by Lesley Kara
I unfurl the roll of brushes on to my bed. There’s no way Josh’s dad will ask me to do that painting. And even if he does, I won’t agree. My tongue sticks to the roof of my mouth. It’s happening again. The sudden swell inside me. The suffocating need to drink. My eyes flick to the travel clock perched on the windowsill, not that I need to check what my body knows with every fibre of its being. Four o’clock in the afternoon. The time I used to start drinking, or if by some miracle I was employed, the time I used to start planning for it in my head. Imagining the satisfying twist of the cap as the seal cracked, the glorious glugging sound as I poured it out. That first long-awaited mouthful.
The muscles in my stomach flutter. My scalp itches. I scratch it, or try to. Work my nails into the exposed areas between the braids. What the hell am I going to do? Is this what it’s going to be like for the rest of my life?
Before I know what I’m doing, I’m ripping the beads off the ends of my braids. It’s a long, fiddly procedure, unravelling every last one, detangling the clumpy bits at the roots, washing my hair over the bath and combing conditioner all the way to the ends. But it’s something to do. Something to fill the endlessly dry void. Besides, it feels good, dragging the teeth of the comb from my forehead to the crown of my head and down over the back of my neck. Over and over again, till my arm aches and my scalp tingles. Till the wave of longing finally breaks.
*
Mum widens her eyes when she sees my hair. ‘I was wondering when you’d get rid of those awful things. You look so much better without them,’ she adds.
She’s scrubbing new potatoes at the sink with a nail brush. ‘Pam said she saw you coming out of the Fisherman’s Shack,’ she says, not looking round.
Pam is her bridge partner and fellow Quaker.
‘She said you were with a young man.’
I sigh. It’s no wonder I feel like I’m being watched.
‘I’m surprised you haven’t organized the whole town to keep an eye out for me.’
The potato Mum’s been scrubbing shoots out of her hand and plops into the washing-up bowl. She lifts it out and rinses it under the tap. ‘You know what they said in rehab, about not getting involved with anyone else. No major life changes.’
‘I had a coffee and a toasted teacake with him. We’re not getting married.’
Now it’s Mum’s turn to sigh. ‘Just so long as you know what you’re doing.’
If only I could confide in her that I have absolutely no idea what I’m doing, that each new day without drinking is uncharted territory, that I feel like a tiny boat, buffeted by waves. A boat that could sink at any minute. But we’ve left it a bit late for heart-to-hearts. The pattern of our relationship is already fixed, and it’s prickly. Combative.
She runs cold water into a colander of lettuce and shakes it over the sink. ‘Omelette, new potatoes and salad for supper. Is that okay for you?’
‘Lovely, thanks.’
She gives me a quick, tight smile. It’s a truce, of sorts.
After supper, I open my copy of Alcoholics Anonymous. I’ve read the same paragraph three times and it still doesn’t make any sense. It’s no surprise that it’s known as ‘the Big Book’. It’s dated and repetitive and I seem to have been reading it for ever but, right now, it’s the closest I’ve got to a lifeline.
No wonder I can’t concentrate. Mum’s pushing a carpet sweeper over the rug and the squeaky noise is doing my head in. It’s so like her to still be using a carpet sweeper.
‘Someone at my bridge club is starting up a beginners’ class at the community hall,’ she says, as if the thought has just that second popped into her head, as if she hasn’t been planning on saying it to me all day. ‘It starts tomorrow. I wondered whether you might be interested.’
‘Not sure bridge is really my thing, Mum.’
Mum’s stopped pushing the sweeper now. ‘It’s a fascinating game when you get the hang of it. And there’s so much to learn, it might be good for you.’
This is what she’s like. She won’t let things go.
‘Seriously, Mum, I don’t want to. I might start swimming or something.’
The thought of plunging into cold seawater with Josh has been exercising my mind ever since we said goodbye and swapped phone numbers. I want to feel cleansed and invigorated. I want to learn about the tides. I want to learn what the hell a sea squirt is.
‘I’m going to see Josh’s dad’s house next week.’
She gives me a sharp look. ‘Who’s Josh?’
‘That guy I had coffee with. His dad wants some advice about a trompe l’œil.’
A strange look comes into Mum’s eyes. ‘I saw an amazing one of those in Quebec once,’ she says. ‘It was on the side of a house and it looked like the wall had been ripped off and you could see inside all the rooms.’
I stare at her. It sounds like she’s talking about the Fresque du Petit-Champlain. I remember it from one of the lectures at uni. ‘When were you in Quebec?’
There’s a long pause. ‘After your dad died.’
Dad. It’s the first time either of us has mentioned him in ages. The words hang in the air like an accusation. No matter how many times I tell myself that he had a heart condition and would have died anyway, I’ll never stop torturing myself about the stress my drinking gave him. It might not have caused his heart attack, but it didn’t help. I know that’s what Mum thinks too. I can see it in her eyes, hear it in the things she doesn’t say.
‘How come you never told me you’d been to Quebec?’
‘I did.’
‘You didn’t. I would have remembered.’
‘You think?’
I look down at my book, cheeks burning. Good point, Mother. I’ve missed too many things in my cobweb of a life. Black holes in my memory I’ll never be able to fill, no matter how hard I try. Not that I want to fill them all. Some things are best forgotten.
6
The hair salon is warm and smells of hairspray. I made the appointment a few days ago. They’re offering discounts if you don’t mind letting a trainee loose on your head, and I don’t. People who have to ask their mothers for pocket money can’t afford to be too fussy about these things.
With each snip of the scissors, the curve of my skull is slowly revealed. My cheekbones look sharper. I feel lighter and freer than before, as if the weight of my past has also been shed. If only that were true. If only we could cut out the bits of our life we don’t like. The bits that fill us with dread and self-loathing. If only we could excise them like warts or lumps and wait for the scar tissue to seal the wound.
I brush away the slivers of hair that sit on my gown-covered lap like pale wood shavings and try to steer my mind away from its usual course, the one it always takes when I start thinking like this. I read Josh’s message for what must be the twentieth time. Wednesday has come around a lot sooner than I expected, and I still haven’t decided if I’ll go. It says to meet him outside the Old Schooner. Although there’s still a chance he might suggest we pop in for a beer before we go to his dad’s, so I need to have some excuses at the ready. Just in case I end up going.
Here’s what I’ll say: I’m not that thirsty, to be honest. Or, Actually, I’m trying not to drink during the week. No, not that, because then he might ask me at the weekend. What about I’ve gone right off pubs lately, or The Old Schooner’s a bit of a dive, isn’t it? or I’m not really a pub person.
The one thing I know for certain I won’t say is: The thing is, Josh, I’m a recovering alcoholic, so if you don’t mind, I’d rather we didn’t.
Why can’t I just say that? Why is it so damn hard?
‘Wow!’ Josh says. ‘You look fantastic. I nearly didn’t recognize you.’
He pecks me on the cheek, then falls in beside me. After all that worrying, he doesn’t even mention the pub. It feels odd, having to match my pace to someone else’s. It’s as much as I can do to keep up with his long, easy strides. Still, at least there aren’t any awkward silences. He has
the easy confidence of someone who went to public school. He’s got the voice too. Simon would hate him on principle.
They couldn’t be more different, the two of them, and yet something about Josh reminds me a little of Simon. It’s how he makes me feel, as if the two of us have known each other far longer than we have. It was like that with Simon too, before everything turned to shit.
My pulse quickens. Why am I still thinking about him? Now I can’t stop myself glancing over my shoulder. Simon once said he’d kill any man who took me away from him. And then he’d kill me. It was only the drink talking, but still …
‘Did you grow up round here?’ I ask him. Anything to take my mind off the image that’s just lodged itself in my head, of Simon watching me from the end of the road, tracking my every movement. My fingers tighten round the juggling ball in my pocket.
‘No,’ Josh says. ‘I was born and raised in Berkshire. When my mum died, Dad sold the house. Couldn’t bear the memories, I suppose.’ He pauses. ‘He bought a houseboat. Lived on it for years. It had been one of their dreams, to live on a boat, so I suppose he was doing it for her. Then he visited his aunt, who lived out this way, saw this place was up for sale and that was that.’
‘I know what it’s like to lose a parent. My dad died three years ago.’
I don’t usually talk about Dad – it’s too painful. But after Mum’s comment yesterday, he keeps coming into my thoughts.
Josh has the grace not to say anything, but there’s a depth to his silence – a comfort to it.
Five minutes later we turn into a wide, gravelled driveway at the bottom of a narrow country lane. The driveway sweeps round in a curve towards a double-fronted Victorian villa that’s about five times the width of my mother’s tiny cottage.
The front door is on the latch. Josh opens it and waves me inside. As soon as I step over the threshold the house welcomes me and all the tension I’ve been holding in my lower jaw and shoulders falls away. My eyes travel from the high ceilings to the newly plastered walls and the bare grey floorboards.
‘It’s beautiful.’
Josh laughs. ‘We’ve only just started.’
‘But the house itself, its dimensions and its … its aura. It’s perfect.’
A man in paint-splattered overalls emerges from the room on the right. He has the same facial structure as Josh, the same tousled blond hair, except his is finer and starting to recede. He also has tortoiseshell glasses perched on the end of his nose.
‘It does have an aura, doesn’t it?’ he says. ‘See, Josh? It’s not just your old man who senses these things.’ He comes towards me, hand outstretched. ‘I’m Richard. You must be Astrid,’ he says, his voice a fraction deeper than his son’s, and I realize, in that split second, that I’m sexually attracted to both of them but that the new, sober Astrid will make a point of burying this thought and not returning to it under any circumstances.
‘Come and look at the view,’ Josh says, and I follow him into one of the rooms on the left, a dual-aspect living room filled with light. Original fireplaces with marble surrounds are in both halves of the room. The walls in here have been painted white, the floorboards sanded.
‘You can see all the way down to Langan’s Creek and Brintock Island,’ Richard says, following us in. ‘Although the best view’s from upstairs, of course.’
I’m speechless. This beautiful house, the huge marshland skies merging with the mudflats. The birds circling overhead, the moored boats. I could stand at this window for hours and watch the tide creep over the saltings.
My voice, when it comes, is barely a whisper. ‘I love it.’
‘Come on, I’ll give you the grand tour,’ Josh says, and now he’s leading me through the house, each room a work in progress. The kitchen has been gutted. A cold tap sticks out of the wall over a washing-up bowl and the stand-alone gas oven has been left connected, but otherwise there’s nothing but an old pine table that appears to be serving as a temporary food station. It’s covered with plates and mugs and crumbs and half-empty packets of teabags, and salami and tomatoes. A small chrome microwave has been balanced on a chair and a massive fridge hums in the corner.
‘This wall is being knocked down,’ Josh says, flinging his arm out in an expansive gesture. ‘Dad wants the kitchen to be one huge space with a long table in the middle and free-standing units.’
I can picture it already. It will be stunning. Like one of those kitchens you see in glossy interior-design magazines. Josh’s dad must be minted.
Upstairs, it’s more of the same. High-ceilinged rooms with tiled fireplace surrounds and bare floorboards, some with the plaster still drying out, some already painted white.
‘This is where I’m sleeping,’ Josh says, and for a few, excruciating seconds we’re both staring at a king-size bed with the plumpest, whitest, most inviting-looking bedding I’ve ever seen. He must feel it too, this energy between us. It’s almost palpable. I walk over to the window, my back to the bed, and focus instead on the view, which is, as Richard said, even better from up here.
When Josh comes over to join me, we don’t talk. We don’t even look at each other. But we both know what’s going to happen. Maybe not today, or tomorrow. Maybe not even this week. But some time soon.
If I let it.
‘It was called “the snug” in the property details,’ Richard says. The three of us are standing in the small, dark room in the middle of the house. ‘But somehow I don’t see myself chilling out in here. It’s too dingy. Too cramped.’
‘It’s about the same size as my mum’s living room,’ I say.
A fleeting look of discomfort passes over Richard’s face. He must think I’m making a point, and I’m not. It was an observation, that’s all. This is my problem. I blurt things out without thinking.
‘But her room’s much sunnier,’ I add. ‘And why would you want to be in here when you have all those other lovely rooms?’
Now I’m making it worse. Rubbing his nose in the fact that he’s lucky enough to have this huge place while some people have to muddle through in poky little rabbit warrens. What’s wrong with me?
‘So what I was thinking,’ he says, ‘is that I could turn it into a piece of art instead.’
‘What sort of thing do you have in mind?’
‘I don’t know. A window, maybe? Or is that too clichéd?’
My eyes sweep round in an arc. ‘A trompe l’œil only really works from one point of view.’ I take a step back. ‘So in this case, you’d need to paint something on the wall that faces you as you come through the door. This one here.’ I pat it with the flat of my hand, enjoying the feel of cold plaster on my palm.
‘You’re the expert,’ Richard says.
‘Hardly. But I have painted a couple in the past.’ The dim and distant past, but he doesn’t need to know that. ‘To work best, the deceit needs to fit into the setting exactly.’ Heat floods my cheeks and I’m glad the room is dark. How would they react if they knew that I was deceiving them right now? That, just like a trompe l’œil, I’m one big, fat lie.
‘I mean, there’d be no point painting a range of mountains, not when you live in one of the flattest counties in Britain.’
Richard and Josh laugh.
‘But if, for instance, you had a picture of an open door leading on to an old wooden jetty and a boat bobbing on some water, then that would match the existing landscape. Shall I play around with some ideas? Do some sketches?’
I can’t believe I just said that. Art takes practice. It’s like a muscle that needs to be worked. I haven’t done anything like this for years. What if I’ve lost the ability to draw? And now that I’ve offered to do some sketches, there’s every possibility he’ll ask me to do the painting as well. Oh God! What have I done?
And yet there’s a small throb of excitement I can’t deny. I felt it almost as soon as I entered this room.
Richard pushes his glasses up his nose and smiles. ‘Would you? That’d be fantastic!’ He glances at Josh
and I sense their silent communication. ‘Are you staying for supper, Astrid? We could get some fish and chips if you like.’
He’s looking straight at me now, his pale-blue eyes unnervingly intense.
‘I’ve got a rather nice bottle of red we could have with it,’ he says, and for one heart-stopping moment I have the feeling he sees right through me. All the way to my rotten core.
And now I’m mumbling something about having to leave. I’m stuffing my arms in my coat and retracing my steps through the house, aware of the shocked silence behind me, how odd I must seem to them, how rude and ungrateful. But I can’t stay here any longer. I just can’t.
She’s in a real state – look at her.
I wait till she reaches the top of the lane before I set off in the same direction. Long, purposeful strides like I know where I’m going, like I’ve got some place to be. By the time I turn on to the main road, she’s way ahead of me, waiting for a gap in the traffic.
Why doesn’t she just step out? That would really be something, wouldn’t it? I can almost hear the screech of tyres and the sickening thwack as her body wraps itself around the front of an SUV. See her shoot into the air then land on the tarmac like a broken doll, skidding along, her limbs sticking out at weird angles, her head all smashed in.
Better still, I’d be the one behind the wheel. The one who couldn’t stop in time, who didn’t even try. For one intense second, I’d see the look of horror in her eyes. Then she’d bounce off the windscreen with a dull thud and I’d drive straight over her. Hear the crunch of her bones.
7
‘As soon as he mentioned the wine, I just mumbled my excuses and left. God knows what they think of me.’
I stare at my lap. I never intended to tell them any of this, but that’s what happens at AA. It’s like a mutual bloodletting.
‘I know I did the right thing, but I still wish I was there and not here.’ A fat tear lands on my knee. ‘That’s it. That’s all I want to say.’
