Come a Little Closer

by Karen Perry

  Tentatively, he begins to tell her about the day his world fell apart. He recounts it as best he can, willing his mind to travel back.

  ‘It was hot, and I was hung-over,’ he admits. ‘There had been a party the night before. I had drunk too much – we both had. Charlotte had been up to her usual tricks, drinking too much, flirting,’ he says, choosing the word carefully. ‘I tried to ignore it. I knew she was only doing it to get my attention – that was how she operated. But she wore me down. Eventually, there was a row between us and I left.’

  He remembers Charlotte’s voice that night, shivering and vindictive as she made her accusations. Recalling it now, he feels a tightness in his chest, as if he cannot take a deep enough breath into his lungs. He would like them to resume their walk and to drop the subject entirely. But Leah’s expression is intent, and he knows he cannot lose her attention now. To pause would be fatal, if he is to convince her.

  ‘I went downstairs to sleep in the flat. It was empty at the time, and Charlotte had made it clear she wished to be alone. Sometime in the night, I heard a noise – it sounded like something falling over upstairs.’ He catches her gaze, watchful and wary, tells her: ‘I didn’t go to investigate.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘I don’t know. Too drunk, too tired. Weary at the thought of another confrontation. I just turned over and went back to sleep.’

  He had slept late. Alcohol made him deeply unconscious.

  ‘When I woke, half the day was gone. I could hear someone upstairs, banging on the front door and ringing the bell. When I went outside to investigate, some of my neighbours were on the top step, trying to get in. I was confused – bewildered. I had no idea what they were doing there, why they had come. It wasn’t until later that I was told about Mark …’

  They’d found her in the kitchen. Blood pooling on the floor. Small footprints tracking blood out into the hallway. A terrible scene.

  ‘I have so many regrets,’ he tells Leah. ‘That I didn’t react to the noises I heard that night. That I slunk off downstairs, like a coward, and didn’t stay and face up to her accusations. If I had, she would still be alive.’

  He pauses to consider this. Then adds: ‘The last words we spoke were in anger. Bitter, hurtful things. We wanted to wound each other, but …’ and the look he gives her now is pressed with meaning and sincerity ‘… I only ever wounded her with words. With my infidelity. I never caused her physical violence. I swear to you.’

  He wonders what bearing it has on anything: the word of a criminal. But it is all he has, and as he speaks it, he hears his voice shake.

  ‘But you were convicted.’

  ‘Wrongfully,’ he states, his firmness veering dangerously close to aggression.

  ‘But if it wasn’t you, then who?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ His voice cracks. Tears come to his eyes. ‘I kept telling them about the noises I heard, about a possible intruder, but they weren’t interested. Instead they kept banging on about the row we’d had, asking me over and over again where I’d hidden the knife.’

  ‘The knife?’ Her eyes flare with interest.

  ‘Oh, yes. They never found it, you see? They tore the house apart looking for it, and the garden. They had search teams all over this park,’ he adds, his sweeping arm taking in the grass, the trees. ‘It never turned up, much is the pity.’ He tells her with conviction: ‘If they had found that weapon, I would have been in the clear. I’d have been exonerated. That’s the great mystery. It never showed up.’

  She thinks about this for a moment, then reaches out and tucks her arm into his. They sit companionably on the wall, side by side, and listen to the birdsong in the trees beyond.

  Slowly, he gains her trust, a little more each evening.

  Like a fish hauled through the water on a hook, not realizing the hook is there, lodged and ready to pull.

  She tells him about the baby boy. A shocking truth to admit, made more shocking by the way she just blurts it out, without warning or signal.

  They are in his kitchen, and he is sluicing water in their now-empty teacups, telling her about a time when the children were small and he had taken Mark to the shops, and ended up leaving without him. ‘I simply forgot for a few minutes that I was a parent. That I even had a child,’ he says, with amused recollection. ‘It was only for a few minutes, and I went back and got him as soon as I realized. But, my God, the amazement of it! This little boy, entrusted to me, and I’d forgotten all about him! And when I told Charlotte about it, do you know what she said?’

  He turns to tell her, but stops when he sees the look on her face. The frozen stillness of it. Shock in the eyes, like she’s just witnessed an accident. And then she puts her hands up and covers her face with them, a horrible liquid sound escaping her mouth.

  ‘What? What is it? What’s wrong?’ he asks, coming and taking her by the shoulders, guiding her to a kitchen chair. It seems such a natural thing for him to do now – touching her in this manner.

  He can feel her trembling beneath his fingertips, and is shocked by this naked display of feeling. She is usually so reserved. So graceful and composed. The storm of emotion has come over her without warning. She sits in the chair, and between sobs he hears about the babysitting job, the phone-call asking her to stay on, the parents arriving home, the child dead in his cot.

  ‘My God,’ he says, holding her hand across the table. ‘It wasn’t your fault, my darling,’ he says softly, as she sniffs and shudders, struggling to bring her breathing back under control. ‘It was a cot death – utterly tragic, but they happen and no one is to blame.’

  ‘No! It wasn’t like that. A bleed to the brain, they said.’ Her words come out in a rush and he can hardly make them out. Her eyes flicker around the room, unable to settle, her arms hugged tightly around her chest. ‘They kept asking me questions, over and over, but I just couldn’t say it. I just couldn’t!’

  She bends over, shaken by fresh sobbing, and he rips a paper towel from the roll and offers it to her. She blows her nose, keeps her eyes on the table-top, her shoulders slumped forward. A picture of misery.

  ‘Is that why you left home?’ he asks, and she nods.

  ‘It’s a small town. Everyone knew. I couldn’t stand people looking at me, talking about it behind my back.’

  ‘You poor darling,’ he says again. ‘That’s a hell of a thing to happen to anyone.’

  He is shocked, but feels the pull of the story too. There’s something in it. Something that can be used.

  She starts crying again, presses the balled-up tissue to her nose. Her eyes are rimmed red, a raw look to the skin on her face.

  ‘Do you know what you need?’ he says. ‘A brandy.’

  And he gets out of his chair, but she shakes her head furiously.

  ‘No, I can’t,’ she tells him. ‘I’m pregnant.’

  ‘Ah.’ He sits back down. Her admission knocks the wind out of his sails a little. It muddies the waters. He casts his eyes over her body, as if the signs might reveal themselves to him. Then he steadies himself and reaches for her hand once more. ‘That’s lovely news, Leah. I’m delighted for you.’

  But she doesn’t look happy. He is somewhat relieved to see that her face is a mask of despair.

  ‘I don’t deserve it,’ she says quietly, and he makes a tutting sound of mild disapproval.

  ‘Hush now. None of that.’

  ‘It’s true. Not after what I did.’

  ‘You’re a good person.’

  ‘Am I?’ She meets his eyes, and there’s something cold in the look she gives him. ‘I keep thinking about them, Yvonne and Jim. What they would think if they knew about my pregnancy. They never had any other children, you see.’

  He nods, says: ‘Well, I’m sure they wouldn’t hold it against you. Despite how they might have felt then. Time is a great healer. Take it from one who knows, pet.’ He squeezes her hand.

  She offers him a sad smile, then draws her hand away, glancing at the clock on the w
all. ‘I should go,’ she tells him. ‘Jake will be home soon.’

  With the heels of her hands, she presses the last tears from her eyes, then tucks the hair behind her ears. Anton feels the now-familiar flatness of disappointment entering his chest. It’s the same every evening when she leaves him alone, with all the hours of the night stretching ahead of him.

  At the door, she stops suddenly. ‘You won’t tell anyone about this, will you?’ she says, urgency in her voice.

  ‘Of course not. Who would I tell?’

  ‘Promise me you won’t tell Mark? It’s just he might tell someone else and then it could get back to Jake …’

  The realization hits him with force. The boyfriend doesn’t know. Her dark secret, and he doesn’t know. ‘I won’t say a word to him,’ he assures her, and sits there, staring at the door, for a long time after she has left, turning the knowledge over and over in his mind, like a pebble, considering every plane of its surface, its weight and heft. How to wield it to his own advantage.

  She comes to help him with Charlotte’s things.

  He wants to ask her what changed her mind, but decides not to. A change has taken place between them – a strengthening of their bond. She has told him things she has not told anyone else.

  He’s relieved at her offer to help: the task fills him with a degree of dread. Something about Charlotte’s clothes seems to call her up from his memory in a way that is far more real than when he is alone in the rooms downstairs. She had loved her clothes, loved the pageantry of them – an outfit for every occasion – and he had indulged her. There was a time when he had thrilled to see her delight in an Hermès scarf brought home from a business trip, or a Furla bag on their anniversary. He recalls waiting outside the little cubicle in Brown Thomas while she tried on the Diane von Furstenburg dress, a little furrow of doubt appearing in her brow as she scanned the price-tag, saying, ‘It’s a small fortune, Anton,’ and the sheer joy that transformed her features when he said, ‘Go on. You only live once.’ He paid for his pleasure, you might say. How many of those possessions were bought as an appeasement or a distraction? The price of a guilty conscience.

  Charlotte would have been fifty-five now, if she’d lived. Hard for him to imagine that. Always, in his mind, she is thirty-seven. Still a young woman, hints of age starting to creep up on her: the grey threading through her hair, swiftly banished; the silvery lines running over the skin of her breasts; the softness of flesh over her belly. He can recall quite clearly the way she’d sat at the dressing-table here in their bedroom, peering at her reflection in the mirror with dissatisfaction, her index fingers pulling taut the skin around her eyes. He’d found magazine cuttings for plastic surgery tucked away in one of her drawers.

  ‘So many dresses,’ Leah says, taking each one carefully from the wardrobe and laying it on the bed.

  He watches the way she smooths the fabric, reverence in the manner of her touch. She folds the sleeves over the breast of one, and it reminds him of a body laid out on the bed, an image he tries to shake off.

  ‘Clothes were her passion,’ he tells her. ‘She used to work in a fashion store. Quite upmarket. It’s how we met.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘I had gone in to buy a gift, and was hopelessly lost, as you can imagine. She came to my aid. Within minutes, I was smitten.’

  What he doesn’t tell Leah is that the woman whose gift he was purchasing was his fiancée at the time. Even then, it was an affliction he was helpless against. And Charlotte knew. She knew from the very start what kind of man he was. It couldn’t be said that she’d gone into it with her eyes closed.

  There is a bag open on the floor, and Leah carefully lays each folded item in it, tucking them away with an air of sad finality. He supposes he should feel something more – some deeper pull of emotion. But he wants these things out of his house. As if ditching Charlotte’s clothes will exorcize her voice from his head, its insistence haranguing him as he moves through the days.

  ‘Are you sure your daughter wouldn’t want some of these?’ she asks him.

  He shakes his head. ‘She’s taken her mother’s jewellery. I’d be very surprised if she had any interest in the rest.’

  ‘Perhaps you should check before you give these away.’

  But he is firm. ‘No. Sandy has turned her back on all of this. Even if she’d speak to me, I still know what her answer would be.’

  She stops, a dress looped over her arm. ‘Your daughter doesn’t speak to you? Not at all?’

  ‘Not for years.’ He offers a thin smile. ‘I don’t blame her. She was so little when it happened. She can’t even remember me from the days before the hotel. No matter how I feel, I must accept that I’m just a stranger to her.’

  He doesn’t tell her about the bitter accusations Cassandra had levelled at him. The poison that had been poured into her ear by her aunt – Charlotte’s sister – eager to castigate and condemn. The things his daughter had been led to believe.

  She sits down on the bed beside him, says softly, ‘It’s hard, isn’t it?’

  And he thinks of what she’s told him – those small admissions made in odd moments of candour. ‘What of your father?’ he tries. ‘Surely he doesn’t blame you for what happened.’

  She smooths the fabric of the dress that rests in her lap. ‘He doesn’t blame me.’

  ‘Then why the distance? You said you rarely see your parents. That your relationship is difficult. But surely they must miss you terribly. You’re their only child. They must worry.’

  She is sitting so close to him that he can smell the citrus scent of her perfume, so fresh and youthful. He allows himself to reach out, to put his hand on hers. The smoothness of her skin – a thrill passes through him. He looks down at the paleness of the little hand caught beneath his own. She doesn’t try to move away. Hope flames in his heart.

  ‘There’s a look that comes into people’s eyes,’ she tells him, in that quiet, pensive way of hers, ‘when they find out what happened. They can’t help it. Even people who love you and want to protect you – still, the look is there. The dark curiosity in the backs of their stares, as if they’re trying to contemplate what it must be like to have a child in your care die in that manner.’

  He loves her voice, its soft timbre, the way it lightly brushes against him.

  And he knows all about the look of which she speaks. It’s the thing that bonds them – him and Leah. His grip on her hand tightens.

  ‘Even my father had it, when he thought I couldn’t see him, but I did. I’d catch him giving me that look, and I couldn’t bear it.’

  She bites down on her lip. He sees how hard this is for her, how unfamiliar it feels for her to open up in this way. But he also knows she wants to go on. That she feels safe with him: they have a shared understanding.

  ‘It’s easier to just cut people off,’ she says. ‘Not let anyone get too close. I learnt that over time.’ A boyfriend she’d opened up to had reacted badly when she’d explained her past to him. ‘Not at first,’ she tells Anton. ‘But I could feel the gradual change. Then one day he told me he couldn’t shake it from his head. That it had changed how he saw me, what he felt about me. It made me a different person, in his eyes.’

  After that, she’d made a decision. Better to shut that side of herself away, hide it from view. Shove it deep down into a dark corner, and never shed any light upon it. It was the rule that governed her life. And yet she had told him – Anton. She had marked him out in this special way. Surely that means something. Surely it points to some deeper understanding, some fated bond. The pad of his thumb draws across the skin of her palm. Does it send shooting messages through her nerve endings? She is so close to him. Her lips are full, gleaming with a smear of balm. Her perfume is in his nostrils.

  ‘It seems a shame to give these away,’ she says, her tone changing abruptly, becoming businesslike, and he watches with dismay as she gets to her feet. ‘But the charity shop will be pleased.’

  He watches he
r move away from the bed to resume her task. Outside the evening light is fading. Soon she will go.

  ‘Why don’t you keep them?’ he suggests, and she laughs suddenly.

  ‘Don’t be silly.’

  ‘Why not?’ He looks up at her appraisingly. ‘You’re about Charlotte’s height and size. They would fit you.’

  He doesn’t tell her that at times she is so like his dead wife that it leaves him reeling.

  ‘Right now, they do. But soon I’ll be too big. And, anyway,’ she says, dismissing the notion with a quiver of discomfort, ‘it wouldn’t be right.’

  ‘They’re just clothes, dear.’

  ‘Jake wouldn’t like it,’ she says, a warning there.

  Her eyes are kept deliberately on the task at hand, avoiding contact with his, and as he watches her folding the Diane von Furstenburg, annoyed by that reference to the meddling boyfriend, Anton is seized with a great longing to see her in it.

  ‘Here,’ he says, getting to his feet and taking the dress from her. ‘Allow me to show you. Just for a minute,’ he continues, countering the objection that flies up into her face. ‘Now, look, it’s a wrap dress, you see? Like this.’

  He gets her to stand still. Then, taking his place behind her, he guides the dress over her shoulders, her arms slotting into the sleeves. She is wearing a T-shirt and skirt, light, flimsy materials – they barely show beneath the silk of the dress.

  Guiding her to the bay window, he positions her in front of the long mirror. Her resistance is still there, but it’s waning now, and he can sense that she’s captivated by her reflection as he pulls the fabric around her, bending to her hip, then tying a loose bow.

  ‘There,’ he says.

  He can see the bump now, the low swell of it beneath the patterned silk. His eyes glide over it, to the curve of her hip, the roundness of her buttocks. He is just a little behind her. Were he to take one step forward, he could press himself flat against her back.

  ‘Look how beautiful you are,’ he whispers, and he puts a hand to her hair, draws it softly away from her neck.

  ‘What’s going on here?’