by Daisy Pearce
‘Come on,’ he says quietly, ‘I’ll hold your hand.’
It is busy in the Star Inn and other than a few curious heads turning towards us as we enter my presence creates little fuss. Perhaps not everyone saw the papers, I tell myself, or maybe they simply don’t care.
‘Let me get the drinks,’ Jackie says, and disappears towards the bar. Marco and I find a table and he pulls my chair out for me. He nods approvingly as I sit down.
‘I’m glad you wore that dress,’ he says.
I look down at myself. It’s one he’d bought me back when we’d first got together: rich navy-blue, long-sleeved, fine-knit. It’s modest. Carmel used to call it my Amish dress. (That pain again when I think of her, like a slingshot.) It had been lying on the bed waiting for me when I’d come out of the shower.
‘Did you bring it with you from my flat?’
‘Not your flat, not anymore. No point paying rent when you’re not living there. I’ve packed up your stuff and taken it to mine. Most of it you won’t really need.’
‘What do you mean?’ I ask as Jackie hands me a drink – apple juice and ice, a little bent straw. ‘I don’t want you throwing anything away. That’s mine. It belongs to me.’
‘Food looks nice,’ Jackie says brightly, handing us both menus. ‘You don’t want to hang on to that old stuff, love. This is a fresh start for you.’
‘But I thought—’
‘We should have a toast,’ Marco says, sliding his hand over mine, pressing it onto the table. ‘To new beginnings.’
They lift their glasses and look at me expectantly. I raise my own and smile, thinking: What is happening here?
‘You fired Frankie,’ I say as I open the menu.
Marco nods, adjusting his tie.
‘You were right to,’ Jackie says, eyes gleaming. She is already halfway through her wine. ‘If he’s lying about one thing who’s to say he’s not lying about everything?’
I stare at my drink, amber-coloured, frosted with condensation.
‘What if it wasn’t him?’ I say suddenly. I feel Marco stiffen in his seat.
‘But you said—’
‘I need to talk to you about Joey Fraser.’
‘What about him?’
‘He’s been coming to the café. Asking about me. Calling me at the house. He wants to do a Marigold! reunion.’
Marco is turning his glass by the base. He fixes me with a stare. ‘How much is he offering you?’
‘It’s not the money—’
‘Yes, but how much?’
‘He said he’d been offered twenty thousand.’
Marco whistles. Jackie looks shocked and sits back in her seat.
‘I hope you’ve said yes.’
‘Well, no, I—’
Jackie and Marco share a look as though they’ve made a bet. Tenner says she’s lost her mind. Twenty says she’ll be institutionalised before December. I take a sip of my apple juice, so cold it hurts my teeth.
Marco takes my hand, squeezing it. ‘You should rethink. It’s money for nothing, honey.’
‘I don’t want to see him again. He was a horrible kid, and he’s turned into a horrible man. Did you know he told me my mother was the reason for all the cast changes, all my lines? He’s still bitter twenty years later. He’s pathetic.’
Jackie looks down into her drink. She doesn’t lift her head when she next speaks.
‘Your father put up with a lot from your mother, Stella. We used to wonder who your career was really for.’
‘What?’ I snap.
Marco is moving his hand beneath the table, creeping up my thigh towards the warmth of me. He squeezes painfully and I gasp, eyes wide. He leans back in his chair.
‘Listen, Stella. Jackie and I have been talking . . .’ They exchange a glance full of conspiracy and I feel my pulse quickening. I try to smile.
‘We both think you’re going to need a little more time.’
‘Time for what?’
‘To work on yourself, love,’ Jackie says, stretching over the table to put her hand over mine. Ugh, I think. She says stuff like this all the time, since she married the tennis coach. ‘Chase Happiness’, ‘Be Your Own Guru’. There is a sticker on her car that says ‘The only “BS” I need is Bags and Shoes’.
‘I don’t want to work on myself, Jackie. I want to go back to London.’
‘What would you do there, sweetie?’
‘Well,’ I say, suddenly enthused, ‘I’ve been looking at interning in a gallery for a while, just to find my feet. And Marco, your PA, Alice? She knows a lot about art, she might have some contacts she can—’
I see their faces. First one then the other. The good humour, falling away like ice melting. Beneath it a stone-cold impasse.
Jackie’s eyes switch to Marco behind me. When she talks it’s as if I’m not there.
‘I thought you said she understood?’
‘I thought she did,’ he says quietly, before turning in his seat to face me. ‘Stella, do you remember what Doctor Wilson said?’
I look at them both, their wide-open eyes as smooth as pebbles.
‘You had a breakdown, Stella. That’s why you’re here.’
‘But I’m better now!’
‘Honey. Honey, no, just listen to me. Last night you stabbed me in the arm.’
‘I didn’t know it was you!’
‘Okay then – what about this person that you say has been coming into the house? Have you seen them? Have they taken anything? Do you remember what you did to Carmel? To me?’
‘Marco—’
‘I can’t—’ He looks pleadingly at Jackie, rubbing the side of his head. ‘I thought you understood. There’s nothing for you in London anymore. Except pain. Regret.’
‘What Marco’s offering you, Stella, is a rent-free house in a beautiful part of the country. Have you any idea how much properties cost down here? And you could go to St Ives or Newlyn if you want galleries so much.’
The way she says it is so dismissive it hurts me.
‘But I don’t want to live down here. I don’t want to live in that cottage. It isn’t mine.’
‘But it will be when you’re married,’ Jackie says, smiling. ‘And then you never have to leave.’
I stand up. I can’t listen to any more of this.
Jackie nods drunkenly, as though this is what she expects. ‘There you go, running off. It’s your answer to everything, isn’t it? Just like your mother.’
Outside, black clouds scud overhead like the sails of a doomed boat. I stand in the darkness blinking back tears. God. I pull Marco’s cigarettes from my pocket and light one. I’d swiped them from the table while Jackie had been talking, my chest suddenly aching for nicotine. That kick to the back of the throat is still as sweet as it was when I was fifteen. I hear the door of the pub open, and I don’t look up. Hear the noise spilling out, the warm amber light on the pavement. Still I don’t look up. The heavy tread of footsteps in the mist. A shape, a figure approaching. I don’t look up because I don’t need to. I know who it is.
‘I didn’t know you smoked.’
‘I don’t.’
‘Ah,’ Frankie says. There is the click of a lighter and a long, slow exhalation.
‘I didn’t know you smoked.’
‘I smoke when I drink and when I have sex. So I’m a – heh – I’m a forty-a-day man.’
I smile weakly.
‘I didn’t see you in there.’
‘I was at the bar. I saw you. I saw Marco.’
‘You don’t like him, do you?’ I say.
Another inhale.
‘Nope.’
He continues to look flatly at me, one hand stroking his beard thoughtfully. I realise he is drunk, just a little. He has reached what I think of as the tipping point. I drag sharply on my cigarette.
‘Why did you lie about Mr Kennecker, Frankie? That’s why you lost your job, not because of Marco. Don’t blame him.’
‘Mr Kennecker didn’t want to do that
job because Mr Kennecker doesn’t want to work at that house any more. Mr Kennecker doesn’t want to work for your boyfriend – sorry, sorry, fiancé – anymore. He’s afraid of him.’
‘It’s still a lie. You could have told me the truth. I thought we were friends.’
‘Yup. I lied because I’m an asshole. But unlike Marco, I don’t try to hide it. I don’t make people do things they don’t want to do.’
I blink at him. I am getting angry.
‘Do you mean me? You know nothing about me and what I want to do.’
‘No, I don’t. But I’ve got him pretty square though, haven’t I? So my question remains. Why do you stand for it, Stella?’
He is standing in front of me now, arms folded.
‘You’re drunk.’
‘Ah, come on. I just told you I was an asshole, what did you expect? For what it’s worth I’m sorry I lost my job too. Mostly I’m sorry we won’t get to hang out anymore.’
I blink back sudden, frustrated tears.
He throws his cigarette away in a shower of amber sparks, walking back into the pub. Before he reaches the door he turns back to me.
‘I’ve been digging on your fiancé, Stella. It isn’t nice. He’s going to sink you like a stone.’
Chapter 25
It is the dead of night, and I am awake. My sleep recently has been like tumbling down stairs; fits and jolts and breathlessness. When I wake up I don’t know where I am. Marco is asleep beside me, his breathing steady. I swing my legs out of bed and creep across the room. I do not want him to wake up. I have to see it again.
Downstairs in the darkness I turn on the computer. Alice had emailed me earlier, a brief, concise message – Hope this is what you are looking for – with the picture attached.
I open up the first image, full-screen. My ears are pricked up, listening, alert to Marco stirring or Jackie creeping down the stairs.
The photo is the one I’d seen on the slideshow that day in the office, a day that feels like a thousand years ago. It shows Marco, tanned and handsome, standing in front of a fountain, his arms around a woman. He is smiling, his hair slightly longer than I recognise and a few days’ worth of stubble built up on his jaw. It doesn’t look too old although it’s hard to place his age. Maybe five, six years ago.
The woman is only half in the picture, as though she had turned away at the last moment to look over her shoulder. Her profile is visible though, and her slim shoulders. I check the darkened stairwell but the night is very still and quiet.
I hold the photograph of the beaten woman up next to the screen. Alongside each other the comparison is clear. It’s her. I’m sure of it. I can just make out Marco’s hand around her tiny waist. I swallow, massaging my throat. The second message arrived tonight while we were at the pub. Another photo, one I haven’t seen before. There is a little postscript from Alice: P.S Thought this one would interest you too.
The photo is definitely older. Marco I recognise right away. Even in school uniform with his dated Flock of Seagulls haircut and the slightly oversized blazer. He looks exactly as I would have pictured him. Cocky. Knowing. That smirk which lifted just one corner of his mouth. Next to him is another boy about the same age, same navy uniform, a straw boater tipped back on his head. It’s the smile that gets me, the lifted, defiant chin. It’s Doctor Wilson.
I’m frowning in the glow of the screen. They went to school together? That means they’ve known each other – I’m working it out on my fingers – over thirty years. Why hadn’t he told me? I am seized with the idea of going upstairs and shaking him awake, demanding to know why he kept this information from me, but I am gripped by a horrible certainty that his answer will be: ‘I did tell you, Stella. Don’t you remember?’
And weirdly then it isn’t Marco I think of, it’s Frankie. I remember the night we had dinner and talked and talked and how happy I had been – how substantial I had felt, how real – and then I remember how he’d lied about Jim Kennecker, the nasty way he’d talked to me outside the pub – and my heart sinks.
A sound then in the kitchen. Through the dark doorway behind me, a low scratching as though of claws on wood.
Mice, I think. No. Too big for mice. Rats then. I listen as I hear it again, a scratching, louder this time, and closer. I slowly walk across the kitchen.
Now there is a clicking sound, and I think immediately (and horribly) of bones knitting together. When I reach the pantry on the far side of the kitchen it stops. I put my ear to the closed door. The pantry is a windowless, narrow room in perpetual shadow. Frankie had told me with naked admiration that it was probably ‘the oldest, most authentic thing about this building’. I had gone in there once and been struck by the dank chill, sour and ancient, the stone walls clammy to the touch. I had not gone back in there again. I stand there awhile, but there is no further sound, so I cross to the sink and pour a glass of water. When I glance back I see the pantry door is standing open.
I am acutely aware of the feeling in the room, a buzz like electricity, enough to lift the hairs on my arms. The pantry has a heavy oak door, the handle blackened with age. It has swung inwards about nine inches, exposing a thick slice of darkness.
I feel a horrible certainty that something is moving in there. Something is inside, looking out. There is a flash of movement and what appears to be the impression of a face peering out from the darkness. Pale and translucent like a jellyfish. In my chest something cold shifts, like ice falling from an Arctic shelf. Slowly, I put down my glass. I can hear more scuffling and have a horrifying mental image of a shrouded figure, stooped with decay, long, horny toenails yellowed with age. As I approach I feel the draught coming through the gap in the doorway. It is cold and smells stagnant. There is something moving in the darkness, just behind the door. Then, unmistakably, a wet sigh, like someone at the end of a long pneumonic illness. From within the pantry a dripping noise, a burst pipe leaking, a sound like pattering rain. I reach out a hand and grip the door handle. As I do so there is a whisper from inside, so close to me that I gasp and grip the handle with both hands.
‘Pay Attention!’
I find my strength and pull hard at the door. An inch or so before it closes I meet with some resistance, as though it is being pulled open from the other side. I groan and redouble my efforts, arms trembling with the strain. I tilt my head back and shriek for help. Suddenly the door slams shut. I back away, expecting at any moment to see the handle begin to jitter and tremble as bloodless fingers manipulate it from that dark, airless space. The door shudders in the frame, just once, and I watch and I wait. My fingers are in my hair, and I am sweating. Behind me, a clatter on the stairs as Jackie comes at a run. Marco’s voice down the hallway asking what time is it, what’s the problem?
‘Stella, love, are you all right?’ Jackie has a glass of water. She presses it into my trembling hands.
‘There’s something in there. In the pantry. I heard it moving around.’
‘An animal?’
‘Too big. Oh God, it was horrible. Can’t you smell it?’
She sniffs and glances over my shoulder as Marco comes into the kitchen in his old T-shirt and boxers, rubbing his arms.
‘It’s cold in here. What’s going on?’
‘Stella thinks there’s someone in there.’ She points at the closed door.
I stare at Marco with big, round eyes. ‘I heard it breathing.’
They exchange another of those looks.
‘I did!’
‘Okay, honey, we believe you. You want me to check?’
‘Yes. No. I don’t know.’
Marco approaches the door and presses his palms against it. I am holding my breath, expecting at any moment to see the handles start to move, the door shaking in the frame. When nothing happens Marco pushes the latch, and it swings inwards, revealing that thick darkness.
‘Careful!’ I call out. I am remembering the way the smell had bloomed from in there. Marco steps inside and for a moment it is silent. When he reappe
ars he looks puzzled, wiping his hands on his T-shirt.
‘It’s damp, and cold. But it’s empty, kitten. Come and see.’
At first I don’t move, but then I feel Jackie’s palm in the small of my back urging me forward. I step up to the door and look inside, careful not to cross the threshold. The smell has disappeared, the darkness a grainy grey instead of the smothering black I’d seen. There is nothing in there.
Marco takes my arms and says, ‘Maybe you were dreaming.’
His eyes drift over my shoulder towards the sitting room. I have left the computer on.
‘Stella?’ he is saying, moving away from me, looking at the screen. ‘Stella, what have you been doing? It’s the middle of the night.’
Horrified, I slowly turn, wondering how I will explain the photograph of him and Doctor Wilson which Alice has sent me, how I can make it look like anything other than a betrayal. But it is just the screensaver, the starfield as though you are flying through space. Marco crosses the room and stands before it, his hands on his hips. If he presses just one button he will see the emails from Alice and the photo of him and Doctor Wilson as teenagers. I swallow, my throat very dry.
‘Marco,’ I say, and he turns, his two fingers poised over the keypad. ‘Can we just – let’s go to bed, yeah?’
I am willing him to not move, to not hit the keyboard. I have to try very hard to keep the pleading note out of my voice. There is so much gravity to Marco, I can’t stop looking at him. He draws you in, like a black hole. And what was it they said about black holes? Not even light escapes.
‘I wonder, Stella—’
He looks at me, head tilted as though listening to a faraway sound. What the hell is this? is what he’d say as the photo appeared, him as a boy. What have you been doing?
‘Please.’ I hold my hands out to him. His face is concealed in the shadows, my man. My good man. Then he moves his hand and very slowly, without taking his eyes from mine, closes the lid of the laptop.
Chapter 26
The damp has come back. It appears the same day Marco and Jackie leave to go back to London. Some of the black spots are migrating, appearing around the window frames. They speckle the skirting boards and the grouting about the bathtub, stain the corner of the bedroom in a shape like a horned beast, a Minotaur. I press my hands to it and they come away chalky with plaster.