Last Night

by Kerry Wilkinson

  ‘I’m going to call the police,’ I say, stepping back towards the house. Olivia hasn’t moved.

  ‘You do that, darlin’. I’ll tell ’em all about you.’

  His words leave me frozen to the spot. There’s plenty to tell – and that’s only from the past two days.

  ‘What about me?’

  The smirk spreads on his face and it feels like everyone has stopped, waiting to hear what he has to say. I know it must be an idle threat, the type of thing people hurl at each other when they’re arguing. But there’s still that sinking feeling in my stomach, that little voice in my ear.

  He knows.

  ‘You okay, mate?’

  Everyone turns to look at the newcomer standing on the pavement. The sun is starting to creep across the horizon, blending with the gloomy glow of the street light. I can’t see his face but the man’s hair that tells me it’s Jason.

  Frank turns towards the road.

  ‘You need a hand getting home, pal?’ Jason waves a hand as if to say, ‘follow me’.

  Frank wavers, stepping backwards and then forwards, turning between the two competing parties. The curtains are still twitching across the road.

  Jason starts to walk along the path, stare fixed on Frank. He’s wearing the exact same jeans and army jacket from yesterday. I wonder if this is his pattern. According to his tag, he’s not allowed to leave Ellie’s until six – so he must have come straight here. Does he walk past the house all day long?

  There’s a flicker where Jason glances away from Frank, giving me the merest of nods and then focusing back on the other man. He holds out an arm as if about offer a hug. ‘C’mon. Let’s go look for your lad together.’

  It’s like watching a charmer coax a snake from a box. Whether it’s what Jason’s said, or the way he’s said it, Frank’s fists unclench.

  He turns towards away from the house and starts to walk away slowly. ‘Yeah, all right. Let’s do that.’

  Chapter Twenty

  As soon as we’re back inside, Dan locks the door. He asks Olivia if she’s okay and, after a mumbled ‘yeah’, he disappears up the stairs without saying a word to me.

  Olivia slumps against the mirror but doesn’t resist when I put an arm around her and guide her into the living room. I leave her on the sofa, saying I’ll put the kettle on because that is, obviously, the solution to all of life’s problems.

  When I return with two cups of tea, Olivia hasn’t moved. Her legs are curled under herself, her head resting on the back of the sofa. She’s staring aimlessly towards the corner of the room. The fact her phone isn’t in her hand is the biggest indication that she’s not happy. There are times where it might as well be surgically grafted to her.

  ‘Anything I can do, love?’ I ask.

  She shakes her head.

  I sit on the same sofa as Olivia and turn the television on, flicking through the channels until I find the repeat of a wildlife documentary. The volume is on low and there’s a herd of elephants sweeping across a barren landscape. I glance to Olivia and she’s twisted slightly to focus on the screen.

  It’s as if we’ve gone back in time. When Olivia was younger, she’d come down the stairs in the morning and sit watching television in her pyjamas. Our strict food-at-the-table rule soon went out the window as we let her eat cereal on the sofa. In the evenings, we’d sometimes watch cookery shows together and wildlife documentaries. Then she found mobile phones and, probably worst of all, boys.

  She changed – and so did I. No longer did she eat cereal on the sofa because she didn’t want breakfast. Watching a TV show when it was actually scheduled was so last century when she could stream her own clips off YouTube, or wherever.

  It’s a long time with neither of us speaking – but we don’t need to. This is enough for me.

  The peace is eventually broken by Dan bounding down the stairs and poking his head into the living room. He’s confused as he glances between us – but I can’t blame him for that. This is the longest Olivia and I have spent in the same room together in a fair while. Certainly, it’s the longest without arguing.

  ‘Everything okay?’ he asks.

  ‘We’re fine,’ I reply.

  ‘I’m meeting my personal trainer. We’re going for a 10k and then I’m heading into school. It’s parents’ evening tonight, so I’ll be late.’

  ‘Thank you for telling me.’

  We can be forcibly polite when we want.

  He hovers for a moment but then heads past with his backpack and briefcase. The door goes and then it’s quiet, except for David Attenborough’s soothing commentary.

  ‘How’s the Facebook page going?’ I ask.

  Olivia shifts position, putting her feet on the floor and then angling herself in the opposite direction. ‘Okay.’

  That’s hardly a ringing endorsement, so I don’t follow up, instead sitting quietly and enjoying the moment with my daughter.

  It’s a few minutes later when Olivia breaks the silence. ‘Do you think he’s shagging her?’

  She twists to look at me and, though I can feel her gaze, I can’t match it. Instinct tells me to scold her for her language but she’s eighteen, not eight.

  As for the question… what is there to say? Disposition makes me think my husband probably is. I saw the way he looked at Alice and there was definitely something there that’s more than a trainer-client relationship. My head says no – what would Alice see in someone who’s more than twenty years older than her? My heart, the part of me that once cared, hopes he isn’t.

  I can’t say any of that, of course, so I settle for replying that I don’t know.

  ‘Is that why you’re separating?’ Olivia asks.

  ‘No,’ I say. ‘We’ve been together a long time but we’ve grown apart. Some things don’t last forever.’

  Olivia takes a breath and I know what she’s going to ask next. She isn’t stupid. ‘Did you stay together for me?’

  ‘I’m not sure this is really the thing to talk about, Liv.’

  She reaches across and touches my knee, making me turn to her. ‘You can’t expect me to be an adult one minute and then treat me like a kid the next.’

  My daughter speaks so calmly, so reasonably, that it melts me. Despite our problems and disagreements, those fights and days we’d avoid each other, it’s a moment like this that makes me believe we’ll be all right in the end. I love her so much.

  ‘True,’ I reply, slowly. It takes me a second to find the words, and then: ‘Honestly? We probably should have broken up ten years ago. Maybe longer.’

  ‘Why?’

  I don’t know if this is an inappropriate subject but there’s no going back now.

  ‘I suppose we were never that well matched. I’d come off the back of a few things when I was a teenager and he was a slightly older man. It was only a few years but it’s enough at that age.’

  I’ve somehow missed this fact in all the arguments with Olivia over Tyler. There’s a similar age gap with them as there is between Dan and I.

  I gulp away the thought and then continue: ‘I was infatuated with him and I suppose he liked that I did much of the chasing after he first asked me out.’

  ‘What things had you come off the back of?’ I don’t reply straight away, so Olivia continues: ‘Ellie told me about how you, her and her brothers would spend time over at the watermill.’

  There’s a second in which I’m temporarily stunned at the thought of Ellie spilling everything. The fact that my daughter might know more about me than I could ever be comfortable with.

  ‘We’d sit on the banks if it was nice, or shelter inside if it wasn’t,’ I say, keeping it simple. ‘Nobody bothered us. It was our little hideaway.’

  When I speak of the mill, it feels more like a person than a place. It was a part of who we were as a group.

  ‘You told me it was out of bounds,’ Olivia replies. ‘You said it was too dangerous.’

  I snigger at that. It’s hard not to. Parents make the
best hypocrites. We tell our children not to lie and then spend however many years convincing them a bloke in a red suit comes down the chimney every Christmas.

  ‘I didn’t know you and Ellie talked about things like that,’ I reply.

  ‘We don’t… not always. I asked what you were like at my age.’

  ‘What did she say?’

  ‘Not much. Just that you’ve been friends a long time and that you were typical teenagers. You used to go out with her twin brother.’

  I nod: ‘Wayne.’

  ‘I never knew that. I didn’t even know she had a twin.’

  This is obviously the time to tell my daughter the thing I’ve kept from her throughout her life. There won’t be a better moment.

  Except I can’t.

  If I tell her about Wayne, then I have to tell her about Jason. And if I do that, then how can she ever respect me again? Why would she listen to what I have to say about anything?

  ‘I suppose I was in with the wrong crowd,’ I say.

  ‘Ellie was the wrong crowd?’

  ‘Not her. Just in general. I suppose that’s why I’ve been so concerned about you and Tyler. I don’t want you to repeat my mistakes.’

  Olivia turns back to the screen, shifting her weight so that she’s angling away from me once more. I wonder if I’ve lost her. It was clumsy to bring things back to her but what else could I do other than evade her questions?

  ‘He’s not as bad as you think,’ she says quietly.

  ‘I only know what I’ve seen. If he’s better than that, then how is he better?’

  Olivia doesn’t reply but there’s a big part of me that wouldn’t mind being wrong. I wish she could tell me how he makes her happy, how he enhances her life. It’s not as if I enjoy the arguing and fall-outs.

  She doesn’t defend him, though. She takes her time, and I can hear her taking a series of deep breaths before she finally asks what’s been on her mind

  ‘Was I a mistake?’

  ‘No, Liv. Of course not.’

  I shuffle across the sofa and hold her head onto my shoulder. She hugs me back, wrapping her arms around my chest and sitting with her legs across my lap.

  ‘Your father and I got married really quickly after starting to see each other. It was only a few months – but you were never a mistake. We wanted a child – both of us. You were the glue that bonded us together.’

  ‘But now you’re unstuck...’

  I stroke her hair, searching for the words, trying to figure out how to tell her that the issues between Dan and me are ours alone.

  ‘There was a point where we realised we didn’t need each other. Your father had his life and his interests – and I had mine. The problem is that, by then, we had a house, a mortgage, car loans, credit card payments – and so on. A marriage is so much more than saying the words. We were living separate lives but unable to do it separately. You were at school, growing up, becoming a smart and independent young woman. It wouldn’t have been right to rip all that apart.’

  Olivia doesn’t say anything but she presses her head harder into my shoulder. We both sit and watch the wildlife show, neither of us moving. The only sound is Attenborough’s calm, methodical voice seeping from the television. Thank God for Attenborough.

  Eventually, Olivia disentangles herself. She’s upset and there’s dampness around her eyes which she wipes away.

  ‘That’s the opposite of selfish,’ she says unexpectedly.

  ‘What is?’

  ‘The other night, I said you were separating because it was what’s best for you. I thought you were being selfish – but you literally spent years making yourself unhappy so that I didn’t have to be.’

  It takes me a couple of seconds to respond. It’s not what I expected to hear. ‘Not quite,’ I tell her. ‘Not really. Your father and I went through the motions over the years. We made a commitment when we decided to have you and, regardless of anything since, we stuck to that.’

  Olivia’s eyes are ringed with tears once more. She tries to breathe but her nose is blocked, so she reaches to the table for a tissue.

  Her smile is weary: ‘You’re going to be late for work.’

  Chapter Twenty-One

  I’m not going to be late, of course, mainly because I’ve peddled Graham a load of nonsense about having a follow-up with the police. That’s on the back of asking for a pay rise. I’m the worst employee going.

  The thing is, I genuinely do have something more important to do today.

  St Paul’s Church sits on top of a hillock on the edge of town. It’s ringed by a crumbling drystone wall and there’s a plaque etched into the arch at the front which says how this was once the focal point of the original settlement. The grass is slightly overgrown but green and springy. I stop when I’m under the arch, turning to take in the unparalleled view below. The older I’ve become, the smaller North Melbury has felt. As a kid, it would take hours to get from one side to the other on foot. A trip to anywhere with bigger buildings or more people felt exotic, as if places like Ipswich or Lincoln were the epitome of adulthood and sophistication. This little town now feels like the end of everything, rather than the beginning. It’s confining and empty; free of creativity and ambition. It’s an island of small buildings surrounded by a sea of green. I can’t believe I’ve spent forty years here.

  Down below, the river winds its way around the mound on which the church is built. Trees flail in the breeze but, in the gaps, I can see a glimpse of the watermill and the lurid fencing that now surrounds it. I’m still staring when a hand touches my shoulder, making me jump.

  ‘Been a while, hasn’t it?’

  It’s Ellie, sombre and downtrodden all in black. Her hair is in a neat bun and it’s all a distant cry from her usual sit-at-the-kitchen-table-look.

  ‘A really long while,’ I confirm.

  Jason is standing off to the side, looking awkward in an ill-fitting suit of his own. I wonder if it’s the same one he wore to court all those years ago.

  A biting breeze singes across the graveyard as Ellie and I pass arm in arm through the arch. The temperature is probably a good couple of degrees cooler here than it is in the town itself. I suppose graveyards are supposed to be this cold and eerie. It doesn’t feel like a place in which life could thrive.

  We walk slowly because there’s no rush to get to our destination in the furthest corner. The path is marked by piles of small stones that crunch as we go. The grinding, chomping noise is the soundtrack, with Jason ambling at our backs.

  I ask Ellie how her ribs are feeling and she replies that she took a cocodamol before leaving the house.

  ‘The ones the doctor gave me are too strong,’ she adds. ‘They knock me right out, so I got these from the pharmacist.’

  ‘Doesn’t that mean you can still feel the pain?’ I reply.

  Ellie is quiet for a moment before responding: ‘Maybe I need that today.’

  ‘Pain?’

  I glance at her as we walk and there are a few seconds where all I can hear is the crunch of the stones underfoot.

  ‘It sort of fits, doesn’t it? Here I am after a car crash, hopped up on painkillers. Meanwhile, Wayne’s in the ground because of his.’

  A chill flitters along my spine – but it’s not the wind this time. I turn back to look at Jason, wondering if he’s heard what his sister said. If he has, then he doesn’t react. He smiles thinly and grimly at me, continuing to trail behind. I can’t read him. He’s not the boy I knew.

  The gravestone reads Wayne Ringo Leveson. I used to laugh at him for it, not really understanding anything other than that his mother had named him after someone who was in an ancient rock band. Jason’s middle name is George. I suppose Ellie was lucky to get away without having John or Paul on her birth certificate.

  It doesn’t feel funny now. Every time we’re here, I stare at Wayne’s name and remember the way we called him Ringo because we knew it would annoy him. I often wonder what I’d say to him now.

 
The three of us stand solemnly to the side of the stone, not trespassing on the grave itself. It’s unremarkable in its ordinariness. There are some elaborate memorials dotted around the church: crosses, mock tombs, shiny black squares rammed into the earth. Mourners have left teddies, flowers and plastic windmills to mark their losses, but Wayne’s has none of that. It is straightforward: a curved stone with his name and the dates that are too close together. I think this type of stone is what he would have wanted.

  I wonder if Ellie’s going to say something. She normally has a few words each year – but she remains silent now, her arms behind her back, head bowed.

  Jason steps forward, reaching into a pocket and pulling out a small matchbox car, which he places next to the stone.

  I look to Ellie but she says nothing and then Jason slots in at my side as the three of us stand silently.

  It’s a long while before anyone speaks – but it’s Jason who breaks the impasse.

  ‘What d’you reckon he’d be doing nowadays?’

  Ellie and I never talk of things like this. We sometimes remember the old days, the fun days, but never how things might have been in an alternate present.

  Jason answers his own question: ‘Probably working in a garage, I reckon. Maybe he’d even have his own place…?’

  It’s an uncomfortable moment. Ellie doesn’t reply and, because she says nothing, neither do I. Jason somehow misses the hint.

  ‘D’you think he’d still live here?’ he adds. ‘North Melbury. He was always talking about getting out.’

  More silence.

  ‘I reckon—’

  ‘Jase!’

  Ellie cuts him off. Brother and sister stare at one another for a moment, leaving me stuck in the middle, and then she turns back to the stone. There’s quiet now and we’re back in the pattern of what we do every year. Ellie and I stand and stare in silence. We’ve held hands once or twice – but not today. I have no brothers or sisters and can’t imagine what it would be like to lose one. Wayne wasn’t simply Ellie’s brother; he was her twin brother. What must that be like? There was a time not long after everything happened that Ellie told me she’d felt it when Wayne died. She’d been at home, lying on her bed listening to music when she’d felt suddenly out of breath. She’d gasped and was left with an irrepressible sense of losing something. In that moment, she thought she’d forgotten to do something, but it was so much worse than that.