The Truth

by Naomi Joy

  She’s making him jealous.

  ‘What’s his name?’ I butt in, unwelcome, of course, but sensing an opportunity, dubious that this forensic-historian-doctor-policeman exists in the traditional sense of the word.

  ‘Aaron.’

  ‘What does he look like?’

  ‘What kind of a question is that?’ Heather asks, affronted. ‘Not every man has to be evaluated by their looks, Emelia.’

  True, I think, though I’m pretty sure Aaron doesn’t have any looks because I’m pretty sure Aaron is a figment of her imagination.

  ‘I see,’ I reply sharply. Not saying much, just enough.

  ‘He’s not a beast if that’s what you’re implying,’ she whinnies. ‘He’s very smart, precise, well dressed, impeccably groomed.’

  He sounds like a show horse.

  ‘Well, we’re very happy for you,’ finishes Anthony, resting his hand against the curve of my waist. ‘You’ll have to come round for dinner.’

  I’m sure I spot Heather’s cheeks flush.

  ‘Absolutely,’ I agree. ‘How about next week?’

  ‘You two are awful!’ Heather insists. ‘I’ve only just met him. I won’t be introducing him to the group, Emelia, for a long time yet, believe me.’

  Oh, I believe you.

  Anthony laughs gently then turns his attention back to the portrait.

  ‘This, Heather, is beautiful. Isn’t it exactly how it was in the poster? It’s breathtaking to see it in person. Thank you for bringing me here, I’ve always loved Mexican art.’

  Heather smirks. I roll my eyes deep into their sockets.

  Anthony breaks away from me and steps closer to the painting, taking in the slash-cut top that exposes the curve of the dead woman’s inexplicably well-preserved breasts. It irritates me, actually, that they’re both so obsessed with this image: the artist has taken a woman, removed all of her fat, her skin, her unnecessary features, and left only her lips, hair, eyes, breasts and make-up in place. I think it says a lot about the artist’s impression of women and I pad over to the little card next to the work. Guillermo Torinto, price tag just shy of a million. Of course, I think.

  Before I moved from Kent to London, away from the one bedroom flat I rented in the next village along from where I grew up, I’d written some articles for the local paper about local exhibitions, up and coming artists to look out for, that kind of thing. I’d blagged it completely – to the paper’s editor-in-chief a lot of things fell under the category of history and culture – so I’d go to all sorts of events in the surrounding areas, was expected to have an encyclopaedic knowledge of a broad spectrum of artistic disciplines. I wonder how my replacement, Kelly – the entertainment correspondent whose self-confessed expertise lies in her knowledge of Brad Pitt’s relationship back-catalogue – is dealing with it. I wonder if, like me, she’s worked out the best thing to do is to make the entire thing up. I zone out, imagining what I’d write about the work in front of me that Heather and Anthony are so animatedly dissecting: A haunting turn of the century portrait featuring a woman on the day of the dead parade. The large circles that amplify her eyes suggest she’s able to see things that we, the living, cannot, her gaze taking her to an other-worldly, perhaps hellish, dimension. Sexualising a dead woman also touches on the taboo subject of necrophilia… perhaps the artist wanted to tell us something, perhaps he had a few skeletons in his closet?

  My editor would cut the last line, but print the rest.

  I snap my focus back to Anthony, brought back to the present by a shriek from Heather. He’s standing with the gallery owner and is excitedly shaking his hand.

  ‘Oh my God!’ Heather squeals, loud enough to send the rest of the exhibit into temporary silence. ‘I can’t believe it! You’re really buying this for me? Really?!’ Her hands are cupped round her mouth.

  ‘It’s our portrait,’ he smiles, wild with adrenaline. She flings her arms around him and a fire burns inside me, though I already know what Anthony will say later: I’m not leading her on, it’s just that this portrait means so much to both of us. Why are you being like this? Why are you so jealous? It’s you I love, not her.

  In that moment I feel my resolve begin to wilt, then the ground start to shake. Hot, razor-sharp pain travels fast from my heart through my limbs and I know already I am going to fall.

  In my mind, I swim fish-quick out of the building, down the spiral concrete steps, back out into the rain and into a waiting taxi, but, in reality, my body remains here, slumped to the ground, Heather’s giant face blinking into view as I come round.

  Through the blur, it’s clear I’ve been out for a little while: the room’s been evacuated and Anthony’s nowhere to be seen, though I think I can hear him talking to someone in the distance. I know the ambulance crew are close by, because the smell fogging my nostrils is sterile and something constrictor-like pulses round my upper arm. Back to hospital I go.

  It is then, as I’m internally groaning at my fate, that a flash fires in my half-vision and I spot Heather looming over me, camera-phone high. Instead of helping me, she’s taking a picture. I imagine it her glee as she hurries to send it to Clara, then to the three R’s, then Harry. All of them laughing at me. Another fall? Really? My ninety-eight year old grandmother is more stable than her. She’ll be in a wheelchair next.

  Anthony would love that.

  Archived Entry

  Five months ago – 22nd May, 2 a.m.

  I wake up in the middle of the night, breathing warm and quick, bolt upright, back like a rod, a dream about our wedding day playing loud in my imagination, slithers of truth mixed with macabre inventions that twist and turn until they’re one.

  I grab my laptop and start writing, taking myself back to the beginning of that day, Anthony fast asleep, none the wiser.

  I drift off into a dusky-coloured afternoon. Red sky. It’s my wedding day and I’m in our marquee on the heath full of familiar faces, a bouquet of wildflowers grasped between my hands, but I’m not at the altar, I’m at the back – watching. I scream then look out, dumbstruck, at my guests: great-aunts in vintage hats, ushers in tidy waistcoats, and find that all of them, bar none, are staring straight at me. A chorus of eyeballs.

  ‘If any person here present knows of any lawful impediment to this marriage, he or she should declare it now.’

  I stare at Anthony, standing proud in his tailored suit, but the choir rattle into song before I have a chance to object. The newlyweds shoot nervous glances at one another as I shut the church door behind me and come in.

  ‘Amazing grace! How sweet, the sound…’

  I rush forward, up the aisle, and now the singers are staring at me too, their nasal voices shrill and unappealing. When I’m near the front, Anthony waits for me to say something but, just as I’m about to speak, I feel something slimy slither across my skin. I look down. There’s a pool of blood beneath me, trickling down my legs. I retreat.

  ‘I’ll say it again,’ the vicar prompts, ignoring me. ‘Do you, Emelia Thompson, take Anthony Lyon to be your lawfully wedded husband?’

  I’m bleeding out.

  I am aware of what I have to do, but I can’t do it. I have to stop this wedding. But I’m stuck in the sand. Everyone’s eyes are on cocktail sticks, ‘What is she doing? Who is this woman? Why isn’t she saying anything? Why is she bleeding?’

  It’s then that new-Emelia – in my dress, my veil pulled neatly over her light brown curls, pearl eyeshadow, satin court shoes, no blood – takes advantage of my paralysis.

  ‘I do,’ she says, slightly out of breath.

  The congregation erupts in cheers and applause, hankies waving between frail fingers as though this union has saved humanity. Anthony bends to kiss his new wife on the lips and all I can do is stand there, watching. She’s Emelia-the-younger, a similar head of chocolate-bar hair, innocence in her eyes, plump cheeks. She knows exactly what to do, entirely how to act, and leaves me behind (something old) as she skips down the aisle with a ring on her
finger (something new), and Anthony by her side (something borrowed).

  ‘How many Emelias does it take to finish a wedding ceremony?’ my mum jokes to the crowds as they leave behind the happy couple. She doesn’t have a punchline but everyone laughs anyway. Emelia-the-younger included.

  ‘You need to leave, darling,’ Anthony whispers in my ear as I sway back and forth at the edge of the ring of guests, watching the new Emelia move effortlessly in her white dress that weighs almost five stone. I know because I’m wearing it too, albeit not quite as convincingly.

  ‘You weren’t invited. I don’t want you to make Emelia feel uncomfortable. It’s her day, darling, do you understand?’

  ‘No, I don’t.’

  ‘All I wanted was to look after you, to help you get better, but you wouldn’t let me. Emelia is quite different. She’s the wife I wanted all along. So, if you don’t mind, I’m going to need to shut you off.’

  So that’s it, then. If Anthony can’t have me no one can.

  I watch Emelia, smiling and laughing as she instructs waiters to refill the empty glasses of her Right Honourable guests. She is a positive vision of perfection, of serenity and stillness, giving each guest equal amounts of attention, tactile touches to their upper arms, laughing gently at their silly jokes. She has a PhD in polite chit-chat, a Masters degree in manners.

  I don’t know what to do.

  ‘Here we go,’ Anthony says, thumping a hand on my shoulder.

  I don’t move a muscle, standing silently on the outskirts, watching Emelia fall into his trap and, though I’m ghostly and ghoulish, thin and transparent, I must do something.

  ‘Goodbye,’ Anthony says, thick lines across his brow.

  I know I should back away, run, before he turns me off forever, but something commands me to act – to warn the new me. I dive through the crowd, screaming at the hordes of awestruck faces to move, watch hands fly to mouths, gasps, gawks, feel the shame from my parents, spluttered laughter from the lightweight guests, buzzed on two glasses of fizz. I push past them all to reach her. She has to listen to me. She has to. My hand’s on her arm, her back’s to me.

  She spins.

  But her eyes are big and buggy and not like mine at all. Her skin’s angry, like the red sky above. ‘Why is she here, Anthony?’ I hear her say.

  I want to tell her the truth, to warn her. ‘You have to save yourself before it’s too late. Run!’ I cry.

  She backs away and I can tell that she’s terrified of me.

  ‘I’m Emelia,’ I explain, moving closer in my tattered and bloodied white dress, digging my nails into her arm, imploring her to open her eyes and listen.

  Face to face she looks at me more closely, as though I’m one of Anthony’s rare archaeological finds. Something dug up from the site, an old skeleton she didn’t realise existed. Then she shakes her head.

  ‘You need to leave.’ Her lips are tight, smile gone. ‘You’re not welcome here.’

  Anthony sneaks up on me. ‘I’m sorry. I have to do this. Really.’

  ‘I’ll go,’ I wheeze, as his hand constricts around my neck. Wedding guests’ eyes slide sideways, away from me, right when I need them the most. Then I hear a crunch: a knife of calcium, an ooze of collagen and my spine snaps in two.

  ‘Something blue,’ I hear someone joke, far off in the distance.

  Blog Entry

  20th October, 4 p.m.

  I hear the front door slam shut and my body jerks awake. I rub my eyes with my hands and check the time. Four in the afternoon. Have I been asleep all day? The bedroom curtains are shut, but it’s another raging hot day outside, so the room is humid and rotten, thick with the smell of my sweat.

  ‘Darling?’

  Anthony comes in and I close my eyes again, feel his briefcase thud against the wooden floor. He’s been out – to the dig site, probably – and my jealousy and contempt for him swell.

  ‘Let’s get some air in here,’ he says, muffled, and I imagine he’s covering his nose with his sleeve.

  His footsteps shake the bed as he walks over, pulls open the window – a glorious breeze ruffling through the room – and picks up an empty crisp packet I’d left on the floor. He sits on the edge of the bed tenderly, his voice light, tone soft.

  His cool hand touches my forehead.

  ‘You’re burning up.’

  ‘I’m fine,’ I insist, eyes clamped shut.

  ‘And so thin,’ he observes, running his hand over my hip, protruding from my waist like a house of mirrors body rather than my own. ‘Poor thing.’

  *

  Anthony has been hovering around me more intently since my collapse at the art gallery, this evening no exception. He comes in again now, then leaves, then reappears, buzzing in and out of the bedroom like a bluebottle I don’t have the energy to swat, a festival of ill person paraphernalia stacked tall in his arms: painkillers, anti-inflammatories, throat sweets, cold compresses, a bucket, a thin glass of water, a plate of bread and a needle.

  How long will this go on for? Him doting on me like I’m a sick puppy who can’t build up the strength to fend for itself.

  ‘What’s with the needle?’ I ask as he arranges his makeshift medical tent. ‘I told you, I don’t want to take any more medicine. It doesn’t help.’

  ‘I spoke to the doctor earlier about this. You have to take it, Emelia, keeping you alive is not optional.’

  He speaks to me as though I’m in his care, like I’m a duty, a chore, a job.

  ‘And this,’ he says, picking up the needle, ‘will help get it into your bloodstream faster. Please, trust me on this.’

  I relent, let him plunge the needle deep into the hollow of my elbow.

  ‘That’s it,’ he says, smoothly. ‘Nearly there.’

  I try to speak, but the medicine catches my tongue and I collapse back, dazed, under the spotlights on the ceiling and the damp heat of the covers. Nothing matters any more.

  ‘Well done darling, all finished,’ I hear him say.

  A bedspring bounces as Anthony finishes up and moves to standing. I listen to him talk in the distance about the dig and the sixteen year old skeleton, about how he’d just heard back from the site that my fall hadn’t impacted the remains as much as first feared and that I didn’t need to worry. I’m not worried about that, I want to tell him. I’m worried about you.

  Archived Entry

  Three months ago – 1st July, 1 p.m.

  ‘Isn’t it amazing!’ Mum squeals, her eyes greedy with delight, fleeced jumper tied tight to her waist – it’s jungle-hot outside but Mum never likes to be without her fleece. Just in case the weather turns. She hasn’t trusted weather forecasts since an unexpected hurricane battered our house when I was a kid. A rotten tree from our small garden had uprooted and crashed into the roof, sending slate tiles smashing through the loft space. I’d awoken just as a branch had pierced through my bedroom ceiling, battered twigs waving from its end like a clutch of deformed fingers.

  There’d been fights with the local council – who’d refused to accept liability as the tree was growing, mostly, on our land boundary. Adding insult to injury was the fact that my parents’ house insurance had refused to pay out, citing that the tree’s proximity to the bungalow violated their Ts and Cs. It had almost bankrupted my parents, which is why the décor in my childhood home hasn’t changed much since the mid-eighties, and why my mother now wears a stick it to the man, year-round fleece.

  And so to today, and the reason why my mum can’t stop smiling: Anthony’s bought them a new kitchen, a reverse wedding present from him to them.

  ‘It’s so modern,’ Dad chirps, standing from the battered beige couch.

  ‘I’ve always wanted a kitchen like this,’ Mum muses from within her new room, running her hands along the shiny counter tops. ‘I belong in a magazine-style home,’ she finishes, seriously, her chin slightly higher.

  I exchange a look with dad, silent communication between us. What’s she like? Honestly. She’ll be lor
ding this over poor old June and Sandra from down-the-road before we know it.

  As generous as Anthony’s been, this all-singing, all-dancing white, sparkly kitchen now sits in stark contrast to the rest of my parents’ slightly ramshackle bungalow. The remainder of the house looks run down in comparison, but the kitchen shimmers in minimalist Scandi-chic, contrasting sharply with the thick curtains and heavy wood of the surrounding rooms, jarring against the miniature car models my dad scatters on every shelf going, at odds with the high piles of magazines my mum likes to store in the corners of the other rooms, gathering dust, sheltering small rodents and the shells of dead woodlice.

  ‘Anthony, I don’t know how we’re ever going to repay you,’ Dad gushes, shaking his hand.

  ‘Don’t mention it, it was my pleasure. I know how much you mean to Emelia, and what makes her happy makes me happy.’

  I imagine if this conversation had been taking place a few centuries ago that it wouldn’t be a kitchen my husband was exchanging me for, but a herd of cows. I suppose, in many ways, this conversation shows how little the times have changed.

  ‘I need to get back,’ I remind Anthony, bending to pick up my handbag. Today I have my first yoga class with my new friend Mishti – our ground floor neighbour who I met in the lobby of our apartment block a few weeks ago – and I really don’t want to miss it. She’d been trying to soothe her screaming baby the evening we’d met, a little girl called Eva with the same dark ringlets as her mother, and I’d offered to help, had taken her in my arms and rocked her until she’d calmed down. Mishti had almost cried with relief – her husband was away and she was struggling to cope. After that, we’d quickly slipped into the habit of saying hello in the lobby, talking for a little longer each time, then she’d invited me to yoga and now, well, today’s the day.