The Edge of Sanity

by Sheryl Browne

  Jo’s heart skipped a beat as Daniel took up his own invitation to leave a message. Back-to-back, the words could have been spoken by two different people. The light-hearted tone, which characterised the Daniel she had fallen in love with, was gone.

  ‘Hi, it’s Dan … Daniel,’ he said, sounding bone-weary with exhaustion. ‘I just wanted to let you know that I’ve, er, made some arrangements vis-à-vis the sale of the boatyard.’

  Arrangements? Jo grabbed up her dressing gown. Already? But then, he would, she supposed. If there was one thing Daniel was, before their lives fell apart, it was decisive. If only he had been so decisive about doing something to help them pick up the pieces. Talking to her, for a start.

  ‘And I wanted to, er, check that it was okay for me to call around later,’ Daniel went on, and then waited.

  Jo debated. Should she pick up?

  ‘Okay.’ He sighed, as she hesitated. ‘Well, I’ll assume it is then, unless I hear otherwise. We need to … to talk, Jo. Properly. Sort things out, yes?’

  So now he finally wanted to talk—to sort “things” out. As in divide up the assets, possibly? Jo’s heart sank. She stopped listening and trailed to the bathroom; somehow she didn’t want to hear his goodbyes.

  She showered and dressed quickly, angry with Daniel—and with herself for sinking into a sea of depression, waiting listlessly for a shift in the emotional tide, instead of swimming against it. She had wanted to be dead herself at first, when Emma had gone. There was no way to deny it. Every fibre of her being no longer wanted to be. Black, empty nothingness was what she had felt, what she craved, where she could curl up alone, on her own in the dark where life couldn’t touch her.

  But she had clung on—with her fingernails it sometimes seemed to her—because she had to. To be there for Kayla. Though, the truth was, she hadn’t been. Every conversation they had lately ended in argument. Or Kayla would go on the defensive—all tight-lipped belligerence. Why, when they needed each other so badly?

  Because she was hurting. Jo knew, yet didn’t have a clue how to reach her. She seemed to have skipped a whole chapter of Kayla’s life. She was growing up. Growing away. Joanne could no more make her communicate than she could Daniel. But she would, God give her strength. Kayla was in danger of going completely off the rails, if Jo didn’t make more effort to get through to her. Somehow they kept misreading each other. Missing each other. As they had this morning, thanks to her own incompetence. She had to ditch the booze, starting now, she decided, heading downstairs to back up her resolve with action.

  Daniel had accused her of overreacting when she had tried to talk to him about Kayla. He’d insisted Kayla’s behaviour was just normal teenage rebellion. Okay, rampaging hormones in mind, maybe it was. Perhaps, as Daniel had suggested, she did just need some space. But how much? When did not crowding her become not being there for her?

  Surely, it wasn’t normal for Kayla to eat barely enough to sustain a mouse. Well, okay, Jo supposed that could be construed normal, size zero icons in mind, but there was a line over which it crossed into anorexia. As for Kayla locking herself in her room, not just for hours as kids did, but forever it seemed, emerging only to trail out of the front door? No, not normal. Not on. Jo selected a bottle of white from the rack, uncorked it, steeled herself to pour it resolutely down the sink, and then followed it with another.

  Her daughter needed her. And Jo needed to be there for her. She wished Daniel was. Oh, Daniel—her anger gave way to soul-aching sadness—why have you shut me out? They were so alike, he and Kayla, whereas Emma had taken after her, a regular little chatterbox.

  Jo swallowed hard and trailed to the hall mirror, attempting to pile her hair on top of her head in some way that allowed her to actually see. Daniel loved her hair. She turned away, leaving it loose. At thirty-seven, it was probably time to think about going shorter anyway. And Daniel had gone, hadn’t he?

  Gone fast, as it happened. He’d obviously wanted to. She couldn’t blame him. They’d been slowly killing each other over the last few months.

  Jo clattered the last of the breakfast things into the dishwasher, and then mechanically set about sorting whites from coloureds. She had been angry with Daniel, bloody angry, but only for refusing to show his grief. To let the pain out and allow himself to miss Emma. Allow her to miss Emma.

  Was that the truth though? Or had she finally voiced it, cruelly, horribly? An accusation buried so deep, even Jo didn’t know she was harbouring it.

  She had blamed Daniel.

  Why, oh, why, couldn’t he have just left the boatyard and come in, comforted her, faced her. Was it really that hard?

  He must have known she would be thinking about her. Everything she touched in the house was Emma. She couldn’t even bring herself to wipe the handprints from the banister. Daniel should have known. Sometimes grief slipped silently out of the shadows to hit her so hard, she would reel from the impact. Wasn’t it bound to on her birthday? And in its wake came the suffocating wave of despair, which seemed to wash away every ounce of strength she possessed. So she had searched for a crutch.

  And then, fuelled by alcohol, which, far from numbing the pain, only ever brought things into sharp focus, she had provoked him, deliberately trying to prod him into some display of emotion.

  She had attacked him—her heart plummeted as she recalled the shock on his face, the hurt in his eyes—but the most brutal thing she could have done was to blame him. He couldn’t have been more hurt if she had taken a knife to his heart.

  He didn’t even retaliate. She wished he had. Any reaction would have been better than none. Emotionless, she had called him. It wasn’t true. She knew him too well. She had watched him be the best father to Kayla and Emma a man could be. Been there when he had wiped away their tears, hugged them; tickled them into hysterics. He’d even played dressing up dolly, for God’s sake. Six-foot tall, and he had sat cross-legged on the lawn dressing Barbie in cool colours and streaking her hair to match.

  She had pushed him away. And she kept on pushing, because he kept coming back for more. Was she crying now for herself, or for Daniel? For Kayla or Emma; so short a life snatched away. Jo didn’t know anymore. If only Daniel had remembered the seatbelt.

  Jo wiped her nose on the back of her hand. And how many times had she done the school run too distracted to do all the right checks?

  ****

  He could’ve pulled out of the sale, up to a point. Daniel had held on to the hope that Jo might change her mind. She wasn’t likely to, he knew. But he had hoped …

  Of course, Sod’s Law had it that a process normally fraught with pitfalls ran like clockwork. No glitches in the legal work. Land searches completed. Accounts in order. The sellable assets, the house, hire-fleet and land represented a good percentage of the sale price. And he had a buyer keen to complete, a business rival looking to expand. Tony obviously knew a good thing when he saw it. God was smiling on him, after all, Daniel thought wryly.

  As soon as the funds were available, they’d be spirited away. Six hundred thousand to pay off the business debts, the rest in a deposit account to help fund a smaller property for Jo, and that was it. All Daniel had worked for, all he had ever wanted in life—the boatyard, his home, his family—gone.

  The Mortgage Adviser passed him his receipt, smiled, and bid Daniel a pleasant day.

  He envied her optimism. ‘You too.’ He nodded. She was exceptionally pretty, he noticed. How old must she be? Early twenties, he guessed. Her whole life ahead of her. The thought crept uninvited into his mind.

  Why hadn’t he talked to Jo, on that day of all days? Left the damn final checks on the boats, which didn’t matter anyhow, and gone in to try to comfort her? Because he was too scared of opening doors better left closed.

  Because he was a coward.

  Daniel broke eye contact with the girl and turned abruptly for the door.

  ****

  There he goes, arrogant little sod. DI Short paused, a chip poised at his mo
uth as he watched Charlie Roberts swagger from his block of flats, not a care in the world. While Rachel Meadows …

  Devastated, she was, poor kid. Traumatised for life, probably. Not going to press charges though, naturally. His appetite gone as he watched Roberts saunter jauntily towards him, DI Short deposited his chip disgustedly back in the wrapper on his passenger seat. He should shut the little runt in a cell with Rachel Meadows’ mum and a pair of gardening shears. She would soon cut the sonofabitch down to size.

  He didn’t blame Rachel, not really. They could hardly provide her a safe house and promise her immunity against scum like Roberts. She wouldn’t want to be looking over her shoulder when he got back into circulation, which he soon would. And he might well seek Rachel out to teach her a lesson, the snivelling little coward.

  DI Short watched on, his stomach churning for other reasons than hunger as Charlie Roberts blew cigarette smoke high in the air and talked leisurely into his mobile, no doubt lining up his gear for the night, a smirk all over his smug face.

  As free as a bird, to do exactly what he liked, when he liked, to whomever he liked.

  There was nothing DI Short could do about it, though, not right now. Apart from stretch his legs, possibly? Yes, a brisk walk was called for after all that cholesterol, he decided, as Roberts slowed his swagger to give two passing youngsters an appreciative once-over.

  ‘Girls, you are so beautiful, you just brightened my day,’ he called after them, at which they blushed and fluttered eyelashes, taken in by the slimy chameleon’s charms.

  Yes, DI Short smiled tightly, and I’m just about to put a damper on it, Charlie, you ‘orrible litte specimen. ‘Oh, tsk, tsk,’ he said as he swung the driver’s side door wide, stopping Charlie’s cocksure strut rudely mid-stride, ‘you really should watch your step, my old son.’

  ****

  Time-is-money-habit of a lifetime, Daniel checked his watch. What the hell were they doing out there, sweeping the tracks? It seemed to be taking an eternity to get out of the station.

  Still, time was something he would have an abundance of now. The thought served only to deepen his sombre mood. Daniel was a doer. He didn’t relish the thought of having nothing to actually do, much less the prospect of starting over, alone. Right now, though, alone was exactly where he wanted to be, with his thoughts, if only perplexed passengers would stop attracting his attention as they fumbled for the doors open button.

  At last, the train lurched into life as Daniel rose, thankfully for the last time, to help a young family scramble aboard.

  A chocolate-coated-toddler in stroller was parked to the side of him; he assured the mother it was no problem, and the little girl, aged five, six maybe, was scooped onto her mother’s lap.

  Daniel kept his eyes firmly averted. Interpreting the graffiti until it merged into one glorious multi-coloured snake, he stared out of the window, the rhythmic roll of the train eventually enticing him to much needed sleep.

  The train slowed to a halt, doors opened and closed. Daniel’s eyes opened, and closed. It might be his station. His mind tried to tug him awake but his body refused to budge. He was finally reeled back to reality by a melodic little voice, which had taken the place of the muted discordance escaping the earphones of the teenager who’d been sitting next to him.

  A train hurtled past in the opposite direction, catapulting him to full consciousness. Daniel righted himself in his seat, eased the crick in his neck, and tried to turn his attention away from the little foot dangling over the edge of the seat next to him, bouncing in time with her tune. ‘Follow the Yellow Brick Road. Follow the Yellow Brick Road. Follow, follow, follow, follow, follow the Yellow Brick Road,’ she sang softly.

  Daniel’s mouth twitched into a smile as she continued to hum happily to herself, her small hands holding her hymn sheet, newspaper style, in front of her. She licked a forefinger and thumb and proceeded to turn the page, as adult-like as a little girl could be.

  ‘Oh,’ she said, as the middle portion fluttered to the floor.

  Daniel instinctively bent to retrieve it.

  Handing it back, his heart plummeted. He looked straight into the eyes of his child. Huge eyes, framed by softly curled eyelashes. Intense blue, and wide with the perfectly clear innocence of childhood—so much like Emma’s. He could have cried.

  ‘Thank you,’ she said, her eyes suddenly guarded.

  ‘Any time.’ Daniel forced his mouth into a reassuring smile.

  She cocked her head to one side, studying him hard. ‘I’m Dorothy,’ she informed him, seeming to come to the decision he wasn’t too strange to talk to.

  ‘That’s a nice name,’ Daniel replied lightly. ‘And what’s your little brother’s name?’

  ‘No, not in real life,’ she said, with a world-weary sigh. ‘I’m Dorothy in the school play, Silly.’

  ‘Olivia!’ her mother quickly admonished her, whilst licking a tissue to dab at the toddler’s chocolate-smeared face. ‘She’s a bit excited.’ She smiled apologetically. ‘I hope she’s not bothering you?’

  ‘No, not at all,’ Daniel assured her, and then settled back to listen as Olivia outlined The Wizard of Oz in its entirety.

  ‘James is playing the lion,’ she informed him, screwing up her nose.

  ‘Oh? And who’s James?’

  ‘Just a boy at school.’ She shrugged grown-up shoulders. ‘He’s okay, but he’s soo noisy. He roared so loud, Miss Adams nearly fell off the stage. Boys.’ She sighed, with a roll of her eyes.

  ‘Oh, dear.’ Daniel was surprised to hear himself laugh.

  ‘Have you got any children?’ she asked, catching him completely off guard.

  He coughed and looked briefly away. ‘Er, just the one. But she’s a big girl now.’

  ‘Oh.’ Olivia nodded. ‘Too big to watch CBeebies?’

  ‘I think she probably is.’ Daniel laughed, trying to imagine a time when Kayla did anything other than listen to Black Eyed Peas, or whoever was currently cool.

  ‘Does she want to be Beyoncé when she grows up?’

  ‘Er, no.’ Daniel’s mouth curved into a smile. The mere mention of Beyoncé had Kayla making delightful little retching noises. Not good for her Goth street cred, according to Jo. ‘Is that what you want to be?’

  ‘Yes.’ Olivia nodded adamantly. ‘Or …’ She had a little think. ‘ … Jack Sparrow.’

  ‘Ah.’ Daniel nodded in turn. ‘Good choice, though I think Beyoncé’s outfits might look a bit prettier.’

  ‘Ye-es.’ Olivia considered, and then chattered on, showing Daniel her script, her new wedge shoes, and, as she leaned forward, Daniel almost didn’t resist a sudden urge to stroke her hair.

  Jesus. He pulled himself up, imagining what her mother’s reaction to that gesture might be.

  Olivia scooted from the seat, her station apparently in sight. ‘You can come to my play, if you like,’ she suggested, slipping her hand into her mother’s.

  ‘I’d love to, but I live a long way away, I’m afraid.’ Daniel looked suitably disappointed.

  ‘Oh, okay. Maybe next time. Bye, then.’ She smiled and gave him a cute little wave.

  ‘Bye, Beyoncé.’ Daniel waved, and offered her a smile back, despite the pain where his heart should be.

  He ran a hand over his neck as she alighted and turned to the window. It was Emma he saw looking back, his golden-haired angel, a little replica of Jo, but for the clear blue of her eyes.

  Jo’s were green. No half-hearted, hazel green either. They were … amazing. Irish eyes, he called her. Everything was there, in Jo’s eyes. If she wasn’t pleased, you knew about it. If you wanted honesty without window dressing, that’s where you’d find it, in her eyes. And when they’d made love together, sweet and slow, before the shadows had taken over their lives, she had conveyed her love for him—with her eyes. So there was no question now in Daniel’s mind. With gut-wrenching certainty, he knew Jo hated him, with as much passion as she had once loved him.

  Arriving, fina
lly, at Worcester, he debated briefly whether to take the bus. Checking his watch, he noted it was almost school out time and decided against. If it didn’t do much for his feet, the walk might help blow the cobwebs away.

  Even now that he was almost there, he wasn’t sure why he was going. He hadn’t been to the cemetery since the funeral. He simply couldn’t bring himself to go and unearth pain better left buried. Now Daniel knew it was something he needed to do. Unconsciously or consciously—he wasn’t sure which—he had slammed a lid tight shut on his emotions. Jo had been right about that.

  It had cut to the core when people he knew had huddled to speak in hushed tones on that, the worst day of his life. Or turned embarrassed eyes away from his, for fear of the grief they might find there, or the guilt. They’d shuffled and mumbled. They were sorry. Of course they were, but none as sorry as he. He’d destroyed the life of his innocent child, and simultaneously, he had destroyed Jo.

  Things had been good up until then. Better than he had dared to hope for. Yes, they’d had their fair share of problems in the early years, but eventually it started to come together. They’d celebrated the refit of their first hire-boat with champagne. Then celebrated some more, the second bottle having them throwing inhibition—and caution—to the wind, right there on the boat, under the stars. He smiled quietly. That was the night Kayla had been conceived. If she had been a bit of a surprise, she was conceived in style, no doubt about it.

  Emma was planned, a plan that didn’t come to fruition, initially. But, on the basis that practice made perfect, Daniel had selflessly sacrificed his body for the sake of a good cause, and it had happened, eventually. If Jo was thrilled, he was ecstatic. Things had come good for them, just as Jo had predicted they would. Because they had faith, she had said, and because they had each other, no matter what.