The Glass House

by Eve Chase

  A difficult philosophical question. And one she’s saved from answering by the muffled gunshot outside.

  29

  Hera

  The deer was alive a few seconds ago. The closeness of death, just a breath, a bullet, away, brings a swooping sick feeling. I stick my finger into the warm hole in the young deer’s flank and recoil. What have I done?

  Watching me, Don starts to laugh. ‘Bravo. Your first kill. Now, taste it.’

  I shake my head. Teddy, standing next to me, one hand resting on my leg for comfort, is trying really hard not to cry.

  ‘All talk then, Hera? Thought so.’

  I bring my finger to my mouth and suck. It tastes of blood and copper coins and something else. Power, I think. My own.

  ‘That deer’s life force has just transferred into you. Feels good, eh?’ With no warning, Don lunges at me, hugging me to his bare chest. My face is pressed against the nub of his nipple, the scratchiness of his hair. I don’t like it.

  He resists as I pull away, his skin sticking to mine. I can’t stop looking at the deer. And I’m struck again by the starkness of being alive one moment, a carcass the next. ‘Teddy, come on. Let’s go.’ I grab Teddy’s hot paw of a hand.

  ‘Wait.’ Don reaches down to the animal, dips his finger in the wound and wipes the stickiness across my forehead. ‘There you go. Blooded. Little hunter.’ He frowns, as if something’s bothering him. ‘It’s hard to shoot anything in these damn trees.’ He hasn’t hit anything that breathes. ‘Didn’t aim for the head, like an amateur either. The mouth is still full of grass. See? She didn’t see the bullet coming. Who taught you?’

  ‘No one,’ I say truthfully.

  ‘A natural.’

  It would feel like a compliment from someone else. I turn and run, tugging Teddy with me, away from the blood and the deer’s open surprised black eyes.

  In the bathroom, I wipe the smear of blood away, over and over until the tissue disintegrates. I pour myself a scorching hot bath that draws a red line on my thighs and I start to cry, thinking of the young deer, how it must have a mother somewhere, and I wonder if she saw, if she’ll come back and nuzzle it and try to make it stagger to its feet again. And I hate that there’s a link between me pulling that trigger – Don breathing over my shoulder, Don hissing, ‘Now!’ – and the end of that deer’s life. I think of the bang on my shoulder, the wrong feeling it gave me – and I wish it was Don lying there, not an innocent animal.

  ‘Hera? Are you okay?’ Big Rita knocks on the locked bathroom door.

  ‘I shot a deer. I hate myself.’

  Stunned silence. I wonder if she’s also picturing the dainty deer on its side. Tongue lolling. If she hates me too. She once found a baby bird on the terrace in London, and carried it back up to her room – a nest in a shoe box – and got up every two hours in the night to feed it bits of worm. Here at Foxcote she pulls hair from our hairbrushes and leaves it outside in tangled balls for the birds to line their nests. ‘I’m sorry,’ she says eventually, in a soft voice, as if she knows, without me telling her, that the deer’s death has stolen something precious from me too.

  When I go back into my bedroom, pink and boiled by my bath, Big Rita’s waiting for me, sitting on the carpet, cross-legged. In front of her is the terrarium, glittering. ‘I thought you might want to take care of it this summer. Dot and Ethel and all the others. I’m so busy with the baby.’ She smiles, like it’s no big deal, when I know it’s the biggest. ‘You’re good at looking after things, Hera.’

  I should thank her. But the words won’t come.

  ‘You don’t want it?’

  ‘It’s your favourite thing.’

  ‘I trust you, Hera.’

  No one trusts me. I’ve wanted this little glass case of plants from the first moment Big Rita pitched up in London, smelling of the sea, unpacking her blouses and books and then, to Teddy’s and my astonishment, this terrarium stuffed full of plants – with names! I think of the bedtime stories she used to tell us – ships moving across the globe, bringing exotic jungle plants to the grey skies of London. No one had brought them back alive before. ‘I swear on my life I’ll take good care of it.’ I reach over and hug her. She feels soft and safe, the opposite of Don.

  ‘Right, shall we find its perch? We want sunlight but not too much. Not too direct. Not too little. You’re east-facing here, that’s good.’ She drags a side table near the window and my bed, then lifts the terrarium on to it. ‘Ta-dah. Perfect. You can look at it before you go to sleep, Hera. I used to love that as a kid. Focusing on it until my eyes went blurry. Forgetting all the bad stuff.’

  That night I lie on my side in bed and gaze at it. But when my eyes go blurry, the bad stuff doesn’t go away. Instead I see a deer running through the ferns, then pronking – leaping, back arched, legs stiff – at some unseen threat behind the glass. And when I sniff my fingers, I can still smell blood.

  30

  Sylvie

  ‘Favourite smells?’ Kerry asks, sliding the clipboard back at the end of the hospital bed. I’m not sure if the nurse is humouring me because I feel so bloody helpless, and she’s walked in and heard me saying this to Mum (as in therapy, you develop a taste for the one-sided conversation). ‘Flowers? Her perfume. Yours maybe? You always smell delicious, Sylvie, if you don’t mind me saying.’

  I laugh. ‘Not today. Bit of a rush this morning. But thank you.’ I make a mental note to buy Kerry a bottle of my scent, a light fresh Jo Malone. She enjoys the beauty freebies I bring her and the other nurses as inadequate little thank-yous.

  ‘And what about music? Does our Rita have favourite songs? Play them to her. Any sounds, really. Things that might jog a memory. Mean something …’

  A scribble of an outlandish idea takes shape.

  I hurry home through the crowded city streets, trailed by a disconcerting reflection in the mirrored glass of office blocks: a woman who has slept badly, leaped out of the bed with a mound of messy hair – over forty, not so cute – and plucked sweatpants from the overflowing laundry basket. I turn on to the canal path, wondering if I should discuss my idea with Steve, if the new rules of our co-parenting, eggshell-stepping, demand it. But I know he’ll say it’s an insane thing to do, the very last thing I should do. And he’ll have a point.

  ‘Brewing one, if you fancy.’

  I startle. The canal is talking.

  A head appears in a porthole window. The boatman. ‘Beautiful morning.’

  I hadn’t noticed the weather. But I notice his eyes. One blue. One hazel. Did he really just offer coffee?

  ‘Have to be some upsides to being self-employed and living in a floating bathtub, right?’ He leans further out of the boat window and sticks out a hand. ‘Jake.’

  ‘Sylvie.’ His handshake is just the right side of too firm. I can’t stop staring at his eyes. They gleam with a sort of delicious amusement.

  ‘I’ve seen you. On the balcony.’ He nods up at Val’s block. I become aware that I’m smiling at him, almost involuntarily.

  I should probably pretend coquettishly that I don’t know this but find myself saying, ‘Yes, you too. With the guitar.’

  ‘Talent and enthusiasm not always fairly divvied up. You wouldn’t be the first neighbour to complain.’

  So he doesn’t think he’s the new Ed Sheeran. This is a relief.

  ‘So what size cafetière should I use?’ he asks, with just enough of a sidelong smile to make me blush.

  ‘Sorry?’ I say, stalling for time. I’m so bad at this. I need some sort of intervention from my single female friends. Dating seems much more complicated than it was the first time round. If this is dating.

  Standing there – confused, flattered, vaguely alarmed – I remember how I used to tell myself to be more French about Steve’s affairs. I could have an affair too: even things up! Only I didn’t. But if I had, where would I be now? With whom? My mind boggles. Married life is an editing process, I realize, a discerning closing down of other options.
It’s like choosing a capsule wardrobe – navy, black and cream – over fleeting extravagances, throwaway fast fashion. You tell yourself: understated day-to-night dressing, this works, this is me. But what if you’re wrong? And how do you ever know what turn your life might have taken if you’d sashayed to the school gate in a leopard-print jumpsuit instead? None of this helps.

  ‘Would Sylvie-from-the-balcony like a coffee?’ he perseveres.

  Hearing him say my name brings an unexpected sexy jolt. A tightening. Then it occurs to me that no one but Steve’s seen my body naked for years. All its bumps and moles and stretch marks. But he’s suggesting coffee not a shag! How ridiculous. ‘I … I’m kind of busy, I’m afraid. Thank you for the offer, though.’ I sound like an old lady thanking him for giving up his seat for me on the tube.

  ‘Another time,’ he says, meaning, I won’t ask again. Our eyes lock, then he vanishes back into the porthole.

  I’m left with a funny hollow feeling, like when you flake out of a party at the last minute and spend the evening wondering if it might have changed your life. The heron spreads her wings and flies away. Deflated, I turn into the concrete cool of the block, trying to persuade myself that the last thing I need is a date.

  Slightly breathless from the stairs, I stop on the open-air walkway. Who’s that? There’s a woman outside my front door.

  Skinny, blonde and perfectly coiffed, she’s wearing a navy bouclé jacket with gold buttons that squeals Chanel, a pair of tailored white trousers, and is lifted off the dirty paving by patent heels. Mid-fifties? Hard to tell. She stands very upright, with a look of jaw-gritted focus, as if she’s doing secret pelvic-floor exercises. Clearly not a resident.

  Who is she? Why is she at my door? I’ve got things to be getting on with. A mission to plan. The woman holds her handbag to her chest, as if expecting a mugger to come steaming towards her at any moment. She glances in my direction.

  ‘Oh, excuse me.’ Cut-glass accent. A small, strained smile, revealing a perfect row of veneered teeth. She has the nervous pale blue eyes of a whippet. ‘I’m looking for a Sylvie Broom. Am I in the right place?’

  It can only be one person. ‘Helen?’ I ask tightly, trying not to sound as if I’d like to toss her back down the stairwell.

  ‘You’re Sylvie?’ she says, processing my Nike trainers and sweatpants and shock of undone hair.

  ‘I don’t normally look like this.’ She doesn’t laugh. ‘Annie’s at her dad’s today. But, as I said on the phone, I’d rather you didn’t contact her directly, if that’s okay.’

  ‘It’s you I wanted to talk to.’

  ‘Oh.’ I blanch. ‘Well, you better come in. Sorry about the mess. It’s been a bit of a morning.’

  I worry about her stiletto heels on Val’s Danish wooden floor but don’t quite have the guts to ask her to remove them. She’d probably refuse anyway.

  ‘I hope you don’t mind me popping over. I was just around the corner,’ she says, and we both know she’s lying, no more likely to frequent this postcode than a polar bear the tropics. She wants a heads-up on what sort of girl her darling boy has got up the duff. Her gaze is like an airport scanner. It sweeps into every corner of the tiny apartment, hovering over the new eyeshadows and lipsticks scattered on the coffee-table that I haven’t yet sorted through, and look like a shoplifter’s haul. A dirty plate. Annie’s dropped socks. Pale pink walls and houseplants and white sofas can only go so far.

  ‘I’m renting this place from a friend,’ I impulsively explain.

  She tries to frown through her Botox. ‘Separated?’

  It’s not a question. She’s been digging. ‘Since June. Amicably.’

  A smile flickers at the corner of her mouth. Like she knows better.

  ‘Annie splits her time between us,’ I over-explain. ‘Steve, my husband, is in the family house for now. A couple of tube stops away.’ The thought of that dear little house, its teal-blue kitchen, where historic Christmases and Annie’s childhood birthday parties seem to be embedded in the walls, makes my voice go high. ‘Until we decide what to do next.’

  Something in Helen’s face changes. ‘What? You should keep the house. The woman should always keep the house,’ she declares, without sympathy but with a sort of flat common sense that makes me warm to her a bit. ‘He should be in the council block, not you.’

  ‘It’s not a council block. Most of the flats are privately owned,’ I say, despising myself for lowering to her snobbish level. I glance at her left hand but it’s so crusted in jewellery it’s hard to distinguish a wedding ring. ‘Are you married, Helen?’

  ‘I was. To Elliot’s father,’ she says, with an emphasis on ‘father’, drawing attention to Annie’s very far from married state. ‘But he died a few years ago.’ Her face betrays no emotion.

  A widow. I wasn’t expecting that. She fits the bitter-divorcee mould better. ‘I’m sorry.’

  She leans towards me intensely. ‘Elliot’s all I’ve got now, Sylvie. You understand?’

  ‘Annie’s my only child too.’ She considers this a moment and something in her face softens slightly. ‘Can I get you something? Tea? Water?’

  ‘No, thank you. This shouldn’t take long.’

  Ominous. I walk into the kitchen area sensing her at my back, that spiky skinny woman’s energy, the self-righteousness that comes from self-denial and rigorous self-control. Her perfume, very eighties, overloaded with heavy, smoky notes, follows us too, like a hormonal mood. I open the balcony doors, hoping to dilute it discreetly. ‘Do sit down.’

  Helen plucks a scrunched-up tea towel from a chair and hesitates before she sits, as if it were a grubby seat on the Northern Line.

  We assess each other, shiftily combative over the kitchen table. I know she’s examining me as closely as I am her. A shaft of sunlight reveals a facelift, scars neatly tucked behind her ears, and – educated guess – neck work too. Her nose has the unnatural childlike snub that comes courtesy of the surgeon’s scalpel. It’s not a bad nose as worked-on noses go, and I’ve seen some honks, but I do yearn to tell her she’s gone too far with the lip fillers, when all she needed was a decent lipstick, the same shade as the inside of her cheek. Laura Mercier, probably.

  I know about reinventing oneself to get on: I understand this. I’m with her. Do what you can to fight the drag south, absolutely. But I also know that when women start surgically tinkering, like my wealthy private clients all do, there’s rarely a point when they say, ‘Enough. I look bloody fantastic. I’m done.’ Like when you paint one room in a house, all the others start to seem tired and scruffy.

  I know Helen. I’ve worked for lots of Helens. Women who consider a private make-up artist a necessity, like a good gynae, rather than a luxury. Hair colourists. Facialists. The nail lady. All on speed-dial too. These women are hard to please but also needy, easy to hurt and, too often, living with the (not irrational) fear they’ll be replaced by a younger version of themselves. But I’ve never moved in the same social circles. And it’s hard to believe there might be any sort of link between us, that our DNA is actually mingling in my daughter’s womb. Even stranger, that our families have a peculiar historical intersection, a path where they randomly cross. What ‘in’ did she have with Harrington Glass? How well does she know the family?

  I itch to ask outright. But I promised Annie I wouldn’t. And I can’t risk rocking that boat now, for Annie to push me away again.

  ‘So has Annie changed her mind yet?’ she asks abruptly, interrupting my thoughts.

  ‘She’s set on keeping the baby.’

  She closes her eyes, and the shimmery lids quiver. ‘Really? Please tell me there’s a chance she’ll change her mind.’

  ‘Look, knowing Annie, once she’s made her mind up … We’re both going to have to embrace it, Helen.’

  She looks truly rocked. ‘I really thought …’ She startles again. ‘But that means you and I …’ She stops, with a look of dawning horror. ‘Good God. We’re going to be grandmothers!’
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  ‘Makes one feel ancient, doesn’t it?’ I can’t help but smile while a part of me yelps. I wonder what Jake would think if he knew. A grandmother. He wouldn’t be offering me coffee then.

  She leans forward across the table. The perfume is so strong it’s as if she’s breathing it out. ‘I simply must talk to her.’

  ‘Helen, you upset her so much last time that she ran away.’

  ‘I was only offering money!’ she splutters. ‘To make it all easier.’

  ‘Exactly.’

  Helen looks genuinely mystified.

  ‘Can we be clear? She’s not going to get rid of the baby. She’s not after your family’s money. She’s determined to manage all this on her own.’

  ‘But your – your situation.’ Her hand flutters around the room. ‘This block. This neighbourhood …’

  ‘I love this neighbourhood!’ As if on cue, Jake starts playing guitar on his boat deck, bluesy strumming, the odd dropped note. It does nothing to persuade Helen.

  ‘Oh, come on, Sylvie. This is no place to bring up a baby. There are gangs! Armed with knives! Lurking in the stairwells!’

  ‘They’re just teenagers knocking about and they live here too,’ I say, pitying her. How sad to view the young with such suspicion. I wonder if she’s had a bad experience, was a victim of some sort of crime, but daren’t ask.

  ‘The flat is the size of a utility cupboard! And Annie’s age! Basically a child. How in God’s name is she going to manage?’

  A tightness in my chest. ‘I only know my daughter’s resourceful and determined and … just a remarkable girl.’

  Helen looks shocked, as if she’s never heard a mother talk about their child like that. Then she shakes her head, dismissing it. ‘What if she can’t cope? What if she doesn’t bond with the baby? Succumbs to post-natal depression? Much higher in younger mothers, the depression thing. I know. I’ve read up about it, Sylvie.’