The Fault

by Kitty Sewell

  ‘So don’t go looking for moonlighting jobs without my permission.’

  Mimi winced, but to interfere in any way would make it worse. She’d already noticed that Carlo had that other side to him, an ultra-conservative attitude bordering on bigotry.

  The young man was still standing in the doorway, looking unwelcome in his own home.

  ‘See you guys another day then?’ she said and he stepped aside to let her pass.

  ‘Wait, Imogen. Let me walk you home,’ she heard Carlo call as she strode purposefully down the stairs.

  Once in the throng of Irish Town, she turned to look and was disappointed. Carlo was nowhere to be seen.

  *

  Good morning Imogen. I am sorry about the botched tunnel tour. Let me know if you want to pursue it, or any other aspect of Gibraltar. Also, I look forward to hearing your thoughts on my poetry. I am happy to read some of your work if you’re interested. Have a good day. Carlo.

  She re-read the message and kicked off her bed clothes. He’d not given up on her, after all. She felt flattered but felt it best to take a little distance. Anyway, Sebastian clearly didn’t approve of the friendship. She texted Carlo back and asked him to let her know if he was taking any other group on a tour.

  Later she put the synopsis of her novel and the first chapter in a brown unmarked envelope and tiptoed down to lean it against his door.

  For the next few days she worked steadily on her novel. The writing was flowing well, but the more she wrote, the more personal it became. The apartment felt like a tomb. Sebastian was out at the site all the time and Eva did not disturb her. Mrs. Cohen’s ghost seemed the only other real occupant. Mimi felt no disquiet or unease about it. She sensed a kind of benign guardian, black-clad, stout and elderly yet featherlight and hovering near the ceiling. The subtle presence was strangely comforting, especially when writing about ‘the mother figure’ which never proved to be any kind of therapeutic purging. On the contrary, it just brought up one hurtful memory after another.

  ‘Get dressed, sweetie,’ said Marcus, laying out her green flower dress, her pink leggings and the ballet slippers she refused to go anywhere without. ‘You’re invited to McDonald’s.’

  ‘I thought we were having my party here,’ said Christiana.

  ‘We are, later. Your mum and her husband are coming to take you for lunch.’

  ‘Will you come too?’

  ‘No, just you.’

  ‘I don’t want to,’ she said. ‘Why do I have to?’

  Dad tapped on her bedroom door before hobbling in. He was still in his pyjamas and had his slippers on the wrong feet. He looked ever so old, at least a hundred.

  ‘Marcus, take Christiana down to her car,’ he said. ‘I don’t want to see the woman.’

  ‘I don’t want to see her either,’ said Christiana. ‘I’m not going!’ She started crying and threw the green flower dress on the floor.

  Dad grabbed his hair. It was too long and greasy. ‘Please child, just do it for me.’ He turned to Marcus. ‘Make the child stop bellyaching. I can’t cope.’

  ‘I’m not going,’ she cried again and kicked off the ballet slippers. ‘I’m scared of her.’

  Marcus took her by the arms and looked her in the eye. ‘Christiana. Your mother sees you only once a year. Maybe she’ll give you a nice present. Please put the dress on.’

  ‘I hate her. I don’t want to be eight.’ Her tummy had begun to hurt. She wasn’t lying. She was scared of the woman they called Mother. Mothers were soft and cuddly and laughing, like Helen’s mum and Rosie’s and Neil’s. Mother was tall and skinny and made her feel like a…slug, slimy and pukey. She just didn’t like kids. Her husband was nice sometimes, but he had his own kids and preferred them.

  The doorbell rang and Marcus ran down to get ahead of Dad. He was embarrassed about Dad’s slippers, and not shaving and not changing his pyjamas. Dad always opened the door like that, and he shouted at the postman. Christiana pulled the dress over her head, not caring if it was the right way around. They were a crazy back-to-front family. All the kids in school said so, but nobody knew she had a mum who pinched her leg and left a mark like a purple pen stain, or pulled her hair really hard, or scrubbed her skin off with a washpad meant for pots. Marcus said it was against the law to hurt children, so she should really be in jail.

  To break with the utter silence of the apartment and the gloomy topic of child abuse, she put away her iPad, grabbed some supplies and walked to the Rock Hotel. As a former guest she’d ascertained that the pool terrace was easy to access, separated from the hotel by Europa Road and surrounded by the lush botanical gardens. When asked, she nonchalantly gave her old hotel room number to the pool attendant who took it for granted that she was a guest.

  Sprawled on a lounger, fully clothed, she observed the holidaymakers. They were mainly middle-aged couples, come here to see the sights, the apes, to shop and wallow in the historic atmosphere of the grand old hotel. There were a few kids having fun in the giant pool. Everybody seemed so deliriously happy, as if they’d never had a dark day in their lives. She wished momentarily she was the sort of girl who could jump in the water and shriek and splash around. But her gelled hair made that idea impossible: with her white skinny body, rings in her navel and a skull tattoo on her hip, she felt utterly alien in that sunny, happy world.

  She played with her mobile for a while and wondered who she could text. It dawned on her that she had no friends left. Brittany had become all posh and distant when she scored a Cambridge student, Andrea had slipped her black leather skirt into her own holdall while she was ostensibly helping Mimi to pack: that had been a nasty surprise (what else had she nicked?) Russell had disappeared from her radar – crack, she suspected – he could be dead for all she knew, and Bea had changed beyond recognition since she’d had the baby, totally shunning her old mates. Anyway, they were scarcely diehard friends, all lived far away and none of them had called or texted to ask how she was getting on.

  One by one she deleted them from her contact list, severing the ties to her old life.

  What the fuck, let’s go all the way, she thought bitterly. Before deleting Jane, she texted her a message. Mother. Rejoice, because I won’t inconvenience or embarrass you ever again. Your utterly unlovable waste-of-human-tissue daughter is out of your life. I’m never coming back to England. Good bye. She pressed ‘send’ and the uncompromising message swooshed out into the ether.

  Contact deleted!

  She lay back again, the pool towel rolled up behind her head. The message was sent, too late to take it back. Written by a fucking ten-year-old. She could just see Jane roll her eyes in self-righteous disapproval, just what she would have expected from this errant daughter. But a mother was supposed to love her child no matter what, wasn’t she?

  The tears won over, misting up her sunglasses. Shit!Get over it and grow up, you moron!

  She sat up and looked at her mobile. There weren’t many numbers in her contact list left to choose from: Sebastian, Eva and Carlo Montegriffo.

  She punched out another message: I’d love a tour. I’ll pay with a drink.

  *

  Coming home from the pool, she found Eva sitting at the kitchen table sorting through a mountain of stuff.

  ‘I’m trying to empty the last of our boxes,’ Eva said and pushed a cardboard box towards her, marked:

  MIMI

  Private – Sacred – Keep Out

  Mimi sat down opposite, ripped off the packing tape and flipped the lids apart. Inside were hundreds of handwritten pages, notes and passages she’d scribbled over the past couple of years for her novel. She’d been so miserable and mixed up, perhaps she shouldn’t even read them. Better to go on with a new perspective.

  ‘Is that your manuscript?’ asked Eva, looking at the pile of papers.

  ‘Bits of it,’ said Mimi, casually sliding the pile towards herself.

  ‘You’re lucky to have a talent like that.’

  ‘Who says I have?’ s
he snorted. ‘Everyone’s supposed to have a story to tell. Telling it is a question of discipline and determination, not talent.’

  Eva’s mouth smiled but her eyes looked pained.

  ‘What’s your story?’ Mimi asked on impulse.

  ‘A passion for diving,’ Eva said quickly. ‘Back home I was a paramedic.’

  ‘Right,’ Mimi said, gazing at her. ‘That’s a short story.’

  Fabrication, she thought. Stuff in the closet…that’s what Sebastian had said. She felt a smidgen of sympathy, and wondered what the attraction of this whole setup was for Eva. She was obviously crazy about Sebastian, but did she understand who she was dealing with? He was not a guy who got close to people. His work was everything. Conversely, for him, Eva must be a great piece of arm candy. He’d have to watch out; she could afford to be choosy. It was just Mimi’s luck to have this gorgeous specimen of womanhood witnessing her own pale and spotty face across the breakfast table. There should be a fucking law against it. It wasn’t fair.

  She rifled through the stack of notes, looking for something worthwhile. Restlessness overcame her, and she gathered them up and dumped them back in the box. ‘I think I’ll have a shower.’

  Eva looked at her in surprise. ‘Go for it! There’s enough hot water in that tank to float an ocean liner.’

  ‘I know. It’s been boiling for near enough a year.’

  ‘A year? What do you mean?’

  ‘Yeah well…ever since the former occupant hung herself.’

  She had turned towards the door, but she felt the startled silence against her back, then her own rush of regret. Shit! How had that happened? She’d just merrily told Eva the truth about Mrs. Cohen, breaking both her promise to Carloand to Sebastian.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she mumbled and rushed from the kitchen with her box.

  Eva

  An hour after a remorseful Mimi had slunk out of the apartment, Eva was out on the terrace with a carpet beater, taking out a multitude of feelings and frustrations on the heavy velvet curtains from the living room. She’d hung her victims on a trestle which seemed put there for the purpose, and the beating created the most satisfying clouds of dust.

  The nerve of it…to think Sebastian and Mimi had had a conversation between them to consider how best to keep her in the dark. What had made Sebastian think she should be protected from the truth? True, a woman dangling by the neck from a hook in the ceiling right above the bed in which she and Sebastian made love, and slept and drank coffee and ate toast in… was gruesome in the extreme, but she didn’t like being treated like an emotional cripple.

  The insistent ring of her mobile stopped her, arm aloft. She considered the distance to the hall, then remembered that Sebastian was going to call to let her know about his evening schedule. She threw down the carpet beater and ran to answer it.

  ‘Butt out! I’m busy destroying curtains.’ Her barbed joke was met with silence. ‘Sebastian?’ No response. ‘Mimi. Is that you?’ Stopping to listen, she could hear breathing at the other end. So why didn’t whoever speak up? ‘Yo… Sebastian? Bad network, this. Try me again.’ She gave it another few seconds, listening to the steady breathing. ‘I’m hanging up now.’

  She rang off and checked ‘received calls’. Number withheld.

  Three minutes went by. Three minutes was a long time when you were waiting. But the phone remained silent. Number withheld! Perhaps it was just a random nuisance caller, but she had a nagging feeling about the call. There could only be one person in Gibraltar wanting to spook her. Hadn’t Mr. Montegriffo hinted at reasons for wanting to remain alone in the building; all that noise they might make, laughing, singing, making love, listening to music and then putting garbage in the wrong place? But he was interested in Mimi, and why would Mimi have given him Eva’s number when she had her own mobile phone? Maybe it was Mimi herself, but would she really stoop to such nonsense? Perhaps she’d been phoning to apologise but then lost her nerve.

  Eva went back to the terrace and picked up the carpet beater. All her strength went into the flogging and she continued even when a blister began to form on her palm. She’d been so cool for so long – almost unflappable – but the silent phone call had torn a little opening in her defences. Some part of her was always waiting for the call, but she was not going to let the waiting back into her consciousness. She was not going to let it nibble away at the edges of her happiness. She’d severed all ties and she’d started afresh. Perhaps it was her relocation from Dubai to Europe that had inadvertently opened a little window of fear, or perhaps it was the phone call to Linda. If she’d had a choice, she wouldn’t live within such restricted borders. Nowhere to run, nowhere to hide.

  Not again! Don’t think it. Don’t think it.

  An angry ripping noise paused her attack on the curtain. When the dust dissipated she surveyed the long rent in the fabric. That wasn’t too hard. One down, only seven to shred.

  Sebastian

  The taxi driver refused to take his pristine vehicle down the ramp into the works yard. He stood on the road and shouted down for his passenger to come up to the layby. Jorge Azzopardi, their head security man, took his new job seriously: he threw the driver a firm gesture of disapproval; that was no way to talk to the principal engineer.

  ‘Thank you, Jorge, but really, I don’t mind walking up,’ Sebastian said and nodded appreciatively at the man. ‘How are you settling in here?’

  ‘It’s a very stimulating appointment, Mr. Luna,’ said Azzopardi, ‘and a privilege.’

  ‘Call me Sebastian, won’t you?’

  He marched up the ramp and climbed into the back of the taxi.

  ‘Upper Town, please.’

  As they roared off towards the entrance of Dudley Ward tunnel, he craned his neck to look down onto the site. It was a stroke of luck to have secured a large depot in such a strategic place, having formerly been the works yard for the tunnel during the decade it was being restored. The site almost hung over the sea and had great accessibility, via the ramp, directly from the main road. A tower crane had just arrived to allow materials to be lowered onto a hundred-and-fifty square metre barge that had been assembled in Malaga docks and towed to Gib as a secondary floating yard. Materials and equipment were beginning to arrive from various sources around Europe, and so far, everything was going to plan. No other unforeseen problems had arisen and the Gibraltar authorities seemed very enthusiastic about the development. Various international engineering journals had sent people over, and articles about the project and its creator had begun to appear. Several large developers were contacting Sebastian directly with enquiries. At this rate, it wouldn’t take long before he could pick and choose his projects, and SeaChange could go to hell.

  Whenever he had a quiet moment, for example during journeys home, his mind soon focused down on the ultimate structure, Luna’s Crossing. In fact, if its combination of materials and its assembly worked in the way he anticipated, bridges such as his could span mountains around the world and allow a different way of travel.

  Slow down, son. Dad’s voice was loud and clear. Who do you think you are?

  ‘I’ll show you who I am,Dad. I’m the creator of a new world.’

  ‘Did you say something?’ asked the taxi driver, peering at him through the rear-view mirror.

  ‘Just thinking aloud,’ Sebastian murmured, biting hard on his lip.

  He put his key into the lock then stepped back to look at the door. Something was different about it. It appeared freshly vandalised. In the middle was a small square patch of rough wood as if something had been prised away. Of course, it was the name-plate. Perhaps Eva, or indeed Mr. Stagnetto, had realised the indelicacy of a dead woman’s name on the door. Still, it had been badly done…perhaps Eva had planned to strip the whole door and paint it. She was going mad with her paintbrush. He’d have to watch out, or he’d wake up one morning painted white along with everything else.

  He stepped into the hallway. It too had been transformed, the former so
mbreness swept away as though washed clean by a tornado of pure bleach. The cherubs in the ceiling looked down at him, smiling beatifically. A bouquet of snow-white lilies looked glacial against the indigo tiles. The walls were alive with glittering dots from a chandelier made out of hundreds of tiny mirrors. He had no idea that Eva had such flair. But then, how would he? During the months they’d known each other, she’d lived out of a suitcase.

  He put his briefcase on a chair and went into the kitchen. Eva could not have heard him come in. She was sitting in her armchair, her hands covering her face. Gently, so as not to startle her, he put his hand on her shoulder. She flinched and looked up. Her face was blotchy and her nose red. She’d been crying, he was sure of it. He’d never seen her cry and he had no idea what to do with a crying woman. In all her distress and vulnerability, she looked angry.

  ‘You told me the owner of this apartment died in hospital,’ she said quietly. ‘But the truth is she committed suicide in our bedroom.’

  He frowned. ‘Suicide?’

  ‘Yes, she hung herself. Hung rotting for weeks from a hook in our bedroom. Just what I needed to add to my nightmares.’

  ‘What nightmares, Eva darling?’

  She flinched. ‘I am talking about what you and your macabre sister have been hiding from me.’

  He fell to his knees and put his arms around her. ‘I think you’ve got this wrong. What happened was, the old lady choked on her dinner. At least that’s what the Stagnetto fellow had us believe. Why the hell should we upset you unnecessarily with that kind of information? Let’s face it, people die…an old place like this has no doubt seen many a death. I mean think of…’