Truth Hurts

by Rebecca Reid

  She shook her head. ‘No, I’m not working at the moment. I’m going to finish getting us moved in and then I might retrain …’

  ‘How long you been together?’

  There was no way that Poppy was going to watch the firework-display reaction on Kay-Lynne’s wide face that was inevitable if she told the truth. ‘Five years,’ she said. ‘We got married earlier this summer.’

  Kay-Lynne looked her up and down, pausing on her ring finger. ‘What does your husband do?’

  ‘He’s in finance.’

  ‘Banking?’

  Yes? No? Poppy paused for a moment. ‘Yes,’ she said.

  ‘Is he from round here originally?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Where’s he from?’

  Poppy cleared her throat, fumbling for something to say, anything other than ‘I don’t know’. Literally anything. ‘London,’ she said eventually, her voice high and strange.

  Kay-Lynne laughed. ‘You looked confused for a moment there! Mind you, when my mum and dad went to get registered to get married he got her birthday wrong when they asked him, and she went mental in front of the woman from the council …’

  Poppy made the right faces and noises while Kay-Lynne cleaned and talked, but inside she was burning.

  ‘Are you OK to get on if I go upstairs and do some work?’ Poppy asked, already retreating towards her bedroom.

  How was she supposed to go through the rest of her life looking like a complete fucking idiot every time someone asked her a question about her husband? How many times would she have to lie about where he came from or where he grew up or any of it? But what was the other option? Tell him that she had changed her mind? That she wanted to know everything about him, to savour every detail. And then what? Tell him what had happened with the Walkers and just hope that there was some tiny chance he loved her enough to overlook it?

  No chance.

  CHAPTER 16

  Eventually, after delivering a monologue about how Poppy had the wrong kind of hoover and too many stairs, Kay-Lynne left. Poppy said something half-hearted about having her back for five hours a week, all the time trying to think of a good excuse to never see her again, without having to lie to the agency and say she’d done a bad job. She had left the entire ground floor gleaming. But Poppy could barely look her in the eye while she handed over the cash, tipping embarrassingly generously in the hope it might distract from her awkwardness. She watched as Kay-Lynne drove away, and then closed the door, awash with relief.

  She didn’t need someone to help clean. She had cleaned people’s houses for years. She was good at it. She could take control over this sodding house. She lived here. It belonged to her. Just like Gina said, as soon as she started making changes, it would feel like hers.

  She found a stepladder in a dusty cupboard in the hall and dragged it into the little sitting room. It was the cosiest room in the house, nestled by the kitchen, warm with a wood burner. The sofa in here was the only really comfortable one they had. This was where she and Drew watched telly, or lay reading their books. So it felt like the right place to start.

  The joints of the stepladder screamed as she pulled it open, positioning it under the light. Then she carefully climbed it, testing each rung with her weight, until she could reach the lampshade. She reached up to unscrew the lightbulb, her feet awkwardly balanced on different steps. She clasped her hand around the bulb and began to screw it out of the socket. Out of nowhere, an enormous heat surged through her arm, through her body, knocking the air out of her. She wrenched her hand away, the movement sharp and instinctive. Beneath her the stepladder creaked. Panicking, she over-corrected, losing her balance and falling, taking the bulb with her. As well as the thud of her body hitting the floor, there was a delicate crunch as the lightbulb broke in her hand.

  Slowly, she sat up. The pain in her right hand was insistent. A piece of glass stuck directly into the palm and a trickle of blood was seeping down her arm. Her wrist felt stiff and heavy and her shoulder ached. She pulled herself to her feet and went to the light switch, flicking it back and forward. She had switched it off. She wasn’t stupid: she knew better than to try and remove a bulb while the light was still on. How had this happened?

  She knew first aid, of course. You weren’t allowed to look after expensive children without knowing how to fix them if they got broken. She pulled the glass out of her palm: one solid piece, luckily. The cut wasn’t as deep as it could have been, so she raised the wound above her head, a tea towel grasped between her fingers, waiting for the pain to stop. Walking back into the snug she gave the ladder a resentful kick, slamming the rubber toe of her Converse into it. For fuck’s sake. There was blood on the carpet, and she needed to bandage her hand, so she’d have to tell Drew what had happened. She hated how useless she felt next to his calm capability. Changing a lightbulb was nothing. She had nursed other people’s children through fevers, cooked four-course dinners for impossibly picky guests. She had cleaned, organized and managed an entire household. She wasn’t like this. Or at least, she didn’t used to be.

  Something about this place seemed to sap her independence. It was as if she was too small, or too weak, to be able to wrestle with it.

  Poppy’s skin prickled when she heard Drew’s key in the lock. She was sitting on the kitchen sofa, waiting for the roasted vegetables to finish in the oven.

  ‘Hello, darling,’ he said, his smile lighting up his face. ‘I was going to ask how the new cleaner did but I don’t think I need to. It looks incredible.’

  ‘Yeah, she was great. Really good.’

  ‘What happened to your hand?’ he asked, catching sight of the bandage around it.

  Mortified, she grimaced. ‘I’m a catastrophe.’

  He reached for her wrist, gently. ‘You’re sure you don’t need to go to hospital or anything? I could probably get someone down to check it out? Or you could come down to London with me tomorrow and see the doctor at work?’

  ‘Honestly. I’m fine. It’s my arse and my pride which are bruised.’

  ‘How did you do it?’

  She started telling Drew about the creaking stepladder but when she reached the part about the electric shock, she stopped. She told him she’d simply lost her balance instead.

  ‘What made you decide to change the shade?’ Drew asked.

  ‘Gina said that I should try putting my stamp on the house.’ She paused, noticing Drew’s raised eyebrows. ‘I called her this morning. I was feeling a bit out of sorts.’

  Drew looked hurt. ‘You could have called me.’

  ‘You were working.’

  ‘You can always call me, whatever I’m doing.’

  He got to his feet, took the lampshade from the kitchen table and disappeared into the little sitting room. After a couple of minutes, he called for her.

  ‘Ta-dah!’ he said, flicking the light on. ‘It looks great. And bloody hell, it’s clean in here. I’m glad you’re making changes. You’ve got great taste. I even like your experimental carpet dyeing.’ He pointed at the splatters of her blood on the cream floor.

  ‘Sorry,’ she said sulkily. ‘I didn’t mean to.’

  ‘Hey.’ Drew nudged her gently in the ribs. ‘I was joking.’

  She let him wrap his arms around her and relaxed into his chest. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I’m just embarrassed. I fucked up the first thing I tried to do here. I feel like …’ She trailed off.

  ‘What?’

  She knew if she said the words out loud, if she told Drew that she had got it into her head that the house was fighting with her, he would think she was mad. So she didn’t tell him. ‘I think we might need a new carpet,’ she said instead.

  ‘Probably needed one anyway,’ Drew replied, looking back over his shoulder to the kitchen. ‘Whatever you’re making smells great. Now, I reckon a large glass of wine might take the edge off the injury. What d’you reckon?’

  She smiled. ‘Yes, doctor.’

  After supper Poppy stood at
the sink, washing up the pan she had cooked the pasta in, her bandaged hand covered by yellow Marigolds.

  Drew came behind her, winding his arms around her waist. ‘You’re not unhappy here, are you?’ he asked. ‘At Thursday House?’

  Guilt flooded Poppy’s bloodstream. She turned the tap on, rinsing suds off the water glasses. ‘Unhappy? No, of course not. Why would I be?’

  ‘Well, you were living in London before. You’re pretty isolated at this house. I worry sometimes that—’ He stopped, taking a breath, and then went on. ‘I worry that you’ve gone from cooking and cleaning for them to cooking and cleaning for me.’

  Poppy reached out to put her hand on Drew’s. ‘It’s so, so different. This is my home. Our home.’

  She buried her head into his body, breathing his smell, just slightly sweaty from a day of London and the train, mixed with the tang of his deodorant, his aftershave and his skin.

  ‘I was thinking’, said Drew, ‘that we might have a party.’

  ‘A party?’

  ‘Well,’ he said, ‘a weekend sort of thing. Have some friends down on a Friday evening through until Sunday morning.’

  Poppy smiled. She could feel her chest warming. ‘I’d like that,’ she said. ‘A weekend. Soon, maybe?’

  Drew nodded. ‘Next month? We could get someone in to do the heavy lifting, all the washing-up and bed-making and that rubbish. And someone to cook, of course.’

  ‘I’d like to cook,’ said Poppy, playing with a loose thread on her jumper.

  Drew gave her a wide smile and Poppy thought, as she so often did when he smiled, how astonishingly perfect his teeth were. ‘You really don’t have to.’

  ‘I want to,’ she said, turning back to the sink. She pulled the plug and watched the hot soapy water flood away. ‘Who are we going to invite? Let me grab a pen – we should work out who we’re having. And where they’ll sleep. And what I’m going to make.’

  She sat down at the kitchen table, pen poised. There was a strange look on Drew’s face. ‘What?’ she asked.

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘What’s that face?’

  He shook his head. ‘Nothing.’

  Poppy cocked her head to one side. ‘That’s a “now” face, not a face that you made before you met me, so I get to ask as many questions as I like,’ she teased.

  ‘I just like seeing you happy,’ he said. ‘That’s all.’

  Poppy pulled the lid off her pen. ‘I’ve literally never been happier than I am with you.’

  Her words sat between them for a moment. Drew dropped his gaze, as if he was embarrassed by her words. ‘I love you,’ he said after a moment.

  ‘I love you too,’ she replied. ‘Now, who are we having? Ralph, obviously – we have to show him the house – he did so much to help get it sorted before we moved in. And then his wife – which one is she? Emma?’ She scribbled on some thick cream paper, Drew’s fountain pen heavy in her hand. ‘It’s going to be amazing.’

  They spent the rest of the evening talking about plans for their weekend, Drew explaining which of his friends secretly resented the other and debating what to have for the Saturday-night main course, Poppy’s body slotted neatly under Drew’s arm.

  ‘This is what it’s like, being married, isn’t it?’ said Poppy as she blew out the candles on the kitchen table.

  Drew smiled. ‘I suppose it is.’

  She reached up to kiss him. Behind him she could see the silhouette of the new lampshade, perfectly still in the snug. There was something off there. It was too big for the room, she saw now. The front rooms had double-height ceilings but this little room needed something smaller. There was something smug about it, as if the whole room was looking back at her and saying, ‘You shouldn’t have tried to change things here.’

  BEFORE

  It was the sticky, dry feeling on the back of her tongue that woke Caroline. She rolled on to her front, her head slopping over the pillow, and looked at the time. Just before 7 a.m. Miraculously, the children still seemed to be asleep. Or maybe they’d gone in to see Poppy that morning rather than bounding on to their parents’ beds, demanding iPads and Netflix. She ran her hand over the side of the bed where Jim should have been. It was still warm, but he wasn’t there. Had he gone downstairs to make breakfast for the kids, like an absolute saint? She pulled a jumper from the chair in the corner of their bedroom, where all clothes seemed to end up, and padded downstairs. The carpet was getting shabby on the landing, stained where years ago Jack had dropped green plasticine and it had been trodden in before anyone had cleaned it up.

  Reaching the kitchen, she heard voices and, to her own surprise, paused. Poppy’s voice. And Jim’s. The noise of clinking glasses. A running tap. Had she started clearing up last night’s dinner party? Guilt flooded her stomach. Poppy had helped so much last night. She shouldn’t be down here, clearing up already. Technically she didn’t even work at the weekends.

  ‘So you had fun?’ she heard Jim’s voice.

  Poppy’s reply was drowned by the noise of the tap. Caroline looked down at herself, at her blue cotton pyjama bottoms and Jim’s massive jumper over her T-shirt. She wasn’t wearing a bra. She could feel last night’s mascara, which she thought she had taken off, caked in her lashes. She knew it would have tinted the skin under her eyes.

  ‘I’m sure they didn’t,’ came Jim again. ‘Why would anyone have minded you being there?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Poppy said. ‘I was surprised that you asked me. I’m your nanny.’

  ‘It’s not Downton Abbey.’ He laughed. ‘Christ,’ he added, ‘did you ever watch that?’

  ‘My mum loved it,’ she heard Poppy say. ‘Until there was a sex scene, and then we were all banned from watching it. She doesn’t approve of sex on telly.’

  ‘For God’s sake don’t let her watch Game of Thrones then!’

  They both laughed. Caroline shifted her weight, careful not to let the floorboards creak under her feet. She put her face to the crack between the door and the frame.

  Jim and Poppy were standing next to each other at the sink. Poppy was fully dressed in jeans and a navy-blue fisherman’s jumper, the sleeves rolled up to her elbows. In Caroline’s imagination, she had been wearing little shorts and a vest top, fresh from her bed. Thighs marked with sheet creases. Caroline put her finger to her pulse, surprised at how viscerally her body reacted to watching her husband standing next to this beautiful young woman. Poppy said something that Caroline didn’t catch, and watched as Jim raised his hands towards her. Her breath caught in her throat. Jim’s hand went upwards, towards her face. It seemed to happen in slow motion. Was he about to push her hair from her face? Stroke her cheek? Run his index finger over the curve of her lip? All of the things he had done to her, Caroline, when they had first known each other flashed in front of her eyes like a slide show.

  Unblinking, Caroline watched. But, as she did so, Jim’s hand moved to the top of Poppy’s head. He ruffled her hair. Poppy stepped back, batting his hand away. ‘Jack doesn’t like it when you do that to him either!’ She laughed, smoothing her hair back into place. Caroline’s breathing slowed. She pushed the door open.

  ‘Morning, love,’ said Jim, turning from the sink. ‘I hope you feel better than I do.’

  Caroline smiled, at her husband’s warm, open face and at her own silliness. She was becoming everything Mel had predicted that she would, and that couldn’t be allowed to happen. She was better than that.

  ‘Poppy, it is not fair that you look that good after last night,’ she said, taking in the girl’s fresh, pale skin as she flicked the kettle on.

  Poppy smiled, drying up a glass. ‘I’m told hangovers get worse with every year. Seeing as I feel OK this morning, shall I take the kids to the park to give you two some time to go back to bed?’

  Caroline and Jim exchanged a look. ‘You are an angel,’ said Jim.

  ‘Sent from heaven,’ Caroline added.

  ‘I’m really not. I just …’ Poppy paused, drop
ping her gaze to the floor. ‘I really like being here with you guys.’

  ‘We love having you,’ said Caroline, truthfully.

  ‘We really do,’ said Jim.

  CHAPTER 17

  When Poppy was growing up, her mother considered boredom a deep personal failing. Occasionally Poppy would complain of having nothing to do. On a good day, her mother would send her upstairs, telling her to play with her sister or read a book. On a good day, Karen would suggest a game. But on a bad day, she would hit her. Poppy knew Drew would never raise his voice, let alone his hand to her. But the idea of telling him, when he came home worn and tired from work and the long, hot train journey, that she was bored, felt ungrateful in the extreme. ‘How can you be bored?’ asked the little voice in the back of her head that often sounded like her mother. ‘You’ve got everything.’ But the problem with Thursday House, not that Poppy would ever have admitted out loud that there was a problem, was that everything lovely it offered was designed to be enjoyed by more than one person. Poppy had swum, the only singular activity she could think of, every day that week, shivering in her swimsuit and pretending that autumn wasn’t on its way. She had methodically ploughed along the length of the pool and back, thinking about how good it was for her body and how it would make her feel happy. But it hadn’t.

  She’d found a load of dusty tennis rackets in the shed near the pool, so she had tried tennis on her own, knocking a ball back and forth against the wall, and working on her serve, hoping that if she got better she’d be more fun for Drew to play with. He’d acted as if he thought her game was endearing, her inability to return amusing. But she knew that would wear thin. Only she’d lost several balls and grown bored of running to pick them up and eventually lost interest. Eventually she’d collapsed on to the sofa of the little sitting room and binge-watched television with the curtains shut. If her mother could have seen her she would have been disgusted. ‘I’m a grown-up, I can do whatever I want,’ Poppy had said to herself, eating an ice lolly. But it had done nothing to shake the sense of guilt she felt.