She smiles back at him, cautiously. ‘The show will be fine. You’ll see.’
‘I better. Now call Jellicoe and find out how long that bloody framing’s gonna take to happen. Remind him we’re on a schedule, yeah?’ Dante snorts. ‘Recycled timber. Jesus.’
Lina descends the stairs with care, one hand skimming the rail. She’s still somewhat off kilter from earlier and the last thing she wants to do is fall and break her soon-to-be-promoted neck. Another five, six months and she could be running Seventh Circle. On her own. The relief, the anticipation is intoxicating. She can’t wait to tell Ant. She can’t wait to tell . . .
. . . Loki pads into the kitchen while Antoinette is still eating breakfast, pushes a glossy black smartphone across the bench towards her. ‘What’s that?’ she asks, swallowing a mouthful of cornflakes. ‘Whose is that?’
‘Yours. Thought you might be missing your mobile.’
She hasn’t been, actually. Has found it bloody refreshing to be at no one’s beck and call, but all good things must come to some kind of an end, and so she picks up the phone and switches it on. Black wallpaper bleeds scarlet, drops that slide slowly down the screen to pool at the bottom, and she laughs, tells him that’s cool, tells him that’s goth as fuck, her Queen of the Night voice a little rusty but still camp enough to make him grin.
‘Thought you’d like that. It’s a pre-paid but the phone’s unlocked. You should be able to put your old simcard straight in there.’
Antoinette frowns. ‘Where’d you get the cash? These things aren’t cheap.’
‘I didn’t have to pay for it.’
‘Loki . . .’
Really, he insists, it just happens. He’s nice to people, that’s all, and sometimes he asks them for things, or for favours, and sometimes – most of the time – they say yes. Lina says he charms people, that Antoinette made him charming in some real sense of the word, and maybe that’s true. And the way he’s looking at her right now, those grey eyes huge and puppyish and pleading, she can almost believe it.
‘So, what, you just rock up and ask someone to hand over a brand new phone or a leather jacket, or whatever, and they say, sure, no problem, would you like me to wrap that up for you, sir? Hell, why don’t we just march you down to the bank and be done with it?’ She holds out her hands, palms joining to form a shallow bowl. ‘Small denominations, if you don’t mind, thanks ever so much.’
Loki shakes his head. ‘It doesn’t . . . they have to be willing, on some level. If it’s too big, if it’s something they really don’t want to do, or are too afraid to do . . . I can’t force them.’
He scowls, portrait of an adolescent thwarted, and Antoinette wonders again just what Loki does with his days. Nothing special, his vague response whenever she asks, or else catching up with stuff – having lived in the world less time than he remembers, there is apparently a lot of catching up to do – and it reminds her too painfully of how she and Jacqueline used to talk to their mother back in high school, and even later, and how nothing meant anything but.
Nothing we want you to know about.
Nothing we would expect you to understand.
Antoinette reaches for Loki’s hand but he pulls away, steps away. ‘Please,’ he says. ‘Please don’t touch me like that.’
‘Like what?’
‘I can’t . . .’ He swallows, shoves both hands deep inside his pockets. ‘Most of the time, I can keep it at a distance, keep it locked up. But I still love you, no matter how stupid and pointless it is. And when you touch me, even when you just look at me a certain way, it hurts. It physically hurts.’
‘But I thought, I mean, now you’re with Jacqueline–’
‘I’m not with Jacqueline.’
‘Loki, come on, you’ve been sleeping together for–’
‘That’s all we’ve been doing,’ he says. ‘Sleeping.’
Antoinette stares at him. ‘I don’t follow.’
And so he explains. Halting and reluctant, like he’s searching for words which simply aren’t there to be found, but she gets enough of the gist from those he does manage to dredge up and drag back. The unseen chains that bind his heart to hers, that bind his body as well, and the pain that grips him, a terror vast and visceral and absolute, should he attempt to betray her with either. Telling her all this without resentment, without anger or recrimination – it’s simply how it is, it’s how he is – and to Antoinette this makes it all the more vile.
Makes her all the more vile.
‘No,’ she says. ‘Loki, no, that’s not what I want. That’s not why I–’
‘Really?’ His smile is sad and fleeting. ‘What if it had all worked out, and you did still love me? Wouldn’t I be exactly what you wanted – a man who could never hurt you, never leave you? If you loved me, wouldn’t I be just perfect?’
This is the curse. This, right here, the knowledge of her own monstrosity. Because her crime is not her failure to love him. Her crime is that she created him in the first place – so thoughtlessly, so selfishly – this beautiful boy who is now forced to love her, who has no choice but to love her, who will be made to suffer for anything less.
And she thinks of her mother, thinks of Sally Paige with two perfected children and a third pulled bloody from her womb, and not one them enough to fill the void, to restore even a scrap of maternal feeling to her dried and desiccated heart. But raising her daughters regardless, joining mothers groups and devouring every childcare book she could get her hands on – faking it, if never making it – and at least she tried. She tried for twenty-seven years.
Antoinette can’t hold it together for even a month.
‘I have to head off,’ Loki is saying. ‘There’s this thing . . .’
‘Wait.’ Uncertain if anything she does from this point on can make a difference, but she has to try, she has to fucking try. ‘I don’t care about you and my sister. No, that’s not true, I do care, I care a lot. I’ve seen the way you look at her and I’ve seen how she . . . how different she is when she’s around you. How happy she is. I mean, hell, she’s wearing colours. Colours that aren’t beige.’
‘Antoinette, this doesn’t–’
‘No, listen. Please.’ She takes his hand in both of hers. He flinches but doesn’t pull away. ‘The two of you are good together, seriously, blind Freddy could see that. So if you love her, if you think you might love her, then go for it. You won’t be hurting me, you’ll be the opposite of hurting me, I swear.’
He lowers his gaze. ‘It’s not like I can stop feeling–’
‘Then love us both,’ she pleads. ‘But be with her, love her, if that’s what you want.’ Antoinette leans forward, presses her forehead against his. ‘I promise you, Loki, it’s what I want too.’
For maybe a minute, they stand like that, before Loki steps back and untangles his hand. ‘I, um, I have to . . .’ His eyes are glazed and distant, the eyes of a wild animal, long-caged and grieving for the woods. ‘There’s this thing.’
After he leaves, Antoinette stares into her milk-sodden cornflakes and thinks some more about her mother, and about responsibility and avoidance and guilt. Then she picks up the phone Loki brought her and taps the screen into life. The contacts list is empty of course – she’ll need to resurrect her old simcard at some stage – but it doesn’t matter. One number she’s known by heart since the age of seven at least, and she dials it now, holds the phone to her ear and waits for . . .
. . . Loki to say something instead of simply standing there. Motionless, scarcely two steps inside the bedroom. Watching as she sorts through more of her clothes. That weird new expression on his face, as though Lina is an exotic insect that might equally sting him or flitter away should he move any closer.
‘What?’ she demands. ‘You’ve been looking at me like that all night.’
He nods at the scarle
t blouse in her hands. ‘That suits you.’
‘I bought it today.’ The blouse goes into the wardrobe with the other items she has decided to keep. There isn’t a huge amount of them. She takes out a well-worn skirt. Tailored, knee-length. A comfortable wool-blend the colour of weak and milky tea. Unquestionably a Jacqueline skirt. Lina unclips it from the hanger and tosses it into the charity bag. Better.
Behind her, footsteps approach.
She turns and Loki is there. He is right there, his eyes searching her face, his hands reaching for her hips. She opens her mouth but whatever words she intended to speak are lost when he kisses her. Gentle, cautious, brief. Too brief.
‘What was that?’ she asks.
‘I still love her,’ he says.
‘All right.’
‘I will always love her. It’s part of what I am.’
‘I know this,’ Lina says, irritated. ‘You don’t have to–’
He kisses her again. Harder. His tongue pushing into her mouth, finding hers, thrusting against it. This time, when he draws away, his breath is ragged and torn. As is her own. ‘I love you,’ Loki whispers. ‘I love you as well.’
She thinks about this. Not in the way Jacqueline would have, with her too careful weighing of shoulds against should nots. Her meticulous concern for presentation and the playing of roles. Lina thinks about how she feels. What she feels.
And she smiles. ‘All right.’
At some point, as they kiss and strip each other of clothing, as she pushes him onto the bed and he pulls her down beside him, it occurs to her that Loki must, technically at least, be a virgin. For all the off-the-rack memories that jostle within his skull, the body that now moves against hers is untouched. Unclaimed. Unexplored. Lina finds she likes the idea of that. She likes it very much.
He kisses her throat, catching her skin lightly between his teeth. Strong hands roam the curves of her back and hip and thigh. She supposes that this is how her sister likes to be touched. That this is what she would have wanted Loki to do, had she still wanted him to do anything. She ponders that for a moment. Decides it doesn’t matter. What is she but an amalgam of previous experience? Of techniques and tricks picked up from earlier lovers? What matters is now. Loki and Lina, here together. Learning how to be with each other.
‘Stop thinking,’ Loki whispers. He taps her on the forehead. Smiles.
‘Is this all right?’ She traces a finger over his mouth. ‘Being with me like this? Last time, you talked about crossing a line.’
‘It’s an odd feeling,’ he says. ‘But not . . . I think the line has shifted.’
He rolls her onto her back, trails kisses over her breasts and stomach. Only when his mouth moves further down does she flinch and clamp her legs together. ‘Don’t,’ she says. ‘I don’t . . .’ A momentary lapse, a small chink through which her shadow self attempts to crawl. Jacqueline Paige, who prefers darkness for encounters such as these. Darkness, or the forgiving flicker of candlelight. Better for her lovers not to see her scars. Better for her not to see the concern in their eyes. Concern or disgust or, occasionally, an altogether more prurient gleam.
‘It’s okay.’ Loki presses his lips to her thighs. ‘I know about these, remember?’ His tongue flicks over her cross-hatched skin. ‘They don’t worry me.’
‘I’m not going to explain. I don’t think I can–’
‘You don’t have to.’ He keeps kissing her. ‘They’re part of you, Lina, and you don’t have to explain yourself.’ Her name in his mouth. Sexier than anything else he could have said, and she feels herself loosen. Feels herself again become Lina. Flawed, lost, imperfect – but nevertheless loved. And she leans back. Arches against Loki’s tongue, against Loki’s hands, and allows herself to open.
‘We seem to be pretty good at that,’ Loki says later, much later, after they’ve exhausted themselves twice over.
She laughs. ‘Pretty good, yes.’
She wants to tell him she loves him but the words catch in her throat. It’s not something she has ever told anyone before. Not in this way. Not to mean what she wants to mean right now. Instead, she gets up to pee and brush her teeth. Considers the shower, but only for a moment. She doesn’t want to be clean. Doesn’t want the smell of him, the smell of them, to be gone so soon. Back in bed, Lina curls around him. Presses her face into his skin. Listens to his breath deepen and slow. She feels serene. Not the cool dissociation of the blade; far from it. She belongs to her body. To her flesh. It no longer frightens her. No longer seems a cage from which she must escape. She finds this mildly astonishing.
But we’re not real, Jacqueline whispers. Neither of us.
Lina squeezes her eyes shut. Hugs Loki even tighter. ‘I love you,’ she tells him. ‘So much.’ She stays awake until she hears the front door open and her sister creep into the apartment. Then she relaxes. Lies still and listens to Ant make tea and get herself ready for bed. Such a different texture, this sisterly kind of love. Both more and less complicated than what she feels for Loki. Familiar, comfortable. Worn thin at times but never worn through.
Loki and Ant, the two halves of her heart.
Two halves? Jacqueline scoffs. Try two thirds. At best.
‘Stop now,’ Lina murmurs as she drifts towards sleep. Two halves. Two to make one whole and nothing in between. No dark sliver of space. No chamber, narrow and needy, forced closed for too many years.
Just her sister and her beloved. All that she loves. All that she needs to love.
Pitter patter, Jacqueline whispers. Pitter patter.
— 19 —
Antoinette’s mother is right about Dr Chiang. He is a good man, a good doctor to have spent his morning up here on the mountain, sitting on the couch and drinking tea and explaining oh so patiently about syringe drivers and continuous subcutaneous injections and hydromorphone and metoclopramide and a million other scary-sounding medical words that he wrote down for them in careful block letters. Not that they would have to worry about any of that. Starting tomorrow, a homecare nurse would pop in each day to prepare and administer the prescribed dosage, and the nursing service would be on call if anything was needed between visits. Dr Chiang wrote down those details as well. He’s taken care of everything – including, it seems, Sally Paige’s determination not to be taken care of. Her mother sat passively in her armchair the whole time the doctor spoke. Silent and shrunken and wrapped in an oversized pink cardigan, she stared at her slippered feet and nodded whenever it seemed required of her.
At this stage, we’re focusing solely on pain management.
We will make you as comfortable as we can.
Thank you, Sally. Thank you for allowing me to help.
‘You care about my mother a lot,’ Antoinette observes as she walks him out to his car. ‘More than . . . more than you need to, I think.’
Dr Chiang smiles. ‘I’ve known her a very long time.’
‘Were the two of you ever . . . I’m sorry, this isn’t an ethics thing, really. I’m just trying to find out who my mother was. Who she is.’ She grimaces. ‘I don’t think I know her very well. Actually, I don’t think I know her at all.’
He holds up his left hand, a wide gold band glinting in the sun. ‘My wife and I have two children. Toby is a teacher now and Grace works in, ah, something to do with computers. Something to do with the internet – don’t ask me exactly what she does, I never understand when she tries to explain it to me.’ He twists the ring around his finger and his smiles fades, dials right the way down. ‘I love my children, and my wife is an excellent mother to them. But if Sally hadn’t married your father, or if your father had left her before . . .’ Dr Chiang sighs. ‘If. So much regret in just two letters.’
‘If I wasn’t born?’ Antoinette bristles. ‘Is that what you mean? If your children that you love so much weren’t ever born, then maybe you and my mo
ther could have lived happily ever after in a castle far far away? Well, excuse us all for being so bloody inconvenient.’
He blinks. ‘I’m sorry. That was tactless.’
‘Yeah, well, you’re not the first. My mother wishes she hadn’t had me either.’
‘I’m sure that’s not true. Sometimes, people in her situation–’
‘Her situation?’
‘She’s dying, Antoinette. She’s frightened and she’s in pain. If she says things that seem strange, or hurtful, then you need to make allowances.’
He opens the boot of his car, puts away his medical bag and briefcase, and when he straightens again his face has slid back into neutral. That caring Good Doctor face she remembers from when she was a kid. His hair now fading to grey, more lines dug in around his eyes, but still the kind, soft-spoken man who was always straight up about how much it would hurt, how long it would take to get better, how bad the medicine would taste going down.
‘How’s your sister?’ he asks. ‘You said she was working today?’
‘Yeah, she’s pretty busy right now.’
‘Both of you should realise that your mother is looking at a prognosis of weeks, not months. If you’re having trouble getting time off work, either of you, I’ll be more than happy to write a letter to your employer.’
‘It’s not that. Jacqueline doesn’t . . . there are some issues.’
I never want to see that woman again, Ant.
But she’s our mother, Jacqueline. She’s–
Your mother perhaps, not mine. She was never mine.
‘Talk to her,’ Dr Chiang says. ‘The window for goodbyes is closing.’
His handshake is as firm as when he greeted her earlier, his skin cool and dry, and as Antoinette thanks him she searches his face for a sign that he knows more than he’s letting on about Jacqueline and how she came to be, some hint that Sally Paige has confided in the good doctor after all. But there’s nothing. Merely compassion and professional concern and maybe, just maybe, skulking wounded at their heels, the bone-weary sorrow of a heart too long misplaced.
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