by Jennie Ensor
‘It was the lunch break. I was sitting on the grass, reading. The others were playing some game, I could hear them yelling, getting excited. Suddenly, I didn’t know if I could stand it anymore. Feeling so apart from everyone, I mean. I went up to the science labs and climbed out of the window. It had a flat roof. I sat there ages, watching everyone below. I didn’t hear any of the bells ring for lessons. Somehow it was better, sitting up there where no one could see me. Like I was properly alone.’
‘You weren’t going to jump or anything?’
‘I did imagine stepping off the edge. I remember thinking it was only the second floor so the fall might not kill me, I’d probably end up crippled for life instead.’ She heard the quiver in her voice. ‘I knew I didn’t want to be dead, I just wanted to be happy again. I wanted my mother to be happy and my father to go back to normal.’
She wanted to cry, to put her head in Rachel’s lap and let the tears slip silently. But Rachel’s face was closed. Her arms were folded across her body, as if to protect herself.
‘Did they find you up there?’
‘Two teachers came with a ladder to rescue me. I told them I was just going up there to think about stuff, but they didn’t believe me. They thought I’d been about to jump. There was a huge commotion – they made me see an educational psychologist. He asked if everything was OK at home. I said my parents seemed very unhappy together and I wished my father was nicer to us.’
‘That’s all? You couldn’t tell him what your dad was doing?’
‘I thought of how heartbroken my mother would be, how shocked my brother would be. Even though I wanted Dad gone, I didn’t want it to be because of me. I thought if he was taken away from us, my mother wouldn’t be able to deal with it. And I was a bit scared of him. He could get so angry.’
Rachel let out a long breath then turned her head towards her rucksack.
‘You should have told them about him back then. When you had the chance.’ Her voice was different. Not hard, but without sympathy. As if she’d already left.
‘I so wish I had.’
‘You need help, Laura. I’m sorry, but I can’t be the one to help you.’
Laura put her hand on Rachel’s arm. Her tears welled up again.
‘Please, Rachel. Don’t go.’
She watched as Rachel got to her feet, pulled the rucksack onto her back and walked resolutely up the path, out of her life.
The flat greeted her with its familiar melancholy air. It needed laughter, visitors, cheerful conversation, a bright spray of flowers on the table. Instead there was the same jumble of tatty furniture and the same exhausted clatter of the fridge. Voices echoed along the stairwell. Harsh, unforgiving voices.
A chill went through her. She was alone. Rachel wouldn’t come back. There was only her brother left, in Bristol, who might as well be light-years away, and her mother.
Laura took the bottle of Jack Daniels from the kitchen cupboard. She drank without bothering to pour it into a glass, and drank some more. A fiery sensation grew inside her. She thought about how Rachel had judged her then abandoned her. Shame mingled with horror and then anger. How dare Rachel do that to her?
She stripped and stood naked in front of the wardrobe mirror. Her body was firm and slim, rounded in the right places. She ran her fingers down between her breasts, smiling at her reflection. She was young and sexy. Men looked at her with longing in their eyes – on the Tube and when she walked past in the street – even when she wore a scruffy T-shirt and jeans with no make-up. If she were at the club right now, she’d let some guy fuck her. To hell with Rachel. She didn’t need a friend like that.
I’m going downhill, she thought the next moment. Rachel’s right. If I don’t get away from the club soon, it’ll be too late.
She awoke in the middle of the night, clutching the sheets, sweat drenching her skin. Her heart struck her chest in a volley of irregular thuds like it was being whirled around in a washing machine. Was this a heart attack?
She sat up and turned on the bedside light. Slowly, her body returned to normal. She drank some water and lay down, trying to rid the images from her mind.
It was him again. Her father. For the last time, he was coming to get her.
18
Suzanne
23 April 2011
‘Suzanne, wake up.’
‘What time is it?’ Paul was sitting on the bed beside her, in his dressing gown. Suzanne opened her eyes.
‘Seven thirty. It’s time to get up. We have to leave in forty minutes.’
What was he talking about? Oh, today was Saturday. It was the Easter weekend. They were meant to be going sailing with Andy and Fiona.
In an instant, everything that had happened over the past few days came back. A wave of weariness washed over her. She shook her head.
‘Paul, I’m really not up to it. I can’t face going sailing now after all that’s happened. I hardly slept last night.’
He clucked his tongue in annoyance. ‘Andy’s been getting the boat ready all week.’
She said nothing.
‘Come on, Suze.’ His voice was upbeat. ‘We have to carry on as normal. Don’t let all this get you down.’
She looked at him in astonishment. How could she carry on as normal? How could she pretend that nothing had happened?
‘You go on your own then,’ she said. ‘I’ll stay here.’
He sighed. ‘I guess I could, if you really aren’t up to it. You’ll be alright on your own?’
She lay in bed, listening to him take a shower and brush his teeth. All sounds were muffled, as if a heavy cloth had been placed over her head. For half of the night, she’d replayed over and over in her mind what Jane had said on the phone, and Paul’s explanation, trying to make sense of it all.
But there was no sense in any of it. Any relief she’d felt after Paul had told her that Emma was lying had vanished. In its place, a bottomless well of confusion. All the questions she’d asked herself last night began to reappear, ghosts that couldn’t be laid to rest.
Had Emma really kissed Paul? What on earth had made her do it? He was forty years older than her. Could she really have some kind of girlish crush on him? Perhaps her father running off to Turkey with Yasmin had affected Emma more than Jane had realised. Had Emma been trying to get back at her father in some bizarre way? Or was she just a precocious brat who thought it was fun to run around creating havoc in other people’s lives?
She rolled over. From the gap in the curtains, dust motes jiggled in a slant of sunlight. Everything that had been clear three days ago was now twisted into a desperate muddle. This situation was beyond understanding. Why on earth hadn’t Paul said anything at the time? If only he’d told Jane there and then.
One thing bothered her more than anything else. Why was Jane so convinced that Emma was telling the truth? As Jane had pointed out, surely, she would know her daughter well enough to be able to tell whether or not she was lying. Then again, Jane wouldn’t find it easy to accept that her twelve-year-old daughter had brazenly kissed a fifty-three-year-old man – her friend’s husband to boot. Maybe she’d prefer to believe that Paul was a … She grasped for the right word. A child abuser? A paedophile, even?
Paedophile. The hateful word drilled into her brain. What was Emma thinking of, accusing Paul of such a thing? It was beyond belief. Emma must be to blame, not Paul. Surely.
She heard a clink on the table beside her. Paul was standing next to the bed.
‘I made you some tea, darling,’ he said.
Suzanne pushed herself upright, arranged the pillows behind her back. She sipped her tea, watching him get ready. He pulled on his white sports shirt and his knee-length shorts, and stepped into his sailing shoes. Then he folded his waterproofs and placed them inside the bag of sailing gear.
‘I can’t believe this is happening,’ she said, to herself as much as to her husband. She pictured Jane in the pub, after one of those Tuesday evening choral society rehearsals, guzzling be
er like a bloke, putting on a meaty growl as she impersonated Geoff, their outspoken, rather bombastic conductor, and wondered if she would ever see her friend again.
‘Darling, I know this is difficult for you. But we’ve both got to be strong.’
He sat down on the bed and rubbed his nose playfully against hers until she couldn’t help a feeble smile. He took her hand in his and kissed her goodbye, saying he’d be back around 8pm. She heard more noises in the kitchen and smelt burnt toast. Then the front door slammed.
She stayed where she was. She couldn’t sleep now, but she couldn’t make herself get up. Her tea would be getting cold, but she couldn’t be bothered to drink the rest. She was on the edge of losing herself, as if she’d had too many hash brownies – though the ones she tried years ago in that Amsterdam café hadn’t produced anything quite like this. Patterns of light swirled on the wall, too bright. Her skin was no longer an impermeable membrane; every sight, sound and smell in the outside world seemed to assault her. She felt jittery, unstable. There was nothing solid she could latch on to for reassurance. She was trapped inside a situation she couldn’t comprehend, like a butterfly on a pin.
She breathed in slowly to a count of five, held her breath for five counts, then breathed out for five counts, as they did in the mediation group. For a while she kept on with this, hoping it would have some effect. It didn’t. She put her finger in her mouth and pressed her teeth into the flesh, meeting the resistance of bone.
If only she could turn the clock back to that sunny morning, before Jane’s phone call. Once more, something had cropped up out of the blue and pulled the bottom out of her life, just when she had least expected it. She thought of the rambling, rather shabby house she’d spent her youngest years in, two miles from the Dorset coast. Her father had filled it with his presence – his smoky beard, his cheery humming as he’d tended his orchids and written up chimney inspection reports. On Saturday mornings, while Irene had her weekly piano lesson, Rich trained with the cycling club, and her mother did the weekly house clean, she would set off with her father down the path to the beach, glad to have him all to herself.
They went there for the last time a month before he drowned. Midsummer’s day. The beach all theirs, stretching out, empty ahead and behind. Wind buffeting their faces; waves wild, spitting foam. As usual, as they’d walked the firm, wet sand along the shoreline, her father was throwing pebbles into the sea as she looked out for shells. Then he’d shouted, ‘Let’s get an ice cream, race you to the top!’ Soon after, he went out in a sailing boat for some stupid race and didn’t come back. His death had marked the end of her childhood, the end of those carelessly happy years.
And now her world had been torn apart, again, by a few words spoken by a friend over the phone. She tried to fasten on to some tangible, comforting thoughts, but none came. Suzanne pushed off the duvet. This was useless. She would go downstairs and make a fresh cup of tea. Marmaduke would be wanting his breakfast and the house needed a thorough clean – she hadn’t done it properly for ages. She would keep busy, that would be the best thing.
Halfway down the stairs, the doorbell rang. She stopped to adjust her dressing gown.
Who was it at this time in the morning? It wasn’t yet nine o’clock. Not the postman – today was a public holiday. None of her friends would visit at this time, unannounced. She opened the door a fraction.
It was Katherine, out of breath, her hair tousled.
‘Jane called yesterday and told me everything,’ Katherine blurted out before either had said hello. ‘Sorry, Suzy, I shouldn’t have barged in on you like this, but I thought I’d pop over and check you’re OK. I’ve been worried about you.’
‘I’ll be OK,’ she said, automatically. ‘Come in, I was just making some tea.’
Katherine’s eyes travelled down the hall. ‘Can you talk? Is Paul around?’
‘He’s off sailing – I said I’d stay home.’
‘I’m not surprised, you must be shattered by all this.’ Katherine’s arms wrapped around her. ‘I’m so sorry, m’dear. It must be hell, what you’re going through.’
Suzanne extricated herself from Katherine’s hug and poured boiling water into the cups. Something in her friend’s tone jarred.
‘Paul says Emma’s lying,’ she said. ‘He didn’t do anything to her.’
Katherine didn’t reply. Her friend leaned against the kitchen worktop, softly tapping her mug as if contemplating what she should say next.
No, surely not, Katherine didn’t believe Emma, did she? Suzanne ran her tongue around the inside of her parched mouth.
‘You don’t think Emma is telling the truth, do you?’
Silence.
‘Please, Katherine. Tell me you don’t believe her.’
‘I don’t know for sure,’ Katherine said slowly, ‘what Paul did or didn’t do. But it seems to me …’
No, it couldn’t be true. She knew what her friend was going to say. Katherine had swallowed Emma’s version, just as Jane had.
‘Paul didn’t do anything to Emma, Kat.’ The words came out in a desperate rush. ‘Emma had a crush on Paul. She was flirting with him, trying to come on to him. She kissed him and he slapped her. She was humiliated. She was trying to get back at him by making up this lie.’
Katherine looked at her, slowly shaking her head from side to side.
‘Suzanne, listen. I know that’s what Paul has told you, but I don’t believe it. Why did he bring her back to your house in the first place? Don’t you think that rather strange? He could have taken her back to Jane’s afterwards.’ Katherine’s voice swelled dramatically, as if she were trying to convince an entire jury of Paul’s guilt. ‘But he knew you’d be away until the next day, didn’t he? He knew he wouldn’t be disturbed if he took her back to your place.’
‘He came here to watch a film, that’s all. Come on, Katherine. If he really had done anything to Emma, why didn’t she tell Jane straight away, as soon as she got home? Why wait until now to tell her, all these weeks later?’
‘He threatened her. He made her feel ashamed.’
‘So, you’re saying Paul is lying, are you?’ She got to her feet. ‘You really think he molested Emma?’ Her voice was shaking, with fear as much as anger. A sliver of doubt was already uncoiling inside her.
‘I hate to have to say this, but yes, I do.’ Katherine took hold of her hand. ‘I think Emma is telling the truth and Paul’s lying to protect himself. Listen, I know how awful it is for you, I know you don’t want to hear this, but it’s not unheard of. There are men like that around—’
‘And my husband’s one of them?’ She snatched back her hand. ‘You’re wrong, Katherine, you must be wrong.’
Paul was a good man, he had principles. He couldn’t have done it. Could he?
But what if he had? What if he had done the unimaginable, and lied to hide his guilt?
‘I’m sorry, Kat, I didn’t mean to shout at you. I just need to be by myself for a while.’
Katherine said she understood, she’d better be going.
Suzanne went into the bedroom and pulled the duvet straight. Paul’s slippers were side by side under the chair, as usual. Beside them, one black sock. She picked up the sock and hung it on the back of the chair. She went into the bathroom, took off her dressing gown and hung it on the hook. Paul had left the toothpaste cap off, which he never usually did. She rinsed the white slime away and put the cap back on. Then she tucked her hair into her shower cap and stepped into the shower. She turned it on full and stood there, letting the hot water pound her body.
Paul had brought Emma back here on purpose to molest her? He’d done the most heinous act imaginable and made her promise not to tell anyone? It was crazy. Her husband wasn’t one of those perverts who went after children.
She dried herself and went downstairs. Paul would be on the boat by now, miles away. She washed Marmaduke’s bowl, dolloped in some Whiskas and replaced the bowl under the chair in the kitchen corner. She wipe
d the sink and picked out the food that had collected in the sink tidy: white grains of rice, yellow teeth of corn, and scraps of red pepper. Then she turned on the radio very loud and began to clean the house to Beethoven’s fifth.
Dust, vacuum, polish. Plump the cushions, empty the bins, get everything straight.
The sun came out for a while then went back in. She lost track of time. After the living room and the hall, she started on the conservatory.
Water the plants, sweep the floor, polish the windows.
Don’t stop, don’t think.
Just after 4pm Suzanne switched on the kettle, her arms aching. Through the kitchen window, branches were flailing and the clouds were racing. Andy’s boat would be on its side, ripping through the water at breakneck speed. It was just as well she hadn’t gone – she’d be freezing and clinging to the side, trying not to throw up. But Paul loved sailing in rough weather, even though she’d reminded him often enough how her father had died. He seemed to almost enjoy the risk of something going wrong. Men were strange like that. She dropped a teabag into her mug.
From nowhere, a memory came.
She had come into the garden after lying down upstairs. It had been another sweltering day. Paul was watering the flowerbeds and Laura was on the lawn, leaning back on her elbows, legs stretched out. A book lay open beside her. She wore her white swimming costume and the wide-brimmed straw hat that she always wore when sunbathing. Her skin had gone a deep, un-English shade of brown, and her legs had seemed longer and slimmer than ever. Quite the Hollywood starlet, she’d thought with a pang of pride. And then she had noticed how Paul was watching Laura as he moved the hose, intently, with an oddly furtive expression, as if he knew he shouldn’t be watching her.
The kettle spewed steam and clicked off. She came back to the present. Why remember that, after all these years?
Suzanne picked up the kettle. She poured water on the teabag then opened the cutlery drawer and took out a teaspoon. The liquid in the cup was dark. It would be too strong soon. She removed the teabag and dropped it into the tall metal pedal-bin in the corner of the kitchen. The lid clanged shut. Now all she had to do was go to the table and sit down.