by Frances Vick
A hidden musical box held more, and codeine had been shoved into a doll’s knickers. It lolled on its uneven behind, one eye shut, the other staring at Claire, frozen, shocked.
Three piles of pills. All hidden, but all to hand. Claire felt suddenly sick, made it to the bathroom just in time. Her throat, and lips, were numb with the sourness of the pills. Her arms, braced against the toilet, shook.
How long had Lorna been putting pills in her food, in her drinks? How long had it been since Claire had felt normal? It was so difficult to think, to remember. She sat, splay-legged on the bathroom floor, trying to work it out. Weeks, it must be. At least. And before then, she’d been taking them voluntarily, so she’d built up some resistance. In that case, how much was Lorna giving her, that she was so incapacitated most of the time?
‘No! Benji, NO!’ The dog had one of the packets in his mouth, and was slinking over to Claire in the bathroom. ‘You mustn’t eat that! Or even go near them.’
And she walked, more steadily now she’d vomited, back to Lorna’s room to put them back where she found them. I can’t let her know I’ve been in her room, snooping. She’ll be so angry if she finds out . . .
And then she stopped, sat on the bed. A colder, tougher part of her brain muscled in, took control. What would happen if I didn’t put them back? Really. What would happen? She can hardly accuse me of stealing them, can she? That would be tantamount to admitting she was hiding them. Hiding them and grinding them up, putting them in the soup, in the cocoa and God knows where else. No, she won’t be able to say anything. But, she’ll know. She’ll know that I know.
‘And where will that get me?’ whispered Claire to herself.
It will keep you safe. Safer anyway. You’ll have something over her.
I’m thinking as if she’s evil. Some kind of psychopath. Absurd! I’ve known this girl for years! She’s my daughter, to all intents and purposes, and I love her! She loves me!
Take a look at the pills and think again. Think about what’s been happening, and ask that question again. The question you really want to ask.
The fire?
Yes, the fire. Why doesn’t she want you to watch the news?
It’s too upsetting for her—
Oh Claire. Wake up.
‘I am waking up,’ she muttered, picking up the pills. ‘I’m trying to.’
32
In the kitchen she found a sealed pot of instant coffee, and some plastic pots of milk Lorna always swiped from McDonald’s. Four cups of strong coffee transformed her into a wired zombie, still dazed, but compelled to move. She walked as briskly as she could around the garden, coatless and with her face turned to the rain, gradually waking up, gradually becoming stronger. Eventually, she was able to sit down on the grass without feeling like she was about to pass out. It was time to think. Time to plan.
They’d be back soon.
She threw the pills down the toilet; they partially blocked it. She was still pressing down on the ball cock when she heard the car come back. One last flush and a few capsules remained, half melted. She covered them with toilet roll – I can come up later and flush it again – and walked down the stairs. She was greeted by surprise and dismay.
Lorna held her mouth in a thin line. ‘Why aren’t you in bed?’
‘I’ve slept enough. I’m not sleepy any more.’ Claire struggled to keep her voice calm.
‘You look awful,’ the girl said rudely.
‘I feel better than I’ve done in months.’
‘Well, that’s good, Claire, really, but Lauren’s right, you look pretty peaky. Have some hot chocolate and get back to bed.’ Marianne bustled about the kitchen.
‘No more cocoa for me, I think. I’ve gone off it.’ Claire registered Lorna’s narrowed eyes, faint sneer.
‘It’s your favourite, we bought it special for you,’ she muttered.
‘And I don’t like it any more. It’s too rich for me now.’
‘Well, I for one could do with something to warm me up. Lo? You?’ Marianne flung open cupboards.
‘No.’ Lorna kept her eyes on Claire.
‘It’s got a very strong flavour, the cocoa, Marianne. It might send you right to sleep,’ said Claire. Lorna’s mouth opened; her face flushed.
‘Well I could do with a good night’s sleep. I’ll have a bit, maybe with a drop of brandy. Can’t tempt you, Claire?’
‘No, thank you.’ She watched as Marianne dumped two hefty spoonfuls of cocoa in a cup, stirred in sugar and a liberal dose of brandy. ‘You enjoy it though.’
‘I shall. Let’s see what dross is on the TV. Lo? Yes?’ She went into the living room.
‘In a bit.’ Lorna’s eyes stayed on Claire. Her fingers clenched spasmodically. Claire, to hide her shaking hands, turned to get a drink of water.
‘What’re you doing?’ the girl asked in a low voice.
‘Having some water.’ Claire kept her back to her, taking her time. She felt incredibly tense and incredibly tired. There was a silence, long enough that Claire turned to make sure that the girl was still there. She was, and so silent, with tears rolling down her red face, her mouth tragic, and everything in Claire wanted to reach out to her, hug her, tell her it was OK. She even took a step towards her, but stopped, forced herself to stay still and gaze at her instead. Lorna squeezed out tears and took some shuddering breaths. The tears petered out. They stared at each other. Lorna narrowed her eyes and twisted a lock of hair around one finger.
‘I tidied your room a bit when you were out,’ said Claire blandly.
No tears now. A frown. ‘You can’t go in my room.’
‘Why not? Secrets?’
‘No. It’s private.’
‘Well, don’t worry. I only threw away some of the things I know you don’t need. I have no idea how some of them ended up there in the first place to tell the truth.’
‘What? What things?’ The girl narrowed her eyes.
‘Oh, I’m sure you won’t even miss them.’
‘Miss what? What are you talking about?’
‘Marianne?’ Claire called. ‘Did you find anything decent to watch? Marianne?’
‘Huh?’
‘Golly, you sound exhausted!’ Claire manoeuvred past Lorna and into the living room. Marianne lolled on the sofa, the cocoa drained, barely conscious. ‘Look at you! All tired out. You need to get to bed.’ And she helped the woman off the sofa and up the stairs. Marianne’s head lolled and her feet dragged on the carpet. She fell half on and half off the bed, while Claire took off her boots and eased her legs under the covers. Marianne blinked once, her eyes rolled like a scared mare’s, and then she passed out, snoring. Claire tiptoed from the room, took a deep breath and walked back down the stairs while Lorna was going up them.
‘Best not to disturb her now. That brandy must really have gone to her head.’
‘I’m going to bed,’ snarled Lorna.
‘But it’s so early! I thought maybe we could play a game together? Or watch some TV? The news, maybe.’ I’ve gone too far now, she thought. And Lorna must have seen some of that fear because she sneered, pushed past her, and slammed the door to her room.
Claire sat on the sofa, muscles quivering. She could hear Marianne snoring, and Lorna muttering to herself and throwing things around her room. With one slow hand, Claire reached for the remote control and turned on the news. There was an advert for a special on the fire, to be broadcast after the break.
The noises from Lorna’s room increased; she’d propped the door open with a broken doll and was dragging things out of carrier bags, loudly and ostentatiously packing a rucksack. Claire stayed, stiff, on the sofa, not moving her eyes from the screen.
‘. . . run away . . .’ she heard from upstairs ‘. . . love me anyway . . .’
A jagged pulse twanged in Claire’s neck. Go and talk to her – make amends. There was a sharp bang from upstairs, and a long, low moan that was almost funny. Then a pause.
‘. . . OWW!’
Clai
re turned up the volume.
‘HURT my LEG!’
‘Try to be more careful,’ Claire called, heart thumping.
‘It really hurts,’ Lorna whimpered.
‘Give it a rub.’ Claire didn’t turn round. Kept her eyes on the screen.
There was the familiar house, blackened, crumbling. Smoke stains drifted upwards from the boarded-up windows and the detritus had been cleared, leaving only the soggy bouquets and mouldy-looking teddy bears. Old pictures of Lorna and Carl appeared on the screen. The sudden silence from upstairs was deafening.
‘ . . . and this, at first thought to be a hellish accident, is now known to be something a lot more sinister?’ asked the reporter.
Lorna was on the top step. Claire didn’t turn round. She heard the girl’s dragging footsteps. Felt her standing just behind, felt sticky fingers on her elbow, and sweet breath on her neck.
‘Let’s be friends.’ One hand took the remote control from Claire’s fingers and turned off the TV. ‘Let’s be friends again. Mum?’ Claire said nothing. ‘Mummy?’
‘Do you miss them?’ Claire asked.
‘Who?’
‘Carl. Your mum.’
‘I—’
‘It’s just that you never seemed to miss them.’ The girl took a hitching breath. ‘Don’t cry, Lorna. There’s no need, it’s just a question.’
‘I-I wanted to stay with you,’ said the girl softly. ‘I didn’t think about anything else.’
Her sticky fingers wormed into Claire’s loose fist. ‘We can be friends again, like before. Can’t we? I mean—’
‘What about the pills?’
‘What pills?’ She moved to face Claire and sat in front of her on the rug.
‘You know what pills.’
‘No I don’t.’
‘Marianne’s sleeping pills.’
‘They’re Marianne’s, not mine.’
‘They were in your room?’
‘What?’ The girl looked confused, mouth open, brow low.
‘They were in your room. In the guinea pig.’
The girl laughed. ‘Pills in a guinea pig?’
‘And in the doll’s knickers.’
‘Knickers!’ the girl snorted.
‘Lorna—’
‘I just picked up the guinea pig and there’s no pills there. What are you talking about?’ Still confused, wanting to help. ‘I don’t get it?’
‘Why I’ve been so tired.’
‘Well, you hurt your ankle, didn’t you? And Auntie May says you’ve been ill—’
‘Lorna—’
‘I don’t know. I mean, she says you drink too much, and take pills. And you do, don’t you?’
‘I threw away the pills I found. I put them down the toilet.’
Lorna stayed still, looking quizzical. ‘Good?’ she said eventually.
‘Lorna, can you be honest with me?’
‘I don’t know what you mean. Mum? Really, I don’t. I’m always honest with you. Is this about dancing school? Look, that’s Marianne’s idea more than mine. I mean, I don’t care about going to London really. I’d be really happy staying here with you. Happier even. But she wants to go, and, well, I don’t want to hurt her feelings.’ Claire said nothing. The girl kept babbling. ‘I mean, you invited her here, and I’m just being friendly. I thought you didn’t want me any more, anyway. I mean you’ve been sleeping all the time, and we haven’t been friends, and I thought you wanted to get rid of me.’ She peered at Claire’s blank face trying to gauge the effect of her words. ‘I mean, you bring me here, and there’s nothing to do, and nothing to play with, and then you get ill and I have to spend all my time with her. It’s not my fault. You act as if it’s all my fault. I didn’t ask to be brought here.’ Lorna’s face had flushed pink, and the corners of her mouth turned down, as if she was about to cry.
‘You did ask to be brought here,’ Claire said neutrally.
‘I didn’t!’
‘You did. And now, here we are.’
‘Here we are.’ The girl jumped up, and stalked back to the stairs. Her face pulled into a sneer. ‘It’s your fault. All of this.’
‘Who started the fire, Lorna?’ Claire murmured.
‘Fuck you,’ Lorna hissed back.
33
Claire found more pills that night, tucked behind the boiler in the airing cupboard. And more twisted into a scrap of toilet roll behind the neglected spice rack. She meandered around the house for the next few hours, looking for more pills. The house smelled of sugary dirt. She found a pair of knickers and a banana skin under the sofa, along with an eye shadow sampler, the colours smeared together, and a training bra stuffed with toilet paper. Everything in the kitchen was teetering on the point of falling, as if time had stood still, just before the final earthquake struck. Famous Five books flopped on the table, next to an overdue library copy of a Katie Price autobiography. In the bathroom, a smear of toothpaste stuck one sock to another, and the toilet bowl was rimmed with dry spots of shit. The whole place was disastrously, deliberately dirty. How had she, Claire, let it get this way? And she felt, suddenly, coldly, that it was all an expression of Lorna herself. This chaos, this menacing disorder, that ekes its way into your neat little life, like rot eroding a tooth from the inside. And now that you’ve moved from pawn to opponent, you should be fearful, Claire. Oh yes you should!
In her own, tidy, room, she considered the pills she found in the airing cupboard. Little comforting dots, all of them, with their friendly score down the centre like a winking eye. Nearly a full bottle. Their rattle, loud in the quiet house, was friendly too. Simple. Simple to let it all go, lie back and sleep for ever. No need to think because thinking was hard. No way out of this lunacy Lorna had concocted. No need to confront her again; no need to accept defeat. No need to grope, painfully, towards the source of Claire’s own errors, understand where she’d gone wrong, how she could have predicted something this terrible, how she’d trapped herself. She lined the pills up, cheerful soldiers, on the scarred bedside table and pushed them this way and that way with her fingers, arranging them into patterns – starbursts, houses, letters. An L and an M and a J. Marianne’s sudden snoring from next door startled her, and she cleared up the pills with shaking fingers, snapped the lid back on and shoved the bottle in her cardigan pocket. No more of that, Claire. No more of that.
* * *
The next morning, Claire woke to find that the door to the cottage stood open and the wind had torn the pictures, lists and self-help mantras from the fridge door into a loose pile on the floor. In amongst them was a note that must have been on the table:
Gone to the beach L NEEDS ICE CREAM! Recording something, so don’t turn off box. M
Claire put on the radio and closed the door. Elgar surged through the kitchen as she scrubbed the surfaces, gouged grime from the grouting, changed light bulbs, cleared bugs off the sills. Enough, enough of the filth. Fingers stinging with bleach, cuticles red, knees aching, teeth gritted, she attacked the kitchen ruthlessly, like an enemy. She was still at it when Lorna and Marianne came back, and by that time it was nearly dark.
‘Jesus, Claire.’ Marianne dropped a bag of doughnuts on the floor. ‘Stinks of bleach in here. Open a window, Lauren? Can you open a window? Or the door?’ Lorna slunk in, retrieved the doughnuts from the floor and went straight to the living room. Marianne took a boot off and propped the door open with it. Her sock made little sweaty prints on the floor. Benji pushed his way past her, padding mud and seawater. Claire, her mouth set in a hard line, leaped forward with a cloth to wipe up the smears. Marianne stared, chuckled, and eventually, when amused censure didn’t work, said: ‘Seriously, Claire, you’re making me tired doing all that. Sit down. You look poorly. Ankle playing up? Do you need me to get a repeat prescription or anything?
‘She looks fine to me.’ Lorna was leaning in the doorway, picking apart a doughnut. ‘Looks all right.’
Claire straightened up. ‘I’m feeling much better.’
&nbs
p; Lorna smiled, turned her eyes to the doughnut. ‘Really?’
Something had changed in the atmosphere.
Marianne dropped the concerned look and stared impassively at Claire. ‘That’s great. Good news,’ she murmured.
‘It is, isn’t it? So, no more pills,’ Claire answered. Lorna looked up. There was a smear of jam on her lip like a bloody fang. Claire kept her gaze ‘No. No more nonsense like that.’
Now Claire did want to sit down; this open rebellion was enervating. But she didn’t. Put some steel in your spine, Claire! Don’t let them see you cracking. There was a long silence. Marianne glanced at Lorna questioningly. Lorna sneered through the doughnut, but backed away into the living room. Claire tried to keep the shudder from her voice. ‘And you, Marianne? How are you feeling? After your long night’s sleep?’
Claire saw the woman try on various expressions: bland, arch, stubborn, saw her falter and lapse into confusion, and she felt a surge of victory.
‘Maybe you’re sickening for something. You need to sit down, you look peaky.’ She put more syrup in her voice, and leaned in to take her hand. ‘How about a drink?’ Marianne pulled her hand away, straightened up. Her mouth hardened, and they stared at each other. The wind howled through the door, and Benji licked doughnut crumbs off the floor. They stayed that way until Lorna shouted from next door.
‘It’s finished. I’m watching it now. Bring the biscuits!’
Marianne put a smile on her face, looked down and strode into the living room ‘Jammie Dodgers or those big choco-chip ones?’
