by Lisa Jewell
She’d known.
But no. The thought went by in a flash. Of course it wasn’t Beth. Beth was her sister.
‘She smells nice, your sister.’
She heard Bill’s voice in her head. He’d said that once. She couldn’t remember when or where. But it had lodged itself in there, more than any other careless comments about other women. She’d held on to it, subconsciously, for years.
‘She smells nice, your sister.’
She saw Charlie’s foot shoot right up into the air and she heard him calling out.
She shook her head. ‘Er, I can’t do this,’ she muttered. ‘The baby’s woken up. I can’t do this.’
She strode across the room and unbuckled Charlie. He beamed at her.
The baby they’d brought into the world to celebrate the fact that they’d been to the end of the road together and found a way back.
Their Elastoplast baby.
‘Hello, sweet boy,’ she said, squeezing out a smile and scooping him into her arms. ‘Hello! Did you have a lovely sleep? Did you?’ Her voice was sugar but her throat was bitter with bile.
She glanced towards the garden, looking for her sister. The boys and Tia were heading back indoors, their cheeks pink and flushed.
‘We’re thirsty!’ gasped Stanley. ‘Can we have more Coke?’
She nodded distractedly.
Stanley looked at her wide-eyed. ‘Really?’
‘Yes,’ she said wearily.
‘Mum says yes!’ he reported back to his older brother, whose eyebrows shot incredulously up his forehead.
All three headed towards the bar. She glanced from them and back to Kayleigh and her father. Kayleigh raised an eyebrow at her and then headed over.
Meg turned away, hoping to discourage her approach, but she felt a hand on her arm and turned again. ‘What?’
‘I’m really, really sorry, Meg. I so absolutely did not mean to say that. I so absolutely was never going to say that. But your sister, she was so angry, I just … I’m really sorry.’
‘Because it’s not true,’ Meg silently willed her to say.
But she didn’t. Instead she squeezed Meg’s arm, and then moved her touch to Charlie’s little hand and she smiled at him and then at Meg and she said, ‘He’s a lovely little fella, isn’t he?’
Meg nodded. ‘He’s perfect.’
‘I’d say.’ They exchanged a look then, a look between two mothers, soft and understanding. And there it was, just there, for a brief moment, the woman her father loved – a human being.
Meg looked at the spot where Kayleigh’s hand touched her baby’s hand. Her blood raged though her body, her heart banged like a door in a storm. Her thoughts veered crazily through her head. Her sister. Her sister.
‘What was that?’ she asked quietly. ‘What the hell was that?’
Kayleigh let her hand drop from Charlie’s hand. ‘It was the truth, Megan. I heard them. In the garden. At the cottage. I heard them.’
‘What? You heard them having sex?’
‘No, no, no! Talking about it. Talking about the likelihood of being caught out. About whether or not Vicky had suspicions. That kind of thing.’
Meg narrowed her eyes at her. Not enough, she thought, not enough.
Kayleigh sighed. ‘I could have been wrong,’ she said. ‘I could have misinterpreted it. There’s only two people who know the truth. The absolute truth. And I’m not one of them.’
Tia arrived at Kayleigh’s side then, clutching a glass of Coke and smiling widely.
‘Have you been having fun, my sweet, darling girl?’
Tia nodded. Kayleigh stroked her hair. ‘Good,’ she said.
Suddenly Meg needed to see Beth. Now. While this was still happening. She offered the baby to Kayleigh. ‘Could you, would you mind?’ Kayleigh plucked Charlie from her arms and nodded.
‘Go,’ she said. ‘We’ll be fine.’
Meg ran then, out through the French windows, out on to the long-shadowed lawn, through a path of discarded pink balloons and fallen leaves.
She looked from left to right. The drop in temperature had sent everyone inside. The pub was in the middle of nowhere. All that was here was the cemetery, and beyond that, quickly darkening countryside.
And then she knew. There was only one place Beth would be. She pulled her cardigan tight around herself and headed there quickly, before the gloam swallowed the place whole.
Beth was there, sitting on her haunches in front of Rhys’s grave. She rocked back and forth on her heels and jumped at the sound of Megan’s footsteps.
She got to her feet and stared at Meg imploringly for a second.
Megan waited for her to say something, for the conversation to begin, the conversation that would end with the two of them laughing and hugging and saying, ‘God, what a totally ridiculous misunderstanding.’
But she didn’t say anything.
Instead she looked behind her, then back at Megan, then she croaked something that sounded a bit like ‘Sorry’ and then she ran. Away from Beth, away from Rhys, away from the wake and into the deep, awful darkness.
Megan did not chase her sister. Instead she sat by Rhys’s grave and held her hand against it. Her other hand she let slip into the pocket of her cardigan, to keep it warm. She felt an object there, small and hard, and brought out the gift that her mother had given her. Earlier. Before.
She peeled it open and found a pebble, polished to a shine, with a pinkish gleam in the dusky light. The wrapping revealed itself as a note, written out in solid school-teacherish shapes:
Remember, Megan, that wherever
you find yourselves, you are all pebbles
from the same beach. Look after each other.
Your friend,
Vicky
She tucked the pebble and the note into her pocket and headed back to the pub.
11
Thursday 13th January 2011
Good morning, lovely Jim!
Yes, yes, you’re right. I know. I must not go hungry. I’m a ridiculous woman. This whole thing is, well, ridiculous! I do sometimes wonder if it was just the other people in the house with me that were keeping this side of me at bay. If maybe I’d have been living like this years ago if I hadn’t met Colin and had all the babies. Who knows??! But I’ve taken your advice and made sure I went to the supermarket before I went to my shops, stocked up on things I like to eat. It’s interesting that I can take being bossed about by you, Jim, but not by anybody else!
Your flat sounds very sweet. It’s strange how I never imagined a place like Gateshead would have any lovely Victorian architecture, I imagined it all as high-rises and dreary old terraces. But I suppose everywhere has its ‘good parts’ and I’m glad that you live in one of them. And I’m also heartened to hear that you are surrounded by nice things. My husband, my ex-husband, he lived for a while in the other half of this house after we split up and it was odd to me to see his notion of ‘interiors’ once cut loose from me and my ideas. And it was quite chilling, in fact, to see that for all those years and years I’d been married to a man who, when left to his own devices, would go out and buy a buttermilk-coloured leather sofa. Absolutely bizarre!
I think things are so important. Pretty things. Mementoes. That’s part of it all, you see, when I go into one of my shops and see that someone has given away a little china vase, say, something pretty, that someone designed, that someone created, that someone liked enough to buy, and bring into their home, it imbues that object with so much substance. So much importance. To my way of thinking, at least. So seeing it there, in a charity shop, given away, given back to the universe, it goes against the grain. It makes me sad. So I have to buy it. To redress the balance.
Oh, really, I am quite, quite mad!!
Anyway, yes, you were asking about the funeral. About what happened there. My God, Jim. It was four years ago and I can still feel every hideous moment of it.
It all came out, at the pub, afterwards, in the quietest, least dramatic way yo
u can possibly imagine, that Beth, my youngest girl, had had a long affair with Megan’s husband. I mean, honestly, Jim, I had no idea about any of it until I suddenly saw her, the Irish girl, my husband’s lover, WHATEVER. I saw her holding Megan’s baby and I said, What on earth is going on here? Where’s Megan!! And she told me she’d gone to find Beth. And I said, Why? And she said, You’ll have to ask them that.
Five minutes later Megan returned, looking pale and traumatised. Her lovely pink shoes were covered in mud and for one dreadful moment I thought she’d been attacked. She wouldn’t tell me what had happened, but she went straight to her car, said she had to find Beth.
She drove around for half an hour, but never found her. And the next thing was a text message from Beth saying she was at Heathrow, heading home. We never found out how she’d got there, from the deep dark countryside, all the way to London. It really doesn’t bear thinking about.
Anyway, that was the last any of us heard of Beth. She changed her phone number and her email address and literally disappeared into thin air. And Megan told me what that Irish girl had said to her. And none of us would have believed a word of it if it hadn’t been for Beth’s reaction.
As for Megan, she was magnificent. She absolutely dealt with it. Confronted Bill, got the truth out of him, made him suffer almighty pain for quite a long time and then made him marry her.
Does it seem terribly strange to you, Jim, that two of my babies are floating about out there, untethered? That I don’t speak to them? That they might, in fact, be dead for all I know? (Although I do have to assume that SOMEONE SOMEWHERE would find me to tell me if they were.) It seems both strange and NOT strange to me. I can’t really explain it. It feels, almost, in some utterly foul way, preordained. From the precise moment that I saw poor Rhys hanging there, it was almost as though this were all inevitable. Or actually, no, from before that. From just before Rhys died. From the night before he died. When something happened that was completely irreversible. That would change the way I felt about all of my children for ever more.
That sounds dramatic and it is, Jim. Truly. I don’t even have the words for it yet.
And as long as I don’t find the words for it, then maybe I can keep on pretending that it never happened.
Much love, beautiful Jim. How I wish that I could just step into your arms and let you hold me. I bet you smell lovely.
L
Xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
April 2011
Colin greeted Meg and Molly at the back door of the Bird House in a T-shirt and boxer shorts. Meg recoiled slightly at the sight of his numerous tattoos.
‘My God, Dad, what the hell have you done to yourself?’
Colin glanced down at his body and laughed. ‘I have to admit, it’s kind of turned into an addiction,’ he said, adjusting his glasses.
Megan frowned. ‘Don’t get any ideas,’ she said to Molly, who merely gave her mother her eugh face and said nothing.
‘I’d invite you in, but …’ He gestured behind him at the dark piles. ‘Shall we sit out? It’s another lovely morning, I see.’
He had Lorelei’s laptop under his arm. He laid it on the table in the garden and thanked Megan for the takeaway coffee and croissant she’d brought him from the local café. ‘I’ve been trying to work out Mum’s password,’ he said, lifting the lid on the laptop. There was a piece of paper inside, with a long list scribbled on it. ‘These are all the ones I’ve tried,’ he said, passing it to Megan. ‘Can you have a look at it, see if I’ve missed anything obvious.’
Meg pushed her sunglasses back into her hair and read the list, Molly peering over her shoulder smelling of boutique hotels. He’d been thorough, that was for sure. He’d tried every conceivable combination of birthdays, children’s names, addresses, pet names, maiden names and favourite colours. ‘Oh, Christ,’ she said, putting it back on the table. ‘I mean, this is impossible, surely? We don’t even know how many characters it’s supposed to have.’
‘There used to be a guy at our school who could crack passwords,’ said Molly.
Meg and Colin looked at her and she shrugged. ‘Don’t know what happened to him.’
‘Well,’ sighed Meg, ‘I think that’ll be our only real option. We’ll have to take it somewhere and get some propeller-headed genius to crack it for us.’
Colin shrugged. ‘I’ll keep trying,’ he said, taking back the paper and folding it in half. ‘Your mum wasn’t exactly Steve Jobs, so I’m sure it’ll be something pretty obvious.’
‘You know she had an “online lover”, don’t you?’ Meg asked Colin.
Colin smirked and shook his head.
‘Someone called Jim,’ she said. ‘From Gateshead. Apparently they were madly in love with each other.’ She rolled her eyes.
‘Well, that’s nice, isn’t it?’ said Colin. ‘Your mum always did need to have someone madly in love with her. Like a drug.’
‘We’ll be able to read their emails if we get her password!’ said Molly, her eyes wide with excitement. ‘Her and Jim’s love mails.’
Now it was Megan’s turn to make a eugh face. ‘Oh, God,’ she said, ‘I hope they weren’t sexting.’
Molly laughed. Colin snapped the laptop shut and glanced at his watch. ‘What time are the skips coming?’
‘Any minute,’ said Megan. ‘Well, now, in fact.’ She looked up at the clanking sound of metal chains outside the house.
Two big yellow skips were lowered on to the road. Megan handed over £100 in cash. An arrangement was made for the skips to be replaced the following morning at the same time. And the morning after that. And the morning after that. ‘We’ll just keep coming every morning till you tell us to stop,’ said the driver. ‘Bad, is it?’ he asked, eyeing the scruffy house behind him.
‘Really bad,’ said Megan.
‘Funny thing,’ he said. ‘Funny how people deal with stuff.’ He looked at the house again, almost tenderly, and he shook his head. ‘Good luck. We’ll see you tomorrow morning.’
She stood for a moment on the pavement after the skip truck had left. The morning sun was already hot. She held the delivery note in her hand and stared for a moment across the street. The enormity of the task ahead of her felt heavy on her skull. Not just the physical work of it (Megan liked physical work), but the prospect of unearthing her childhood and finding it riddled with rot.
‘Right,’ she said a moment later, clapping her hands together. ‘That’s it. No excuses. Let’s get going.’
Friday 28th January 2011
Darling Jim,
I knew it would come to this eventually. I had hoped that you would have read between the lines of my words and seen the truth squirrelled away in there. When I close my eyes at night, I dream about being with you. I pretend that you’re there with your big strong arms around me, I imagine running my hands through all that glorious silver hair, I fantasise about seeing you across a room, sharing a complicitous smile, walking into a pub, hand in hand, sharing a bottle of, well, water, I suppose. In another, parallel world, you and I are living together. In a parallel world, your lovely things sit side by side with my lovely things, your dog rests its chin on my lap at night as we watch TV together. In a world where I hadn’t made such a mess of everything and everything hadn’t made such a mess of me, you and I would be together. It’s obvious, isn’t it, Jim? It has been from the minute we first read each other’s words. We are soulmates.
But, darling, in this world, in this actual world, which may or may not be the best of all possible worlds but is bloody well the only one I’m aware of, we won’t ever meet each other. Will we? Because I can’t leave here. And you can’t stay here. There’s nowhere for you to sleep, my love. There’s nowhere for me to sleep. Yes, it’s that bad, darling. That bad. I can’t bring you here. I can’t come to you. And I know we could share a few hours with each other, meet for a coffee, something like that, but really, what would be the point? An hour or two, snatched in the day, barely a chance to get to know you. I’d be d
esperate to prolong it, to make it more, but I’d be snapped back to the pigging reality of everything, the pull this house has on me, the hold it has on me. I’ve given up everything for this house.
But please, Jim, don’t make me give you up too. Please. Can’t we just continue as we are? These lovely emails that make my heart sing when I see them in my inbox? Can we do this for ever, please?
And yes, Jim, I love you too.
xxxxxx
April 2011
By the end of the first day, they had filled both skips to the absolute limit and yet barely got halfway through the kitchen. The sun had blazed unforgivingly, more like August than April. ‘Do you remember,’ Meg had asked her father at one point, ‘that Easter before, when we were small, when it was hot? Do you remember the Easter eggs melting? And the paddling pool popping?’
Colin had nodded and smiled, sweat rolling down his temples, a dusty box of tea lights in his hand, and said, ‘Of course I do. It was one of those times. Those golden shiny times. When nothing could possibly go wrong.’
They sat now, the three of them, around Lorelei’s table in the garden, drinking Coke and letting the sweat dry on to their bodies.
‘When do you have to go back?’ asked Colin.
‘Bill and the boys get back next Monday. Monday week. School goes back on Tuesday. So in theory we could stay for two weeks. But hopefully not.’
Megan thought about the boutique hotel, the £180-a-night bedroom. She’d packed fresh bed linen and pillows into the boot of her car. She’d brought soap and flannels and towels and shampoo. She’d thought that within three or four days she’d be checking out of the hotel and moving into the Bird House. She’d thought it was a matter of a bit of sorting and chucking. She’d had no idea. Absolutely no idea.
‘Come back to the hotel,’ she said to her father. ‘Come and have a proper bath. And we’ll have a nice dinner somewhere.’
Colin looked at her gratefully. ‘Thank you, darling,’ he said. ‘That would be lovely.’