Guilt Trip

by Maggy Farrell

  I turned off the tap, my eye instinctively checking the bathroom door to make sure that it was locked properly before I reached out for a towel, wrapping it round me as I emerged from the shower. I wasn’t totally used to sharing a bathroom with strangers yet. It made me feel uncomfortable and self-conscious - as if they could see me.

  Back in my bedroom I checked the time. I’d been in the shower far too long. Dad would be waiting for me. But hurrying was made difficult by the tablet, which had really started to take effect now. It certainly was stronger than my usual dose. What had started out as a pleasant, calming effect had now intensified so that my head seemed stuffed with cotton wool, and all my movements felt sluggish and clumsy.

  Slumping down in front of the mirror, I tried to brush my hair quickly, but my arm felt heavy, weighted down, so that the task seemed to take forever. Then, trying to concentrate really hard, I drew on a wobbly line of gold eyeliner and then started on my lashes. But I was all fingers and thumbs, and inevitably, managed to get the mascara brush too close to my eye. Tutting, I leaned in, poking at a black filament, which insisted on swimming about under the rim of my eyelid.

  And that’s when I noticed it: a dark mass above my head.

  It was a print, on the wall behind me. Not the usual hotel-style bland landscape in a frame, but an actual poster of some old band. I turned to look behind me, my eye still watering, wondering how I’d missed it all this time.

  But there was nothing there - just a plain, boring, beige wall.

  Still rubbing my eye, I turned back to the mirror. No, there was nothing there in the reflection either.

  Yet I had definitely seen it - and not just a dark shape caused by a clot of mascara either. I had quite clearly made out the lead singer, all dishevelled sun-bleached hair and a guitar. But why would I imagine such a thing?

  Especially after my tablet.

  My heart sank.

  It hadn’t worked. The tablet hadn’t worked. It hadn’t stopped the visions at all.

  All it had done was to make me horribly lethargic and slow.

  I checked the time on my phone again. Dad had been waiting for ages now - I had to get going.

  Making a concerted effort, I pulled myself up, shoving my feet into my shoes and stumbling for the door. But as I passed the bare wall, something caught my eye, making me stop. There were marks, there, exactly where I had imagined the poster to be. Tiny holes, painted over, but still visible. Four tiny holes, positioned into a rectangular shape. Like those left by drawing pins.

  There had been a poster there once.

  I stared stupidly at them, trying to remember if I’d noticed them before. I didn’t think so - but I must have done, maybe subconsciously, my mind squirrelling away the information, using it to weave another creation - the latest instalment of a brain on the edge.

  But why? What was the point? How was a band poster supposed to help me accept what had happened to Mum?

  <><><>

  When I finally got downstairs, the place was full. I looked over at the bar, but Luke didn’t seem to be around.

  I spotted Dad at the table near the fireplace and joined him, trying hard to act normal, though my movements still seemed slow and laboured. However, Dad seemed preoccupied with his thoughts and didn’t notice anything different about me at all.

  No wonder - I’d been so long that he was on his third beer by this time. And then he ordered another with our scampi.

  This wasn’t good. When Dad drank too much he tended to get a bit soppy. That in itself was okay; but it inevitably led him to other things.

  To dwelling on the past.

  To Mum.

  It happened during dessert: a delicious take on sticky toffee pudding. Sweet, thick and claggy, it consisted of a rich sponge smothered in sticky, heather-honey sauce, and swimming in custard. Comfort food at its best.

  But then Dad started - his usual speech.

  “Melissa,” he sighed, smiling as he watched me lick the sweet sauce from the back of my spoon. “My little honeybee.” He reached out to stroke the side of my face. “I remember why we chose that name,” he continued, “your mum and I. Because from the very moment you were born you were the sweetest baby in the world.”

  My mind plunged back in time. I was sitting at the kitchen island, supposedly doing my homework, while Mum and Dad were getting supper ready. Dad had just made the same soppy speech about why they had chosen my name. He wasn’t drunk or anything; he didn’t get drunk then. He was just happy. “Our little queen bee,” he said, arm round Mum’s shoulder, proud that together they had created their sweet baby. Even more precious apparently because for years they’d tried to have a baby but failed, until they’d resorted to doctors who’d helped the process along with IVF.

  Mum looked pointedly towards my schoolbooks. “But it’s quite obvious,” she said, “that you don’t have the unswerving dedication of a worker bee.”

  Then Dad had laughed, teasing her for being so ‘grown up’ and ‘boringly responsible’, tickling her until she squealed.

  “I miss her, Mel.” We were back in the Fox and Hound, Dad pushing his pudding round with his spoon, unable to eat. “I miss your mum.”

  “Of course you do,” I sighed, sagging under the weight of his grief.

  We fell silent, Dad just sitting there, letting his spoon rest against the side of his bowl. He’d gone off into a world of his own. Of their own. For of course he was with Mum. Lost in fond memories.

  I looked around me listlessly. No, Luke still wasn’t about.

  For a while I watched the fire, the golden flames crackling and flickering in the grate. I was warm and sleepy, my head still fuzzy, my stomach full. Yawning, I let my gaze wander up to the painting above the fireplace: the hunting scene. Funny how people used to like that sort of thing. The artist obviously had: he’d painted all the riders in spotless red coats, the bugle bright and shining, and all the animals glossy and healthy. And everything was busy and exciting. As if chasing after a defenceless fox was a brave and noble sport.

  I looked over at the stuffed foxes in their glass cases on the wall. They looked a bit old and bedraggled. Moth-eaten. And their beady glass eyes stared, cold and hard. So, I wondered, was I meant to see them as helpless victims - or as pests who needed culling? It was hard to say.

  By now my ears had idly tuned in to a conversation at the table behind me. A group were discussing a monthly meeting, which they would be going to on Sunday evening. A spiritualist meeting. I glanced round at them, two middle-aged couples in anoraks, wondering what a spiritualist meeting was exactly. I figured it was something religious and had an image of them standing in a circle, clapping and singing hymns. But I was wrong. As they said more, it became obvious that they didn’t want to talk to God at all, but to their ‘dearly departed’. The dead. And they discussed this in a very matter-of-fact way as if it were a perfectly normal thing to do.

  I glanced back at Dad, hoping he hadn’t overheard. Talk of dead loved ones was the last thing he needed right now. But one look at his face told me he had heard it all.

  “So - we’re off to the caves tomorrow, right?” I said desperately. Even to my ears it came out too loud, too falsely eager.

  But Dad didn’t even hear me.

  “Dad.” I squeezed gently on his hand but he didn’t respond. “Dad!”

  “I miss her, Mel,” he repeated. He must have felt the pressure of my hand on his, because he looked down and started playing with the gold ring on my middle finger. Mum’s wedding band. “I’m going to go to that meeting on Sunday,” he said.

  “What?”

  “I’m going to that meeting.”

  “But why?” I couldn’t understand it. Dad didn’t do things like that.

  “To talk to your Mum,” he said simply.

  “But you’ve never believed in all that rubbish!” I lowered my voice a decibel or two as people round us started to stare. “In ghosts and stuff.”

  “But she wasn’t dead then,”
he said.

  “But she is dead now, Dad,” I whispered, trying to be as gentle but firm as possible. “Dead and buried. Gone.”

  But he didn’t speak.

  “Dad?” Once more I tried to hold his hand, but it was limp again. Lifeless.

  “Dad!”

  Suddenly he came to, looking round as if he didn’t know where he was, like someone waking from a deep sleep.

  “But you’ve got me,” I said. “I’m still here.”

  “And looking more like her every day,” he said softly, smiling at me, the small, absent-minded smile of a father reassuring his daughter that everything was fine. But of course it wasn’t.

  Pushing his pudding bowl to one side, he looked round for the waitress, wanting another drink.

  Immediately I started whining and complaining: “No, Dad. Please. Let’s just go.”

  He looked at me then, and finally noticed how tired I was.

  “Okay then, sweetheart,” he sighed, pushing his chair back. “Maybe both of us could use an early night.”

  He stood up, unsteadily, accidentally nudging the table, knocking over the saltcellar, which crashed onto a plate, sending cutlery flying. I was mortified, feeling everyone’s eyes upon us. Judging us. A father drinking like that in front of his own daughter.

  I wanted to shout at them. Scream at them to mind their own business. His wife was dead for God’s sake! Give him a break!

  And that’s when I spotted Luke for the first time that night. He was helping to clear some tables as the place was so busy, but had looked up at the noise, taking a step towards us as if to help. But Dad was okay by now, managing to walk across the room without any further incident.

  Luke looked at me, his brow furrowed with concern. “You all right?” he mouthed.

  I nodded, giving him an embarrassed half-smile. I mean, I wasn’t angry with him; he wasn’t like the others, whispering behind our backs, enjoying their feeling of moral superiority. No, with Luke it felt different. Not like judgement, but like support.

  And I felt a warmth inside, just knowing that someone cared.

  10

  The sharp bend.

  The black ice.

  The car swerving, crashing through the fence and down the riverbank, overturning and slamming into the water.

  “Help me!” My mother’s cry. Her prayer, begging for release. It echoes on and on.

  But her seatbelt is jammed, trapping her, pinning her down in the rising water.

  And so I watch as she drowns.

  I stab at the button to open my window, and then unbuckle myself, pushing off, trying to heave myself out.

  But there is a dark shape above me. A presence. Looming. Blocking my path.

  Then suddenly the shadows dissipate, and there he is: Luke, reaching out his hand to me.

  11

  Dad was back to his normal self the next morning in the breakfast room. It was as if last night’s talk of Mum and the Spiritualist meeting had never happened. All forgotten about. And I certainly wasn’t going to remind him.

  “I hope you can entertain yourself for a few hours,” he said, as he mopped up the last of his full English with a piece of soft, white roll. “I have to meet the organisers at the gallery at ten and run through the schedule and everything.”

  I assured him that I was more than able to amuse myself while he went off to work, and could he give me some money so that I could look round the market.

  “Money? To look round?” He shook his head: “Window shopping used to be free.”

  “Yes,” I agreed, “but I need some new clothes. I can’t go to your opening night looking like a scruff, now can I?”

  “Hmm…” Frowning, Dad opened his wallet and handed me the smallest note he could find. “Now don’t spend it all at once.”

  I gave him a steely stare until, rolling his eyes comically, he placed more on my outstretched palm.

  <><><>

  We left the table and headed off, only to bump into Luke in reception.

  “Good morning,” he said. “How’s everything going?”

  “Great,” Dad replied brightly.

  I smiled sheepishly, still embarrassed about last night: about Dad’s behaviour. But Luke gave me one of his secret winks as if to reassure me that everything was okay. I guess he saw a lot of that sort of thing working in a pub. It was no big deal. But nevertheless, I was touched by the gesture.

  He turned to Dad. “Taken any good shots, yet?”

  “A few. Over at the Changing Well yesterday. Fascinating.” Dad nodded over at me: “Though some people might not agree.”

  “You didn’t like it, then?” Luke looked at me, eyebrow raised.

  “Found it a bit ‘creepy’,” Dad answered for me, thinking himself most amusing. “What with the wicked witch and - what was it you called the hanging objects?”

  He paused briefly, trying to remember the right words. I cringed, silently willing him to stop.

  He didn’t.

  “Oh yes,” he said, “‘voodoo’.”

  “Voodoo?” Luke was still staring at me. “You mean the things petrifying?” He was silent for a second, studying me. “You didn’t like them then?”

  What could I say? I had no excuse: I’d told Dad exactly that - that it was creepy voodoo. And now I looked like a complete idiot. Luke was obviously into geology, like Dad: he probably loved that well. I could feel the heat rushing to my face. Tongue-tied and ridiculous yet again, I just stood there, speechless.

  “Anyway, I’m off now, Melissa.” Oblivious to my inner torture, Dad turned towards the door. “I’ll be back round about lunchtime.”

  “Okay.”

  “So don’t get up to any mischief while I’m away,” he laughed.

  And then he was gone, leaving me standing there - with Luke.

  At first we were silent. But then Luke spoke. “So, all on your own this morning, then?” he said, tapping his fingers on the desk.

  I nodded, aware that I should probably leave, but unwilling to do so until I’d put things right: I needed to explain that I thought the well was fascinating too - sort of.

  But then Luke checked his watch, which made me feel even worse. He was obviously keen to get away and I was holding him up. So, abandoning any plans to redeem myself, I immediately turned to go.

  But then he spoke again. “Delivery’ll be here any minute,” he said, casually. “But I’ll be about later, if you’re at a loose end.

  I looked back at him, uncertainly. What did he mean? Was this an actual offer - an invitation to spend time with him? Or was it just something he felt obliged to say, what with Dad having gone off?

  I didn’t know. I couldn’t tell.

  But it was clearly my cue to go.

  And so, though hugely grateful that he’d even consider giving up his free time to me, I was determined not to let myself be a burden to him. Awkwardly shrugging off his suggestion and mumbling that I’d better get on, I headed for the stairs, trying to look purposeful.

  But, in my haste, I stumbled over the first step.

  Mortified, I glanced back; but, thank God, he was no longer there.

  <><><>

  It was still chilly outside, the sky a little overcast and the air damp. But at least the wind had finally died down.

  I zipped up my jacket as I crossed over the road to the market, which once again covered the town square. I wandered aimlessly, past various stalls: pet-related products, various dusters and mops and cleaning stuff, bolts of fabric, organic fruit and veg... Then I came to a van selling a vast array of local cheeses, their smell overpowering everything else in the vicinity. I moved on, passing a meat counter advertising the best pork pies and scotch eggs, and a burger van. All quite dull, really.

  Finally, I came to a few clothes stalls. The first was way too old for me, featuring this year’s must-haves in polyester and rayon frocks. The second was obviously aimed at a younger buyer, but on closer inspection it wasn’t quite right either. All a bit ordinary compa
red to my favourite shops back home. Nevertheless I had a good root around, making sure I examined every item of clothing they had. But no: there was nothing.

  Disappointed, I moved on, only to find myself faced with rails and rails of T-shirts - mostly black - covered in photos of bands, or the artwork from their album covers. The guy in charge was sitting with his big, boot-clad feet up on the counter, heavy metal blasting from his stereo as if iPods had never been invented. His hair was back in a ponytail, which left his neck uncovered, displaying a tangle of badly designed tattoos which crept up from under his leather jacket. I nodded ‘hi’ to him and began to look through the racks. Not my usual kind of thing, obviously - but I still had loads of time to kill, and there might be something a bit more up-to-date in there somewhere.

  I was rummaging through my second rail, giving up hope of there being anything at all from my lifetime, when one of the T-shirts slid off its hanger and fell to the ground.

  I picked it up.

  And there he was: the same sun-bleached hair, the same striped top, holding his guitar, with the rest of the band in the background. It was the group from the poster I’d seen, briefly, on the wall of my bedroom back at the pub. Not just a figment of my imagination at all, then. An actual lead singer from a real band, its name printed underneath the photo. Nirvana.

  So how had I done that? I mean, obviously I’d heard of the band before, but I didn’t know much about them. And I certainly didn’t know what they looked like. Did I...? So how had I imagined them so clearly on my bedroom wall?

  I slung the T-shirt over the rail and hurried away, my mind reeling.

  Buying a cup of tea from the burger van, I looked for somewhere to sit down, but the benches arranged round the monument looked damp. There was the bus stop, empty, on the other side of the marketplace from the pub. Not exactly Starbucks, but better than nothing. I wandered over.

  Stamping my feet to warm them, I looked idly at the bus timetable, at the long list of stops: all places I’d never heard of. But I did recognise one. I would be going there that very afternoon: the Hell’s Mouth Show Caves.