Hold My Hand

by Serena Mackesy

  My God, I'm tired, she thinks. I must be getting old. And then she laughs out loud because she has realised that she’s just tuned a car radio to Radio 2 for the first time in her life. You may not be old yet, she tells herself, but you’ve sure as sherbet passed one of the milestones of middle age.

  “What’s so funny?”

  She glances in the rear-view. Yasmin is sitting up, craning like a meerkat. She’s strapped onto the booster seat, her legs sticking out in front of her, too short to bend fully at the knees, her dark hair crushed down on one side of her head from sleep. Bridget feels one of those hourly surges of love. My baby. Not a baby any more, but not big enough to kick the back of the seat, either.

  “Nothing, baby,” she says. “Just something I heard on the radio. Are you thirsty?”

  Yasmin considers the question, stretches to see the gloomy road. “Yes,” she says, absently, imperiously. “When did it get dark? It must be awfully late.”

  “It’s winter, darling. It gets dark early in winter.”

  Children are so odd. The things they notice and the things they don’t. Six winters Yasmin’s gone through now, and she’s only just discovered about the darkness thing. “Why?”

  Good God, thinks Bridget, I don’t actually know the answer to that. Is it because the course of our orbit is different at different times of year? Or does the earth tilt on its axis? Or is it something to do with the Wobble they go on about on the science programmes?

  “It’s just one of those things,” she settles for the it-just-is route. “It’s why it gets colder in winter, you see. There’s less sun.”

  “Why?”

  “Why what?”

  “Why is there less sun?”

  “Because it’s winter–”she begins. Realises that she’s painting herself into a corner, changes tack. “We need the winter so all the plants can have a rest. It’s like you needing to go to sleep.”

  “But plants don’t need to go to sleep,” says Yasmin the logician. “It’s people who need to go to sleep.”

  “Mmm,” says Bridget noncommittally.

  “And cats. Cats sleep. A lot. Sometimes you can’t wake them up.”

  “Yes, they do.”

  “Can we have a cat?”

  “We’ll see,” she says. A phrase she hears passing her lips thirty, forty times a day.

  “I shall call him Fluffy,” says Yasmin with finality.

  Please don’t, thinks Bridget. It’s tough enough being a child’s cat without being called Fluffy.

  “Are we nearly there yet?”

  “Another couple of hours, I’m afraid.” Bridget fishes a mini-carton of Five Alive from the door pocket, unwraps the straw with her teeth and passes it back.

  “Another couple of hours?”

  “Yes. I told you it was a long way.”

  “Practically,” says Yasmin, in that strange, suddenly grown-up way she has, “America.”

  Not far off, thinks Bridget. After all, it only takes seven hours to fly to Florida.

  “Mummy, I’m bored.”

  Oh God. Don’t let her start. We’ve got such a long way. “Do you want to play a game? How about I Spy?”

  “Ok. I spy with my little eye something beginning with H.”

  “Um…” Bridget casts about her. “Headrest?”

  “No.”

  “Hair?”

  “No.”

  “Um…”

  A car passes on the other side of the road. “I get it! Headlights!”

  “Yup,” says Yasmin. “I spy with my little eye something beginning with H.”

  “Headlights,” says Bridget.

  “Yup. I spy with my little eye something beginning with H.”

  “Okay. I get it. Drink your drink.”

  A rattly slurp from the back seat. “How much longer?”

  “One hour and fifty-nine minutes.”

  “I’m booored.”

  “Look!” cries Bridget. “A camel!”

  “Where?” She sits up again, boredom forgotten.

  “Oop, missed it.”

  “What’s a camel doing here?”

  “They get everywhere, camels.” Especially when small children need distracting. They’re very useful for that. And elephants.

  “Well, how come I never see one?”

  “You’re just not quick enough, that’s all. I’m sure we’ll see another one. I should think there’ll be quite a few along this road. We’ll be going through Camelford, after all.”

  “Tchuh,” says Yasmin. “Sometimes I think you’re just making them up, Mum.”

  Oh, damn. I knew it was too good to last.

  “We need to think,” she says, “what colour to paint your bedroom. It’s cool, isn’t it, having a bedroom of your own at last?”

  “S’pose so,” says Yasmin. Bridget feels a touch of disappointment. She’d expected more enthusiasm, but she guesses that it’s hard for a child Yasmin’s age to get too excited about something she’s never had. Except a kitten. Perhaps she should think about the kitten. It’s a tricky one. Even harder to move on if it doesn’t work out, if you’ve got a pet to leave behind.

  “You’ve got a spare bed as well,” she says cheerfully. “You can have your friends to stay.”

  Yasmin picks up her monkey from the seat beside her, starts pulling at its ears. “All my friends are in London.”

  “You’ll make new friends,” she promises.

  “How?”

  “Well, you’ll be going to a new school – ”

  “I don’t want to go to a new school…”

  She can hear her daughter’s voice well up. Oh, no, please, she thinks. I can’t do any more tears today. I’ve just handed the keys to my home in to the building society. I’ve just become homeless. I’ve left everything familiar and run away to a place full of strangers…

  And she carries on, like mothers do: forces her voice light and finds a joke the way she always has. My daughter won’t grow up knowing about unhappiness. She won't grow up thinking the world is a threatening, dangerous place. I won’t let her. I won’t let Kieran poison her future.

  “How about lime green,” she asks, “with purple spots?”

  “Eeeuugh!”

  Yasmin is good at distraction. Storms turn to sunshine rapidly in her world. She giggles. “No!”

  “Well how about orange with electric blue stripes?”

  “Noo!”

  “Um…”

  “Pink,” declares Yasmin. “I like pink.”

  Of course you do. You’re six years old.

  “With stars on the ceiling. Those stars that light up in the dark.”

  “Okay. I’m sure we can find some of those.”

  “And a special cushion for Fluffy. Because he’ll need his own bed, won’t he?”

  “Um…” she endeavours to find a creative way of being noncommittal, fails, leaves it.

  “And I want one of those lights.”

  “Which lights, dwarfy?”

  “The ones that go round and round. With the pictures. So I get stars and fairies on my walls.”

  Jesus. Stars and fairies? What have they been teaching her at that school?

  “Fluffy’s black and white,” says Yasmin. “With a pink nose. I love him sooo much.”

  They fall silent. Think their thoughts as they pass the sign for Okehampton. Maybe she’ll forget about the cat thing in a while. Once she’s at school, and she’s got friends, once she sees lambs gambolling in the fields and… I don’t know… maybe she can start an earthworm farm or something… or maybe… as long as she doesn’t start wanting a pony…

  Yasmin shifts again, struggles against her seatbelt. “Are we nearly there yet?”

  Chapter Eleven

  “Hello?”

  “Hi. It’s me.”

  “There you are! I was beginning to worry.”

  “Sorry. Sorry.” She checks her watch. It’s gone ten. “Sorry,” she says again. “It just… time got away from us.”

  “N
o problem,” Says Carol, and Bridget hears her light a cigarette. “ I just worry, that’s all. You know what I’m like.”

  “Yes, I know. And I’m grateful.”

  “So: what’s it like, then? Are you all settled in? Little one asleep?”

  “Only just. And I think it’s more passed out from exhaustion than actual sleep. It’s taken forever.”

  “Well… New place and everything…”

  “Yes. That and…” Bridget giggles, partly from amusement and partly from the sheer tiredness. “Oh, God, Carol: it just hadn't occurred to me.”

  “What?”

  “Well… She’s never slept by herself before. Not in a room she doesn’t know.”

  Carol is drinking something with ice in it. Bridget hears the chink as she raises it to her mouth. “Oh my God. So what did you do? Surely she’s used to going to sleep by herself?”

  “Well, yes… but not in a strange bed in a strange house. She’s always just tucked up in my bed in our room, since Kieran left. You’ve never heard so much shrieking.”

  “I live in Streatham,” says Carol. “I hear it every night.”

  “It doesn’t help that it’s colder than a witch’s tit. He’s obviously had the heating off since the day I came down for the interview. We’re going to have to go and buy some new bedclothes first thing tomorrow. As it is, I’ve got her sleeping under a couple of coats, and I’ve taken down the living room curtains to put on my own bed. He’s bloody lucky the pipes haven’t frozen.”

  “Surely it’s warming up now?”

  “I’m sure it would be if I could only find the boiler. It’s obviously not on the same system as the house, but I’m damned if I can work out where it is. I’m too tired, to be honest. The lights were out when we got here and it took me half an hour of fumbling around in the dark with a cigarette lighter before I found the trip switch.”

  “Oh, honey, how horrible. Were you scared?”

  Bridget laughs. “Naah. What would I be scared for, wandering about a huge strange house in the dark? And Yasmin was hanging on to my trousers every step of the way, howling. Actually, I had too much on my hands to think about being scared. It’s pissing it down here. Started raining at Launceston, and I wouldn’t be surprised if that wind wasn’t gale force. It practically took me off the road a couple of times when we were crossing Bodmin moor. I was more worried that we were going to get hit by a flying roof slate than anything else.”

  “Have you eaten?”

  “Heinz Tomato Soup and cheese on toast. We weren’t very hungry. And she’d been eating crisps fairly solidly since junction 5.”

  “And she’s asleep now?”

  Bridget sighs. “Yes. Though I’ve had to leave her bedroom door open and all the lights on. I don’t suppose I’m going to be much longer myself.”

  “Get yourself a drink and get in the bath,” Carol advises.

  A lovely idea, thinks Bridget. A long hot bath is just what I need. And I’d have one if we had any hot water. And if the bath wasn’t an inch deep in spiders. “Yeah, you're right. That is what I need.”

  “By the way, I tucked a present for you into Madam's left wellington. Half a bottle of vodka. Thought you might need it.”

  “Oh, Carol. You shouldn’t have.”

  “It’s only Asda,” says Carol, “nothing posh or anything. I just thought… well, I knew you wouldn’t have thought of anything like that yourself and I know what it’s like trying to get to sleep somewhere new. Even if you aren’t six years old.”

  “You’re a true friend. You know that?”

  “Sure am. Still, I’ll get my reward now I've got free summer hols for the rest of my life.”

  “You know you can come, any time.” Bridget suddenly feels lonely. The summer holidays are six months away. “You know you’re welcome,” she continues in a small voice. “Can’t you come sooner?”

  “No,” says Carol, and Bridget's stomach lurches. “You’re not to get maudlin on me,” she continues. “I’ll be down as soon as we can both manage. You know I will.”

  “Yes.” Bridget holds back a sniff, swipes the back of her hand across her eyes.

  “It’ll be fine. In the morning. Once you’ve got everything unpacked and started finding your way around. You’re doing the right thing, you know you are.”

  “Has he been round?” she asks, suddenly unable to stop herself thinking of Kieran.

  “You’ve only been gone half a day. He’s hardly had time. And anyway, the pub’s not let out yet, has it?”

  “He’s going to be so –”

  “Yeah, well,” Carol cuts her off, “it’s nothing more than he deserves. And nothing I can’t handle, either. Just stop it with that. That’s tired thinking. Go and run that bath.”

  “Of course I will.” No point in telling her just how grim things are looking right now. It’ll be better in a couple of days.

  “Pour yourself a nice big drink and take it in there with you. I guarantee you’ll get off to sleep in no time, however cold it is.”

  “Okay,” she says.

  “I’ll call you tomorrow. At least we know your phone works down there, eh?”

  “It’s not Siberia,” says Bridget. “It's only Cornwall.”

  A buffet of wind slaps into the side of the building, rattles the casements. There's no way she's going back out across that yard tonight to find Yasmin's wellies buried somewhere in the boot of the car.

  “Sleep well,” says Carol.

  “Thanks. You too.”

  “That bloody car alarm’s going off again,” she says. “I doubt it. Just be grateful you’re where you are. Honestly, Bridge. It won’t be long before I’m envying you.”

  In the middle of nowhere. With a wind that sounds like someone’s scrabbling to get in through the roof. Oh, God, have I made a terrible mistake?

  “Night night,” says Carol.

  “Night,” she replies. Hangs up and sits, elbows on the tiny kitchen table and face in hands, while she allows a couple of fat self-pitying tears to roll over her fingers. She can’t cry in front of Yasmin: has made a pact with herself that she will try not to. But that doesn’t mean she doesn’t want to, most minutes of most days. How did I end up so lonely? I was pretty, once, and popular, and now I’m the kind of person nobody notices when I walk by in the street. I don’t even get noticed by builders any more: they fall quiet as I pass.

  Not surprising, she thinks. The self-pity emanating from you would be enough to put anyone in their right mind off. Amazing, though. How short a time it takes. Ten years ago I would have dreaded passing building sites because of the attention I attracted. Now I feel the same way for exactly the opposite reason. Life with Kieran was the drip, drip, drip of water on stone: you never notice the effects by watching them, but a decade of it was enough to wear my confident veneer through to the dull grey clay beneath. He was like a vampire: sucking my self-esteem out to replenish his own.

  She feels, in the cabin-like kitchen, like a sailor lost at sea. It’s warm enough in here, for she’s turned the oven on full whack and left the door open, but she knows that stepping out into the corridor will be a different matter. The wind, stepping up a gear, howls against the walls like a wild animal. She’s always been a city child: lived with her mum and dad in Peckham until she was grown up, would probably have gone back there if she'd had the option. She’s never been alone somewhere where the orange glow of streetlights and the occasional sound of passing footsteps couldn't give at least the illusion that someone was at hand. Out here, miles from anywhere… anything could happen and no-one would know.

  Abruptly, she pushes her chair back. That’s the tiredness talking, like Carol said. You’re not to go down this road. You’re still healthy, your daughter is beautiful and bright and loving and life is going to get better. It has to. Tomorrow we’ll buy double-thick duvets and a couple of fan heaters and hot water bottles, and I’ll get the kettle and the clothes and the TV from the car and we can start to make a little home here, at
last. But tonight you must sleep.

  Something clatters out in the yard, makes her jump. Don’t be silly, she thinks. There’s a wind. It’s probably a branch or something, blown loose and bowling down the hill. And now there’s rain rattling off the window like gravel thrown by a teenage lover. It doesn’t mean anything. He’s not followed you. He will have been at the office when you left. It’s just nature, and you’re in the middle of it.

  She considers for a moment leaving the oven on overnight; turns it, reluctantly, off. No point in testing the fuse box; it obviously doesn’t take much to make it trip.

  Entering her bedroom is like stepping into a fridge: a month standing empty in early winter has left the whole house shivering with neglect. Pulling the curtains, she feels a blast of cold air from the window, creeping round the ancient casement. She remembers her father, one winter of her childhood before they could afford vinyl replacements, going round the house with Clingfilm and Sellotape, sealing out the cold air. I’ll get some tomorrow, she thinks, when we go to the supermarket. The list gets longer and longer.

  Kicking her shoes off, she gets under the duvet, thick brocade curtains piled on top like an old-fashioned coverlet, fully dressed. Waits for the bedclothes to warm up, then struggles out of her jeans under the covers.

  Normally, she can’t go to sleep unless she has at least brushed her teeth, but the prospect of facing the icy water in those taps is worse than the prospect of waking with a mouthful of fur. She stretches out on the mattress – it’s not far off new, she notices, and comfortable. Her mattress in Streatham was so far gone – dimpled and stained from years of use – that she didn't even try to offer it to the second-hand man. Just left it to be the building society’s problem.

  We’re going to be okay, she repeats to herself again. If you get a good night’s sleep it will all look better. She switches off the light.

  Darkness. Real, deep, velvet darkness of a sort she’s never known. The bedroom curtains are thin, but nothing – no sign, even, that there is a village over the hill – penetrates the room. There’s someone, she thinks. In the house, there’s someone, I can feel it. They’re hiding somewhere and I can only hear them when the lights are off.