The Woman in the Dark

by Vanessa Savage

  She winces, like I’ve hurt her, then her face shuts down. We’re back to the blank-faced hostility.

  “I don’t want to stay with Caroline,” she mutters.

  They used to be close. It made me jealous once, when all I got was slammed doors and attitude. “But it would give you a chance to catch up with your old friends.”

  “Jesus, Mum, can’t you take a hint? Do I have to spell it out?” she says.

  “What?”

  “I thought that’s why you did it—why you took the overdose.”

  My turn to wince.

  She’s gone even paler. “I thought you were punishing Dad,” she says, her voice wobbly, “for cheating on you.”

  I can’t take a breath. Her words have punched me in the stomach just as she intended. I’m remembering the letter, the handwritten letter that started all this. The one I saw and thought, This is from a woman, and my instinct was to hide it, bury it, forget it, pretend I hadn’t seen it.

  Did I know? Did I always suspect? Is that what’s wrong with him—not the house, not money worries or work or me, but guilt over an affair? No. It can’t be that. Mia’s wrong. It can’t…

  “I saw him with her,” she says. “They were only kissing, but it was obvious what they’d been doing.” She shakes her head, as if she could shake away the memory. “So I shouldn’t blame you, should I? Maybe I’d have tried killing myself too. If Dad can cheat on you with your friend like that…”

  What?

  Mia’s staring at me. “Yeah, it was Caroline. He was kissing Caroline.”

  Caroline?

  What?

  I float in the bath, only my face above the water. It’s so full that any movement on my part sends waves of water over the side to drip-drip onto the tiled floor.

  We ate dinner, the four of us, Mia picking at her noodles, barely eating anything, me numb, frozen. Did I pick up my fork? Did I even pretend to eat? Patrick and Mia talked, Mia nervously prattling, shooting me worried glances. Joe was in a world of his own.

  Mia has to be wrong. She must have seen something she misinterpreted. And Caroline hates Patrick: How can they have been close enough for Mia to think she saw them kissing? I can’t breathe. Something’s choking me. Caroline has been my best friend for nearly twenty years. She knew me when I met Patrick, when I was so in love with him, when I was floating in the clouds in love with him, first love, first lover, Caroline knew all of this. My best friend.

  It can’t be true. But a bitter voice in my head rewrites everything I’ve seen between them: the barbed words become flirtation, every moment they stopped talking as I entered a room becomes significant—not arguing, not talking about me, but making arrangements. Her concern at the hospital about my moving out here was nothing to do with me and all to do with Patrick. If I check his phone, will I see her number listed? Secret messages planning secret assignations?

  Every thought is a stab, a hot needle direct to my bloodstream. I want to phone her, beg her to tell me it’s a lie, a mistake, but what if she doesn’t? What if she confirms it? What do I do then? I close my eyes, sink deeper into the water, but the voices won’t go away.

  “Who did it?”

  Patrick’s voice, raised and sharp, sends me lurching upright, water sloshing over the side of the bath. By the time I get out and run downstairs in my dressing gown, he’s got Joe by the shoulder, shaking him.

  “What’s going on?”

  They both look at me. I shiver not just from my wet hair but at the cold anger on Patrick’s face, the fear on Joe’s.

  Patrick looks away from me, back at his son. “Did you do it?”

  “Do what?” Joe mutters, and Patrick’s dragging him off, through to the kitchen. I follow them in time to see Patrick unlocking the back door, pushing Joe out ahead of him.

  “Look,” he says, pointing up into the tree that grows outside Joe’s window.

  At first, I think it’s a ribbon floating from the branches and I don’t get Patrick’s anger: it’s close enough to Joe’s window that he could probably reach out and hook it off. Then I step closer and see it’s a pair of baby shoes, those soft satiny ones with ribbons that are just for show, for very new babies. It’s the shoes Ben found, the ones he said he’d throw away.

  I glance back at Patrick. He’s breathing fast and the hand that’s not holding Joe is white-knuckled at his side.

  “Patrick, I don’t think Joe put them there—why would he put baby shoes in a tree? It’s probably kids messing about, a lucky shot from the alley.”

  Patrick isn’t looking at me. He’s looking at those shoes swinging in the breeze and it’s there again. Fear. He’s afraid of something and I don’t know what. And I’m not only worried about him anymore—I’m scared too. Scared for all of us as to what that look might mean.

  He lets Joe go, rubs his hands through his hair. “Sorry, I’m… sorry. Just kids, you’re right.” He glances up at the tree again and his face tightens. “Get rid of them,” he growls, to both of us, as he walks away. I hear the front door slam and hold my breath, only letting it out when I hear the car start and drive off.

  Joe straightens his shirt where Patrick twisted it when he grabbed him. “Still think this house is a good place for us, Mum? Still promise everything will get better?”

  Anna’s brought me to her secret beach. I stand on the steep path leading down, clutching a rock, as I’m hit with a disorienting wave of vertigo. I wasn’t going to come—I walked away from the house, overwhelmed by everything: the fear on Patrick’s face, my own fears about him and Caroline, about Tom’s conviction of Patrick’s friendship with John Evans. Everything that’s happening in the house—the cold spots that I swear are growing, that height chart, which seems to be becoming more visible, the footprint, the marks on the window, those damn fucking baby shoes.

  I press my hands tight against my temples, as if I could squeeze away the pounding headache. It’s too much, thoughts like maggots eating away at my brain. Every muscle in my body is tense and I don’t know if it’s withdrawal from those damn pills or something more, but it’s too much. I had to get out, but I was looking for the mundane, the normality of a café, or a numbing walk around a supermarket.

  Then I saw Joe outside the fairground, and before I had the chance to go over, he was met by another boy in the same school uniform. They were mostly hidden in shadow at the back of the cotton candy stall and this boy leaned in to kiss Joe. Joe turned afterward and saw me. I lifted a hand to wave, but I didn’t go over.

  I wasn’t sure what to do, so I ran away. Not literally running but almost. It’s not that I’m surprised. We’ve never discussed it, but I think I’ve always known Joe is gay. I want to tell him it’s okay, that I just want him to be happy. But if I’d gone over to them, what would I have said? Something stupid, probably: Why aren’t you in school? or I’m worried about you or Don’t tell your father. Something that would take away the smile on Joe’s face and it’s been so long since I’ve seen that smile. And I’m glad, so glad, to see him happy, but it ignites more worries: What if that boy breaks my son’s heart when he’s so fragile? What if Patrick finds out? Last year, six months ago even, would I have worried about that? But Patrick as he is now, would his reaction be rational?

  So I waved and walked away, my feet carrying me in the other direction, to the coast path where Anna was waiting, sitting on a bench, looking out to sea, just like the painting in the gallery window.

  “What do you think?” Anna calls as I climb carefully down onto the sand.

  I straighten up. The beach is pebbly, like the one at home, but Anna was right: these pebbles have a million more colors—greens and blues and pinks. The water is slices of cobalt and jade and gray. That flat painting in the gallery chopped up and re-collaged into something real and interesting. I can see for miles along the coast and grass-topped crumbly cliffs stretch up behind me.

  I glance at Anna. The walk down has put color into her cheeks and she looks younger as she jumps from rock
to rock. I could bring Joe and Mia here. We could build a house made of pebbles and driftwood and hide from everything.

  “I needed this,” I say. “I haven’t been sleeping. This is washing away all the sluggishness.”

  I want to tell her about Patrick maybe knowing John Evans, about Caroline and Patrick, but she doesn’t know them. She won’t be able to reassure me. She’ll believe it, and the squirming fear in my belly will grow. If I told her about my husband’s reactions to the baby shoes, the restaurant, the kitchen showroom, if I told her about my creeping fear that something’s living in the house other than us, what would she say?

  “Do you think this place might end up in one of your paintings?” she asks when we get to the water’s edge. We look down, watching the water creep toward us, as far as our toes and back.

  “Patrick doesn’t want me to exhibit. He thinks it’ll be an embarrassment.” I feel the sting of humiliation again.

  “But shouldn’t it be about what you want?”

  What I want is to grab Mia and Joe and move down here into the pebble-and-driftwood house of my imagination, away from everything. What I want is to be free of the clamoring panic in my head.

  We stand in silence for a while, looking out to sea.

  “I want to do it, I do. But I’m scared,” I say.

  “Of what?”

  Of everything.

  “I like your secret beach.”

  She smiles. “Then it shall be your secret beach, too. We’ll share it, fifty-fifty.”

  Another secret to keep from Patrick.

  She holds out a handful of tiny pebbles in a dozen pastel shades. Wet from the sea, the sun turns them into glittering jewels. “Paint this place,” she says. “Have your exhibition. Do something for you.”

  I lick my dry lips and they taste of salt.

  “I will,” I say. “I’ll do it.”

  I go by the gallery on my way back to talk to Ben, Anna’s pebbles heavy in my pocket. I try to put the baby shoes out of my mind as I stand outside. Ben’s talking to a customer but flashes me a smile as I come in. I leave them to their low-pitched chat and wander around the gallery. It’s so beautiful, white walls and polished wood floors, huge windows, warm and bright.

  “Sorry about that,” Ben says, coming over to me after the customer leaves. I’m staring at a painting, lost in it. It’s not big in terms of physical size. Its vastness is all within the picture, in the mist settling over the sand dunes, the way it eats the ground so the dunes appear to be floating.

  “Is this one of yours?” I ask, and Ben nods.

  “It’s beautiful,” I say. It is. Beautiful and powerful… but also full of emptiness and loneliness.

  “It’s not my favorite—too melancholy,” he says. I nod. That sums up the mood of the painting perfectly. “It’s one of a series I did after my divorce came through. The paintings I’m working on now are much happier.” He says it with a smile, but I still see a drift of that melancholy on his face.

  “You said you had something that could help me be ready to exhibit.” Does he hear the agitation in my voice, the high-pitched edge of anxiety?

  He looks at me for a moment, then turns and locks the gallery door. My stomach lurches—was I wrong about this? About him?

  “Wait,” I say as he walks toward the back of the gallery. “Did you—did you throw the baby shoes into our tree?”

  “What?”

  “The baby shoes. The ones you found outside our house.”

  He’s frowning. “Throw them into a tree? Of course not. I put them in the wheelie-bin, like I said I would.”

  “They were dangling from a branch of the tree in our back garden.”

  He rubs a hand through his short hair. “I’m not… I promise you I took the shoes, put them in the bin, and that’s it.”

  “Someone threw them there.”

  “What are you suggesting, Sarah? I’m guessing it was whatever joker put them outside your house in the first place.”

  He takes a step toward me and I take one back. His frown grows. “Look, I can promise you I’m not stalking you with baby shoes or planning anything terrible here, but if you’re feeling uncomfortable, you can go and I’ll get someone else to liaise with you over the exhibition.”

  I’m being stupid, made paranoid by whoever’s been watching the house. I still don’t know who threw the shoes, but it’s clearly not Ben, and he’s no threat to me. I came in here myself. It’s a public place. I rub my fingers over my palms—they’re tingling, itchy. My whole body is tingling and I can’t stand still. “I’m sorry,” I say. “You locked the door and…”

  “I locked the door because we’re going out of the gallery and these paintings are valuable. I wanted to show you something. That’s all.”

  I hesitate and he sighs. “Please? It won’t take a minute.”

  I follow him up a flight of stairs tucked away behind the door at the back of the gallery and we step into a large room. A rattling fridge and stained sink take up one corner; broken floorboards and damp, peeling walls frame the rest. But the light from two big windows floods the room.

  “What do you think?” he asks.

  “About what?”

  “This as a studio space.”

  I spin in a circle, taking in the light and the space and the quiet. I could paint here. “Thank you, but I… we just don’t have the money for me to rent a studio right now.”

  “Oh, I’m not charging for it, Sarah. I’m offering it to you to use as much as you need. I’ll give you a key,” Ben says. “It has a separate entrance as well as the one through the gallery. You can come and go as you please.” He walks over to the window and looks out. “I used to live up here until I bought my cottage.”

  “Why?” I ask. He doesn’t know me, not yet. Why give me this when all I’ve done for him is throw paranoid accusations his way?

  He shrugs. “I’m not using it, so why not?” He smiles as we walk out of the room. My room. “Besides,” he says, “you look like you need this space. It’s always been something of a sanctuary.”

  We go back down through the gallery in silence. I don’t know if I’m comfortable with his… It’s not pity. Sympathy? Concern? Whatever, I’m not used to such generosity from someone who’s essentially a stranger.

  “Sarah?” he says as I get to the gallery door. “If there’s… if there’s anything else I can do, or if you need help, let me know, okay?”

  I nod and turn away, my eyes stinging. He sees too much. I’m giving too much away. He’s offering more than friendship and, for a fleeting moment, I want to grab him and kiss him, make him lock the door again, rip his clothes off on the floor of the sanctuary he’s tossed my way. I could take that home to Patrick, let him see the same betrayal in my eyes that I now see in his.

  It plays over and over in my mind—us. Our time. Our years. Best friends, us against the world. That’s what I thought. I spent a lot of time drifting, filling myself with whatever drugs and drink I could find so I didn’t have to think about it. But the moment I’m sober, the projector clicks on, the film starts playing.

  In a park, middle of the night, middle of the summer. “Doesn’t it bother you that no one cares if you’re out all night?” you said, looking to hurt. You lit a cigarette and passed it to me. A couple of our other mates had been there, but they drifted off home as it got closer to midnight. “Doesn’t it bother you either?” I should have said, but I just shrugged. I don’t think you ever saw how honest you were with me. How real. You would have been embarrassed by me earlier if you’d seen.

  “God,” you said, that night. “God, if I ever have kids, the perfect world I’m going to give them.”

  CHAPTER 17

  I wait until the house is quiet, everyone busy doing their own thing, before I retrieve the stones from the secret beach out of my jacket pocket. I go upstairs and open my wardrobe. Right at the back there is an old wooden box my dad gave me. He made it himself and it’s always been my treasure box.
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br />   I check that the bedroom door is closed and pull out the box, sink to the floor to open it. My head pounds harder as I lift the lid. Something’s missing—it’s much lighter than it should be. I move the bundle of postcards, scrawled messages from my dad sent from places I’d never heard of back then, the writing now faded. There should be a jewelry box underneath with all my mother’s old necklaces and earrings. Nothing I’d wear, but all heavy and gold. Valuable enough to keep hidden, though that wasn’t why it was in my treasure box. I take out everything—childhood diaries, the postcards, baby cardigans my mother knitted for Joe and Mia—but the jewelry isn’t there.

  I put the box back in the wardrobe and sit on the bed, my legs shaking. The bedroom door opens and Patrick comes in. “Everything okay?”

  I nod. He must be able to hear my heart beating, it’s so loud. “Fine,” I say. I don’t think I can stand up.

  He turns to go and I reach out my hand to stop him. “Wait. Have you seen my mother’s jewelry box?”

  “Jewelry box?” He looks at the dressing table where my own jewelry box sits open, a tangle of silver necklaces and earrings. The combined worth of my jewelry is less than a hundred pounds, nothing worth hiding away there.

  “Not that one. My mother’s. The box with all her gold jewelry in—her gold chain and her engagement ring…”

  “Why would I have seen it?”

  “It’s gone. It’s missing.”

  He pauses. “Have you asked the children?”

  I think of Mia’s new shoes, all the unfamiliar clothes she’s been wearing recently. I think of Joe hidden away upstairs on his own for hours on end. I think of how Patrick would respond if he thought they’d been stealing.

  “It’s probably just been misplaced in the move,” I say, making myself smile.

  “Okay…” he says, still frowning. He glances down at the sketchbook I dropped on the bed. “Are you drawing again? Can I see?”

  I think of all the notes I’ve scribbled in there, the half-finished sketches, and I snatch it up before he can reach for it. “No—it’s not finished. Not ready for anyone to see yet.” But moving the sketchbook reveals the book about the murder houses I forgot to put away.