by Clare Boyd
‘There’s no need to be so unpleasant.’
‘I think you’re missing a cog in here,’ Naomi said, pressing her forefinger to her own temple.
Sophie played with the amber beads of her necklace, retying the knot. ‘Could you please think about it?’
‘Why? Why would I think about it?’
Sophie let go of her necklace, stood up and stepped very close to her, so that Naomi would not miss a syllable of what she was about to say. ‘Because I think you owe me that, don’t you?’
The shock seemed to unscrew Naomi’s jaw, letting it fall open, letting her pithy retorts roll unspoken off her tongue.
She rasped, ‘You’re blackmailing me?’
‘Don’t put it like that,’ Sophie frowned, stepping away. ‘We’re great friends going into business together.’
‘Do I have any choice in the matter?’
‘Choice can be an illusion,’ Sophie said, rather too grandly, having read the line somewhere. She elaborated, ‘One decision, or another decision, it doesn’t matter, it leads to the same conclusion.’
‘What are you talking about?’ Naomi scowled.
Sophie was losing her patience. ‘Okay, no. No, Naomi, you don’t have any choice.’
Naomi clawed her fingertips through her hair, wild blonde curls against the deep green of the fir trees behind her. ‘I can’t believe you’re doing this to me.’
Sophie stood up, galled, biting back everything she wanted to remind Naomi of. She could feel the rippling of the rash inside her clenched fist.
Before now, Naomi had been the first one to stop and note the fleeting beauty of a sunset or pause to savour the sound of children’s laughter. Well, maybe it worked the other way around, too. When the going got tough, why not believe that everything was just as it should be and live in that moment as powerfully as you might want to under a sky full of glittering stars? Naomi was trying to hit reverse on the earth’s spin, but couldn’t they simply enjoy the ride, and live as though it was all just meant to be? God might judge them, but would the universe care in a trillion years’ time?
‘You should be grateful for all you have,’ Sophie said.
They both needed to stop wrestling with their regrets. It was pointless of Naomi to pretend that she was the better person for wanting to confess. The simplicity of good and bad did not need to exist; the moral and legal parameters could become irrelevant to them, if they so chose. For both their sakes, Sophie wanted Naomi to accept this, to accept their shared destiny. They could either let it destroy them, like Sophie had almost done, or they could work together and give it meaning, huddle into the closeness and comfort of friendship, look around them, see what they had within their grasp to feel grateful for.
‘Fuck you,’ Naomi replied.
Sophie sighed. ‘I want my name added to the business by the end of next week. I’ll send you my bank details, and any other info you might need.’
She walked away from Naomi, back through the house and out of the door, with a ball of excitement gathering speed in her chest. The thrill of her achievement propelled her into a run. She felt the wind in her hair and the air filling her lungs. She was alive, finally. The realisation of her dreams was closer than ever. Change felt great! What a wonderful day this was.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Two hands were pinning my shoulders to the bed, pushing me down when I wanted to get up. I could smell incense. My eyes shot open but there was nobody there. I blinked, trying to find something to focus on in the dark. My rapid eye movement accentuated how motionless the rest of me was. If I had been able to breathe properly, I would have tried to inhale and exhale, to centre myself. I tried to move, but my chest seemed put upon, pressed upon, crushed by the air around it, which was leaden, heavy with my worry.
I had until Monday to decide whether to contact Mike, the accountant at Charlie’s firm, about Sophie’s request. He would be able to make the changes easily. It was a technicality that he was not in a position to question. Knowing Mike, he would. He was a good accountant. It would be easy to allay his fears. I would lie about Sophie’s motivations, about her skills, about what she could offer the business. I could explain that I had been finding the juggling of work and childcare tiring, or that I missed the company of others, or that I wanted to build a business with someone who had fresh ideas. Any of the above would have been enough to persuade him that I was of sound mind. He knew that Charlie’s income covered our overheads, just.
In the early years of the girls’ lives, I had hated relying on Charlie for handouts. With my own money, I contributed to the family. In small ways, I enhanced our lives. While Charlie paid the mortgage and the utility bills, I bought the added extras, like holidays and the girls’ after-school clubs and new clothes and the lease-purchase payments on a car that didn’t break down every week. Not only that; my earnings allowed me small luxuries, like breakfast out at the organic café on Friday mornings, or a Pizza Express meal with the girls on a school night or theatre tickets in London.
If I gave half to Sophie, I would have to explain to Charlie why I needed to dip into our shared account again. If I told Charlie that Sophie was benefiting from half of my profits, he would not accept my reasoning in the way Mike would have to. He would be suspicious and obstructive.
The only other option was to say no to Sophie.
I considered this, and then tried to twist myself physically out of the progression of that thought. My skull was a bell and her threat a gong. It was loud and clear: she would harm my girls. Their trip to Brighton had been designed to deliver that exact message.
Panic exploded inside me. I opened my mouth to scream but nothing came out.
Sophie thought she deserved to take what was mine as recompense for the secret she had carried for us. In her mind, in her warped mind, she was only taking what she deserved.
She imagined that I had been an unwitting beneficiary of her sinister, wicked cover-up. The so-called favour – which I had not asked her for, which she failed to accept responsibility for – had been her own unilateral decision. Not mine. If she was capable of leaving a young man to die by the roadside, of letting his mother suffer in the dark for so long, she would be capable of anything.
I knew that I could not risk her wrath, that I could not risk derailing her. I knew I had to give her the money. For the girls’ safety, it was a small price to pay.
Charlie and I would survive. We could take the financial hit, just about. I could make up some nonsense about the business that he would have to accept. If he suspected foul play, there was nothing he could do to prove it.
The decision loosened my limbs. I was able to sit up.
Quietly, I snuck out of the bedroom and headed down to the laundry room, where Harley slept and where I kept the wine boxes. I chose a cheap plonk, given to us by a couple who had come over for dinner. That sourness, that acid in my throat was fitting. It would send me off to sleep with indigestion, but it would fill me right up and push the nastiness up into my gullet, and possibly make me sick if I drank enough of it.
* * *
Hot breath was on my cheek.
‘Mummy,’ Izzy’s face was inches from mine. ‘Why are you in here?’
The room was brighter than the bedroom.
As I focused, I saw the television screen and the coral linen of the armchair and felt the lumps and bumps of the sofa underneath me.
Izzy did not wait for an answer; she climbed under the blanket and pressed the television on with the remote control.
I lay there with her snuggled into the curve of my body, and felt a throb in my head from the bad wine, from the excess of wine, and wished we could stay huddled here together all day. I tried to remember if we had anything planned today. I didn’t think so, which was perfect for me. With this acid hangover, I wanted a too-much-telly-and-cereal day.
The sound of Izzy sucking her thumb was almost as comforting for me as it would have been for her. Normally I would tell her off, remind her of the dentist’s th
reat to fix braces, but I could not rob her of a simple pleasure this morning. Under the cloud of Sophie’s menace, none of the peripheral concerns of parenting registered as important to me. Izzy’s life with me, Diana’s life with me, safe in this house, was all that mattered.
Five minutes later, Diana came in, taller than Izzy, but just as wobbly and ruffled from sleep. She curled up at my feet. With her eyes on the screen, she asked, ‘Did you sleep in here, Mum?’
Unlike Izzy, Diana would not let me get away without answering.
‘Daddy was snoring,’ I said, knowing they would instantly understand.
Last year, when camping together, both girls had been woken at first light by ‘the scary noise coming from Daddy’, which Diana said was so loud it rattled the tent poles. To be fair to Charlie, he only snored when he drank red wine, which was rare in itself.
‘Poor you, Mummy,’ Izzy said, very seriously.
They both began doing impressions of him, which sounded more like donkeys braying or bears roaring than his snoring. Their noises might have been what brought Charlie downstairs.
‘What’s all this racket?’ he asked, bending over the back of the sofa to tickle Izzy and kiss Diana on the head. His pyjamas had twisted around and a patch of his hair was flattened in the wrong direction. I loved him dearly.
‘It’s your snoring!’ the girls giggled.
He rubbed at his head. ‘Was I snoring? Did you sleep in here?’ he asked me.
‘Yes,’ I murmured, turning away from him to look at the television, uncomfortable to lie about this small thing, as though it symbolised all the other lies.
‘What’s this rubbish you’re watching?’ he asked.
‘It’s so good, Daddy. Come and watch it.’
I hoped he would settle into the armchair and pretend to enjoy this trashy sitcom with us. The girls loved it when he did. They would provide a running commentary throughout, explaining each and every character and plot twist in detail, fully expecting him to be as invested in the show as they were. If he tried to criticise any aspect of it, they would get cross and shout him down and tell him he was too old and boring to get it. He moved over to the armchair, and was about to sit down when there was a clink of glass. With a sinking feeling, I knew exactly what he had stumbled on. His brief, charged glance at me confirmed it.
Instead of sitting down, he picked up the empty wine bottle and glass, smeared with my handprints and lip marks, and left the room.
I heard the clattering of crockery from the kitchen and Harley yapping. I had forgotten to let him out.
Reluctantly, I crawled out from under the blanket and nipped upstairs to brush my teeth and hair, sort out the Burgundy stain on my lips, pop a Nurofen and climb into clean sweatpants.
Before I had a chance to return to the kitchen to make scrambled eggs and bacon for everyone – with a plan to eat a large pile of them, with ketchup, in front of the television, where I wanted to lie all day – Charlie came into the bedroom and closed the door.
‘Harley left a puddle in the laundry room,’ he said.
‘Sorry. I forgot.’
‘Are you going to be okay for this afternoon?’
‘What’s happening this afternoon?’
‘The Festival Hall?’
I had a caving-in feeling. How had I forgotten? A few months ago, I had booked tickets for me, Charlie, Meg and Josh for a performance of Beethoven’s 5th Piano Concerto at the Royal Festival Hall on the Southbank. It was a birthday treat for Meg, whose birthday was next week.
‘Oh. Of course. Why wouldn’t I be okay? I’m really looking forward to it.’
I tied my hair up and stared at my reflection in the dressing table mirror, seeing the dimpling of my chin as my muscles fought away the tears.
From downstairs, I heard Harley barking.
‘I’ll take Harley for a walk if you feed the girls some eggs,’ I bargained.
If I returned to the sofa with the girls, I would never be able to rally myself out of the door with Charlie later.
A bracing walk with Harley would sort my head out.
The steep climb out of the valley and the aromas of damp, peaty soil had been an antidote to the bad wine. As had the strong cup of coffee.
I now stood in a hot shower, letting the steam cleanse me of my sins, detoxing me, preparing me for the glass of wine I would be able to drink in the interval. In fact, the wine would be a better cure for the hangover than scrambled eggs.
A rush of cold air broke my reverie.
Through the frosted shower door, I saw Charlie come in.
At first, I worried he wanted sex. It was the last thing I wanted.
‘Can I talk to you about something?’ he asked.
I shut the water off, grabbed the towel and hurried out of the shower. ‘No. You cannot,’ I snapped over my shoulder as I rushed back into the bedroom, knowing exactly what he wanted to talk to me about.
I struggled to pull a pair of black, slightly bobbly, tights over my damp skin, dreading his lecture about my ‘problem drinking’, as he would no doubt call it.
He emerged from the bathroom. There was silence. He stood with his hands twirling the cords of his pyjama trousers. There was a fleck of egg at the side of his mouth. He looked as tired as I felt.
‘What then?’
His eyes – lost, crestfallen – were searching me for something I didn’t have, and I wanted to shrivel away in shame.
‘Go on,’ I said, less aggressively, accepting he needed to get it off his chest. I was poised with promises of my reform.
Then, unexpectedly, he said, ‘It doesn’t matter,’ and left the room.
For a minute, I wanted to run after him, and insist he tell me what was on his mind, wondering if perhaps it had been unrelated to my drinking. In the fug of my own despair, I had forgotten that Charlie had his own life and his own problems, separate to mine. But I could not think about Charlie’s problems right now. I did not have the headspace. Moreover, if I didn’t solve my own problems, they would become Charlie’s, too.
I stepped into my black shift dress and undid my hair from the towel to dry it.
As the hairdryer blared into my ear, I gave myself a pep talk. All I had to do was get through this afternoon. Bed and sleep were waiting for me afterwards as a reward. If not, peace of mind. Sophie’s business proposition hung in the air around my head like a swarm of bees. Tomorrow, sobriety and a clear head were waiting for me. As soon as today was over with, I could make a decision about what to do.
Ironically, I had been the one to book the tickets for the concert, before Sophie had unleashed the past on me. It was the kind of present I would never have been able to justify buying with Charlie’s money. My wine blog had afforded us the luxury of treats like this, which Sophie was going to take away from me. There were worse fates. Charlie and I could go back to living as we had before. It had been tight, but we were fortunate enough to have his regular salary guaranteed every month. I was lucky. I didn’t need extras. I could handle it, as long as I could handle Sophie’s audacity, her nerve, her turncoating. She had been my friend, and now she was my enemy.
They say first impressions are everything, and that it is foolish to dismiss them. Back then, through naive eyes, I had seen Sophie as a true eccentric; an ethereal, bony, pale-haired beauty, who was brave enough to stand out in the crowd of freshers, enough to wear unfashionable cowboy boots and pack plastic flowers instead of toothbrushes and drive classic cars. She had hidden behind her kooky cool and her controversial literature. My own insecurities had been too great to see beyond her pretensions.
When I thought of yesterday, and how she had stood in my garden with her plans of stealing half my business from me, there had been a disconnect between her actions and my reaction, just as there had been for Humbert Humbert when it came to his desire for Lolita. With hindsight, when I thought of Sophie’s fascination with that novel, I understood that Sophie was more likely to have been absorbed by the amorality of Humbert Humbert,
whose intellectual sophistication and good looks and shyness obscured his dark nature, his paedophilia. His internal struggles were never quite convincing enough to allow the reader to believe he was remorseful or fully aware of how damaging and unnatural his crimes towards Lolita were.
It had been obvious, yesterday, that Sophie could not understand why I was upset about her business proposal, her blackmail. She had not been capable of empathising. She could only see it from her own point of view. Life had been unfair to her, and with self-pity at the heart of everything she did, she was redressing the balance. Through the prism of what she needed for herself, she justified her crimes. It was all about her. But I had refused to see it.
Now, I recognised the steel inside her. If I were to meet Sophie for the first time again, today, with my worldly, adult eyes, I would see a parasite who wanted to feed off me.
I sat down in front of the mirror of my dressing table and reached for some under-eye concealer. The liquid replaced my shadows with unpleasant semicircles of light beige. My mascara clumped. My eyeliner was too heavy. My lipstick bled into the fine lines around my lips. The make-up would not be absorbed, as if my skin was rejecting its falsehoods.
Underneath was me. The real me; a separate entity to Sophie. All about me. An alien concept. Could it ever be all about me? What could that possibly look like? What chasm would open up in me without Sophie?
The piano notes wrapped around our minds, silencing the auditorium, holding us in its magic. As I looked along the row of seats, I noticed that Meg’s shoulders were pushed forward towards the orchestra. Her chin was resting on her hands and her cheek was brushed up against Josh’s expensive suit sleeve. One of her satin high-heeled shoes danced to the music in between his splayed legs. Across the intricate beading of her structured dress, across the contours of her back, Josh’s fingers fidgeted, up and down the long zip, from the nape of her neck right down to the base of her spine.
I looked away, back to the young conductor, who was flipping his hair as he thrust himself forward, bringing the second movement to a climax. Here I was. Just me, alone among all these people. It was all about me. My emotions were crashing and soaring like the music. The thrumming rhythm dredged up my darkest thoughts, thrusting a deeply buried memory into the front of my mind. A memory that felt like a silence. I saw it, I couldn’t hear it. All I could hear was this music, its gentle cradling of me, how it enveloped me, almost holding me up. There was a giving way of something inside me. This chair, this auditorium, this setting wove itself into this startling act of remembering, imbuing everything around me with momentous significance.