Something You Are

by Hanna Jameson

  ‘Bet this isn’t the first one she’s made,’ Mark added. ‘Be interesting to see.’

  ‘That’s it. I can get the laptop.’

  ‘Don’t…’

  ‘What?’

  He looked me up and down in a way that reminded me of Tony. In the instant I thought of him I replayed Harriet’s voicemail in my mind. I thought of my parents, my promise to come back and the knowledge that I would never keep it. But then, as always, it was easy to push it all away.

  ‘She’s trouble,’ he said. ‘Don’t get me wrong, she’s beautiful and… whatever, but she is trouble. Just don’t do anything stupid; you don’t know what she wants.’

  ‘Can find out though?’

  ‘This is about Emma, remember?’ he said.

  ‘Well, yeah.’ I shut the laptop, unsettled at having to look at her face any longer. ‘Yeah, I know.’

  18

  It was freezing. The pavements and houses were encrusted with a thin sheet of ice.

  I was going to get that laptop, I had decided. Whatever it took.

  She may be erratic, hard to read, but at the end of the day she was a woman. It wasn’t the most fashionable view to hold nowadays, but it made me feel more secure that, for all the intellect and madness in the world, I would always have the upper hand where physicality was concerned. Brute force was our last resort for superiority.

  I had taken the tube to Marylebone and then walked the rest of the way to their house. As I walked up to it I thought I could hear faint voices carried on the wind, and it was only when I got closer I realized they were coming from inside. I could hear them through the front door, screaming at each other.

  ‘Clare, stop it! Just… fucking… stop it!’

  ‘Or what, huh? Or what? What are you going to do, Pat? Are you going to make me? Are you going to make me, like you do in your work?’

  There was a pause.

  ‘Exactly! Oh, what a fucking man you are!’

  ‘Stop it.’

  ‘Fuck you—’

  ‘STOP IT!’

  I crouched at the letterbox, my heart pounding. I heard a scuffle and something breaking. By the sound of it they were both in the kitchen, as it wasn’t long before something else smashed, like glass being thrown.

  ‘Jesus… Clare… fucking… stop!’

  ‘Get out!’

  ‘I’m not putting up with this shit any more! Not now! I have things to sort out, we… we have our fucking lives to sort out and you won’t fucking grow up!’

  She said something inaudible.

  There were footsteps in the hallway. I stood up, sharply, lest I be caught listening, and heard a dull thud. Pat started shouting but Clare was screaming over him, hysterical.

  ‘GET OUT! GET OUT, GET OUT!’

  ‘YOU KNOW WHAT?’ There was a bang, the sound of something hitting the floor, and Pat slamming a door. ‘You know what? I will! Fine! Change the fucking locks again, why don’t you?’

  The front door was wrenched open and Pat stared at me with pure hatred in his eyes. One of his cheeks was red and he was unshaven. His rage may have been diluted a little by the surprise but for a second I readied myself for a blow.

  ‘Fuck’s sake.’ He laughed. ‘Of course! Of fucking course you’re here!’

  I tried not to glance over his shoulder too conspicuously, but I knew he had seen the movement. The hallway was empty. I couldn’t see where Clare had gone, but behind Pat everything was still.

  He brushed past me, shutting the front door, and headed towards his car. I noticed he was carrying his briefcase, and an extra coat.

  ‘Have a good listen?’ he snapped.

  ‘Not much.’

  ‘She’s just…’ He made a futile gesture at the house. ‘Just when you think it’s going to stop, she just goes and… fucking hell, why does she make everything so FUCKING DIFFICULT?’

  He shouted the last two words, back towards the house.

  I had seen this sort of behaviour before. They always blamed the other person, implied that they brought it on themselves. No doubt he’d be remorseful later. I felt my lip curling and looked away, back at the front door, wondering if Clare was all right.

  ‘She won’t open the door, not while we’re both here,’ Pat said, putting his briefcase in the boot. ‘What do you want?’

  ‘I wanted to ask you whether you had heard of some people, ask some more questions about Emma.’

  ‘Hudson a dead-end then?’ he said, opening the door of his Mercedes. ‘Thought so… Come on.’

  Irritated by the change in plan, I did as he asked and got into the passenger seat, not bothering to ask where we were going. He had calmed down too fast to be convincing, I thought as I watched him start the engine and reverse out. His breathing was normal and, aside from the redness and residue scars on his cheek, there was no indication of the violence that had taken place.

  ‘Has she thrown you out before?’ I asked, breaking the silence.

  ‘That wasn’t being “thrown out”,’ he replied, eyes front. ‘She’s changed the locks twice, barricaded the door a few times, but Em… Emma would let me in eventually, when she was home.’

  I wondered what it was that made a daughter apologize for her father’s behaviour, let him back in again and again. Had she really hated her own mother that much? I glanced at Pat’s knuckles but couldn’t tell whether he had thrown a punch or not.

  ‘What were you arguing about?’

  ‘Who are you, a fucking marriage counsellor?’ He indicated to go left, but then changed his mind and went right. ‘Just… things. She’s not… she’s not coping very well. Maybe I’m not either, I don’t know how these things work… You’d think there would be some rules to follow but they’re all just bullshit. Denial, anger, acceptance… what fucked-up PhD student came up with that?’

  I didn’t know what to say.

  ‘And yes, I know it was Kübler-Ross, thank you,’ he continued. ‘I’m just making a point. It’s bullshit.’

  I found it hard to control the level of disgust I felt when around him, so I tried to look out of the window as much as possible as he was speaking. My thoughts kept drifting back to the house. I wondered whether Pat knew about the videos she made. It gave me a strange thrill, knowing that I had seen his wife in such a way.

  ‘Do you know if any of Emma’s friends were called Matt? Matt Masters?’

  ‘Doesn’t ring a bell.’

  ‘Kyle?’

  ‘Kyle?’

  ‘Browning.’

  ‘Maybe… Doesn’t mean anything to me though, she talked about different friends all the time.’ He was trying to light a cigarette one-handed. ‘I need a drink, you know. You want a drink? I know it’s before midday but—’

  ‘It’s a bit early for me, thanks.’

  ‘It’s weird, when time doesn’t mean anything any more.’

  I stayed silent, looking out of the window at the shops. I could still hear him struggling with the lighter.

  ‘It’s not like stages,’ he said. ‘It doesn’t change… it just goes on longer.’

  I thought of Tony and I looked at Pat.

  ‘It never fucking changes.’

  I saw a red light.

  ‘PAT!’

  There was a screech as Pat slammed on the brakes. I flew forwards, jerking against my seatbelt, and I felt the car mount the pavement as it came to a halt. Through the windscreen there was a young couple staring at us from a bus stop, teenagers. That was all I was aware of for a while, meeting their eyes through the glass, and then I heard Pat swearing.

  ‘Fuck… Fuck, shitting fuck…’

  I became conscious of my breathing, the ragged inhaling and exhaling, and got out of the car on unsteady legs. I supported myself on the roof for a moment, but nothing seemed to be broken.

  Pat got out of the car also, but I didn’t look at him.

  Traffic was still flying past and the wind went deep into my skin. My eyes seemed locked on my hands, resting against the metal. I pictu
red them spattered in blood from a body that had meshed with the frame of the car.

  It was a long time before I looked up.

  Pat was leaning against his door with his back to me.

  ‘You all right?’ I managed to say.

  He didn’t answer me.

  I stood up straight and glanced at the couple at the bus stop, but they were talking to each other, bored with the fleeting drama. Pat’s shoulders twitched and a hand came up to rub his eyes.

  I swallowed. ‘You all right?’

  He sniffed, and turned around with his gaze cast down inside the car. ‘Yep.’

  ‘You want me to drive?’

  His eyes were red, but he was looking past me now, at the road. There was something in his face that was almost wistful.

  ‘You think it’s all over,’ he said.

  ‘What?’ I raised my eyebrows. ‘It is now?’

  ‘Never is, is it.’ He snorted and got back in the car. ‘Come on then.’

  ‘I’ll walk,’ I said.

  I walked all the way back to Marylebone. I could have caught a tube, but I felt like celebrating having the use of my legs. It was to get the laptop, I thought for a while, before I dismissed the idea as ridiculous and admitted to myself it was because I was curious.

  Mark had laughed at me this morning, saying over a mug of coffee, ‘She could strap you on and play you like a keytar.’

  As the house came back into view I tried to rehearse what I wanted to say, how I was going to act. It seemed best to act dismissive, as if this sort of thing happened to me all the time. But it was hard not to give in to concern; agonize over whether there was going to be another bruise, another scar, or worse.

  I knocked on the door and listened. When I looked through the letterbox I thought that one of the pictures on the wall looked crooked, but it may have always been like that.

  There was music playing from somewhere.

  I knocked again, and waited.

  ‘Is Pat with you?’ Her voice was low on the other side of the door.

  I stepped forwards. ‘No, just me.’

  ‘Did he send you back?’

  ‘No.’

  There was a pause, and I heard the sound of the chain being slid out of place. The door opened but then she left it. I heard her walking back down the hall so I let myself in.

  It was dark; either she hadn’t opened the curtains or there was something over the windows in the living room. She had stopped in the kitchen doorway, having ignored me coming in, and shook her hair out of its ponytail. Her skirt was too short and her top too tight. Like Mark she didn’t have a spare inch of fat on her, but unlike Mark she was starting to look like a caricature of a human. Her face was a painted skull, all lips and cheekbones.

  ‘Are you all right?’ I called.

  Pushing herself away from the wall, she slid across the kitchen floor like a child stepping on to an ice-rink, high heels crunching over broken glass. When she turned there was an odd half-smile on her face and her arms were covered in red and purple marks.

  ‘I’m fine… Fine.’

  As I came forwards I saw a shoebox on the kitchen work surface. Scattered around it were dozens and dozens of photos; some of Emma, others of the whole family. The music I could hear was distorted, like someone playing a guitar solo backwards.

  ‘I took those,’ she said, doing a twirl over the shards. In high heels she was even taller and her speech quiet and fleeting. She was like a super-imposed image on reality, rather than anything solid. ‘Would you like to see them?’

  ‘Um… OK, sure.’ It was difficult to interact with her when she was like this. I felt reduced to watching events unfold on a screen, unable to control any outcomes. ‘I thought we needed to talk.’

  ‘Oh God, are we breaking up?’ She laughed at her own joke as she leant against the kitchen counter, eyes on the shoebox. ‘What did you want to talk about?’

  ‘Did you and Emma get along?’

  ‘What sort of question is that?’ she snapped.

  ‘It’s a valid question.’

  ‘You can’t think of anything more interesting to talk about?’

  ‘Well, did you?’ I said, brushing off the question.

  ‘How is that even…?’ She pushed the photos around the surface, as if she was making some collage. ‘It doesn’t matter now, anyway.’

  ‘God, why can’t you just say yes or no? You’d make this so much easier on yourself.’

  ‘On myself? On you, you mean.’

  ‘No, for fuck’s sake, I—’

  ‘I took all these, you know,’ she said. ‘When you have children you realize, I suppose, that they’re the most… perfect form of self-expression you’re ever going to get.’

  My mouth went dry. ‘What… What do you mean?’

  ‘You could be the world’s greatest painter, dancer, musician, whatever… But once you’ve had a child, that’s it. Nothing else even comes close to…’ She trailed off. ‘I know what I’m trying to say.’

  ‘Why did you give up dancing?’ I asked.

  ‘Freakishly tall,’ she said, gathering up a handful of pictures and flicking through them. ‘Their words, not mine.’

  I didn’t know what to say to that.

  ‘It’s useful for modelling, if you want to turn up and have people take photos and give you free stuff for entertainment. Not so useful if you want to… do anything else, I suppose. But that’s all people really want.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘An ornament.’ She held some photos out to me. ‘Some pretty, fucking… vacuous ornament. Of course, no one understands if you don’t want that; they think that’s all anyone would want to be.’

  I took the photos but didn’t take my eyes off her. ‘What about Emma?’

  ‘What about her?’ She spat the words out, glaring at me. There was another bruise, always on her forehead or her cheeks. ‘I can’t tell you anything you want to know.’

  ‘Did you get along?’

  ‘She’s my daughter.’

  ‘That’s not an answer.’

  ‘Well, it’s my fucking answer.’

  I seized on to something controversial to say, something that would provoke her. ‘Were you jealous of her?’

  She swiped another water glass off the side and hurled it.

  I leapt back into the doorway as it smashed at my feet, dropping the photos.

  ‘Get out!’ she hissed.

  ‘Like fuck,’ I said. ‘Were you jealous of her because she had the chance to do the things you couldn’t? Is that right?’

  ‘You think you’re so clever, well, you know what…’ She was coming towards me and she skidded a little on the glass. I wondered if she was on something. ‘You don’t know anything!’

  ‘Then tell me something I don’t know!’ I shouted back, my heart beginning to race with how close she was.

  ‘You’re not listening!’

  There were tears in her eyes suddenly and she turned away with a hand over her face. Her shoulders trembled for a moment but then it passed. She kicked some of the shards away from her feet and moved a photo across the floor with her toe, but didn’t look back at me.

  ‘Why did you send me that video?’ I asked, feeling light-headed.

  ‘I wanted…’ She still didn’t turn around but I saw her rub her eyes. ‘I wanted to tell you the worst thing about myself.’

  ‘I… I don’t understand.’

  ‘Who said I expect you to understand?’

  She took a step towards the back door, locked her gaze on something and twirled, whipping her head around with her lips parted. I didn’t find it hard to believe that she wasn’t aware of the kitchen any more, or of me.

  I took a cautious step towards her, where she was turning in circles on a clear patch of floor, and wanted to put a hand on her shoulder. When she danced it was as if she left this world. I had this idea that if I tried to touch her I would fall through her, like an apparition.

  ‘Don’t.’

  I s
topped, but I didn’t want to.

  She turned her head and stared me down, unblinking. ‘Don’t you dare touch me.’

  Maybe, on some level, it was what I had been planning all along. I pulled her forwards, more roughly than I meant to, and kissed her. She jerked away for a second, surprisingly strong, and dragged us both sideways, her nails raking into my forearms.

  She slapped me across the face, kissed me back and it felt like what I had been waiting for. For a moment, that was all that existed in my world. I gripped the tops of her arms, leaving marks over the ones that were there already, until I realized the insanity of what I was doing and let her go.

  The music had stopped.

  I expected her to hit me again, but there was a faraway look in her eyes and her lips were swollen red.

  ‘I’m… fuck, I’m sorry,’ I said.

  She burst into tears.

  19

  ‘I didn’t really know what to do with them all, so I put them in here.’

  I hovered for as long as I could before sitting down beside her on the sofa, linking my fingers to stop them twitching. It was strange, seeing a person’s life reduced to nothing more than a shoebox on someone’s knees. The evidence of my life probably wouldn’t fill one.

  ‘These ones are really old. She was only about eight.’

  In the first two Emma was with her father, smiling a gap-toothed smile. Pat looked younger, much younger and less jaded. It made me wonder if he had always been like he was now, or whether being too long surrounded by the ugliness of people had turned him so hard.

  ‘This was her on her sixth birthday, with my mum.’

  I nodded, trying to ignore the way my leg was just touching hers and the brush of her fingers every time she gave me a photo. Her skin was warmer than I had expected it to be.

  ‘I think she was about four in these ones. God, it seems so long ago now.’

  I looked at the tiny dark-haired child and felt an uncomfortable lump in my throat. The girl playing in the garden had no idea it was possible to end up a dead young woman on a mortuary slab and I envied her that kind of blissful ignorance.