by Sarah May
‘Couldn’t sleep, honey?’ she said, starting up the concerned mother patter, but the words sounded too far away to be coming from her mouth.
Arthur stared up at her. ‘I’m thirsty.’
‘I’ll get you a drink,’ Ellie said, getting suddenly out of bed and pushing past Jessica.
Jessica thought about following them, but in the end took two steps across the floor and ended up falling onto the bed, letting her eyes shut almost immediately.
When she opened them again, she had virtually no memory of having fallen asleep, and no idea what time it was.
She thought she could hear talking, but maybe it was only the mice that came up from the florist’s, which she’d given up setting traps for. There was something digging into her left hip and, pulling the Walkman out from under her, she rolled over and fell back to sleep.
When she woke up a second time to the sound of a dog barking somewhere close by, her left arm was numb with pins and needles and she could smell faint traces of some sort of perfume on the pillow her face was pressed into. Disorientated, she didn’t have a clue where she was and for a moment wondered if she’d even made it back to the maisonette on Prendergast Road.
She sat up slowly, her head thumping. The alarm clock on the bedside table said 4.10. She didn’t have an alarm clock.
Sinking back onto the bed, she turned to face the wall and thought she saw Ellie floating beside her before realising it was the Ophelia poster Ellie had insisted on putting up.
She was in Ellie’s room and had been out cold for over five hours.
Once she caught up with this fact, she tried sitting up again. Then she tried getting up, but her head was so bad she was barely able to walk unaided and had to use furniture and the walls to claw her way to the bathroom.
Sticking her head in the sink, she drank from the tap until it felt as though her belly couldn’t take any more liquid. The rapid intake of tap water made her feel grey all over so she hung her head over the toilet bowl, thinking she was going to throw up.
She gagged three times and, as she stood up straight, caught sight of herself in the mirror and looked immediately away.
She took two Nurofen then shuffled across the hallway to Arthur’s room.
Arthur and Ellie were lying in Arthur’s narrow bed together.
Arthur was lying on his back near the wall, his arm out straight over the duvet.
Ellie was curled precariously on the edge.
Outside, a dog had started to bark.
It sounded like the same dog that had kept her awake the night before. Peering through the curtains at the bedroom window, she saw what looked like a dachshund streaking round the snatch of garden at the back of the florist’s, in circles. Whose was the dachshundand how was it getting into the garden?
Jessica turned away from the window and stood watching her children sleep.
She hated herself.
Chapter 22
The PRC had disbanded for the night and everybody had left No. 236 Prendergast Roadapart from Harriet and Miles, who couldn’t because they lived there.
Harriet was standing in front of the fridge looking for the bottle of milk she’d expressed that afternoon. ‘Miles? Miles?’ Shutting the fridge door, she moved into the hallway.
Miles appeared, leaning over the banister on the landing.
‘There was a bottle of milk in the fridge I wanted to give Phoebe at her twelve o’clock feed?’
‘Isn’t it there?’
‘Not that I can see.’
Miles, sighing, plodded his way downstairs past her and into the kitchen, where he took up her stance in front of the fridge.
‘Can you see it?’ she asked.
‘Definitely no bottle of milkyou’re sure you put it in the fridge?’
‘Sure.’
‘Sure?’ he asked again.
‘Surenot sureoh, I don’t know,’ she said, giving up.
The fridge started to hum and Harriet continued to stare into its well-lit interior, certain she’d expressed at least nine ounces of milk that afternoon and put it in the fridgeshe could picture it on the shelf between the tuna steaks and Rachel’s organic yoghurt.
She felt uncertainty course through her, and uncertaintyalong with doubt and suspicionwas the sort of thing that made her blotchy and, in extreme cases, brought on one of her sporadic bouts of eczema.
She shut the fridge door but stayed where she was, waiting for some sort of reassurance from Miles.
But nothing came, and after a while she said, ‘I’ll have to do the feed,’ already feeling sick at the thought of the pain.
Miles didn’t say anything to this.
He was staring, distracted, at his reflection in the window. This unnerved HarrietMiles wasn’t a vain manunnerved her as much as his newfound need to spend time alone; a latent hankering after solitude that she found inexplicably strange. Miles had never to date hankered after solitude. Miles was changing, and change and contradiction were, for Harriet, two of the least redeeming features of human existence; ones she categorically avoided, which was why up until now she had felt so safe with Miles.
To those looking in on them, Miles and Harrietas a couplehad an edgy dullness to them that had its origins in the fact that they had decided to commit to each other before actually falling in love; without knowing whether they would ever fall in love.
They met through friends, on line. When they actually met for the first time, face to face, Harriet realised immediately that Miles fulfilled all the criteria on her subconscious checklist for life partner. Miles gave her life structure and pattern. Maybe this was enough for Harriet; maybefor Harrietthis was love.
Who knows?
Harriet didn’t.
Harriet and Milesapart from obvious gender differenceslooked very similar. They were at their happiestor had been up until now, anywayspread out on the sofa watching Jane Austen adaptations. Nothing unfortunate, accidental or tragic had either shaped or misshaped their lives. Life hadso farno dark side, and the world they inhabited had no behind-the-scenes; was, in many respects, as palatable as any created by Disney, apart from the moderate sexual references and absence of talking, singing, dancing animals.
The only thing that they differed on was sex.
It came as a shock to Miles to discover that Harriet didn’t really like sex all that muchif at all. Probably because she’d never yet achieved orgasm, although Miles didn’t know this.
Now, watching the tension across Miles’s back, Harriet realised she was afraid; afraid for the first time since they’d been married.
‘Where’s the letter?’ he asked suddenly.
‘What letter?’ She walked over to the biscuit barrel and dug around for some chocolate animal biscuits. ‘Want one?’
He shook his head. ‘They taste of cheese.’
‘What these?’ She sniffed at the elephant she’d started to eat, then took another mouthful. ‘They taste of chocolate.’
Miles shrugged.
‘Nothing cheesy about them.’ She ate the rest of the handful slowly, then started to make a cup of tea.
‘Harriet!’ he said sharply. ‘Where’s the St Anthony’s letter?’
‘Well, I don’t know what you’ve done with it. You must have put it somewhere after I showed you when you came home from work.’
‘You never showed me the letter.’
‘I did. Miles…’ She shook her head, smiling, but there was panic in her eyes. Desperately changing the subject, she said, ‘Did you see Evie tonight? I never noticed beforebut she had dandruff; quite badly.’ She got the milk out the fridge; the recollection of Evie’s dandruff making her feel suddenly happy…anchored to something definite again. ‘It was everywherecompletely covered her shoulders.’
‘Don’t know how I could have missed it…’
‘No…’ She stopped short. Was Miles being ironic? It reminded her of the practical jokes he used to play on her when they first met. The practical jokes had taken her by surprise. She ch
anged the subject again.
‘And I can’t think what possessed Jessica Palmer to turn upor how she even found out it was happening.’
‘Loneliness,’ Miles said.
Harriet laughed, instinctively, then realised Miles hadn’t meant it to be funny.
Feeling suddenly tearful, she said, ‘And I can’t believe Arthur got a place at St Anthony’s. He had his fourth birthday party at McDonald’sin Peckham.’
‘HarrietI found the letter upstairs.’
‘You did?’
‘It was in that bag you keep your tights and the passports in.’
Harriet, standing by the fridge with the milk in her hand, burst into tears.
Miles waited.
They stayed where they were. Miles by the sink, waiting, and Harriet by the fridge, sobbing.
‘You phoned me at work this morning and told me Casper had got into St Anthony’s.’
‘I know,’ Harriet bellowed through tears, distraught. ‘I didn’t know what else to say. The letter came and…and I was scared.’ She ran her hand up the fridge door. ‘I didn’t know what to do. He didn’t get in, Miles. He didn’t get in.’
Miles cut in with, ‘If you’d told me earlier, I could have done something about it.’
‘But you still can, can’t you?’
‘I don’t know.’ He watched her waddle towards him.
‘We must only be about ten houses out of the catchment area.’
‘So, where is the catchment area?’
‘Well, given that everybody except us got a place, the lower half of Prendergast Road, Nielson Road, Beulah Hill.’
Miles stared at her with a precision that made her hold her breath. ‘Beulah Hill.’
Harriet nodded, still not daring to breathe.
‘We’re going to write a letter,’ he said.
‘To St Anthony’s?’
‘To St Anthony’s,’ he agreed, almost soothingly, ‘and the admissions authority. You’re going to tell them that I’m beating you. That I’m beating you to a pulp.’
Harriet smiled enthusiastically at him.
‘That you’ve had to move in with a friend living at Number eight Beulah Hill and that Beulah Hill will, to all intents and purposes, be your new address. The address must remain confidential, for your sake, and for the sake of the children. All correspondence regarding the school should in future be addressed to you at Number eight Beulah Hill. Obviously, this is an extremely stressful time for Casper, and it is essential that he suffers as little upheaval as possible and remains with the friends he made at nursery, all of whom are going to St Anthony’s. We’ll write it tomorrow.’ He broke off. ‘I presume you told everybody else what you told methat Casper got in?’
‘Of course I did.’
‘Well, you keep it like thatI’ll sort it.’
Harriet nodded, relieved but still terrified, and went upstairs.
Miles stood with a whisky in his hand and watchedon the kitchen monitoras Harriet sat hunched on the side of their bed, scratching at her left hand. Then she broke off scratching and curled her hand protectively round her neck instead as she looked up suddenly at the camera, staring straight at him.
Chapter 23
Evie left No. 236 Prendergast Road not long after Jessica, walking through the same rain in the opposite directionunder the protection of one of the new Orla Kiely umbrellas she had just reordered for ‘Boutique’ because they’d already sold out. In Evie’s opinion, the retreat to vintage in fashion and interiors was an unsurprising reaction to 9/11after which people lost their appetite for ethnic, for things from far away with an unfamiliar heritage. But the peak had been and gone; instinct told her that the exodus back to vintage was beginning to thin out.
Looking up, she was surprised to see that she was almost at No. 112. She stopped and tried to make a call on her mobile, but the person she wantedwhom she’d been trying all eveningdidn’t answer. Standing on the pavement, she could hear screaming coming from somewhereNo. 110, the house next door to them.
The houses at this end of Prendergast Road were semidetached with fifty-foot gardens and were now fetching well over seven hundred thousand, which wasn’t bad considering that the McRaes had bought their house five years ago for just under three hundred. The houses around them were still mixeda lot of flats, and a lot of social housing…like the one next door, No.110, where the shouting and screaming was coming from and where Evie was heading now.
No. 110 Prendergast Road was a parallel universe, where windows stayed open and tattered nets flapped wetly against outside sills.
Evie picked her way round some burst Blue Circle cement bags, a cylinder of gas and a broken dining chair, and banged on the slab of wood that was the front door.
The rain carried on beating down on the Orla Kiely umbrella, louder and faster, and her shoes were now soaked through.
She banged again and was about to give up when a black face appeared at an upstairs window.
The boy looked down, half smiling, and dropped his cigarettewhich she had to sidestep in order to avoid it landing on her umbrellathen disappeared.
She waited in the dreary orange light that shone out from the pane of glass above the front door, thinking that the boy was coming downbut the door didn’t open. As the woman’s screaming on the other side got louder, Evie turned away, getting as far as the pavement when a motorised scooter pulled upthe sort that had incited local residents like the McRaes to campaign for speed bumps through the PRC.
A white teenager in a T-shirt and wet tracksuit bottomswhom Evie knew as Jackgot off, keeping his helmet on. Pushing his visor up, he stared at her then made his way to the front door.
Evie followed him.
‘I told you to phone if you want stuff,’ he said, angry.
‘I tried phoningI’ve been phoning all night, but you never fucking answer,’ she hissed back.
There was the sound of a woman’s heels passing on the pavement behind her and the muffled giggling of a young couple heading home to have sex in a flat. Evie and Joel had started off having sex in a one-bedroom flat and over the years Evie had come to the conclusion that the smaller the living space, the better the sex.
The front door to No. 110 opened.
Inside the house another door opened and a woman was flung out into the hallway. She rebounded off a rusting radiator and fell onto the floor where she remained motionless for a few seconds, before starting to stir, and trying to get onto all fours.
Evie couldn’t take her eyes off the woman’s socks, which were white and covered in blue hearts.
Without turning round Jack said, ‘I’ll push it under the fence at the back. Put the cash through first, and don’t ever come knocking again.’
The door to No. 110 was shut in her face.
Within seconds, Evie was putting keys in her own front doorwith shaking handsand opening it to the sound of the TV and Joel’s wide, throaty laughter. She could hear the screaming starting up again next door, coming through their hall wall.
Joel didn’t turn round when Evie walked into the lounge.
On TV there was a woman in an exercise pool no bigger than an oversized bathtub, swimming against the current.
Joel threw his head back and laughed.
Lately, he’d become obsessed with the shopping channels and claimed to be overexposing himself to the cultural trash canWestlife CDs, the X-Factor, etc.on purpose. For his thirty-eighth birthday, he’d taken ten friends to the Take That concert.
‘Sorry it’s so loud,’ he shouted, ‘I’m trying to drown out next door. They’ve been at it for hours. I wasn’t sure about phoning the police.’
‘Did you?’
‘D’you think we should?’ He looked up at her, waiting.
‘Maybe we should.’
‘Ummaybe.’ His eyes strayed back to the TV again. ‘Only thing is, we could wind up with a brick through our window while Ingrid’s playing in here or somethingcan you imagine?’
‘Joel—’ Evie started.
>
Jerking suddenly forwards, he cut in with, ‘Is that Cher? My God, it looks like Cher.’
‘It can’t be Cher,’ Evie said, taking in the woman sitting on the edge of the exercise pool, reciting a list of vital statistics only achievable on purchase of one of the pools.
‘It’s Cher,’ Joel insisted.
Uninterested, Evie said, ‘Surely she doesn’t need the money that badly.’
‘Stranger things have happened,’ Joel responded cheerfully.
‘You coming to bed?’ Evie asked, distracted.
‘In about twenty minutes. I promised to help Martina revise for her Life in the UK test.’
‘Where is she?’
‘In her room.’
‘I’m just going out to the office.’
‘What, now?’ he said, turning round again, taking in the fact that Evie was still in her coat with her handbag on her shoulder.
‘We were talking tonight about setting up a local magazineI thought I might just make a few notes before turning in.’
‘Great idea,’ Joel said, enthusiastic, his face relaxing. ‘How long will you behalf an hour or something?’
‘About that,’ Evie said vaguely, walking through the house and into the back garden without turning on any outside lights.
Something scuttled across her feet and up a nearby tree.
The air smelt inexplicably different in the back garden as she made her way through the grasses they had planted, which gave way to black bamboo twice her height. She wasn’t entirely convinced by the bamboo; wasn’t sure whether it was okay to still have bamboo, but didn’t really have an idea about what to replace it with.
Once she was behind the bamboo, she squatted and pulled the lower panel off the fencing. The scuffed white Reeboks were already there on the other side and the smell of dog shit was overwhelmingEvie only hoped it was in Jack’s garden and not theirs.
‘Same stuff?’ Evie whispered.
A plastic sandwich bag was pushed under the fence then pulled back.
