by S. L. Grey
Not for the first time, I consider dumping rat poison into his coffee and getting him out of my life once and for all. I wouldn’t blink, I swear. But if it went wrong, if he lived, I’d be finished. I still don’t know what I’m going to do after this. I keep on saying it’s going to be all right, that it will work out, but I still don’t have a fucking plan.
I force myself to smile benignly at him. ‘They had my name wrong. They had me down as Joshua Alphonse. They thought Alphonse was my surname.’ I laugh, looking at June, and she smiles back in timid support.
She trusts me, I think. ‘And Katya, well, you know…’
Katya always books in under an assumed name: when she went to rehab for a week; when her nose wouldn’t stop bleeding. Standard practice. They know this as well as I do. I don’t have to say any more, and Glenn won’t want to pursue this line of questioning. He checks his watch again and huffs, and June pats his hand, gets up and wanders over to the Moroccan mosaic on the mantle. She stands there, her back to us, staring into the inlaid shards of mirror, stretching her cheeks with her fingers. The way her shoulders slope from her neck, that intense, unforgiving scrutiny of herself in that neurotic mirror, that’s hereditary; Katya got those genes in spades.
I froth the microwaved milk and bring a tray through to the coffee table.
June returns to the couch and pours two cups. ‘How has she been, Josh? You said there was nothing broken?’
‘No, thank God. She was lucky. They did a scan and after a few days the swelling on her brain – the haematoma – disappeared. Apart from a few contusions on her face, she’s—’
‘You didn’t say anything about her face!’ Glenn roars.
‘It’s not serious, it’s just… Look, she’s quite sensitive about it, though, so when you see her—’
‘Have they found the kaffir who drove into her?’ Glenn interrupts. ‘It was a taxi, right?’
That’s what I told him. Unroadworthy minibus taxis smash into lots of people and then just drive away, don’t they? And they’re not registered and you never find the culprit.
‘No. The police are still looking.’
‘My fucking arse, they are. I’m going to get some of my people onto it and we’ll find the motherfucker. Where’s her car?’
Shit, I didn’t think about that. It’s parked downstairs in the tenants’ parking lot, completely unscathed. ‘Uh, I think it was scrapped. I don’t know. I can find out.’
‘Hmpf,’ Glenn scoffs, slopping his coffee on the carpet as he reaches for more sugar. ‘We’ll get onto the licensing department.’
‘Lovely coffee, Josh,’ June says. She hasn’t even tasted hers.
‘And what about this fight you two had?’ Glenn says.
‘What fight?’ I say innocently.
‘Don’t fucking play coy with me, arsehole. When you phoned from the hospital, you told June you and Katya’d had a fight. What was it about?’
‘It was nothing. Just something stupid.’
‘That right?’ Glenn says. ‘Then tell me this, when we came here the next day, how come there was broken glass and drops of blood on the floor?’
I’m still seething about the fact that they came in here. But now’s not the time to make an issue of it. ‘You know how Katya gets, Glenn. She was upset, she smashed a glass and we both cut our fingers clearing it up. But it blew over. It was nothing.’
Glenn glares at me, but then his phone beeps and he pulls it out of his pocket, momentarily distracted.
‘I hope you don’t mind us coming into your apartment uninvited, Josh,’ June flutters. ‘We were so worried when we couldn’t get hold of Katya, and Glenn explained the situation to the building supervisor and he let us in.’ Explained the situation in Glenn’s inimitable style. I’ll bet he fucking did.
Glenn pockets his phone. ‘Bit of a coincidence, isn’t it?’
‘What?’
‘Both you and Kat ending up in hospital at the same time? You with the…’ He waves his arm vaguely.
‘Measles,’ I say, swallowing a surge of panic. Fuck, where’s he going with this?
‘And Katya being hit by a fucking taxi.’
‘I don’t know what you’re trying to—’
‘You know exactly what I’m saying,’ Glenn says, his toad eyes fixed on mine, his voice dangerously soft. ‘If I find out you’ve hurt my girl, I will fucking kill you.’
‘Glenn,’ June tuts. ‘She had an accident. Josh explained what happened.’
Glenn points a pudgy finger at me, and the LOVER bracelet rattles. ‘If I find out different then you know what I’ll do to you. Count yourself lucky that she’s okay this time. But I tell you one thing, she should be around her family at a time like this, not stuck in this shithole.’ He sneers at me as if I’m a bit of crap on his shoe. ‘In fact’ – he stands up and walks towards the bedroom – ‘enough already with the fucking tea party. I’m going to see my daughter, and I’m taking her home.’
‘Glenn!’ June raises her voice, and I brace for an explosion of rage, but instead he just stops and turns to face us. June cowers, wringing her fingers in her lap. ‘Katya doesn’t need any upset right now. I’m sure Josh is taking very good care of her. He loves her, which is…’
‘What?’ he says.
‘He loves her,’ she almost whispers. ‘That’s all.’
Glenn tenses and June’s hand flies to her mouth as if she wishes she could take the words back. But he thinks better of transporting their usual domestic drama to my flat.
‘Joshua,’ he says, using my name for sarcastic effect. ‘When will my daughter be able to see me?’
‘I’m sure she’ll be awake soon. Let me just go and check on her, okay?’
‘Hurry up.’
I go into the room, pushing the door closed behind me. ‘You ready?’ I whisper.
She nods and smiles but she’s nervous. I should have given her a couple of painkillers, just to take the edge off. It would have been better if she was woozy. Too late now.
‘It’ll be okay,’ I say again, and she settles herself back under the duvet.
I head back to the lounge. ‘She’s just waking now,’ I whisper. ‘But be prepared, she’s really out of it.’ I follow close behind them. ‘Katya,’ I call softy. ‘Your parents are here.’
Glenn’s first to the bedside, June close behind. Thank God there’s nothing personal on display. The reality of Glenn being in my bedroom never struck me before. June looks up at me and gestures to ask whether she can sit on the edge of the bed. I can’t help wondering whether Glenn snooped around here last time he was here, and what he found.
‘Kat?’ Glenn says, peering down at her. ‘It’s Daddy. Everything’s going to be fine now.’
She’s lying in the bed, as if asleep, face pressed between the pillows, her back to us.
‘It’s Daddy, Pumpkin.’
Glenn steps back and impatiently waves June forward. ‘You try.’
June reaches out a hand and gently smoothes the dark hair spread over the pillow. She rouses and turns slowly to face June. My heart stops. Oh, Jesus Christ, I can’t watch.
‘Oh.’ June turns her face away. Without this, there’s no next step. Without this, it will never work. ‘This is… this is not…’
‘What is it?’ Glenn leans over June’s shoulder. ‘Jesus.’ He turns away, looking for someone to blame. Finds only me.
‘Mom?’ she whispers. ‘Daddy?’
‘I’m here, Kitty-Kat,’ Glenn says. But he keeps his distance. Who knew he was squeamish? Not that there’s much to see. Not with the dressing covering most of her face.
‘Oh, Katya. My God.’ Then June is down and hugging her, crying snot into the duvet cover. Overreacting as usual. ‘I’m so sorry,’ June says.
‘Sleepy. Need to sleep.’
‘Leave the girl alone, June,’ Glenn says. ‘The last thing she needs is you crying all over her.’
‘It’s not as bad as it looks,’ I explain. ‘I know the dressing looks
quite frightening, but really, they say that the scarring will be very limited.’
‘Will she be able to work again?’
‘Glenn,’ June snaps. She turns back to the figure on the bed. ‘You just rest, my love, and we’ll see you soon, all right?’
But she’s already snoring softly.
‘Like I said, the painkillers knock her out,’ I say. ‘She should be fine in a day or so.’
‘I just have to… to go and freshen up,’ says June, wiping her eyes and disappearing into the bathroom.
Glenn opens his mouth to start laying into me, but then his phone trills and he heads out into the hallway.
When June comes out, she turns to face me with a vacant stare, motionless on the surface but jittering inside like a hive of wasps, synapses spattering and failing all through her mind. I bet she’s downed another handful of pills in there.
She turns to Glenn, and without a word to either of us she wanders like a ghost through the hall, unlatches the front door and drifts down the front stairs to the Jag without a backwards glance, like she was never here.
Phone stuck to his ear, Glenn jabs me in the chest. ‘You take care of her, you hear? It’s Juney’s birthday on Wednesday. We’ll see you at the house then. Or if she’s not up to it we’ll all come here.’
‘No, no,’ I say, trying to kill that idea before it lodges. ‘She’ll be fine by Wednesday.’
Then he follows his wife out of the apartment, letting the door slam behind him.
I race into the hallway and peer out of the window to watch them driving away. It’s only then that I allow myself to relax.
It’s over.
A hand on my shoulder. I turn around.
She pulls the dressing from her face, revealing the flawless skin beneath. ‘What do you think?’ she says. ‘Did it go okay?’
‘You did great, Lisa. I think we did it.’
Chapter 22
LISA
Thank God that’s over.
The nervous sweat that’s been dribbling down my sides is drying, and my stomach is starting to unknot itself. I head back to the bedroom and sit down on the bed. Farrell follows me in.
‘So what do you think, Lisa? You think we pulled it off? It went okay, right?’
I try to smile reassuringly at him. But the truth is, I’m not sure we did pull it off. Even though half of my face was hidden by the dressing, as Farrell suggested, there was something in Katya’s mother’s eyes – a flicker of confusion, a flash of horrified disbelief – that makes me think she knew. Still, I liked her; she seemed compassionate. But Farrell was right about the father. He reeked of aftershave and had ‘bully’ written all over him. The kind of alpha male my father looks up to. The kind of man my father has always wanted to be.
‘Fuck it,’ Farrell says. ‘I need another drink.’ He stalks out of the bedroom, slamming the door behind him.
I stand up, take a deep breath and gaze into the bank of full-length mirrors that camouflage the huge, wall-length closet space. The Katya face, framed by the long black wig, stares back at me. I place my hand on my hip, turn around and look at myself over my shoulder.
Mirror mirror on the wall, who’s the most deluded of them all?
I block out the Dr Meka voice, and concentrate on my reflection, trying to avoid looking too closely at the rest of my body; it spoils the illusion.
But my eye keeps being drawn to my thick thighs, heavy shoulders and non-existent ankles.
The face is perfect. It’s the rest of me that’s hideous.
That all-too-familiar wave of despair threatens to swamp me. How could I ever have thought I could do this?
My point exactly. It’s insane.
But I’m not going to give up. I can’t – I won’t – let Farrell down.
I tiptoe to the door and place my ear against it to double-check that he’s not coming back in here. There’s the faint thump of bass; he must have put a CD on.
I pull open the doors that lead to Katya’s walk-in closet and let my fingers trail through the loaded racks of designer clothes. Katya clearly favoured delicate fabrics in jewel colours: short summer dresses, skinny jeans and tiny Barbie-sized tops. I’ve sneaked in here several times, but I haven’t dared try anything on. I riffle through the hangers. The garments – most with labels I’ve never heard of – still hold a trace of her perfume, Midnight Poison. There’s a huge bottle of it in the bathroom, and I sprayed a dab on my wrist yesterday. But on me it smells cloying and slightly sour, as if it clashes with my skin.
I pull out a plain black short-sleeved dress. It’s loose and summery, not as skimpy and fitted as the other clothes. There’s no label inside it, but I can tell by the fabric’s impossible lightness that it must have cost the earth.
I shrug off the T-shirt and sweatpants, and pull it on over my head, praying that it won’t rip; praying that it will fit. It does! It’s tight around the back and shoulders, but it will do. I turn to the shoe racks, and pick out a pair of soft black wedge heels – the others are all high strappy things I’ll never be able to walk in. They’re slightly too big, but only by half a size or so.
Now for the moment of truth. I close my eyes, and turn to face the mirror.
Oh God. It’s terrible. The dress exaggerates the size of my mottled thighs, and the wedge shoes make my ankles look even thicker.
What did you expect? Those are a dead woman’s clothes. And then that old Dr Meka refrain: You must learn to be happy in your own skin, Lisa.
Too late for that. And besides, I like this skin better. Especially the face. The beautiful face. I’ll concentrate on that. I turn around, smile at myself over my shoulder.
‘Hi,’ I whisper. ‘I’m Katya. Call me Kat. No, call me Kay.’
‘Katya hated that dress,’ Farrell says from behind me, making me jump. Red heat floods to my cheeks. I’ve been so absorbed I haven’t heard him come in. ‘She got it for free after a shoot,’ he says. ‘Never wore it.’
‘God, Farrell, I’m so sorry.’
‘What for?’
‘I was snooping. I shouldn’t have gone through her stuff. Not without your permission.’
‘It’s fine. You look… You’re…’ He doesn’t finish the sentence. ‘I’ve made lunch. It’s getting cold.’ He dips his head and leaves the room. Face still burning, I rip the dress off too roughly and it splits under the arms. I kick it away, yank the wig off my head and pull the sweatpants and T-shirt back on.
I tie my hair into a bun at the nape of my neck and hurry through to the living space.
He doesn’t look up as I sit down at the breakfast counter. He’s made some sort of spicy omelette. It’s not the sort of food I’m used to, but my stomach grumbles anyway. I don’t dare eat more than two or three bites.
Farrell finally looks up at me. ‘Not hungry?’
‘I need to lose weight. Katya was way thinner than me.’ I remember the slender shape of her body lying in that hospital bed.
‘She wasn’t. It’s just that her bone structure is… was different. Finer.’ He glances at my arms. ‘You’ll have to keep your hands and arms covered, wear long sleeves, that kind of thing.’
I look down before he can see my burning face, pretend to brush crumbs from my T-shirt.
‘But on the plus side, at least you’re the same height, give or take an inch. That would be a fucking disaster. We can’t fake that.’
‘You’re right,’ I say, struggling to smile.
‘We can’t get too complacent. I think we fooled Glenn, but next time you’ll have to watch your voice. You spoke to Katya, didn’t you? You know what she sounds like.’
‘Yes. But at the time she was…’
What, Lisa? About to die?
For a second the silence is so heavy I’m scared to breathe.
Then he nods. ‘You can say it. She died. Those bastards killed her.’
It’s the first time he’s mentioned anything to do with the Wards since we left, but he must think about it all the time. I know
I do. I still haven’t figured out why I haven’t told him what Katya said to me just before she died. That she was sorry. Something must have happened between them. If he knew that she was sorry, he’d… he’d feel differently about her. Miss her more.
And of course you don’t want that, do you, Lisa? You can’t compete
with a dead woman.
Would it have made a difference if we’d been in the room when that alarm first sounded? When she had her heart attack or whatever it was that killed her?
But what could we have done?
It must have happened quickly. She couldn’t have suffered for long. When Farrell and I finally raced in there, minutes after we first heard the alarm, Nomsa was already pulling a curtain around the bed.
‘What’s happening?’ Farrell said. ‘What’s going on?’
At that stage he seemed calm, in control. And strangely, even though it must have hit me straight away that something awful had happened, I felt oddly distanced from the scene, as if I was watching it on television.
‘She’s gone,’ Nomsa said.
‘Gone where?’ Farrell said.
Nomsa smiled. ‘To the great catwalk in the sky.’
‘But… but why? How?’
‘Something in her system didn’t agree with our medication.’
‘What’s that supposed to mean?’
Nomsa rolled her eyes. ‘She was taking methamphetamine. And cocaine.’
‘Not in here, she wasn’t!’
‘It was still in her system.’
‘She was on drugs?’ I said.
‘Sometimes. They all do it,’ Farrell said, something heavy and blank in his voice.
‘I’m sorry for your loss,’ Nomsa said to him. She didn’t sound sorry; she sounded bored.
‘She’s gone,’ Farrell said. And then his face crumpled, his body sagged. For a second I was certain he was going to collapse. ‘Oh Katya. Oh God.’ He took a step towards her bed, but then seemed to change his mind. He suddenly pushed past me and Nomsa and charged out of the room.
I raced after him.
He weaved down the corridor, punching the wall as he went. ‘Fuck it!’
He stumbled into the waiting room and slumped onto the couch, head in his hands.
