The Girl in the Corner

by Amanda Prowse

  Dolly beckoned the waiter.

  ‘Good evening; welcome to the Blue Lodge restaurant. Have you made your decision?’ he asked, with a fixed smile.

  Dolly nodded. ‘Two chicken, please. And a bottle of whatever white you’ve got that’s cold and decent.’

  ‘Certainly, madam.’ The waiter gave a small bow of his head and walked briskly away.

  ‘I feel like we’ve been here a week.’ Dolly yawned.

  ‘Me too. And I know you and Vinnie have our best interests at heart – I know you love us – but please let me sort my head out, Dolly. That’s the point of me being here: to try to think straight.’ Rae again rubbed at her temples where a tension headache threatened.

  ‘Okay!’ Dolly held up her palms. ‘But you and Howard, you are more than any other couple. You are my family and you are a huge part of the business; our lives are interlocked. And I can only help you fix things or help sort your head if you let me in.’

  Rae looked out towards the water and wished at that moment that they were not so interlocked. The idea of telling Dolly what had happened left her feeling a little overwhelmed. She had always known the two siblings were close and she had learned to navigate the waters of that closeness over the years, selective about what and how she shared regarding certain aspects of their lives. Howard had of course always put Rae first, taken her part, but there were nonetheless times when she felt unable to fully express her wrath at her husband when talking to Dolly; and she couldn’t ask advice on anything of a delicate nature, like sex – not when it was Dolly’s brother she was having sex with.

  What a bloody mess, Howard. What a bloody mess . . .

  ‘Two chicken.’ The waiter bent forward with a plate in each hand.

  ‘Actually, just one chicken.’ Dolly patted the table in front of her and looked across at Rae. ‘I think you’ll find I am very brave and am happy to say it like it is. My friend, on the other hand, is keeping it all bottled up, a bit shady . . .’

  Rae tried to laugh but bit her lip, fighting the desire to cry.

  It might have been the chicken, as Dolly suggested. It might have been too much wine on top of champagne in the heat, or – as several of the guests they passed on the path back their room agreed – jet lag. Either way, Dolly was all of a wobble. Rae held her arm as her friend leaned heavily on her and they made their way back to their apartment. Dolly kicked off her slingbacks and fell face down on to the bed.

  ‘I feel terrible. Sick and like I’m hungover. I don’t want to be poorly, not on my holiday!’

  ‘Don’t worry. We have two whole weeks to enjoy all of it – one night getting settled won’t hurt. I’ll sit here and keep an eye on you. Go to sleep. When you wake up you’ll feel better.’

  ‘Don’t sit and watch me! Not on your first night. I feel bad. Go walking, get some sea air, play whist with Nick and Nora . . .’ Dolly slurred, as she closed her eyes and gave in to the slumber. Rae shook her head; the last thing she wanted to do was venture out into the labyrinth of corridors and walkways by herself.

  After half an hour of sitting on the bed watching Dolly snore and listening to the whir of the air conditioning, she changed her mind. Rae walked into the bathroom and appraised the middle-aged woman looking back at her. It still surprised, how time had so altered her shape, eroding bits of her, like the sea-smoothed rocks on the shelf in the bar, yet sending unexpected bumps and pouches to spring up in other places. She tried not to think of Karina, with her skinny hips and pert bottom. She wondered how and when sex had become less important to her, to them as a couple. Was that the problem, the reason they had drifted apart? She thought of her own parents and one particular night.

  She had been only five years of age when she stood with her heart beating too fast and a cold clammy feeling on her skin. With the nightmare still fresh in her mind, she loitered in the doorway, watching. As was often the case, the only thing that was going to help her get back to sleep was a drink of water and some reassurance from her mum. But there she stood, confused. It was an odd thing. Instead of her mum and dad lying side by side, as was the norm – with her mum on the right and her dad on the left, her mum in her nightie and her dad with his head tipped back on the soft pillow, snoring – she found something quite different. She couldn’t figure out what was going on. The alarm clock tick-ticked by the side of the bed, as it always did, but what she saw in the middle of the bed was a large mound, like a whale under the covers, one big lumpy, shifting bump instead of two smaller still ones.

  She took a tentative step forward and placed her little hand on the brass foot of the bed, about to call out or tap the lump when she heard her mum making a strange low sound. It was quite a sad noise, a bit like the sound Prince, the neighbour’s dog, made when she took his ball and hid it behind her back, but then the noise got louder and sounded a bit more like a little laugh. Her dad was breathing in a funny way and she felt her fear rising. Something was going on; she didn’t know what, but she knew it was nothing good. She was torn between going to call for her sister, Debbie-Jo, who hated to be woken up, or calling out. She chose the latter.

  ‘Mummy!’ she shouted.

  Her mum screamed. Loudly.

  Her dad said, ‘Shit!’ and suddenly they were back to being side by side on the mattress. With much relief she noticed that the whale-like lump had disappeared.

  ‘Rae-Valentine! What on earth are you doing?’ Her mum was still shouting; Rae wasn’t sure why, as she was standing only a little way from her and she hadn’t done anything wrong. Her heart beat even faster nonetheless.

  ‘I . . . I had a bad dream.’

  She felt her lip tremble, not only at the memory of her nightmare, which still lingered on the edge of her consciousness, but because her mum, usually so placid, had shrieked at her for no apparent reason.

  ‘Oh. Oh, honey, was it the tunnel one again?’ Her mum sat up in the bed, calmer now, as she ran her fingers through her hair and fastened the top two buttons at the neck of her nightie.

  Rae nodded: yes, the tunnel dream again; the one where no matter where she ran, she’d face another dark corridor and she knew that however how far she went, or however many turns she took, she would always, always be stuck, underground. Like a mole.

  ‘What’s happening?’ Debbie-Jo, arriving a little late to the party, jumped up and down on the spot, no doubt excited by the possible drama. ‘Did you see a mouse?’ she yelled.

  Rae-Valentine shook her head, wondering if she should mention that she might have seen a whale.

  ‘Are we being burgulated?’ Debbie-Jo came up with the scenario and immediately started screaming. She shoved her fingers in her hair, just as she had seen those in peril do in the movies. ‘Help! Help us! Save us!’ she shrieked, loudly.

  Maureen jumped out of the bed. ‘For goodness sake, Debbie-Jo, will you calm down! We are not being burgled and there is no mouse! Rae-Valentine had a bad dream, that’s all.’

  ‘Oh.’ Debbie-Jo stopped screaming and sneered at her sister with a narrowed gaze, removing her fingers from her hair and letting her shoulders slope with something close to disappointment as she headed back to bed.

  Rae-Valentine stood with her back against the open door, wondering what on earth had just happened. Bad dreams, the whale, burgulations and a mouse! It was all a bit much for her five-year-old brain to cope with, especially at this hour of the night.

  Her mum smiled at her. ‘Tell you what, sweetheart, you go hop back into bed and I’ll be right with you. I’ll go and get you a glass of water and I’ll sit with you until you get back to sleep, how about that?’

  ‘’Kay.’ Rae had stared at her dad, who was making out he was asleep. She could tell he was only pretending by his fast breathing, the way his hands were gripped uncomfortably over the top of his off-white vest and the fact that his eyes were too tightly squished shut. Rae tiptoed barefoot across the landing and back to her little bedroom, where her teddies were lined up in order of size along the back of her chest of
drawers, and the curtains, which her nan had made, were the same pink floral fabric as her duvet cover. She preferred to sleep with a slight gap in the curtains so that at the right time of year, on cloudless nights, the moonlight could find its way in and lie across her room in a cool silver slice that fascinated her. These were for her the most magical nights, when the moon, the actual moon, was up her wall and across her carpet. She would stare at it, making wish after wish after wish . . .

  Hopping into bed, she pulled the cover up to her chin and waited for her mum, who when she arrived placed the glass of water on the night stand and sat gently on the floor by the side of her bed before smoothing the hair from her face.

  ‘You mustn’t let bad dreams scare you, sweetheart. They are just dreams, like smoke. And just like smoke, if you wave your hand they will all disappear and you can choose a different dream.’

  Rae nodded, trying to remember this for next time.

  Her mum coughed to clear her throat. ‘How . . . how long were you standing in our room, little one?’

  ‘Not long,’ she whispered.

  ‘Right.’ Her mum bit her lip and looked up towards the corner of the room, as she did sometimes when she was thinking. ‘It’s just that Daddy was helping me find something I had lost down my side of the mattress.’ She coughed again.

  ‘What was it?’ Rae asked in her small voice, interested in case she might be able to locate the item and win praise – and if she curried favour over Debbie-Jo in the process then that was just a bonus.

  ‘What was what?’ her mum asked, distractedly.

  ‘What was the thing Daddy was helping you find down your side of the mattress?’

  ‘My passport,’ her mum stated with confidence. ‘He was helping me find my passport.’

  Rae stared at the reddening plume on her mum’s neck and wondered why she might need to locate her passport in the middle of the night when to her knowledge there were no trips planned.

  ‘Are we going to Boulogne?’

  ‘Boulogne?’ Her mum seemed to have lost the thread.

  ‘Yes! Is that why you need your passport?’ Rae felt excitement flare in her tummy.

  ‘No. We are not going to Boulogne. I need it for another matter.’

  Rae didn’t know what that meant. Something in her mum’s manner told her not to question it further, but it struck her as odd. She might have been only five, but she wasn’t stupid . . .

  Rae felt a nostalgic burst of affection for her parents and their intimacy, still in love even now. Straightening her frock, she draped her pale-pink fringed shawl over her shoulders and over her bust, securing it with a china rose on a gold pin that had belonged to her nan. She thought of her parents, who had made a whale shape under the covers and who still held hands as they watched television of an evening, side by side on the sofa in their dotage. A lump rose in her throat. Rae shuddered at the thought that, in no more than a blink of any eye, it would be her who, like her mum, sported deep wrinkles and grey hair and had a creak to her bones if she knelt for too long. The difference was she was no longer sure that Howard would be by her side. It was a strange thing, how she felt exactly the same at forty-three as she had at twenty-five; it was only mirrors like these, her increasing forgetfulness and the fact that she had grown-up kids that reminded her of just how many decades had passed.

  Dolly hadn’t moved and was snoring louder than ever. Rae swallowed her nerves and dug deep to find courage. She grabbed the room key and her book, thinking she might find a secluded spot out on the deck at Max’s to read, hopefully without the presence of Nick and Nora. Quietly she closed the door on her friend, who was dead to the world, wishing she had that long piece of string to tie to the door handle after all, or a slack handful of breadcrumbs.

  This was not how she had anticipated her first night on this island paradise and it made her smile, thinking of Dolly, the party animal of her youth, who with her backcombed hair and impressive bosom was always the first on the dance floor and the last to leave, dancing wildly with a cigarette held above her head.

  The other residents of the Blue Lodge seemed friendly, smiling or offering ‘Goodnight’ as they passed her. She ran her thumb over the gold band on the third finger of her left hand and felt the bloom of loneliness in her chest. She had never been alone in a foreign country, not from that first day trip to Boulogne to her last holiday with Howard. She took a deep breath and ventured on, knowing this was the time to be brave.

  Walking out on to the soft sand felt a lot like coming up for air. The warm breeze fanned her face and sent a shiver of joy through her bones. She slipped off her leather sandals and held them in her fingers, walking slowly along the seashore littered with shells whose iridescent beauty was picked out by the moonlight.

  With the solid tread of the beach beneath her feet, the sound of the foaming waves, the smell of the salt-tinged night air all around and the most incredible canopy of stars hanging in the Yale-blue sky, Rae felt thoughtful. She liked the half-light, figuring she could blend into the background, hide in plain sight.

  She found a spot and sat down on the sand, with her shawl about her shoulders and her book on her lap. It felt good to be in summer clothes and even better to be in the warm air, which even at this time of night warmed her muscles. She looked out into the vast space of the ocean and let the wind lift her hair, liking the feeling very much. It reminded her of the honeymoon she and Howard had taken: three days in Barcelona, strolling Las Ramblas to watch the street performers; stopping along the seafront to eat spiced prawn paella washed down with rich red Spanish wine. They would then rush back to their hotel room to spend the evening entwined on the crisp white linen sheets. It had been a magical time. And after three days in the city, they hired a convertible and at their leisure made their way along the coast before taking a ferry to Ibiza, where their honeymoon villa awaited on the east side of the island.

  Rae remembered standing on the ferry with Howard behind her, his hands around her waist as the stars shone overhead. ‘I’ve got a wife,’ he had whispered in her ear.

  ‘You have.’ She felt him kiss her neck.

  ‘And not just any wife; the most amazing wife in the world.’

  ‘You know, Howard, we’ve only been married five days; you might want to reserve judgement.’ She giggled.

  He twisted her around and held her close, his fingers holding her face close to his. ‘I don’t need to reserve judgement. You are perfect.’

  ‘Don’t know about that.’ She felt her face colour.

  ‘Perfect for me,’ he clarified.

  Rae had looked up at his handsome face, his dark skin, blue eyes and confident manner, and felt a bubble of joy rising. This was what it felt like to be part of the Latimer tribe. This was what it felt like to live like a rock star – and she liked it. She liked it very much.

  ‘When did I stop being perfect for you, Howard?’ she whispered now into the night air, as the wind whipped her words from her mouth and carried them far out to sea. She didn’t want to feel this melancholy. It felt like a disservice to this most magical of settings. Her sob came without warning; her nose ran and tears seeped down her throat and sprang from her eyes. She hid her face in her hands and cried quietly, trying to catch her breath and wishing the pain in her heart would ease. With the end of her shawl she wiped her eyes and mopped her tears and carried on crying until her breath stuttered into a normal rhythm and her nose and throat cleared.

  ‘I don’t know what’s happening to me,’ she mouthed. ‘I don’t know what’s happened. I liked it before. I liked being half of us. I miss it. I miss you.’

  Rae pulled up her legs and tucked her skirt beneath them, resting her arms and head on her knees, alone on the beach. She screwed her eyes shut and rocked gently on the sandy incline. ‘I don’t know what I am supposed to do. I don’t know how I am supposed to be,’ she whispered.

  Rae had over the years played out various scenarios in her mind, wondering how they would cope with illness or,
God forbid, if anything happened to the kids, but even in her most maudlin of imaginings she could not have foreseen an event that saw her and Howard so fractured, separated, lost to each other with no obvious way back.

  It needed so much more than a long piece of string or a trail of breadcrumbs.

  ‘Ah! My unofficial first customer of the day! Where is your shy friend?’

  The man’s voice cut through her thoughts. She whipped around, swiping at her tears, embarrassed. It took a second or two for her to place the young guy who had been behind the bar earlier.

  ‘Oh, she’s not feeling too well. I think it’s just a bit of jet lag and possibly too much wine; I don’t know.’ She swallowed, feeling her confidence evaporate as it often did when she spoke to a stranger, doubt lingering with a sour aftertaste coating every word, as if what she had to say would be of no interest.

  ‘Well, you can’t sit here all on your own! Come and have a drink at Max’s.’ He held her gaze. ‘I’ve just been collecting glasses; you’d be amazed how far they travel.’ He held up a tray laden with plastic cocktail glasses.

  ‘I’m amazed at how far I’ve travelled. It feels like one minute I was in dreary London and the next I am here!’ She felt a little giddy; maybe that too was jet lag.

  ‘London, eh?’

  ‘Yep.’

  ‘Well, I mix a mean pina colada if you like?’

  Rae wrinkled her nose. ‘I don’t drink pina colada. Bit too sweet.’

  ‘There are plenty of other drinks. Come on, I’m heading there now.’ He pointed over his shoulder.

  She looked at him standing there with his tray full of glasses, watching her and waiting. Slowly she stood and brushed the sand from her dress.

  ‘Forgive me. I can’t remember your name?’

  ‘Antonio.’ He smiled.

  ‘Antonio,’ she repeated. ‘Where do you come from?’ She couldn’t quite place his accent.

  ‘Lisboa, Portugal. Do you know it?’

  Rae shook her head. ‘No. I’ve never been.’

  ‘It’s a beautiful city. But this is a good life for me for here.’