by NJ Moss
After several minutes of complaining, he looked at the digital clock, the red readout telling us it was one minute past two. “Jesus, listen to me. We better get some sleep. I’m sorry, Grace. I didn’t mean to unload.”
“That’s what spouses are for, aren’t they?” I teased. “Unloading all your woes and heartaches?”
“Yeah, maybe.” He sighed, not taking the banter-bait. “But it’s not fair. This is your week. It’s going all right there, yeah? Clive’s treating you well?”
“Everything’s fine.” I slid into bed next to him and snuggled close to his chest. “And everything.” I kissed his cool skin. “Is going to be.” I kissed higher, his neck, his beard. He laughed and so did I. “Fine. All right?”
We fell into each other’s arms, but simply to hold each other. I hoped he couldn’t smell the coffee on my breath.
Everything’s going to be fine, I whispered into the cluttered fray of my mind, as Troy’s breaths turned sleepy.
If Derrick or my insomnia or anything else became a real problem, I’d talk to him. We’d always been honest with each other. We’d always had long conversations about our relationship, our lives, our trajectory. Of course there were unsaid things, accepted silent things, like his truncated writing ambition and the fact he slightly resented me for my so-called posh parents, whereas he’d been born to working-class George and Phoebe.
But I wouldn’t let my workplace stress become one of those Unsaid Things.
I promised myself.
And we all know how much your promises are worth, a bitter voice laughed within.
18
Russ troubled me that first week. He moped before school, dragging his feet to the table for breakfast. It was as though somebody was sucking the energy out of him, an invisible demon come to syphon my son’s enthusiasm. When I asked if anything was wrong one evening – while he was building a giant dinosaur on Minecraft – he shook his head and kept his eyes glued to the screen.
“Russ,” I said firmly.
“Wanna build my dinosaur, Mummy. Can I? Please?”
I didn’t have the heart to tell him no, the note in his voice was so tragic, so pleading. I let him have fifteen more minutes on the screen, but not a second more. Later I read to him from his favourite book and ended up falling asleep on his bedroom floor. When I woke it was with my son’s hands pawing at my shoulders.
“Mummy,” he said.
It was the way he said it, how young he sounded, as if a two-month-old had learned to speak. I knew without asking that he’d wet the bed. I changed his sheets and told him it wasn’t his fault, and held him until he fell slack and carefree in my arms.
Russ hadn’t wet the bed in almost a year. Was there a problem? Should I be worried? Not according to Miss Mathieson. I stole a few minutes with her after school one afternoon, to be sure he was doing okay, he was making friends, he wasn’t the weird kid with the dead little sister who tried to win approval by going too far with boys and being mean to girls, he wasn’t—
Quiet, Grace.
“Russ is doing much better,” Naomi told me, smiling in a way that seemed genuine. I sensed we were silently agreeing to ignore any awkwardness from the previous week. “His behaviour has been fantastic, actually. I should eat a big old slice of humble pie for overreacting before. But I do like nipping these things in the bud, if you know what I mean?”
Of course, yes, I knew what she meant. Better safe than sorry. I’d have to watch Russ, though, and make sure she didn’t nip his joy for life entirely out of his personality. But change was what happened when children started school, everybody told me: Troy, Mother, Father, even my best friend, Yasmin. It was expected.
Life was a maelstrom with the job and the children to contend with, but I was making it work the best way I knew how. I woke on Friday morning with an unashamed feeling of accomplishment, almost enough to shoo away the sleeplessness, the boom-boom-boom of my heart. I’d almost done it, a full week of going out into the world and proving Grace Dixon still had a little Grace Addington in her.
That morning, Clive knocked loudly on my door and then swaggered in. That was always his way. A knock and then he was in my face, aiming the cloud-white smile that didn’t quite match the wild dog in his eyes. “Grace, big ask. Next week I’m going to need you to do some overtime. You’ll be well paid, obviously. But frankly, it’s a weird request.”
19
“Knock, knock,” Olivia said, popping her bob of red hair around the door. “I come bearing lattes. I thought you might need an extra pick-me-up before another evening in the trenches.”
Behind her, the office was a hubbub of sound as the rest of the Langdale Consulting team got ready to go home to their partners or pets or hobbies. It was Wednesday and I’d be spending it how I’d spent yesterday evening and Monday: sitting in this office on my own, trying to convince myself what I was doing wasn’t a complete waste of time.
“Thank you,” I said, as Olivia placed my flask on the desk; we’d decided to ditch the paper coffee cups and go eco-friendly. I could smell the coffee as steam rose through the small cracks between the lid and the flask, ghostly temping tendrils. “You really are too good to me.”
“It’s nothing. I think you need at least one ally in this place. God knows, it can be a flipping snake pit at times.”
“Fine, but you must let me make the coffee run more often.”
For a moment, it was almost like she was offended. Her upper lip twitched and a flash of pure hatred crept into her eyes. She stared at me like I’d slapped her. Then it passed. Had I imagined it? Why would she resent me returning the favour? “I don’t mind,” she said.
“The coffee certainly does taste better when you get it.” I laughed, trying to push away the nonsense paranoia fluttering around my mind. It was the truth. The coffee seemed to have an extra oomph when it was Olivia’s turn.
“How are you finding it anyway?” she asked, hurrying the conversation along.
“Hand-copying reports from Word documents like I’m some sort of prehistoric barbarian?” I shook my head as a familiar wave of disbelief washed through me.
Hand-copying documents.
It was ridiculous.
“Clive’s had a lot of eccentric clients over the years.” Olivia shrugged but I could detect a note of suspicion in her voice. “Whatever you can say about him, he knows how to network. I guess if you meet enough people, eventually you’ll find some crazies.” Like me. “So yeah, good luck.”
“Thanks,” I replied. “Any plans for the evening?”
“Seeing my mum.”
“Have fun.”
She frowned. “Yeah, I will.”
“Olivia, is something wrong?” I said, seeing the pain in her eyes. “I’m sorry if I offended you somehow.”
“No, it’s not your fault,” she said. It is your fault, that ceaseless voice mocked. “My mum’s got dementia, early-onset. She’s only sixty.”
“Jesus.” Dementia, a sickness of the mind. New memories dying and old ones resurfacing. It terrified me. “I’m so sorry.”
She looked at me silently for a short moment, as though judging if my words were sincere. It seemed like she wanted them not to be, her expression twisted into resentment, as though she thought I was responsible for her mother’s dementia. She reminded me of the cold Olivia who’d introduced me to the office.
But then it passed, and I was left wondering if I’d imagined the whole thing. What whole thing? A half-second look? Get a grip, Grace.
“Thank you,” she said. “And try not to go too crazy this evening.”
I laughed, but her words left me with a chill. I’d been spending my entire life trying not to go crazy.
I pushed it all from my mind and checked in with Troy and Russ and Mia, who were eating an actual meal instead of the microwave curry I’d nuke in about an hour’s time. All was fine on the home front, so I had no excuse not to crack on with my absurd work.
“He’s very particular, Grace,”
Clive had explained, when outlining my overtime for the week. “He’s… ah, shit, what do you want me to say? He’s cuckoo. For whatever reason, he prefers to read reports that have been hand-written, not typed out. I once tried using a hand-written font instead, you know, the fancy-pants ones people use on wedding invitations. No dice, Grace, no dice. But I thought: why not use this to our advantage? So I’ve managed to convince him to hire us for his next project.”
Clive seemed pleased with himself, chest puffed up.
“It’s easy work,” he went on. “I know it’s not glamorous, but who else can say they get paid your wage for rote copying?”
He was right, and though I was technically free to turn down the overtime, it was my second week and I didn’t want to make a bad impression.
The reports were long and dull: workplace conduct regulations, paragraphs upon paragraphs outlining the correct procedure should a fire alarm go off, emailing etiquette, et cetera. I felt like I was in school, mindlessly copying from the board, having to write slowly so my script was attractive and not the usual quick scrawl I used for shopping lists and fridge notes.
I consoled myself with the fact there were people all over the world who’d kill to get paid for what I was doing. Fine, it was a little strange, a little out there. But so was Clive’s approach to business.
But then my pen faltered and it wasn’t from the cramp biting up my forearm. I’d come across a section titled “Guilt and Culpability”. I tried to tell myself I was being silly as the words cast some bizarre spell on me.
“Those responsible for workplace malpractice will often try to rewrite the narrative,” it read. “They will pretend they are the victims. Or they behaved far better than they truly did. Some will go so far down this road they will actually convince themselves they haven’t done anything wrong. These are the most dangerous employees, the wilful blind, the indignant wrongdoers. These people can be car collisions for a business.”
Was it the reference to car collisions, triggering images of Hope, poor innocent Hope? Why wouldn’t they say car crashes instead, the most common metaphor? Car collision, well, that could be a hit-and-run, couldn’t it? Perhaps whoever had designed this report – this report about guilt, for Christ’s sake – had done so with the intent of sending me a secret—
“One,” I croaked, forcibly placing my hands in my lap and slowing my breathing, which was assailing me rather too frantically. “Two, three, four…”
I counted steadily to ten. This was a coping mechanism I’d started in my teens when the panic attacks had become so bad I was afraid I’d be hospitalised one day. How would that look for Mother and Father? Not only had they lost one daughter, but another was unspooling. Using the steady breathing and the counting, I’d slowly gone from burying my face in a pillow and weeping and screaming to sitting like an effigy and waiting for it to pass.
I breathed; I counted.
In the months following the hit-and-run, Mother and Father didn’t notice me walking like a ghost through the house at all hours of the night. They didn’t see me writing It’s not my fault over and over in a notebook until I couldn’t close my fist from the tension. Perhaps they didn’t care if I disappeared for an entire Saturday to sit at her grave and cry and pray I could hear her voice, pray I was mad or magic or anything, anything so I could hear my little sister’s voice.
It’s not my fault, I wrote now, on a new page.
What the hell was I doing? I balled up the paper and threw it in the bin. I turned back to the report and made myself write out the words, ignoring the subtle needling in my chest. It was like somebody was lightly prodding my heart.
20
I got home at half past eight. After looking in on the children, I joined Troy in the bedroom. “Evening,” I said, dropping onto the edge of the bed and reaching down to tear off my shoes. I was already missing my UGGs like a phantom limb.
“Another easy night?” Troy bantered, peering over his laptop screen.
I bared my teeth and mimed throwing my shoe at him. He held his hands up. “All right, all right.” He chuckled. “If I could get paid for writing out some reports for an eccentric millionaire, I’d feel pretty damn blessed. That’s all I’m saying. Who do you think it is? Alan Sugar? Maybe some Saudi oilman?”
“It’s boring. And I’ve got no idea who it is.”
“He’s paying, isn’t he? That’s all that matters.”
“I suppose so. Anyway, how were the kids today?”
“Fine, mostly.”
“Mostly?” I asked.
“Russ had a little temper tantrum at dinner and said he wanted to live with your parents. But you know how it is. School stress. He’ll get over it in a month or two.”
“We’re doing the right thing, aren’t we?”
“What do you mean?” He half-closed his laptop.
“With Russ.”
“Well, yeah,” he said. “You should’ve seen Keith when he started school, the little shit. We’re both talking to him constantly, right? We’re making sure he can share his problems with us. I think that’s all we can do for the first couple of months. Obviously if we think something else is going on, ever, then we’ll step in and take action. But honestly I think by Christmas we’re going to see the old Russ back again. And Grace…”
He trailed off, getting a particular expression on his face. It was one I could read easily after being married to him for so long. It said, I want to say something but at the same time I don’t want it to spawn an hours-long discussion in which I am punished for saying it. And I don’t want to offend you.
“Troy?” I slid up the bed to sit next to him.
“I think this is going to be as hard for you as it is for him. It’s a lot of change for both of you. But it’s only been a couple of weeks. So let’s hunker down and get through it.”
I suspected he’d been on the cusp of saying something else before he hesitated, or at least he was going to phrase it differently. A decade of marriage had taught us that sometimes it’s the battles you don’t fight that matter the most.
I ignored the ever-present anxiety rampaging around my body. “Yeah, you’re probably right. I love him and I don’t want—”
I was crying, somehow. The tears had erupted and they were streaming down my cheeks.
Troy pushed his laptop aside and cradled me to his chest, his arms wrapped lovingly around me. “It’s all right, Gracie-kins,” he sang, the same way he’d said it over the years when I broke down about Hope.
“I’m okay,” I huffed. “I don’t know what came over me.”
They will pretend they are the victims.
“Is this just about Russ?” Troy asked, softly running his fingers through my hair. “Whatever it is, you can talk to me.”
“I know,” I said, laying my cheek against his. “I’m tired. That’s all.”
Once the tears had passed, I went into the en suite and took a scorching hot shower, focusing on the physical sensation of the water sluicing down my body and nothing else, not the reports, not the ever-present hum at the back of my mind. Nothing, just the water, just the heat.
I prayed sleep would come easier. But the moment my head sunk into the pillow I knew I was in for another toss-and-turn marathon. I couldn’t find a comfortable position. The duvet became an enemy. The mattress was rock-hard in places and doughy in others.
In the end – after waiting for Troy to start snoring – I went down to the living room with my Kindle, sitting with my knees to my chest and turning to this month’s book club read. The Virgin Suicides. It had been Mike Foreman’s choice, which didn’t surprise me. Despite his laddish exterior, his picks were always dark.
I lost myself in the world of the book, living in the words, reality drifting away. It was about childhood and death and sex and anger and hate, and as I read I couldn’t help but think of Hope. By the time I reached the end, the hazy early-autumn sun was glowing through the curtains. I could hear Troy’s alarm whining upstairs. I hadn’t slept
.
I went to make myself a coffee.
21
At various points in my life I’d had the distinct feeling I was being followed. In the early years after Hope’s death, some twisted conviction had arisen in me it was my little sister; she was the one who caused the animal instinct to rise in me to get away, get away now. I’d learnt to ignore this feeling and recognise it for what it most likely was. My regret, my grief, my guilt.
It’s natural to think Hope would be watching me, judging me. Of course it is.
But as I walked through Cabot Circus – to meet Troy for a hurried lunch – I felt it again, that prickling. It was a primordial sensation, a leftover from when this feeling meant a predator lurking in the underbrush, a big cat about to wrench me down into the dark. I strode and kept my head bowed, telling myself I was paranoid.
Lack of sleep could really mess a person up.
But then I turned and, hugging to the corner of a clothes shop with a baseball hat pulled low over their eyes, I saw them, him, a man. A man was standing there and watching me. I stared and my mouth hung open and all around me harried Bristolians sighed loudly with classic British reticence.
I was too far away and there were too many people bustling around for me to make out the features of the man’s face. He was wearing a long-sleeved shirt and jeans, and as I watched he pulled the black hat lower and lifted his hand. He waved… at me? I couldn’t tell. He waved and then turned away, disappearing around the corner of the shop.
“Excuse me,” I was suddenly saying, pushing past people, elbowing them out of the way as my breath became loud and frantic in my ears. “Excuse me. Sorry. Excuse me.”
I remembered standing outside my halls of residence at university with this same feeling creeping over me. You’re being watched. As I’d looked up at the end of the street, I’d spotted a man in a black baseball cap like this one was wearing. He’d lifted his hand and waved and then disappeared. At the time it was easy to chalk it up to him waving at somebody else. The world didn’t revolve around me. But he’d returned. Who was he?