by S. E. Lynes
As it was, Michael really went to town, buying that rabbit. It was almost as if he knew this was the big one, the night we all held hands and jumped into the flames.
She was upstairs when I got there. I cornered Michael in the hallway and kissed him full on the mouth. He pushed me away, but I pushed back, laughing.
“Hello,” came her voice from the stairs.
“Hey, babe,” I said, turning, my face composed into innocence itself. “Michael reckons he’s burning a bunny in the backyard.” He’d been on his way to pick it up when I spoke to him. I even knew the ingredients in the marinade.
When I told her Red hadn’t come with me I saw doubt flash in her eyes. I almost faltered. She was so sweet, so damn trusting, it was possible the final revelation would kill her. I had hoped to edge her towards revelation – as one edges hot crockery into cold water. Now I feared I had regained her trust a little too thoroughly and that, plunged headlong into the truth, she might crack. And that would be a shame. The fact was, we had all of us come this far. Either we joined together tonight or one of us would go home empty handed. And that wasn’t going to be me.
When Shona went to powder her nose, I wandered into the garden to see the hallowed beast.
“I think you need more friends,” I said to Michael, kissing him again by the light of the flames. “We’ll never eat that, the three of us. Think your eyes might be bigger than your belly, Mr. Quinn.”
“You have no idea how much I can eat,” he said. “My appetite is limitless.” He bit my earlobe, making me laugh. We muttered like that for a little while, flirting with danger. Michael was nervous she might come out and catch us. I was determined she would.
And when I looked up and saw her across the glow, I knew she wouldn’t need to catch us, knew I wouldn’t have to do anything more. Her jaw hung oddly, as if it were broken. Her eyes sagged at the edges, as if in the time it had taken her to go to the bathroom she had aged ten years. I knew then without any doubt that she would not join us. I had been a fool to think she would.
“What have you done?” she said.
Indeed, I thought. What have we done?
When she ran upstairs, presumably to pack her bags, I ran through the argument with Michael, made him repeat back to me what I needed him to say. Remember, I had to play this like it was a disaster for me too or risk losing him forever. And now that Shona was lost, he was all I had left. He went into the hallway. Through the French windows I watched, hidden in the shadows. He reached for her, knelt before her, as I had told him to do. I waited and watched, resisted the overwhelming temptation to go in there and do it myself. Eventually, unable to bear the impotence any longer, I walked away, up onto the lawns. After a few minutes, he stepped out and called my name. I headed back towards the cottage and found him on the patio.
“She’s taken the keys to the Fittie place. She’s going to sleep on it.” His eyes shone with what looked like jubilation.
“What?” I said. “But that’s my house. She has no right to go in there. You have no right to give her my keys. They’re mine.” I grabbed him by the neck and pushed him against the back wall of the cottage. His face, half lit, half in shadow.
“Georgie, stop,” he said. “It’s all right. She’s upset but she’s going to think about it.”
I let go, stood back. “And you believe her?”
“She said she’d think about it. But she needs space. She’s taken the car and she’s going to stay at yours tonight. She won’t wreck anything, don’t worry. She’s not like that.”
“Not like what? Are you stupid? She’s just found out her whole life is a lie and you’re trusting her with my house? She could torch the place.”
He laughed, sniffed. His face crumpled. He put his head in his hands. “Oh God, what’ve we done to her?”
“To her? Michael, this affects all of us. She’s no worse off than we are. Don’t you see, we’re all compromised here. Come on, baby, you must see that.”
“You don’t understand.” He stared at me, his eyes wild. “You don’t know her like I do.”
“Are you sure she won’t damage my house?”
“Is that all you care about?”
Yes, actually. There was no way I was letting her trash my house. I had to persuade him to let me go there. “You don’t think she’ll do something to Isla do you?”
He was still looking at me like I was the devil. “Of course she won’t hurt the baby. The only monsters here are us, Georgie.” Good God, was he crying? “We’re monsters.”
“Hang on a second, why all the guilt all of a sudden? We’re in love, that’s all. We’re simply trying to figure out what’s best for everyone. So we can’t do the two point four kids thing, so what? Doesn’t make us monsters. You know that. I know that. And Shona will realise that eventually. She’ll be fine. I’m concerned about her, that’s all, and wonder whether I should go and talk to her. I’m her friend after all.”
“She needs somewhere to sleep,” he said, almost absently. “She said if I text or call or do anything she’ll never let me see her or Isla again. I can’t risk that. I need to give her space. She knows I love her, doesn’t she? When you talk, you know as girls, does she tell you she loves me?”
“Of course.” This conversation was beginning to make me feel sick.
“I can’t lose her, Georgie,” he whined. “Please tell me it’ll work. Tell me she’s coming back. She will come back won’t she?”
Er, no.
I shrugged. “She took it better than I thought she would.”
“She did, didn’t she? She won’t be angry forever, will she?” I couldn’t see him clearly for the dark, his head was bowed, but I was pretty sure he was still crying. “She’ll come back, won’t she?”
“Of course she will,” I said, knowing she would never come back, wondering how the hell he could not see that for himself, how he could even begin to believe what he was saying. He was, always had been, deluded. “She just needs a good night’s sleep.”
I had to get away from him. His wretchedness was getting me down. I stepped through the French windows, back into the cottage and ran myself a glass of water from the tap. I drank it all in one go, felt the cool trajectory down into my body. My body felt empty, as if the water was all that ran inside it: no bones, no blood, no organs, merely water, running forever down, without ever reaching my feet.
Outside, the rabbit burned, no more than wasted meat. On the table, Shona’s little touches, a woman’s touches – undervalued, unappreciated, unused. I had lost her – perhaps the only friend I’d had and all Michael could do in the darkness, out of my sight thank God, was snivel in the face of his own failure. He had played us, Shona and I. Shona more than me but all the same, I had been played too. I had allowed that to happen. I had convinced myself I could somehow come out on top, that I could manufacture a satisfactory outcome to suit my own needs, but I saw now I could never have Michael or Shona, let alone both, in the way I wanted. Shona was too strong and Michael was weak. I had believed her to be a pathetic victim but she was simply ignorant of the facts. A lack of facts was all that had kept her here whereas I, with all the facts at my disposal, had played along – as brainwashed as a teenage girl in a sect. She, armed with the facts at last, had walked away, without hesitation, wanting no part of it. She had said no. And that took strength. He, meanwhile, like a spoilt child upon hearing he can only have one ice cream not two, had fallen to pieces, broken shards on the patio stones. Not a visionary, not at all, but a greedy little boy too spoilt to choose.
I had changed my mind. I no longer wanted the three of us to live in an alternative idyll out here in this place. I should have known this had never been on offer. Shona had left me forever and as a parting gesture had handed Michael to me and told me I could keep him. He was her cast-off, her broken toy. And now I no longer wanted what at the very beginning I had set out to get: Michael, to myself. Had I ever really wanted him? Now I had him, now he really was mine, I saw him for what h
e was: worthless and weak. All I wanted now was the freedom to live without people, people who, no matter how brave and interesting you thought them, were no braver and no more interesting than anyone else.
The cottage. That was all I wanted now. Not a third of it, not a half. All of it.
But that too would take some planning.
PART III
TWENTY-SIX
I left Valentina and Mikey in the garden. I staggered upstairs, half-blind with fury. I can’t remember much about those moments, to be honest. I threw nappies, clothes, whatever I could lay my hands on into a bag. I remember weeping. I remember that all I could think about was getting out. I had to get away from the toxic cloud of them both.
Isla barely woke, simply nudged into my shoulder with her sleepy head. I can’t believe now that I managed to hold onto her, that I managed to pack – but I was in life-saving mode, I think, the ultra-efficient autopilot setting, the tunnel vision of the undiluted crisis state. Her in my arms, I made myself walk back down. There was after all no other way out.
Mikey was standing in the hallway, hands on hips, teeth gritted in angst.
“Shona, don’t go.” His voice had a pleading tone to it.
I stepped off the bottom stair, stood in front of him with our baby in my arms and looked into his eyes.
“I don’t know who you are,” I said. “I have literally no idea.”
“Shona, give me one minute. Please.” He grabbed the tops of my arms, hard.
“Take your hands off me,” I said. “And if you touch Isla I’ll kill you.”
He raised his hands in the air. He stepped back.
“Talk,” I said, keeping my eyes on his. “Go on. Say what you’ve got to say.”
“Can’t we sit down?”
“No.”
He exhaled heavily and shook his head as if he was in some sort of despair.
“Is she still here?” I asked him.
“She’s in the garden.” His brow furrowed, he looked at his shoes. I supposed he was going for contrition.
“Talk,” I said, swaying from side to side to try and keep Isla calm.
“Look,” he began, spreading his hands while I imagined ripping out his lungs, his spleen, his black husk of a heart, blowing it from the flat of my hand and watching it scatter and settle like ash. “I know it’s a lot to take in,” he went on. “It’s been hard for me too but I never meant to hurt you or harm you, Shona. That’s the truth. The truth is, it was all about us – you and me and Isla – but I found out George was pregnant on the same day I found out you were. Honestly, it was unbelievable how it worked out.”
“Mikey – for Georgia to become pregnant with your child you would have to have had sex with her. I don’t mean to be crude, but you’d have to fuck her, which you clearly did while we were living together. It’s not unbelievable. It’s nature. Take some fucking responsibility for yourself.”
Isla had grown too heavy for me to hold. She was hard off to sleep and I was glad of that at least. I lowered myself into the armchair under the stairs. “Don’t let me stop you.”
He nodded and again held up his hands. “You’re right. I did sleep with Georgia while we were together. And yes, that’s how we – that’s how we have Zac. But we were all so young, Shone. We still are, we’ve got our whole lives ahead of us. And – and – we’re not like other people. If you give this a chance, if you open your mind, you’ll see we have something really special, the three of us. Think about it. You love Georgia – the name and the posh accent don’t make any difference, do they? And I know you hate her now but she does care for you, you know. Very much. All I’ve done is try and figure out a way to make this all work.” He knelt on the floor by my feet and I had a fleeting memory of when I first met him, a grinning Captain Hook, the black beard, my own inability to distinguish between what was real and what was fake.
“It was for the kids more than anyone,” he was saying now. “You must see that. Isla and Zachary need us to be together. They’re so close. They could be brother and sister. I was going to suggest it to you, the whole set-up, but I knew you wouldn’t go for it, not at first, so I kept it a secret – but I was going to broach it in time. Honestly. I was waiting till you were ready.” He threw out one arm, gesturing towards the garden. “Georgia’s been happy. She likes her space. She’s a very unconventional thinker.”
“Is that another word for psychopathic bitch?”
“Shona, stop.” He scratched his head and for the second time let out an exasperated breath as if I, not he, were the unreasonable one. “Don’t, baby. Come on. Don’t do this. You always do this. You let your emotions get the better of you. Don’t let that happen. Open your mind for a minute, that’s all I ask. The only difference between now and half an hour ago is that you know. That’s all.” He laid his hand on my knee. “You know. Nothing has actually changed and knowledge is better than ignorance, isn’t it?” He ran his hand up my thigh and back again, the way he did when I was upset or tired. I shook him off before I’d even processed the presumption in him doing this. His hand flew back, as if singed. “I know you’re shocked, but take the emotion out of it for one second. I know what I’m offering isn’t normal, it’s not what normal people do but that’s because they’re normal. People like us, Shona, we can live differently. Shone?”
I could see only his knees, clothed in black denim, black jeans resting on the terracotta tiles of the kitchen floor. He was talking, talking, talking, but I could barely hear him above the roar of my own raging blood. He was talking about taking the emotion out of it. He was talking about how nothing had changed. And I – I was looking at his black jeans on the tiled floor while in the periphery of my grasp hovered the knowledge that nothing about my life was, had ever been, the truth. The information was coalescing, somewhere near me. From the gloom it was taking solid shape. And I was staring at black denim, at the stone tiles of my kitchen floor, and I was trying to figure out how it was that I did not know, had never known, the father of my child. I did not know my closest friend.
My life, my love, my home, had been violated.
Her life, her home, meanwhile, was at peace.
Well, we would see about that.
“Tell you what,” I said quietly. “This is what’s going to happen. You’re going to give me Georgia’s keys and I’m going to take Isla to Fittie and I’m going to think it over, OK? Like you say, we need to be calm and think things through. I can’t think here. I can’t even breathe.”
I felt him stand up, heard the click of his knees. “Shona, you shouldn’t be alone. You should stay here.”
I made myself look up at him. “You can’t ask me to do that. And you can’t tell me not to sleep in another person’s house. What would you have us do, sleep in the gutter? Just give me the fucking keys, you lying, pathetic excuse for a human being.”
He nodded quickly and held up his hand. “All right.”
I watched him walk over to the coats, dig into his own coat pocket, pull two keys from his own key ring. I had never noticed the two extra keys, I thought. There were so many things I hadn’t noticed.
“Here.” He held the keys out to me. “It’s number 14.”
“I know what number it is.”
“Sorry. Of course.” His eyes were still as deep and as brown as that first night in The Crow when I had seen, or thought I’d seen in them mischief and kindness and possibility. I steeled myself against those eyes and spoke.
“Now,” I said. “Let’s be clear. If you so much as try and follow me or disturb me in any way, if you call me or text me or let that bitch come anywhere near me, that will be the end. There will be no negotiation, nothing. I will take your daughter away and you will never see me or her again. Do you get that?”
He nodded. “All right.”
“Because it’s very important you get that.”
“I get it.” His face was grim. I had noticed how tired he had looked this last year and had felt sorry for him. I had thought it was th
e offshore life sapping his resources. But it wasn’t. It was the strain of two lives. His expression softened to sadness.
“Are you going to be OK?”
I took the keys from his open palm, stood up and shifted Isla further onto my shoulder. “What a ridiculous thing to ask.”
The door to number 14 was stiff. I had to hold the key and give the door a kick at the bottom. It opened directly onto a tiny kitchen. On the draining board was a flowery china mug, upside down, one teaspoon in the cutlery drainer. I closed the front door behind me and immediately noticed her smell. She had, I realised, a very particular scent – spicy, aromatic like herb oil or dried grass and there was another note in there too – vanilla. Vanilla, that I had smelled on Mikey and thought it was air freshener from the cab. I had thought her a hippy, come day go day, a free and rebel heart. I had thought her a friend, with all that word meant. I had loved my friend, little realising she was no more than a lie, a fictional character, the imagining of a cruel mind. I had loved no one, then, no one at all.
A thin doorway to the right led onto the living room I’d seen through the window months before. I put on the overhead light. Its dull glow threw little more illumination than a candle at first. But, slowly, it brightened. The sofa was ours, I saw that straight away. It was the one Mikey had told me he’d put into storage. There was a small rip in the back where they’d caught it on the doorframe trying to squeeze it into the cottage. On the mantelpiece, the photo of him was still there; on the table under the window, the pictures I had only been able to see from the back. I saw them now. In one, Mikey and Zac and her, on a beach. Dunes – was that Balmedie? Looked like it. They were sitting on a blanket, smiling. The photo had been taken recently – this past summer. Zac will have been five or six months old: bonnie, smiling. Beside them was a sandcastle, a sandcastle he had made no doubt for his son, even though he was too wee to appreciate it. Zac. Isla’s half brother. I thought of them together in the swimming baths, the look of wonder on their faces, their wet eyelashes clotted into tiny spokes. Mikey had taught his son to splash the water the same way he had taught his daughter. Did he believe himself, while he did this, a good father? He may have taught little Zac to walk, let him fix his baby’s grip onto his strong father’s forefingers, coaxed him to put one foot in front of the other, picked him up and comforted him when he fell. He may have done all this while a few short miles away I was teaching his daughter to walk, alone.
