by Daisy Pearce
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
Text copyright © 2020 by Daisy Pearce
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.
Published by Thomas & Mercer, Seattle
www.apub.com
Amazon, the Amazon logo, and Thomas & Mercer are trademarks of Amazon.com, Inc., or its affiliates.
ISBN-13: 9781542017824
ISBN-10: 1542017823
Cover design by Tom Sanderson
For my mum, who always believed
CONTENTS
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Epilogue
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Prologue
The pill is small and round and grey. It is unbranded, like the bottle, and almost entirely unremarkable. I am used to swallowing them now. At first they left a metallic taste in my throat, like pennies. Now I barely taste a thing. Sometimes I drink them with juice or coffee. I used to take them with wine, but all that’s changed now. It’s all changed.
And so. I’m standing in the bathroom, water puddling at my feet. I look down at myself, noticing that I’m dressed but no shoes. The light coming through the window is the dirty grey of smog or a ruptured exhaust. It’s early, and I am at home. The heating hasn’t come on yet, and I can see my breath. Winter frost on the windows. I am shivering with cold. And I must take this pill.
There is someone at the door. I can see the shape of the figure through the patterned glass. I swallow the pill dry. My hair is wet, and he is knocking against the glass, saying, ‘Are you done yet?’, and he is saying, ‘Stella, we need to get going’, but I can tell by the set of his shoulders that what he means is I will swallow you, I will swallow you whole, and I am afraid.
Chapter 1
The moon is rising, the sky lavender-coloured. Carmel and I have walked to the end of our road, enjoying the twilight and the open windows of the houses through which can be heard the clinking of cutlery, soft music, laughter. When we draw near to the bus stop Carmel sees the poster and she nudges me, grinning.
‘Go on, Stella,’ she says, ‘go and stand beside it. Please, please, please. Just one photo. We’ll do it quickly. Give it a double thumbs up.’
‘Can I give it the finger?’ I ask, and if she hears the tremor in my voice she doesn’t comment on it. I stand beside the poster, smiling weakly, uncomfortable. My skin tingles with anxiety and something a little like revulsion. Hurry up, I think. The bus is drawing nearer. Carmel clicks the camera and then frowns down at the image.
‘Huh,’ she says, ‘wasn’t as funny as I thought it would be.’
Later, we are in Soho. I’ve got a mildly pleasant buzz on from the beer we drank before we left the flat and the warmth baking from the pavements. We’re laughing, Carmel and I, and I don’t see it coming, not then. I don’t know the bar we’re going to but Carmel does. She tells me she’s been there with a previous boyfriend, but – as I tell her – that doesn’t narrow it down. Inside it is dark and low-ceilinged. There is the thump and hiss of loud music, the wall dank with condensation. I press my hand against it and leave an almost perfect wet print. I order cocktails from a menu chalked on the wall and struggle through the crowd, where I find Carmel talking to a tall man with a neat haircut, tattoos crawling up his neck. His face is pressed close to her ear, and she is smiling.
I hand her a drink and look around. It is busy. The cocktail is exotic, with a dark kick of rum in the back of my throat. Inside, curled up like a milk-fed cat, is the part of me which would much rather be in bed. It’s a sour sort of homesickness. I swallow my drink and head back to the bar. Carmel has snaked her arms around the man’s waist; they lean into each other, like dancers, like drunks. I smile. I’m happy for her. She deserves her pleasure.
At the bar I order something else, mispronouncing the name. The barman makes me repeat it until I get it right, having to speak louder and louder into his ear. I feel stupid and tiny and too old for all this. As he hands me my drink I thank him and tip him because, absurdly, I want him to like me and think I am cool. I’ve always been needy, even as a kid. At nine years old I would make myself sick worrying about my parents separating and as a result spent a lot of time needling them for attention, sandwiching myself between the two of them on the sofa, small grabby hands at their hems. Where are you going? Don’t leave me. There were no child psychologists in those days and the doctor didn’t know what was wrong with me. On bad days I overheard them talking about me. I didn’t have enough friends, my mother was saying, and my father said well whose fault is that, and my mother replied I just want the best for her, and my father said she should be in school for God’s sake, and on and on. What it all came back to was one or both of them saying, ‘It isn’t normal.’ And that scared me most of all. I wanted to be normal. I wanted to be just like everyone else.
I look into my glass, surprised to see it empty. Carmel and the man with the tattoos have found a booth in a darkened corner, sitting in it pressed close together, his hand reaching around her back possessively. I think it’s time I leave or I’ll miss the last tube. I turn when he touches me. It was enough, that deft sweep of his fingers against my bare arm, to make me turn around.
‘Excuse me, are you—’
The question hangs in the air, creating a vacuum. I turn to face him, this dark-haired man, tall and strong-featured. He has the thick, heavy nose and jaw of a caveman. This is the first word I think of when I see him: Jurassic.
‘You are, aren’t you? You’re her.’ He’s smiling, looking me over. ‘I don’t – I don’t believe it. It is you, isn’t it? Katie Marigold.’
I nod. It was my name, or rather, it was her name: the little girl with the ringlets and the gap between her front teeth. Katie Marigold. That was me, from ages four to twelve. A halo of blonde curls, frilly little dresses like clouds orbiting my waist, my dimpled, chunky legs. I was adorable. I even had my own teatime television show in the eighties. It ran for eight years: Marigold! The exclamation mark was important, as was my catchphrase, which I was contractually obliged to say at least once per episode – I fink we’d better ask Daddy. Awful, right? It got applause every time, the audience awwww-ing and bleating like lambs. The programme was syrupy-sweet, a fictional family living in a cottage called Honeypot with a golden Labrador called Frisky and the same storyline regurgitated every week: mild family problem, implausible complication, catchphrase, resolution doled out thickly like wedding cake, audience reacts, credits. ‘A sitcom for simpletons’, it was described as once by some unwed bitter old
hack who predicted my future thus: dead of an overdose at thirty. Nice woman. My mother wrote to her. I didn’t see the letter, but I remember her mouth pressed tightly together as she was writing, lips as thin as a fishing hook.
Little Katie Marigold. Obviously, Carmel thought it was hilarious. Sometimes she would make me do the voice, that cutesy little lisp through the gap in my teeth. When I got them fixed she was gutted I couldn’t do it anymore. I would catch her looking up the old episodes on the Internet and quoting me my lines or singing the theme song to me when I walked into a room, creasing herself up into giggles. I did adverts too, everything from Dentabrite toothpaste to Patches dogfood (‘I fink we’d better ask Doggy!’). By the late eighties we were pushed further and further out into the scheduling wilderness. The show had become dated, unfunny, and borderline racist. (‘Keith, there’s a man squinting at me in the garden!’, ‘That’s Ho Ching, honey, he’s Chinese.’) I’d outgrown the dress, the shoes, the buttery voice. My career was over just as puberty hit me like a truck. No one wanted to see Katie Marigold with tits and acne. I did a couple of interviews and a TV special just before my twelfth birthday, and then I shed Katie Marigold like a skin. I made the papers just once more, a year later, when my mother died. They had a long-lens photographer on the day of the funeral, capturing my face hovering over my black peacoat like a haunted white balloon. I had just turned thirteen.
‘You’re not going to make me do the voice, are you?’ I say. My words are blurry. The cocktail was stronger than I thought.
‘No! God, no. It’s just – wow. You know, I watched that show all the time as a kid. We all did, the whole family. I used to love that dog, all the tricks he could do.’
‘We had nine of them.’
‘What, dogs?’
‘Yes. We had to keep replacing them because they kept dying.’
I’m a little too drunk, I think. I’m being morbid. Need to snap out of it. I smile, show some teeth.
‘Sorry. Have I ruined the magic for you?’
He laughs at that, smooths his hand down the front of his shirt. I’m getting a good look at him now as his lips draw back into a long, languorous smile. His eyes are dark like twin pools of ink. I don’t like him at all. Too old, too clean-looking. He looks like a sleazy dad jettisoning his marriage. Wedding ring in his jacket pocket, condom in his wallet.
‘Listen, can I, uh’ – he scratches his cheek with his thumbnail, looking uncomfortable – ‘can I buy you a drink, Katie?’
I look over my shoulder but I can’t see Carmel anymore, so I turn back to the man and smile brightly. ‘Sure, why not.’
‘Great!’ He seems genuinely pleased, and I’m weirdly flattered by his attention. I never get recognised anymore. Marigold! didn’t achieve cult status; no one wants to see reruns of it, and it’s never been out on video or DVD. It sank, a rusty anchor tolling off the fathoms, without trace.
Later, we leave the bar, both of us staggering against each other a little. It has started to rain, and the air has that sticky, urgent feel of a summer storm. He gives me another one of those lupine grins and makes a show of looking at my shoes.
‘You can’t walk in those. We’ll need to get a cab.’
‘Has that line ever got you laid?’
‘You tell me.’
I stiffen and turn towards him. To my surprise he doesn’t pull away and now our faces are very close, his mouth just inches from my cheek. The intimacy is almost unbearable. This close I can smell him; smoke and whisky and bright white tropical heat. His skin is clear and his cheekbones high, flat blades severing his features. Dark hair wavy, as though combed by fingers.
‘I have a boyfriend.’
‘Liar.’
My mouth drops open. He closes it with gentle pressure, just the pads of his fingers, laughing. My pulse flutters in my neck, my wrists, where the skin is transparent and thickly veined.
‘Come on, I’m serious.’
‘So am I. Piss off.’
He laughs again. ‘Okay, let’s make a deal. Okay? Little deal. Humour me. I’m going to take you for one more drink. One drink. That’s all I’m asking for. If you still think I’m an idiot after one drink, then . . .’ He shrugs.
‘One drink?’
‘Yup. Back at mine.’
He is still looking around for a taxi. When he sees my expression he laughs.
‘One drink, I said. I didn’t say where.’
The next morning I wake with a throbbing head and an oily taste in my mouth like rancid butter. Another hangover, a blinder. Beside me, in a bed I do not immediately recognise, in an unfamiliar room, a man is sleeping with his back to me. His broad shoulders are decorated with freckles like an unknown galaxy. I move slowly, so as not to wake him. Inside my head bells are ringing, clamouring. I wonder if it is possible to die from a hangover, and I think then as I always do: I am off the booze for the rest of the month. Lips that touch liquor shall not touch mine. Lord, my head.
My phone shows me that Carmel has been calling and calling. Wondering where I had gone, I suppose. If I was safe. I should have told her I was leaving, I think as I gather my clothes into my arms. I shouldn’t have just left the way I did. I look back at the sleeping figure in the bed and suppress an involuntary shudder. What had I been thinking? I know what Carmel will say. She’ll tell me I have ‘daddy issues’. She’s probably right. God.
On the train, early Sunday morning; the tube is full of black-eyed revellers with sour morning breath, ravaged and blinking in the sunlight like released hostages. On the platform at London Bridge, I spot another of those posters, the one for the new film coming out that Carmel had taken my picture in front of. It’s called Bossman. An action film. I walk past it quickly, feeling my heart and my head throbbing. My memories from last night coming back to me. They feel feverish, a cartoon. After leaving the cocktail bar, the man and I had taken a taxi to another dive with candles burning in gothic-looking sconces. A kiss on the bank of the Thames beneath a line of fairy lights, gently swaying, the smell of the river, brackish greasy. A passionate embrace inside the hallway of his building which had left the ghostly imprints of our bodies on the glass panels.
But in the morning, asleep, one hand thrown over the covers, he had looked old. There were threads of silver in his hair, long lines about his mouth. Thank God, I think, as I finally reach our rented flat and fumble for my keys, that I never have to see him again.
Three days later I see him again. It’s lunchtime and I am not at work. I’m in a pub just round the corner, sitting facing the wall so that no one can see my tears. I wish I could smoke. I’ve ordered a gin and tonic with a whisky chaser, but the thought of food makes my stomach shrivel. I left work half an hour ago, and I don’t think I’m going back this afternoon.
‘Katie?’
I don’t recognise his voice, and I don’t turn around at the unfamiliar name. He approaches the table and says it again, tapping me delicately on my shoulder. I can hear the rustle of paper as he moves, and I wipe my fingers under my eyes carefully. Still, his smile rapidly fades as he sees my expression, dissolving into a look of concern. I note he is holding flowers. Peonies the colour of antique silk, hand-tied. They’re beautiful. My throat swells with emotion at them: how fragile they are, how short their brief lives. I can’t speak and so he sits opposite me. I’m embarrassed to admit it, but I don’t remember his name. He pats my hand with awkward familiarity. ‘I was on my way to your work but then I saw you through the window. I’m sorry. I didn’t realise . . .’ He falls silent. I smile weakly.
‘These are for you.’ He indicates the flowers. ‘Uh – I’m not normally this clumsy, I promise. I had a better speech than this planned out.’
‘I’m sorry I ruined it.’ I press the heels of my palms into my eye sockets until white flashes appear behind my lids. ‘I’ve had some bad news.’
He doesn’t ask. Instead he asks if I want another drink. Yes, I tell him, something strong. He comes back with a gin and tonic – a double
measure, he tells me – thick slices of lime, ice chattering in the glass. I take a sip.
‘How did you find out where I worked?’
‘The hotel on Pelham Street, you said. I only went into three before I found the one you worked in. Don’t you remember? You told me.’
‘Did I?’
He laughs. ‘Not very memorable, then?’ he asks, and I have the decency to blush. ‘You know who I am, at least. That’s something, right?’
He waits, tapping his fingernails against the table. There is a smile lurking behind his frankness, a carefully disguised tease.
I nod. ‘Sure I do.’
‘Go on.’
I take another sip. I am thinking desperately. He watches me with those imperious dark eyes, and then I see he is mouthing something at me. Mark. Mark-o.
‘Marco!’
‘Well done.’
‘Oh, Marco, I’m so sorry. I’m giving you a terrible impression. Thank you for the flowers, they’re beautiful. Today is just an awful, awful day.’
‘Do you want me to call someone for you?’
He speaks quietly, and his kindness makes me feel like crying again.
‘No, I think I’m just going to go home. It’s my dad. He’s had a stroke.’
‘Oh, Katie, how awful. I’m sorry. Is it serious? Do you need to go to him?’
I shake my head. The shock is wearing off now, and I am starting to shiver. A haemorrhagic stroke, his sister said in the phone call I’d received at my desk, her voice trembling. I’ve never heard her sound so afraid. A bleed on the brain; according to the doctor, it’s lucky we got to him when we did.
‘You stay where you are, love,’ Aunt Jackie said when I’d offered to take a train up that afternoon. ‘Nothing you can do at the moment. Your father’s not going anywhere and me and Darren are driving up this evening.’
I miss my mum. We lost her, my dad and I, when I was nine days a teenager. She jumped from the roof of the multi-storey car park just outside town, near the industrial estate. She was found on a patch of waste ground where weeds sprouted through the cracks in the earth like exclamation marks. A pointless, violent death, I heard my dad say. His voice was raw from crying. I was silent for two months, a mute. I couldn’t take it in. She hadn’t left us a note or given anything away. The last time I saw her she’d given me five pounds for my seventy-pence bus fare and told me to keep the change. I still have it, the change. I’ve put it in a jar, sealed it. It is airless in there, and the rattling sound it makes is like old bones. I’ve taken it to every house I’ve ever lived in. I don’t know what else to do with it. Here’s the thing about being an only child. One day it all falls to you to keep everyone going.