Intention: a compelling psychological thriller

by C. S. Barnes

  ‘Gillian, I appreciate that you’re an adult,’ she started. ‘But you need to appreciate one or two things as well. This hasn’t been easy, you know, finding that box and accepting that behaviour from you.’

  When I turned to face her I was already wearing a frown that I couldn’t shift.

  ‘But if we’re going to go down this therapy route, which I really think we should because I’m not at all fond of the alternative, then I just need to know, and trust, that you can be honest with me. And it works both ways, love, because you need to trust that you can confide in me without me overreacting, or, I don’t know, you just need to trust me with these things.’ She paused here and gave a shallow sigh, almost a huff.

  Before I Go To Sleep. 2014. Nicole Kidman. ‘Don’t trust anyone.’

  My mother continued: ‘Trust that you can tell me things without me doing whatever it is you’re nervous of me doing.’

  What, like making me go to therapy? I wanted to push, but instead I nodded to indicate that I had heard her; I stood silently, arms folded, as I processed her speech. Not at all fond of the alternative, she had said. Which was what? I wanted to ask but swallowed the question.

  ‘Is there anything you haven’t told me, that you feel like you should tell me?’ she pressed.

  The situation hadn’t developed as I had planned. The unpredictability of my mother these days made it more challenging to anticipate her reactions to certain stimuli. I had assumed that this would lead to something much more explosive; that the calm attitude would finally give way to something much more interesting, and it would then fall to me, the considerate daughter, to defuse the situation with a touching display of emotion. But my mother had beaten me to it. And worse still, she had upped the ante. This would take something exceptional.

  I walked over to her side of the table and, standing next to her, I held my arms outstretched towards her. My mother stood and complied. It was a good and convincing hug, I felt sure of it. The next stage in my plan proved more taxing.

  ‘I love you, Mum.’

  The words rushed out, one on top of the other. A hand came up to pat the back of my head then. We stayed close like that for a handful of seconds before my mother pulled away and I went back to cooking. I didn’t say anything at all about the fact that she hadn’t said it back.

  ‘Do you want to tell me about this morning, love?’

  ‘There isn’t much to tell, really. She gave me some good ideas.’

  ‘Ideas for what?’

  My mother was hoping for an epiphany. I left the knife suspended but loosened my grip around it slightly as I considered my explanation. I threw out an overview of the morning’s events, delivering to my mother small pebbles of information that I thought would appease her, including the plan to deal with my so-called anger in constructive rather than destructive ways, which she hmm’d over. When she changed the subject to something more palatable, I knew that my retelling had pacified her.

  ‘And have you spoken to Daniel today?’

  ‘Earlier, yes.’

  ‘Is he well?’

  I couldn’t remember whether I had even asked him.

  ‘A little stressed,’ I said, thinking that this was likely the truth. ‘He has some family troubles at the moment.’

  ‘I wouldn’t want to rush you, because I know what a big thing meeting the family is and all,’ she said. It seemed that everyone, apart from me, could appreciate the magnitude of introducing someone new to the family. ‘But it would be nice to meet this boy, you know?’

  ‘Why don’t I invite him over for dinner?’

  The question popped out, bold and fully formed. The determined silence that followed indicated that my mother had been surprised by the suggestion too. Some time rolled by before she managed to say anything at all, and I found myself so preoccupied with thoughts of Daniel – and the warm feeling in my abdomen that was a standard response to him now – that I almost missed her reply.

  ‘That’s a lovely idea, but not tonight.’

  ‘No, no, not tonight. But, soon?’

  Three days later, after spending the afternoon with Emily, I slipped the suggestion of a family dinner into my goodbyes with Daniel. His usual composure abandoned him and gave way to a sudden wave of what appeared to be panic.

  ‘I’ll have to check with Emily. I try not to leave her often,’ he said.

  It took another four visits but we eventually decided on a convenient date for everyone.

  ‘What time do you want me?’

  ‘Half past six?’

  Four hours later the front doorbell interrupted my mother’s unwelcome critique of my outfit for the evening. Behind the door there stood Daniel, wearing his lopsided smile and his corduroy jacket that I had grown quite fond of. In his right hand he held a bottle of wine which, as I glanced down towards it, he promptly lifted until it was level with my chest. He held the bottle securely at arm’s length as if there were something dangerous about it. I reciprocated his smile, and his nervousness, and took the bottle from him.

  ‘I’ve never seen you drink wine,’ he said.

  ‘No, but it’s polite that you brought it.’

  He laughed and rubbed at the back of his neck. ‘Emily’s orders.’

  I stepped aside and gestured him into the house. My mother was hovering behind me, her eyes wide and expectant. She took an enthusiastic step towards us and, in my peripheral vision, I was sure that I saw Daniel flinch.

  ‘Mum, Daniel. Daniel, this is Geraldine.’

  I knew this introduction was right. I had seen it so many times.

  My mother ushered us towards the dining room before I could say anything interesting about either of them. When we walked through the open double doors it was clear that she had gone to some effort in making the room look presentable. To her credit, it did look very well put together, although not as appealing as it had done when there had only been two place settings.

  ‘Do you know, Daniel, this is the first special occasion we’ve had for using this table since we moved here?’

  There was a satisfied smile on her face as she walked through to the kitchen. Daniel and

  I swapped understated smirks of amusement. There was something satisfying about the fact that we now shared a secret.

  ‘I’m sorry. She’s a little…’ I hesitated.

  ‘Enthusiastic?’ Daniel offered.

  We had time to share a laugh before my mother burst into the room holding a plate in each hand, with a third one precariously balanced on her left forearm. She distributed our meals before sitting down with her own, at which point an awkward silence fell over the table. The three of us exchanged glances as we fought to chew through the circles of mush that sat on our respective plates.

  ‘How are the fishcakes, kids?’

  So that’s what they were meant to be.

  ‘Certainly the best homemade fishcakes I’ve ever had, Mrs Thompson.’

  It was a physiological battle to stop myself from smirking over Daniel’s response. I thought these must be the only homemade fishcakes he had ever eaten, making them the best by default. Regardless of whether there was any truth to Daniel’s sentiment, it had been complimentary enough to lure my mother from her shell and, from that point onwards, their only moments of silence seemed to occur alternately while the other one was speaking. My mother quizzed Daniel like he was the first real live human being she had ever encountered. Although, over the course of our mediocre starter, I began to think he might have taken my mother too seriously when she had demanded that he tell her everything about himself. Throughout our main course of roast pork with an assortment of vegetables I continued to learn various things about both of them that I had been ignorant of before. I’d had no idea that my mother used to be a valued assistant at Clive and Jenkins’ Accountancy Ltd nor did I know that Daniel was severely allergic to penicillin, something that he discovered right in the middle of a family holiday, much to his mother’s annoyance.

  Should I have known
? Were these normal things to ask?

  It wasn’t until Daniel was mopping up the remnants of pork-tinged gravy with a round of bread that I became relevant to the evening at all.

  ‘I’ve really taken you up to when I moved in with Emily now, and when I met Gillian,’ said Daniel, punctuating his life story with a curt laugh and a mouthful of food.

  When I looked up from my dinner plate, they were both looking back at me.

  ‘That’s quite a potted history of Daniel you’ve been given there, Mum.’

  ‘It really is.’ She paused to laugh although I couldn’t see why, and Daniel reciprocated the effort. I managed a smile.

  ‘Sorry, I might have missed something here, but who is Emily?’ my mother probed

  further.

  ‘Oh, she’s my aunt. I moved here to care for her. It was a big decision, but you do these things for family, don’t you?’

  My mother looked inexplicably outraged.

  ‘I told you about Daniel’s aunt, Mum.’ Because why wouldn’t I have told her?

  ‘I’m sure you didn’t, Gillian.’ She looked back to Daniel. ‘You said you care for her?’

  ‘I do. The only other option was a hospice and it just didn’t seem right, so, here I am. Nurse Daniel.’

  Daniel smiled. I batted the expression back to him in return but my mother’s effort at joining in with this display was unconvincing. I was all too aware that I had missed something crucial and whatever it was had made for a sour turning point in the evening.

  ‘Gillian, take Daniel’s plate for him and help me in the kitchen.’

  She disappeared through the door as she finished speaking. I collected my plate, and Daniel’s, and followed her. Behind the kitchen door I found her with her back towards me, her hands hanging on the kitchen work surface, as if attempting to steady herself. Without turning to face me she said: ‘Why didn’t you tell about his aunt?’

  ‘I find it hard to believe that I didn’t, Mum.’

  She turned to face me then, leaning back against the work surface. ‘Is she going to die, Gillian?’

  ‘I’m not sure that’s an acceptable question to ask.’

  ‘Well I’m asking it. Is she?’

  At some point in the last minute or so my mother’s face had reddened. It looked like she was close to tears and, while I could empathise with Daniel’s situation, I couldn’t help but think my mother might be taking her reaction too far.

  ‘Yes, she is.’

  She closed her eyes. Her right hand came up to her head and she rubbed at her temples. ‘Is this why you’re involved with this boy?’

  ‘I’m sorry?’

  ‘Gillian, you have nothing, and I mean nothing, in common with him. He is kind, he is the first boy you have brought home, and, well – what am I meant to think?’

  I wasn’t sure what she was meant to think, but I was sure it shouldn’t be what she was apparently thinking.

  ‘We were having a nice normal evening until now, Mum. But now Daniel is sat out there’ – I paused to gesture beyond the kitchen in case my mother had forgotten the close proximity of our guest; it was a genuine concern to me what Daniel might have heard, or might hear in the minutes to follow – ‘wondering, much like I am, what on earth is going on. I care about him, deeply, I’ll have you know.’

  The words emerged with a power and conviction that was surprising even to me and I realised then how authentic the sentiment behind them must have actually been. And then something snapped. Some censorship, or sense of parental respect, something that would have ordinarily have held me in my place suddenly sprang open, unleashing: ‘How dare you, Mum? I keep a dying woman company and you twist it into this? What the fuck is wrong with you?’

  I rushed out of the kitchen, uninterested in any response she might offer. In the next room Daniel was staring at the dining table with disproportionate concentration. He flashed a sad smile when he saw me in the doorway. When my mother joined us seconds later, Daniel thanked her for a pleasant evening but said he really must be getting home.

  ‘I didn’t realise the time,’ he added, with an awkward laugh.

  Like respectable and fully functioning adults, we all said our overtly polite thank yous and goodbyes. When the front door closed I stormed up to my bedroom and stayed there for the remainder of the evening. My mother tried, once, for verbal contact through my closed bedroom door – ‘We have to talk, Gillian’ – but I had nothing I felt I could say.

  Chapter 18

  Following the argument with my mother I spent more and more time at Daniel’s house – or at least, that was the impression my mother was under. She and I exchanged clumsy niceties before I slipped out of the house for a therapy appointment that I hadn’t booked, or I left to spend an afternoon with Emily – the latter more often than not was actually true. Emily and I became close friends – dare I use the term – but she never mentioned whatever it was that she’d asked Daniel to do for her (I had my ideas on the matter, all the same). She mentioned a host of other things. We discussed the dancing career – less a career, more something she did to irk her then husband – the child, the near-child that never quite came to fruition, and the divorces. ‘There are always divorces, Gillie,’ she said, and I nodded like I agreed with her. We even discussed Daniel’s parents once or twice. ‘It’s hard to believe he came from the same stock as them; it’s hard to believe that I did,’ she’d said, and from what I now knew of their dispassion towards human suffering and their lack of family loyalty, I was inclined to agree.

  Late one evening, when Emily had finally settled, Daniel and I were hidden away in the kitchen. We were sitting across the table from each other, hands clasped and mouths silent. I approached the one subject Emily had avoided.

  ‘Did you find a resolution to whatever it was Emily asked you about?’

  ‘What she’d asked me about?’

  ‘She asked you to do something, didn’t she?’

  Daniel swallowed hard as he registered what I was referring to. ‘Ah, yeah, I’m not sure that’s something we’ll come to an agreement on, GT.’ His fingers switched position around mine and Daniel watched them with unnecessary intensity, grateful, I thought, for something to focus on. ‘People disagree on things all the time, don’t they?’

  On another Tuesday morning, some weeks into our scheduled visits, I turned up earlier than Daniel had been expecting me, ahead of him going out for general supplies. In the hallway I eyed my watch – 9:15am – and thought how tardy it was of him to still be bed-shaped when he actually had things to be doing.

  ‘What time do you have to go out?’ I asked.

  ‘Pfft, no time, really. I have to shower first. I’m not sure the world is quite ready for this.’ He gestured from his dishevelled hair all the way down to the small turtle heads that made up the pattern on his pyjama bottoms. I wondered then what it would be like to sleep next to Daniel, whether I’d sleep at all given the brightness of his attire. He noticed my stare. ‘It’s not that bad, is it?’

  I shook my head. He leaned forward and planted a damp kiss on my forehead, and this time I felt no urge at all to pull away.

  ‘You might want to give Emily a bit of time to come round today. We had a rough night.’

  The tardiness made sense now.

  I hid myself away in the kitchen and nursed a cup of tea while Daniel showered. The house was so quiet. As if by accident then, I wondered whether Paul’s house would be this quiet in the morning, or whether the place would host an ongoing series of clicks as paws paced over wooden flooring. I had seen Paul’s hallway only once and from my somewhat shoddy viewpoint at the time it had been hard to gather whether it was carpet, or a carpet rug, sitting at the entrance ahead of a wooden floor. But I had mostly decided on laminate flooring; Paul somehow seemed the type.

  Thirty minutes later Daniel returned to the room looking much more presentable. The lemon scent of his shower gel was so pungent that I imagined the whole room felt revitalised just from him having w
alked into it.

  ‘Well, how do I look?’

  His hair was flamboyant, his trousers properly ironed, and the front of his T-shirt was completely devoid of anything resembling a cartoon character. I wondered what the special occasion was.

  ‘Where are you going, looking so neat?’

  It was uncharacteristic of me to pry but there was something different – more attractive, even – about Daniel that morning, and an unfamiliar voice in the back of my head was frantically trying to work out why. General supplies, he’d said. What did that even mean?

  ‘Neat?’ he questioned.

  It was the wrong word but I had to stick with it.

  ‘Yes, neat.’

  ‘Is neat a good thing?’

  ‘Usually. I suppose it depends on where you’re going, really. But I don’t suppose anyone would ever want to be messy.’

  Daniel let out something between a laugh and a ‘Hmm’ before planting a kiss on my cheek. These little displays had become more commonplace over recent weeks and I was always surprised – and proud, I’ll admit – when I succumbed to them this easily.

  ‘You’re a peculiar little jelly bean, GT, you really are.’

  These little names were commonplace too, although I was less comfortable with them.

  ‘So what should I do with Emily, just go in and sit with her?’

  Daniel fidgeted, rubbed at the back of his neck, averted his eyes. I couldn’t make the movements fit together meaningfully.

  ‘I’d leave her, if I were you,’ he said, staring out of the kitchen window. ‘Yep, definitely best to leave her.’ With a quick shake of his head, as if shooing away his thoughts, he was back in the room with me. I wondered how bad Emily’s bad night had been, and how hard Daniel must be trying to process it. ‘I promise that I’ll be back soon.’

  Daniel excused himself before I had ample time to voice my touching display of genuine concern. I found him in the hallway tugging on a coat.