Until You're Mine

by Samantha Hayes

  ‘Nonsense,’ she continues. ‘Here, let me see.’

  She reaches for the dripping fabric but I recoil, holding it to my chest. ‘Really, it’s fine. It’s ancient. It’s for the bin.’ Then I make the mistake of chucking it in the basement rubbish bin and, of course, Jan lunges for it. I know she’s only trying to be helpful.

  ‘What you need is to soak it in some hydrogen peroxide.’ She slaps the sweatshirt back into the sink and rummages in the cupboard beneath. ‘I swear there’s some in here.’ A moment later she stands up beaming and holding a black plastic bottle. She shakes it. ‘Should be enough,’ and she douses it onto the sweatshirt along with some water.

  ‘Thanks, Jan,’ I say through gritted teeth. ‘I’ll sort it now. I’ll rinse it out in a few minutes.’

  ‘Oh no, love. Best leave it for a few hours. Did you have an accident?’ She hooks up the bloodied shoulder with her little finger.

  ‘Yes . . . yes, I did,’ I say. ‘I fell off my bike.’

  ‘You must have a nasty cut,’ she says, but I brush it off, claiming it’s just a graze. ‘Some graze,’ she says incredulously, looking at the top then back at me again. ‘Looks more like murder.’ Then, before I can reply or protest, she’s heading back up the steps. ‘See you next week,’ she calls out.

  I don’t say that, if all goes to plan, she most certainly won’t.

  I decide to take Jan’s advice and leave the top to soak. No one’s home to question the gory-looking garment and Jan seemed to believe me when I told her about falling off my bike. Bloodying a sweatshirt is pretty high up on my list of idiotic things not to do while I’m in this house. Drawing unnecessary attention to myself is not on my agenda. I really can’t afford for Claudia to become suspicious about me. I certainly wouldn’t want anyone with bloody clothes looking after my children.

  My children, I think, and then Cecelia is back in my head again, yelling at me for ruining her favourite slouchy top and not being able to give her a baby.

  I’m relieved that Claudia went into work this morning. Judging by her pale colour and proximity to her due date, I was convinced she wouldn’t. While she doesn’t complain much about the effort it takes to move around the house or climb the stairs or even bend down to pick something up, I can see the frustration and exhaustion written on her face. Having seen Cecelia again so soon after I promised myself I wouldn’t (so much for my self-imposed contact ban of at least a month since our separation), I’m even more convinced that me not getting pregnant naturally was a blessing in disguise. Cecelia doesn’t see it that way, of course.

  I take the opportunity of an empty house to sneak back into James’s study. This time I’ll make certain that the photos are off my camera and safely uploaded. I’m sure Claudia is suspicious, that she was probing through my things. I don’t miss the irony of this as I turn the key to the study door.

  ‘Right,’ I say, still not having much of an idea what it is I’m looking for. ‘Where to begin today?’

  I bite my lip and look around James’s inner sanctum. I wonder if he senses, from all the way under the sea, that I’m in his domain. When he gets home, will his nose twitch and his eyes dart around the room, picking up any vague scent I might have left, or will he spot misplaced items? The carpet is a deep red colour and plush underfoot. I must be careful not to leave footprints in the nap when I leave. If Claudia comes in, which I know she does from time to time, she’ll be sure to notice.

  I pull on the drawer of an antique wooden filing cabinet but, as I suspected, it’s locked. Last time I was in here I covered the contents of the metal cabinet, thinking that the fireproof one would contain the more interesting documents. While some of the papers I photographed might prove useful, I’m certain what I need is yet to be found. There is money in this family, I am sure of that, and I’m certain it came from the Sheehan side. But I need proof, so much proof, and I need it fast. I have to think of my future.

  In a flash, I locate the key to the wooden filing cabinet. It’s tucked beneath a rather dry-looking pot plant on the windowsill. I ease open the top drawer with no idea what I’ll find inside, if anything, but if I’m to do this properly, if I’m to succeed – oh God, let me for once have some luck! – then it has to be in here. I need that elusive thing, the proof, the deal-sealer. Someone like me doesn’t get many opportunities like this. If I think about it, it’s all being handed to me on a plate. That’s why I’m so nervous, I realise, as I pull out the first file. If I mess up, if I don’t come away with exactly what I want, if I get caught before I’m finished, then I’m going to have a lot of explaining to do to the police.

  I spread out the contents of the first file on James’s desk. It’s a load of statements – some kind of investment fund – ranging from 1996 to 2008. I carefully photograph each one. It takes me twenty minutes. I sigh and stare at the crammed cabinet. What is this really going to achieve? A better life for you, says the voice inside my head that torments me with the rights and wrongs of what I’m doing. It hasn’t shut up from the moment I answered Claudia’s advert.

  Professional working parents seek experienced, kind, loving nanny to look after four-year-old twin boys and soon-to-be-born baby girl. Own room and bathroom in beautiful family home in Edgbaston. Light domestic chores but no cleaning. Use of car and weekends off. Must have formal training and exemplary references. Immediate start.

  How perfect, I remember thinking when I first saw the advert. What an absolutely uncanny, sent-from-the-heavens, amazingly-timed opportunity, and it had landed in front of me almost as if I’d been hand-picked for the job. Again, I laugh at the irony. It’s not as if I really want to do what I’m doing. In fact, I have little choice – no choice – in the matter. There are some things in life that you just have to get on with, and I came to realise this the day I moved out of Cecelia’s flat, which happened to be the same day I moved in here. Out of one fire pit and right into another.

  Still, I console myself, at least I’m doing something worthwhile and avoiding the cutting edge of Cecelia’s cruel tongue when I can’t provide her with what she so desperately wants.

  I stuff the file back in its slot and pull out another. ‘Life Insurance’, the label reads. I raise my eyebrows. Useful, I think. Hope they have plenty.

  Half an hour later and I’m waiting for the kettle to boil, just as if it’s any old tea break in any old job. I stare out of the kitchen window and down the well-kept garden. The trees are gnarled and winter-craggy against the dull, low sky and the grass is a greeny-grey smudge of summer’s forgotten fun. I suddenly feel very alone, very scared and very like giving up. I touch the phone in my pocket – my line to everything safe and familiar, my line to Cecelia. I wonder if she is thinking the same, tracing a finger over the keys of her phone that could so easily tap out a message to me. What is she thinking at this precise moment? Does she even realise that I’m doing all this for her? Does she hate me? Will she ever want to see me again? The thought that she won’t makes me go cold inside. It also makes me return to the study and begin searching through files again. I must surely be close to something useful by now.

  The file marked ‘Gardening’ surprises me. It’s the same drab shade of beige as the rest of the folders in the cabinet but a lot thicker, more stuffed full of papers than the others. So much so that it takes a good pull to remove it from its file hanger. When it comes out, I see that its contents have nothing to do with gardening at all. If I was expecting to read about the latest in ride-on mower technology in sales brochures gathered at the garden centre, or tree-lopping services and block-paving quotes, then I couldn’t have been more wrong. The Gardening file contains yet another file, a tattier one, that is simply labelled ‘Trust’.

  My heart races behind my ribs. My ears strain to hear the sounds of anyone coming home – the noise of a car drawing into the drive, the slam of the door, someone’s key in the lock. In the distance I hear the rise and fall of a siren scream as it races to a far-off emergency, and in my head I hear
the sound of my own breath as it forces its way in and out of my lungs.

  I open the folder and take out the first document. I speed-read it and then take a photograph. I do the same with the rest of the contents. It takes me an hour and a half to complete the task. Even when everything is put back neatly in its place, when the study is locked and I’m back in my room, my heart doesn’t stop its ridiculous dance in my chest. I can’t stop thinking about what it means. But, mostly, I can’t stop thinking about Cecelia.

  33

  GRACE WAS STARING at the carpet and picking her thumbnail. Her foot rubbed back and forth until Lorraine told her to stop. She took no notice and continued more vigorously until she was kicking the leg of the coffee table with her toes and banging the base of the sofa with her heel. Her cheeks grew red and her bottom lip began a virtually undetectable quiver, bringing her to the edge of tears.

  ‘Well, how kind of you to call in,’ Lorraine said sourly. She hadn’t meant to take that tone but her hopes of Grace returning for good had been crushed after her daughter rang the doorbell – rang the doorbell! – and announced she’d just popped back to get a couple of things.

  ‘Darling . . .’ Adam began.

  Grace said nothing. They had coaxed her into the living room and got her to sit down. But the sigh, the tightly folded arms, the pout and the sharp stare at the ceiling did more than suggest that she would rather be anywhere else.

  ‘Stop kicking, Grace, you’ll hurt your foot,’ Lorraine said, probably too harshly.

  Grace finally straightened and sat still.

  ‘Your mother’s right,’ Adam added pointlessly. ‘Grace, you have to talk to us. How can we help you if you won’t even speak about it?’

  ‘I don’t need your help,’ Grace said, still staring at the carpet. ‘There’s nothing to talk about.’

  ‘Is that boy pressuring you?’ Lorraine asked anxiously.

  ‘That boy,’ Grace replied, ‘has a name, you know. And no, Matt is not pressuring me. We both want to get married. We love each other.’

  ‘But what about university? What about getting a good job, having a decent life? You’re just a kid still.’ Lorraine had a sudden vision of her daughter, seventeen, pregnant and living in a council high-rise on the dole. Matt was nowhere to be seen, of course.

  ‘We understand how you feel,’ Adam said.

  ‘Well, I don’t, actually,’ Lorraine interrupted.

  Grace took a deep breath. ‘I’m very aware that neither of you understand,’ she said quietly. ‘That’s why I’ve left home, to get away from you both. If I have to leave school and get a job to support myself, then I will do it. Matt and I are serious about getting married. His mum’s being brilliant.’

  Lorrained flinched in pain. ‘You wanted to be a scientist,’ she said weakly.

  ‘We’re looking at wedding venues at the weekend,’ Grace said, as if she hadn’t even heard her mother.

  ‘And you were thinking of a gap year in the States.’

  Grace slowly looked up at her mother, shaking her head, as if the last seventeen years had all been a hazy dream and none of this was true. ‘You wanted me to be a scientist,’ she corrected. ‘When you weren’t busy fighting with Dad, that is.’

  Lorraine felt a slight wave of madness sweep through her. ‘Fine. Leave school. Go and live with another family – a better one, no doubt. Get married and have a dozen kids before you’re eighteen and work nights in a supermarket.’ She sensed she’d got her attention. ‘As of this moment, you’re free, Grace. Just think, no more Mum and Dad nagging at you, no more homework, no more ground rules. You’re on your own, my love, and you needn’t think you can come running back to us when you have no money.’

  ‘Dad doesn’t nag,’ Grace stated calmly. ‘But you do.’

  ‘Jesus!’ Lorraine put her hands to her face.

  Adam shifted uncomfortably on the sofa. ‘Ray, don’t.’

  ‘I’m not finished yet—’

  ‘It’s OK, Grace,’ Adam said. ‘If you’ve thought about this long and hard and it’s really what you want . . .’ He trailed off unconvincingly. ‘We just don’t want you to rush into anything.’

  ‘You’re still a kid,’ Lorraine said in a final attempt to change her daughter’s mind. ‘You can’t possibly get married. You have absolutely no idea what it means.’

  ‘At least I’ll have someone who loves me,’ Grace responded, so quietly Lorraine thought she’d misheard. ‘Because neither of you two do.’

  ‘Oh darling, that’s just not true and you know it.’ Adam leant towards her, taking her hands. ‘How can you say such a thing? Your mum and I both love you very much.’

  She replied with a slow shake of her head, as if even that hurt too much. A single tear left her eye.

  ‘Of course we love you,’ Lorraine reiterated, shocked to the core by what Grace had said. ‘Why on earth would you think we didn’t?’

  ‘Because you don’t even love each other,’ was Grace’s meek reply.

  It made Adam recoil. A quick glance snagged between him and Lorraine.

  ‘Yes, we most certainly do,’ he said indignantly.

  His duplicity was obvious, Lorraine thought. How could they have been so naive to think that their problems, swept conveniently into a dark corner of their minds, had not affected their daughters?

  ‘Stella thinks the same,’ Grace added, beginning the foot-tapping again. ‘You’re always arguing and whispering and fighting about stuff. You think we don’t hear but we do. Stella cries at night sometimes.’

  ‘Of course Dad and I love each other, darling,’ Lorraine said, noticing Adam’s head drop a little. ‘We have a lot of stress at work and maybe we bring it home, which is wrong, but we do . . . love each other.’ Across the cushions, she took Adam’s hand, forcing her fingers into his.

  The one and only time they’d seen a marriage counsellor had ended similarly, when the woman had asked Lorraine to touch Adam, to see how it made her feel. At the time, she could have answered that without moving a muscle: sick. ‘Touch?’ she’d asked incredulously. A sharp pinch or a sly kick was what she’d felt like giving him, but instead she’d gone along with it. She’d reluctantly held Adam’s hand.

  ‘How does it feel?’ the therapist had asked.

  ‘Warm?’ Lorraine had suggested.

  ‘Warm,’ the therapist had replied. ‘That’s good. Perhaps it feels as if he’s alive, as if he’s like you, as if his veins are filled with emotion and love.’

  ‘Oh for fuck’s sake,’ Lorraine remembered saying. She’d whipped her hand away. ‘He’s warm all right. Warm-blooded and male and he can’t keep it in his pants.’ Now, sitting opposite Grace, Lorraine could almost hear the exasperated sigh Adam had let out during the counselling session. ‘It wasn’t like that,’ he’d said, yet again defending his behaviour.

  The meeting had been drawing to a close, and Lorraine was furious. The stupid therapist was obviously on Adam’s side – perhaps she was also an Other Woman and her priorities were different to hers. Either way, she wasn’t about to be patronised and ridiculed by a stranger. And neither was she going to pay to hold her husband’s hand after he’d admitted to a one-night stand. She’d already agreed to rein in her feelings and keep things together for the children, though as things stood she hadn’t been entirely sure how long that would last.

  Lorraine felt Adam’s fingers close on hers. ‘All we’re trying to do is help you see the sensible path, Grace. Getting married at your age would be a disaster. This time last week we were chatting about university.’

  Grace stood up, smoothing down her top. Lorraine noticed how clean and well ironed it looked. Matt’s mother clearly had too much time on her hands. ‘Mum, Dad, my mind’s made up. I’m leaving school and getting married. I hope you’ll come to our wedding.’ She turned and calmly left the room.

  *

  ‘I thought that went well,’ Adam said sarcastically. They’d retreated to the kitchen, having sat in stunned silence followin
g Grace’s departure once she’d collected her things. Matt had been waiting outside in his car. Neither of them had known what to do or say.

  Lorraine sighed and dialled into her messages. She raised a finger at Adam to get his attention. She listened, then tucked her phone back into her trouser pocket. ‘It was Carla Davis’s doctor at the hospital finally following up. He’s been unreachable all day so I left a message with his secretary. I must have missed his call while we were talking to Grace.’

  ‘Go on.’ Adam filled the kettle.

  ‘Apparently, Carla’s kidneys had been badly damaged by her long-term drug use. She was advised at the start of her pregnancy that carrying her baby full term could quite possibly lead to her own death either before or after the baby’s birth.’

  Lorraine paused to absorb this conflict-ridden dilemma. How was someone so ill-equipped emotionally as Carla supposed to make a life-changing decision like that?

  ‘Put simply, she was risking her own life by carrying the baby full term. She was advised to have an early termination and, initially, she agreed. Then she changed her mind. Dr Farrow wasn’t Carla’s doctor at the time, but her records show that she was made to think very seriously about the health implications of continuing with the pregnancy. It was literally a life-and-death decision.’

  Adam frowned. ‘The health implications of this pregnancy weren’t so good for her anyway, as it turned out,’ he said rather humourlessly.

  ‘So why did she change her mind? Did someone talk her round against medical advice?’

  ‘Maybe her social workers can throw some light on it,’ Adam said after a moment’s pause. ‘Carla might have confided in them.’

  ‘You think we should talk to them again?’

  Adam was already nodding. He glanced at his watch.

  ‘You’re not serious?’ Lorraine said grimly. She was exhausted. ‘Tonight?’

  ‘I think we should. There’s something I want to . . .’ He hesitated. ‘It’s probably nothing.’

  ‘But their offices will be closed . . .’ Lorraine trailed off, knowing better than to question Adam when he had one of his gut feelings. In the past, things he’d noticed and kept to himself had, once or twice, turned into major leads. He might have made a serious error of judgement in their personal life, but this was work, this was him doing his job, and he was good at it – infuriatingly so at times. She would go along with him, see what transpired. After all, he was in charge.