The Girlfriend

by Sarah Naughton

  I know it’s just what everyone says and means nothing coming from a man who must parrot it every day, but I reach up and clutch his hand as if I’m drowning.

  “I can remove the DNR if that’s what you want.”

  It takes me a minute to get myself together again, and when I’m finally able to speak, my voice is soft and high as a child’s. “No. Leave it. Probably the best thing. And call me Mags.”

  I raise my eyes to meet his gaze.

  “I knew when I first saw him that he wouldn’t last long,” he says. “I’ve seen people of Abe’s age with lesser head injuries, and I’ve seen them get better enough to go home. But when I look at them slumped in their chairs, dribbling, I think, if it were me, I’d rather be dead.”

  I can tell he thinks he’s made a mistake to talk to me that way. He fingers his name badge, blinking his long eyelashes. I want to tell him that it’s OK. That the fight is seeping out of me by the day, that I can feel Abe’s ghost creeping into me, softening me. But I can’t speak.

  “He sounded like a good man. I wish I’d had the chance to know him. And I promise you, Mags, I won’t let him suffer.”

  He squeezes my shoulder then, and I squeeze his hand in response, eyes closed, trying to suck enough oxygen into my lungs that I won’t cry again.

  When I’m sure I’m in control, I open my eyes and smile at him.

  “Thank you.”

  He dips his head, then turns and walks away. A moment later, the door swings shut, and I am alone among the silently dying.

  He has given me a gift. I won’t have to make the decision to end my brother’s life. I thought I could do it, but I am beginning to understand that I cannot trust myself anymore. The person I thought I was, the person I made myself into, was a lie. And the lie is cracking like an eggshell, gradually exposing something new and white and clean.

  I take the bus back to St. Jerome’s, hoping to compose myself during the journey. I can’t confront Jody like this.

  A work chat will sort me out. It’s one-ish back home, so Jackson will be back from his Saturday morning run. I take out my phone and hit the contacts, but on my way to his name, I overshoot and Daniel’s rolls up. I let my thumb hover over the number. Then I swipe up to Jackson’s. Back down again. Back up. I am about to make the call to the States when the phone shudders in my hand and starts to ring. I almost drop it with shock. A number I don’t recognize.

  I answer.

  “Miss Mackenzie?” A woman’s voice, vaguely familiar.

  “Who’s calling?”

  “It’s Tabitha Obodom, Jody’s social worker. The police have told me that you believe Jody pushed your brother over the stairwell. They said you’re considering bringing a civil case against her.”

  “And you want to try to talk me out of it.”

  “Yes. Yes, I do.”

  I tell her I’m not interested in hearing any bleating about Jody’s difficult childhood. I tell her that England is too damn full of bleeding-heart social workers making excuses for criminals. I’m about to say that maybe the American states with the death penalty have got it right but stop myself just in time.

  “Please,” she says. “Just a few minutes of your time. Just hear me out.”

  It’s nearly nine o’clock on a Saturday night, and this woman is prepared to come to St. Jerome’s for what is bound to be a hostile confrontation and then travel home again in the dark and cold. I think of Abe. I think of his kindness.

  I say yes.

  27.

  Mira

  I am watching at the window when you finally come home, Loran. I see you park the car, but you don’t get out straightaway. You just sit there in the darkness. I wonder if you are looking at your phone, if you are texting her. But if you were on your phone, I would see the glow of the screen.

  After a while, you get out. I watch you walk around the side of the building and then, just as you are about to disappear, you look up. I shrink back from the window in case you accuse me of spying on you, but you are not looking at me. You are looking at the flat of the man who fell, where the sister now lives. It cannot be her that you like—this affair was going on before she came. Before Abe fell.

  Poor Abe. He always seemed such a kind, gentle man. The first time he spoke to me, it was to offer help.

  I was taking out the rubbish. Three big black garbage bags, mostly clothes I knew I wouldn’t wear again after the birth: tight dresses and short skirts, clothes from my life before. They weren’t heavy, just awkward to carry, and it was taking me a very long time to get them down the stairs. Then I heard a door open on our floor.

  “Let me help you with that,” he said.

  “It’s OK,” I said, but he was already taking two of the bags, his fingers brushing my own. I followed him down the stairs, a few paces behind so as not to have to speak to him. The only sounds were the rustling of the plastic and our quiet footsteps on the stairs.

  We went out into the sunshine. It is not often sunny in England, and when it is, it makes me feel strangely sad. It makes me think of long summer evenings at home, lying out in the back field with my sisters, always barefoot, our feet nut brown and dirty as children’s.

  The sun on my skin was like a lover’s caress, and I paused for a moment with my eyes closed, letting its warmth spread across my face.

  When I opened my eyes, he was waiting for me at the corner of the building. I went to join him, and we walked together to the garbage area around the side. It’s a disgusting place; in the summer, I could not open the windows because the whole flat would smell of rotten meat and fermenting vegetables. As we threw down the bags, there was an explosion of flies that made me jump back. I tripped on the handle of a toy stroller and almost fell, but he caught my arm just in time and pulled me upright.

  He smiled at me as I adjusted my scarf.

  “Why do you wear that?”

  “For modesty,” I said.

  He laughed. “You can be too modest, you know. Let the world see how beautiful you are. It doesn’t last long.”

  English people think it is funny to insult you, and I thought it was funny too. I said, “Actually, I am seventy-two.”

  At first, he just stared at me—it took him a very long time to realize an Albanian Muslim woman was making a joke. Then he laughed so loudly, it echoed around the building. I liked the way he laughed, with his whole body. He was so long and lean, it was like a violin bow bending back.

  My face warmed up, and my heart beat faster, and I realized I was feeling something I hadn’t felt for three years, not since we left Albania. I was feeling attraction for a man. I didn’t want him to leave.

  “You are my neighbor,” I said.

  “Only for the past two years,” he said, and his brown eyes sparkled. “When’s the baby due?”

  I told him. “I hope you have—” I gestured, poking something into my ears.

  “Not at all,” he said. “This place could do with a bit of life. Perhaps your husband will let me babysit.”

  “Perhaps,” I said.

  For a moment, he just looked at me, and my smile faltered a little, because I knew the look was not one of desire but of pity.

  Then he looked over his shoulder. I followed his gaze, and my blood turned cold.

  You were watching us, Loran. You were standing by the corner of the building, with your work bag slung over your shoulder, and your face was white. Then you stepped to the side and were hidden by the building.

  “I have to go,” I said and hurried away, but when I got to the main entrance, you had already gone.

  I heard Abe’s footsteps behind me, and I was so scared that he would try to talk to me again and you would see that I set off at a run across the waste ground, and the children in the playground laughed to see a Muslim woman running, with her black dress flapping.

  You were nowhere to be
seen, and when I got to Gordon Terrace and glanced back, I saw Abe going back into the building. I stood there for some minutes, feeling foolish, until the boys in hoods came walking down from the main street, and then I hurried back to the building.

  You were very late back from the pub that night, and I lay awake, terrified that this time, you would actually strike me for behaving like a whore with another man.

  But you did not.

  You came into the bedroom and undressed and showered, then you made love to me, silently, in the darkness. I was glad because I had made you jealous.

  Your key in the lock makes me jump. I did not hear your footsteps on the stairs.

  I wipe my face with a tea towel and run my fingers through my hair. It is short now, because you said it is more becoming for a married woman. I slip on my shoes too, because you say it is slovenly to go about barefoot, and I am smiling when you come into the room.

  You do not know that I know.

  “Si je?” I ask.

  “Mira.” You smile back at me, but the smile only reaches your lips. Your eyes are so sad, and you drop your work bag onto the floor as if it was heavy as a dead body.

  “How was your day?” I ask.

  You shrug. “We are delivering cement.”

  “Oh.” I smile, blinking, wondering how it can be so difficult to talk to a fellow human being. It is as though we are from different species. But the way you look back at me, I think perhaps you feel the same. You take out your phone.

  “Look at these. They are cement silos. They store the powdered cement. We have to climb all the way up there.”

  You point to a tiny ladder, as narrow as a zipper, running all the way up an enormous cylinder.

  “You must be careful,” I say. “If you fell, you would break your neck.”

  “Better that than falling into the silo. Then we would drown in cement powder, and no one would ever know.”

  “Don’t say that. It’s horrible.”

  You are quiet then, frowning, lost in thought. Have I upset you again?

  “I have made us gjellë,” I say brightly.

  After a moment, you raise your head. “I can smell it. It smells good.”

  “The baby makes it smell bad!” I say and try to laugh.

  Then, as if he is listening, he starts to kick.

  “He is kicking. Look.”

  I know you would not want to see my bare belly, so I press my dress against the bump, and a tiny lump appears. The heel of the baby’s foot.

  I fear you might be disgusted, but now your smile goes to your eyes. You come over and cup your hand around it, and then it pushes out even farther.

  “He knows his father’s touch,” I say.

  For some reason, tears start to my eyes, and then I see they are in your eyes also.

  You stand with your hand on the baby’s foot, and we both know that you are only touching me to get to him.

  “Does he hurt you?” you ask.

  “A little. Sometimes.” Your smile fades, and I am sorry.

  That night, you do not go to the pub but go to bed straight after dinner and cry yourself to sleep. When I thought you were happy with another woman, it was bad, but this is worse. Loran, what are we to do?

  28.

  Mags

  Tabitha is short and overweight, but close up, she has the face of a supermodel, with smooth, glowing skin and tranquil black eyes.

  We sit down at the table, streaked blue by the streetlight through the stained glass. I’ve made her tea and myself a strong coffee. Even though the heating is up to maximum, I feel cold and stiff, like an old woman, and I hunch over the steaming mug, trying to inhale some of the heat.

  She sips her tea and then puts the mug down deliberately. “Have you spoken to her yet?”

  “I’ve tried, but she’s not answering her door or phone.” I don’t add that I’d been fully intending to break in if she hadn’t had the locks changed. That must have been what she was busy doing when I was at the hospital.

  “She’ll be scared.”

  “With good reason.”

  “She didn’t push Abe, if that’s what you think,” she says. “She was obsessed with your brother, but it was an infantilized thing. A preteen sort of crush. Had he shown the remotest interest in her sexually, she’d have been terrified. That’s why she fixated on him. I think she knew underneath that he was gay and she was perfectly safe from any adult involvement.”

  “What makes you so sure she didn’t do it?” I ask. “Seems to me British social workers have a habit of giving their clients far too much benefit of the doubt.”

  She looks down at her mug, then back up at me.

  “Your brother suffered her attentions with very good grace. She was happy with the status quo, and his gentle discouragement did her no harm. There was no reason for her to challenge things. Even if she wanted to hurt him—and these letters contain no suggestion of that—she’s far too physically and mentally fragile. She could never have managed it.”

  I experience a strong sense of déjà vu. “She could have caught him off guard. There’s evidence of a struggle. And who knows what she’s capable of when she lies all the time.”

  Tabitha sighs unhappily. “I accept Jody is strongly self-delusional. She constructs these fantasies because the truth of her past is so unbearable. Her father was never in the military, if that’s what she told you. He didn’t die in a plane crash, and her mother didn’t kill herself.”

  I hold her gaze. Nothing she can say will surprise me.

  “She died of a drug overdose a year or two after Jody was taken into foster care.”

  So what? Plenty of foster home kids go on to lead fully productive lives and don’t become pathological liars/stalkers, so if she’s trying to make me pity Jody, she’s going to be disappointed.

  “It wasn’t because of the drugs,” the woman goes on. “Why she was taken into foster care.”

  I sigh. “Go on, then.”

  “Her father was part of a pedophile ring. Jody and her stepbrother were traded back and forth between men on a farm in Surrey.”

  Sickened, I look away. Then I look back, and my lip curls. “Sure this isn’t one of her tall tales?”

  “Five of them are serving life sentences in Woodhill Prison. Jody has severe internal injuries consistent with sustained abuse as a very young child.”

  In the silence that follows, I can hear the swings creaking in the playground below.

  Abe and I used to play in the local playground next to our house. We had to be back in time for tea, or my mother would shout across the little park to us: “Daddy’s waiting to say grace!”

  It was humiliating when that happened, and the kids mercilessly ribbed us for it, so most days, we made sure we were back in good time. But one day when Abe called me, I ignored him and carried on playing in the sandpit.

  He climbed in and yanked at my sleeve. “C’mon, Mary.”

  “Git tae fuck!” I shouted and pushed him so hard, he fell back and banged his head on the wooden wall.

  The playground fell silent.

  Then all around me, I heard the little thunks of shovels and buckets being dropped into the sand. Abe was crying, but no one went to comfort him. I knew why. I could feel the presence behind me, as huge and dreadful as a monster from a nightmare.

  “MARY MACKENZIE.”

  My father’s voice was like a sonic boom echoing across the mountains behind the estate. Slowly, the other children got up.

  “I don’t think she heard Mrs. Mack calling,” one of them said shrilly. I never did find out who had tried to defend me, but Christ, they were brave.

  He ignored them. His shadow turned the yellow sand gray.

  “Up.”

  I carried on playing, grimly pouring sand from a plastic watering can to make a little hill that
never got any higher.

  “Up.” His voice was getting quieter and quieter.

  The last dregs of sand poured out. The watering can was empty. I stared at it until the bright colors smeared together. It was so quiet, you could hear the hair dryers growling in the salon down the road.

  “Git tae fuck,” I said quietly.

  He yanked me up so forcefully, my humerus fractured with an audible crack. I screamed and carried on screaming as he dragged me by my broken arm across the cold concrete, through our side gate, and up the steps to our kitchen. Only when I started vomiting did they call the ambulance.

  The doctor at Inverness Hospital had used my father’s roofing firm and wasn’t inclined to question his account of how my arm “twisted awkwardly when I pulled her up.” It didn’t sound so bad, and it wasn’t a lie. The other children told their parents what I’d said, and they all thought I deserved it. At church the following Sunday, my father received understanding pats on the back while I, the cross he had to bear, sat in the back pew with my arm in a cast, fiercely ignoring the shaken heads and pursed lips. For a time after that, I thought about cutting his throat when he slept, but later, I discovered boys and decided there were plenty of better ways to get my revenge.

  The bastard ruined my childhood, but compared to Jody’s, he was Ned Flanders.

  “I understand you’re angry, Mags.” I bristle at her use of my first name. “You feel humiliated and betrayed because you believed her. Don’t be. She’s very convincing. Of course she is. Even she believes everything she says, on some level at least.”

  “So what does she say when you pull her up on it?”

  “We don’t engage with her on those subjects. We let her tell herself the stories she needs to to keep herself strong.”

  “You let her delude herself?”

  “It’s harmless. The whole thing about reliving your past to come to terms with it has actually started to be discredited. Everyone deals with trauma in a different way. Some people in Jody’s position experience a complete fracturing of their personalities as they try to block out what happened to them. They become drug- or alcohol-dependent. Jody was a self-harmer for a while. But now, she manages to keep her head above water with antianxiety medicine and a few harmless delusions—like the delusion that your brother was in love with her.”