by Alice Feeney
I don’t know whether it was the whiskey or the sleep or the sex, but I’ve remembered something. I know what I did with the gun and I know where it is.
But that can wait.
For now, I just want to lie in Jack’s arms and pretend I might be able to stay here. I’ve spent too long equating love and loneliness; it doesn’t have to be that way. And I’ve spent too long trying to be nice, always trying to do the right thing, doing what I thought I should. Turns out doing what you want to do feels pretty good.
Sixty-six
Maggie does not feel good. She can’t sleep and she doesn’t even want to eat. She stares at the photo of Aimee and wonders why she still hasn’t called. She should have figured it all out by now, but maybe Aimee isn’t as clever as Maggie has been giving her credit for all these years. Sometimes when we put someone on too high a pedestal, it only means they have farther to fall. Maggie checks the landline to make sure it is working.
It is.
She’s cold, so she comes to stand in front of the fire, throwing another log on top. She notices that it didn’t hurt to pick it up. When she looks down at the splinter in her hand, she sees that the black shape has risen to the surface, a halo of white skin separating it from the pink coloring of the rest of her finger.
It’s formed a scab.
Her body knew that this part of it was harmful, so has rejected it.
Just as Maggie has rejected Aimee.
She takes a pair of tweezers from the mantelpiece—there are three different-colored ones to choose from. Then, slowly—because she wants to savor this moment and she already knows how much pleasure and satisfaction it is going to give her—she starts to lift the edges of the scab.
It feels so good.
When the whole thing has been gently torn away, she examines it on her other finger: a tiny black splinter of wood and a piece of her skin, conjoined. She puts the little piece of herself on the mantelpiece. She wants to keep it. She’s not sure why.
The fire is hot now, crackling and spitting, yellow flames wildly dancing in the otherwise darkened room. Holding the tweezers in her hand makes her want to remove some more of herself, but she can’t find any stray hairs on her chin. Looking back at the face in the dusty mirror, for just a moment Maggie feels like she doesn’t know who or what she is anymore.
But she remembers her name, her real one, and wonders if Aimee remembers hers.
Maggie borrowed her name from a dead woman, just as Aimee borrowed hers from a dead little girl. The thing about borrowing other people’s things is that, eventually, you have to give them back. She lifts her splinter-free finger and starts to write her real name in the dust, taking longer to write the A than any other letter.
Sixty-seven
I wake up to the annual sadness of autumn; it’s pitch-black outside the bedroom window, yet my phone informs me that it is morning. The night sky has outstayed its welcome, and the darkness I can see seems to seep inside me, as though the color black is somehow contagious. It feels as if I have forgotten how to turn on the lights, and my life will be little more than a shadow from now on.
Alicia White.
Jennifer Jones.
John Sinclair.
Maggie O’Neil.
The names circle my mind because I’m certain the man I was married to didn’t do this to me all on his own. Sometimes I wish I could go back in time to the day I ran away from home in Ireland. I wonder where and who I’d be now if I had stayed. I wouldn’t have met any of these people, and my life might have turned out simpler, safer, more straightforward. I might have been happy.
I think about Detective Alex Croft. She was right, I have been keeping some things from her, I didn’t have a choice.
I look over at Jack, still asleep on the other side of the enormous bed, the sound of light snoring escaping from his mouth. I take in the shape of his shoulders, the line of his spine, the tiny blond hairs on his neck. His eyes are closed and his hand has formed a fist, as though he might be fighting with his dreams.
Perhaps we all are.
I remember everything that we did last night; it would be hard not to. It felt so good I only wish I hadn’t waited so long to give in to the attraction. I don’t know what happens next. Maybe now that he’s had all of me, his interest will fade away to nothing. I don’t know whether he wants more. I don’t know whether I do. I can’t help thinking it would be nice to stay like this: the pleasure of intimacy without the pain of a formal relationship. Everyone wants something from someone, that’s just how we are made. Most relationships, whatever their nature, are based on some kind of trade and compromise. I’m not naïve.
I climb out of the bed as quietly as I can. I want to be alone for a little while, make sure the thoughts inside my head are still my own. I want to get back to some vague kind of normal and do the things I used to do before this nightmare began. It feels like I need to do that, for me.
I want to run.
I look back at Jack before creeping out of the room, wondering if this might be the last time I see him like this; stripped back to being himself.
I run the short distance to my house. It’s still early, and when I’m sure no reporters or police are outside, I let myself in. I grab an old rucksack and fill it with a few essentials: makeup, some clean underwear, and my phone charger. Then I walk over to the wardrobe and bend down to remove one of the bottom panels of wood. Ben designed the whole house and garden, but clothes are very much my department, and I had the fitted wardrobes especially made after we moved in. When you have as many secrets as I do, you need places to hide them. I find the gun where I’d put it to keep it from my husband. Concealed out of fear one night, when I was a little too drunk to remember. Afraid of him, and what he might do if he found it. I put the gun in my bag, then I replace the panel in the wardrobe floor and leave.
I take exactly the same route I always have—running past the pub on the corner, past the fish-and-chips shop and through the graveyard, until I reach Portobello Road. Along the way I pick up a thought or two about what happens next, and carry them with me for a while. I decide that I don’t like them much, so put them back down and run on, without looking back, hoping they’ll stay where I left them. As I reach the start of a long line of antique shops, I slow down a little, allowing myself the pleasure of longingly staring at the window displays. Ben always knew that I preferred older furniture to modern pieces with no personality, but he didn’t listen to me, and I let myself be silenced. There were times I would have done almost anything to keep him happy, and try to convince him that we should have a child together, but I’ll never let anyone control and manipulate me like that again.
I come to a halt, my brain taking a little while to process what my eyes think they have just seen. I turn back, retracing my last few steps, to peer inside the shop window I just passed. I’m no longer in any doubt about what I am looking at.
It’s Ben. Or at least a photo of him as a child.
The black-and-white image I always hated.
The only picture of him I could find after he disappeared.
It doesn’t make any sense. What is it doing here? I haven’t touched any of his belongings yet, haven’t removed a thing from the house we shared, masquerading as husband and wife. The thought stings a little, and I feel the need to defend us from it. I’m sure ours wasn’t the only marriage that unraveled into separate lives, lived together out of habit or convenience. We each spin our own intricate web of lies, then get stuck and tangled inside them, unable to find a way out.
I bang on the shop door, but nobody answers.
It starts to rain, fast, fat drops falling from the sky without warning, soaking my clothes and skin, filling the network of veins on the paved street with dirty-looking water. I stare back at the picture, my vision a little blurred, but still sure of what I see.
I carry on down the road, retreating, as though a black-and-white photo of a child might come to life, smash through the glass of the shop window, and hu
rt me. I don’t get far. The window of the next antique shop contains a different frame, but it’s the same face staring out at me. I start to shiver. I walk to the next shop, and he is there again, malevolent eyes glaring in my direction.
I look up and down the street, suddenly in fear of being watched. But there is nobody there. All I see is an empty pink-and-white-striped paper bag—the kind I used to get sweets in when I was a little girl—blowing along the pavement in the wind. I can see lights on inside the final shop, but when I try the handle, the door is locked. I bang on the glass, and eventually an elderly man comes to open it.
“I’m so sorry to bother you, but I need to ask a question about a picture in your window.” I realize how crazy I must sound and feel a little surprised when he beckons me inside, my rain-soaked clothes dripping on the tiled floor.
The shop is overly warm and smells of toast and age. The man in front of me is at least eighty, perhaps older. His back is a little hunched and his clothes are too big for him, as though the years have caused him to shrink. It looks as if his smart tartan trousers might fall down altogether, without the help of the red braces holding them up, and the bow tie beneath his chin looks expertly hand-tied. His hair is white, but thick, and his eyes are smiling even though his mouth is not, as though glad of any form of company.
“You’ll have to speak up, dear.”
I walk to the window display and reach for the frame, careful not to knock anything over. “This picture, I wonder if you could tell me where you got it?”
He scratches his head. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen it before.” He looks almost as troubled by the sight of it as I feel.
“Is there someone else who might know?” I ask, trying not to sound impatient.
“No, it’s just me now. I had a delivery from a supplier yesterday. She helped me bring the bits I wanted in from the van. I don’t remember the frame, but it can only have come from her.”
“Who is she? Who did you buy it from?”
“It’s not stolen.” He takes a small step back.
“I didn’t say that it was. I just need to know how it got here.”
“It got here the same way most of these goods do … dead people.”
The hot room seems to cool a little. “What?”
“House clearance. People’s unwanted things after they’ve gone. You can’t take it with you.”
I think for a moment. “And this woman, she runs a house-clearance company?”
“That’s right. All legit. Nothing illegal about it. She brings in some good pieces, too, knows her stuff.”
“Who? Who is she?”
“I’m not so good with names. I have her card here somewhere.” He shuffles behind a small desk. I can see that despite his dapper appearance, he is still wearing his slippers. “Here you go, I’m happy to recommend her, she’s very good.”
I stare down at the card he has put in my hands, not able to stop them from shaking as I read the name printed on it.
Maggie O’Neil.
It can’t be.
“Can I buy this picture?” I can’t hide the tremor in my voice.
“Of course,” he says with a grin. I give him my credit card, not caring how much he plans to charge me, and remove the photo from the frame before I’ve even left the shop. I turn it over, unable to take another step when I read what is written on the back of it in a childlike scrawl:
John Sinclair. Age 5.
Sixty-eight
Maggie lets the phone ring and doesn’t answer.
Whoever it is calls three more times without leaving a message.
She is sure it is Aimee calling. It’s as though Maggie knows it. She holds the three smallest fingers of her left hand inside her right and squeezes them hard, until they hurt.
The ringing starts again. The caller has perhaps thought of something to say now, and Maggie leans right down, until her face is next to the answerphone, her ear turned and tuned to the little speaker. Pleasure ripples through her entire body when she hears that beautiful voice coming out of the machine; it’s like a song she’s missed hearing.
“Hello, my name is Aimee. I wonder if you could give me a call back…”
Maggie listens to the whole message thirteen times. She turns her face to kiss the phone, leaving red lipstick all over it, and starts to moan a little, as though the sound of the voice in the recording is caressing her in return. Giving the girl elocution lessons might not have been her idea, but it was a good one.
She pictures Aimee’s face crinkling with confusion, dripping in disbelief. She is tempted to return the call, but she knows that she mustn’t. She’d be willing to bet that Aimee will come to find her now, and the odds of that happening soon are quite high. She just needs to wait a little while longer. Some conversations are better had in person.
Sixty-nine
I let myself back into Jack’s house and head straight for the shower, doing my best to wash the sweat and fear away.
I thought Maggie and John were dead but this is too much of a coincidence, it all has to be linked, I just don’t know how. The police have already confirmed that John survived the shooting. Why did he never get in touch? I thought he cared about me, in his own way. Did he blame me for what happened? The memory of John’s face had smudged over the years, but now that I’ve seen his name written on the back of the black-and-white photo, I know it is him, I recognize his eyes. Why would the man I married have a picture of John as a child and pretend it was him? I should go to the police, but I can’t trust them. I can’t trust anybody. I try to think it all through, but none of it makes any sense to me.
My husband was pretending to be Ben Bailey, but that isn’t who he was.
I’m pretending to be Aimee Sinclair, but I’m not really her either.
Someone is pretending to be Maggie O’Neil; at least I think they are pretending. If John is alive, then what if she is too?
We’re all just pretending to be someone we’re not, but I still don’t know why.
The bathroom fills with steam, and I’m so lost in my thoughts that I don’t hear the door open. The shampoo stings my eyes, so I close them. I don’t see somebody walking into the room, or hear them climbing into the shower behind me. A hand touches my body, I scream and the hand covers my mouth.
“Hey, it’s only me, no need to wake the neighbors.” Jack wipes the suds from my face, allowing me to see again. My heart is beating so hard I can hear it inside my ears. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to scare you.” I turn and he kisses me. The whole thing seems deeply inappropriate at first, as though last night didn’t happen and this is somehow unexpected. I suppose I just didn’t think this far ahead. His hands move down my body, and the feeling they generate is so good, I give in to it. I turn around, so that I am no longer facing him, and I love that he seems to know exactly what I want him to do without saying a word. I lean against the glass and let myself forget everything else except this. I’m enjoying things I thought I might never again experience, as though thirty-six were somehow old, and I were past my prime. He doesn’t make me feel like that, he makes me feel new.
We eat breakfast afterwards, and when I say I need to pop out for a few hours, he doesn’t insist on me telling him where. He doesn’t act as though he owns me, and this newfound sense of freedom makes me feel hopeful about the future for the first time in a long time. I know I should tell him where I am going, but I can’t. I don’t want anything to spoil this, whatever this is. We all have secrets. Secrets from ourselves as well as from others. We bury them deep down inside because we know if they were to slip out, they have the power to destroy not only us, but everyone we care about.
I make some more coffee and pour him a cup.
“What did I do to deserve meeting someone as nice as you?” he says, before kissing me again. I can still taste our kiss goodbye as I leave the room, hoping it won’t be our last.
I take my gun, my phone, and what little courage I can summon, then leave the house.
N
obody is nice all of the time.
Seventy
The address on the business card the antique dealer gave me should have been enough.
But it wasn’t.
I never knew the name of the road until now. The journey through East London and into Essex gave me plenty of time to think, but until I stood in front of the building, I was still trying to convince myself that I was wrong; that this was just another coincidence.
It isn’t.
It’s been thirty years, but I still recognize this place, I still visit it in my dreams.
The little parade of shops is still here, but everything has been boarded up and closed down, except for the launderette. No more video rental, greengrocer’s, or corner shop, nothing but bars on broken windows and graffiti; a consumer ghost town.
The betting shop is still here, too, boarded up, but with a hand-painted sign above the door:
BRIC-A-BRAC & ANTIQUES
There is also a CLOSED sign, sellotaped behind the frosted window. I hold my hands up to the glass to block out the light and try to peer inside, but all I can see is black.