Never, if you don’t want me to, thought Fran, surprised at how drawn to this woman she was. Her mind was in turmoil. Strange emotions and sensations warmed her body when she was close to Martine. It was strange, scary, new and exhilarating at the same time. All she knew was that Martine transfixed her; brought out in her feelings she didn’t know she had. She felt she could share anything with this woman and not be judged.
‘Do you feel it too?’ Martine whispered.
Fran needed no explanation. ‘Yes.’
Suddenly her life in Birmingham flashed like an explosion before her eyes. Her mother, her job, her flat. The safety. She had to get back. This was not her sitting in the middle of London like a bohemian with no responsibilities and alien sensations. She became choked, suffocated. Something was under threat and she didn’t know what. She needed to get back to the neat, tidy existence at home that held no surprises.
Blindly she stumbled to her feet. ‘I have to go,’ she blurted out and ran away from the woman who, too shocked to move, sat rooted to the spot.
Fran ran as fast as she could to the road and jumped into a taxi. That was when she heard, above the bustle, the solitary sound of her name being called from the distance.
7
Kit
The smell invaded Kit’s nostrils as soon as Carol opened the door. A childhood smell of overcooked cabbage mixed with damp, it sickened her. The two women did not touch and Carol guided her inside, speaking quietly even though Bill was ensconced permanently upstairs and wouldn’t have heard them.
‘I’ll go and tell him you’re here,’ said Carol. ‘Then we’ll have a cup of tea and a chat.’ She was gone before Kit could remind her that they were not friends, they were not neighbours and she had no desire to make small talk with a woman she barely knew.
Nothing had changed in the dark, poky kitchen that sat between the living room and the bathroom. The only window looked out on to a six-foot fence separating them from next door, ensuring little light managed to creep into the kitchen. The yellow vinyl-topped table was no different except for a few extra scratches. Nothing had changed. Kit half expected her mother to come through the door at any moment with carrier bags from the supermarket. The sights she saw held no fond memories for her.
‘We should talk,’ said Carol as she entered the kitchen.
‘About what, Carol, the weather?’
‘About what happened.’
‘I have nothing to say to you. You left home, not the planet.’
Kit looked into her eyes. The weakness reflected there was obvious. ‘You had to know, you were much older than me. You had to have some idea what you were leaving me to. I can forgive everything else but you were my sister and you did nothing. There you go, we just talked.’
Carol moved towards her. ‘Kit—’
‘Don’t touch me.’ Her eyes flashed.
Carol sighed and leant against the sink. ‘You scared us, Kit. Even Mother and especially Dad, they didn’t know how to act around you. We were all the same. You see, she could see our lives before we could, and she was right. But not you. You were different. Self-sufficient and demanding at the same time.’
Kit fought hard not to be interested in Carol’s words. She’d never talked about her childhood with anyone – she had no idea what she’d been like.
Carol smiled sadly. ‘We wanted sweets, money, new clothes… all the things that Mother couldn’t give us but understood. You weren’t interested. You had a lively mind and an imagination. You had a brain and a voice and you used them. Don’t you see, Kit? Your individuality terrified and threatened everyone around you.’
But Kit didn’t want to hear any more. ‘Well, you must be so pleased to see how my life has turned out. Boy, did I exceed everyone’s expectations!’
Carol shook her head and sighed deeply.
‘You’ll be shocked when you see him,’ she warned as she filled the kettle, now burnt black. She moved around the kitchen with the natural authority of the elder sister.
Kit didn’t answer. She had not slept for two nights and now that she was here she just wanted to get it over with and be on her way as quickly as possible. She looked closely at her sister. Eternal martyrdom formed her features as it had their mother’s. She smiled, but never really smiled, Kit noticed.
She took the chipped cup offered to her and found it laughable that she sat so civilised drinking tea with the sister who hadn’t given a toss about her, while the centre of her hatred lay upstairs.
There were no sounds from upstairs yet she sensed him and it frightened her.
‘How long?’ she asked.
Carol knew what she meant. ‘Not long, Kit. He’s been ill for years but his own laziness stopped him from going to the doctor and when he did it was too late to operate. It’s in his stomach.’ She glanced up at the ceiling. ‘It won’t be long now. Sometimes he doesn’t even know what he’s saying.’
‘How can you stand to be near him?’
Carol weighed her answer. ‘I suppose I convince myself that it’s what Mother would have wanted. I do it for her, not him.’
Talking about him only made Kit feel worse. She slammed down the teacup. ‘I’m ready.’
She walked up the darkened stairway and each step brought the bile higher in her throat. The creaking of the ninth stair caused her to stumble. It had been the warning of his proximity on that night long ago. The sound transported her back into the bed and the body of a fifteen-year-old frightened schoolgirl.
Kit sank on to the stair and pushed her back against the wall. She was so close but she couldn’t do it. She could enter that room with the intention of wreaking vengeance but not offering forgiveness. How might my life have been different? she wondered, staring at the carpet that lay full of dust. Would I have let anyone use my body if he hadn’t used it first? Could I have fought harder to stop him? The questions ran around her head urgently, seeking answers.
You bastard, she seethed inwardly. Even now you have some control over my life because you’re forcing me to confront this now, before I’m ready to accept the full repercussions of that night. She couldn’t do it. Then she thought of her life back in Birmingham and knew she couldn’t return to it unless she did. She swallowed hard and entered the room wondering if the sour, stale odour of decay was real or in her mind only.
The curtains were drawn and her first thought was thank God, there’s been a mistake, it’s not him! In the darkness it looked as though the bed was empty and the blankets were ruffled. The lump atop it didn’t look big enough to be a person. Then she saw his eyes. Her mind reeled and her legs went weak beneath her; those eyes bore into her soul.
Carol felt her weakness and supported her around the middle. ‘It’s okay, he can’t hurt you any more. This is for you.’
Kit swallowed deeply suddenly inexplicably thankful for the presence of the sister she had never known. She swallowed her fear but it went no lower than her throat. Then she looked at him again. The obese stomach was gone; the rolls of fat that had hung below his chin were no longer there, leaving loose sallow skin in their place. Thick black hair had been reduced to two tufts behind the ears, which were now completely white. Skin hung on his bones like a badly fitting suit. His colour was ashen except for large black circles under his eyes. His chest rose and fell with the effort of laboured breathing. And still he stared at her.
The fear in her body began to drain away. She stood erect and inched away from Carol’s grip. Slowly she moved towards the bed and stood level with his knees. His gaze never left her face.
‘Kit,’ he rasped. It wasn’t a voice she knew. She was no longer terrified of the shrunken, sorrowful figure in the bed. She hated him and always would but the fear was slowly seeping away. It was a young girl’s fear that she’d held since she was fifteen. Now she could let it go. She didn’t feel pity for him either; she could not bring herself to be sorry that he was dying. He had killed many parts of her in the room across the hall.
The fragile, age-sp
otted hand moved slowly down the bed towards her. She ignored it. There was nothing else to do; she had nothing for him.
‘Forgive… me?’
Unable to grant his request she shook her head. She stared straight into the eyes that were unchanged and had never left her mind. ‘I wish I could for my own sake, not yours.’
Carol moved forward to stand by her side. Kit motioned for her to leave them for a few moments. She was safe – this thing in the bed could no longer harm her. And so she waited until the door closed and she heard Carol’s soft footsteps going down the stairs.
She took a deep breath, her hands gripped tightly together. ‘I can’t forgive you, Bill, because that would indicate some form of understanding on my part that I simply don’t feel. What you did to me I’ll never forgive but seeing you suffer will give me the strength to move on. I can’t give you absolution because you’ll never know how much it affected my life. You stopped me from being the person I should have been.’
‘I’ve… been… lon—’
‘I don’t care, Bill. Don’t you understand? This is not about you. Maybe if I were a better person it could be, but it’s not.’ Anger bit at her stomach. She had done what she had come to do. She had come to judge the power he still held over her life and to put him firmly in her past. ‘I’m not Mother Teresa, for God’s sake! I don’t care about the way you feel. I’m here to make sure that the guilt of what you did follows you wherever your excuse for a spirit wanders. I hope you rot in hell for what you did to me!’
Now she couldn’t bear being in the room with him any longer. She wanted to get away from him and everything that reminded her of her childhood; she wanted to move on.
She walked briskly out of the room, eager to be away from him. The more he spoke the more he became Bill. She couldn’t stand that. It was easier to deal with a silent stranger that lay unmoving in the bed.
She walked into the kitchen to find Carol sitting with her jacket on. ‘I thought you might like to get out of the house for a while.’
Kit nodded. They walked to the park around the corner, which was no more than two swings set on a patch of tarmac. Like the rows of remaining terraced houses it too had been abandoned by the major regeneration project. They each took a swing.
‘I couldn’t do it, you know, forgive him.’
‘It’s your peace to make and you only have yourself to live with.’
‘I couldn’t lie, not even for the sake of a dying man. It’s not even so much about the act any more,’ Kit said, trying to rationalise the thoughts weaving around her mind. ‘It’s more about the effect of the act. Do you know what I mean?’
Carol looked away but not before Kit saw the pained expression in her eyes. ‘We were all to blame for that. I could have helped, I should have been a better sister. If I’d stayed in touch you would have been able to come to me. If—’
‘Leave it, Carol. If we both added up the shoulds, coulds and ifs, there wouldn’t be a lot left for either of us.’
‘We both know I failed you so let’s leave it at that.’
Kit felt her anger towards Carol dissolving. Her sister was no more than their mother had moulded her to be. She had been just as desperate to escape the loveless house and once she found the chance she’d seized it with both hands and simply never looked back.
‘What are you smiling at?’ Carol asked, puzzled.
‘I’m just realising how easy it is to blame everyone for the things that go wrong. At some stage I’m going to have to face that.’
‘What now, Kit?’
Kit pushed against the tarmac and began to swing to and fro, enjoying the rocking sensation. She didn’t know; she only knew that something inside was happening. She wanted something but she wasn’t sure what. A question occurred to her. ‘Did you ever hear from Dad?’
‘No, but Mum did.’
Kit was surprised. ‘I never knew.’
‘None of us did. I found three letters from him after you’d left and I sorted through her things.’
‘What did they say?’
‘Only that he was sorry for deserting her and that he was never coming back.’
‘And it took him three letters to say that?’
‘No, in the last letter…’ Carol paused and looked into Kit’s eyes ‘…he said he’d been to the school… to see you.’
Kit’s feet met with the ground. ‘To see me… but why?’
‘You still don’t get it, do you? You were different. If we wanted to go left to the cinema, you wanted to go right because you hadn’t been that way before. You intimidated us all because nothing ever fazed you. The rest of us needed each other, Kit, but not you. You didn’t need anything.’
Kit nodded, recalling the hours alone.
‘It could have been better. We could have tried to know you but it was easier to leave you to yourself. That’s what you do with something you don’t understand, you leave it alone.’ Nervously she stared hard at her hands.
‘It’s in the past, Carol, we can’t change it, no matter how much we’d like to.’
Her sister nodded. ‘I don’t know about you but I could do with a drink of something. Shall we…’
‘I can’t,’ Kit said quietly. She took a deep breath. ‘I’m an alcoholic, Carol. Recovering, I think, but I can’t ever drink again.’
She realised it was the first time she’d ever said the words aloud. In fact it was the first time she’d allowed it to surface in her mind so clearly. Even now it would be so easy to take Carol up on her offer. She knew it was something that would be with her forever.
‘Oh my God, what did we do to you, Kit? Why didn’t I have the courage to get to know you?’
The words caught in her throat and Kit saw that it took an effort not to cry. Without realising what she was doing she leaned across and touched her sister’s arm.
‘Get to know me now.’
They returned to the house and sat up all night talking about the past. Carol gave her a picture of herself as a child. She tried to merge the two mothers, hers and Carol’s, but it just wouldn’t happen. For some reason it didn’t matter any more.
At seven o’clock Kit was woken in the armchair where she’d fallen asleep to be told by Carol that Bill had passed away. Neither of them cried. Kit felt more sorrow for what had been lost between herself and Carol than Bill’s death. They could have been sisters. It would have been nice to have a sister, Kit thought. She didn’t try to force any sadness for Bill – that was too hypocritical.
By nine o’clock Kit was on the train back to Birmingham, to Mark.
The familiarity of the train station surprised her. She’d just left a place that she’d lived in for fifteen years. Each step nearer to the hostel confirmed to her that she was returning home. Home, a mending place where she’d lived for a couple of months.
She went through the ritual with the locks and entered to hear the radio playing softly in the kitchen. An instant peace stole over her as she observed Mark before he turned. She was unprepared for the lurch in her stomach that felt like her whole insides had just rearranged themselves.
‘I’ve been waiting for you. How did it go?’
Kit shook her head, confused at her own feelings. He didn’t look the same to her any more. He didn’t look like safe Mark, caring Mark. He looked like a man she had missed more than she wanted to admit.
‘I don’t want to talk about it right now,’ she said abruptly as she tried to control her feelings. She could feel the colour that had suffused her cheeks and the instant warmth that it brought.
‘I think it’s time I moved out,’ she stated, unsure where the words had come from but the instant they were out of her mouth, she knew it was the right thing to do. She needed some distance from Mark. Her feelings were painted red with hazard lines, screaming danger. As the train had lurched towards Birmingham she had felt Mark getting closer, waiting for her. But worse, she had enjoyed the sensation that had rolled around her stomach, welcomed it. And that was the dangero
us part. She had lived her life so far without coming to rely on anyone and that wasn’t about to change now. She would not give anyone else the power over her life again.
‘A bit sudden, isn’t it?’ she heard above the clatter as the kettle fell into the sink.
‘I’m ready.’
She watched him nod slowly, without turning. ‘I think you’re right.’
Kit wasn’t sure what she’d been expecting. Every nerve ending in her body told her that being near to Mark was dangerous. She knew that she had to put some distance between them.
Kit pushed open the doors to the employment agency. She’d lost count of the times she’d looked at the boards and found nothing but today she was determined. She took a number from the deli-like queuing system and sat in an easy chair. Two men next to her discussed their families and failed interviews like old friends. Looking around the room, Kit realised it was much like a gentleman’s club for the unemployed.
‘Ninety-two!’ a monotone computerised voice boomed. It was her turn. She walked towards a woman sitting at a square desk with a selection of forms and a computer in front of her.
‘Two sausage rolls and a quarter of boiled ham,’ Kit joked as she sat down. The woman looked at her blankly as she folded her hands together in a ‘how can I help you?’ stance. Kit realised this was no place for humour. ‘I’m looking for a job.’
A bored expression modelled her features. The new Kit tried not to be irritated.
‘And what can you do?’ the woman asked in a voice that said, Astound me.
Kit would quite happily have reeled off her previous job description but feared that this caricature of a public servant might actually begin to grind the two protruding front teeth that shaped her top lip.
‘Not much. I’m coming on to the job scene a little later than most people.’
‘Hmm, any qualifications?’
‘No,’ replied Kit, feeling guilty for breathing. The woman shook her head and disinterestedly pushed away the keyboard.
The Forgotten Woman: A gripping, emotional rollercoaster read you’ll devour in one sitting Page 12