by Rachel Ward
“I’m … I’m sorry.”
He keeps looking at me, and I’m starting to sweat. I can feel a confession trying to elbow its way out of me.
“I … I …”
“All right, son,” he says. “Don’t touch it again, that’s all. It’s not yours. Have you still got that book I gave you?”
“Book?”
“Of Mice and Men, wasn’t it? That’s a good one. I loved that book when I was your age.”
I breathe out. So it was him. In a flash of memory I remember being here before, seeing it on his shelf, picking it up because we were studying it at school. I told him someone had nicked mine and he said, “You can have that one. I don’t need it anymore.”
I couldn’t believe someone would just give me something like that.
“Yeah,” I say, “I’ve still got it. I love it, too.”
He smiles and I wish I could smile back, but this is cutting me in two, because of that other time, the time Rob and me came back here.
“Now, come into the light, in the kitchen,” he says. “I’ll be able to see that scrape better.”
Not the kitchen. Not where …
“Come on,” he says, “don’t just stand there.”
He shuffles down the hallway. I could cut and run now, but I don’t. He’s got his back to me, rummaging in a cupboard. I stand just outside the doorway scanning the floor. What did I expect? Two painted outlines highlighting where the bodies lay, a woman and a dog? The rotting remains still in a heap? There’s nothing here. No marks, no dents, no smears, no spatters. It’s linoleum, pretending to be black and white tiles.
“Come in,” he says, “I won’t bite.”
His voice is drowned out by the voice of his wife in my head. “You bastard. You thieving, cowardly bastard.”
“I should go,” I say.
“Yes, all right. After I’ve fixed you up a bit. Come here.” He beckons me toward him. “Get under this light.”
I move forward until I’m standing on the exact spot where the dog was lying. It feels like the floor is moving underneath my feet, like there’s a paw or an ear or something trapped under there. I shift a little bit to the side.
“Here, stop moving about. Stand still.”
He’s close now, and the smell of his minty breath mixes with the sharp tang of the disinfectant that’s soaking the cotton ball in his hands. He brings it up toward me. Close up, I can see all the wear and tear in his skin, the way the whites of his eyes aren’t white but yellow. I close my eyes and flinch as the rubbing alcohol makes contact with my raw cut.
“All right,” he says. “Nearly done. There, you can open your eyes now. I’m finished. Do you want a cup of tea?”
I should go. I shouldn’t be here. Despite this, I nod.
“Go and sit down in the lounge, son.”
I walk through. It’s tiny, neat and tidy … and familiar. A patterned carpet. Wood paneling on the walls. Bookshelves on either side of the fireplace. And photographs. I walk over to the mantelpiece and look along the row of pictures. Some are of people on their own, others are group shots. I pick up one with just two people in it: the old man and a woman, his wife. There’s a caption along the bottom: “Harry & Iris, 22nd July 2012.”
They are looking straight at the camera, side by side. Heads leaning toward each other, Harry’s hand just showing where he’s got his arm around her shoulder, holding her close. They’re both togged up — him in a tweed jacket, white shirt, and tie, her in a glossy blouse with a bow loosely tied at the neck. Nestling in the shiny material is a necklace — a silver locket on a chain.
I’m walking across the park with Neisha. She’s nervously touching the silver locket that’s swinging on a chain around her neck.
“Golden wedding, that was.” Harry’s voice makes me jump and jerk my head around to look over my shoulder. I’m ready to be told off again for touching, but he doesn’t seem to mind this time. He’s standing in the doorway holding a tray.
“Fifty years,” he says. “Fifty years … Thought we might make it to our diamond anniversary, but … That’s the last photo we had taken together.”
“What happened?”
“Don’t you remember that, either, son?”
“I’m sorry, I’ve been in the hospital. They said I got a concussion in the lake.”
“Ah, nasty. You’ll get better, though, son.”
“Yeah, it’s getting better already. I’ve just got some … gaps. I’m sorry about your wife … Iris?”
“I haven’t seen you since it happened. You haven’t been around …”
“So … ?”
He puts the tray down on a table and starts pouring steaming hot tea into two mugs. I don’t think he’s heard me or understood what I’m asking, but after he’s handed me my tea and settled into an armchair with his, he starts talking.
“I’d gone out to fetch some indigestion tablets. She … Iris … had been feeling a bit off. I wasn’t gone long, twenty minutes or so. The pharmacy wasn’t open so I stopped by at the neighbor’s.
“I found them in the kitchen. Iris and the dog, both … both … you know. Doctor said it was a heart attack. That’s why she was feeling sick earlier. Said she must’ve found poor old Winston and that was it. It was too much for her — probably would have happened anyway. Natural causes. But there’s something bothering me, something not right.”
Up to now he’s been looking at the photo on the mantelpiece, but now he turns and leans toward me in his chair.
“Her necklace was gone. She always wore it. A silver locket on a chain. She’s wearing it in that photo. It was one I gave her on our first anniversary — twenty-second of July 1962 — she put it on and never took it off. Now I can’t find it.”
His eyes are red-rimmed.
“Things get lost,” I say, trying not to squirm in my seat.
He shakes his head.
“No, not this.” He dabs at his face with a big white hankie. “Someone was in here.”
His words hang in the air between us.
“I’d better go home,” I splutter through a mouthful of tea. “Mum’ll be wondering where I am.”
He puts his hankie away.
“Good lad,” he says, “you look after your mum. Terrible thing, to lose someone so young.”
He follows me down the hall and lets me out. It’s dry outside now; dry and dark and quiet. I pause on his doorstep, scanning around for signs of Rob, half expecting him to be waiting there. He isn’t.
“Thanks for the tea,” I say.
I turn and walk down the path. When I look back, he’s still standing there, watching me. He raises his hand briefly and shuts the door.
I pull my hood up and head for home. I keep my eyes peeled all the way, but Rob’s nowhere to be seen.
Mum’s not on the sofa. She’s on the kitchen floor, on her hands and knees. From where I’m standing I can see her backside resting on her heels, wiggling from side to side.
“Mum? What the — ?”
She doesn’t seem to hear me. She’s scrubbing the linoleum, going at it so manically her whole body’s moving.
“Mum?” I try again.
This time she twists around. Her hair’s flopping into her eyes. She huffs out of her open mouth, making the hair waft out for a second before it flops back again.
“In a minute, Carl, I’ve just got to get this done.”
She’s wiping the same patch of floor over and over again. She starts to cry, then sits up on her heels and shoves some hair out of the way with the back of her hand.
“Where’ve you been all evening, Carl?” she says. “And how’d you get that scrape on your face?”
“What difference does it make?”
“What difference? What difference?! I’m your bloody mum, in case you hadn’t noticed. I should know where you are. If I’d known where you were, perhaps … perhaps …” She can’t bring herself to say it. Instead she says, “Rob was a good swimmer. What happened, Carl?”
&
nbsp; In the water, I lock my arms around his neck, holding my elbows in a viselike grip, making a double layer of skin and bone. I bring them back toward me, pulling on his neck, compressing.
“I can’t remember, Mum. I told you. I can’t hardly remember anything about it.”
“But why were you there?”
“If I knew, I’d tell you, right?” I’m nearly shouting, fueled by the confusion, the disbelief, the guilt that’s been building up all day.
She goes back to scrubbing the floor, tears running down her face.
“Cleaning the floor won’t bring him back.” The words are out before I can stop them.
She’s leaning on one hand, head down, face hidden. She looks pathetic, broken. And I suddenly remember what Harry said, “Worst thing a mother can go through, losing a kid.” And I feel ashamed.
I find another cloth under the sink and kneel down next to her.
“Here, let me help you.”
I let her carry on polishing her clean patch, and steadily work my way around her. As I dip the cloth into the bucket, a shiver runs down my spine.
We nearly did it, Cee.
A voice, his voice, close to my ear.
I look around. It’s just Mum and me, on the kitchen floor.
I take a few deep breaths and carry on working. Where my fingers grip the cloth, water oozes out. The voice is still there — cold, quiet, chilling.
Nearly’s not enough.
Jesus. Something clicks in the back of my brain. Something to do with the moisture on my fingers … and Rob — here one minute and gone the next.
I spring up.
“I reckon that’s done it, Mum. Do you want a drink?” I say.
She sits up on her heels again and looks around her.
“Coffee,” she says. “Black coffee would be nice.”
I empty the bucket into the sink. The filthy water splashes my arms and the twang of decay catches at the back of my mouth, making me gag.
Mum sits at the table, pushes the heap of leaflets to one side. I make coffee for her and sit down, too.
“Since when have you drunk coffee?”
“Cheeky sod,” she says, but she’s almost smiling. “That’s it now. This is what I’m going to drink. I’m on the wagon.”
I force myself to meet her eyes. A thread of red runs through the white of her right eye, the skin underneath is puffy and saggy.
“I mean it. This is it, Carl. I got things wrong, terribly wrong. I’ve been a bad person.” Her eyes are brimming with tears again.
“Mum, don’t …”
We sit in silence.
“I might take a bath,” she says after a while. “You should take one, too — you’re filthy.”
“Okay,” I say, but there’s no way I’m getting in a bath. My head’s full of horror, seeing a body lying under the surface of the bathwater: pale, still, hair floating out, away from his head. Dead, but not dead.
Mum drains her mug, tipping her head all the way back to down all the dregs, then gets up to go to the bathroom. I hear her make her way upstairs. The sound of water running brings back the fear, like cockroaches running all over my body.
Upstairs, I hide in my sleeping bag, curling up with my back turned to the dark stain on the ceiling. If I’m asleep, or Mum thinks I am when she gets out of the bath, perhaps she’ll leave me be.
But I can’t sleep. Everything that’s happened today is tumbling around my head. I can’t make sense of it.
Instinctively, I reach for my book, the comfort of reading. And I understand now why it means so much to me. It’s not just the story, it’s the book itself. The fact that Harry gave it to me. And it wasn’t even my birthday.
A water snake slipped along on the pool, its head held up like a little periscope. The reeds jerked slightly in the current.
I close the book again, and let it flop onto the floor.
There are questions snaking through my head, things too awful to think about. Things that I can’t stop thinking about.
How could I betray Harry and burgle his house? How did I end up fighting my brother in a lake? How did he end up dead? Did I really want Neisha — lovely, beautiful Neisha — dead, too?
Am I a killer?
I wake up in yesterday’s clothes, yesterday’s dirt. Now I lie on my back looking at the dark patch on the ceiling; it’s grown again. I can hear voices downstairs, female voices. I haul myself out of bed and pad into the kitchen.
I do a double take. Neisha’s standing in the kitchen with her back to me, talking to Mum. She’s got a thigh-length black coat on, fitted so it goes in at the waist. There are tiny specks of rain sitting on the surface of the fabric, the same with her hair.
Why’s she here?
Oh God, I look like a tramp. Our flat looks like a flophouse.
I’m about to sneak away, but Mum’s seen me, and her eye movement alerts Neisha. She turns around and a tight little smile blinks on and off.
“All right,” I say, half in, half out of the doorway.
“Hey,” she says. The whites of her eyes flash as she quickly looks at me and looks away, turning straight back to Mum. She’s faking it, trying to pretend she wants to be here, but even that half second of eye contact is enough to melt me, turn me to jelly.
“I wanted to say … to say how sorry I am. About Rob,” she says.
What? I think back to last night in the rain outside her house.
“Thanks, love,” Mum says. She looks better for her bath. Her hair’s clean, tied back into a neat ponytail, but her face is still crumpled, her eyes are still puffy. “I appreciate that. I appreciate you coming. How are you doing? It must be difficult for you.”
“Oh, I’m … you know.”
Terrified? Terrified of your sons! What’s she doing here?
“I was lucky, I suppose, I had him for seventeen years. You’d only just got together. You had your whole lives ahead of you. It’s so cruel.”
There’s a little pause where I guess Neisha’s trying to pick the right words, and I think, Please don’t say anything bad, not to Mum. Then she says tightly, “We had a few months. I’ll always remember them. Always remember him.”
She glances back nervously to me as Mum steps forward and puts her arms around her. She’s wrapping Neisha up in her arms and I wonder how Neisha can do it, let this woman hold her, this woman whose sons tried to kill her. It’s weird seeing Mum like this, too. I can’t remember ever having a hug from her.
Behind them the tap is dripping into the kitchen sink, a steady feed of drops that’s on the edge of being a stream.
When Mum steps back, they’ve both got tears in their eyes. “Do you want a drink? Some Coke or a cup of tea?” Mum says.
Neisha checks back at me. I shrug. I don’t know why she’s here, how long she’s planning to stay.
“Um …”
“It’s okay,” Mum says. “I’ll make myself scarce.”
Neisha smiles again, a quick, brittle smile that betrays her nerves.
“Okay,” she says, “I’ll just have some water.”
Mum fetches a glass and fills it at the tap. She turns the tap back as far as it will go, but it still keeps dripping.
“I’ll leave you to it,” she says. “I’ll be upstairs.” On her way past me, she hisses, “The state of you. You’re going in that bath today.”
Neisha and I stand awkwardly on either side of the kitchen table.
“Sit down,” I say, trying to be polite, but it comes out like an order. I wince at my own clumsiness and dart around to pull out one of the chairs for her. Instinctively she takes a step backward. “Please,” I say, retreating back to my own side, and reluctantly she lowers herself down, perching nervously on the edge of the chair.
I sit down opposite her. The pile of leaflets is still there. I wish it wasn’t, but if I pick them up now, it’ll just draw attention to them. Too late, anyway; Neisha’s seen them, her eyes are tracking across the titles.
I try to think of something to
say, anything, to distract her.
“You were nice, just then, to my mum.”
“Why wouldn’t I be? It’s not her fault, is it? All of this …”
Not her fault. My fault. Has she just come around to have another go at me?
“Neisha —” I say.
“What?” Her eyes flick up and down nervously.
“I’m sorry. For everything. I don’t remember much, but the stuff I do remember is …” I trail off, then I say the thing I’m really thinking. “Why are you here? You hate me, don’t you? I tried to … me and Rob tried to …”
Then she does something that makes me gasp. She reaches across and puts her hand on my wrist. Her touch is light and her skin is warm, shockingly warm. I feel myself blushing, blotches forming on my face and neck. I can’t look at her. If I look at her, I might actually explode.
“The thing is,” she says, “I’ve come around to thank you.”
And now I do look at her. As our eyes meet, I get a flash of another time. When I was looking at her, and she saw me looking.
He slides his hands down her sides, around to the front. I stand and watch him stroke her, squeeze her, turn her on. She sees me over his shoulder. For a second I wonder if there’s a question there, an appeal for help, but then her eyes close and her mouth opens.
I stand. And watch. And I can’t believe it.
She’s back with him. After everything that’s happened.
He breaks away from her and starts peeling off his clothes. Down to his underpants, he runs into the water until it’s up to his knees.
“Come on!” he shouts. She shakes her head, but then arches her back as she peels off her top, and I can’t look anymore. Disgusted, humiliated, I turn away.
“Carl, are you listening? I wanted to thank you.”
“Thank me?”
“I’ve been thinking about what you said. How you said you killed him. Rob.”
She lowers her voice even further. Her fingers tighten a little, curving over the back of my hand.
“I think I did. I’m not sure. I remember fighting him.” I lower my voice, too. “My arms were pulling on his neck.”
