by Daisy Pearce
‘Whose is this?’ I ask, and Marco tells me, ‘It’s yours.’
‘Is it?’ I’m frowning, confused. ‘It doesn’t look like mine.’
‘It’s your new phone, Stella. I gave it to you, remember?’
‘Okay.’
Marco is speaking slowly, patiently, but I can tell he is tired. He rubs his temples with the tips of his fingers. I open the phone, scroll through it. Messages are blank. Photos are blank. In the address book just three numbers. I look up at him.
‘Where are all my numbers? Where’s my phone?’
‘In your other bag, the one you lost. Honey, we’ve talked about this.’
‘Don’t be mad at me.’
‘I’m not— I’m not mad at you, Stella, I’m just – you know? This is hard work.’
The sign reads ‘KERNOW a’gas dynergh’. I crane my head to look at it through the smeared glass.
‘What does that mean, that sign?’
‘“Welcome to Cornwall”.’
‘They have a different language here?’
‘Don’t worry, I bought you a phrasebook. You’ll soon pick it up.’
It is almost impossible to tell when Marco is joking, and when he does it feels as fragile as a robin’s egg. I do not laugh, in case it breaks. There is a strange urgency in my flesh, a prickling. I feel very far from home.
Outside it begins to rain and the clouds turn to ash, a vast leaden grey. Through the window the landscape shimmers, vast rapeseed fields undulating like the mounds of a woman’s hips and thighs. The slippery unease increases as we drive past signposts with goblinesque names: Perranzabuloe, Marazanvose, Goonbell. Rain turning to drizzle as we pass through a dull town, grey blocks of houses against the backdrop of china clay pits. I press my head to the window, catch sight of myself in the wing mirror. Pale and pinched with a crown of wild blonde hair, slightly darker at the roots. My eyes are polished marbles, pupils thick and black and round as coins. There is a graze on my chin, and I don’t know how it got there. Marco is asking me if I’m all right. My jaw aches and my arms feel heavy. Blows to the head. I have done something bad. Put a muzzle on, Katie Marigold. You look so beautiful when you’re dead. I close my eyes, and when I open them we are driving down an avenue of trees thick with shadow, and then I close them again and when I open them Marco is saying, ‘Here we are, Stella, we’re here’, and all I see is a sign choked by the spiny hedgerows growing thickly, skewering glossy black fruits and berries. It reads ‘Chy an Mor’. I turn to look as we drive past it. The drizzle has turned into a hard, driving rain. He is peering out of the windscreen, slowing the car to a crawl. The hedges press up against us. I can hear the leaves whispering against the windows.
I turn to Marco. ‘What is “Chy an Mor”?’
‘It’s the name of the cottage. My parents bought it from a man in the seventies and never changed it. Here it is. Look, can you see?’
He points through the window. I catch sight of a little white cottage, a grey slate roof, wind-blunted trees.
‘See that upstairs window? That’s your bedroom. I asked Kennecker to tidy the garden for you and sort out a few things inside.’
‘Who?’
‘Kennecker, the caretaker. He was working here when I was a kid so he must be in his seventies now. He said he’d show you how the boiler works and the heating. I can’t stay long.’
But. But I do not want to be alone.
Marco sees my face and his lips tighten. ‘I know. I know. But I have to work. I have to finish some things. You know what it’s been like. Just a few days, and then once I’m done I’ll come straight back down, I promise. Please don’t look at me like that, Stella. Please tell me you’ll be okay. I’m worried about you as it is.’
‘I’ll be okay.’
He smiles, but he is not reassured, and my heart is fluttering like a trapped bird. I do not want to be here. I do not want to be alone. I cannot trust myself anymore.
Marco opens the back door of the cottage, drawing in a breeze of ozone and sea salt and the sibilant sounds of the waves. I stand in the doorway, blasted by the wind, hair floating about my face. The cliff sweeps dramatically down, threaded with canary-yellow gorse. The grey waters of the Atlantic roll sinuously, close enough that I can see the white caps of the breakers steaming towards the shore. The sky is charcoal strokes drawn by an amateur hand.
‘You’ll get cold,’ he tells me.
‘I don’t care.’
He puts his hands about my waist; they are warm and fleshy, pressing through my thin cotton T-shirt, pulling me towards him firmly, until we are pressed together. The curve of my spine is flat against the leanness of him. His breath is warm against my ear. He is saying my name, telling me it will be all right, that he will look after me. As he moves around he breathes against the back of my neck, feathering the hair there, and I flinch, pulling away. Marco sighs, rakes his fingers over his scalp. In this light I can see how tired he looks, how disheartened, and I know that I am losing him, and the fear fills my mouth like seawater. As I open my mouth to speak his phone begins to ring. He looks at the screen, shrugs.
‘Look, I have to take this. Why don’t you get your stuff from the car?’
I stand for a moment in front of a silvery, fly-spotted mirror in the hallway. I have to keep reminding myself that this is for my own good. The doctor said so, and Marco had agreed. A break from everything. Getting away from it all. Outside the rain is easing, and the day fills with an eerie tobacco-coloured light. I flick the keys at the car, hear the clunk as it unlocks. I feel an uncomfortable sensation of being watched – no more than a prickle – and I look back to the house. For a moment I see a silhouette in the upstairs window, grey and insubstantial like a veil of smoke, but when I step forward it has gone.
Clouds. Clouds moving across the sky on the glass.
In the car boot a spare tyre, antifreeze, Marco’s golf clubs. I stare at the empty space where my bag should be. Close it, reopen it, close it. My blood thickens. I move slowly around the car, peering into the footwell, cupping my hands against the darkened glass of the windows to look into the back seat. I look up at the sky, chrome-coloured, sucking my breath from my lungs in silver ribbons. I open the boot once more, and it is still empty. I stare and stare and heat builds in me like a fever.
‘What is it?’
Marco is standing in the doorway, his phone in his hand. He tells me it is cold, to keep the door closed. He reminds me I am not well and on this score he is absolutely right. I am not well.
‘Did you bring my luggage into the house?’
He stares at me blankly, shakes his head.
‘It’s gone, Marco. My suitcase with all my clothes in it, my toiletries, everything, gone.’
‘Have you checked the back seat?’
‘Yes, the front too.’ I drum my fingernails on the roof of the car with a sound like tiny bullets. I can feel a hectic colour in my cheeks.
‘Do you think someone has taken it?’ I ask.
‘What do you think?’
‘I’ll tell you what I think, I think coming here was a mistake and that this is a – I don’t know – some sort of sign. Fate telling me to go back to London.’
Marco smiles slightly, but his eyes remain cool and dark, watching me. ‘A sign, Stella? This isn’t the Middle Ages. Your firstborn isn’t going to die because the cock crowed thrice this morning. You’ve obviously just left it at your flat—’
‘I put it in the car. I put it in the car this morning, along with my jacket. I know I did because I remember not wanting to put it down as the ground was wet. So I put it straight in the boot.’
Marco tilts his head a fraction, as if listening to a faraway sound. ‘Think, Stella. Think back. Do you really remember doing it? It was early, and you were still half asleep. Maybe you intended to put it in the car but got distracted and you’ve created a false memory. Remember what Doctor Wilson said.’
I stand, blood buzzing in my ears, chin bent to my chest. I try t
o remember but it is hard. I can remember unhooking my keys from where they hung by the coat rack. I can remember Marco asking if I was sure I had packed everything I would need. The dawn air had smelled smoky and exotic and the neighbour’s cat Tonto had wandered over as I’d stood beside the car. Had I put my bag down to stroke him and not picked it back up again? Is it still sitting on the thin strip of littered concrete which serves as a parking space near our Lewisham flat? But in the next moment I’m sure I stroked Tonto on my way back from the car, because I had had both hands free. Hadn’t I? Hadn’t I?
Marco says softly, ‘I think you left it behind, didn’t you?’
I nod, and my eyes brim with tears. What a day. What a lonely day.
‘Let’s . . . Okay, let’s sort this out.’ Marco is scanning through his phone. ‘Don’t worry. We can fix this. Doctor Wilson said to expect these sorts of things to happen, didn’t he? It’s all part of your recovery, Stella.’
I hurriedly wipe my eyes with the backs of my hands. ‘Who are you calling?’
‘Alice.’
‘What can she do?’
‘She can go to the flat and see if you left it behind. Then she can have it couriered down here.’
‘How will she get into my flat?’
‘She’ll use my key,’ he replies. ‘You’ll just have to manage for tonight.’
He turns away from me as he begins talking to Alice. I find my thoughts wandering to Carmel and instantly force myself to stop. It is too painful.
‘Okay. She’s on her way there now. She’ll call and let me know. Why don’t you get some sleep?’
‘Sleeping is all I’m doing these days.’
‘It’s the pills. Doctor Wilson said—’
‘I know what he said, Marco. I’m just – so tired of being tired. You know?’
‘You’re not the only one, Stella. Sometimes I think—’
I stare at him. ‘What? You think what?’
He looks exasperated and puffs his cheeks out in a long, loud sigh. ‘I’m worn out, Stella, I really am. I’m trying so hard to help you. I’ve driven you all this way and – well. Leaving your bag behind like that, it’s a pretty lame trick.’
‘You think I did it on purpose?’
He raises his eyebrows at me but says nothing.
‘I thought I’d put it in the boot. I honestly did.’
‘I just can’t believe anything you say anymore. All I’m doing is trying to help you.’
Back in the kitchen he leans on the work surface, head bent. I wait. I can feel a headache building in my temples, something as dark and ponderous as a storm.
‘In the car you asked me about the numbers in your phone.’
I nod.
‘You asked me where the numbers for your friends were. Don’t you remember?’
He is speaking softly, cushioning his words. Tears prickle again. Sometimes I just feel like screaming.
‘Stella?’
‘Huh?’
‘Do you remember?’
‘Yes. I asked you where my numbers had gone.’
‘They’ve gone, Stella. You lost them.’
‘I can get them back.’
‘I mean your friends, honey. Carmel, Martha, James.’
He reaches his hands forward, I take them. He begins to rub my fingers, gently building warmth.
‘You’re cold.’
‘I’m frightened. I don’t want to be left on my own. I want to go home.’
He is not being unkind when he tells me: ‘You’ve nothing to go back for.’
I feel that dull sense of cauterisation which has become so familiar to me in recent weeks. A sensation of distance, of depth, the unbearable itch of amputation.
‘Lost your job, your friends – you’re in a limbo right now. You certainly can’t go back. What would you do? Where would you live?’
More tears rolling down the curve of my cheeks, making my vision blur. Marco says, ‘Oh, darling’, and he says, ‘Oh, Stella.’ He rubs my knuckles with his thumb.
‘I’m just trying to – don’t cry, honey – I’m just trying to make you see the reality of it, of your situation. It’s no good me pretending to you that everything is as it was. It isn’t, and it won’t be for a while.’
His phone begins to twitter in his hand. He looks at it and smiles apologetically.
‘I really do need to take this. One second, okay?’
He moves away from me, across to the back door and onto the little stone path which leads out into the garden, voice low. I close my eyes, only half aware that I am swaying slightly, only half aware that the knocking sound I can hear is at the front door.
‘Marco,’ I call out, ‘Marco, the door.’
I walk into the hallway, back again. Fidgeting. Someone is here at the house. My hands curl and uncurl at my sides.
‘Marco?’
More rapping, this time more urgent. I walk down the hallway on legs which are not quite steady. When I reach the front door I allow my fingers to hover over the latch.
‘Who is it?’
‘Caretaker,’ comes the muffled reply. And then, when I hesitate, ‘It’s starting to get cold out here.’
I open the door, pinning a smile to my face rigid as rigor mortis. The man standing in the doorway is middle-aged, bullish, thick beard threaded with grey. He is smiling, revealing a row of small, even teeth.
‘Oh,’ I say, ‘you’re not Mr Kennecker.’
‘True.’ He pushes his cap back on his head. ‘What gave it away?’
‘You’re too young. Marco told me he’d been looking after the house since he was small so that would make you at least seventy.’
‘Correct. And I am to assume that you are not Mr Marco Nilsen?’
‘Very observant. What gave it away?’
‘If I’m honest, ma’am, it was your tits.’
I bark laughter once, shocked. He is still smiling, arms folded across his broad chest. Carmel would have liked you, I think briefly, and with that comes a pain somewhere in my chest so I shut the thought down.
‘Do I hear a trace of an accent? Are you American?’
‘Nope. Canadian.’ He rolls back the sleeve of his parka to reveal a maple leaf tattoo. It is old and faded and the colours have bled.
‘Terrible, isn’t it? I got it done in my teens when I was in Vietnam so that people wouldn’t keep assuming I was an American. People are much friendlier to you when they find out you’re from Vancouver, not Texas.’
‘It’s a pretty permanent form of identification.’
‘Yup, I guess. But you don’t think of permanence at nineteen, do you?’
I shrug. He tilts his head slightly, narrows his eyes.
‘I’m Frankie.’ Extending a hand. ‘Like the Sister Sledge song but more irritating. Can I come inside? I’m getting soaked.’
The caretaker, Mr Kennecker, has been in hospital.
‘Gallstones,’ Frankie explains. ‘Painful but not fatal. He’s fine, he’s recovering, but he won’t be back at work. I’ll pass on your best wishes, shall I?’
‘Yes, please do,’ Marco says briskly. He moves around the table to shake Frankie’s hand. ‘We were expecting you half an hour ago, so I hope you’ll understand that I’m not going to stay here long. I need to get back to London.’
Since coming off the phone his face has darkened. He looks like a caricature of himself, swiftly drawn. Dark and brooding, wide mouth set in a firm line.
He pulls me towards him, saying quietly, ‘That was Alice. She found your bag. It was in the hallway by the stairs. She said she’ll get it down here as soon as possible.’
‘I don’t understand how that happened.’
He squeezes my shoulder, looking into my eyes. ‘Stop it.’
‘Stop what?’
‘Going over everything. You’ve done the right thing.’
‘I wasn’t—’
‘And stop thinking about Carmel. You’re better off without her. She was a leech.’
‘I wasn’
t thinking about Carmel.’
I am, of course. I look at the bracelet on my wrist, the one with the inscription next to my skin. I wear it all the time. And so I think of her.
Frankie has a box beneath one meaty arm, and now he puts it on the scarred surface of the old oak table. He pulls his cap off to reveal dark curls peppered with silver. He has another tattoo, I notice, on the back of his hand. Blue ink, a geometric shape, fuzzy with age.
‘Shall I put the kettle on?’ Frankie asks.
I clear my throat. ‘I’m afraid I haven’t been shopping yet, so we have nothing in.’
‘Aha!’ He sounds pleased with himself and opens the box. ‘It’s a sort of welcome pack. It was Mrs Kennecker’s idea, so I can’t take the credit. Just to help you on your first night.’
From inside he produces teabags, milk and a small bag of sugar. Holding up a finger – ‘Wait, wait, I’m not done’ – he continues to extract a bag of apples, cornflakes, sausages, potatoes and a box of chocolates. With a final flourish he produces a bottle of red wine.
‘Uh – Frankie. That’s very kind, but Stella won’t be drinking the wine this evening, I’m afraid,’ Marco says.
‘Well, then she can splash it on her cornflakes, can’t she?’ Frankie stares at the label. ‘Should certainly liven up your morning.’
‘Do you want to tell him, Stella?’
It stings. My guts turn slippery with anxiety. A blush is building on my chest, my neck. Instead I look down, hands ghost-white stars spread on my knees. I shake my head.
‘No?’ Marco turns to Frankie. ‘Stella isn’t drinking because Stella is an addict. We can’t have any alcohol in the house. She’s here to get better. London was ruining her, and she’s left it all behind.’
Marco says all this impassively, tanned forearms crossed in front of him. The glint of his thick gold watch hangs in a loop about his wrist. Distantly, I hear Frankie say that it’s cool, no problem, he’ll take the wine home, and would I like him to show me the boiler, it’s just upstairs. I follow him on hollow feet.
London, home, suddenly seems as remote as a moon orbiting a distant planet. I have shed it like a skin, a ghostly imprint, fading. I miss my friends, although it feels like a long time since I have spoken to Carmel or Martha or James. Marco told me it was all behind me now; the commuting, the unendurable deadlines and unbreakable glass ceilings, the flirting, the pubs, the traffic. But, still. I miss it.