by Karen Perry
She’s not much older than me, a diamond stud winking from the side of her nose and a bored expression on her face as she watches me trying to make up my mind. There’s a loud clunk as someone makes a purchase from the vending machine. Two girls with backpacks wait for me to conclude my business, indiscreetly shuffling their feet and letting out impatient sighs.
‘Okay,’ I say. ‘I’ll get it to you later in the week.’
‘Today, if you don’t mind,’ she corrects. ‘We’re filling up fast.’
I sign my name on the form and she slides my passport back to me. I take it, shove it in the front pocket of my bag, mumble, ‘You’ll get it tonight.’
She blinks, flicks her chewing gum over to the other side of her mouth. There’s a thread of curiosity lacing through the boredom of her look. But then she turns her eyes to the girls with their backpacks – new guests, new forms, same old drill. Besides, she’s seen plenty like me pass through here. Girls with few options, and little money. Lost girls with nowhere to go.
I buy a coffee in a Leon, sit at a table on my own and open my laptop. I check, and then check again, but there’s nothing there – still no activity. No browsing, no emailing. It’s been five days now of this nothing. When will it come – the sign I’ve been waiting for? I feel like she’s cut me off, abandoned me again. I hit ‘refresh’, but when nothing comes a sob of frustration bursts out of me. Two builders in high-vis vests at the next table look over.
‘You alright?’ one of them asks.
But I just wipe my face on the back of my sleeve and snap my laptop shut. The music’s too loud anyway, all that fucking good cheer, chasing me back out into the streets where there’s a paltry greyish show of snow.
I walk the pavement, eyes down, hunched into a jacket too flimsy for the season. Somewhere along the way, I lost most of my stuff. I can’t even remember when or how. There are blanks in my memory, days and weeks blurring into a mutable cloud of events. I spend my days listlessly, waiting for a sign, tramping through museums and art galleries – anywhere that’s free and warm. In the British Museum, I curl up on a bench and sleep until they come and wake me and tell me to leave. Everywhere, there are people. Even back in the hostel, there’s always a door slamming, the inane chatter of girls doing their make-up or planning their sightseeing, FaceTiming their boyfriends back home.
I drift through a department store, just to get the feeling back into my toes. I’m tempted to take my shoes off, walk barefoot over the thick-pile carpet, feel the plush give of it beneath my jaded skin.
I’m so tired. So goddamned exhausted. It feels like I haven’t slept properly in weeks. One thought chases another, running around and around in my head, never letting up. There’s Christmas music oozing through hidden speakers – the Rat Pack smarming their way through the oldies with brass and bass and crooning backing vocals. A week ago, I came back from the shower and found my iPhone earbuds had been lifted. Without them, I’m powerless to avoid this muzak – it invades my ears amid the baubles and the garlands and the twinkly lights. I’m just about ready to scream when the phone rings and I answer.
‘Amy?’ she says.
My heart pumps hard and fast, like it’s going to burst out of my chest.
I hold the phone to my ear and listen, biting down on the tears that have surfaced, trying to get my breathing under control.
The line goes dead, but it’s enough. Finally, after all these weeks adrift, waiting for a sign, she has reached out to me as I knew she would.
I buy a ticket and ride the Tube. The sprinkly pattern in the blue upholstered seats imprints on my retinas so that when I close my eyes, that’s all I see: orange and red jags. I hear the clickety-clack of the tracks, the rumble of the tunnel.
And then Connie’s voice cutting through it, saying: What are you doing?
A smudge in my memory, her voice. I keep returning to it – or rather, it keeps coming back for me. Pressing, kneading, silently pleading. I do my best to resist it.
But sometimes, in idle moments, like when the tiredness has laid me low, and the lull of the rocking train helps me to believe that I am safe enough, far enough removed, I allow myself to be drawn back there. My eyes are closed, my head lolling back against the window, so I look like I’m asleep. But I’m not.
What are you doing? Connie asks, a rising curl of horror in her voice.
I keep my head in the pillow so I can’t see the look on her face.
She’s out of the bed now, spitting words at me – dyke, pervert – my heart a tight fist in my chest. I can hear her dressing quickly, her breathing laboured with disgust, hopping around on one foot as she pulls her boot on. Thoughts zip and chase around my head – how to calm the situation, how to undo what has been done. But part of me doesn’t want it undone. The love in my heart for her is natural and true, even though the strength of feeling I have slams up against the cold wall of her revulsion. The covers are pulled up over my chin, my face pushed deep into the pillow. And as she pulls on her other boot and grabs her bag from the bureau, I can feel her standing over me, hissing the words at me, her voice so close and intent, it’s like I can feel the heat on her breath.
Stay away from me, you skank. D’you hear? Her voice is low and deadly. I don’t ever want to see you again.
And then the door bangs shut behind her, followed by the thud-thud-thud of her angry footfall on the stairs, and I’m alone in that room with nothing but an empty silence. Dark thoughts flood in to fill it. Shameful memories. I relive the base animal desires that swept through me, only this time they draw a croak of embarrassment from my throat. The memory of me pawing at her breast, the way she recoiled from me, her voice weighty with loathing, makes me want to curl up so small I might disappear. But I can’t make myself disappear, just like I can’t blot out what I’ve done. Humiliation courses through my blood, swamps my brain. It itches and writhes within until I just can’t stand it.
It’s still dark outside, my breath clouding in the cold air. I’m shivering as I take my seat in Elaine’s Pinto, my hand shaking so hard it takes several attempts to slot the key in the ignition. The chill of the night air fills my chest, turns my heart to stone. The tears dry on my cheeks. By the time I’ve caught up with her, I’m so numb inside, it’s like all of this is happening to someone else.
She turns when she hears the engine and I slow the car, but when she sees it’s me, she faces the road again, hunches deeper into her jacket and quickens her pace. Anger, contempt, dismissal – all of it there in her thin back, hands shoved into pockets, the scrape of her boots along the dirt track as she hurries away from me. Something breaks inside me. A shattering of the past and all that was precious to me. I hardly feel it when I press my foot to the accelerator, feel the old car lumber into action, the slam of the fender into her warm body, hear the high note of her scream cutting through the early-morning air. I have to break her in order to silence her. And she must be silenced; she cannot be allowed to contaminate our shared past with her revulsion, her sneering contempt. I cannot allow her to do that. I reverse the Pinto, the twitching body caught in the beams, and then I slam it again, the wheel rolling over her and landing on the hard earth beyond. I don’t know how many times I go over and back, over and back, before finally pulling away, only the red tail lights watching her fade in the dust.
I don’t cry while I drive. I hardly feel anything at all. Instead, I think of a time we were walking into town, along a little side track by the woods, so busy talking that I didn’t notice the dead rat on the path until I stepped on it. I remember Connie’s face screwing up into an expression of revolted amusement, both of us screeching and clinging to each other as we laughed and hurried away. But most of all, I remember the feel of that rat underfoot, the soft give of its body beneath the sole of my shoe, the nauseous thrill when I realized what it was, and how the thought of it kept returning to me hours afterwards in little secret surges of pleasure.
Now, the train lurches to a stop and I get off. I do
this automatically, like I take this journey every day and am programmed to disembark here. And in a way, I know that this is where I always intended ending up. That the last two weeks have been a series of evasions and fillers, killing time until I would wind up back here, past Lidl and Lavender Gardens, turning the corner on to Dorothy Road.
She has given me the sign.
The snow has turned to sleet. It pelts against my face, causing my skin to sting, but I don’t care. Connie’s voice is silent now; Finn’s was never there to start with. There is joy in my heart coming back here, the gut-scrape of desire increasing with each step. And when I turn the corner and see the apartment block lit up against the night like an Advent calendar, all the little flaps thrown open, all my anxiety fades away. A dreamy smile on my face, I look up and find her window, the drapes open, light shining from hidden sconces, and caught up once more in the slipstream of her love, I move towards the door.
26.
Cara
Night has fallen. The sky, though dark, has a strange pinkish hue – the promise of more snow while the city sleeps. I draw the curtain and go to check on the bath. Mabel sits on the toilet, grasping her knees, her small feet bare and dangling. She grins up at me, showing off the new gap where her tooth has fallen out. It came home from school in a twist of tissue paper, guarded and precious.
‘Will the tooth fairy come?’ she asks.
I hunker down, and test the temperature of the bath water, turning the cold tap for more flow.
‘I’m sure she will,’ I tell her, managing a smile, even though I am exhausted, more tired than I have felt in months.
I sit on the edge of the bath and help her undress. Tying her hair up into a topknot and then turning off the taps, I lift her into the water.
She splashes away happily with her bath toys as I leave her to play and cross into the kitchen. My bag is on the table and I check my wallet for tooth fairy coins, but there’s nothing there save a couple of ten-pence pieces. I put down the wallet and dig around in my bag for loose change, and that’s when my fingers alight on the strip of photographs. I had forgotten they were there.
I draw them out and hold them up to the light. Amy and Connie. I think of the stories Amy has told me about this girl, and examine her image again: the mischief in her smile coupled with a languid sexuality in the curl of her lashes, the intense gaze at the camera – unapologetically suggestive. Amy’s words return to me:
You remind me of her, in a way.
I try to read something of myself in this girl with her russet hair and seductive leer, but I cannot, for the life of me, see anything. It triggers something inside me, though. A push of curiosity.
My laptop is still in Wogan House with Mark, so, instead, I wander down the hall and into Jeff’s study. Sitting at his desk, I try to push from my mind the events of this morning – the horrible scene that took place in this very room. Instead, I fire up the computer.
Miller. That was the name Amy mentioned. The Millers – Connie and Elaine. I open the browser, and google Constance Miller, Pennsylvania. The first hit throws up listings for 23 people named Constance Miller in the state of Pennsylvania. Spokeo has 53 records, and BeenVerified 73. Further down there are listings on Facebook and Craigslist, but before that, there are three obituary listings. In the first and second, the deceased are both septuagenarians, but the third one makes me stop.
Constance (Connie) Miller of Scranton, Pennsylvania, passed suddenly after a tragic accident Thursday, 14 February 2014. She was 26. Connie, as she was affectionately known, was the beloved and cherished daughter of Elaine Miller. Lost but forever in our hearts.
It occurs first in my heart, which begins banging away with uncertain beats. An accident. But didn’t Amy tell me Connie had survived? A concussion. Some broken ribs.
Into the browser, I quickly type her name again along with her home town, adding the word ‘accident’ and the date.
Immediately, it throws up listings from newspaper stories. I open the first one from U.S. News. Quickly now, my eyes scour the article.
Valentine’s Tragedy As Local Woman Killed In Brutal Hit-And-Run
Authorities say that a local woman was walking along the road towards her boyfriend’s house, planning to surprise him for Valentine’s Day, when she was brutally slain by a hit-and-run driver. The dead woman has been named locally as Connie Miller, aged 26. The death occurred on a rural highway outside Scranton, Pennsylvania, just a kilometer from the victim’s mother’s house.
State police said the accident happened around 5 a.m. Thursday on the westbound side of a minor road that links a few rural houses to the main highway. The woman was pronounced dead at the scene.
Initial reports say the killing was of a particularly brutal nature, with unconfirmed reports that the driver may have repeatedly slammed the body with the car. The body shows multiple injuries consistent with severe trauma. Although details have yet to be released, it’s thought the killer may have been known to the victim. Police say they are following a definite line of enquiry.
I’m so focused on these words, I almost jump when my phone buzzes.
I’m coming.
That’s all it says.
Fear rushes at me.
Distantly, I hear the swoosh and ping of the elevator doors opening.
I am out of the study and halfway across the hall when I hear the key slot into the lock, the turn and click of it opening, and I freeze.
My heart stops cold as the door opens, a rush of panicked thoughts coming at me.
And then she comes in, closes the door behind her and discards her bag on the hall table. The look she throws me is sulky and disdainful.
‘Is my dad here?’ she asks, running a hand through her hair as she looks about at the stacked boxes, the empty rooms.
‘Olivia?’ My mind is flickering with confusion.
‘You’ve been busy,’ she remarks, with something close to contempt, and then walks past me to her bedroom. I hear her flicking on the light in there, the loud creak of the wardrobe door.
Slowly, I follow her to the door, my thoughts jumping all over the place.
‘Did you just text me?’ I ask.
She is plucking hangers from the rail, pulling clothes off them which she tosses on to the bed.
Her answer is a bored, ‘No,’ released on a sigh.
‘Are you sure?’ My heart is thumping with fright.
‘Of course I’m sure,’ she snaps. Then, turning to hold me with her hostile gaze, she says, ‘I’m just here to pack up my stuff, okay? I don’t need you hovering over me, watching.’
I could turn away from her now, return to the bathroom and attend to my child, and perhaps I should. But I am frightened by that text, the possibility that my anonymous correspondent might be here at any moment, not knowing what it is that they intend. It feels like I’m on the brink of a precipice, a great chasm opening out in front of me that sends me scuttling towards last-gasp chances and risks.
I step forward into the room. Olivia is flinging clothes about with pent-up fury, and even though the history between us is full of misgivings and doubts, I need an ally and right now she’s all I’ve got. Besides, over the past few days I’ve started to think that maybe I was wrong about Olivia. That perhaps I was too swift to judge.
‘Would it help if I said I’m sorry?’ I ask.
She rips a blouse from a hanger, throws it on to the growing pile.
‘Not really.’
‘Even if it’s true?’
She gives a derisive snort, but it’s half-hearted and I sense the slightest yield within her.
‘We never got off to the right start, did we?’ I say. ‘That’s my fault.’
Her eyes shoot in my direction, and she lets out a breezy, ‘Yes, I know.’
‘It was too soon for you. Too soon after your mother. Our timing was lousy.’
‘You could say that.’
I sit down on the bed, look at the pile of clothes amassed there, the tangle of sl
eeves and legs in an orgy of cotton and silk and wool. This room has been hers since childhood. It was in this room she cried and grieved for her mother, an experience I am all too familiar with. It was to this room she would storm off in those early days when she first railed against my presence. A lot of unhappy memories, but I can tell from the brittleness of her tone, the downward turn to her mouth, that behind the bravado of her scorn and derision lies a tender spot. This has been her home since childhood, and we are tearing it away from her. The new house will have a room for her to stay but it will never be home, not like here.
‘You’ll miss this place,’ I say gently.
I am trying to give her an opening, but I have misjudged her mood. She shoots me a look of pure venom and all the constraint inside her collapses. She flings the hanger in her hand across the room, it ricochets off the chest of drawers and clatters to the ground.
‘This hasn’t been my home since the day you stepped in the door!’ she screeches.
Turning, she pulls hanger after hanger from the rail, sending them slamming to the bottom of the wardrobe, spilling out on to the floor, across the room. Tears burst hotly from her, and I watch in amazement as she shudders with emotion, realizing that I am witnessing an outpouring of unresolved grief. She turns away from me, draws the heel of her hand up to wipe at her nose, as if suddenly overcome with embarrassment, and it is this gesture that finally rends my heart.
I get up from the bed and go to her, say her name gently. I put my hand to her shoulder, braced for her rejection, fully expecting her to angrily shrug me off. That is why it is so surprising when she turns into me, allows herself to be taken into my arms, her face resting on my shoulder; her sobs are quieter now, but still I feel them quaking through her. In all the crazy tempest of recent days and weeks, what an unexpected blessing this is. But perhaps it is because of what’s happened, the danger I have felt from some unknown outside source, that I find myself softening towards her, needing to reach out and connect. For the first time in our difficult history, I feel the warmth of a maternal link with her. A bridge crossed, a pattern broken, a difficult battle nearing a weary truce, both of us glad of it, relieved.
