Time to move on. Time to pack it all away.
At ten-thirty, the doorbell rings.
‘Hiya,’ Emma says when I open the door, a wide smile on her face. A dull ache ripples across my stomach.
‘Hello there,’ I reply. A large, pink umbrella shelters her from the rain. The white slogan printed on it tells me to keep calm, it’s only raining. ‘Come on in.’
I hang up her green parka jacket and put her umbrella in the brass stand next to the telephone table. She insists on taking her ankle boots off.
‘Don’t want to muck up your carpets.’ She pulls a pair of slippers from her backpack with a magician’s flourish. ‘Ta-da.’
‘Very organised.’ The slippers she pushes her tiny feet into are the same pink as her umbrella, each one embroidered with an instruction to keep calm and snooze. I turn and head towards the kitchen. ‘If we can make a start in here, that would be fab.’ When I look back she is gone. ‘Emma?’
I hear the sound of doors opening and closing upstairs. The faint pad of her footsteps.
‘Just sussing the place out.’ She appears at the top of the stairs. ‘There’s tons to do.’
‘Well, getting the kitchen sorted will be a big help.’
‘Sure.’ She skips downstairs, oversized gold hoops swinging from her ears. ‘We can do the rest another time.’
‘Thanks, but that won’t—’
‘Can’t wait to get started,’ she says, squeezing past me. I follow her into the kitchen. My e-mail did only ask for her help today, but I can put her off at a later date. Don’t want to offend her.
‘That’s proper weird, seeing your mum’s stuff like this,’ she says. ‘Bet she misses it all, bless her.’
‘I don’t think she remembers the house most of the time.’
Emma bends down and picks up the tea towels that lie scattered on the floor around the kitchen table. I smile at the memory of how they ended up there. While I fill the kettle, Emma folds the towels and places them back on the table in a neat pile. Almost exactly in their original position.
‘Thanks,’ I say. Her fingers trace a pattern across the surface of the table.
‘No worries,’ she replies. We stand in silence for a moment.
‘Tea?’ I ask. ‘I’ll make you one for a change.’ She nods. I fill the kettle and switch it on. ‘Hope this hasn’t mucked up your work schedule for the weekend?’
‘Nah. I’ve been covering loads recently so Kegs owed me a day off.’ She fiddles with one of her earrings, twisting it round and round. I ask how she’s getting on with her application form. ‘Great,’ she says, ‘that stuff you gave me was well helpful.’
‘If you need me to take another look once you’ve finished, just ask.’
‘Cheers, that’d be brill.’
I show her the dinner services in the dresser and ask her to wrap them in the old newspapers I’ve been collecting.
‘No problemo,’ she says.
After I’ve made the tea, we get to work—Emma on the crockery and me sorting through Mum’s baking cupboard, which contains an extensive collection of equipment, including the large, round tin Mum used for my birthday cakes. My eyes fill up as I deposit it in one of the charity boxes, but I have to be ruthless. Getting rid of bad memories means losing some good ones too.
Emma has no intention of leaving the past undisturbed. She asks question after question. How long did my family live in the house? What did I like most about growing up here? Why did my mother have three dinner services?
‘Bet she baked amazing cakes,’ she says, nodding at the pile of loaf tins beside me on the floor. ‘Did you make stuff together when you were little?’
‘Sometimes.’
‘That must have been fun?’ Her expression is wistful.
I nod. We had some good times in this room, Mum and I. Her measuring and stirring, me in charge of licking clean the mixing bowls and wooden spoons. We had darker times too. Me, twenty years ago, sitting at the table sobbing. Begging for support. Her refusing me in the worst way possible.
Don’t do it, Grace. It’s a sin.
Yesterday, as soon as I entered her room, she said, ‘Only trying to help.’
‘You didn’t help me, though,’ I said. ‘Did you?’ Her eyes burned into me. For a moment, I feared we might finally talk, but she drifted back to the TV.
‘I’ve finished all the plates and stuff,’ Emma says, loading the last of the dinner services into a cardboard box.
‘One more thing to do.’ I fetch the Virgin Mary from the window sill. ‘She can go.’
‘Hail Mary, full of grace,’ Emma says, as I swaddle the statue in layers of newspaper. ‘I don’t know the rest.’
‘Who cares?’ I shove the Virgin Mary in a box.
Emma frowns. ‘Won’t your mum want that? You could take it to Birch Grove.’
‘No.’
She watches as I fold the flaps of the lid shut. ‘Can I have a look at the living room?’ she asks.
‘Sure.’
As soon as we move next door, Emma rushes across to the bookcase and hones in on the family photographs. ‘Who is everyone?’ She picks up a black-and-white picture of my nan in her mother-of-the-bride outfit. ‘That must be Polly’s mum? Oh my God, they are literally lookalikes. Tell me about her.’
I’m in no mood for reminiscing, but Emma’s excited enquiries are impossible to refuse. I tell her about my nan, a hard-drinking Catholic charlady from Stockport. Emma doesn’t believe me when I say she had an outside toilet.
‘It’s true,’ I say. ‘When I stayed with them I had to use a potty during the night.’
She laughs. ‘That’s mental.’
It’s fun, sharing my family history with someone. I’m about to launch into a story about my dad’s father, who fought with the Chindits in Burma during World War Two, but Emma moves on to the next shelf and my mother’s menagerie of crystal animals.
‘Super cute,’ she says, picking up a hedgehog with glittering spikes. I understand now why I followed Emma, why I like having her around. She gives me glimpses of the life I chose not to have.
‘Would you like to keep it?’ I ask, aware I’m acting out what might have been. Role-playing a moment meant for someone else.
Her eyes widen. ‘I couldn’t.’
‘Might as well. Better than it going to charity.’
‘Wow. Thanks.’ She holds the hedgehog in her cupped palms. ‘I’ll look after it.’
Her gratitude moves me. She has no one to give her gifts, and I have no one to give gifts to. We’re just two people helping each other through a difficult time. What harm can it do?
***
I wake, fighting for air, and grope for my bedside lamp. As light floods the room, I glance at the bedroom door.
Nothing.
Touching the bony hollow between my breasts, I wipe away the sweat collecting there. Force myself to take slow, rhythmic breaths. In, hold, out.
The dream I haven’t been able to remember is a nightmare. An old foe. I fell asleep to find her waiting. When I ran, she followed. Terror tied a knot around my heart. Terror drove me up a flight of stairs and into a room. I crouched in the dark belly of a wardrobe, each breath bold as a thunderstorm. I knew she would find me. She always found me.
I heard her solemn, deadly footsteps. I heard her heartbeat. Her accusatory little heartbeat, drumming just for me. The wardrobe door clicked open, and she slipped her hand inside. Her tiny, pink hand.
I woke before it could reach me.
37
Monday, 11 September 1995
Royal Edinburgh Hospital
She came back for me. Two nights ago. I don’t remember waking, but Simon said I was in a bit of a state and that’s why the nurses sedated me. I was out of it all day yesterday but feel better today.
He asked if it was the same nightmare I started having months ago. I said yes and, at his request, described it to him. He wanted to know what I thought the dream was about. A longing to talk came over
me. To unload myself, just a little.
‘I was pregnant,’ I said. He asked me what happened to the baby, and I said I didn’t keep it. I told him about the abortion.
His expression didn’t alter, but he radiated the quiet triumph of a man who thought he’d reached the heart of the matter. He asked if the nightmare began after the termination and I said, yes, about a week afterwards.
I had no idea what the nightmare signified at the time. No clue it would lead me here.
Simon glanced at the notepad on his desk. He reminded me that when I’d arrived at the hospital, I’d insisted I was being punished. Kept saying it over and over. Did I think I was being punished for not keeping my baby? he asked.
Tears clustered in my eyes. Simon said I’d had a difficult choice to make but insisted it had been my right to make it. I said he should try telling my mother that.
He let out a knowing sigh and said he finally understood why I’d refused to let him contact Mum. I’m not under section, so he couldn’t ignore my wishes. Mum thinks I’m on tour in Germany. I told her months ago I’d got a part in a musical revue and wouldn’t be able to contact her very often. Yesterday, I rang her from the payphone outside the dayroom and told her I was in Frankfurt. After a few minutes of strained small talk, I said the tour had been extended for another few months. In a cold, flat voice she said, ‘Oh well, career comes first, I suppose.’
Simon asked if Mum had disagreed with the decision I made, and I said that was one way of putting it. He was adamant that none of what I’d been through was a punishment for making that choice. He pleaded with me to believe him.
I knew he was right. I longed to go back in time, to the moment I’d made my decision with confidence, never questioning my right to make it. A victory for reason over biology.
If only I’d kept the news of my disaster to myself. If only I hadn’t phoned Mum.
As soon as she asked me what was wrong, I burst into tears. I explained that Dan had left me and she said, ‘Honestly, all this over some boy.’
I confessed I was pregnant and told her I couldn’t keep it. A long silence followed and then she begged me to come home. I asked her if she’d help me.
‘Just come home, love,’ she said.
38
Monday, 14 December 2015
‘You seem agitated,’ Dr Costello said.
‘No, I’m not.’ My right thumb and forefinger fiddled with the diamond stud in my right ear. An annoying habit I’d picked up from Emma.
‘A bit down then?’ he ventured.
‘I’m not feeling suicidal, if that’s what you’re asking?’
‘No, Cassie. That’s not what I’m asking.’
My mother’s upcoming birthday had me all over the place. So many decisions—what to get her, how to celebrate, whether to divulge the real me.
I shrugged. ‘It’s nearly Christmas. That’s enough to make anyone feel bad.’
He raised his eyebrows. ‘Can’t disagree with you there.’
‘Buying presents already?’ I said, pointing at the Harrods bags stuffed under his desk.
‘A necessary evil.’
As was this appointment. I’d considered cancelling it, but during yesterday’s Skype call Quentin begged me not to neglect my therapy and hinted he’d check up on me if necessary. Couldn’t risk that at this crucial stage. He’d looked in need of help himself. Unshaven with a glass of whisky in his hand, the ends of his sentences disintegrating. Pitiful, really.
‘Can you describe how you’ve been feeling?’ Dr Costello asked.
‘Are those presents for your kids?’
He folded his arms. ‘Are you sure it’s just the season of goodwill that’s getting to you?’ He never liked me asking questions about his kids. Or his wife. Especially his wife. Guess he had to maintain some professional boundaries. ‘Cassie?’
‘Yes. I hate Christmas.’ I should have been in a great mood, the best mood ever, but my conflicting feelings for my mother had left me confused as always. I’d spent nearly all Sunday with her, packing up some of my grandmother’s stuff. We’d cracked up laughing when we found a whole drawer of Mills and Boon books under the coffee table. We spent ages reading out the naffest bits to each other—women with pulsating hearts and tall, dark men seething with dangerous passion. So much fun I could have wept with happiness, but then my mother gathered up the books and dumped them in a box for charity. A brutal cull. Did she get rid of me so easily? She knelt on the floor beside me, gathering up the loose pages that had fluttered from the tattered romances. A line from my grandmother’s Bible came to me: But I am full of the wrath of the Lord; I am weary of holding it in. I picked up a crystal swan from the bookcase. It was small but heavy and would do some damage if applied with enough force. My mother glanced up and urged me to take the swan as well as the hedgehog if I had room for it. Her voice cracked. She looked so sad I felt awful for even thinking of hurting her.
‘Things going well with your boyfriend?’ Dr Costello asked.
‘Great.’ Ryan had forgiven me for our last falling out. He’d had no choice after I’d bought us tickets for a VIP tour of Arsenal football stadium. One of the dullest afternoons of my life, but it got him back on side.
Dr Costello smiled. ‘Good. And you’re still enjoying the job? It’s not too much for you?’
‘I feel sorry for them.’
‘Who?’
‘The olds. The way they just get dumped in these places.’
‘It’s a little more complex than that, Cassie.’
‘Is it?’ What about my poor grandmother? My mother had hardly seen her recently. No excuse for that.
‘Sometimes,’ said Dr Costello, ‘the elderly aren’t safe at home and need to be where they can receive better care.’
‘Their families should do it.’
Costello pressed his lips together before he spoke. He always did that when I was getting to him. ‘Sometimes family members aren’t able to provide the right care,’ he said. ‘Sometimes they have to do what’s best for the person they love.’
I sighed. ‘You’re talking about my mother, aren’t you?’
‘Am I?’
‘You know you are.’
‘Weren’t you?’
‘You’re always making excuses for what she did.’
‘I’m suggesting reasons.’
‘I nearly died.’
‘I believe your mother was sorry for what she did.’
‘You think being sorry makes it okay?’
He sighed. ‘Perhaps she was scared and alone. She may have been too young to understand what she was doing. She might not even have realised she was pregnant.’
‘My mother’s not stupid,’ I said. ‘She’s got a degree.’
He lurched forward then, eyes alive with the possibility of catching me out. ‘Why do you say that?’
I sat very still, working out how to evade him. ‘That’s how I like to think of her,’ I said. ‘Clever, with a university degree. Something arty.’
He relaxed back into his chair. ‘Have you been thinking about her a lot recently?’
‘A bit. I suppose that’s because of Isobel dying?’
‘Perhaps.’ That’s when he asked about the people at work. Had I made any friends? If so, how old were they and what were their names? I guessed what he was getting at and made it very clear that my best friend at work, Surinder, was almost the same age as me.
‘That’s good then,’ he said. Before I left, he told me to make another appointment before Christmas. He said we shouldn’t leave it too long at this trying time of year. ‘Oh, and, Cassie,’ he added, as I stood up to leave, ‘bring your scrapbook with you next time.’
My scrapbook. The fragments of my early life that Costello and I had compiled when he first started helping me. I’d taken it to Emma’s bedsit a few weeks ago.
‘I think it would be helpful if we looked through it together,’ he said.
***
The steamy air around me filled with
the sounds of a beating heart and sloshing fluid.
‘What the hell is that?’ Ryan asked from his end of the bath.
‘Womb music,’ I said.
‘Where’s it coming from?’ I pointed to the speakers above the bathroom door. ‘It’s a bit weird,’ he said.
‘It’s relaxing.’
He moaned as I massaged his calves beneath the foam-filled surface of the water. ‘Now that’s relaxing.’
‘Better than dinner with Nick and Maya?’
His eyelids drooped shut. ‘Yeah, you win.’ I’d had to tempt him with something special to get out of the double-date nightmare he’d planned for me. What if I met his friends and they didn’t like me? The longer I could put it off the better.
‘I said they’d get to meet you at the Christmas party,’ he murmured.
‘What Christmas party?’
‘The Aroma one. It’ll be awesome.’ He opened one eye. ‘You will come?’
‘Don’t know. Maybe.’
His pained expression irritated me.
‘Will I be seeing you at all over Christmas?’ he asked.
‘I’ll be spending it with my gran.’
‘Yeah, but we’ll see each other at some point?’
Unlikely, but I couldn’t face an argument now. I slid my hands up his thighs, and he groaned as I cupped his balls. It didn’t take long to finish him off, and afterwards the subject of Christmas appeared forgotten.
I instructed him to do my feet and lay back amongst the bubbles as he rubbed the ball of my right foot.
‘You look tired, babe,’ he said.
‘I am.’ The effort of not screwing up in front of Costello always left me drained. The same kind of exhaustion I often felt after being Emma for the day.
I focused on the hollow heartbeat echoing round the bathroom, hoping it would take me back to my mother. To the time we were as one. Instead I remembered lying in a bath with a belly full of paracetamol, waiting to slip from this world to the next. I was seventeen and trying to get over Miss Robertson, my A-level English Literature teacher. She had blonde hair and blue eyes, she’d shown kindness towards me and I thought I could trust her. When I tried to get to know her better, she caused such a fuss. Making me move schools was a bit harsh in my opinion, but Isobel and Quentin didn’t stick up for me, so I had no choice. My suicide attempt took weeks of planning, but I hadn’t counted on the bath water cooling so fast around me. The cold had dragged me back into consciousness. Back to Isobel’s screams, muffled and distant. Why, Cassie? Why?
She Chose Me Page 14
