by C. J. Skuse
The salon’s getting busy now and the radio blares out ‘Despacito’ which one of them has turned up because ‘this was all we danced to on our holidays’. They went to Spain together, I gather, three of the staff. They spent most of the time ‘paralytic’ but it seems to make them very happy hearing the song again. They’re obviously a close bunch. Natalya with the Princess Leia buns knows all the words and whisks her hips in time to the music. Steffi and Toni are behind me, bitch-chatting about their ex-husbands. Meg with the topknot is folding towels and chit-chatting to her client about her own disastrous holiday to ‘that place where Maddie went missing’.
‘It rained most days. And there were all these turds in the sea. Then we got robbed and came home.’
The taps go off and the water stops to a drip, drip. The chair stops massaging and I keenly feel the loss. A grey towel stinking of cooked mince wraps around my head and I’m led back across the glittery floor to get dried and styled. Jodie’s disappeared to make coffee. The baby’s still sleeping, no thanks to her.
Any softness in Steffi’s face from the conversation about kids has skinned over. She’s concentrating now – brushing me roughly as the burning air from the dryer sets about my head. She scrunches, ruffles and shakes me until I’m dry before straightening it into a jet black bob with my parting once again located.
She affords me a few more seconds of bliss as she rakes it through, shielding my eyes while caking it with Elnet. Before I know it, she’s holding up the mirror. Black bob. Brown eyes. The red is dead. Nobody would know it was me.
‘That alright for you, Mary?’
‘That’s perfect, thanks so much.’
‘You’re very welcome.’ She removes my cape and I flick off the brake on the pushchair and wheel Emily over to the desk to pay. I’m expecting her to mention the Avon party again but she doesn’t.
The radio waffles on – an advert for a conservatory firm, twenty-five percent off windows and doors, some aquatics company are giving away fish and it’s Kids Eat Free at the Jungle Café – none of which I can take advantage of but I pretend like it’s all very reasonable.
Then the door opens with a little jingle and three men file in, one after the other. There’s no rush to their movements. The first two wipe their feet on the mat, the third wipes his nose on his sleeve. And my entire body floods with ice – I can’t move. They are loud and unapologetic. All laughter and smoker’s coughs.
My breath catches – I know that laugh. The short, straw-haired one with predatory eyes and a cheeky-chappy smile, like his face is at odds with itself. He carries the air of someone with power. Power over the other two. It’s them. I know it is.
Think rationally. Think logically. Breathe. Scants is always telling me I’m paranoid. It’s not them. It’s too much of a coincidence, them being here, me being here. Deeper breaths. Act normal. It’s three ordinary men. Three innocent customers.
Steffi holds out her chubby mitt with the gold rings, her fingers like strangled chipolatas. ‘That’ll be £32.00 then Mary, thank you.’
I can’t concentrate on anything but the three men. Three little pigs blowing my house down. I can smell their thick layers of aftershave. Aramis, unless I’m mistaken, and something else. Lynx or Old Spice. I can’t breathe.
The short, stocky one with straw-coloured hair and brown camel coat starts in with an anecdote about a crash on the motorway which meant they were late for something. Late for what, I can’t figure – my brain’s too busy careening around bends. And the music’s too loud – screechy punk guitars now. The brown-haired one in the leather bomber jacket, skinny jeans and trainers does a selfie with the one they call Natalya – old mates? – while the third, built like a tank, is all knuckles and chins and seems happy to stand there, the limelight firmly on the other two. He’s the heavy. They’re all pally – Meg joins in, selfying with the brunette for Instagram. Two others join in – Jodie and Toni. Fawning like the men are rock stars. But I know them. I’ve seen them in my nightmares. And I know that laugh.
I pay Steffi and tell her to put the change in the charity box. On the counter is a box of hand-knitted animals – lions, tigers and bears – all with a Halloween Scream Egg sewn inside the head with googly eyes stuck on. I want one but I also want to leave.
‘A customer makes them for the donkey sanctuary,’ Steffi explains, posting the coins in the tin. I know I’ve got to get out but I can’t decide which animal I want – a lion, a tiger or a bear. Bomber Jacket is coming towards the desk. He’ll stand beside me. He’ll see my face. I fumble for a knitted lion.
‘Thanks,’ I say, no more than a whisper. ‘Bye.’ I wheel the pushchair awkwardly towards the door.
Steffi calls out, ‘Oh, and that Avon party I mentioned…’
I’m forced to be rude and not answer her. Unbeknown to me, The Tank has followed me to the door and opens it for me before I can get there.
I daren’t look up. But at the last second, before the door closes, I thank him briefly and we lock eyes. A shadow of a frown that’s either confusion or recognition.
‘Mind how you go now,’ he says, and his deep voice sends a freeze through me. Was it a Bristolian accent? Could have been. He only said five words but I caught a definite twang. Tears come and there’s nothing I can do to stop them. All I can think about is getting back to the flat and locking every door and window.
‘How are they here?’ I mutter to myself, trying to catch my breath, pushing the buggy back along the road until I’m practically running, back along the high street and onto the seafront. As I pass, the doughnut man sticks his head out of his van and calls out, ‘Charlotte! Charlotte! I saved you some fried doughnut holes!’ But I pretend like I haven’t heard him and keep running, looking behind every few steps to see if anyone’s following. They’re not, they’re definitely not, and there’s salt and sand in my eyes and my throat because it’s windy, but I don’t stop until I’m nearly back.
I cry wee wee wee, all the way home.
Through the gate and down the steps, and finally we’re inside the flat. Patio doors locked tight. Main door locked and bolted. Lounge curtains drawn. The cats are all in and accounted for. I take Emily out of the pushchair and she grizzles but I hold her against me, warm and tight so she’s safe. Only then does my breathing slow. I notice the answerphone flashing. You have one new message. I press Play.
Silence.
Crackling.
Breathing.
Click.
Dead tone.
‘Wrong number. Means nothing,’ I reassure Emily, though my heart pounds.
Taking her into the bedroom, I draw the blind and slump down onto the springy single bed the landlord said he’d replace soon. I hold Emily against my neck, skin to skin. Safety. My heart beats in my ears. It’s the only sound.
I stare up at the walls, almost bare apart from the Frida Kahlo print the previous tenant hung there in a glass frame. I don’t even know who Frida Kahlo is but the landlord said the picture was called ‘Time Flies’ and the guy who’d left it was an artist who died of an overdose. Frida’s wearing a white dress in the picture. And there’s a little aeroplane above her head. And a clock on a shelf. Her eyebrows scare me. I don’t know what it means. I don’t know what any of it means.
2
Wednesday, 23rd October
My name isn’t Mary. It’s Joanne. Well, that’s the name they gave me. I can’t tell anyone my real name. I might be free now but I still have to imprison parts of myself. And that’s the big part. I don’t have all the children I told the hairdresser about, either, or a successful career in medicine. Or a personal trainer husband called Kaden. I have a new neighbour with that name, and a man’s sweatshirt I got from a charity shop sprayed in a free tester of Paco Rabanne that I pretend belongs to him, but that’s all. Mary is an act. One of my many acts to keep them at bay.
But they’ve tracked me down, haven’t they? They’ve found me again.
No, I tell myself, no they haven’t. May
be it wasn’t them. Maybe Scants is right, as always, and I’m being paranoid. Or maybe he just says that because he’s paid to look after me and this is what he’s supposed to say. If it was them, The Pigs, this is still a big town and at the moment it’s flooded with tourists, families on half term, coach loads of people on outings. I’ve been swallowed by all that. They could think I’m staying at a hotel or one of the B&Bs. So while I’m in the flat, I’m safe.
As a precaution, I haven’t been outside in two days. I told work Emily has a bug. She doesn’t. I’ve just been playing with her and the cats, making the odd cake, having the odd bath, trimming up far too early for Christmas and watching DVDs – mostly Disney movies up to the sad bits, then I fast forward or switch off. I decided as soon as I was old enough that I didn’t have to watch the sad bits if I didn’t want to. So, in my world, Mufasa’s still alive, Nemo doesn’t even go missing and the Beast never turns into that disgusting prince.
I’ve ordered a few things off the internet – a new rug to cover most of the hideous old lino in the kitchen that the landlord won’t replace, a board game for my paper boy, Alfie, that I was telling him about the other day and found quite cheap on eBay, these really cute hair slides, and some silver glitter. I don’t know what the glitter’s for yet – a Christmas something I expect. I know I can make use of it somehow.
I’ve done some research on Frida Kahlo, too. She was a bisexual feminist Mexican painter and her portraits ‘allow a deeply intimate window into the female psyche’. So says the internet. She was also in an accident when she was eighteen which left her unable to have children. And she kept spider monkeys. I like the picture in my bedroom of her a lot more now. Her eyebrows don’t scare me as much.
And I’ve had another message on the answerphone. More silence. And crackling. And breathing. Then the Click. Then the dead tone. Another coincidence? I have to believe that. It’s a ‘little nothing’, that’s what Scants will say. Unless it’s a viable threat, I cannot pester him about it. That’s the rule.
I’ve eaten nearly everything in the flat. Even the Findus Crispy Pancakes I keep in for emergencies. I’m like the Tiger Who Came to Tea – there’s still water in the tap, but I bet any minute there’ll be a cold snap and the pipes’ll freeze. Emily’s getting ratty. She needs fresh air. I will go out soon. Maybe I could nip across the road and get some doughnuts from the van? But it’s not healthy, is it? Doughnuts for tea. I counted fifteen sugary paper bags in the recycling box this morning. Fifteen. Plus the one on the table I’ve doodled all over. I pick it up and admire the curly handwriting:
Ann Hilsom
Melanie Smith
Claire Price
Joanne Haynes
I feel greasy. I’m going to have a bath.
I settle Emily in her bassinette by the chest of drawers and she’s happy enough lying there looking up at the mobile I’ve fixed to the side. She’s so small. Sometimes I wish she was bigger so she could hug better. And then I realise what I’m thinking – the bigger she gets, the more she’ll stop being my baby. The more she’ll learn. I want her to stay small and unknowing and thinking the world is a charmed place where imagination is real and everyone thinks you’re fascinating. Being an adult looked so much more appealing when I wasn’t one.
A bath, I’ve found, is the nearest thing to a hug. You get fewer hugs as you get older but we had loads as kids. Auntie Chelle was always wrapping me and Foy inside her arms and squeezing the breath from us. I can’t hug you two tight enough, she would say. It’s scientifically proven that baths help depression in the same way a hug does. Something to do with balancing our bodily rhythms. As a kid I used to eat the foam. Spread it out on a sponge like a little waffle loaded with squirty cream.
Scants is funny about hugs since he got mugged in a pub in 2008. He’s funny about a lot of things. I can’t think about him – he’ll visit when he’s next in town, that’s what he said: ‘Don’t pester me’ – and he said it in his Serious Voice so I knew he meant it. I must not call him unless it’s an emergency. It’s three random men and a couple of wrong numbers. That’s all. I’ll leave the flat soon. Everything’s normal.
I sink down in my warm bath and allow the water and essential oils to hug me all the way up my body and back down again. I picture all my worries as a kite on a string, and imagine letting go of it, watching it float up to the sky as I count backwards from ten. Gradually, the panic disappears, though I know it’s only a temporary break from a world that feels so wrong all the time.
The door creaks open and The Duchess saunters in. I roll over to tickle her head.
‘Hello Duchess, how do you do?’
She sits proudly on my bath towel, butting into my hand, her white fur soft as clouds beneath my fingertips. She’s looking tubby today – I think I’m overfeeding her. I’d rather that than underfeeding her, though, or any of them. They’re my other babies. The Duke of Yorkums and Earl Grey sleep all day on my bed while the other girls are more inclined to wander. The latest one, Queen Georgie, doesn’t get on with Princess Tabitha Rosynose or Tallulah von Puss, though. She’s taken up residence on the couch on the blanket. Prince Roland won’t come near any of them – he prefers it at the back of the wardrobe guarding all my jumpers from Jumper Pixies who bite holes in clothes to make their little hats. But The Duchess always comes to play or say hello. Of course, I’d never tell the other cats this, but she’s my favourite.
My dad used to say cats were cursed kings and queens in hiding. That’s why they’re all so aloof and it seems like they don’t care about anything. It’s not that – it’s because they have royal blood. It goes against their protocol to get too involved.
I wish I could stay in the bath forever, the water lapping against the sides, The Duchess still butting my hand. I wish this was my bath. My bathroom.
Suddenly, an awful buzzzzzzzzzzz resounds through the flat and my chest tightens – it’s my door buzzer. It’s not Scants – he always calls ahead. There’s no one else it could be. Maybe it’s a relative of the people in the middle flat. Or Kaden, the guy who’s just moved into the top floor flat. Maybe it’s a mistake. Maybe they have the wrong number altogether.
Maybe they don’t.
I scramble out of the bath and yank out the plug, grabbing my towel from under The Duchess and she protest-reeeaaaawrs, but moves out the way. I wrap myself up and wait – it’s a mistake. Or the postman? No, he’s been. It can’t be for me. My rhythms are all to cock. What if it’s them? What if they hear the bath gurgling? What if Emily starts crying?
Buzzzzzzzz, buzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz it goes again.
She’ll cry and then they’ll know for sure where I am, where I live.
Buzzzzzzzz buzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.
I fumble for my robe on the back of the door and slide it over my now-freezing wet body. Panic has taken over and I can’t think in a straight line. I stumble into the bedroom, pull on my boots and lace them up as best I can though my brain has temporarily forgotten how to do laces.
‘Bunny ear, Bunny ear, Bottom Bunny ear over Top Bunny ear, tie and pull.’
Buzzzzz buzzzzzzzzzz buzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.
‘Oh no, oh shitake mushrooms.’ I want to cry. How do I run with a baby? And what about the cats? If I go through the patio doors and up the front steps they’ll catch me. I’m soaking wet, in my dressing gown, wearing no knickers and badly tied DMs. They’ll be shooting slow, fat fish in a tiny barrel.
I need to be brave, be rational, and take a look before doing anything stupid. Before I can change my mind, I run to the kitchen and grab the Flash bleach spray and a bread knife. I go to my door and scramble the chain off, opening it slowly onto the hallway. I’m at such a high pitch, I’ve broken out into a sweat and my mouth is so dry my lips stick to my teeth. My tongue feels like an invader.
I see the shadow behind the glass. One shadow. It’s only one of them.
‘WHAT DO YOU WANT?’ I force myself to wobble-shout.
‘Hi, it’s Kade
n from upstairs. I think the bolt’s on? I can’t get in.’
Relief floods through me. I deflate and the tears start pouring as I pull back the bolt and release the Chubb to find the guy from the top floor flat standing there in his leather gear with his motorbike helmet under one arm, a bag of shopping in his hand. I can’t stop shaking.
‘Oh god, are you alright?’ he says. ‘I’m so sorry. I’ve been away for a couple of days, and came back and my key wouldn’t work… I didn’t mean to get you out of the bath. I definitely didn’t mean to scare you. It’s Joanne, isn’t it?’
NO, I’m NOT Joanne, I want to say. I have an alarming urge to tell him my real name. I want him to help me. Tell me he’ll fight the Pigs away with his strong arms. Not very Frida the Feminist Icon, but then I’m not Frida – I’m me. And not a very convincing me either. I sit on the stair, dropping the knife and spray gun to the carpet.
The front door closes. He puts the bike helmet on the shelf and there’s a creak of leather as he kneels down. ‘Hey. It’s alright. I’m not going to hurt you.’
And I pull him into me and he wraps his arms around my back and we’re hugging like two lovers. Lovers who’ve only previously shared Hellos and door openings for the past two weeks since he moved in. I blush every time. Because in one of my newest lies he is of course My Husband. The Father of My Five Children. The screensaver on my phone, from when I followed him to the gym at the other end of the seafront where he works, and took a photo of the picture of him behind reception – Kaden Cotterill, Certified Personal Trainer. How sad is that? Now that he’s here, holding me, I can see how sad it is. Here he is real and perfect and my tears chase down his leather jacket. The back of his neck is sweaty and he smells of the sea breeze.
‘I’m sorry, I really am,’ he says. We pull apart, his face packed full of concern. ‘Is there anything I can do?’ I shake my head. ‘Did you think it was someone else?’ I nod. ‘Do you wanna talk about it?’ I shake. ‘Do you wanna be on your own?’ I shake again. ‘Okay, well I need to go and shove some of this in the fridge,’ he says, indicating the carrier bag. ‘Why don’t you go and put some clothes on and when I come back down we’ll go for a coffee and unwind a bit, yeah? There’s a nice café I’ve found on the seafront. They do my favourite roast.’
