Forget Her Name

by Jane Holland

  Finding a quiet seat at the back, I eat half my panini, sip on my latte, then push both aside and place the parcel squarely on the table in front of me.

  The address label has been printed. It looks neat and professional. I check the underside but there’s no return address, and no note inside to indicate a point of origin. The brown-paper wrapping is plain; the white polystyrene chips are generic. I can’t imagine who could have sent it to me. And to the food bank, not my home.

  I reach inside and pull the snow globe free of its rustling nest. My breath catches in my throat.

  It wasn’t a mistake. Or not on my part, anyway.

  Even without my sister’s name on the plinth, I would have known whose globe it was. I recognise the village scene inside, the miniature Swiss chalets, the white-capped mountain with its obligatory tiny goat. Rachel loved to shake and shake the globe, only laughing when our mother pleaded with her to be careful.

  ‘Rachel, please don’t,’ Mum would say. ‘You’ll break it if you drop it.’

  But of course she never dropped it.

  The snow globe feels smooth and heavy in my hands, snug on its black plastic plinth. There’s a thin crack across the plinth; I can see where it was mended. My father did that with superglue, then it had to be left to set for half a day.

  I glance about the busy café, but nobody’s looking my way. Nobody cares about this strange, unsettling reminder of my sister.

  Only me.

  It’s like looking into the past. Like my childhood still exists inside a locked room in one of those snow-covered Swiss chalets, almost within reach, if only I could see through the white-out of the storm . . .

  Then something else bobs round with the fake snow, bumping against the glass.

  I cry out, almost dropping the globe.

  An eyeball?

  Not a joke-shop eyeball. A real, honest-to-goodness eyeball, white and fatty, with ragged bits of pinkish tissue still hanging off where it was cut out.

  There’s an eyeball in the whirling snow, staring back at me.

  Chapter Two

  Our flat is five minutes’ walk from the Hanwell Cemetery end of Ealing Broadway, a large old Victorian house divided into one- and two-bedroom flats. We’re on the top floor.

  ‘Hello?’ I ask warily, unlocking the front door.

  There’s no answer.

  I kick the door shut and hurry straight into the bedroom of our one-bedroom flat, not pausing to strip off my thick scarf and gloves. The curtains are still drawn. The windows are narrow and the ceilings slope on the top floor, so the room constantly feels small and gloomy.

  I flick on the light, breathing quickly after my fast walk from the bus stop, and look about the place. Books and open magazines lie everywhere, cups balance on book stacks, dirty plates gather dust on the floor, the wastepaper bin overflows silently in a forgotten corner. The double bed is still messy from this morning’s scramble to get up in good time, the duvet thrown back in a tangled rush, one of Dominic’s dark hairs on the pillow. A crumpled sock dangles over the lampshade.

  It looks like the flat has been burgled.

  Nothing unusual, then.

  I bend and shove the anonymous parcel, still partially wrapped, under the bed. It slides into the narrow space with barely an inch to spare. Easy to remove though, and hidden from view when I step back to check.

  ‘There.’

  I’ll deal with it later, I tell myself, and try to ignore the guilty thump of my heart. Dominic will be home any minute, and Rachel’s snow globe isn’t a conversation I want to have with my fiancé. Not today, anyway.

  Dominic sheds like a bloody cat, I think, glaring down at the long strand of hair coiled on his white pillow.

  I strip off my gloves and shove them into my coat pocket. With a grimace, I tweak the long hair off the pillow and drop it into the wastepaper bin, then plump up both head-dented pillows. Shaking out the duvet, I arrange it neatly across the bed. Straightening up, I eye the dirty sock on the lampshade, then decide to leave it there.

  I don’t want him to suspect anything is wrong.

  ‘There,’ I say again.

  Before leaving the room, I pause in the doorway and glance dubiously back at the parcel’s hiding place.

  Will I even be able to sleep with that thing under the bed all night?

  The front door bangs.

  Closing the bedroom door, I turn with a quick smile. ‘Dominic.’

  ‘Hey, baby.’

  Dominic looks exhausted, still in his blue hospital scrubs, his nurse’s identity badge twisted up in a loop on its lanyard and stuffed into his top pocket. There’s a dark shadow on his chin where he needs to shave. Twelve-hour shifts as a nurse practitioner in Accident and Emergency. Not easy to cope with.

  He smiles wearily and kisses me on the lips. We nuzzle together for a moment in silence, his head on my shoulder.

  I should tell him about the snow globe.

  Only I can’t.

  ‘You’re early,’ I say instead. ‘And I’m late.’

  ‘Busy day?’

  ‘Busy day,’ I agree without elaborating. ‘And the bus took forever to arrive. I was just going to make a pot of tea. Want some?’

  ‘Gin would be more appropriate,’ he says, ‘and hold the tonic.’

  ‘I expect that can be arranged,’ I tell him lightly, but raise my head to study his face. I know that tone. ‘What’s happened?’

  ‘Oh, you know . . . same old shit in A & E.’

  ‘Dom, come on.’

  ‘It’s nothing. I’m knackered, that’s all.’ I raise my eyebrows, still waiting, and he adds reluctantly, ‘An old lady died. Old ladies do that, don’t they?’

  He drags the identity badge up over his head and tosses it onto the hall table, then staggers past me into the tiny living room. I follow in silence, wishing there was something I could do to help. But he hates me fussing. Making an irritable noise under his breath, he reaches up and pulls off the hairband that holds his ponytail strictly in place during the working day.

  ‘Except they’re supposed to die at home, or on the ward,’ he mutters, and throws himself onto the sofa, taking up all the space. ‘Not in a bloody uncomfortable chair in a crowded corridor, after waiting nine hours to be seen by a doctor.’

  I don’t ask for details. He’ll tell me more if he wants to. When he’s had a crappy day like this, Dominic rarely wants a two-way discussion. He just wants to get the acid out of his system for a few minutes, which usually means bitching about Sally Weston, his manager in A & E, or the increasingly visible cracks in the NHS. Then he’ll sink down in front of the television with a beer for a few hours and not mention it again.

  I kneel on the rug beside him. ‘Fuck.’

  ‘Nobody even noticed.’ He throws an arm across his eyes. ‘She’d been dead maybe twenty minutes, half an hour, before anyone even thought to check she was still breathing.’

  I lean my forehead on his shoulder. My heart aches for him. And for the old lady.

  ‘This fucking government . . .’ He kicks the far end of the sofa, and there’s a distinct crack. ‘Shit, sorry.’

  ‘Don’t worry about it.’ I stroke his hair, trying to communicate how sorry I am without being mawkish. Dominic distrusts sentimentality; he says it clouds the important issues, that love is better without pity in the mix. ‘What was her name?’

  ‘Ida,’ he tells me after a long pause. ‘Her name was Mrs Ida Matthews, a widow. And she had a son, and three grandchildren.’

  ‘Weren’t they with her at the hospital?’

  ‘On a winter holiday, she said. Two weeks’ bloody skiing in the Alps.’

  I tense, pushing away a sudden vision of Swiss chalets against a backdrop of snowy mountains . . .

  ‘That’s awful.’

  ‘I left Sally trying to find a number for their hotel.’ He gives a croak of humourless laughter. ‘If I hadn’t spent so long talking to her, we wouldn’t even have known about them. She could have been lyi
ng unclaimed in the morgue for days.’

  ‘You did your best.’

  ‘Oh yes, I did my bloody best. No one can blame me. Or the doctor. Or the system. We were all doing our best under difficult circumstances, that’s what the report will say.’

  Dominic sits up suddenly, knocking me away. His eyes are damp and bloodshot. He stares at nothing, his face grim, then turns his head towards me and says, ‘Sorry,’ without actually meeting my gaze. ‘You’re only trying to help, and I’m being shitty. Come on.’ Standing, he holds out a hand to me. ‘Let’s make supper together. I’ll do us chicken pasta. You can tell me about your day.’

  I think about my day, and my smile falters. ‘You’re too tired.’

  ‘I insist.’ He pulls me up effortlessly, six foot of pure brawn, and kisses me again, this time a lingering kiss that leaves me warm and aching. ‘Mmm, you’re so good to come home to. I love this.’ His fingers play with my short, ash-blonde hair. ‘Soft hair, soft skin . . .’ His hand slips down to my behind. ‘Soft bumps.’

  ‘I beg your pardon?’

  To his credit, Dominic gives an embarrassed laugh. ‘Curves, then. Though I like to think of them as bumps.’

  ‘You mean like speed bumps?’

  ‘Quite the opposite effect. Your bumps make me go faster, not slower.’

  I grin at that, and kiss him back. My lips part and his tongue slips between them, probing delicately. I know what he’s asking and don’t pull away, slipping a hand down between our bodies. I take my time, my eyes shut tight, concentrating on him. It’s the perfect distraction.

  He starts to harden against my fingers, and his breathing quickens.

  ‘Yes,’ he mutters.

  We don’t make it to the bedroom. He makes love to me right there on the sofa, from behind, while I’m bent over, gasping. I don’t know where he finds the energy, after his long shift at work. I close my eyes and try to close off from that other world. The one with eyeballs, and parcels from anonymous ill-wishers. Despite his fatigue, he makes love to me with a familiar, almost violent urgency that often accompanies days when he’s witnessed a death at the hospital.

  Afterwards, Dominic lies panting beside me.

  ‘You didn’t come,’ he says.

  It’s not a question. All the same, I consider lying. Avoiding all the fuss by pretending he missed it in the rush of his own orgasm. But a greedy little voice in my head won’t let me. Instead, I whisper, ‘It doesn’t matter’, and wait.

  ‘Of course it matters.’ His hand pushes between my legs, bold and insistent, as I secretly hoped it would.

  ‘What about the pasta?’

  ‘Fuck the pasta.’

  I stifle my cries against the cushions, my face hot and flushed, my legs shaking as though after some traumatic incident.

  Dominic always seems to know what I need, physically. It’s his gift, I tell him in a hoarse voice, but he’s already moving away and doesn’t hear me.

  I consider showing him the snow globe.

  But then I decide against it. He knows I had a sister who died young. But none of the details. And that’s how I prefer it. I don’t want him to know about my past.

  About Rachel.

  Chapter Three

  After we’ve eaten the chicken pasta, we lie together on the sofa for an hour, limbs tangled in lazy torpor, and watch a late-night news programme where they’re discussing the state of the NHS.

  ‘Bloody fools,’ Dominic growls, throwing an empty cigarette packet at the screen. ‘What the hell do you know about it?’

  He’s a political animal.

  I was vaguely apathetic before I met him, not even bothering to vote. But I take a keener interest in politics now, largely down to him and his highly vocal opinions. Dominic seems better informed than the guests we see on news shows, quickly grasps political nuances and complexities that other people miss. He snaps at the television when annoyed, as though the presenters can hear him.

  I find his outbursts entertaining, but keep my amusement to myself.

  As a nurse practitioner in a casualty department, he sees an even sharper side to social injustice than I do at the food bank, and I know it’s real experiences that drive him, like the old lady’s death today.

  Protest marches, campaigning, political activism. Dominic has made no attempt to encourage me to take part in such activities. But I often join him anyway, making slogan banners long into the evening on Friday nights and sometimes carrying them, too, marching beside him and his activist friends at weekends.

  The job at the food bank was his idea, initially. Though only after I’d expressed a need to do something worthwhile, rather than continue working in an exclusive Knightsbridge boutique, as I was doing when he met me.

  Mum and Dad were astonished when I told them about the food bank. Dad even tried to stop me, saying he would find me ‘something better’ if I didn’t like boutique work anymore. But Mum backed me up for once. ‘Let the girl do what she feels is right, Robert,’ she told him, and smiled at me.

  A minor victory. Something to put on my mental shelf, along with other trophies, like my parents’ acceptance of Dominic, and their grudging support when I chose to move out and rent a flat like most other people of my age that I knew. I still need their help with the rent, of course. But I won’t be doing volunteer work forever, and my time at the food bank will help to build up my CV.

  ‘I’m not a child,’ I told my dad when he complained that our flat was too insecure, the area run-down and dangerous. ‘I’m twenty-three, for God’s sake.’

  Dad said nothing. But his disapproval was palpable.

  ‘You can’t blame your parents, babe,’ Dominic told me later, reassuring me that I was making the right choice. ‘They live in a different world to us. People like that don’t see why food banks are needed, just like they don’t feel the need to protest. They think the answer is as simple as someone getting a job instead of a handout. Their lives are too comfortable for reality to ever intrude. They live in this soft, champagne-coloured bubble of money, and can’t see anyone outside it.’

  I couldn’t argue with that.

  Dad works at the Foreign Office, and is almost never at home. And Mum is a housewife, the Roedean-educated daughter of a diplomat herself. She doesn’t work; in fact, I don’t think she has ever had a job. Her obsessions include her looks, the large and immaculate London town house where I grew up, and hosting dinner parties for their circle of wealthy, influential friends. I can’t imagine either of my parents having experienced hardship, let alone poverty and starvation. So how can they possibly understand my need to give something back to the society I can see falling apart around me? To do something altruistic with my life?

  The news programme finishes just before midnight, and I glance at Dominic, lying curled up against me.

  He’s asleep, breathing deeply, his mouth slightly open.

  ‘Poor tired baby,’ I whisper.

  He doesn’t react.

  As gently as possible, I extricate myself from his arms. I leave him sleeping on the sofa and creep into the bedroom without putting on the light. I don’t want to wake him. Not yet, anyway. Listening for sounds of movement from the living room, I drag the parcel out from under the bed, then remove the snow globe in the semi-darkness.

  It’s cold, round and heavy in my hands. Like a marble head.

  Ugh.

  I carry it on tiptoe into the bathroom, then shut the door. As an afterthought, I turn the key in the lock.

  I turn the globe upside down. The black plinth is easy to remove. Just a few twists and a click.

  I hid a screwdriver in the cupboard under the sink earlier while Dominic was preoccupied with the pasta. I take it out now and slip it inside the rubber seal of the snow globe, wiggling it about. It’s harder to dislodge than I thought it would be. After a few minutes of pointless fumbling and swearing, I’m tempted to give up. To throw the bloody thing away and forget it ever arrived.

  But I need to be sure. So I per
severe, and eventually the rubber cap shifts, water pouring down my arm in a sickly, glittery shower.

  ‘Shit,’ I say, inadvertently loudly.

  Loud enough to wake Dominic? I listen at the door, suddenly tense, but there’s no sound from outside the bathroom.

  I don’t want to involve Dominic in this. Can’t involve him. How could I possibly explain a horror like this without sitting down to tell him the whole sorry tale of my sister Rachel? I can’t bear to admit to any of that. After we’re married, perhaps. But not before.

  I know it’s a form of dishonesty. But it’s just too scary a thought. Rachel is the skeleton in our family closet. And what if it’s hereditary?

  Once I’m convinced Dominic is still asleep, I hold the globe over the sink and slowly let the rest of the water drain out, glitter and white snowflakes clogging up the plughole.

  Then nothing is left inside.

  Except the eyeball.

  Gagging, I push a hand inside the narrow opening and grope about with my fingertips until I meet something soft.

  I drop the eyeball twice while trying to retrieve it, my whole being repulsed by the cold, squidgy feel of it. Eventually I drag it out through the opening of the globe and hold it up to the flickering strip light above the sink; a fat iris with a whitish surround, staring dully back at me. Definitely organic, the flesh around the eyeball is a pale, yellowing pink, flecked with glitter. And it smells pretty awful, too.

  Like it’s already rotting.

  Chapter Four

  They’re doing some kind of renovations at the back of St Hilda’s Hospital in North London, where Dominic works. Scaffolding, hanging folds of plastic sheeting obscuring everything, planks and steel rods heaped to one side, a cement mixer churning away, and not a single workman in sight. I duck through an opening in the plastic and head towards the back stairs. There must be a bin lorry backing up somewhere through the chaos and debris, ready to empty the vast hospital bins at the base of the steps. I hear its high-pitched, warning beep-beep-beep, but where is it?

  The sky is steel grey again, a mass of cloud hanging low over London’s skyscrapers. Another grim day slipping rapidly into winter.