by Lana Newton
His eyes were pleading with her to believe him. And she wanted to, more than anything. ‘On the day my mother was killed, on the day of the accident, you were with Gaby? That’s why you never answered my calls?’
He lowered his head as if he was ashamed. ‘I’m sorry. I understand if you don’t want me around anymore. I can leave. This is your house and you can have it.’
‘I don’t want you to leave. But I feel like everyone around me is lying.’ Suddenly she was crying and Paul had his arms around her. ‘I don’t know how I feel about any of it. I don’t remember our relationship or my feelings for you. Before I can make sense of it all, I need to find out who I am.’
‘Do you want me to cancel my business trip?’
Trying to compose herself, smiling through her tears, she nodded. ‘You’d better unpack the dog.’
Chapter 17
Claire didn’t tell Tony about her conversation with Gaby and Paul. She didn’t know why but she wanted to keep it to herself until she knew how she felt about it. While Tony was listlessly chewing on a pancake she had made, she asked if she could have the key to his house. ‘I want to see where I lived when I was younger. I want to see my old room. It might trigger something, a memory or a feeling.’
‘I don’t think it’s a good idea. Your mother … That was where they’d found her. I couldn’t go back there. Are you sure you are strong enough?’
‘I know I’m not. But it’s something I need to do.’
Claire could see hesitation in his face, as if he was searching for a way to talk her out of it. Finally, he gave in and she asked Paul to drive her to her parents’ house. The revelation about their marriage had been a good thing in a way, she thought. It encouraged them to talk and helped her see him for who he truly was, and not someone she had invented. She was grateful he would be with her when she visited her parents’ house because she didn’t think she could handle it alone.
Just like her father, Paul didn’t think it was a good idea.
‘I want you to stop trying to protect me from my past,’ she said to him. ‘I need you to help me find it.’
When they pulled up outside the familiar house in North London, it took Claire a moment to muster the courage to get out of the car. Motionlessly, she stared at the large brick structure where she had once lived. With trepidation she pushed the gate, walked on the brown carpet of withered grass and stood with her hand on the front door, listening. She wondered what it would feel like had things been different. Had her mother been home waiting for her, with cookies baking in the oven perhaps and a pot of tea brewing on the dining table. The fantasy was so heartwarming, she almost turned around and fled. She couldn’t bear seeing the house empty. But she had to face her past in order to discover who she was in the present.
Once again, the letterbox was stuffed to the brim with letters. Fresh newspapers littered the front yard. The neighbour was in her garden, pruning. She had on the same apron, the same pair of trousers and shirt. Her dog was sleeping in the shade of an apple tree. It was a Boston terrier, smooth and bug-eyed. After a moment’s hesitation, Claire peeked over the fence, said hello and waved. Her voice woke the dog and it barked indignantly at this disrespectful invasion in the middle of a peaceful afternoon. Thankfully, Old Sue didn’t seem to hear. Claire wasn’t up for small talk.
Coughing to clear her dry throat, she followed Paul inside the house, which was even more imposing on the inside than it seemed from the outside. Everywhere she looked were expensive paintings and old-fashioned furniture. The ceiling was so high, the living room so spacious, if she spoke, Claire was sure her voice would ricochet off the walls in a loud echo. She could sense ghosts in the house, their eyes following her every move, but everything was silent. There were no whispers from the past, only the din of traffic outside.
Claire asked Paul to lock the door. She wasn’t sure what she was expecting to find here but she knew she didn’t want to be disturbed when she found it.
This is where I lived with my mother and father, she thought, shuddering. This is home.
The house smelt like a hospital – of bleach and sanitiser. It must have been professionally cleaned after the forensic team was done with it. Everything was spotless, except for a piece of furniture here and there that looked out of place, as if pushed out of the way and forgotten. The sofa was in the corner instead of directly opposite the TV. The umbrella stand wasn’t by the front door but abandoned in the middle of the room. In the gaps between floorboards she could still see traces of white powder the police had left behind. ‘They use it for fingerprints,’ explained Paul, watching her carefully.
Not knowing where to start, Claire walked around the perimeter of the walls, tracing the flowery pattern of the wallpaper with her fingertips. Finally, she paused next to the coffee table and touched its smooth surface. She could imagine Angela on the sofa, her hands in her lap as she watched TV, relaxing after a long day. Claire listened to the silence and thought of her younger self running through these rooms, of her mother’s voice calling her for supper. Inside these walls, she had a life once, even if she knew nothing about it.
Her parents’ mail didn’t contain anything of interest. Utility bills, a greeting card from someone called Olivia, a credit card application form. Claire made her way into the dining room. It seemed like the safest place to start. If there were secrets waiting for her inside these walls, she doubted she would find them here. Although she longed to learn who she was, she was desperately afraid of her past.
‘What is it you are looking for?’ asked Paul.
‘Clues,’ replied Claire. Clues to who she was. Clues to what happened to her mother. The missing pieces of the puzzle.
The dining room contained an old round table covered with a flowery tablecloth and eight chairs like knights crowding around it. Just as Claire suspected, no devastating secrets here. The kitchen was nothing like their high-tech kitchen at home – yellow cupboards and yellow tiles, some of them cracked, an old-fashioned cooker and a kettle that whistled. It seemed her mother collected tea towels from around the world. Claire could see towels from Barcelona, Tenerife, Paris. Even one with a koala on top of the Sydney Harbour Bridge. Taking it off its hook, her hands trembling, she wondered if she had brought it for Angela as a present when she had toured Australia with her ballet company. She opened cupboard after cupboard, examining containers filled with tea and sugar. An empty fridge and a fully stocked freezer that seemed to have everything, from frozen pies to cartons of ice cream. And then she spotted the knives and her legs gave out. Petrified, she sunk to the floor.
Instantly Paul was by her side. ‘Are you okay? Do you need anything? A glass of water?’
‘I don’t think I can do this.’
‘You can do this. I’m right here.’
Seeing the look of concern on his face, feeling his strong arms around her, she knew he meant it. And she felt better. ‘Where did they find her?’ she muttered. Paul didn’t seem to hear. Maybe he chose not to hear. Could she blame him, when it was the last thing she wanted to talk about? But she needed to know. ‘Where did they find my mother?’ she repeated louder, words getting caught in her throat, threatening to choke her.
‘Right here, in the kitchen. That’s what the police told us.’
Claire closed her eyes and searched for a memory, imagining herself walking through the door on the day her mother was murdered and seeing … what? Her mind was blank.
Suddenly, she felt faint and short of breath. Shaking, afraid she would collapse, she leaned on Paul’s shoulder when something shiny caught her eye in the corner. It was a silver charm – a dove carrying an olive branch. It must have belonged to her mother. Eagerly Claire reached for it and held it up for a few seconds, studying it with reverence. And then she saw a tiny brown spot on the dove’s head, like an old tomato ketchup stain. Claire knew instantly what it was – her mother’s blood. She threw the charm on the floor and fled from the kitchen. She never wanted to set foot in here again.
As she was about to step into the dark corridor, she glanced behind her one more time and saw Paul bend over, pick up the charm and place it in his pocket.
It took her a few minutes to get her breath back, to be able to think straight. Blinded by terror, she walked up the stairs. Not a thing was out of place in her parents’ bedroom. Family photographs adorned every wall, as if her mother wanted to be reminded of the people she loved everywhere she looked. There was a younger Angela, impeccable in her bridal beige, and Tony, tall, good-looking and smiling from ear to ear. There were pictures of her mother and father holding hands on a beach and kissing in front of the Statue of Liberty. And pictures of Claire as a baby, a toddler, a young girl, riding a bicycle, holding a puppy, posing on stage in a white tutu.
There were no pictures of Nate.
On the bedside table she found a small bottle of perfume. Her doctor had told her scents were particularly good at bringing back memories. She undid the cap and closed her eyes, trying to concentrate. Did it smell familiar? A hint of jasmine and vanilla, and something else, something she couldn’t quite place. The fragrance was light, almost girly. She sprayed some perfume on the inside of her wrist because she wanted to smell like her mother.
In the wardrobe, there was a little bit of everything – clothes, shoes, books and magazines. Timeless and elegant dresses, all straight lines and understated colours, mature and grown-up, something a schoolteacher or perhaps a librarian might choose. Absentmindedly Claire touched the fabrics, imagining a tall elegant woman wearing this suit or that skirt or that pair of trousers, with an aura of jasmine and vanilla about her.
‘Oh, Mum,’ she whispered, wrapping her arms around a cardigan, burying her face in it, trying to catch her mother’s scent and to feel her mother’s presence, all the while struggling not to cry.
Painstakingly she opened every drawer of the bedside table and went through gardening magazines and old newspaper clippings on the mantelpiece. They were mostly about Claire and her ballet, with an occasional ad for a holiday resort. A caravan park in Cornwall, a cabin in the South of France.
The room next door was slightly bigger. Even before she stepped inside, Claire knew it had once belonged to her. There was a ballerina cover on the bed and a ballet poster on the wall. Suddenly, she wanted to hide from the world under her childhood blanket until her mother came home and held her in her arms, telling her everything would be alright.
On either side of the bed, she could see two bedside tables, both empty. The rest of the furniture consisted of a tall mirror, an old wardrobe, bare bookshelves and an ancient piano. Claire ran her fingers over the piano keys. It hadn’t been tuned and sounded like a church organ, eerie and disturbing.
As she meticulously searched the room, she wished she knew what she was looking for – then perhaps she would know where to find it. If she were a young girl, where would she hide something she didn’t want anyone to see? A diary perhaps? Old love letters? There was nothing under the mattress and nothing under the bed.
Behind the piano, a dozen boxes were haphazardly stacked on top of each other, held together with tape that was old and dry and peeled away easily. As fast as she could, Claire searched inside every box. They seemed to contain her whole teenage life – clothes, books, pointe shoes, magazines, posters and greeting cards. She imagined her younger self wearing the tutus, what it had felt like, what she had looked like. She glanced through the ballet magazines that had once inspired her to dance the best she could, to work hard and reach for the stars. Looking at her pre-adolescent dreams all there in front of her – in every poster and carefully preserved newspaper article, she felt proud of herself. Proud of the old Claire, whom she couldn’t remember but who had strived and achieved.
But the clothes, the books, the magazines felt as if they had belonged to a stranger. It couldn’t have been her, reading National Geographic and making notes in her school notebook. The clothes – short skirts and tight tops, something a teenager might wear when she wanted to impress a boy – still fit perfectly. And then there were the books with her own notes in them, a few words here and there, a random thought or a witty comment. This made me cry. I don’t agree with this. This is funny. Must read this again.
Finally, at the bottom of the last box, under an anthology of poetry, she came across a small notebook. A diary. She could feel her heart racing. Was this what she had come here to find? Her hands trembling, she read the first entry – it was about ballet, what she had learnt and how much she had improved. There were drawings on every page – of ballet positions, butterflies and flowers. In the corner of the room she found a small box and placed the notebook inside. Then she returned to her parents’ bedroom, opened the bedside table and added some gardening magazines and newspaper clippings to her box, so she could go through them at home and see what her mother had been reading.
‘I think we are done here,’ she said to Paul.
‘You don’t want to see the rest of the house?’
‘I found an old diary. I want to go home and read it.’
But the truth was, she couldn’t stay in her parents’ house another minute. Her head was spinning and her throat was aching as if she was coming down with a bad cold. Every old photograph, book and magazine, every piece of furniture and clothing seemed to taunt her with the images of a life that was forever gone. You don’t remember us, they seemed to shout to her at the top of their voices, but we remember you. We remember you as a carefree little girl, rushing home to tell your mother all about your day. We remember you when you were happy. And look at you now.
* * *
Nina had whipped up an elaborate three-course meal for them that evening but Claire felt queasy just looking at the food. Telling Paul she had a headache, she locked herself in her room and opened the notebook. In the dim light, the pages looked dog-eared and worn. At first glance they contained everything you would expect to find in a young girl’s diary. Transfixed, she read through detailed descriptions of arguments with her friends, movies she had seen, books she had borrowed and clothes she had bought.
Quicker and quicker she turned the pages, hoping for a glimpse into her life that would shed the light on who she was, a mention of her brother, perhaps, or a passage about her mother. After fifteen minutes she was halfway through the notebook and her eyes were tired. She almost closed her diary and went to bed, but something caught her attention. She had to go back a few pages and there it was – a dot in the corner, as if the page had been accidentally smeared by a red marker pen. She would have ignored it if, a few pages later, there wasn’t another dot. By the time she reached the end of the diary, she counted a dozen similar marks.
The red dots were not an accident. They meant something.
She bookmarked every page where the dot appeared by bending the corner slightly, and then returned to the first one. The letters were smaller here and the writing was difficult to decipher, as if the author was in a hurry to commit her thoughts to paper. Claire read the entry three times but the words made no sense. It was as if her brain refused to understand.
I wish I was deaf, so I wouldn’t have to hear him. I put a pillow over my head but it doesn’t help. I hate him!
The last sentence was crossed out, as if the person writing didn’t want anyone to read it. But behind the veil of black ink the letters were still visible.
What did it all mean? Who was the young Claire talking about? Chilled by a sudden fear, she found the second red dot.
Why does he have to be so angry all the time? I hate him so much.
And this time there was no attempt to hide the ‘I hate him’. It was right there, in bold letters, for the world to see.
Claire looked at the dates. There was a red dot every few weeks. And in the meantime, as if nothing was happening, there were school assignments, sleepovers and trips to the seaside with friends. Just a normal life of a typical teenager.
And then the final red dot, dated December 2009:
This time he’s gone too far
. And one day he will pay. He will pay for everything. I will never forgive him for this. I hate him!
The writing changed on that page. It became uneven, disturbed. As if the hand holding the pen was shaking. Claire was shaking herself as she read the words one more time.
After December 2009, there were no more entries.
Chapter 18
As hard as she tried, Claire could find no mention of her brother in her diary. Like any teenage girl, Claire rarely wrote about her family. Instead, she talked about her friends, hobbies and dancing. But every now and then, there would be a few words about her mother that would take her breath away and she would read them aloud to herself until she could recite them in her sleep, longing for a picture of Angela that wasn’t too far removed from reality.
From the lines of her diary, a kind and warm woman came to life, a little absentminded perhaps, but one who adored Claire. When Claire was 14, her mother had made her a new tutu for a ballet performance. She had stayed up all night finishing it and then watched proudly as her daughter danced her heart out on stage. She had cooked oatmeal for breakfast every morning, was overprotective and constantly worried about her daughter.
When Claire turned 15, Angela had taken her to see a film about ballet. There were two pages describing the movie, when all Claire wanted were a few sentences describing her mother. She had so many questions. She wondered if Angela had enjoyed the film, if they had shared a box of popcorn, if they had gone out for a bite to eat afterwards. She wanted to know what they had talked about, whether they had laughed together, whether they’d enjoyed each other’s company.
The thought of the unconditional love her mother had for her, of the love she still felt for her mother, even though she couldn’t remember her, filled Claire with an unbearable longing she didn’t know how to control. At moments like that, she thought the police suspecting her of murdering her own mother was laughable. How could she ever hurt someone she adored? Would PC Kamenski see her feelings as proof of her innocence? Why did Claire doubt that? And then Claire read an entry that made her heart beat faster.
