She opened the first. ‘I need you, come back, come back to me.’ Nothing else, no signature, no name, address, no hint of who the author was.
The second. ‘I miss you, I’m sorry, please come back.’
The third. ‘I’m lost without you, I don’t know what to do.’
And so on, and so on, desperate and pitiful, repetitive, needy, full of regret.
James’s mother had pushed him away, he told Nuala that final time, done things he could never forget, never forgive, had lied to him again and again.
He’d told Nuala his mother was poisonous, a viper, the opposite of Nuala in every way, that she would lie to Nuala, turn her against James, tell her things about him that simply weren’t true.
But these letters were postmarked from that village, the place he said he would never go back to. Had he written to his mother, like he’d promised in the days after their wedding, told her he was married, happy, fulfilled?
Had she responded in kind, writing and letting him know she still loved him, wanted him to forgive her, forget the past and move on? He hadn’t given her their new address, obviously wanted to keep his mother away. But he had kept the letters, so did he still feel something for her?
The woman who wrote these wasn’t a viper, wasn’t malicious but lonely, missed James as much as Nuala did now.
People change. Places change. Seven years is a long time, after all.
These letters told her someone wanted him back.
It must be his mother, she told herself again. He never mentioned anyone, no other woman, of significance.
It must be his mother.
It must be.
Emma
Saturday, 18th November, 2017
Emma sat at the kitchen table, staring at the dust motes that hung in the air, each one representing a fragment of the messed-up, messy story Maggie must be telling Nuala right now. Emma’s story. She should be angry. But all she felt was the heaviness in her limbs, an emptiness in her chest.
What did that matter any more, that Maggie was talking to a stranger about Emma? What did any of it matter, now James was never coming back?
Maggie had stuck a note on one of the yellowing cupboard doors before she’d left with Nuala.
Keep the pub closed tonight. Back later, with news.
Emma knew, though.
James was dead.
He’d run off, left her, married that woman.
Nuala didn’t seem his type somehow. Too thin, hair too dull and greasy, no backbone, no spirit.
‘You’re a firecracker, Em. A firecracker wrapped up in this little girl costume, all innocent.’
‘Which would you rather? The firecracker or the innocent?’
‘What do you think?’ And a kiss, soft at first then harder, his tongue working its way through her closed lips and teeth.
Even now, seven years on, she could practically feel the points of his hips pressing her flesh, the wheat grazing her ankles, tickling her wrists, the sound of his sigh in her ear. She would dream of him tonight and oh, dear God, the things she would do to him in that dream. Her back arched, the top of her spine pressing into the wood of the chair, lost in imagination. She’d show him what a real firecracker she was, she would show him what she could really do, now she was older and so, so much wiser.
Her eyes sprang open. She remembered.
He was never coming back.
She would never see him again, never do those things she imagined.
She brushed herself off and stood, taking a cup of tepid tea to the sink, leaving it there with the detritus of her unfinished dinner. Slovenly was the word that came to her mind, the word Elaine would have once used, the thought of her stepmother a stab to the chest. Normally she wouldn’t leave a mess, normally she would scrub and clean and polish and sweep and dust and tidy and scrub some more until her nose bled from bleach fumes.
But how could she do that now, when James was dead?
She picked up her phone, opened the contacts, stared at Toby’s name.
She could invite him round, tell him the bar was closed and did he fancy a lock-in? A sleepover?
She could wipe away the memory of James with the body of another man. Pretend, for one night, that James never existed. That she was here, in this shitty pub with this shitty job, crappy life because she wanted to be, not because James and his mother ruined everything.
Toby wouldn’t be interested anyway, regardless of what he’d said the other night. Why would he be interested in her? He hadn’t even wanted to tell his friends they’d been together, had wanted to keep Emma a secret. Just like James.
Memories of Elaine swarmed in her head. The last day she saw her stepmother had been the last day, too, that she had seen James. When she thought of Elaine she could still remember her touch, the feel of her thin arms holding her close, telling her everything was going to be all right after all those terrible nights at home, when Emma’s father had drunk too much or had decided the way Elaine looked at him hadn’t been quite right.
‘You deserve better,’ Elaine would say to her now if she could see Emma’s thumb hovering over Toby’s name. ‘Don’t sell yourself short.’
But what else was she meant to do?
Forget it all, move on, suck it up and keep moving forward?
That’s what Elaine would have said.
Keep moving forward.
She pushed her phone away.
She would leave.
No one could stop her, not now. She had nothing, no one, to wait for.
She had some money, a few thousand pounds from the savings account set up by Elaine years ago, the account Maggie had been watching for her these recent years. She would tell Maggie to give her the details, withdraw the money, go to university or move away, get a job somewhere else.
Maggie would understand.
Emma got up, head light.
She would clean downstairs, sort the fire, stock the bar. She would butter Maggie up, relax her, then tell her it was time to move on.
Maggie couldn’t begrudge her that chance, could she?
If Emma showed Maggie how determined she was, that she needed to do this, needed to feel her life wasn’t over, that she wasn’t worthless and pathetic, then how could Maggie refuse?
She couldn’t.
She wouldn’t.
Emma wiped down the table, brushed the floor, swept the hearth and prepared a fresh fire. She checked the fridge; there was enough food for a nice dinner. Bacon and cabbage fried in butter, mash with the skins on, onion gravy with a dash of Guinness, just how Maggie liked it.
Emma held on to the door of the fridge, the cold air hitting her thighs, and pressed the heel of her hand to her mouth. She was smiling. She could feel her cheeks stretching, her head light with this feeling she hadn’t felt in so long.
James was dead, he was dead, but she didn’t need him anyway.
It was going to be OK.
She would move on.
Leave him behind her, take her life into her own hands at last.
She closed the fridge, went to the cellar to check the barrels.
She had missed this year’s enrollment but maybe she could start university in September next year, take her time choosing the right course, the right place.
She took the stairs in twos, giddy by the time she reached the bottom, jumping off the last step.
She checked the gas levels on the canisters by the wall. All fine; Maggie had changed them only last night.
She could try a university in the North, far away, maybe even Edinburgh if she fancied it, why not? Maggie had persuaded her against it at eighteen, told her to wait, stay on at the pub, help build the business. She should never have listened, but in her naivety, after all Maggie had done for her, she had felt duty-bound to obey.
She checked the bitter, ale, dry cider. All were fine. Only the sweeter cider was looking quite low.
She would get the barrel ready, it’d make changing it easier for Maggie when the time came.
She rolled the sweet cider barrel towards her, shifting its weight with a heave and a groan and wondering how Maggie still did this at her age, nearly sixty-five.
The slap of something falling, the rustle of paper on the ground. Emma looked behind the barrel, lifted a plastic sleeve of letters from the floor, letters from the bank.
The room grew darker by a degree, the damp, whitewashed bricks closing in.
One hand on the wall, the other holding the letters, she let herself fall onto the bottom step, the step she had jumped from, jubilant, hopeful, only moments before.
Letters telling Maggie the accounts were all empty.
The door at the top of the cellar stairs was still open, a draught working its way down, stroking Emma’s neck with the cold, bringing the smells from the kitchen down with it.
Overdrawn.
The smells worked their way round Emma. She could taste the old fat from the frying pan, the dry, stale teabags by the sink.
Late payments.
Spoiled milk and yeasty, rotten cider.
Bankruptcy.
She gagged but had nothing left to bring up, the food from earlier splashed on the edges of Nuala’s sink, another round heaved up in the toilet. Her stomach was empty, her gags were painful, dry.
The money was gone. All of Emma’s money was gone.
She looked up from the letters, hands shaking.. She was cold, her head light and empty.
She had nothing.
No one.
Standing, hand on the wall for support, she felt inside her jeans pocket for her phone. She would look online, see what her options were. But her phone was upstairs, on the table in the kitchen. All she found in her pocket were apple seeds. Who was she kidding? She didn’t have any options at all.
Nuala
Saturday, 18th November, 2017
The car filled with Nuala’s cries, her head thrown back and mouth wide open, the sound like a banshee’s wail. The car rocked as she pummelled the steering wheel. Her fingers dug into her palms, wanting to cut, wanting to see the black flow of blood but her nails were gone, gnawed to the quick.
She raised her hands to her mouth and bit down, ripping open the top layer of skin until blood began to flow, dripping into her mouth and clotting beneath her tongue. All the while the images from Maggie’s story echoed, the memory of Maggie’s voice brimming over with blame, disapproval, disgust for the man Nuala loved.
She continued to bite, but the physical pain did nothing to quash that other pain, that darker pain, impossible to reach with fingernails or teeth.
She couldn’t go on.
Below her, she could see the lights from the village houses, the winding streets of the combe. She had come here, to this place she had promised never to go, to find solace, comfort, the embrace of a mother in as much pain as Nuala. She had read the letters, up there in her attic at home, and saw hope, saw a lifeline, someone she could go to at last.
What a fool she had been.
She thought of her baby, her little boy, buried in the garden at home. Thought of James’ arms around her, kissing her, telling her he was sorry for calling her names, so sorry, didn’t she know he loved her, only her?
Only her.
She thought of all the times she had forgiven him. She thought of all the times she had bitten her tongue until she had lost the ability to speak altogether.
Was it the letters that had caused his foul tempers? Was it the reminder of what he had left behind, run away from, that made him lash out?
If Emma had never sent them, would James have been different, would he have remained the kind, caring man she’d first met?
Those first few months. Waking up early and bringing back coffee and fresh pastries from the Starbucks down the road. Cooking her dinner. Laughing with her when she burnt the cake she’d baked for his twentieth birthday. Looking at it now, she was sure that the number of times they laughed together, shared a smile or a joke in those first few months, outnumbered all of their moments of post-nuptial camaraderie.
Maybe that was when the first letter arrived, Nuala thought, remembering how James would twist the wedding ring around her finger, calling her ‘Mine’, in a soft, low voice. ‘You’ll always be mine.’ And she had said, ‘Yes, yes of course I’ll always be yours.’ And he had laughed, said ‘I know,’ and she realised he hadn’t been looking for reassurance. He was stating a fact.
James was her husband.
Hers.
She hadn’t spent years perfecting her role as his wife, working and working and working at being the woman he had wanted her to be, for someone else to lay claim to his memory, to plant themselves in his biography when he had built his life around Nuala alone. She wasn’t going to let Emma mourn him as the one that got away, or Maggie taint him with her disapproval.
‘Besides,’ Nuala said, ‘you shouldn’t speak ill of the dead.’ And laughed when she realised she’d spoken aloud.
She wound her car through the village’s dark streets, the moon hidden.
She passed the school and its sad little park. She passed side-roads that led to farms and barns.
Which one did Emma claim to have fucked James in?
She stopped the car in the middle of the road, not bothering to pull over.
What an idiot she had been.
Why did she assume Lois had written those letters, when James had warned her about his mother, told her what she was like?
Why had she come here, driven all this way, for something she would never find?
Comfort.
Understanding.
Love.
It had all gone, died with James, with their son.
And not one of them knew about it. James never told them about her, they didn’t know who she was, what she’d put up with to build up the family she had wanted for so long.
They didn’t understand what she had been driven to, how desperate she had become.
She had to make them see.
She had to make Emma understand.
Maybe then Nuala would find some peace.
She looked at the clock on her dashboard; she still had fifty minutes. More, if Maggie was a slow walker which, due to her size and girth, she suspected she was.
She drove on.
Past the shop, past more houses, the pub up ahead and in sight.
As she reached the pub she noticed the building beside it, another house set back from the road.
A fragment of Maggie’s story came back to her. Maggie had said that Lois and James lived next door to the pub, that Lois was Maggie’s neighbour.
Then why did Lois live on the opposite side of the village now? What had made her move?
Nuala parked the car and got out, walked over to the building next door to the pub.
The house itself was set back, a forgotten garden at the front, a tumbled down wall surrounding it, scorch marks licking the edge like tongues. The burnt out remains of Lois’s former home.
The roof was missing, the door too. The windows, staring out from the blackened stonework, were glassless, frameless holes.
From the state of the building, the destruction, Nuala knew that nothing would have survived the fire. Furniture, gone. Books, curtains, photographs.
Nuala knew how it would look inside; like the monochrome setting of a silent film. Wallpaper, grey and delicate, curling away from the walls. Melted, distorted furniture, the white ash of unidentifiable objects scattered around, after the fire moved through like a hurricane.
She had seen it all in her parents’ house in Oxfordshire. Her father, asleep on the sofa, holding one of the lit cigarettes her GP mother always nagged him about, had burned their house to ruin. Her mother upstairs, asleep in bed with the door open, had choked to death o
n the fumes. Nuala slept in the far end of the house, the big yellow bedroom with the strong, closed door that the firemen said had saved her life.
She could smell the heady scent of wood smoke and melted plastic, even the smell of burned hair where the fire had caught brushes, dog beds. The dogs.
At the time, they’d told her that it was her imagination, there was no way you could isolate the different smells from a pile of cinders. But she could. She could smell the hair, the plastic, the burned flesh.
The clouds shifted with the wind and the moon broke through, brightening the ivy in the house’s doorway and windows.
She thought she would die, too, in those first few months afterwards. Thought she would die from loneliness, pain, guilt, from the sympathy of overbearing neighbours, from the stifling hugs of her friends’ mothers who would hold her and tell her it is all right to cry, dear girl, cry away.
She didn’t die, not then.
Someone had saved her. James.
She thought of him walking barefoot on the grass in front of this house, with the sun behind him. She thought of him as a child playing in the street, imagined the sound of Lois calling him in for a dinner of mackerel and toast.
When she turned to the burned-out house there he was, smiling in the doorway, waving and beckoning her inside.
But he wasn’t waving at Nuala.
Another phantom swept by, a phantom with soft, dimpled arms, blonde hair flowing over her shoulders, laughing as she ran to him and let him hold her waist and kiss her neck, his lips caressing the space above her collar bone.
She watched as Emma’s hands disappeared beneath his T-shirt, tugged at the fly on his jeans. It was Emma, all Emma, biting his neck and guiding his fingers inside her knickers, filling his mouth with her tongue.
Here, James did not belong to her, he would never be remembered as her husband. It was a love story they didn’t have time for.
He would only be remembered, here, as Emma’s lover.
The phantoms receded, hidden by the shadows so only their naked limbs could be seen, James’s feet moving with the rhythm of his body, Emma’s legs open either side of his, her knees raised, toes curling against his calves.
Never Go There Page 14