“Oh, I’ve not got green fingers. I even killed that spider plant you gave me.” I climb back onto my step and take another sip from the glass of wine, feeling the alcohol soothe the anxiety that’s forming somewhere deep inside my body. I can understand how people become alcoholics. I’ve found myself slipping that way a few times. But I treat it like I do my panic. Stop. Deep breath. Get through the next ten minutes without a drink. Then the next. And somehow, I’ve managed to keep my drinking as a recreation, and not a prerequisite.
Edith tuts. “Well, I suppose it’s not for everyone.” She coughs, then sips more of her water. “Have you seen much of the Masons?”
I choose a spot on my knee to run my finger around, feeling the circular motion through my leggings. It gives me precious seconds to decide how much to say. I don’t want to tell her that I was there when April started screaming, or how I woke up hearing that same scream ringing in my ears last night. Nor do I want to tell her that I’ve been watching the Masons over the last week, observing that April wanders away from the house on her own during the day, and overhearing some of Matt and Laura’s arguments either late at night or early in the mornings. Neither will I say that I keep seeing Matt Mason leave April alone in the middle of the day as he disappears with a duffel bag. Sometimes he’s gone for most of the day, only returning in the late afternoon. I don’t want Edith spreading this knowledge around the street, but more than that, I don’t want to share this information with anyone. It feels too personal, not to the Masons, but to me. They have become more than the neighbours across the street. They’ve become almost an obsession.
“Not much,” I say. “I’ve seen them to say hello to.”
“Well, I heard shouting coming from that house the other day. Old Peter next to them is too deaf to hear owt, and the Akbars on the other side never speak to me. I doubt they can even speak English.” She rolls her eyes and I bite my tongue. Then she hobbles over to me and sits down in the deck chair on her side of the garden, close to the table I retrieved her water from. “But do you know the woman comes home at all hours? She’s never there to cook tea for them. The husband takes care of the kid all day. That’s an odd set up.”
I suppress the urge to roll my eyes. Edith, along with much of the world, sees the woman’s role as little more than a mother and a housekeeper (unless a war is on of course).
“Maybe it works for them,” I offer.
She shakes her head. “If it was working, they wouldn’t be fighting at all hours, traumatising the child, would they? I bet that’s why the kid is acting up, you know, because of all the disruptions. And he’s not much better, disappearing in the middle of the day.”
I turn to Edith. She’d noticed it too. So it wasn’t my imagination. “I think he goes to the gym a lot.”
“Yes, but, he doesn’t always take his bag with him. I don’t know much about these gyms, but I do know people need to change out of their mucky clothes afterward.” Her eyes are sparkling, excited by the gossip. Turned on by the mystery. “It’s odd to leave that kid alone for so long. Mind, thirteen is plenty big enough to look after yourself. I could cook a roast dinner by the age of twelve and use me mum’s sewing machine. But it’s not right for a man not to have a proper job. He should be out of the house all day, grafting, not tinkering with his car and bobbing off to God knows where. It can’t be a job, can it? He leaves at different times, sometimes he’s gone an hour, sometimes it’s five. Besides, I asked her summat, you know, Laura Mason. I asked her if he had a job and she said he was between clients or some such nonsense. Nah, you could tell that he didn’t have a job from the expression on her face. She was embarrassed, it was plain as day.” She pops a cigarette into her mouth and flicks open her lighter. Before she lights the fag, she says, “But where does he go? That’s what I want to know.”
Chapter Eight - Laura
Even in midsummer I’m driving home in the dark. There was an accident in the city centre, making coming out of Sheffield a complete nightmare. Trying to get back to my new suburban home is taking forever. I hadn’t wanted to move so far away from my job, but sometimes life takes us places we don’t expect. This isn’t the worst hardship in the world, I just need to knuckle down and get on with it.
The night air is muggy enough for me to keep my car window open and to drive without my jacket on. Instead, I’m in a flimsy blouse that sticks to my skin. There was an issue at work today. Two accountants messed up, and I had to speak to the board about their mistake. As the manager, the responsibility rests on me to get everything right, even though it was those arseholes who fucked up the numbers, not me. When a red Skoda pulls out in front of me, my hand reaches for the horn, but I stop myself. Instead, I lean back against the headrest and drum my fingernails against the steering wheel.
Matt will be furious when I get in. I’ve been dodging his calls, knowing that he’ll want me to come home early so I can have tea with him and April. I sent him a text about an hour ago. Mental day at work. Leaving now and will be home soon. But I left twenty minutes after I sent the message, and then got stuck in traffic. That wasn’t supposed to happen. The streets are usually dead by the time I drive home.
But I have to admit to myself that it was at least in part a conscious decision. I’m avoiding home. I’m avoiding the rows, and the shouting. I want to keep away from Matt’s temper, which is forever boiling over right now. I’m avoiding April’s strange, elusive behaviour, and the fact that she never seems to leave her bedroom. Sometimes, when I’m driving home, I wonder what it would be like to take a different direction and keep driving until I find somewhere I want to stop. What would it be like to start all over again? To be on my own? Once, while I was thinking about this, I accidentally drove to our old house. There, in the window, sat a new family, eating in the dining room like we used to. Now we never eat together. I work overtime. I work weekends. I take on as much as I can, and it’s not only for the flexi-time, it’s because I don’t want to go home.
But with that realisation comes the guilt. How can I be a mother and even think that? How can I let that thought drift into my mind? I’m a terrible person. As I finally reach my turning to get out of the city, I start to think about what I can afford to buy April at the weekend. Some new clothes, perhaps? We could go shopping together. Maybe a new notebook, one of those fancy ones with a leather cover. She likes to write. Or some new pens. I know now not to buy April the kind of stuff that other kids her age love—like expensive trainers, or games consoles. She never uses them. Matt plays on the new Xbox, April hardly touches it. Sometimes he manages to persuade her to play games with him, but even then she shows little interest. She doesn’t even try to win.
I find myself slowing down as I come out of the city. I guess I’m putting off the inevitable. But the thing is, I can’t work out how many of my worries are in my head, and how many are genuine. Has April really got a serious problem, or am I making too much of it? The screaming in public is the worst, but maybe it’s attention seeking. She’s always been the kind of kid who wanted all the attention, but then didn’t know what to do with it when she had it. A sort of insecure neediness.
And Matt, maybe it’s all the stress of being unemployed. Sometimes I think he’s self-sabotaging, that he’s the only one stopping himself becoming a personal trainer. He’s so frightened of failing that he can’t even start. Maybe, just maybe, all these problems are fixable.
I manoeuvre onto the street before Cavendish Street, where the woods back onto the road. It’s a quiet street with only a few street lamps and a field separating the road from a thicket of trees. Matt tried to sell me the house based on these woods alone—we could get a dog and go for family walks together. He could jog through the woods in the mornings when the sun was rising. I’d agreed and made all the enthusiastic noises that he needed to hear, but secretly, the place gave me the creeps. I’ve never liked woods, not since I was a child.
It’s almost a relief to pull onto Cavendish. There’s a tickle in my t
ummy, a butterflies feeling, about going home. It’s not a pleasant sensation, like when you expect something good to happen, it’s more of a warning. I pull up on the side of the street—on-road parking is a pain in the arse—and turn the key. No matter how much I try to tell myself that all my problems can be fixed, I can’t stop the tension working its way through my muscles at the thought of going inside the house. I take a deep breath before opening the car door and making my way into the house.
Matt is standing in the kitchen with his arms folded across his chest. I try not to make eye contact as I fiddle with the door, and then spend a few moments messing with my jacket and shoes.
“Sorry love,” I say, realising my voice is too high. “There was an accident in town. I got caught in traffic. Oh and I had to speak to the board because of an almighty cock-up. I was in a meeting with them for three hours if you can believe it. I’m knackered.”
Finally I meet his eyes. My throat goes dry. His expression is cold. His jaw is clamped tight, and there’s a bulging vein along his temple.
“I’m sorry, babe.” I reach out to touch him, but he flings his arm out, smacking my hand away. I let out a little cry and rub the sore spot on the back of my hand.
“I made pasta,” he says. “You can heat it up if you want.”
He storms out of the kitchen, and I hear the sound of the TV switching onto the sports channel. I find a Tupperware box of pasta and put it in the microwave.
How did it all change? How did we end up like this? I remember when Matt would cook special meals for us, scallop risotto, lamb shank, sea bass… and I would rush home from work so I could spend time with him. He was a different person then. Or at least I thought he was. His desire for the best always felt like desire for the best for me, not him. Now I feel like an ornament or a gadget that’s supposed to fit into his perfect idea of a life: an uncontrollable object that he desperately wants to control.
The microwave pings. I unload it onto a plate and take it into the living room to eat on my lap.
“What are you doing?” he asks, gesturing to the plate in my hand.
“I’ve come to eat,” I reply.
“You’re not eating in here. Eat at the table in the kitchen.” He turns away from me. His voice is devoid of all emotion.
“Are you kidding? It’s late, Matt. I’m not playing games.”
“It’s the rule of the house,” he says. “Eat at the table.”
“I’m not sitting on my own eating my dinner. Grow the fuck up.”
He’s on his feet. “Then I’ll come with you.”
From the challenge in his eyes, I know this is a game he wants to win. He wants the control back.
“Fine.”
I eat in silence, with Matt’s eyes watching me the entire time. I daren’t speak. I’m too tired for an argument. It’s too hot, too sticky and claustrophobic in this house for that tonight. The open windows let nothing but stale air into the house.
Matt at least appears to relax as he watches me eat. A petty part of me urges to throw the plate across the room, or to storm out of the house, but I don’t. I let him have it.
“That wasn’t so hard was it?” he says, taking my plate to wash.
“Sorry you missed your football game,” I say, glad the ordeal is over.
“Highlights,” he says. “Nothing important.”
“Did you have a good day?” The small talk should be natural. We should be natural, but we aren’t. We’re stilted and wrong, like jigsaw pieces forced into the wrong position.
Matt shrugs. “I went for a walk with April. I think she’s getting used to the area slowly but surely. You know how cautious she is about change.”
I nod. “Well done for getting her out of the house. That’s more than I can manage.”
He rinses the plate under the tap. I should probably offer my help, but I don’t want to ruin this moment we have, so I stay quiet.
“I like spending time with her. You really need to get some one-on-one time with her, Lors, you’re really missing out. I have all this time in the day where it’s just us, you know? You don’t get any of that.”
I chew on my bottom lip, resenting the reminder. “I’ll take her shopping this weekend. We’ll go to Meadowhall and get Pizza Express.”
“She doesn’t eat pizza anymore.”
“What? Why?”
“She wants to be healthier,” Matt replies. “It wouldn’t hurt us all to eat a little better.”
I prickle, resenting his words. “I guess so.”
I start to make my way back into the living room but Matt’s arms snake around my middle. I immediately tense up, and that makes him hold me tighter. Then his mouth is on my neck, pushing my hair away, tasting my skin.
“Matt,” I say with laughter in my voice. “I’m still gross from the drive here.”
“We’ll shower together,” he murmurs into my neck.
“I’m tired.”
“Shh, you’re not.”
His arms are constricting me, like a vice, slowly squeezing the life from me. I try to squirm out of his grip, but he’s too strong.
“Matt,” I say, this time with a warning tone in my voice, slightly high with panic. “I’m serious.”
He sighs and lets me go, pushing past me into the living room. I pull my hair back into place and head upstairs. The air here is stifling, so I open the window in our bedroom. I prowl around our room for a few moments, trying to force nervous energy bouncing around my body to be still. It’s no use, I’m too on edge.
I step out onto the landing and walk across to April’s room. The door is shut, and the light is off. April is a light sleeper, so I decide not to pop my head in to see her, even though I badly want to.
Instead, I start delving into the laundry basket, separating light and dark items, in some desperate need for my body to move. A sheen of sweat forms on my forehead as I work, but I ignore the heat and the frantic nature of my hands. I ignore my thoughts, fractured and worrying. Is my marriage irreparable? Does April hate me?
When I check the pockets of Matt’s jeans for tissues—the man is terrible for leaving them in all of his trousers—my fingers find a screwed up piece of paper. I’m about to throw it out when I decide to open it up instead.
“The bastard!”
My temper is quick to flare when I feel I’ve been wronged. I’m a hater of the unfair, but most of all I hate a liar. I hurry downstairs with the receipt held out between two fingers.
“What the fuck is this? Who is she? Who are you screwing?”
Matt stares up at me from the sofa with his mouth agape. He has such a slack face. It’s an unwrinkled, unintelligent face.
“What are you talking about?”
I throw the receipt towards him and it flutters through the air, forcing him to snatch it before it floats down to the carpet.
“It’s a receipt, Laura. Can’t you read?”
I’m shaking with anger. “A receipt for two lunches in a fancy restaurant that you paid for.”
Matt is on his feet. “You think I’m having an affair because of one receipt?”
“Well something is going on,” I say. “You’ve been secretive and argumentative—”
“Since when have I been secretive? I’ll tell you all about it shall I? I met up with a potential client about a job.”
I roll my eyes. “Oh, pull the other one. You’ve not had any clients for months.”
Matt’s face goes red and the vein is bulging over his temple again. He throws the receipt onto the sofa and covers the space between us.
“You’re my wife, Laura. You’re my fucking wife, and this is what I get? I get accused of cheating, and ridiculed in the same day? You work so late I never see you. In fact, yeah, I’m sure of it, you’re avoiding me and April. You could be the one having an affair not me.”
“Don’t be stupid.”
Matt grabs my face. “I’m not stupid, I’m not ridiculous, I’m your husband.” He pushes me up against the wall. His mouth
presses against mine.
Chapter Nine
Hannah
When I wake, my arms fly up in front of my face. The glass, I think. It’s all my fault. The suffocating guilt comes back, so hard and fast that it’s like a kick to the abdomen. But there’s nothing here, only a stuffy dark room and a sweat soaked bed. I lift up my knees and push my face into them, feeling the perspiration from my forehead seep into my leggings.
The window is wide open, but the curtains are shut, keeping the air from travelling in or out. I turn over and seek out my mobile phone from within a crevice between the pillows and disconnect it from my charger. It’s only just past midnight. I’ve been asleep for maybe an hour. I tip my head back and sigh, wondering when I last had a decent night’s sleep. I flinch, because I remember exactly when that was, and I hadn’t been alone.
If I had been even remotely sleepy, the raised voices coming from across the street would have killed it once and for all. I pad across the bedroom floor and slowly open the curtains. There’s a faint glow coming from inside number 72. They’re fighting again, with muffled voices that leave the subject of their argument inaccessible. I move away. I shouldn’t be spying on them. I should leave them alone and live my own life.
I can’t help but laugh at myself. My own life. What is that? The four walls of my house? The walk to the co-op and back? The treadmill that never gets used? Feeling angry now—with myself, with the Masons for waking me up, and with my circumstances—I grab my laptop from my bedside table and start checking my Emails for new work. I have five more orders. Two of which I’ll have to reject because they contain violence. No matter how many times I tell people I won’t accept violent stories, I still get them appearing in my inbox. People always think they are the exception: my story is violent, but it’s so good she won’t notice; everyone else’s child is a brat, but mine is an angel; the sign says no smoking, but I really need one. No one likes to be ordinary. Everyone wants to be different. People try so hard to be different, that they end up all being the same. Just like me, with my working from home attitude, my “I’m independent and don’t need anyone” approach. What a joke that is.
Saving April Page 4
