“That you murdered your best friend’s husband. You want to talk about obsession? You want to talk about not normal? I’m coming for you. And you know it. You just can’t quite believe it yet.”
“You know what?” I said. “I think you’re jealous.”
It was a new thought. It hadn’t occurred to me before that moment. But it must have been percolating somewhere, because it made such perfect sense.
She opened her mouth to speak, but she didn’t say anything. Her cheeks sank slightly, indented between her teeth, and her forehead was instantly clear of its creases.
“I’m not,” she said eventually.
I shrugged, as she had done earlier, in a deliberately flippant way.
The train pulled up at the platform. She reached into her handbag and held out a business card. It had an illustration of a fountain pen embossed in gold foil on one side.
“I’ll go,” she said. “But take this. And call me. I really want you to. I mean it.”
“Not a chance,” I replied.
Chapter Thirty-Seven
The door was open, as always, and I knocked lightly against the frame. My mother was sitting in the corner of the room in her armchair. It had a pale wooden frame and polished wooden legs. I hadn’t noticed the pattern before—the cushioned body decorated with electric green swirls—but it was hypnotic set against the purple of her woolen jumper. She was wearing shoes instead of slippers, and I wondered if she’d been using the moisturizer I’d bought for her birthday, because her skin looked a little softer, a little suppler.
“Morning,” I said.
She smiled at me and tapped her hand against the armrest of her chair. She still spoke—sometimes—but less and less, and instead used small gestures to convey her meaning. She had once described how it felt to lose words on the way to her lips. She said it was like shepherding children to school, each word a child, but they were unmanageable and arrived at the wrong time or, sometimes, they didn’t arrive at all and stood on the path spinning in circles. Or, even worse, the children who arrived were the wrong children, somebody else’s, and not the ones she’d wanted. The silence was a less frightening alternative.
She turned her head toward the bed, encouraging me to sit there. I did as instructed, even though the mattress was horribly uncomfortable.
“You,” she said. And what she meant was: Please tell me about your week, about your day, about your life, about everything that has happened to you since we were last together.
“Not a lot to report,” I said. Which was the truth. I had fallen back into a very familiar routine, a reliable combination of work and home and home and work. “But I’m going to call Emma later.”
My mother’s face twisted slightly as I said this, and I continued talking so that she didn’t have the space in which to form a reply or to begin her manic gesticulations.
“I might even pop over to see her. She’s doing much better since that last trip to the hospital, but it’s probably a good idea to visit even so.”
My mother frowned. She’d ignored Emma’s suffering until the illness was thoroughly entrenched in her bones. She hadn’t known me as a wife, only as a widow. But despite these crushing shortcomings, she knew us. And perhaps in a way that only a mother can know a daughter. She knew, for example, that I was manipulating the truth because I was weak. I couldn’t admit that Emma was not doing much better, but in fact seemed to me to be a little worse. Her hair was thinning, and a small bald patch had erupted by her left temple. She shivered all the time, constantly cradled in layers of jumpers and blankets and socks. She had a cough that she couldn’t shake.
But I couldn’t admit any of this because I couldn’t stand to confront that reality. And my mother knew that. She knew, too, that Emma didn’t have the strength to be much better and that, at best, she was suffering.
My mother danced her nails across the wooden armrest and then said:
“John?”
“Jonathan?” I asked.
“Tomorrow,” she replied.
She pointed toward the calendar hanging on her wall. I had bought it for her a few Christmases earlier, a generic calendar with dates but no days, with photographs of flowers, a different image for each month. She had been frustrated by her inability to remember significant events—our birthdays, for example—and so we sat and filled in the most important ones. Jonathan had been dead for a couple of years and yet his dates were still my dates and I had written them in as though they were my own.
I stood up and approached the calendar. Each morning, my mother’s carer moved a small yellow sticker onto the day’s date. There was little use knowing when the important moments would fall if she had no idea where she stood.
The next day would have been Jonathan’s birthday.
I had forgotten.
In another life, I would have been preparing for weeks, if not for months—with gifts and a cake and a card and balloons. I might have booked a table at a nice restaurant or organized a surprise party. I might have looked for wrapping paper that matched his personality—decorated with bicycles or cricket bats or animals—or collected croissants from the bakery.
And—even a couple of years ago—I would have been approaching this day with lungs about to burst from the most insurmountable grief. I would have been anxious and panicking, watching the days roll forward, thinking of all the things I’d be doing if he were alive and the things that I wasn’t because he was dead.
“Yes,” I said, wanting her to think that I’d remembered, that I already knew, because what sort of wife forgets her husband’s birthday. “I’ll probably visit him. At the cemetery. First thing. Before I see Emma. I’ll take some flowers, I think. Maybe a balloon. No, not a balloon.”
She nodded. “Dad?” she asked.
She sometimes—more often than not—forgot that he was no longer a part of her life. She thought that he came to see her and, occasionally, she told me about his visits. She told me that he brought flowers, although there were never any in her room that hadn’t been brought by me, and that he had put up the shelves at home, although she had asked him to for years and he never had. He was well, she said, and I knew that he was, but that he was well some many miles away with some other woman who was not my mother.
Once, when we’d been squabbling about our shared responsibility, Emma suggested that I visited so regularly, not because this was my mother and not because of some sense of familial duty, but because I envied my mother’s ability to forget. She didn’t know that the person she loved most was no longer around.
I tended to avoid having this conversation with my mother where possible: I either ignored her questions or replied with something terribly vague, something that suggested that he might visit sometime soon without actually making a promise to pass on a message or to pop in and see him myself.
Perhaps she had never tried to remember my father’s absence. Perhaps she was happy to forget.
“Marnie?” she asked instead, with a smile.
“She’s doing really well,” I said. “Audrey’s doing great, too. She had a checkup a few weeks ago. She’s putting on plenty of weight. Although I haven’t seen much of her these last few weeks. They seem to be so busy.”
“Motherhood,” said my mother, and then she yawned, as though that, too, was part of our conversation.
“I know,” I replied. “But friendships are important as well. I’ve been thinking that I should surprise her.”
My mother nodded her approval enthusiastically.
There was a clatter from next door and then a frustrated groan as my mother’s neighbor dropped something onto the floor. We heard the fast slap of shoes on tiles and then two nurses rushed past the door to assist.
“I thought I might make her dinner,” I continued. “Do you remember that we used to have dinner together once a week? I’m thinking I should reinstate that. It would
be nice to have a way to stay in touch. What do you think?”
In other places, with other people, the absences were filled by other, louder voices. But here mine was the only one.
“I’m thinking of leaving work early next Friday,” I said. “It’s fine, really. Everyone seems to be sneaking off after lunch, what with the weather and them all wanting to get away for the weekend. We have fewer people to answer the phones, but—so what? The phones are ringing less because everyone everywhere has buggered off on holiday. Anyway, I know that Marnie meets up with some other mothers at three o’clock on Fridays—she makes time for that weekly commitment—so I know that she won’t be home. I’m planning to let myself in and cook something incredible, something that even she will be impressed by.”
My mother frowned.
“I have a key,” I said. “So, no, don’t get the wrong idea. I wouldn’t be breaking in.” I laughed and it felt awkward.
My mother began to shake her head.
“She gave it to me,” I said. “What’s the matter with you?”
“No,” she said, and her head shaking became more vigorous. “No.”
“Don’t be like that,” I said. “It’s a good idea. It’ll be a nice surprise.”
“A key,” she insisted.
“Yes, a key,” I said. My mother stopped shaking her head and stared right at me.
I was the responsible adult in my family and yet she still occupied this traditional omniscient mothering role with eyes that sharpened in the way that only a mother’s can and a head tilt that demanded answers. It took her weeks to accept that my father had really left—we were sure he was bluffing—and when she finally did, she fell apart. He sent us a postcard from a Thai beach explaining that he had a new number now and that he wouldn’t be sharing it with us but that he thought we ought to know that he was no longer ignoring our calls and messages but simply not receiving them. She cried and drank too much and shut herself in her bedroom, and I went in regularly to leave water bottles on her bedside table and load microwave meals in the fridge. She hadn’t been much of a mother then.
“It’s fine,” I said. “Don’t get all worked up.”
She slapped her hand against her wooden armrest, hard, and she flinched, snapping it back against her chest, trying to shake out the pain.
“Stop that,” I said. “Stop that right now. What are you doing?”
She slapped her other hand against her face and then knocked her beaker of water onto the floor from the standing tray beside her.
I jumped up and rushed over. “What’s wrong with you? Stop making such a mess.”
“Key,” she hissed.
“I’ve only just been given it,” I said. Which was the truth. “This isn’t about— This hasn’t got anything to do with—”
A nurse paused in the doorway. My mother and I turned to stare.
“Morning, Jane,” she said to me. “Morning, Helen,” she said to my mother. “What’s all this about?”
My mother slapped her hand against her thigh again. She stared at me, wanting to say something but unable to, incapable of finding the right words to express that want.
“What’s the matter now? Your daughter’s here to visit you. It’s a lovely treat.” The nurse knelt on the floor in front of my mother and took her hands, holding them together so that the slapping ceased.
“Key,” groaned my mother. “Key.”
The nurse looked at me and I shrugged.
“I’m afraid I’ve no idea what’s set her off,” I said.
“Oh, dear,” said the nurse, assuming responsibility for the chaos. “Well, I’m afraid I’m not sure either. What on earth’s got her so upset? Why don’t you take a few deep breaths, sweetie?” Her voice was soothing. “There you go. We’ll work this all out in just a minute, but let’s get you all sorted first. Because we’ve had a lovely week, haven’t we? The hairdresser’s been in and this is looking glorious now, isn’t it?” She gestured toward my mother’s hair with a wild sweep. “Did you tell Jane all about that, did you? We’re all ready for visitors, aren’t we, so we are?”
“Key,” my mother insisted, still glowering at me.
“Right, all right, then,” said the nurse, sitting back on her heels. “What do you need? You want a key? Do you want me to open the window, is that it?”
She was thinking the worst of me: that I’d had the key all along, that I was lying to her now.
My mother slammed her hand against the tray and the whole contraption toppled to the floor, sending her tissues, her water jug, and her framed picture spinning across the room.
The nurse looked at me. “Perhaps we should—”
“That’s fine,” I said, standing up. “Not to worry. I’ll be back next week. Perhaps a bad night’s sleep or something.”
I was losing it, losing control, making mistakes.
I had told her before that I didn’t have a key. And—worse than that—I’d said that if I did have a key, I’d have used it to save his life. Which was nonsense. I’d used that key to take his life, and she now knew it.
I wasn’t lying now, but I’d lied before, and she’d caught me in my own web.
“Dad?” said my mother, and I turned to face her. She was asking for him because she needed him. She wanted him to step in, to be my father. She knew not to trust me, and she knew that she was too weak, too frail, to put this right.
“You know he’s not coming,” I said in my most sympathetic voice. “We’ve talked about this. He doesn’t live here anymore. Do you remember? He hasn’t been part of our family for years.”
And then I left.
* * *
It was only afterward, on my way home, that I found myself wondering if she wasn’t reprimanding me at all, if she wasn’t trying to punish me, if she wasn’t angry but afraid. Was she protecting me instead? Was she warning me, telling me to be more careful, to watch myself, to not get caught?
Because isn’t that what a mother would do?
She was frightened for me. She had looked inside me and seen that something was broken, noticed my fractures, and acknowledged that I might not be the very best version of myself. And, despite that, she still wanted to protect me.
Chapter Thirty-Eight
When I arrived home, I called Emma, but she didn’t answer and so I watched three movies and ordered takeout and then went to bed. I called her again the following morning and there was still no answer, and I thought nothing of it because she was probably asleep—she was so weak and often exhausted—and because she often isolated herself when things felt overwhelming.
I called her again on Monday after work and she still didn’t answer, and I decided to head over to her flat with some fruit—she’d occasionally eat a few slices of apple, even in her very worst weeks—and to remind her that I loved her and that I wanted to help.
At no point over those three days did I for a moment consider that she was in trouble, in danger, that something was wrong.
I arrived and knocked on her door. There was no response.
The police later asked me if I could smell anything at this point and, although I’ll never forget that repugnant stench, I didn’t notice it then.
But I did begin to feel afraid. I knew in that moment that something bad had happened.
I went back downstairs and found the security guard. He’d been hired to patrol the area after a young man had been stabbed in the nearby car park. He was perched on a low brick wall and I interrupted the film he was watching indiscreetly on his phone to ask for help. He sighed loudly and said that there was nothing he could do, that I needed to come back with the police.
I called them immediately and spoke loudly, explaining that my sister was vulnerable, hospitalized only a few months earlier, virtually housebound, and that I couldn’t get through to her at all. I stood there in front of the security guard, paci
ng, interrupting him further, while waiting for the police to arrive.
I felt sort of ridiculous, because while I was absolutely sure that something was terribly wrong, I couldn’t shake the fear—the hope, too—that I was unnecessarily making a fuss.
The police arrived and I think that they knew, too, that she was dead.
At their insistence, the security guard contacted the maintenance man, who accompanied us up to the flat.
“You want to wait here?” asked the policewoman. “We can go in first.”
I shook my head. “It’s fine,” I said. “I want to be there.”
I knew that my little floret of hope was wrong, that she was dead, and I didn’t want to be a coward this time, to look away because I was afraid.
They opened the door and I stepped inside and then I smelled it, and I walked in and she was lying on the sofa, swollen thicker than she’d ever been before, her skin mottled and gray, her eyes wide open, flies swarming and one sitting just above her eyelid.
I stood and stared, and the policewoman rushed past me to feel for a pulse but we all knew then that there wasn’t one. The maintenance man retched behind me and I heard him rush back onto the balcony.
I had known for years that she was going to die.
That sounds morbid, and perhaps it is, but she was terminally ill. She had a disease from which she would never recover. There was only one outcome.
The policewoman stood up and shook her head and then walked toward me and put her arm around my waist and turned me around and led me back toward the staircase.
I wasn’t afraid. I knew what to expect. I had experienced grief and I was ready.
“Is there anyone I can call for you?” she asked me.
This time there was no one at all.
* * *
Here are some of the things that you have when you have others, things that I no longer have: the steady, reassuring, harmonious hum of someone somewhere who cares; the reflex that reaches toward the story, the retelling, when something goes laughably wrong; the someone you’d call from the side of the road, the hospital, the back of a police car; the knowledge that you’ll never lie dead in your bed unfound for long because someone somewhere is searching.
Seven Lies Page 26