Marshmallows for Breakfast

by Dorothy Koomson

  I could have run if I hadn't been so scared. I could have screamed if I wasn't so frightened. I could have scratched his face as he came towards me and suddenly we were standing in a nook, hidden and sheltered from the main corridor, but I was petrified. Fear, true fear, which is thick and deep, which crushes you slowly but surely one molecule at a time, which stops time itself, had me. Fear had me and I couldn't do anything. I knew what it was like to think you're going to be killed.

  I'd never thought about dying before I was twenty. I'd never had to, not really. And if I did, in those brief moments where I thought about the end of my life, I was old, I was frail, I slipped away quietly in my sleep. I never thought it would be because someone had decided to do it. Someone else had closed their hand around my neck and was pushing all life out of me.

  I knew what it was like to think you're going to be killed. And I was afraid of it.

  He was staring at me, I knew, because I could feel his eyes over every line of my face. I wasn't staring back at him. I was staring through him, seeing the dark wood paneling that ringed the lower part of the walls like a heavy, pleated skirt. I saw the tapestry hanging behind him on the flock wall paper. I saw the low lighting embedded into the wall.

  He lowered his head until his lips were a fraction away from my ear. “I thought it was you,” he whispered. “I thought it was an amazing stroke of luck—here I am on holiday and there you were at breakfast this morning. I thought I was imagining it, but no. It's you.” He came in even closer. “Long time no see.”

  Two of his fingers stroked across my collarbone and revulsion trailed in the wake of their path across my skin, but I didn't react.

  What was there to react to? That thing called my body was something separate and far away and I'd lost contact with it.

  “Hmmm,” he breathed, “you've still got the same smooth skin. I love your skin.”

  He ran his hands down and over the rest of my body. I didn't feel anything, I simply knew from the disgust that followed every touch.

  He leaned in and put his lips to my ear again. “Talk to me, Kendra,” he said. “We used to talk all the time. Talk to me.”

  “Aren't you going to ask what you had?” I heard myself say.

  “What?”

  “Aren't you going to ask if you had a son or daughter?”

  “What are you talking about?” His hands stopped and he pulled away slightly as his eyes concentrated on my face. For the first time I looked at him rather than through him. I looked into his face, saw how little he'd aged, how much the same he was. Still blond; those clear, turquoise, violet-flecked eyes, those lips that didn't fit with mine. Nothing had changed about him.

  “I'm talking about,” I paused, summoning up the courage to go through with this, “the baby.”

  “Baby? What baby?”

  “Think about it.”

  The penny had dropped awhile back but his mind hadn't picked it up until that moment. “No,” he said. His eyes searched my eyes for any hint of a lie. “You didn't have my baby. You did not have my baby.”

  “Didn't I?” I replied.

  “You're lying,” he said. “You're lying.”

  I said nothing.

  “You had my baby but didn't tell me? That's not your style. You'd feel duty-bound to tell me.”

  “I know what you're capable of, why would I expose a child to that?” I replied.

  Doubt crossed his face—it occurred to him for the first time that I might not be lying. That maybe I would keep something monumental from him because he was capable of great acts of evil. Because he was evil.

  The truth would never occur to him. That if I couldn't fight him physically, I'd stop him another way. I'd do anything—say anything—to stop him.

  When he didn't speak, I held my breath.

  He stepped back a fraction, not far, but enough so my body wouldn't feel the heat of his. I still held my breath.

  “Tell me about my child,” he said.

  I shook my head.

  “Please?”

  I tried not to lie. In my life, I tried not to lie. I even found it uncomfortable to twist the truth a little. I'd rather keep quiet, hold something in rather than let it out and it not be the truth. But, in the choice between this and lying, I would lie every single time.

  A click, then the yawn of a door hinge being opened filled the corridor. There were people. Someone was coming. “Step away from me,” I said, listening to the footsteps approaching us, hanging onto their sound.

  “But I want to know about—”

  “Step away from me or I start screaming,” I said, raising my voice.

  He stepped back.

  The loved-up couple I saw descending the stairs yesterday walked past and I moved out into the corridor proper, so I could be seen. The couple was heading in the direction of the lift, away from my room. I could go with them, but he'd follow. I was trapped in this corridor, and once the couple was out of sight he might try to touch me again. I needed help. I needed help so desperately at that moment to get out of this situation. Away from this. And then a miracle happened. The door to his room opened and a woman emerged.

  “Oh, honey, I thought you were already downstairs,” she said when she saw him. She was tall, slender, redheaded with alabaster skin and clear blue eyes. She didn't notice me; I was simply another guest in the corridor.

  “Ah, yeah,” he said. “I meant to ask you to bring my mobile down with you. I'm expecting a call from the editor … I know, I know we're on holiday—”

  I walked by concentrating on putting one foot in front of the other as quickly as I could. I walked by focusing on the safety I'd find behind the door of my room. I walked with my heart pounding in my ears. At my door, I risked a look down the corridor and found it was empty. I pushed my key card into the door, stepped in quickly, slammed the door just as quickly. I dragged a chair from the desk and hooked it under the handle.

  I stood in the space between the bed and the door, frozen again. I was cold inside. Burning on the outside, freezing on the inside. I was a human baked Alaska—slice me through and I'd have ice at my core.

  Into the silence brrrrriiiinnnnnnnng! exploded.

  I wasn't startled: I was too cold inside for that. My eyes went to my mobile sitting on the bedside table. I was drawn to it. I wanted the noise to stop, I needed silence. I needed quiet. To think, I needed quiet. Moving like a robot with fused joints, I went towards the phone, picked it up.

  On the screen Summer, Jaxon and Kyle flashed up. A photo from the day we went to the British Museum. Their picture was replaced with their names. Then they were back, grinning at me. Then their names. Their bright faces. Their names.

  I couldn't.

  Speak to them. I couldn't.

  They were part of a different Kendra's life. Not this one. This one was damaged. This one was disgusting. This one could not speak to two children. I pressed the red button to reject the call, then carefully replaced the phone on the bedside table before I went to the bathroom to begin the process of removing him from every single piece of me.

  “Kendie, it's Summer. We have to talk to you. We're going to Gra'ma Naomi's house tomorrow and we're going to see Mumma … Oh, Dad said I told you that already. Mumma called us again today she said she's excited. Here's Jaxon … It's Jaxon. Garvo chased a cat. It ran under next door's car and wouldn't come out. Dad said that wasn't very nice but it's not Garvo's fault. Call us back … It's me again. Yeah, call us back … What?… Dad said you have to call back tomorrow if it's after eight o'clock … But, Dad, we'll be at Gra'ma Naomi's house tomorrow … All right, Dad … Call us back.”

  I listened to the message over and over.

  Lay in the dark listening to their voices. Bright and happy. On loudspeaker they filled the room; I could close my eyes and pretend they were with me. They were near enough to touch.

  I hadn't called them back and now it was the middle of the night. They were safe. Tucked up in bed. Before my eyes their faces as they slept
became clear. The eyelash-fringed semicircles of their closed lids, their gently pursed pink lips, the smooth skin of their faces as they dreamed of pleasant things.

  I loved them.

  I loved them so much, but I couldn't talk to them.

  CHAPTER 31

  He was waiting for me in reception. I knew he would be.

  The hotel was clothed in quiet because it was only 6 a.m. and I did my best not to crease it as I made my way out. But he was sitting on the sofa directly opposite the reception desk. He didn't move until I'd finished checking out, and then he came towards me as I walked towards the exit.

  He looked washed out, wrung out, the kind of grey-white that came from lack of sleep and reworking your life. His hair looked as if he'd run his fingers through it more than once, his clothes were crumpled. I stopped, to keep a distance between us and to keep us in the line of sight of the receptionist.

  “I knew you'd leave before everyone got up,” he said.

  I almost screamed in his face to stop it. To stop believing that he knew me, knew how I thought, how I acted; that there was some kind of connection between us.

  “Leave me alone,” I said quietly.

  “But—”

  “Leave me alone,” I said again.

  “We have to talk about our child. He or she must be about twelve? Is he—” he asked.

  “I lied,” I cut in. “To stop you from doing what you were doing. I didn't have your child. I don't have any children.” I'll never have children.

  I'd realized that last night. I didn't have children. No matter how hard I wished, no matter how many school runs I did, day trips I planned, stories I read, I did not have children. No matter how many times I told myself I knew they were someone else's kids, I had been fooling myself. I'd become too close to them when they weren't mine. I did not have children.

  For a moment I thought he was going to go for me, to close his hand around my throat and squeeze the life out of me and it didn't scare me that much. A little, but not like last night. Not like it had before. He'd already hurt me as much as he could. His face relaxed. He wasn't sure what to believe.

  “You lied?”

  I nodded. “You were trying … I had to stop you.”

  “I wasn't going to hurt you,” he said. “I just wanted you to talk to me. Like we used to.”

  “I have nothing to say to you.”

  He looked disappointed, as though he couldn't understand why I was being like this. Why I wasn't pleased to see him. We were friends, after all, why didn't I want to talk to him? The silence stretched like loosened elastic between us; it could go on and on and still not be pulled back. He didn't know what to say to get me to act like his friend again; I had nothing to say to him—not now, not ever. It was time for me to leave. To put him behind me like I had done all these years. It was time for me to walk away.

  I walked down the stairs. In the car park I threw my bags onto the passenger seat and slammed and locked the door. I shoved the key into the ignition, put on my seat belt. I started the car, put it in gear and took the hand brake off.

  Lance was standing on the steps watching me as I began to crawl out of the car park. I was driving slowly enough to see him do it. To see him glance in the back window and see Jaxon and Summer's booster seats.

  SLICE OF COLD PIZZA

  CHAPTER 32

  Is there something that you can do when it feels as though your head is caving in and your chest is being crushed?

  It hadn't stopped since I left the conference. I'd forgotten what it was like to live without the pain and the feeling of being compressed from the inside out.

  Saturday afternoon, knowing the kids were with their mother and Kyle would be out shopping, I left a message on their home phone saying I'd be back on Monday instead of Sunday and turned off my phone. I didn't go to Leeds, I'd just driven back to Kent. Then I'd parked the car three streets away and crept into my flat.

  I didn't bother to take off my clothes—instead I kicked off my shoes, climbed under the covers and hid. I was safe under the covers, protected and safe. No one knew I was here. I lay huddled under there, and slept in fits and starts. Slept and woke. Would open my eyes and stare at nothing. Trying not to collapse into the knot of what had happened at the hotel. What had happened all those years ago. If I fell back there, even for a moment, I'd be tangled; caught and trapped.

  Monday I got up early. Showered with blistering hot water and left at 5:45 a.m., before the children got up. I missed them. I wanted to see them, to listen to what they'd done in the time I'd been away. I wanted to see the light in their eyes, the smile on their lips, to hear their voices excitedly unraveling the mysteries of our time apart. The agony inside my head hadn't gone away, the pressure on my chest was increasing not decreasing, the bruise on my heart was spreading. I couldn't pass that on to them. Not even for a few minutes. And after the revelation I'd had, the reminder that I did not and would not have kids, I knew I had to pull back from them.

  I beat Gabrielle to work for the first time ever in us working together. She raised her eyebrows in surprise when she saw me at my desk as she arrived, but made no comment. Instead we just talked about the conference and what I'd learned. “I learned I'm never going to have children,” I almost said. “That's what I learned.”

  I knew what this was. It was bereavement. It was losing something precious. It was losing a part of myself I'd never gotten to know. I hadn't gone through the bereavement process like I should have done three years ago when I found out. I'd simply stayed in shock, maybe even denial, pretended it wasn't happening. Pretended I could hide from it by moving to Australia. As a result, I was nowhere near acceptance, the part of the process where you assimilate the knowledge and move on with your life. I was somewhere along that process of loss and grief. I knew that. In tel lec tu ally I knew that. Emotionally was something else completely. Emotionally a simple look would ignite enough pain to knock me out.

  The day inched by. I looked up at lunchtime to find it was only ten- thirty and I still had hours before I could go to lunch and walk around the streets, get outside in the fresh air, unnoticed and anonymous.

  My skin doesn't fit.

  I felt uncomfortable. I wanted to bury my fingernails into the flesh of my inner arm and claw away the skin. I wanted to dig my nails into the softest, tenderest part of my cheek and strip it of everything. I wanted to hurt physically so the rest of it would go away.

  “Kendra, for God's sake!” Janene's frustrated voice called across the office and broke into my trance.

  My eyes stopped staring at the swirls of words on the newspaper in front of me and moved up to seek out the office assistant.

  “Are you back on planet earth?” she asked, each word coated in sarcasm. “Or shall I page you on whichever crazy world you're visiting today?”

  Gabrielle was out of the office, so was Teri. It was only the two of us, which was why she was using this tone. Since the incident with the phone message where Gabrielle had given her a written warning, she had been very careful to hide her dislike of me. As soon as we were alone, the razor-blade studded politeness with which she dealt with me fell away, and who she was would appear.

  “How can I help you, Janene?” I asked evenly. I didn't want to fight Janene. I didn't want to fight anyone.

  “Did you sign those temp invoices?” she asked.

  “Not yet,” I replied. I'd meant to, but hadn't. They'd actually left my mind.

  Her hazel eyes rolled up at the ceiling as she heaved a frustrated sigh. “What haveyou been doing?”

  “I'll sign them when I'm ready,” I said.

  “You do that,” she said with a slight snarl. “And if anyone calls because they haven't been paid, I'll be putting them through to you. I won't be taking the blame because you're not doing your job.”

  “You know what I love most about you, Janene?” I said, my voice as calm and serene as a sea before a violent storm. “Despite every piece of evidence to the contrary, you still
think you're the boss. And, despite the fact I have a better title, and I have a better pay structure and I pretty much have a better job, you go on day after day, laboring under this delusion that you can tell me what to do. It's incredible. I applaud your delusionary abilities.”

  While Janene tried to shift out the insult amongst what I said, my eyes returned to the newspaper in front of me. I raised my pen, went back to the top of the want ads because I hadn't taken in one word that I'd read.

  “If ever there was a woman in need of a good seeing to, it's you,” Janene said. “What's the matter, Kendra, not getting any?”

  I continued to stare at my newspaper, the nib of my pen pressed hard enough into the newsprint to make it snap.

  “Do us all a favor and go get laid, Kendra … Oh, yes, I forgot, you don't like sex, so afterwards you make things up and call the cops to have the man arrested, don't you? But I suppose it's only fair—sleeping with you is a crime, isn't it?”

  If I hadn't just come back from the conference, if I hadn't been missing the kids, if I'd had more sleep in the past few days, what happened next may not have. I may have just calmly removed my diary from my desk, written down in detail what Janene had said to me and reported her to Gabrielle upon her return. I may have gotten up, left the room and walked around the block until I could sit calmly in the office with Janene. I may have ignored her. I'll never know. In the seconds after she spoke, my eyes closed and then opened to glare at her. I took in her straight, gold-blond hair that fell in expensively styled sheets to her shoulders. I took in her mean eyes, her vicious mouth, her nasty nose, the base cut of her jaw, her expensive black suit. All money and no class. I took it all in. And then I opened my mouth. “If you speak to me again, Janene, I will hurt you.”

  “As if,” she scoffed.

  “You just spoke to me.” I felt my mouth twist into a bitter, humorless smile. “Obviously you didn't understand what I said.” I spread my hands out in front of me, leaned forwards. “I mean, if you ever speak to me again; if you even utter a simple hello or good-bye, tell me there's a call for me, or say ‘excuse me’ if we pass in the corridor, I will wait for you someplace and I will hurtyou. Now, just nod if you understand.”