by Emma Chapman
‘Did you want something?’ I say.
‘I just came to see if you needed any help,’ she says.
‘It’s fine. Go back in there and enjoy yourself.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘Yes,’ I say.
She is still standing there. ‘Marta?’ she asks. ‘I’m so sorry I asked about your parents. I didn’t know.’
No, I think, you don’t know.
‘It’s fine,’ I say. ‘Honestly. It was a long time ago.’
‘It must have been hard, to hear me talk about the wedding preparations if your parents weren’t there for yours,’ she says. ‘I’m sorry.’
She’s trying to bond with me, and it makes me sick. I want to push her out of the room and shut the door.
‘Really, Katya,’ I say. ‘Don’t worry about it.’
She turns to leave and then stops. ‘And thanks again for dinner. It was delicious.’
No it wasn’t, I want to shout. I step towards her and grasp hold of her hand. And there it is again: her ring. She stares back at me, wide-eyed.
‘Katya,’ I say. ‘Are you sure you want to do this?’
‘Do what?’ she says.
‘Get married.’
She looks down at my hand, over hers. ‘I’m really excited about it,’ she says. ‘I love Kylan.’
I let go of her. ‘It’s your decision too,’ I say. ‘Just remember that.’
‘I love Kylan,’ she says. I want to shake her.
I look into the water in the sink.
‘Are you all right, Mrs Bjornstad?’
I wipe my eyes. ‘I’m fine,’ I say. ‘Please don’t tell Kylan I said anything.’
When she is gone, my hands are shaking, the rage vibrating through my body. I shut my eyes, but all I see is her young, perfect face, smiling sweetly back at me. I imagine them having their own children, a little boy like Kylan, a little girl with blonde hair: I see a perfect family picture. And I will always be on the outside.
Behind my eyes, the family picture refuses to fade. A man and a woman stand arm in arm under a wide dark tree, the sunlight in their faces. The man’s hair is sandy, split down the middle like Kylan’s, but the woman is different to Katya, her hair darker and longer, her feet bare. Between them stands a girl in her early teens, smiling, wincing at the camera, her features erased by the light. The picture begins to dim, and I cling to it, longing to understand who the people are. There’s a roaring sadness in my chest that feels as if it is pressing to escape, and I lean against the sink, waiting for it to pass.
My hand reaches out for the phone on the kitchen wall. The numbers are there, on the edge of my mind, and I type them in fast, before they fade again. I hold the phone up to my ear. It rings and rings but there is no answer.
I put down the phone and pick it up again, but when I try to remember the number, it is gone. For a long time, I screw my eyes tight shut, willing the picture back, but it doesn’t come.
Eventually, I take another bowl and continue with the washing up.
Once the house is back to normal, I go to the living room. The CD has been turned off and the television is on.
I tell them I am going to bed, and head upstairs.
13
I check the rooms, laying clean towels on each of the beds. Normally, I would put a hot-water bottle under Kylan’s sheets for him to find, but I see Katya’s suitcase on the floor of the guest bedroom and I know I can’t do that any more.
In the bathroom, I fill the basin with water, shut my eyes, and wash my face. I rub my face on a towel, and when I look up, she is there in the mirror next to me. Her hair is still white blonde: a little greasy, and tied in a shiny ponytail. She wears the pyjamas with the pink hearts, but they are clean now. Side by side, her leg is wider, denser, than mine. She hasn’t lost the weight yet. I put my hand out, squeezing the hard muscle. She tenses her leg, stretching it out and pointing her toes. Then she begins the exercises: swinging her leg out to the side, the front, and then the back, pushing it up as far as it will go. As she lifts her arms, they are inches from my face, her fingernails unbitten.
I begin to copy her and our movements align, our legs next to each other. She can get hers higher than mine, much higher; her movements are more fluid. We rise onto our tiptoes, and I feel my muscles elongate. I touch the ceiling and hold, hold, hold.
When I lower myself back down, she is gone. My heart pounds in my chest; my arms and legs tingle.
Entering the bedroom, I look around to check if she is still there. Though I can’t see her, I feel her watching me as I undress and pull my woollen nightgown over my head. I slip under the covers and shut my eyes, trying to ignore the sounds from downstairs, to drift off to sleep.
* * *
I wake up to screaming in the darkness. It is loud, piercing. Soon, the sounds turn into words. Help me, somebody, please. Sometimes it stops, and beyond it, through the silence, I can hear the whirring of a fan. Then it starts again.
‘Marta?’
I blink in the darkness, not sure whether my eyes are open or shut. There is the familiar sense of dread.
The light flicks on. The clock on the bedside table reads 03:07. Hector is beside me in the bed, his eyes bleary with sleep, flat and unreadable.
‘You were screaming,’ he says, as though he knows he doesn’t need to.
I feel the softness of the ironed sheets, the warmth of the bedside lamp.
‘I’m sorry,’ I say. It’s the old conversation, and I remember my part.
‘Bad dream?’ he asks.
I think, as if I can’t remember, then nod. I don’t think I was asleep at all.
‘Do you want to talk about it?’ he says. He has learnt, by now, that the answer is always no.
‘I’m fine,’ I say.
He looks at me one last time, then rolls onto his back. ‘Do you think you’ll be able to get back to sleep?’ he asks.
‘Yes,’ I say, and Hector flicks out the light.
I lie in the yawning darkness. My stomach is heavy, as if it is filled with jagged black stones. I raise my hand up to my face, but I see nothing and I squeeze my eyelids together to check they are closed. I count to a hundred. I do it again. Nothing changes.
Then I hear her voice, whispering: her breath is warm in my ear.
They’ll never find me. I don’t even know where I am.
Then she is screaming again.
I can’t stand it. With my head resting on the pillow, I put my fingers in my ears.
When I pull my hands away, she has stopped. There is only silence now, and that is worse, because it means she has gone again.
14
The light begins to glow at the edge of the curtains, tattooing the wall with squares of blue. My face feels tight and achy in the dim bedroom.
Walking down the stairs, I open the front door. Outside, the world is white. Our stretch of drive, usually so flat and grey, is covered: the cars a line of freshly made beds. Bright blue morning light reverberates, leaving no room for darkness; it spreads across the fields, masking where the hills begin, where they meet the sky. The flat bowl of the valley is marked out by spindly telephone poles, fences, and the low-hovering ghosts of leafless bushes and trees: white shadows of the former world.
Winter has come suddenly and my world is no longer the same place. The air out here feels brand new: I need to be where everything is hidden, away from the staleness of the house.
I pull my snow boots out of the hall cupboard, lacing them around my bare legs, then slip into Hector’s huge cushioned green coat. It smells of dried dampness: of spruce needles and a thousand winter walks.
The snow sticks to my boots, leaving a heavy black trail. It’s not too thick on the ground yet, just enough to cover everything. I use my sleeve to remove the worst of it from the windscreen and climb in, rolling down the windows, turning on the engine, surprised when it fills the air with sound. The snow crunches under the tyres: I should put the chains on. If I get myself stuck, Hector
will be angry.
I pull out into the lane, indistinguishable from the fields around it. White-trimmed fences mark out where I should manoeuvre the car, though I almost lose my bearings several times. Once I am out on the bigger roads, tyres of earlier cars have marked out straight grey paths through the whiteness. I follow them, starting to increase my speed, feeling the chilled rush of the wind. I drive faster.
The glow of the shop emerges out of the lowering fog. My headlights make it swirl, the light losing itself in the opaque white air. When I turn off the engine, the silence is total. Sweat prickles under the neck of my jacket. Even if I were to scream at the top of my lungs, I know that the sound wouldn’t be heard.
Ta king a deep breath, I open the car door. The cold wind hits me. I move towards the square of yellow light.
The door is heavy and as I lean against it, a bell rings through the silence, making me jump. I clomp across to the refrigerator and pull out a large carton of milk. I see her reflected in the glass doors: the messy hair, the purple marks under her eyes like bruises, white pyjamas, bare feet. I turn away and look back quickly but it is only me in the reflection: a middle-aged woman, swamped by a huge coat over her nightdress.
The man at the counter is watching me. His dark hair is flattened by his hat and his ears are red; he is still wearing his jacket and gloves. He has a dark little brush of a moustache and his smile tremors beneath it like something hiding under the bed.
I put the milk onto the counter, feeling the sweat on my hands as his moustache lifts into a smile.
Once I have handed him the money, he gives me my change. Soon, I am out in the snow, the wind whipping my hair out of my face. I get back into the car quickly.
A red vehicle comes out of the white fog: bumper glinting silver, huge headlights sending out tunnels of yellow. Scraping metal, a heavy thumping: the sounds of spraying grit escaping onto the road. The noises stay, changing, getting louder as the gritter retreats. Even when it is gone, I still hear the horrible familiar churning of stone against stone, of darkness moving, over and over. Shoving my fingers in my ears, the sounds fill my head.
Through the fog, the light of the shop flickers for a moment. I shut my eyes, but the light remains, intensifying into a long bar, flashing into life. A sharp pain twinges in my temples, behind my eyes, travelling round the back of my head. It is an electric strip light, running across a grey ceiling. As if I am getting used to the new light, the room begins to form: the bed, the toilet, the sink. I see her, tucked into the bed sheets, blinking, her black eyeliner smudged.
I follow her gaze back to the ceiling, where the sounds were coming from. The edges of a metal door begin to drop, jerking awkwardly. A square of dim light appears slowly. Then the ladder. Cargo pants streaked with white dust. A faded green shirt with a rip at the elbow and paint splattered across the front. The brown hair at the back of his head.
He stops on the ladder and pulls the door shut, clicking the padlock into place. He puts a key on a yellow key ring into his breast pocket.
At the bottom of the steps, he turns around. She looks up at him.
‘In this room,’ he says, ‘you must keep your eyes down.’
She shifts her eyes to the ground, looking at his boots. The big metal eyelets, the brown laces, tied in neat double knots. He stands above her, his head almost grazing the ceiling.
The boots walk over to the chair. He sits down.
Standing again, he reaches out and places his hand on a crack on the wall above his head, as if he is rubbing the flank of an animal.
‘I hope you like the room,’ he says.
She keeps her eyes on the grey carpet.
‘What’s your name?’ he asks.
She can’t answer.
He takes something out of the pocket of his cargo pants.
‘I can’t give you this unless you tell me your name,’ he says. ‘I want us to get along.’
She lets her eyes flick upwards: it is a chocolate bar. Her stomach growls.
‘I know you’re hungry,’ he says. ‘It will be much easier if we can be friends.’
Eventually, the boots move towards the ladder. He stops.
‘It’s your choice,’ he says. ‘Just remember that.’
Then he slips the chocolate bar back into his pocket and climbs the ladder, pulling it up after him. As the door is shutting, she gets up from the bed, tries to reach up after it. It swings shut, jarring into place. She jumps and her fingers graze the top of it, but it is closed now. She sits back onto the edge of the bed. After a long time, she begins to mutter something under her breath, closing her eyes tight. I strain to make out the words.
Elise, Elise, Elise.
And then there is only the whirr of the car heaters, the whiteness outside, and the lights of the shop. I can’t see the car or the road or the trees or the mountains.
I listen for her, and I think I make out her voice, floating in the dense air.
Please let me go.
Just let me go.
Please.
I sit there for a long time, listening. She can’t hear me, and after a while I stop trying to make her.
* * *
The house glows through the white that has fallen on the valley. I see the lights before anything else, vague yellowness emerging through the car windscreen.
As I climb the steps to the front door, I decide that Kylan and Katya can’t go back today. I know it’s not too bad, but it’s bad enough. We’ll all have to stay put: shut out the cold. The house will be filled with noise and life again.
As I open the door, I smell bacon. In the kitchen, Matilda is at the stove, wearing my red apron. Hector is sitting at the table, reading the paper. There is a clutter of pans, utensils, and bowls on the surface and the hob is spotted with grease. I sigh inwardly, knowing I will have to clear it up later. I want to tell them to get out.
‘Where’s Kylan?’ I ask.
‘In the living room,’ Matilda says. She opens the cupboard above the sink. ‘I don’t know why you had to move things around. I can’t find anything.’
Hector looks up.
‘Have you been out dressed like that?’
I look down at my wet nightgown, the huge coat.
‘I went to get some milk,’ I say.
He leans over and opens the fridge door. ‘We have plenty of milk,’ he says. ‘We’ll end up throwing half of it away, as usual.’
‘We have guests,’ I say.
Hector stares at me. ‘They’re leaving today,’ he says.
‘I think they should stay here,’ I say, looking at my bitten fingernails.
‘What do you mean?’
‘It’s too dangerous.’
‘Marta, it’s only the first snow,’ he says. ‘A light dusting.’
‘There’s a fog,’ I say.
‘It’s forecast to get worse tonight. They wanted to go when they woke up, but they didn’t want to miss you.’
‘Don’t you want them to stay?’ I ask.
He sighs. ‘Of course I do, Marta, but they’ve got lives to get back to.’
‘Aren’t you worried about the snow, Matilda?’ I say.
Matilda looks up from the stove. ‘Why would I be? It’s not even bad yet.’
I sit down at the kitchen table, my hands in my lap. I imagine reaching forward and smashing Hector’s head onto the table, over and over.
There are little etchings of frost on the window which I trace with my fingers. Hector has gone back to his paper. Matilda concentrates on frying the bacon, curling patches of wet pink leather. I remember that my fingertip might leave a mark on the window and stop.
‘I still think it would be safer if Kylan stays one more night,’ I say.
Hector doesn’t look up. ‘We’ll see what he says.’
Just then, I hear Kylan in the hall. I go to the kitchen door. He is pulling on his coat.
‘Where are you going?’ I say.
‘I’m just going to put the snow chains on,’ he says. �
��We should probably get going after breakfast.’
‘It’s dreadful out there,’ I say. ‘Perhaps you should stay here tonight.’
‘It’s not too bad,’ he says. ‘And we have work tomorrow.’
I put my hand on Kylan’s arm. ‘Don’t you think you should wait until the snow passes?’
‘They say it’s only going to get worse.’
‘Then you should probably stay here,’ I say.
‘We can’t, Mum,’ he says. ‘You know that.’
Matilda calls through from the kitchen. ‘Breakfast’s ready.’
Hector comes through with two plates and hands one to Kylan. ‘Shall we eat in the living room? Marta, yours is in the kitchen.’
Kylan nods and they head in. Matilda carries two plates through from the kitchen.
I stand in the hall for a long time, listening to the chatter continue in the other room, before I follow them.
The living room is warm: Hector has lit the fire, and there is the sound of wood cracking in the fireplace. Always light the fire in the winter: make the home as cosy as possible for your family to enjoy. It seems like without me, everything has continued as normal.
Katya is sitting on the sofa with Kylan. He looks up and sees me standing there.
‘Not hungry?’ he asks.
I don’t answer.
There is nowhere for me to sit anyway.
After they have finished eating, I can feel the restlessness in the room rising. Everyone is getting ready to leave. Kylan fetches the overnight bags and Hector leads Matilda out to her car. The front door is ajar, and a chill spreads through the room.
I cross my arms, moving to the small hall window. There are swirls of flakes dropping from the sky.
‘It’s snowing again,’ I say, but no one is listening.
Kylan and Katya have their coats on. I stand rigidly in the middle of the hall.
‘The roads are sure to be icy,’ I say.
‘The main ones will be gritted,’ Kylan says. I think of the huge red gritter whirring past me on the side of the road and feel sick. He comes forward and embraces me stiffly. ‘Thanks, Mum,’ he says. ‘We’ll see you soon.’
