clicks off. Rod fills the cafetière and fetches a bottle of Grouse and two mugs.
‘Put some sugar in mine,’ Dodie says, thinking of Donna’s advice. Besides, it’s nice with sugar. He stirs sugar into both and holds the bottle up.
‘Why not?’ It’s like a treat, at nearly midnight. The strangest moments can become occasions. People do the strangest things. It can strike at the oddest moment or be calculated down to the last detail, is what the forensics man said. Halfway through a carrot is an odd moment all right, but he implied that he had seen odder.
‘What if it wasn’t suicide?’ she says.
Rod sits down opposite her, hands cradled round his mug. ‘What? What are you saying? Murder you mean?’
Dodie takes a tiny sip. Sweet. Hot. Strong. ‘Do you think they might think it’s kind of suspicious that Seth’s gone?’
He frowns at her. ‘You’re not saying you think he’s got anything to do with it?’
She scalds her tongue on a slurp of coffee. ‘Of course not!’
He shakes his head, exasperated.
‘Seth would never hurt a fly,’ she says.
‘I know.’ He adds more whisky to her coffee and his own. The alcohol and the hot coffee have pinked his face; his skin looks steamy.
‘Of course it was suicide,’ she says.
‘I know.’
‘How could you even think that about Seth? This is Seth we’re talking about!’
‘You mentioned him. Mind if I smoke inside? It’s pissing down.’
Dodie stares at him and he eyeballs her right back. She runs upstairs to have another look at Jake, to shut his door and keep him safe from the smoke. He’ll never remember Stella now. She bends to sniff his cheek, breathe in the soapiness of breath and skin. His eyelashes are such long, dark wings resting on the smooth roses of his cheeks. She nudges his shoulder and he wriggles and sighs. The sheet’s a bit crumpled; she lowers the side of the cot to straighten it and his eyes snap open, stare at her blankly, bottom lip folding down.
‘OK, Jake,’ she says, ‘Mummy’s here. Hush little baby, don’t say a word,’ she whisper-sings, ‘Momma’s gonna buy you a mockingbird.’ She watches till the thumb goes in and the lashes brush his cheeks again before she creeps out: stupid, guilty mother. To want to wake a sleeping child just because she needs comfort.
A mean niff of tobacco floats up the stairs. Inhaling, she goes down again, closes the door, feeling an urge herself. Exceptional circumstances.
‘Roll me one?’
He raises one eyebrow and pulls out another Rizla. Dodie swallows the last of her coffee, squeezes a bit more from the cafetière. ‘Anyway, you’ve felt like murdering Stella now and then,’ Rod says. ‘Anyone would.’ He narrows his eyes and blows smoke in her face. They sit and sip and smoke. The fridge switches itself on with a panicky tremble. Stella is dead and Seth is missing and Rod is going away. The warmth of the whisky and the rush of the nicotine and caffeine send a flutter through her. None of it feels real at all. But Stella is really dead. Dusky toes under the velvet hem. Poor dead toes. Surely she should be crying? Did they think it suspicious that she didn’t cry?
‘I’ve got to let Seth know,’ she says, standing then sitting down again with a bump, a rush of dizziness sweeping through her.
‘Time for bed, Dodie,’ Rod says.
‘And you thinking it was him!’ She tugs away as he tries to hold her. Tears splash down her face.
‘Oh, don’t be so fucking mental,’ he snaps. He stomps off to the bathroom, leaving her there with the empty mugs and the spindly dog-ends in the saucer. She watches the tears land on the table. It’s not like herself crying at all, it’s like someone crying through her, or a natural phenomenon, like the rain.
3
It’s a cold day. A cold day to be burned on. Cold in the hall and the door sticks on the drift of post. Dodie stands and breathes: stale trapped breath, that faint cold whiff of bleach and incense. She forces herself to look at the place. Stella’s head up there in the shadows, toes dangling right there, the creak of rope on wood. There’s the stain on the carpet and fingerprint powder smudged on the banister but otherwise no sign that anything has happened. Breath held, she waits, to feel a presence, to feel something, fear or anything. But the atmosphere tells the truth. There’s nothing. Only cold. The hall is just the same old hall. She scoops up the post and riffles through it. Nothing from Seth.
It’s true that he is in the States; a card arrived the day after Stella died. A view of hills and forest from New York State. Dear Dodie, Rod and Jake, it’s great here. Don’t worry, love Seth. And that was it. Receiving it had shot relief like a drug through her veins. And then anger. How dare he do this to her? And then send such an insouciant card, insouciant, as if everything is normal, and no address even, no phone number? He’s always told her everything before. When she gets hold of him . . . But at least, she tells herself, at least he is safe.
This is her house now. Rod reminded her of that. ‘When I get back,’ he said, ‘we could move.’
‘If I have you back,’ she said. He’d lifted a corner of his mouth in acknowledgement of her puny joke. But could she bear to live here anyway, either with him or without him? She’d have to get the kitchen ripped right out and start again. The awful times she had in here, the awful drabness of the food.
Dodie fingers the softened edge of the old wooden draining board. She chucks the tannin-stained tea cosy in the bin and then pulls it out again, hangs it back on its hook beside the sink. Her heart chips like an ice pick at her ribs. In front of the sink the lino is worn to a dark smudge.
She smashed a plate here once. The plates were oatmeal-speckled and patterned with ears of wheat. Deliberately, she’d smashed one, and Stella, with a rare and sudden burst of vitality, had dragged her to the cellar door and shoved her so she tumbled halfway down the concrete stairs, banging her head on the wall and grazing her knee.
There’d been an airbrick letting in a drizzle of light and she sat on a box beneath it, waiting. She didn’t shout or cry, just sat there throbbing with power, because this was the sort of thing you could report a parent for and maybe even get taken into care. That was her favourite fantasy: a normal foster-family with television and dogs and mess and other children. This was before Seth was born. After a while her eyes grew used to the darkness. Leaves had blown in from somewhere, and in the corner was a wicker dressmaker’s dummy, draped in cobwebs. She kept her eyes away from that. What if she never lets me out? she thought, imagining her own skeleton sitting there for ever and evermore. She listened to the scraping clop of Stella’s clogs up above and the creaking of the floorboards. It could have been hours – or maybe only minutes – before the bolt was shot open and Stella called out: ‘Dodie?’
She limped up, exaggeratedly shivering and chattering her teeth. Stella mumbled an apology and Dodie felt her chest puff up like a pigeon’s with the proud surprise of that – and Stella’s eyes lingered, just for a second on her face, really looking at her, really seeming to see her, just for a moment, a moment that contained, maybe contained, a seed of love.
She looks at the scratches in the sink, the flaking paint on the window frame, the way the pattern has almost been rubbed off the Formica worktop. Maybe better to demolish the kitchen altogether. She could knock through to the dining room and make it like the dream foster-parents’ kitchen, with an Aga, a huge pine table, children gathered round,
laughing and squabbling, warm and cosy, warm, warm. Though she’s got a jacket on and a scarf wound round her neck, she shivers. In the dining room she switches on the gas fire. It lights eagerly, with a woof of surprise. An immediate smell of burning dust, a flutter of blue turning to orange behind the silver bars.
The gondolier gleams up at her from the table and she makes to begin breaking up the puzzle – but how can she? A thin layer of dust has settled on the rosy wood of the table. How quickly it gathers. She slides her finger through it, makes a trail through Stella’s skin cells. It would make sense to move in here. It’s a nicer area, a bigger house, a proper garden – much better for Jake to grow up in than the cramped terrace that is her own. Seth could simply keep his old bedroom, when he comes back. If.
It does make every sort of sense. She looks out at the garden – you’d need a machete. She could get a sandpit for Jake, a climbing frame. Now the inquest is over, Stella will be cremated. Dust and ashes. No suspicious circumstances. All, as the policewoman had said, cut and dried.
Dodie stands too close to the gas fire, the heat scorching her calves. At the inquest she’d learned that Stella had made several attempts before, the first when she was seventeen. Seventeen. Dodie never knew that. Seventeen. And she’d been sectioned after another attempt. The year was mentioned. It was the year that Dodie’s father was killed in a car crash. She just remembers being looked after by Aunt Regina and her friend, Kathy, who had a smallholding in Scotland. Stella hardly told her anything about the past, even about her dad, except that he crashed a car and died and that Dodie was better off without him.
Averting her eyes from the banisters, Dodie runs upstairs to Seth’s room. It’s a musky, hormonal-smelling tip, drawers hanging open, clothes and books, dirty cups and socks and crisp bags tangled together on the floor. She stands breathing him in, remembering the way he’d loop his arm around her, kiss her on top of her head; recalling the croak in his newly broken voice. He’d been a titch for too long, got bullied for it, but he’d shot up last year, all that sudden growth of bone and muscle. She picks up a maths book and flicks through, noticing a series of red ticks and Good work, in a teacherish hand. He’s left most of his stuff behind – which maybe means he hasn’t gone for long.
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