In My House

by Alex Hourston

  ‘I imagine you’ll have to work, after that baby is born, simply to make ends meet. There is the question of your mother. She has nothing, after all, bar her pension. None of them do. And they are all getting older and sicker and more expensive.’

  I had never heard him talk like this. The truth, so unvarnished, so impolite.

  ‘You are a family of unprotected women, Maggie. Please don’t take offence. You know this to be the case and your mother knows it too. And not just because you have no men, but also no money and no prospects between you. Don’t bristle. You could have changed that with your work but you chose to give it up. Your choice. No one else’s. I was to provide the ballast, Maggie, and I was happy to do it. For all of you actually. This is what amazes me about the whole thing. That you would simply be so foolhardy. But anyway.’

  Bella was in the doorway, looking from me to him.

  ‘Daddy, the Mr Men aren’t talking,’ she said, and he left to sort it out. I thought about his words. There was nothing to dispute in them.

  He came back and shut the door. He looked grim. I think it was the reality of his daughter, the fact of her precariousness.

  ‘You will now have a life exactly like your mother’s. Uncertain. Hand to mouth. Vulnerable to the next disaster. But I will not have the same for Bella.’

  ‘Of course,’ I said, no inkling of what came next.

  ‘The thing is, I want her with me.’

  I think, at first, I merely laughed.

  He came over and knelt before me, balanced on his toes. It took everything not to knock him down. It needed just the gentlest push. Finger or foot.

  My silence made him angry.

  ‘Put yourself aside, for once, Maggie. Do something for your daughter,’ he said.

  I told him to get up.

  He rubbed his hands, returned to reason.

  ‘Bella will be happy here with Jan and me. I can take time off to get us all settled. If you do what I ask, I’ll make sure that you’re comfortable. I will. A lump sum. If you don’t, I imagine life will be hard for you, Maggie. And this new child. Think of it.’

  ‘So you want to buy her, do you, Chris? Been on the phone to your father, have you?’ I said, cheap but well aimed.

  ‘I will have her, Maggie. I will not let her go,’ he said.

  I looked at him, my face drained, but I felt his need and it scared me.

  ‘OK. Well, I didn’t want to have to do this, but here’s the thing. Bells,’ he called, but it sounded rough, a voice meant for me. He adjusted his tone.

  ‘Bella, darling. Could you come through here a minute?’ he said.

  ‘What, Daddy?’

  Her nightdress was long and flowered, with a pin-tuck front and embroidery at the wrists. The pink of her big toes showed under.

  ‘How’s your head, darling? Where you fell over yesterday?’ he asked.

  ‘OK, I think,’ she said and put her hand to it.

  ‘Let me have a look. Oh yes, there’s a nasty bruise, isn’t there. Ouchy.’

  He lifted her hair and there was a right-angle of cut and a cushiony lump in yellow-purple.

  ‘I think you’ll be fine, sweetheart. Now go back to your programme. Good girl.’

  He faced me again and said: ‘I will put her in the car now. I will take her to A&E and I will tell them that you did that. And they will check the records, and they will find the broken arm and I will tell them that you did that too, and they will believe me. And they will take her from you, and that new baby as well.’

  I got up and walked away, laid my forehead against the cold glass in the back door. It was wet, and screamed softly as I rubbed my skin across it.

  ‘That’s how it will work. My mother was a nurse, don’t forget. I have talked this through with her and she will get involved if she has to. She will say what needs to be said.’

  She would, I knew that, though she might not like it. I moved my head, pressing my cheek against the damp.

  ‘I know this seems hard, Maggie, but it’s for the best, don’t you see? It is in you, after all, isn’t it? Your temper. You can’t deny it. I know that it frightens you. Look at your mother.’

  I wondered if I would have a black eye. Her hand had caught the bridge of my nose when she hit me the night before.

  ‘Life will be harder for you now. Who knows, under pressure, what you might do? I can’t take that chance and nor should you.’

  Chris kept talking.

  My knees went, and I slid gently to the floor.

  One good night’s sleep, I believe, and I would never have let her go.

  ‘I will be back for her later. There’s no point in prolonging it.’

  At the door, he stopped, spoke downwards.

  ‘I am not punishing you, you know,’ he said thoughtfully. ‘I simply cannot have you in my life. You have humiliated me completely.’

  He looked down at his filthy nails as he said it.

  ‘I’ll leave you now. Go and speak to. Whoever you need to. But you must know that there will be no going back. To pop up at some later date would be unbearably cruel. Keep away. And I swear to you that I will never be in contact again. Not unless it is essential.’

  39

  After Chris left, I went to find her. I knew she lived at the Oval end of the Brixton Road, past an Internet place that was also a launderette. It was a start, and I had nothing but time. I shut the dog in the kitchen and hailed a cab.

  A long time since I’d travelled in a taxi, beyond my own clutch of streets; less than a minute and the roads were new. He took the A5 and we passed through layer upon layer of London. Skylines bunny-hopped; a cut-and-paste effect. I thought of Alice and her ‘Drink Me’ potions. And all those places of worship; I had no idea so many people still prayed.

  At Marble Arch, we hit Christmas; coloured lights and shops and drunks. It was slow and I was impatient. I listened to a caller on the radio and the noises of the road and watched people mouth and gape outside my window. A glimpse of Victoria Station, which used to take me home, and the river, at last – mud brown and choppy. We got there not long afterwards and I paid him in great handfuls of coins.

  Out, and I felt new to the city. I reached for my bag and left my hand there, like a tourist.

  The Internet place came along soon on the right, recently updated in sharp bands of yellow and green. There was one old lady inside. I took a place in a cafe close by, and watched. Drank two huge coffees – perhaps an hour passed – and then a caffeine jangle got me up, and I made to leave, with no better idea. Three girls came in as I paid; Anja’s age, clothes like hers, accents that were not London. I spent a minute pretending to look in my bag while they chose drinks, and followed them.

  Their pace was relaxed. They travelled outwards as much as on, using the full width of pavement. One minute they were close, heads tight, and then they broke apart in laughter, spreading, just far enough, and drew back together in a loose alliance. I was just thinking how confident, how entitled, how comfortable they were in the world, when a girl of a different sort drew my attention.

  First a burble of radio. A police car had stopped and an officer climbed out. He walked up to a house, a stack of Georgian features. Wide stone steps to a huge front door with a semicircle of fanlight above it, mirrored in the tops of the sash windows. Half-height shutters pulled to. A grand place of aged yellow stone and black and white paint but also a dump, water-stained and blasted by weather and exhaust.

  A girl was crammed into the crack of doorway, talking to another PC. I could see a long thin strip of her, one leg sticking out in a towelling tracksuit, a flip-flop on her foot despite the weather, a sharp pale profile. She looked poised, alert, like Anja had when she first arrived. Expecting some sort of violence. Ready to run, or submit, as the occasion required.

  I listened hard but the sounds of the street splintered off into competing elements. The buses won, with their long queeny gasps. I risked a few steps forward.

  The girl’s eyes swooped but h
er mouth barely moved. The policeman waited at the edge of the porch, stood back into his heels. The other had paused halfway up the stairs.

  The girl looked behind her into the house. A hand gripped the door from inside, and she ducked beneath it and was gone.

  Someone new; older, more in charge.

  I stood now, at the foot of the steps, pretending to read my phone. Two men in their sixties slowed on the pavement and yelled: ‘Bout time too,’ but when the policeman craned to find them, they moved on meekly. His eyes passed over me.

  They had rearranged themselves in response to this new person, shoulder to shoulder, their backs a wall. I couldn’t see a thing.

  I took the first three stairs.

  Up closer and the woman was all bluster. She shouted and postured until a radio blasted interference and there was silence, for a stretch, as the policeman listened. A crackle that made me start. The officer unclipped a pad from his belt and spelled a word out clearly.

  ‘M. A. R. I. C. Anja with a J. Over.’

  I climbed the next three.

  That the police wanted to leave now became clear. The woman made a noise in her throat and was gone. She slammed the door with a flourish and the time between the gesture and the bang seemed too long. It came at last, and the knocker gave a faint answering clack. The glass shivered tinnily in its panes.

  I was noticed.

  The officer nearest paused. A look laced with confusion.

  ‘Excuse me,’ I said. ‘I just. I couldn’t help but overhear you mention Anja. Anja Maric. It’s just. She’s my friend.’

  ‘OK, madam. And if you could give me your name?’

  I did, and it seemed to ring a bell.

  ‘Well, perhaps you can help. She’s missing, I’m afraid. Could you please tell me when you last saw Miss Maric?’

  40

  I got the Tube home from Oval, a horrible mistake. It took the walk to my house to slow my heart and stay the tremor in my limbs. As I slid the blade of the key into the lock there was a re-acceleration; something, I suppose, to do with being so very nearly there. Then I was in, but the house did not feel mine. The acknowledgement of wrongness was immediate. Quite why took a second or two more.

  The dog, first; he should have barked. The sitting-room door was open and there was a lamp on in the far part of the house; I could see the traces of a low orange light reaching out into the kitchen. The hall was cold and dark. I stretched my arm and felt the slick drop of her parka.

  I pressed the switch. Her coat was on the peg, hung clumsily from one shoulder. A fat canvas bag I didn’t recognise blocked my way. Still she did not call and I didn’t hurry. I laid my own things on the sofa and went through, reluctant to break the hush of the house.

  She sat out in my spot, facing the garden. Her ponytail dangled over the back of the seat, a few snapped hairs sprouting outwards from the band. I could see one foot bent behind her; a baggy loose-knit sock, worn at the heel and ball, a week away, at most, from holes.

  There was a mug of tea on the floor and she ate from a great stack of toast that she had balanced on the chair’s arm. Buster sat before her, his paw up to beg, his tail narrowly missing the cup. He looked to me, but wouldn’t abandon his efforts. She inclined her head in some acknowledgement, but still I couldn’t see her face.

  ‘I came,’ she said. ‘Like you wanted me to. Is it OK for me to eat this bread? I’m starving.’

  I walked round to the front of her.

  ‘Oh, sorry. This is your place, is it? You moved things. Shall we go through to the sitting room?’ she said. Her face was expressionless.

  ‘Say please.’ She looked back down at the dog and he lifted his foot, which she shook. ‘Good boy.’

  She put her nose in his ear and gave him half a slice of toast, which he took with gentle teeth.

  ‘Not too much. You’ll make him fat,’ I said but she didn’t respond.

  She got up; I took her mug through to the sink, and followed.

  I found her on the sofa stroking the dog’s eyes shut.

  ‘I’ve been calling you, Anja. And texting,’ I said.

  ‘I know.’

  Her rhythm was slow and steady. Buster made his happy noise, a throatier version of a purr.

  ‘Why didn’t you reply?’ I asked.

  ‘I’m here, aren’t I?’ she said.

  His front legs slid out and he dropped a heavy chin to her knees.

  ‘I know what you want anyway,’ she said, after a bit.

  ‘I was calling to say I was sorry. Am sorry. About our fight. And that I wanted us to be friends again.’

  I cringed at my own language. It didn’t impact her at all.

  ‘But there is something else, right?’ she said.

  She bent the dog’s ear back so she could watch him correct it. It was unkind, but it amused her. Worry was plain on his face; still she did it again. I wanted to tell her to stop.

  ‘Well, yes. There is now. Of course there is.’

  ‘I guess that would be Paul’s money,’ she said levelly. She moved her hands to her lap but Buster nosed her until she resumed their game. A forgiving beast.

  I leant into the wall. Everything ached; the big muscles of my thighs, my shoulders. I needed a shower or they would set this way.

  ‘Why did you take it, Anja?’ I said.

  ‘Easy. Because they wanted me to. That’s what it was there for.’

  I had the idea of lying, of making this simple, but I tend to avoid that path. When it was clear that I would say nothing, she puffed out her contempt.

  ‘Look. You could get into trouble over this,’ I said.

  ‘No, I won’t. They won’t find me. I was thinking of leaving and now my mind is made up.’

  ‘They were friends to you, Anja. You abused that.’

  ‘They are not friends or they would not have done it. That shows what they think of me.’

  Her voice was high and bitter.

  ‘And so you went and proved them right,’ I said.

  ‘Why not? They are happy now. They think they know how everything is.’

  ‘It was still wrong,’ I said, though I heard my own uncertainty.

  ‘We do what we have to. Remember? You told me that once.’

  There was a siren a few streets away. We were still while its sound grew and diminished, mournful and animal.

  ‘Have they told the police?’ she asked.

  ‘I don’t think so.’

  ‘Well, I’ve left my place anyway. I’m not going back.’

  A teenage slump on my furniture; her shoulders low and her legs spread wide. No vanity, Anja, none of what we used to know as feminine charm.

  ‘Is that sensible? They are looking for you, you know. They think you’re missing. Someone must have reported it. They’re worried something has happened,’ I said.

  ‘For five minutes only.’

  She pushed up from her chair.

  ‘You think I’m so stupid, Maggie. I know I will not win my case. There is not a good chance. I knew it from the start. Everyone does. It is only you.’

  ‘I do. I do know that now,’ I said.

  ‘So I am making my own arrangements, right?’

  ‘I would have given you money. I will give you money,’ I said.

  ‘I have some now, thanks. To start me off. And you know that I work hard.’

  She put a hand on her back and the bump was clear, a compact ovoid pushing out against her zipped-up top.

  ‘I need to get my things. I’ve left some stuff,’ she said.

  She found her slippers and a book. I said she could keep the dressing-gown if she liked but she shook her head. I offered her a sandwich, some more of Rosie’s clothes, the cash in my purse, but she would take none of it. I trailed her feebly.

  ‘Anja,’ I asked, finally, as she bent down to her bag, ‘why did you email my daughter?’

  She stopped, low to the carpet, her back long and curved.

  ‘Oh,’ she said. ‘So you know?’ Poised. I
nterested.

  ‘Yes, I do.’

  Her hair was pulled back viciously and I saw her reach round for the sore patch of scalp. She found it and, as she stroked there gently, I saw a dark shade of growth beneath her finger.

  ‘I saw the birth certificate. I thought I could find her for you. There is Facebook and Google. It’s not so hard.’

  She pressed her palms flat into the floor, as though preparing to sprint.

  ‘Have you met her? You guys look alike, you know. I could show you, if you like.’ A note of invitation in her voice.

  ‘What were you doing in my drawers?’ I asked.

  ‘Curious. About Rose first. Next this new person. It was not locked.’

  No question of apology.

  ‘So she has been in touch?’ Anja asked, and I think I heard some hope in her.

  ‘No. She wants nothing to do with me,’ I said.

  It hurt no more than it always had.

  She pushed up in her sudden way and took my hands. Hers were greasy under mine and I smelt my body cream on her, and unwashed hair.

  ‘Oh, I am sorry. I hoped. I did not want you be alone,’ she said, in a gentler voice.

  ‘Alone?’ I repeated, stupidly.

  ‘Alone, Maggie. After I am gone.’

  Her face was smooth thick putty in the pinkish shade she liked. Plasticky and featureless. There was a web of vein in the white of one eye and, as she blinked, I saw a contact lens that I had never known she wore swim gently out of place.

  ‘I am not alone. I have friends. I spend my time with who I choose. That’s not the same,’ I said.

  She held my hands tighter and began a massage at the base of my thumbs; a circling pressure.