Fragile

by Sarah Hilary

In the garden room, Dr Wilder’s plants were thirsty, soaking up the water I tipped into their earth, drinking until the soil was black at their roots. I trickled more water, wiping dust from their leaves before spraying a tar-based fungicide solution, in accordance with his instructions. Following his rules helped, in spite of everything Carolyn had told me in his bedroom. The real reason I was here, she said. This game he was playing – I’d believe it when I heard it from him. Women had lied to me all my life. She wouldn’t be the one to make me run. I was tired of running. It made no difference, that’s what I’d learnt. But all the same I stayed away from him, in the garden room, tending to his plants.

  At Lyle’s, the garden took all the water it could get in the summer months. The hosepipe ban became a blessing, no more hauling watering cans around. The garden was a feature of the house, in the eyes of the social workers. A big lawn for kids to play on, flowerbeds to lend colour and give the impression of a caring presence at work. As long as the begonias were in bloom, they could pretend Meagan’s was a good home for lost or lonely children. I tried to imagine the child Carolyn and Robin Wilder might have. Spidery like this orchid, or twisted out of shape like that bamboo shoot. A daughter with her mother’s fair hair, snapping the stem of every flower in here, or else ticking off tasks against Daddy’s rota. I tried to see their child but instead I saw Rosie, winding herself around Joe’s leg as he begged me to put down the watering cans and run away with him, to the lake. ‘Please, Nell.’ Pushing Rosie away. ‘Please.’ My fingertips chilled with the memory.

  Looking down, I saw I’d buried my hand in the wet soil where the orchid was rooted. I pulled free, shaking the worst of it away before wiping my fingers on the thigh of my jeans. More mess for Carolyn to remark upon. I’d been stupid to let her see how shocked I was by her words. I should’ve let her say her piece and scratch her claws, giving nothing in return. You couldn’t feed a creature like Carolyn, it only made her hungrier. But I blushed so easily, shame too near the surface of my skin, running its rash along my neck. ‘Rosie, and Rosier,’ that was Meagan’s joke. How I’d longed for Joe’s sunburnt skin that never paled, until I brought him to London and we found ourselves on the streets. My fault, Joe said, because I’d wanted the pair of us punished. Did I still want that?

  In the empty hall, her scent hung over everything, making me hold my breath.

  I went down the stairs to the kitchen, my hands shaking as I prepared their coffee, so much I nearly smashed his china.

  When I set the tray on the library table, Robin lifted his head and looked at me. His shadow was on the bookcases, smaller than usual because she’d tied back the curtains and switched off the lamps, shrinking the room. Even his books seemed smaller. My heart ached for all the learning he’d ever done, and all the learning he’d yet to do. I tried to smile but my face wouldn’t cooperate, obeying some instinct of its own to keep my distance from this man.

  Carolyn sat at the edge of his desk, swinging one bare foot. Without make-up, she was unrecognizable, as if she’d removed her face. She watched as I unloaded the tray, setting cups and saucers on the desk between her and Robin. My skin crawled from her scrutiny. I looked away but she was there, at the edge of my eye, her face wiped clean. She was like one of the white hairs we were made to pluck from Meagan’s head. She’d hit us when we took too long, or else she’d kick us, the flick of her hand or foot somehow worse than if she’d laid into us because it was so casual, too easy for her to hurt us. What recourse did we have? Worse than none, after Rosie. How she loved to remind us of that. Who’s in charge, eh? Who exactly is in charge?

  ‘We’ve decided we’ll paint you,’ Carolyn said.

  I straightened from the coffee press, looking between the pair of them. Robin avoided my eyes, rubbing at a mark on his desk, a white frown at the bridge of his nose.

  ‘I don’t understand.’ I kept my hand on the press.

  ‘Paint.’ Carolyn made a wand of her hand, waving it at me, the way Meagan used to wave her cigarettes. ‘We’re attending an art class together and we need a model to practise on.’

  My skin twitched under her gaze, repelled.

  ‘As you’re in the house anyway, we thought why not? You’ll do.’

  I pictured her, Juno in a tunic, making leisurely marks on a canvas as I cowered at her sandalled feet, naked and exposed. ‘I’d rather not. There’s such a lot to do in the house—’

  ‘Oh, we’d pay you, of course. A model’s fee. You need the money, I’m sure.’

  I looked to Robin, needing him to rescue me. I was his housekeeper, not hers. Not her model, or her slave. He said nothing, polishing at the imagined mark on his desk. Ashamed of her, or had this always been his plan? Just as she’d told me, yesterday. My throat hollowed, my stomach cramping.

  ‘We’ll start at the weekend,’ Carolyn said. ‘I need to buy in the supplies, brushes and so on.’ Her stare raked my body, knowing its secrets. ‘That should give you the time you need.’

  In a single week, I’d learnt the shape of Starling Villas. Every corner, every shadow. But since Carolyn came, the house was changed, shutting me out. Dirt crept back as soon as I finished cleaning. I made no difference and never would, no matter how long I stayed or how hard I battled. His house could never be my home. Like Lyle’s, after it all unravelled.

  As I washed their cups, I thought of Lyle’s as it had once been. The amber glass in its front door, above the brass bell and letterbox which Rosie grudgingly polished once a week. She’d been happy in the house, that’s how I chose to remember her, back when none of us knew any better. Meagan wasn’t in the business, she said, of making happy memories. But we defied her, making them in spite of her. In summer, the porch filled with buckets and spades and shells and sand, all the jumble of seaside living although we were a long way from the nearest beach. We’d catch a bus down to the coast on afternoons when Meagan wanted us out of the house. She’d let me pack a cheap picnic of white bread sandwiches spread with ketchup, and orange squash in a big bottle to be shared. We’d have money for the bus fare and a lolly for the little ones. There were always at least six or seven of us in Lyle’s, sometimes more. Joe carried old towels in a woven bag with bamboo handles, Rosie and the others humping buckets and spades. Up the cinder path at the back of Lyle’s, down the winding path to the bus stop. How I loved the scratch of the bus seats against the bare skin of my legs, the driver letting Rosie sit at the front because he liked kids. Not like Meagan, lying in an eye mask, simmering with resentment until our return.

  In Starling Villas, the fat pigeon alighted on the windowsill.

  I rubbed my thumb at the marks Carolyn had left on the cup. She wasn’t wearing lipstick but I could feel the tacky imprint of her lips at its rim. She was everywhere in the house, shedding her skin like scented dust. Starling Villas was hers again. Everywhere I’d cleaned and polished and tidied – put back down in disarray. It wasn’t my house any longer, it wasn’t even his. She’d come to reclaim it, poisoning me against Robin, whispering her lies in my ear. Should I be grateful to her? It gave me no pleasure to realize how far I’d fallen for him. I’d lost too much to love to consider it anything other than a punishment. Perhaps that’s why I cared so little for Carolyn’s warning; what could he teach me about punishment that I didn’t already know? But perhaps, too, I wanted to believe him capable of change, as I longed to be. Freed from the past, from the terrible things I’d done or allowed to be done.

  Shutting my eyes, I held my hands under the hot water, thinking of how Lyle’s was a hundred different houses all at once. Some kids hated every second of their lives with Meagan, couldn’t wait to get away. And others like Joe grew to love Lyle’s. The stairs we were made to brush, the broken banister wound with Sellotape that had turned brittle and brown. The garden where we lived in the hot months, hearing the throb of bees in the hollyhocks; if summer had a sound, it was that. I could smell the grass parching, soil baking all about me. Face down under a blanket of sun, Rosie put to bed after
lunch, worn out by the heat. Joe and I side by side, taking turns on the only lounger. We were slaves to the sun, that summer. I was fifteen and fearless, filling my palms from a stolen can of Meagan’s suncream, its thick foam smelling of skin and sex, Joe stretching his arms and legs for me to stroke the cream there. Later, when the heat was gone from the day, we’d shiver as we crossed the stone threshold to climb the stairs. Rosie would wake, wanting to play, grabbing at our sunburnt ankles, making us yelp. Meagan would be snarling, the sound peppering the house like shrapnel. I’d pour her a glass of cider and take an icepack for her head, and another sleeping pill. If I could keep her quiet until suppertime, it’d be all right. The nights belonged to me and Joe. Rosie wound herself at my waist, all sticky kisses. I had to peel her free, warming a cup of milk to keep her busy. Joe had gone to his room. I’d find him later, face down in the sheets, the day’s heat rising from his brown skin. In the twenty minutes it took to deal with Meagan and Rosie, I’d missed him so much my heart felt battered, beaten flat. What was love but pain, and punishment?

  In Starling Villas, I set Carolyn’s cup in the rack and pulled the plug, watching the water as it drained away, the gulp of it startling the pigeon into clumsy flight.

  What did they want from me, the Wilders?

  He’d told at least one lie I knew of – Just me in the Villas – and now he wouldn’t look at me. There was nothing good in the house, just this new suspicion, this fear. I’d been so certain I’d find Joe here. I’d searched for drugs, thinking if I found them I’d take my revenge in whatever small way I could. Thinking revenge was all I had left. Joe and I should be together, forever. Not love, not now. What we had was darker and dirtier. Joe thought he could outrun it, but I knew better. Carolyn knew nothing. She’d fed his addiction without knowing its consequences, the terrible thing it had done. She knew nothing of Joe, or of me.

  I shook the water from my hands, drying them on the waist of my dress.

  I’d built a castle once. A fairy palace of sponge turrets and towers, glittering with sugar. I’d saved up to buy the food colouring and edible glitter, working all night to sculpt stars in the windows and fix tiny flags in the turrets. I stood the finished cake at the head of the table, tying balloons and foil streamers to Rosie’s chair where she scrambled the next morning to demolish it all, sucking sponge and sugar roses from her fists before grabbing a turret and cramming it into her mouth, screaming a muffled warning at the other kids that it was her cake, her birthday, all hers. Icing in her fair hair that was so like Carolyn’s, streaked with gold. And Meagan at the foot of the table, laughing and smoking, one eye on the mess Rosie was making, waiting to tell me to clear it all up and hadn’t she warned me it would be like this, hadn’t she told me so?

  16

  Twelve hours. That’s how long it took Meagan to regret letting Joe Peach move in with her. The morning after he’d turned up shivering on her doorstep, she was woken by voices outside the flat. She dressed, putting an unlit cigarette between her teeth as she went to the front door.

  Joe was on the walkway, leaning one hand on the rail, his back blocking her view. She saw the tension in his spine through the cheap cotton T-shirt he was wearing. Whoever he was talking with, they’d dropped their voices to whispers when they heard her coming.

  ‘Oi,’ she said. ‘What the bloody hell’s this?’

  Joe straightened, half turning in her direction. Enough for her to see the boy, Darrell, with his hands in his pockets, grinning at her. The sight of him standing so close to Joe gave her gooseflesh. The walkway was a sheer drop down to the tarmac, eight floors below.

  ‘You’d better not be doing what I think you’re doing.’

  Drugs, because wasn’t it always drugs with Joe? Forget the promises he’d made to Nell, and to Meagan last night. She’d been a fool to try and extract a promise; better off doing what she’d done at Lyle’s – dealing him the bloody things herself. At least that way she knew how much he was taking. And it kept him coming back to her, kept him quiet.

  Darrell said, ‘He was fixing me a fag, that’s all.’

  Joe looked down at the boy. Did he see what Meagan saw – his likeness to Darrell? No, he just saw a kid who knew who was dealing on the estate. He’d always been good at spotting his predators, had Joe. As for Darrell, he’d no idea what he was seeing. No idea how this morning chat might’ve ended, had Meagan not shown up when she did.

  ‘You, get your arse inside the flat.’ Nodding at Joe. ‘And you, bugger off.’

  Her heart was beating a tattoo in her chest. Joe was standing so close to the boy, close enough to pick him up and drop him over the side. She couldn’t stop herself seeing Rosie in his arms, lifted over that bloody lake. It was a sharp drop over the side of the walkway; Darrell’s head would crack open like an egg.

  Joe slipped past her, into the flat.

  ‘Don’t come round again,’ she warned the boy. ‘Not while he’s here. Understood?’

  Darrell met her stare, his eyes hooded, before he turned on his heel and walked away.

  Joe was in the kitchen, filling the kettle.

  ‘State of you!’ she hissed. ‘What’d I tell you?’

  ‘No heroin,’ Joe shrugged. ‘He wasn’t selling heroin.’

  ‘He’s ten years old!’

  ‘I was ten years old. Once.’

  ‘Before my time, sunshine.’ She reached for her lighter. ‘This isn’t bloody Lyle’s. Stay away from the kiddies. I told you, I’ve seen enough of the police to last me a lifetime.’

  Joe took the sugar down, licking a finger to dip in the bowl. ‘What happened to Lyle’s?’ He sucked the sugar from his finger. ‘After we went, I mean.’

  ‘Ask your little girlfriend. She’s the one who started the stories. Not just to the papers, to the whole town.’ Rage clouded her vision. ‘Every one of my windows smashed! Every bloody one. It took the council three weeks to send a man to nail boards over.’

  She knew some of the vandals, recognized their faces inside the hoodies they all wore. She’d had a bird’s eye view, being inside Lyle’s as the windows were exploding, picking up the stones in the morning, clearing the worst of the broken glass from the floors. When the ‘For Sale’ sign went up, it was spray-painted with obscenities in no time. By kids she’d once fed and kept warm. All that might’ve died down but for the papers chucking oil on the fire, thanks to Nell feeding them a story. Speculation and rumours and outright lies about what was done to the Bond Baby on Meagan Flack’s watch.

  ‘Lost girl sold at sex parties,’ shrilled the headlines, with Meagan named as the pimp. ‘She treated us like slaves,’ the sources always anonymous.

  She knew which kids were selling their stories; the pixelated photos gave them away, like their choice of lies. Greedy kids claiming she’d starved them, rowdy ones saying she’d gagged them. Plenty made money out of selling their stories. Well, good luck to them. Meagan knew she’d done nothing wrong. She’d followed the rules to the letter – let them try and prove otherwise. She’d braced herself for a story sold by Nell or Joe but they never breathed a word, letting others do their dirty work. And because they knew the truth. Guilt had a way of gagging you, better than any threat.

  ‘Your little girlfriend stitched me up.’ She made a fair fist of keeping the fury from her voice as she boiled the kettle for tea. Joe was a mess but he’d protect Nell, even now. Old habits die hard. ‘To think I fell for her tears after they called off the search. All that fake crying the pair of you did.’

  ‘It wasn’t fake,’ Joe said mechanically. ‘We loved Rosie. Nell loved her.’

  Catching himself in the lie. He’d stayed wide during the police search. It was Nell who parked herself by that bloody pool, keeping watch. For weeks, all the divers came up with were bottles and balls, a rusted pram dripping green weed. She’d told the girl to buck up: ‘It’s starting to look like you’ve something to feel guilty about. You don’t want the police getting the wrong end of the stick.’

  R
osie was in that pool, no doubt about it. Meagan hoped the child went quickly. She wasn’t a cruel woman, no matter what anyone said. She was hard because life was hard. She’d seen others spoil the kiddies they took in, making promises they’d never keep, talking about unconditional love as if you could buy it off the shelves in Poundland. ‘Your new family, forever home,’ as if anything was forever but debt and death. At least her kids came up fighting when life kicked them down. She was proud of the ones who sold their stories and made themselves a bit of money. For a while, every week brought a fresh theory about what had happened that day. Meagan stopped reading. The sea took Rosie. You couldn’t prosecute the sea. Everything else was just flapping mouths.

  Oh, but the stories about that kiddie! You’d think she’d grown a pair of wings and flown to heaven. Funny how death did that. Took ordinary kids – lazy, spoilt, or just plain nasty – and turned them into angels. Rosie Bond was selfish from top to toe, same as all six-year-olds. Meagan had warned Nell and Joe to stop spoiling her. She was getting too big for her boots.

  ‘I’m the favourite,’ she’d started telling the others. ‘Nell’s like my mum. Joe loves me the best.’

  Meagan had broken up friendships before, when she saw fun and games turning to long silences behind bedroom doors, fumbling eyes at the breakfast table. Nell was too smart for that. Sneaking round behind Meagan’s back, biding her time, bringing Meagan sleeping pills to be sure they weren’t disturbed. Joe was the hopeless romantic, that’s how she’d read the situation, Nell was the one with the head on her shoulders. But look how she’d fought for Joe, wanting to believe the best of him never mind all the evidence pointing in the other direction.

  In the flat, Joe dipped his finger back into the sugar bowl.

  ‘You’ll stay away from that estate and those kiddies while you’re dossing here, understood?’

  He nodded and handed her a cup of tea, made strong the way she liked it. He knew her, that was the problem. They’d recognized one another, from the off. He wasn’t like the other kids at Lyle’s, and not just on account of his looks. Meagan hadn’t trusted him, not at the start. Made sure he knew it too, treating him roughly on account of those looks, as if they were a trick he was trying on, or else trouble in store. No one was that pretty without it warping him. She was right, too. Joe’s social worker had fallen like a bag of bricks: ‘Such a sweet boy, so lovely!’