by Daisy Pearce
‘Are you all right, baby?’ Marco asks me, a hand on my shoulder. ‘I thought you’d be interested, that’s all.’
‘Oh yeah, it’s fine. I’m fine,’ I tell him, smiling. But still. I’m thinking about Carmel making me stand in front of his poster to take a photo, the way it had made my insides feel like ice. By the time Marco leaves that evening, I have blacked out Joey Fraser’s picture with a pen, going over and over the same lines until the paper becomes shiny and black as tar. My jaw aches as though I have been grinding my teeth.
Chapter 3
I begin sleepwalking again. I haven’t done this since I was a kid, when my parents would find me wandering the garden or slowly descending the stairs like a little ghost. Most nights since the funeral I have been sleeping at Marco’s flat and tonight I jolt awake with a feeling of horror. I am in the lift facing the mirrored wall. I can see my fingers are tangled in my hair and it looks like I am snarling. The lift shudders. How did I get here? I don’t remember. We’d been drinking, and we’d laughed as he’d insisted on carrying me to bed like a little girl. Now the doors slide silently open, and the concierge in the lobby is looking at me with something like horror, and I am pulling the hem of the T-shirt down over my nakedness and trying to tell him to stay away from me. I bite.
‘Here.’ Marco presses something into my mouth. It is a small pill, chalky-tasting. I crush it between my teeth and ask for water. He is wiping the blood from around my mouth with a wet tissue.
‘What is it?’
‘It’ll help you sleep. What the hell were you doing?’
‘I’m sorry. I must have been sleepwalking. I didn’t mean to scare him.’
‘You didn’t scare him, but he rightly thinks you’re a fruitcake. You must have looked like a vampire. Christ, honey, this looks sore.’
He tilts my face up towards the light. I have bitten my lip and made it bleed. He presses the tissue against it tentatively.
‘I must have been dreaming. I don’t remember.’
My flesh prickles with shame. I take the water and gulp it. Marco is watching me, leaning against the sink. The look on his face frightens me.
The next day I wake in the pale morning light. Marco is dressing and I watch him silently. I slept full and deep with no dreams. His hands cross as he knots his tie. There are worry lines on his forehead, more at the corners of his mouth, drawn down in concentration. He sees me watching him, one leg curled outside the duvet. He smiles.
‘I’m sorry, Marco,’ I tell him. I say his name the way I said it the first time, Marc-oh. A delicious sound with an almost exotic lilt, like Vietnamese or Thai. I say it again. ‘I’m sorry,’ I say. ‘I’m sorry for making your life complicated.’
He sits on the edge of the bed, stroking my hair from my face with the flat of his hand. He tells me it is okay, and he tells me not to worry and beneath it all is a wariness he thinks I don’t see. As he leaves the room I prop myself up on my elbows, look at him over my shoulder. It’s coquettish by design. I want something.
‘Honey,’ I say. He looks over at me. ‘Can you leave me another one of those little pills?’
For a second I think he might say no. I know Carmel has some Valium at home because her mother eats them like sweets, like ripe cherries one after the other, because of her nerves. I know Carmel keeps them in her dresser drawer with her Pill and bottles of lube and a pin badge of Smurfette she’s had since college. I know this because I’ve been taking one a day since the funeral, just to keep the edge off. But I can’t keep taking them. She will start to notice. Besides, I’m due back at work next week and the thought of it fills me with a dread as cold as bright-blue water.
‘Sure,’ he says finally, and closes the door.
The café we go to for lunch is small and busy, and Carmel and I are lucky to get a table. The walls are pine-clad, except in the places where cracked Victorian tiles still cling grimly to the walls.
‘Sorry I’m late.’
Martha, who is never late, puts her bag on the table and starts ferociously unwinding the scarf from her neck. Carmel and I exchange a glance. We have known Martha eight years, since a New Year we spent in Berlin. There had been a party on a rooftop and fireworks at midnight, and I’d forgotten to bring a coat so I was shivering in my dress, face tilted up to the sky. Martha had given me hers, a thick camel-coloured trench which hung heavy on my shoulders. We’d introduced her to our friend James and only saw him again three days later, rushing to the airport to catch our plane. He looked like he’d been sleeping in a hedge.
‘I love her,’ he’d said simply, as we checked our luggage in. Carmel had oversized sunglasses on, her manicure chipped and fractured. She had laughed – hah! – and James had turned to her earnestly. ‘I love her and I’m going to marry her.’
He had, of course, and now three years later here she was, her pretty round face looking uncharacteristically flustered, a brick-red colour building in her cheeks. She looked from me to Carmel and back again.
‘What?’
‘Is everything all right?’ Carmel asked her.
‘Yes, fine.’
‘You look pale,’ I said. She did. Tired too, I could see purple smears beneath her eyes.
‘I’m fine.’
‘You look like shit,’ Carmel said. ‘Are you ill?’
I saw Martha take a breath and then another, swallowing as though she might cry. The soft flare of her nostrils. Her hand strayed to her stomach. It was not tears she was trying to hold back. I realised before Carmel did, but only just.
‘Holy shit, you’re pregnant.’
Carmel’s mouth fell open.
Martha put her head on the table and groaned. ‘I can’t stop being sick. It’s like a wave, one after another. I didn’t know it was this hard. I’d never have done it otherwise.’
‘Done what?’
‘Had sex!’ she said loudly. I saw a few heads turn to our table and I couldn’t help smiling. Martha took my hand. Hers was cool and soft, gentle.
‘I was sick on the bus on the way here,’ she told us as Carmel poured her some water. ‘Then again just down the road. A man asked me if I was all right, and when I turned around I thought I would faint. Oh God. Perhaps I will die. I hope so. Dying would be better than this.’
I see Carmel make a slicing motion across her neck with her finger – shut up, shut up – and Martha looks at me, her pale eyes big and round. ‘I’m sorry. Stella, I’m sorry. So clumsy!’
‘It’s okay.’
‘It’s not, it’s not. Was für ein Arschloch, I’m sorry. How are you? How was the funeral?’
‘Terrible,’ I answer honestly.
‘It must be very hard,’ Martha tells me, squeezing my wrist. I feel tears prickle at her kindness, the balm of it.
Carmel rolls her eyes. ‘Listen. I’ve got her puking on one side of me, and you crying on the other. I’ve nothing against body fluids but for now, can we not?’
We laugh. It is the first spontaneous laugh I think I’ve had in weeks, wholly organic. It feels good. Martha tells us that she is worried that she will start swearing during labour.
‘I hope I do not make the midwives blush!’ she says. ‘I found out that your cervix expands to ten centimetres!’
Carmel and I exchange a look. ‘Oh no,’ I mouth. She shakes her head.
‘That’s the worst thing I’ve ever heard.’
Carmel is looking at her hands, measuring.
‘That’s the same size as a box of Dairylea,’ Martha tells us wonderingly. ‘It’s a melon being squeezed through a straw.’
‘Jesus Christ, Martha, you’re a hell of a woman.’
‘Do you think it will hurt too much?’
Carmel and I exchange another look. I mutter something about the joy of children transcending the agony, and then I start laughing. I can’t help it.
Carmel snorts. ‘“The joy of children”?’ she repeats. ‘Your fanny is going to look like roadkill.’
And then she and Martha both b
egin to giggle, only for a minute we aren’t sure because Martha also has her head in her hands and could be crying. We laugh and laugh until tears spring to our eyes. It’s good. I feel light and untethered as though an anchor has been weighing me down.
Chapter 4
I book a weekend break in a B&B in Cumbria for me and Marco.
Carmel laughs at me. ‘You’re turning into one of those couples,’ she says.
‘What couples?’
We’re sitting on the sofa together. I have a bag of crisps on my lap, and now I press one against my tongue, enjoying the tingle of salt.
‘You know.’ She puts on a syrupy voice. ‘“Two weeks today!! Love my little koala bear”, “Can’t wait to see my boo-boo, a whole hour apart!” All that shit. You know. On Facebook.’
‘You jealous?’
‘Of Marco? Hardly.’
I’m used to her acerbic tongue, of course. But even this shakes me, a little.
‘He looks after me.’
‘You don’t need looking after. What are you, a toddler?’
I nudge her with my foot, and she breaks into a smile. ‘Sorry. Maybe you’re right. Maybe I am jealous. You used to have more time for me. Remember that time at the Red Lion, when we did the pub quiz?’
‘That was ages ago.’
‘Yup, and it was the last time we hung out. Without Marco, I mean.’
‘Next weekend. No – no, I can’t – the weekend after. We’ll do something fun. I promise.’
‘You promise?’
‘Cross my heart and hope to die.’
Marco and I drive to Ullswater on the Friday evening and heavy rainclouds follow us along the M6, thickening as we approach the tiny guesthouse we are staying in. Just as we leave the car the downpour begins, and we run into the warmth with our hands over our heads, giggling. Marco is convivial and smiling, teasing me and calling me kitten, running his hands down the curve of my spine. We fall into bed and do not leave for two days and the rain pounds against the windows like tiny fists. Marco feeds me in bed – fruit slippery from his fingers, plump chocolate truffles, buttered toast – and I feel loved and safe. We have escaped, I think, feeling warm beneath the covers, we have escaped and we are happy.
When it happens it is like a huge silver bell tolling, once. Only once. We are eating Chinese takeaway from cardboard boxes, making a mess. I am sitting in a chair by the window where I can look out over the view of the lake, the mountains in the distance, shrouded in drifts of dark cloud like lace, like Italian widows. Marco is watching me from the bed, where he lies imperious against the cushions. He rests the box in his lap, chewing, looking at me thoughtfully.
‘That show you did—’
‘Oh God, Marco—’
I’m groaning but it is good-natured, feigned. Still, he holds up his hand, palm turned out. Stop.
‘Just listen, just listen. That show, Marigold!. How long did it run?’
‘Eight years. Seven series, seventy-four episodes including the pilot.’
‘Huh. And nine Labrador dogs, is that right?’
‘That’s right.’
‘I read about Joey Fraser in the paper again today. It said he was working in Hollywood.’
‘Oh yeah?’
‘Yeah.’ He digs with his chopsticks to the bottom of the carton. ‘I think it was something with Samuel L. Jackson. Did you know about this?’
It’s Will Smith, I think, but my voice says, ‘No.’ It shakes just a little, a shimmer of sound, wind across glass. I don’t think he hears it.
Joey Fraser was cast from a stage school and even at eight already had a theatre background. He talked a lot about voice projection and establishing space. Once, when I came down with a bout of tonsillitis, he offered to put on a wig and fill my role and no one knew if he was joking or not. He was the only one of the original cast to achieve anything close to a career.
‘Yeah,’ Marco continues, chewing thoughtfully, ‘I thought it was funny, that’s all. I mean, meeting you like that and then seeing his name in the paper. What do they call it, when things happen like that, like one after another and all joined together?’
‘Synchronicity.’
‘That’s it. That’s the one. Like that.’
We are silent for a moment. I can see his shape in the dim light, the hard rope of his muscles. Marco had told me his personal trainer was an ex-marine, bullying, close-shaven. Kicked him out of bed in the pearly light of dawn.
‘He said in the interview that the show – your show – had been exploitative. To the kids, I mean. Would you agree with that?’
When I don’t answer immediately he nudges me with his foot against my thigh, repeating the question.
‘He’s full of shit. He’s just trying to get attention for himself and his failing career. They didn’t exploit us. We filmed, what, three times a week? I had a tutor on set – we all did – and a nurse and an assistant and God knows what else. Exploitative. Shit.’
‘Are you mad?’
‘Do I sound it?’
He see-saws his hand. A little bit, he seems to be saying. I squeeze his foot beneath the covers.
‘Sorry. Joey Fraser was always a prick, even at eight years old. I have a lot of bad memories from those days and he features in most of them. I just – he’ll say anything, you know? Don’t believe it. We were treated well; we were looked after. We were just kids.’
‘It must have made you a lot of money. The show was named after you, wasn’t it?’
‘No. “Marigold” was the family surname.’
‘Yeah, but you – you were the star.’
His toes press into me again. I favour him with a weary smile.
‘I made some money, sure.’
‘Did your parents put it in a trust fund?’
‘Why are you even asking me about this?’
He leans forward, running his palms up my bare arms, making me shiver.
‘Because’ – another kiss and another – ‘I’m interested. You made a lot of money at a young age. It kind of makes you a freak.’
‘Thanks a lot!’
‘You know what I mean. How many kids do you know under the age of ten worth a million pounds?’
I laugh scornfully.
‘First, that estimate is way off. Second, the big money was in advertising and public appearances – I could make the same money as I did on a whole series in one thirty-second ad for baked beans.’
Marco is looking at me with interest. ‘You haven’t answered my question.’
I study him. He has a day’s worth of stubble peppering his jaw, shocks of grey in his hair. We’ve been together just two months and are still at the stage of our relationship when we want to devour each other, sinking our teeth into each other’s names, the details, the rich smell of him in the crook of his neck. Perhaps that’s why I can’t tell him where the money went. Perhaps that’s why the lie slips from my mouth like ribbon being pulled from between my lips.
‘I don’t know. I just tapped into it when I needed it. I couldn’t tell you how much.’
I lift his feet into my lap.
‘Did you spend it all?’
‘Every penny.’
Liar. I fink we’d better ask Daddy.
Later Marco is naked, his arm beneath me, leg curled around my thigh. He is sleepy. I am watching his eyelids flicker, the way his lips part slightly. He shifts a little onto his elbow, kisses me lightly on the tip of my nose.
‘What happened to your teeth?’ he asks drowsily. I am close to drifting off myself and for a moment I struggle to understand what he means.
‘The gap,’ he says. ‘Katie Marigold has a gap between her teeth.’
‘Oh, that. I had it fixed. You can get it filled in.’
‘It’s a shame.’
‘I hated it.’
‘It’s meant to be lucky.’
I don’t know what to say. From the outside, my life must look charmed. I had been a star, in a show named after the character I played. My face
had been on magazines and TV screens and there had even been a range of biscuits called Marigolds!. They had been buttery-soft with my face stencilled on the underside. The weirdest thing. Dad had hated them.
‘Goodnight, baby,’ I say.
‘Goodnight, little orphan Annie,’ he murmurs. I am instantly cold, as if my internal organs are covered with frost. I stiffen and he opens his eyes wide.
‘What’s wrong?’
‘Why did you call me that?’
‘It’s a joke.’
‘It’s a joke that my parents are dead?’
‘Oh, Stella.’ He switches on the lamp beside the bed. I am quivering, flush with anger. My cheeks boil, red as though slapped.
He shakes his head, draws breath. ‘It was a joke. It was misjudged. I meant – you know, a child actress. I’m sorry. I’m tired, I’m not thinking straight.’
‘It was cruel.’
‘It was. Yes.’
We look at each other, and he plants another dry kiss on my forehead before reaching over and turning off the light. I lie in the darkness, arrow-straight, my hands clenched into fists. My enraged blood floods my system. He apologises again, but his voice is slurred, gluey. In moments he is asleep. I lie awake a long, long time. Finally, I get up and walk across the room. The thick carpet muffles my movements but still I creep. I can hear Marco’s deep, regular breathing, the watery gurgle in the back of his throat as though he has a cold. I drag his suitcase over to the window. If I open the curtains just a little some of the streetlight comes through. I unzip his washbag and empty it into my lap. Razors and deodorant and aftershave, a blister pack of painkillers. And at the bottom, tucked away into the pocket, are the pills in a small plastic baggie. I recognise them even though they are unmarked, rough to the touch. I swallow one and fold them back into the bag, stashing it deep in his holdall. The pill will help me sleep but most of all it will rob me of this feeling of loneliness and abandonment.