The Tightrope

by Hiba Basit

  ‘I placed a tape in his drawer and explained everything in there. Everything he deserved to know when we first met.’

  ‘Annie, he can still come with us.’

  Annette smiles sadly. ‘I can’t do that to him. I won’t hurt him any more than I already have.’

  A guest drops her glass of rosé on the floor, the glass shattering. Annette looks over as David appears with paper towels, reassuring the woman who dropped the wine that the stain will disappear.

  ‘No, it won’t! You haven’t got magical fingers,’ she mimes, as he catches her eye. He raises his eyebrow as if to say, you want to bet? Throwing the towel over the stain, he starts wiggling his fingers over it, as if casting a spell. The woman behind him frowns and turns away. Lifting the towel up, he feigns shock and looks back at Annette to see if she’s amused.

  ‘When are they coming for us?’ Santana asks, forcing Annette’s attention back to her daughter.

  ‘As soon as my phone rings. We’ll be gone before midnight.’

  ‘Have you told Uncle Clive? He’s already lost his wife this year. He can’t lose me as well!’

  Annette shakes her head. ‘You know we can’t tell him,’ she says softly.

  Santana looks away. ‘Sometimes I just want to wake up and not be me. I pray that I’ll wake up one day and find out I wasn’t who I thought I was.’

  ‘Santana, please don’t say that.’

  ‘I just want to be free.’

  Annette winces, feeling entirely to blame for her daughter’s unhappiness. ‘We’ll get through this,’ she says, unsure if even she believes her own words. Santana begins to smile, and then stops. ‘What is it?’

  ‘There’s another note!’ she says.

  Annette turns and spots a black envelope peeping out from under the front door. They turn simultaneously back to the window, looking into the darkness and scanning outside for someone familiar. Annette walks coolly to the door and picks it up.

  ‘Well?’ Santana asks as she returns.

  ‘I don’t understand,’ Annette whispers to herself.

  ‘What does it say?’

  ‘It says, all he wants is one in exchange for the other.’

  ‘In the third person?’ Santana asks, equally confused. Annette’s phone suddenly goes off. The fear returns to Santana’s face. Annette suddenly feels faint.

  ‘Upstairs, now!’ They race into Santana’s room and locate their bags. ‘Your passport, birth certificate, identification papers, they’re in the side pocket.’ She moves to her own bedroom and slips her pager off, placing it next to her phone on the dresser. Her eyes land on her wedding photo and linger for too long.

  ‘You should take it,’ Santana whispers, standing behind her.

  ‘I don’t need a picture to remember him. He’ll be a part of me forever. It’s enough to know that he loved me. If I can remember that, I’ll be fine.’

  Santana looks at the photo. ‘Can I ask you something?’

  Annette nods, checking her documents.

  ‘It’s something I’ve been dying to ask you.’ Annette looks up, pausing. ‘After everything you’ve been through, everything I’ve seen you endure, how can you still have your love and faith intact?’

  Annette smiles, thinking long and hard about her answer for her daughter.

  ‘It’s because of what I’ve been through that they’re intact. Believe it or not, Santana, sometimes you don’t wish away the terrible things that have happened to you because they make you who you are. They definitely don’t define you, but they shape you in a way that nothing else could.’

  ‘I don’t get how you’ve done it. How you’ve managed to build a life here. Create something so different from reality. I couldn’t, and yet you live it every day.’

  ‘I made myself believe I had choice. And then I chose to hope for a better life and I chose to live a better life.’ She throws her bag to Santana. ‘Go downstairs now, sweetie, turn left, when you’re outside, there’s an in-road at the second exit, turn into the in-road. You’ll see a black car there. Get into the car and wait for me.’

  Santana nods. ‘Where are you going?’

  Annette wraps her raincoat around herself. ‘To say goodbye to my husband.’

  David’s hands are covered in turkey grease as he approaches the stairway.

  ‘Caught you!’ he says, grabbing Annette as she comes down with Santana. They both freeze as he looks at her sternly. ‘You can’t do this! Skipping your turkey turn twice? I’m in over my head right now.’

  ‘Turkey turn?’ she asks, the colour slowly returning to her face.

  ‘Yeah! It burnt! I’ve had to start over.’

  ‘Oh, I get it!’

  Santana tries to head for the door, but David catches her. ‘What are the bags for?’

  She reluctantly stops and turns. ‘Presents,’ she says abruptly. He raises an eyebrow.

  ‘Aren’t the presents meant to go under the tree?’ he asks suspiciously.

  ‘Yes, but Mel and Matt left in such a hurry, they forgot to take their presents with them! We’re going to put them in the car so that when we go over, we can give these to them.’

  He grins. ‘OK, I’ll come and give you a hand!’

  Annette grabs his arm. ‘We need to talk first,’ she says, turning him towards her and signalling for Santana to leave. Santana doesn’t move at first, her face full of longing and despair.

  ‘Bye, David,’ she finally whispers, lifting the bags.

  He turns. ‘I’ll be with you soon, sweetheart.’

  Annette slips into the side room and shuts the door behind them. She sits down on the sofa as he tries to wipe his hands clean with a hand towel.

  ‘Come here,’ she says, patting the seat next to her. For a long time, she doesn’t know where to start. ‘I didn’t fall in love with you in the rain,’ she finally says.

  ‘OK,’ he replies, giving her an uneasy grin.

  She tries again. ‘Earlier on, you remembered that we first met in the rain. That day, when I came to have my appendix removed and you were my surgeon, I didn’t fall for you then. In fact, I never planned to see you again. Then, you just turned up at my doorstep to ask if I wanted to keep my appendix and I asked if people could do that. You said no, that you just wanted to see me again, to make sure I was as beautiful as you’d seen at the hospital.’

  ‘That was when you fell in love with me?’

  ‘No,’ she says softly. ‘One day, you drove us to the beach. We sat beneath the glow of the moonlight and drank wine and ate breadsticks. You put two of the breadsticks up your nose and said these were your flaws. Then, you asked me what my flaws were and I told you I didn’t have any.’

  He smiles at her. ‘Instead, you said you were flawed.’

  She is momentarily shocked that he remembers. ‘Yes.’ He leans in closer, as he did that night. ‘You came and held my hand and said that if I’d let you, you’d spend the rest of your life trying to keep me the same, to keep me flawed. That was when I fell in love with you, in that moment, when you drowned out the sound of the sea for me that night.’

  ‘That was a month after we got engaged.’ He looks confused and hurt. ‘You said yes to marrying me when you didn’t love me?’

  ‘Old habits die hard,’ she says.

  ‘Why are you telling me this?’

  ‘I just thought you should know,’ she says, feeling her world collapsing around her. He shakes his head and finally sighs.

  ‘I kind of already did,’ he tells her. She lifts a sceptical eyebrow. ‘You changed in the way you kissed me. You suddenly... opened up. Even the sex felt freer.’

  ‘Even the sex felt freer?’

  ‘Yeah, like you’d finally allowed me in, not just physically, but emotionally, too.’

  She gulps back a sob. ‘I’m sorry. I never knew.’

  He slips his hand under her hair, smoothing the spine of her neck with his thumb and massaging her skin.

  ‘It’s all right. It must have been hard to trus
t me after your pregnancy.’ The tears she’s been holding back finally spill out. For a minute her vision goes black. He wipes her eyes with his hands. ‘What’s going on?’

  ‘Nothing, I’m being stupid,’ she says.

  ‘No, darling, you’re not. Tell me what’s the matter so I can try and make it better for you.’ She cups her hands over the sides of his face.

  ‘David...’ Taking a deep breath, she forces the tears back in and looks at him. She thinks about telling him the truth. Will he believe her? Will he forgive her? Will he ever trust her again? ‘I’ll never be complete without you!’ she says fiercely, honestly.

  ‘I’ll never be complete without you, too!’ he says, as if this should already be obvious to her. He looks at his watch. ‘Your turkey turn, Mrs Coulter.’

  ‘Can you do it for me?’ she asks, kissing him.

  He shakes his head mockingly. ‘You’re pure lazy!’ He gets off the sofa and his hands leave hers. She wills herself to keep it together until he has left, even as her body feels like it’s going to break apart. ‘Hey, Annie,’ he calls, stopping at the frame of the door. The pain in her heart is unbearable. ‘We’re lucky we don’t have to worry about becoming incomplete, right?’ he asks. It takes all of her energy to look at him.

  ‘Yes,’ she smiles sadly. ‘We’re so lucky!’

  The trees shed their summer leaves as if it’s autumn, the fierce lightning and sudden thunder confusing their natural intentions. Sitting in the car, Annette feels this weather is in some way expected, or at least warranted, predicting the unravelling events of the evening, making them authentic, indirectly justifying their existence. As the driver starts the engine and swerves off the in-road, she turns and watches her home vanish from sight. The car rapidly swings to the right as a huge branch clatters to the ground. The branch, the size of a tree trunk, lands horizontally on the road, blocking cars on the other side from venturing outwards and ensuring that she can’t go back in. Taking the cascading branch as a signal, she forces herself to face forward, but her thoughts turn with her. She thinks about the future without David, without waking up next to him in the mornings, without hearing his soft voice floating from his equally contrary masculine beard, without seeing how he ages with time.

  ‘I know our lives will drift apart, but I hope he’ll continue loving me,’ she whispers to Santana, and yet to no one in particular.

  ‘He’ll always love you,’ Santana says. ‘A love like yours doesn’t ever die.’

  ‘You’re just saying that because you know I’ll never be able to find out.’

  ‘Ignorance is bliss.’

  ‘Bullshit! Ignorance is gutless.’

  Santana smiles wryly. ‘I thought I’d give that saying a try. Turns out I shouldn’t use it with people who have much more to say than the old school proverbs.’

  ‘Turns out,’ Annette repeats, a faint recollection coming to memory of when she was young and her mother told her, reciting an ancient proverb: What the heart thinks, the tongue speaks. Her reply was unusual for a five-year-old.

  ‘What if someone is mute, or speechless? Then it is their actions that reveal what their heart thinks. Their behaviour!’ In retrospect, it surprises her that she discovered psychology so late, realising with a mixture of apprehension and excitement that it was the single thing she could understand and relate to, perhaps even be a natural at.

  ‘Did you bring the box?’

  Annette waits for Santana’s words to register. ‘What box?’

  Santana looks at her as if she’s finally lost her mind. ‘The box. There’s only one!’ Santana shouts for the driver to stop. ‘What do you want to do?’ she asks, but Annette is already pushing the door open. ‘Hold on! What if you run into David?’

  ‘I won’t! I’ll dodge him.’

  ‘What if you can’t? What if he doesn’t let you go?’

  Annette looks at her in desperation. ‘I have to get that box! My whole life is in it! Just wait right here!’

  Santana slams the door shut and watches her mother disappear down the street and around the corner. She does a quick scan of her surroundings, looking all four ways, acutely aware of a familiar dread settling inside her. Her heart skips as she notices a man jogging across the street, only to pass their car quietly. Noticing the time on the dashboard is nearly approaching midnight, she wills her mother to come back to the car, hoping she returns with her senses intact this time.

  Through the living room window, the clock reads eleven thirty-six. Annette stands outside her home, camouflaged by branches and rainfall, feeling like her own intruder, as if whilst reading her own diary, she’s stumbled upon words written by someone else. Keeping an eye on everyone from the front window, she tries to work out how to retrieve the box from the attic without being seen.

  David appears from the kitchen so suddenly that she scrapes her forehead against the exterior frame as she ducks. The physical pain does not come close to the pain she feels at having to hide from him. Without warning, the front door slams open and then closes. Buried behind the line of bushes, she lifts her head and scans the darkness, her eyes darting over the expanse of her porch. David lifts the trash lid and hurls several bin bags inside. Looking agitated, he walks past the gate and stops on the sidewalk, peering into the distance tentatively. She holds her breath as he runs up the steps and closes the front door, returning to the kitchen. Then, she opens the door and runs upstairs and out of sight. She unhooks the latch on the outside and pulls the ladder down. The wood feels damper than usual. As she enters the attic, she turns the light on and takes in the water surrounding her feet.

  ‘Shit!’ she cries, slipping her shoes off. She tries to discern where the leak’s started. Failing, she begins manoeuvring her way in route of the box but almost slips on one of the planks. Retreating back down the steps, she rushes to her bedroom and picks her mobile up. She doesn’t understand why she cares since she won’t be coming back, but she finds herself dialling the number of a plumbing service. She walks back towards the attic, having replaced her flats with waterproof boots. She is about to step back up when she hears footsteps behind her.

  ‘There you are,’ David calls, standing so close she finds herself instantly leaning into his warmth. ‘Dinner’s ready, at last! The turkey took longer than we’d planned. Everyone is starving!’ She smiles, refusing to look at him.

  ‘We can call it a midnight feast,’ she whispers, her back still turned to him. He laughs.

  ‘Come down. Everyone’s getting started. And call Santana, too!’

  ‘In a bit,’ she replies and, just like that, he disappears downstairs and she’s cold again. As the laughter echoes from below, she moves away from the attic and edges her way towards the bathroom. Locking herself inside, she falls to her hands and knees and sobs so fiercely that no sound comes out. She takes out the torn notes from her pocket, flattening them out one by one and arranging them on the tiled surface in the order they were sent. Her knees make crushing noises as she hovers over the papers, trying to decode the trilogy of messages. She grabs a pen from the bathroom cabinet and slashes lines from letters to words, making frantic notes that dishevel her more when she looks back at them.

  ‘There must be something more! You always enjoyed a good word-game!’ she yells. With sweating hands, she picks up the last note and examines it carefully. ‘All he wants,’ she whispers dazedly. ‘Why would he write about himself in the third person?’ Reading the sentence in the note over and over again, she circles the words he and exchange. ‘Exchange what?’

  And just like that, it dawns on her, the realisation as terrifying as an ice-cold current hitting bare skin. Someone would only talk in the third person if they were writing on someone else’s behalf. If her theory proved true, the man who had sent these notes wasn’t alone. She tries recalling familiar forms from her past, people who visited her home often, figures she started to recognise simply by their footsteps outside her door. She can’t think of anyone who’d partner with him after s
o many years of her disappearance.

  Then, another thought dawns on her and her chest tightens. She feels the horror stab her like a blade. ‘No!’ she screams, searching her pocket for the blood-red envelope but pulling all three out. She spreads it out using the tips of her fingers, letting the other two fall to the ground. Pointing the pen at the name at the heart of the envelope, she draws a black line from the letter S and scribbles ‘Sofia’. Then, she labels the M with ‘Maria’. Reaching the letter A, she falters, the pen falling to the floor and rattling from one tile to the next before it stops near the sink. ‘Alex!’ she cries, and as she gets up, stumbling, and unlocks the door, she falls back into the chapter of her life she’d tried so hard to forget.

  ***

  Annette leans over the banister, trying to gauge if it’s loud enough for her not to be noticed if she goes downstairs. She thinks of pacing the hallway until she is convinced that everyone has lost themselves among the food and merriment of the night, but when she tries turning, her body doesn’t move with her mind. Hearing somebody ask after her whereabouts, she takes a deep breath and tries to purge herself free of her preceding insecurities. Today is the real her, someone who’s created a life and home with David, someone whose passion is to help children, someone who’s dedicated her entire life to making the world a better place, to notice the good within the bad, to trust men again, to nurture her child in front of others, to feel worthy as a mother and wife. Helpless was something she was never going to become twice. Even if it destroyed her trying to fight it.

  She eases herself down the stairs, her eyes permanently fixed on the kitchen entrance, like a hawk stalking its prey. Her boots and raincoat lie haphazardly at the top of the stairs where she’d slipped them off, knowing barefoot would be quieter. As soon as she gets to the bottom, she runs across the room to the drawer she left her necklace in. She rummages through her things, shuffling David’s sets of cufflinks and old glasses aside, but the necklace has vanished. In a brief moment of panic she lifts her hand and touches her neck, thinking it’s on her.