by Alice Feeney
“John Sinclair?” A deep frown folds itself onto her forehead.
“That’s right.”
“John Sinclair didn’t die in the robbery. He was in hospital for three months, then he went to prison.”
“What? No. John died. He was shot in the back, twice. I was there.”
She reunites her fingers with her iPad, swipes a few times, then reads from the screen, “‘John Sinclair was sentenced to ten years in Belmarsh prison and served eight.’”
I try to keep up with this new information. “What for?”
“He killed the alleged burglars with an illegal firearm. The gun was found in his hand and was linked to three other serious crimes.”
John is alive. John went to prison because of me. I put that gun in his hand.
“Where is he now?” I ask.
“I don’t know. And I don’t know what to think about this case anymore. You’ll be released later today.” She stands to leave, waving to the guard on the other side of the door to let her out.
“That’s it?”
“For now, yes.”
“Well, where am I supposed to go?”
She shrugs. “Home.”
She doesn’t seem to understand that I don’t have one.
Fifty-four
Maggie steps back inside the flat and slams the door closed behind her without meaning to. She’s aware that it isn’t the door’s fault she had a bad day—the dead can be so bloody demanding. She puts on her white cotton gloves to cover her hands. She knows they aren’t to blame either, but they are still an ugly reminder of who she is and who she isn’t. Maggie was taught to toughen up at a young age, but she is not impervious to pain. A thick skin can wear thin when worn too often.
She remembers that she hasn’t eaten all day, so eases her tired feet into her slippers and shuffles to the kitchen to examine the contents of the fridge. Everything she sees is disappointingly healthy, and that isn’t what she wants or needs right now. She walks back out to the lounge to use the phone and dials a familiar number. The framed photo of childhood Aimee stares back while she waits for someone to answer. Maggie glares at the child, twisting the phone cord around her gloved hands as she becomes increasingly impatient.
“Fuck you,” she says to the photo, turning it facedown so she doesn’t have to look at Aimee anymore. “Not you,” she adds, realizing that someone has finally answered her call.
She leaves the exact cost of the pizza in a recycled white envelope on the doorstep, along with a Post-it note that reads, Leave food here. She has taken off her makeup now and does not want to see anyone else again today. She closes her tired eyes and holds the three smallest fingers of her left hand inside her right, pretending she is comforting Aimee as a child when she was scared of something. Maggie wishes she could go back to that time. After a couple of minutes, sitting waiting in the darkness on the other side of the front door, she opens it, bends down, and adds the words Thank you to the Post-it note. She doesn’t want to be rude or take out her bad day on someone else.
After she has eaten almost an entire large pepperoni pizza, with extra cheese, she vomits it all back up in the bathroom, flushes the toilet twice, then wipes her mouth with a square of quilted toilet tissue. She makes herself a green tea, adding a little cold water from the tap, then settles down on the sofa to watch the news.
She feels sick all over again when she sees Aimee’s face.
Even worse when she watches the report.
Aimee has been released from prison.
Fifty-five
I stand on the doorstep, wearing the same black dress and red shoes I was wearing when I was driven to the prison. I didn’t know where else to go, and I didn’t have anything else to wear after they released me; the street outside the house where I used to live is full of reporters and satellite trucks. It seems my celebrity status might have increased over the last few days, for all the wrong reasons.
The door swings open and he hesitates for just a moment, making me worry that he’s changed his mind since I called from the taxi.
“Come on in.” Jack looks behind me theatrically, as though I might have been followed. “I’m so sorry, I didn’t hear you at first, the doorbell is broken. I broke it. Reporters kept ringing the damn thing.”
His house is beautiful. The layout is almost an exact copy of my own just a couple of streets away, but this house is a home. There are books, and photos, along with all the general clutter of life that you would expect to find, and I struggle to take it all in. It’s warm and feels safe, if not familiar. I wait to be invited to sit down. I feel dirty, as though I might accidently infect all his beautiful things if I touch them.
“Do you want to have a shower?” he asks as though reading my mind. I guess I must smell even worse than I look. “There are clean towels and plenty of hot water. You’re welcome to use anything you find in the bathroom. I have argan-oil conditioner.” He smiles, stroking his own graying but glossy hair.
I stand beneath the rain showerhead for a long time, letting it pummel my body, and I wonder how I ended up in this situation: almost completely alone in the world. I don’t know Jack, not really, he’s just a colleague, not a friend. Some people don’t know the difference, but I do. Right now, it feels as if I don’t have anyone left in the world who knows the real me. Nobody I can be myself with.
I never had much of a family, but I did used to have friends. There are people I could call, names in my phone that used to mean something. But if I did call, or text, they wouldn’t come for me, they would come for her. The me you become when you spend your life being someone you’re not. They would come to see her, then gossip afterwards about her with everyone they knew, while pretending to be my friend. Sadly, that’s my experience, not my paranoia speaking loud and clear inside my head. Sometimes self-preservation means staying away from the people who pretend to care about you.
I suppose family is who most people turn to when the world closes in, but I don’t have any of them left either. I went back to Ireland when I was eighteen, having never once been in contact with my father or brother since the day I ran away. I’m no longer sure what I expected or hoped to find there; I think I just wanted to visit what I had left behind. I found out that my real father had died a few years earlier; he was buried in the same plot as my mother, at the church we used to attend every Sunday. I visited their grave, unsure how to feel about it as I stared down at the overgrown plot and simple headstone. A neighbor confirmed that my brother still owned the house that we used to live in, but nobody had seen him for a while. I wrote him a letter and slid it under the front door before I left. Either he never read it or I wrote the wrong words. He never got in touch and it made me realize that sharing the same blood does not necessarily make you family.
After Maggie died, I was taken into care, although calling it that always seemed a little ironic to me, because most of them didn’t. I was sent to live with lots of foster families, but never really felt that I belonged with any of them. I think the feeling was mutual. I wasn’t a bad child, I didn’t get into trouble, and I was good at school. I was just quiet, at least on the outside; the characters I wanted to be were so noisy inside my head that, for me, it was practically deafening at all times. People don’t always trust quiet; they didn’t then and they certainly don’t now. The world we live in today is too loud, so that most people think they have to shout all the time just to fit in. I’ve never been great at fitting in, and when I look at the world around me, I’m not sure I even want to.
I think about all the years I spent believing John was dead, when he wasn’t. What if I’m wrong about Maggie too?
I’m not.
I watched her die.
But I also saw John die, or so I thought. I don’t know what to think anymore.
I wish I could erase what happened that day; the memory of it has never stopped haunting me, and I’ve felt alone in the world ever since.
Every time I film a movie or a TV show, I am surrounded
by people, all of them fussing over me, and telling me what they think I want to hear. But, when filming stops, they go home to their families and I am left abandoned. That will never change now, it will always be this way. I’ll never marry again; how could I even meet someone else? I’d never know whether he was with me for me, or for her. Sometimes I hate her, the me that I have become, but without her, I am nothing. Without her, I am nobody.
Life is a game that few of us really know how to play, filled with more snakes than ladders. I’m starting to think that maybe I’ve been playing it all wrong. Perhaps, when all is said and done, and the world decides to turn against you, people are more important than parts. Somebody hated me enough to do this to me, and whoever it is is still out there. It isn’t over until I slot the pieces of the puzzle together, and I won’t be safe until I do.
I wash the remaining fear and dirt away, then step out of the shower. I wrap a thick, soft white towel around my body, and another around my wet hair, then creep out onto the landing, leaning over the banister at the top of the stairs.
“Jack?” I call.
He doesn’t answer. The house is completely silent except for the sound of the oversized metal clock ticking in the hallway. I walk down the stairs, enjoying the feeling of the carpet beneath my toes, telling myself that everything is going to be okay, because if I can make myself believe that it will be, then maybe it might.
“Jack?”
I wander through the rooms, ending at the kitchen at the back of the house, cold tiles beneath my feet now, sending a shiver all the way through me. It’s strange, walking around a house that has the exact layout as your own. I double back to the lounge and freeze when I see the coffee table. Panic paralyzes me as I stare at the items on it, as though they were dangerous. It feels as if they are.
“Jack!”
Nobody answers.
It’s happening again.
His phone and keys are here on the table, but Jack is gone.
Fifty-six
Maggie arrives early for her appointment in Harley Street.
Thanks to Aimee, she has more work than time in which to do it today, and she is not in the mood for a so-called doctor to feed her any more excuses or lies about why they need to delay her surgery. It’s her body, she should be allowed to do whatever she wants to it. She isn’t asking others to pay for her self-improvements, so why should she need their permission?
Maggie thinks the whole country has tied itself in knots with red tape, so consumed with checks and bloody balances that nothing gets done anymore. She tuts and shakes her head and only realizes that she has been muttering beneath her breath when she notices a woman in the waiting room staring at her. Maggie lifts her chin and stares back, until the woman’s eyes retreat and look down at the magazine she is pretending to read. The next person to look at Maggie the wrong way today is going to regret it.
Everything in the clinic is white. The walls, the floor, the strange modern chairs in the waiting room, the staff, the patients, and the lengthy invoices she receives after each visit. All white. Sterile. The place is too white and too quiet. There is no music, just the maddening and monotonous sound of the receptionist tapping away on her keyboard, with her pretty little hands. Maggie always thinks there ought to be music, something to help take your mind off your present, forget your past, and daydream about a fantasy future. Without anything to listen to, she kills her time observing the other people waiting for their appointments, wondering what they are here for, wondering what they want to have done. She finds them all rather fascinating and tries to guess from looking at their faces and bodies—nose job, tummy tuck, hair transplant. Almost anything is possible nowadays, you can completely reinvent yourself. Start again.
“The doctor will see you now,” says the receptionist, fourteen minutes after Maggie’s appointment should have started. Doctor. Doctor my arse, thinks Maggie, hearing the cracking sound her knees make when she stands up from the uncomfortable white chair, wishing the clinic had invested in some white cushions. Maggie can see that the receptionist has also had some work done. Her crease-free brow screams Botox, and the face-lift is good, subtle, the skin on her cheeks hasn’t been pulled too tight. Only the skin on her neck gives the age game away. Maggie wonders whether the receptionist gets a staff discount, but thinks it might be rude to ask. Instead, she forces herself to smile and say, “Thank you,” before shuffling along the white corridor to room three.
He smiles when she walks into the room. He’s practiced that white smile so often, it almost seems real. “Hello, how are you?” he asks, as though he cares.
He’s younger than her and has already made far more of his life than she can ever hope to now. His tan is real, unlike his concern for her well-being, and his floppy blond hair looks as though it might have been blow-dried. Photos of a smiling wife and two perfect-looking children adorn his desk, reinforcing the image of all-round success.
Maggie knows the man is busy, she has seen all the people waiting in reception to become better versions of themselves. Maggie is busy too; she might not be a doctor, but she has things she needs to fix and mend, important things, so she would rather they didn’t waste any more of his time or hers with unnecessary small talk.
“Why have you postponed my surgery again?” She leans as far forward in her chair as she can without falling off, as though she might hear his answer sooner if her ears are closer to his mouth.
He sits a fraction backwards in his own chair, but keeps his eyes fixed on hers. They are deep blue and look wonderfully wise for such a young man.
“Having some excess breast tissue is incredibly common after dramatic weight loss, like you experienced after having a gastric band fitted—”
“Yes, well, I don’t want to look common, I want to look more like this.” She thrusts a crumpled magazine page from her pocket onto his desk.
He gives the glossy picture of a celebrity he vaguely recognizes a cursory glance. “The surgery you wanted is relatively noninvasive, and I would have been happy to go ahead, but do you remember the scan that we did the last time you were here?” He carries on without waiting for an answer. “And do you remember the unexpected mass that we found, and the biopsy I performed?”
Maggie does remember, she’s not senile. It was how she imagined it must feel to have a staple gun used on your naked flesh: a sharp stabbing pain and then a dull ache for the rest of the day.
“There is nothing wrong with my memory … thank you.” She’s even more cross with him now, but tries to remain polite; she needs this man to help her become who she wants to be. “You said the biopsy was just a precaution, nothing to worry about.”
The doctor looks down, as though he’s forgotten his lines and thinks they might be written on the palms of his hands. His thumbs revolve around each other in some hypnotic spinning dance.
It is all Maggie can do to stop herself from tutting. He is going to say no to my surgery again, she thinks, and can feel her crossness inflate inside her. She has never been good at controlling her temper; when she is cross with someone, it can literally last a lifetime. She knows that this is neither a clever or a kind way to be, but she cannot help it. She inherited her anger from her father, who inherited it from his, like a genetic disorder of wrath. She sits up a little straighter, trying, but failing to remain calm.
“If you won’t perform my surgery, then I’ll find someone who—”
“I’m so sorry, but what we found was a tumor.”
The room, and everything in it, has become perfectly still and silent, as though his words have created a vacuum and sucked anything she might have had left to say clean away.
“Right. So then take it out at the same time as the procedure.”
“I’m afraid that isn’t possible. You have breast cancer.” He says the words so kindly, she thinks she might actually cry.
“I don’t understand,” she whispers.
“Tests on the tissue sample have confirmed the cells are malignant. From w
hat I can tell, it has spread further than your chest, but there are treatments that might be suitable for you either on the NHS, or privately…”
“I don’t understand.”
“I’ve written to your GP. I recommend that you make an appointment to see them as soon as possible.”
“I don’t understand! How can this be happening to me?” Maggie’s voice is louder than before, cracking a little, as though some part of her just got broken. Her eyes fill with tears, and she permits them to spill down her cheeks. It must be over thirty years since she let a man see her cry, but she doesn’t care about that right now, she doesn’t care about anything.
The doctor nods. She can see him trying to arrange some words inside his head, trying to press and fold them into something a little neater, before letting them out of his mouth.
“It’s a lot more common than people realize.”
Maggie hates that word, common. She wishes he would stop using it.
“How long have I got?”
“Your GP will be able to advise you on—”
Maggie leans across the table. “How. Long. Have. I. Got?”
He looks away, then shakes his head before meeting her eyes again.
“It is impossible for any doctor to tell you that, but based on what I have seen, not very long. I’m so sorry.”
Fifty-seven
Men keep disappearing from my life and I don’t understand it.
I run around Jack’s home in just a towel, calling his name repeatedly, as though I’ve developed some unique form of anxiety-induced Tourette’s. I search each of the unfamiliar rooms, stopping inside a child’s bedroom on the first floor. The carpet is pink, and the furniture is white, with a colorful bookshelf in the corner and toys on the bed. The little girl’s bedroom drags me back in time and holds me there for a moment; it looks so much like my bedroom above the betting shop, it’s uncanny. I stand and stare, completely mesmerized. Distraught. Disturbed.