Scurrying overhead, thudding on the stairs and then Emma bursts into the kitchen.
‘Don’t go mad,’ she says, ‘but I found these on a shelf in your mum’s room and I know you’ll definitely want to keep them.’
More photograph albums. Thick and square with blue, faux-leather covers. Emma sits at the table, opens an album up and gasps.
‘Your mum was so pretty.’ She pushes the album closer so I can see. My sixties mother, glamorous with her beehive and mini dresses, casts sultry looks into the lense. The version of my mother that ceased to exist once I came along.
‘She looked much happier before she had me,’ I say, not meaning to speak aloud. The wine has caught up with me.
‘Rubbish.’ Emma trawls through the album until she finds a picture to prove her point. ‘Look at that.’
Me in my mother’s arms. Red faced with a quiff of black hair.
‘She looks well chuffed,’ Emma says. I see no hint of elation in my mother’s drained face. She has the harrowed look of a survivor, one yet to make sense of the ordeal she’s just endured.
The fault line quivers. The last person to show me these pictures was my mother. Here, at this table.
‘Didn’t you ever want kids?’ Emma says as she pores over the pictures. She asks in such a casual manner, as though the question is a simple one.
‘No,’ I say.
She looks up. ‘What? Never?’
‘No. Never.’
She closes the photo album. A twinge in my chest gathers strength until I blurt out, ‘I was pregnant once.’
‘Oh.’ She pulls her chair closer to mine. ‘What happened?’
‘I didn’t keep it.’ I expect her to look shocked, but she doesn’t. Instead she asks me why? Why didn’t I keep it? ‘Lots of reasons,’ I say.
‘Like what?’ she demands, with the loud belligerence of someone who has crossed the line from drunk to pissed. ‘Like what?’
No more questions. She is drunk and I am drunk, and this night should end now.
‘It’s getting late,’ I say. ‘Why don’t I call you a taxi?’
‘It’s not even nine.’
A burst of light to my right. I jump up and raise the blind at the kitchen window. The new sensor light I got fitted has come on, bringing the patio to life. The back of the garden remains in shadow.
‘What’s wrong?’ Emma asks.
‘There’s been someone hanging round here lately,’ I say. ‘Probably just local kids,’ I add, not wanting to scare her.
‘Have you been to the police?’
‘Not yet.’
‘Good. I mean, you don’t want to get them involved unless you have to.’ Before I can protest, Emma is up and grappling with the back door key.
‘Don’t,’ I say, but she is soon out on the patio in her socks.
‘If anyone’s there, just sod off,’ she yells. She spins round towards the kitchen window and gives me a thumbs up, signalling I have nothing to fear, but the vision of her looking in on me makes my scalp prickle.
She skips beyond the light’s reach. I peer through the glass but cannot see her. When a knock on the window gets no response, I move to the back door.
‘Emma?’ I call into the darkness. She groans in response. ‘Emma?’
I edge across the patio and find her on her knees by the shed. The stench of vomit hits me as soon as I lean over her.
‘Sorry,’ she says, ‘didn’t think I was this pissed.’
‘It’s okay.’ I help her to her feet and steer her back inside.
‘Better lie down for a minute,’ she mumbles.
‘Yes. Of course. Come on through and lie on the sofa,’ I say, but once in the hallway, she lurches to the stairs.
‘Need to go to bed.’
We navigate the stairs together. At one point I stumble and wonder who is helping whom. I steer her along the landing and into Mum’s room. As soon as I pull back the duvet, she collapses into the bed with a sigh.
‘If you feel better in a bit, I’ll call you a taxi,’ I say, but she has already shut her eyes. I can’t send her home in this state; she’ll have to stay the night. This is my fault for buying her two bottles of wine. I should at least have encouraged her to drink more slowly.
I cover her with the duvet. Beneath it, her tiny body twitches and her feet jerk as she slides into sleep. My earlier fears dissolve as I watch her face relax. She looks so peaceful now. No wonder she’s exhausted after her early start and hours on her feet. All the time with a smile on her face, doing her best to make a miserable Christmas bearable for all involved.
I don’t move. I listen to her breathing—heavy exhalations that verge on snoring. I dip my head towards hers and inhale a mixture of lemon-scented shampoo and cigarette smoke. It would be irresponsible to leave her alone; she might be sick again. I should stay and watch over her.
My eyelids sag, unable to bear their own weight anymore. I yawn. My mother’s mattress yields as I recline. I’ll lie here for a minute. Just a minute.
***
My mother fell asleep right away. Curled on her left side, knees bent. I snuggled into her, my spine against her belly, her legs parked snug under mine. I lay awake, replaying the moment she’d almost confessed everything to me. I never expected that. When she spoke of being pregnant, her sadness surrounded us like a fog. The same sadness I’d detected the first time I saw her. If that stupid light hadn’t interrupted us, she would have spilled it all out, and I’d have said, it’s me, I’m here, Mum. I’m here.
Instead, she’d tried to get rid of me again. Getting late, I’ll call you a taxi. No chance. Making myself sick was easy enough—two fingers down the throat, hard and sharp.
My mother began to snore. Deep, nasal vibrations. Her hand sought me out and rested on my waist. Was she dreaming of me? Her hand slipped down and came to rest on the jut of my hip. She held on tight, as if finding safety in it.
***
I wake in a room murky with grey dawn light. The hand is there to greet me. The inescapable fact of it on my chest. I draw sharp, frantic breaths.
The hand moves. It creeps towards my throat and settles on my windpipe. Where has all the air gone?
I remember I am dreaming and wait to wake again, but this release fails to arrive. Where has all the air gone? I rip the hand away. It returns, along with another. Two hands gripping my wrists. Her voice telling me to calm down. To stop screaming.
‘Grace,’ she says, ‘it’s me.’
I free my hands and slap hers away. She cries out. Then I hear a click and a bedside lamp fills the room with a soft yellow light.
‘It’s me,’ she says, and I realise I’m awake. I realise she is Emma. Emma with messy hair and a red crease down one side of her face. Emma looking as scared and confused as I feel.
‘You were having a nightmare,’ she says.
‘Sorry… It felt… I thought it was real.’
She places a hand on my shoulder, but I shake it off, unable to bear the contact. Red blotches appear on her cheeks.
‘Should I get you some water?’ she asks.
‘No.’ The inappropriateness of the situation hits me. ‘I didn’t mean to fall asleep here,’ I say. ‘I was worried you might—’
‘It’s okay.’
‘It’s not okay.’ The scratch marks on her hands fill me with guilt. I look away, unable to meet her eyes.
‘I shouldn’t have got so wasted,’ she says. ‘Why don’t I make us a cup of tea?’
‘No. Please… I’m… I’m not feeling well.’ The muscles around my throat are tender. I grope my way out of bed and examine my neck in the mirror above Mum’s dressing table. No marks to be seen.
Stop it, I tell myself. Nightmares aren’t real.
‘Do you need some paracetamol?’ Emma asks.
‘No.’ That prickling sensation in my scalp returns. I have to get her out of the house. Get her away from me.
She throws back the covers and springs out of bed. ‘We really need a cu
p of tea.’
‘For God’s sake.’ My barked words paralyse her.
‘What’s wrong?’ she asks, voice and bottom lip trembling. She looks so young. So innocent.
‘Nothing, Emma. I’m just really not feeling well. Maybe you should go.’
The red blotches on her cheeks grow and merge. Anger transforms her face; she looks like a stranger. ‘You’re kicking me out?’ she says. ‘Why? What have I done wrong?’
‘Nothing.’
‘You’re just using her.’
‘What?’
‘Me. You’re just using me. When your mum’s dead, you won’t need me and you won’t even bother keeping in touch.’
‘Emma—’
‘I’ll see myself out.’ She pushes past me, slamming the door behind her.
I can’t let her go. I have to let her go.
When the front door bangs shut, I make my way to the kitchen with tentative steps, flinching at the early stirrings of a headache.
Half an hour later, as the terror of the dream recedes, the extent of my appalling behaviour dawns on me. What on earth was I thinking, treating Emma that way? No wonder she was furious.
I have to get a grip. I’ll lose myself again if I’m not careful.
I decide to send her an e-mail to apologise. Last thing I need is any awkwardness between us at Birch Grove. I have enough of that already with John. I lift my bag from the back of the kitchen chair and reach inside for my phone.
It is only as I’m trying to compose the first sentence of the e-mail, that I realise what is missing. I empty the contents of my handbag onto the carpet. I even check behind the ripped lining, but the envelope containing the photographs is nowhere to be found.
48
Tuesday, 12 September 1995
Royal Edinburgh Hospital
I bought two pregnancy tests, just to be on the safe side. Desperate to find out as soon as possible, I rushed to a nearby shopping centre and took the escalator down to the toilets in the food hall.
In the end cubicle, I read the instructions for the test carefully, even though I’d used the same brand last time. One blue line for negative, two blue lines for positive. It would take four minutes. I settled myself on the toilet, the white plastic stick expectant beneath me. The heavy stream of urine I released soaked my hand as well as the stick.
I kept telling myself I was crazy. No way could I be pregnant.
By the time I’d dried my hand on a piece of toilet roll, the first blue line had appeared.
As I waited to see if another line would join it, the main door to the toilets banged open. Screams, swearing and leg slapping followed. A little boy’s voice begged to return to Toys R Us, but his mother wrestled him into the cubicle next to mine.
She told him to stand still so she could undo his trousers. I could see his blue wellingtons, patterned with yellow ducks. I thought he might be an omen. I thought if he crouched down and stuck his face into my cubicle it might mean something.
They left, I never saw his face. A minute later, the second blue line appeared.
PART THREE
49
Monday, 28 December 2015
ISOBEL HARRINGTON
1954–2015
BELOVED WIFE AND MOTHER
ALWAYS IN OUR HEARTS
Isobel’s memorial stone lay embedded in the grass in the Garden of Remembrance behind Aldersham church. The Harringtons had never attended the village church, apart from to drag me to the Christmas carol concert every year, but when Isobel died, Quentin insisted on finding somewhere close to keep her.
I laid my bouquet of pink gladioli on top of the white marble slab.
‘Happy birthday,’ I said and then stood in silence, not sure what else we had to discuss. I took a few pictures of the stone and the flowers with my phone to send to Quentin, as requested. Proof I’d visited Isobel, as promised.
A light drizzle began to fall. I opened up the black golf umbrella provided earlier by Stuart the chauffeur, who sat waiting for me in the silver Mercedes S-Class parked across the road.
‘I had to take a driver,’ I explained to Isobel, ‘the past few days have been hectic.’
So much travelling—Brentham, London and then Brighton yesterday. I couldn’t have coped with another train journey. I wanted to get back in the Mercedes and head for London and some much needed sleep, but my conscience kept me standing in the rain, the heels of my boots sinking deep into the sodden grass.
‘She rejected me,’ I said to Isobel. ‘Again.’
I told you so.
‘Thought you’d say that.’ I wanted to go back in time, to my mother cuddling me in bed, her hand gripping my hip. The sound of her snoring, the wine fumes on her breath. A brief interlude of contentment soon spoiled by sour memories of the half-confession she’d made only hours ago. The way she’d called me ‘it’. Dan Thorne wouldn’t leave me alone either, forcing me out of bed and down to the kitchen to fetch my phone. I crept upstairs and into the small bedroom, opening the box again and taking out the photo album, checking every now and then that my mother hadn’t stopped snoring. Definitely him, I thought, after comparing the old image and the new.
Could he be my father? The dates matched, and my mother had acted strange when I’d asked about him earlier. A quick Google search on my phone led me straight to him. I read about his wife, Stella, and their two children.
I sat for hours on the narrow single bed, going over it all. What if he and my mother had been arguing about me that day? What if he wanted to find me but she’d kept me from him all this time?
The sky outside her window mutated from black to grey. I returned to my grandmother’s bedroom and stood over my mother as she slept. Her dreaming eyes roved back and forth beneath her oily eyelids. I felt sick with fury and longed to hurt her as she had hurt me, but at that moment she reached for me again in her sleep. Her hands caressed the empty mattress and lured me in. I lay in her arms, torn between joy and anger. We fitted so well together, two lost pieces reunited. I brought my head to her ribcage, spellbound by the thump of her heartbeat. The sound that had comforted me for the first nine months of my life. I placed my hand on her chest. As she exhaled, my fingers traced the journey of her breath along her windpipe. Her throat in my hand, throbbing and live.
Then she woke, flinging me from her in disgust. When I tried to offer comfort, she recoiled, unable to hide her revulsion. She tried to act as if nothing had happened between us, as if our intimacy had meant nothing to her.
She couldn’t get me out of there fast enough. Before leaving the house, I wanted to take something from her. She could at least give me the money for a taxi. I rummaged through her handbag, intending to pinch ten pounds from her purse, but instead I discovered the envelope with the photographs and her notes inside. To see my own mother had gathered evidence against me left me reeling.
I’d stolen the envelope on impulse. Only afterwards did I notice the photographs were copies. Where did she get them from? Who gave them to her? I’d probably never know but better I had them than my mother, just in case she changed her mind about going to the police.
You don’t think before you act, Cassie.
‘I know,’ I said to the marble stone. ‘I know.’
***
When I could no longer bear looking at Isobel’s grave, I returned to the Mercedes. Stuart closed the crime novel he was reading and stepped out of the car. He fastened his grey suit jacket over his protruding belly before opening the rear door for me.
‘All done?’ he asked in his Glaswegian accent.
I nodded. ‘Straight back to London, please.’ We drove away from the church and into the heart of the exclusive village, along the main street with its deli, organic butcher and patisserie. Temptation swelled inside me until I gave in and instructed Stuart to take a right at the end of the street, followed by a left. Soon we were parked outside the wrought-iron gates of Lake View, the house I’d grown up in.
‘I’ll only be a few minutes,’
I told Stuart as he opened the door and helped me out. I followed the red-brick wall that bordered the garden. Once out of Stuart’s sight, I clambered up and over it. I’d left my keys in London, determined not to come here.
Quentin had closed up the big white house with the thatched roof until his return. All the diamond-leaded windows had their curtains drawn. I wandered across the grass to the large pond with the weeping willow. A meander around the water’s edge took me to the terraced rockery—Isobel’s pride and joy and the setting for our final confrontation. Apart from a few shrubs, the rockery was bare, the soil holding its breath until spring. Whatever bulbs our gardener, Harry, had buried below would then push through. Plants and flowers Isobel would never see.
My father had a lovely front garden at his place. A quick online search had uncovered two Dan Thornes in Brighton. Before my trip there yesterday, I’d used Google street maps to help me figure out which address he lived at. The first property I looked at was a grey bungalow. I guessed he wouldn’t live somewhere like that, and I was right. He had one of those coloured houses on a steep street above the city. A whole building to himself, not just an upper- or lower-floor flat. His windows looked new and eggshell blue paint coated the exterior of the house. The classiest place on the street by far. I’d feared he might be away for Christmas, but tasteful silver stars twinkled in his windows, and I only had to wait an hour before he emerged with his family.
What a beautiful unit. His elegant wife with the streak of grey in her long black hair. His blonde daughter and his younger, black-haired son. And, of course, my father. Much better looking in real life than in his profile picture. They were perfect. I wanted to hate them, but I couldn’t.
We walked into town together. My half-siblings skipped ahead while my father and Stella had a heated discussion about New Year. My father didn’t seem happy that Stella’s parents would be spending it with them, and Stella said she could hardly have refused, and my father got cross and said he supposed he had no say in the matter seeing as Stella’s father had bought them the house, and she said that’s not what she meant. But by the time we reached the seafront, they’d kissed and made-up, snogging on the promenade like a pair of teenagers.
She Chose Me Page 19
