by Jo Jakeman
No amount of shush-shushes and there-theres would calm my baby, and I slept in his bed with him that night for my benefit more than his.
It was the first time I had openly disobeyed Phillip.
“Come to bed.”
“No.”
“I mean it, Imogen.”
“Screw you!”
Two weeks later he moved in with Naomi. My only regret was that I hadn’t kicked him out sooner.
* * *
• • •
Once, Phillip had been my savior. He’d promised freedom from my pedestrian life, but he rescued me from one tower just to lock me up in another. He had appeared before me smelling of cigarettes and pay packets and talking of the police force and “protecting people.” He talked about his vision for the future. He’d been married before but it had been a mistake, a young and foolish accident. The wife was a cold fish, an old fish, and she liked dogs more than kids, and all he wanted was a big family someday and a wife he could “take care of.”
He told me about his wife, Ruby, how he hadn’t laid eyes on her in years but he was trying to track her down and ask for a divorce. The girlfriends he’d had since the breakdown of his marriage had meant nothing, until he met me.
He understood what it was like to lose a parent. He’d experienced the same. His father died when he was only eleven. Snap. He had no siblings. Snap. He was alone. Snap. But not anymore. We marveled at fate for bringing together two such damaged people who deserved happiness and love.
My father, Andrew Stanley Neville Winston Joyce, exited my life when I was nine years old. He had been named after a series of Conservative prime ministers. The first, Andrew Bonar Law, was prime minister for just 209 days. Andrew Joyce was my father for just 3,413 days.
After he died, I misplaced a part of me. One day I was happy and whole, a confident child who no more thought about death than walking on the moon. But the next, I grew silent and scared. Phillip became that missing piece. With him in my life, everything started to work again, make sense.
I could trace my triskaidekaphobia back to Father’s death. He died on the thirteenth; there were thirteen white roses blooming over the love seat, thirteen stones in the duck pond, thirteen ripe tomatoes on the plants in the greenhouse. Only thirteen people attended his funeral, and that included Mother, Aunty Margaret, and me. I cried for him thirteen times a day, the exact number of times a day that Mother cursed him.
I counted the olives into a Greek salad, twelve or fourteen but never in between. The volume on the car stereo was never at thirteen. I knew that logically there was no reason for this. But what if there was something in it? A slight chance? The smallest of chances? Would it hurt anyone if there were only twelve olives in the salad?
The thirteenth of August was the last day that my father had witnessed both sunrise and sunset. It had been a gloriously hot one that melted pavements and tricked eyes into believing that the world above the road was shimmering. The sun stung the backs of legs and the music from the ice cream truck had children streaming onto the street like ants onto a dropped lollipop. I knew it was a scorcher when Dad stripped to his vest in the garden and rolled up his trouser legs. He clucked over the tomato plants and said they’d need watering more than once this day, but the hosepipe ban was in force and he’d have to trek backward and forward with his green watering can. We had one bottle of elderflower cordial left over from the previous year’s bounty and I sucked it delicately through a striped straw like it was nectar.
The twins from across the road came over to play that day. They were two years younger than me but seemed to know much more than I ever would. Our hands were sticky with melted popsicle and our summer skirts were tucked into our knickers as we lay on the picnic blanket, talked about music, and read Nicola’s copy of Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret. Mother thought it was good for young girls to be reading books about religion. She’d not heard of the book’s author, nor that the local library had banned her books. Mother’s ignorance was my bliss.
Father busied himself with watering the plants and the cracked ground drank it thirstily. He stopped by us every now and again to splash us with water and laugh at our squeals. He was a quiet man, my father, kind and playful. He was never too busy for hide-and-seek or too tired for bedtime stories. He was everything to me, and my friends loved him too. How could I have known, back then, that he was battling his own demons?
After the twins went home, Mother and Father argued. I heard her shout, “I don’t care what you’re thinking—it only matters how it looks.” My mother was from a stiff-upper-lip generation where appearance was everything. She was as furious as I’d ever seen her. By the look on Father’s face, he was as confused as I was about what he’d done wrong.
The light was on in the garage well into the night. It must have been late because I remember the sun never wanting to set that summer. The days ruled the evenings, barely letting the stars get a word in edgewise. I waited for him to leave the garage so I could lean out of my open window and wave to him, so he’d know that I was on his side. But he only came out of the garage one more time. And by then I was asleep, and he was covered in a sheet from head to toe.
Girls—especially naive, flimsy girls like me—grew up looking for the fairy tale, waiting for those three magical words: I love you. My mother’s love included slaps to the back of the legs and go-to-your-room-without-any-supper because she loved me. No, I was waiting for five magical words: I’ll take care of you.
The years following my father’s death, and Mother’s subsequent, and perhaps understandable, breakdown, were flat cold years, stark in comparison with the warm rounded days of my childhood, when our unit had felt unbound by limitless love. Before my father died, I could have sworn it was always summer. But afterward, it rained. A lot.
I could have gone off the rails, smoked or drank, but I sought Mother’s attention in the only way I knew. I never put a foot wrong, never came home from school with a grade any lower than an A. Never stayed out late nor had boyfriends. Never sought a life away from Mother’s Parma violet scent.
But then I met Phillip.
I gave myself to him before I knew what I was giving away. I had mistakenly thought myself lucky to be shaped by him. I let him chip away at me until he found something that he liked. And when there was nothing else to work with, he moved on to a more pliable subject.
Though Naomi was effectively my liberator, she was still the woman who stole my husband. Prettier, younger, firmer, with a stomach unstretched by pregnancy. I knew what he saw in her, and it wasn’t brains.
I left Phillip in the cellar with his food, his bad mood, and his belief that nothing was ever his fault. I made my way back up toward the hallway with a promise that we would talk again soon.
Naomi was in my mind, a vision at the tail end of a memory as I closed the cellar door. I recalled her floral scent that failed to mask the fact that she’d been smoking, so vividly that I thought I could smell it in the air. It had been hard to get her out of my mind since I’d seen her at the hospital.
I saw the outline of a woman walking up the driveway, and rushed to open the door before she rang the bell. I squeezed outside to cut her off at the doorstep and send her on her way.
I stopped with a jolt as my memory was made manifest. There she was, Naomi, with a crooked smile on her face.
“Y’all right, duck?” she said. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”
CHAPTER 10
11 days before the funeral
I shepherded Naomi through to the kitchen, closed the door to the hallway, and mumbled something about “keeping the heat in” and “chilly today.” I crossed quickly to the cupboard in the corner, where the boiler was neatly hidden, and switched the heating on. Gurgling and tapping filled the kitchen for a moment and would have drowned out any sounds from the basement. Naomi took off her thin denim jacket and laid it across t
he back of the chair, in defiance of my lie.
She was wearing a shirt thin enough for me to see the shape of a tattoo on her shoulder blade. The cut on her forehead was stuck together with graying butterfly stitches, and in the light of the day I could see she’d done her best to conceal the bruising with makeup.
“Not working today?” she asked me.
“No. Not feeling too great.”
“You look like crap.” Her eyes dared me to contradict her.
Naomi was obviously in the mood for an argument. I wasn’t.
“I wouldn’t say no to a brew, seeing as I’ve driven all this way,” she said.
I rearranged my features into an apology, but inherent politeness wouldn’t let me find the words to ask her to leave. Old, compliant me was still in there somewhere. I was skating on thin ice and it felt like she was pushing me toward the middle of the lake. I wanted her to leave without making a fuss. I needed her to keep her voice quiet and her movements limited. I had to keep her from discovering her boyfriend in my cellar.
“I’ll pop the kettle on.”
I warmed the pot, offering Naomi a biscuit by saying, “Elevenses?” like Gran used to say, and felt the age gap between us widen some more.
“No, thanks.”
She was looking at her mobile, checking messages and refreshing screens.
“How’s the, er . . . head?” I asked.
“Sore, but you know . . .”
“I’m glad you came around,” I lied. “I wanted to call to see if you were okay but thought I’d make things worse if Phillip knew I’d phoned. Anyway, I wasn’t sure you’d still be there.”
“Told you,” she said, putting her phone facedown on the table and fixing her attention on me. “I got nowhere else to go. I wasn’t thinking straight on Sunday.”
“I’m sure there are—” I began, but she cut across me.
“Seen Phil lately?”
My scalp tingled and there was a sensation of cold water trickling down my spine. I paused before answering, taking a moment to peer into the fridge.
“Skim milk okay?”
She nodded.
“As a matter of fact,” I continued, “I saw him yesterday. He wanted me to sign some paperwork.”
“And?”
“And that’s it, really. I didn’t sign it because he wants me out of the house by the end of the month.”
Naomi folded her arms and leaned back on the wooden chair, causing the front two legs to lift off the floor.
“You didn’t sign? Last week you couldn’t wait to get everything done. What changed?”
“I . . . We need to come to a better arrangement about the house.”
And Alistair, I thought.
“Why’d he want you out of the house so quick?”
“Don’t know. You’d have to ask him,” I said.
“I would,” she said. “But he didn’t come home last night.”
Blame it on lack of sleep or blame it on stupidity, but I hadn’t considered that Naomi would notice his absence and come to my door. Self-preservation has a way of dealing with guilt. I needed her to stop looking for him.
“Perhaps,” I said, as if a thought had just occurred to me, “he’s realized that the two of you can’t go on like this. Is it possible that he’s left you?”
The day was darkening even though the morning was not yet spent. Nature was colluding with me to explain my door-closing, heat-switching behavior.
She didn’t take her eyes off me. “Maybe. You think he’s found someone better, do you? Maybe an old flame?”
She looked far too smug. She wasn’t buying my explanation. And worse than that, she was looking at me like I might be the old flame.
“Listen, Naomi. I wasn’t going to say anything, but a friend of mine said I owed you the truth. I can’t keep it from you any longer.”
She raised an eyebrow. I’d got her attention. She looked almost eager, like this was what she had come for.
“At your house the other day, you didn’t seem to know that Phillip hadn’t been at work. He wasn’t at the doctor’s either, but I think you already knew that, didn’t you? There’s no easy way to say this, Naomi, but Phillip’s been lying to you. And if you put that together with the fact that he wants us out of the house by the end of the month . . . well, isn’t it obvious? Phillip’s having an affair.”
I let the news sink in for a moment. If she wanted to storm out now, I wouldn’t stop her, but she kept her eyes on my face, wanting more.
“It wouldn’t be the first time, would it?” I continued. “So, if I were you, I’d go home and pack my things. Perhaps go to a hotel while you work out what you want to do?”
I knew she would eventually find out that her partner had spent the night in my cellar, but hopefully not until he’d signed the papers.
I expected shock, or denial, possibly a tear, but I didn’t expect the laughter that came.
It was my turn to fold my arms. Still she laughed. It was the dry, rasping laugh of a smoker. Breathless and coarse. She shook her head and looked about her.
I glanced at the door, wondering whether we’d hear Phillip if he began to shout. Just how good was that soundproofing he’d paid a fortune for?
“I tell you what,” she said. “You almost had me fooled.”
“Sorry?” She couldn’t possibly know. Could she?
“I mean, God, is it even true?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about. Is what true?”
“Fine. Whatever.” She stood up and shrugged her shoulders into her jacket. “One thing, though—if you don’t want me to know he’s here, he shouldn’t leave his car on the drive.”
* * *
• • •
“I can explain,” I said, following Naomi outside. “It isn’t what you think.”
“You’re still in love with him, aren’t you?”
“No, I—”
“Did you think I wouldn’t notice you’d taken a photo of Phil from my house?”
I grimaced with embarrassment.
“If you’d just let me explain.”
I’d switched from wanting her away from the house to not being able to bear the thought of her leaving. I couldn’t let her believe I was having an affair with Phillip. The idea was ludicrous, but then, so was the fact that I’d taken a picture from her house just so there wouldn’t be thirteen photos.
“When you said he were having an affair, did you think I wouldn’t know it was you? Well, the joke’s on you ’cause I don’t want him anyway. The shit I’ve put up with . . . You’ve done me a favor and I hope the both of you rot in hell. Is it even true? Does he even have cancer?”
Cancer.
I tilted my head to one side, hoping I’d misheard.
“What?”
“Or were that another lie? Hard to tell anymore.”
Phillip with cancer? Naomi was angry and her voice was raised and shrill.
“Well, if it is true, you’re welcome to wipe his arse and feed him through a tube as he gets sick. You can be the one who sits by the side of his bed as he wheezes away. I hope you enjoy the time you’ve got left. You’ll be lucky to get a couple of months with him. You’d better make the most of it.”
I put both my hands upon the hood of Naomi’s car and bent over to wait for my head to stop spinning.
“He’s got cancer?” I asked quietly.
“I’nt that the reason you’ve taken him back?”
“I haven’t taken him back.”
Naomi put her hands on her hips and glared at me, but some of her defiance was gone.
“Then what’s going on?” she asked.
I looked back at the house. Who knew? Phillip was a master manipulator and I couldn’t trust anything that came out of his mouth. But . . . the erratic behavior, the time
off work, the desperation to get more time with Alistair . . . If he’d told me he had cancer, I would have called him a liar, but the deceit, and the fact that he was obviously hiding something, had a ring of truth to it.
“If . . .” I stammered, not sure what to ask first. “If . . . he does have cancer, why is he in such a hurry to get me out of the house and to finalize the divorce? He could just . . . wait.”
Naomi threw her hands up to the skies as if it was anyone’s guess.
“All I can tell you is, he said it was so that we could get married before he died. Said he wanted to make sure that loose ends were tied up and that I were entitled to his pension. But now, here he is, shacked up with you.”
“He’s not shacked up with . . . Oh, shit.”
I concentrated on my feet, my breathing. Now wouldn’t be a good time for a panic attack. I studied the pebbles beneath my feet. I counted to ten and then ten again. This didn’t sound like the Phillip I knew. But then, did I really know him anymore? Had I ever? If Phillip had been trying to do right by Naomi for a change, then I’d misjudged his motives. Surely I could be forgiven for that.
“No,” I said. “That still doesn’t explain everything. He could sell the house and finalize the divorce without me moving out.”
“He thinks you’d put any buyers off.”
I shook my head, but he had a point. I certainly wouldn’t have made things easy for him. Naomi unlocked the car and the side lights flashed.
“What kind of cancer is it?” I asked. I needed facts, something tangible. I didn’t want to believe that I had locked up a terminally ill man.
