Come a Little Closer

by Karen Perry

‘My parents. And the people of our town, but –’

  ‘And no one else? Anyone at work? The girls you used to share with?’

  ‘No.’ But her voice is tapering off, a new suspicion entering it, and immediately he picks up on it.

  ‘I just don’t understand how they could put you with Anton, then somehow dig up this thing from your past.’

  She turns from him, pulls at her lip.

  ‘Leah?’

  Her thoughts are turning over rapidly.

  ‘Did you tell Anton?’ he asks, the sharpness of the question pulling her up suddenly.

  ‘Did you?’ he asks again, when she doesn’t answer, incredulity leaking into his tone.

  She doesn’t speak for a moment. Sinking back against the wall, she closes her eyes. ‘I didn’t mean to,’ she says quietly. ‘It just sort of slipped out.’

  When she opens her eyes again, Jake is staring at her, his face made impassive with shock.

  ‘Please don’t be angry with me,’ she tells him, although he looks beyond anger now. ‘Something he said just triggered it in me. I was upset and he sort of coaxed it out.’

  ‘Coaxed it out?’ His voice is a low croak, his lips bloodless and pale.

  ‘I was upset,’ she says again, a tremble in her voice. ‘I felt he understood something.’

  ‘What did he understand?’

  ‘What it’s like to carry this guilt and shame around inside you all the time. What it’s like to be judged for something you didn’t do. To carry the burden of a person’s death even though you’re not responsible for it. It’s hard for people to understand – to really know what that’s like. The awful weight of it. But he just –’

  ‘Unbelievable,’ he says, cutting across her. An ugly smirk has appeared on his face that confuses her. ‘You think he didn’t do it, don’t you? Nineteen years in prison and you think he’s some downy innocent.’

  ‘Jake, I –’

  ‘Un-fucking-believable. You keep this secret from me, and yet you confide in him?’

  He’s pushed himself away from the kitchen now and is hurrying around the room with a new urgency, gathering up his bag, his helmet, his coat.

  ‘What are you doing?’ she asks, but he doesn’t answer.

  He’s leaving me, she thinks, and the idea makes her panic. The thought of living without love in her life sets off a range of new emotions inside her. She cannot bear the return of loneliness, not again, not after all she has been through.

  She follows him out into the hall, watches him slinging the bag over his shoulder, and clipping the clasp of his helmet beneath his chin.

  ‘It’s pouring with rain,’ she tells him. ‘You’ll get soaked.’

  But he ignores her, wheeling his bike to the door.

  ‘At least tell me where you’re going,’ she pleads, panic entering her voice. This stony silence is worse than his wound-up agitation. It feeds the certainty inside her that this is an ending between them. He’s leaving her.

  ‘Jake?’

  He opens the door, cold air cutting through the little hallway, rain spattering over the threshold. His eyes are fixed on the handlebars of his bicycle, avoiding all contact with her.

  ‘I need to think,’ he tells her quietly.

  He wheels the bike outside and she watches him carrying it up the steps, rain falling on him, darkening his clothes.

  Then he is gone, and she stands listening to the loud patter of drops bouncing off the leaves of the magnolia, falling fatly and noisily on to the steps and all the hard surfaces around her.

  After a minute, she steps back and draws the door closed.

  It rains all night. She lies awake, listening to the patter of it on the window, on the concrete path outside. The wind moves through the magnolia, the tips of the branches brushing against the walls of the house. Overhead there are creaks and groans and she knows that it’s Anton, awake and moving around. This reminder of him arouses suspicion within her – did he betray her secret? Did he deliberately break his promise? Reason tells her he couldn’t have. Why would he? She has witnessed his contempt for those tabloid hacks so bent on twisting his own story. She has seen him cowering from them, frightened of being exposed to their vicious lack of scruples, their limitless appetite for gossip. No, it must be some other source. And then she remembers how they swarmed to the town after Cian’s death – the same tribe of hacks, bent on digging the dirt. Because of her age, they couldn’t print her name. But was it unreasonable to think that her details might still be on record, sitting in some database held by these people, for future use, the provision of context in future stories?

  The night passes without word from Jake, and in the morning, she dresses herself and goes to work. At the office, several people remark on how pale and unwell she looks, but she is glad of the opportunity to lose her mind within the rigours of the familiar for just those few hours. On the train journey home, the doubts come flooding back.

  She eats alone in the kitchen. The flat shrinks around her. Dampness in the walls, the tang of mould in her nostrils. She cannot seem to get warm.

  When she tries calling Jake again, his phone is switched off. The message she leaves sounds weak to her ears, feeble, but she is running out of energy, disheartened by his silence, his refusal to speak to her. She tries to remember the last time she felt close to him, and what comes to her is the memory of a kiss when she lay in the hospital bed, scraped out and empty. She recalls the press of his lips against her forehead, the way he held her there. But the memory provokes a knot of grief, so she pushes the thought from her mind.

  That night, sleep sweeps down over her and Leah dreams again of Cian. It’s always the same dream. He’s lying on the changing table after his bath, his flesh all naked and warm, pink and chubby. He’s kicking his legs and laughing, making his high-pitched gurgling sounds. She’s laughing, too, and tickling him with one hand, the other reaching for the cotton wool and the baby lotion. In these dreams, she is half turned when she feels him begin to roll. The padded cushion beneath him slips to one side. In these dreams, she turns just in time and catches him, holds him to her chest. ‘Where d’you think you’re going?’ she tells him, smelling the baby shampoo in the fine threads of his hair, his little pounding fists at her neck, the sudden wriggle and bounce of him in her arms. That’s what she usually dreams.

  But tonight it’s different. In the dream, she half turns and reaches for the sink. The baby lotion is just there by the tap. Reaching for it, her fingers knock it over and it falls to the floor. Quickly, she leans away and bends down to pick it up – it takes an instant. And as she reaches, she feels the rush of air behind her, and then the soft thud, like china wrapped in cloth, hitting the cold surface of the tiles. The baby is sprawled on the floor. He doesn’t cry. He just lies there, his limbs outspread, staring up at the distant ceiling in amazement. Fear pounds in her chest and then she sweeps him up in her arms. In takes a minute or two before he starts to cry. He doesn’t wail or scream, but rather there is uncertainty within his distress, as if he’s not quite sure of the root of it.

  She holds him in her arms, and rocks him back and forth. ‘It’s okay, it’s okay, it’s okay,’ she tells him, her heart thudding through her chest and into his little body. Wetness against her blouse when he pees suddenly. She puts the padded mat back on the changing table and lays the baby down, holds him there with one hand on his belly. It takes a minute for her hands to stop shaking enough for her to fix his nappy on.

  ‘Hey,’ a voice says.

  Leah blinks her eyes open and starts to sit up.

  It’s dark in the room and, without consulting the clock, she knows it’s the middle of the night. Jake sits on the bed, his hand on her chest, gently but firmly, so it’s like he’s holding her down, preventing her from sitting up.

  ‘Jake?’ she says, her tongue thick in her mouth, the remnants of the dream disconcerting her.

  ‘I’m going now,’ he tells her.

  ‘What? But you’ve just come ba
ck.’

  She pulls herself up a little more and looks past him. There’s a light on in the hall and, through the open bedroom door, she sees a rucksack and a sports bag, both packed and waiting, a laundry bag bulging with Matthew’s toys. It’s all coming at her too fast. How long has she been asleep? How long has he been here, sneaking around packing up his things while she slept?

  ‘But where are you going?’

  ‘My parents’ house.’

  ‘But …’ She scrabbles to think. The pressure of his hand on her is lessening and then, abruptly, he gets up and goes into the hall.

  ‘But for how long?’ she asks. She’s out there with him now, pulling her dressing-gown around her, covering the long T-shirt of his she’s wearing.

  Jake doesn’t answer. He picks up the bags and heads outside to where the van waits. The ends of her dressing-gown flap about her and she feels the cold around her legs, the sting of it coming up through the soles of her bare feet as she follows him, panic making her blind to the manner of her dress.

  ‘You are coming back, though,’ she says, as he slams the back door, then climbs into the front seat.

  ‘Jake? You are coming back?’

  He doesn’t look at her, just turns the key in the ignition and pulls the van away, and she’s left there, staring at the red tail-lights travelling up the street until they disappear around the corner.

  It’s so quiet now. The windows in the houses opposite are blank. The park is a dense black mass pushing up against the night.

  Hurrying back inside the flat, she shuts the door behind her, goes into the kitchen, her movements blind with panic, and as she crosses the floor sudden pain shoots up through her foot. She lifts it and sees a stray piece of Lego embedded in her sole. And as she picks it out, she thinks of Jake hurriedly packing his son’s things, and then she thinks of Matthew chattering to himself as he played, and this somehow gets woven into her memories of Cian. The thought that all of this is behind her now, that happiness has been wrenched from her, causes a howl of anguish to rise through her and escape into the night air. All the pain she has kept suppressed for so long rushes to the surface. Here in her kitchen, she cannot control it any longer. She cries and cries, so loudly that, at first, she doesn’t hear the knocking. The gentle but firm tap-tapping on the glass.

  She wipes her eyes and turns, and then she sees him. His face pressed against the glass. And as she steps towards him, it’s not fear she feels but relief. Because she cannot carry the burden alone any more.

  He’s waiting with his arms held wide as she opens the door. Wordlessly, she steps into them.

  ‘Oh, my darling,’ Anton says softly, folding her into his embrace. ‘Oh, my poor sweet darling.’

  AUGUST

  * * *

  23

  Anton

  Intimacy.

  That is the word, Anton decides. The word he has been hunting around his brain for, the word to describe it.

  He stands in a queue, waiting. Ahead of him, a woman is sampling olives while a young bearded man in a long apron stands poised for her decision. There’s a breeze ruffling the awning overhead and a little dog keeps sniffing around Anton’s ankles – a tiny brown slinky thing, like a rodent on a lead. Anton smiles at the dog’s owner. ‘Busy today,’ he remarks.

  ‘It’s the good weather. Everybody flocks here.’

  The woman goes for the Kalamatas, picking through her purse for coins as the young man weighs and prices them.

  Anton looks at the wooden troughs glistening with various olives sweating in the heat of the August Sunday morning, and wonders whether Leah might prefer the Kalamatas or the stuffed Cerignolas. A thrill goes through him, like a volt of electricity, when he thinks of her, at this very moment lying in bed in his house, waiting for him.

  ‘Have you tried their salted almonds?’ the dog-owner asks him now. ‘Amazing. Very moreish, do you know?’

  Anton makes a vague humming sound of approval, then turns back to the counter.

  Moreish. A word he’s not familiar with. A word that seems to have sprung into existence during his years inside. Moments like this feel extraordinary to Anton, where he finds himself vividly present in the normal world once more, all his senses engaged, after so long starved in the darkness. Having a conversation with a stranger, being among these crowds of normal people, with this cornucopia of exotic foods spread in front of him, knowing that she is at home, right now maybe sitting up in bed, stretching.

  He buys Kalamata olives, anchovies, a Barolo salami, some salted almonds, puts them all in the cloth bag slung over his forearm, then drifts into the crowd. For weeks, he has been avoiding situations like this, shying away from the masses for fear of being overwhelmed, consumed. It’s something he hadn’t expected – how even after you’d left your cell behind, still you carried the confines within you. That cell, meant to keep the law-abiding public safe from you, becomes over time the thing that protects you from the outside world, a curious reversal. The very confinement you dreaded at the start becomes a need, a vital limitation. A few weeks ago, visiting the Sunday market would have been an impossibility for him. But now everything is different.

  There is a space free on one of the benches looking on to the spouting fountain, and Anton sits and opens the bag of olives, savouring the salty tang of juices as the fruit’s flesh bursts in his mouth. Nothing like this on offer at the hotel. But he doesn’t want to think of that now. Instead, he retreats into the quiet reserve of his imagination, replaying the events of the night he rescued her.

  He had been biding his time. That was the hard part. Keeping his distance until the time was right. Tricky enough, trying to judge it, but he knew, deep down, it was best to let her stew in her anxiety while she wondered if her young man would return. Best to let her hollow herself out with sleeplessness and doubt, the feverish going-over of past events in her mind, as if better to understand what the future might hold. Anton had experienced a single plunging moment of regret when he had heard the young man’s return in the middle of the night. Fearing a reunion, he had scuttled down the inner stairs to that private space that has become as familiar to him now as his own bed. He had listened anxiously, silently berating himself for not having made his move sooner, for having left it too late. He need not have worried. The fickleness of that foolish youth meant Anton was safe. And when the young man left with his bags that night, Anton had felt an unmistakable swell of triumph in his chest. Minutes later, the howling had started.

  He had not anticipated the level of her distress. The way she just fell apart like that. It was like witnessing a collapsing building, the nauseating plunge, the inevitable dropping away. She had fallen into his arms in defeat.

  ‘Oh, my darling. Oh, my poor sweet darling,’ he had said, aware of the flimsy dressing-gown she was wearing – why, she was almost naked.

  She had offered not the slightest resistance when he coaxed her upstairs, sinking weakly on to the sofa and staring blindly into the middle distance while he fixed her a brandy, and one for himself. A light had been turned off inside her, and he couldn’t be sure if she was actually hearing the words of comfort he spoke, if she was aware of him in the room at all. When he put out his hand to touch hers, she didn’t even blink.

  Anton finds himself remembering that touch. The coolness of her skin beneath his fingertips, like alabaster. Her bare feet on the rug – long and slender and pale, one toe crooked, an imperfection he found strangely endearing.

  ‘I’m afraid for you, sweetheart,’ he’d said. ‘You’re in a terrible state. I don’t like to think of you being alone.’

  She had put her hand to her forehead then, as if pained. Her brandy remained untouched.

  ‘I know what it’s like when those feelings come. The desolation. The awful emptiness inside.’ He’d kept his voice low and steady. ‘It’s not good to be alone with those kinds of thoughts. A slippery slope. Who knows where they might lead?’

  Both of them had been down that path before.
Their own separate journeys along that forlorn stretch of road. Weeks now since his own mishap, and in those days afterwards, when she’d come to him, coaxing him from the darkness of his depression, there was a moment when she’d revealed her own despair. It had happened when she was fifteen, shortly after the child’s death. Pills. She had panicked after swallowing them and told her parents moments later. A disaster swerved but not completely averted. Something like that stays with you.

  ‘I couldn’t have it on my conscience, sweetheart, if you did something to harm yourself, knowing I might have helped.’ He watched as the tears came, falling soundlessly. The heaving sobs had abated, replaced now by silence and a stillness within her that did, in fact, worry him a little.

  ‘Take a sip, love,’ he said softly, moving the glass towards her. She drank obediently, which pleased him, pushed him to say, ‘You need to rest. To get some sleep. But I hate the thought of you going back down there to that gloomy apartment, especially after what’s just happened. You there all alone, with no one looking after you. I’m not sure it’s a good idea, Leah,’ his voice silky with concern.

  He watched as a tear slipped down her cheek, falling on to the sleeve of her dressing-gown, making a little spreading stain through the fabric – some kind of nylon, it was. It had crackled with static electricity when he’d put his arms around her earlier.

  ‘There is, of course, the room upstairs,’ he offered, keeping his voice light while the blood thumped thickly through his chest. ‘Charlotte’s room. It would put my mind at ease, Leah, knowing you were not downstairs maybe doing something terrible. You would be welcome to rest there for the night, if you’d like.’

  Two nights now, as it happens.

  Anton puts the olives back in the cloth bag, and gets to his feet, moving in the direction of the park gates. He stops to buy bread at the One In the Oven stall, then continues, taking his time, a leisurely stroll. He knows she’ll still be there when he gets back, and half the pleasure is in the anticipation.