Fear

by Nina Manning

  ‘Are you ready to go, sweetheart?’ I said as I navigated my way into my text message.

  My mouth went dry. My heart rate sped up. My mind was going into overdrive trying to fathom out the meaning of the words I was seeing and why I didn’t have the number saved.

  ‘Mum!’ Pixie’s exasperated voice filtered through, but I still couldn’t tear my eyes away from the message.

  ‘You won’t get much out of your mum today, she has a poorly head.’ Damian emerged from the en suite, dripping, wrapped in a towel.

  ‘Yes, sweetie,’ I said, finally looking up from the screen but still seeing the words in front of my eyes.

  ‘My black leotard, you said you’d buy one.’

  My heart pounded hard. Did I buy the damn leotard? Then relief. Sheer relief. Yes, I did. ‘It’s in my car, sweetie, in the boot.’ I had raced out and bought it on my lunch break yesterday.

  ‘And where is your car, Frank?’ Damian said with an air of superiority.

  Shit. Damn. The car was in the staff car park behind the Bliss offices.

  ‘Pixie, darling.’ Pixie looked obviously forlorn. ‘I’m so sorry, sweetie. I’ll make it up to you later. I’ll take you to that café you like and you can get one of those ridiculous milkshakes with cakes on them.’ I tried desperately not to return to my phone and study the cryptic message that was plaguing my mind.

  I hated winning with sugar, but it was the only hand I had to play.

  ‘Go and pop your vest and leggings on then and that will have to do for today. I’m sure the teacher won’t mind for the first lesson.’

  Pixie dutifully hopped off the bed and trotted out of the door.

  I could feel the weight of Damian’s disappointment.

  ‘Good night was it last night, then? Worth waking the whole house up at 3 a.m.?’

  ‘What?’ I snapped. I knew this was nonsense because Pixie would have mentioned it. If she is woken by anything in the night we are put through a long description of it the next morning. Even if she has a vivid dream, we get to hear the full theatrical version.

  ‘That’s rubbish and you know it,’ I said, still itching to get back to my phone. ‘I presume I lost my keys and you had to let me in.’

  ‘No, Frankie, it was far more dramatic than that,’ Damian said, pulling on jeans and a t-shirt.

  I could feel myself burning up with fury. He was enjoying this too much.

  ‘I was woken up by the doorbell, yes, but it wasn’t you. No, it was a very nice man who drives for the taxi firm. He asked me if I would come and remove the unconscious woman from the back of his car before he dropped you outside the local hospital.’

  ‘Unconscious?’ I stared at Damian. But I knew he was speaking the truth. Before the kids came along I would often wander off on a night out and he wouldn’t see me until the next morning. The next day I would crawl into our flat looking like a waif and stray, feeling like hell with a mouth full of things I wanted to say but unable to release them. Then a few days later I would mumble a half apology. It had been years since the last time. The horrific thing was I had no idea of anything after the free drinks had ended last night, and that would have been at around 9 p.m.. So, I had lost a whole six hours. But I didn’t dare tell Damian that.

  ‘I was just tired, Damian. I had finished a week in a brand new job that’s bloody hard. I passed out in the taxi. Big deal.’

  Damian ruffled his hair dry with a towel. ‘You need to get help, Frankie. Not for the drink, the drink is just the cover up. For what’s really going on inside. You need to talk to someone about Kiefer. And about the other person who died that night.’

  ‘Don’t you dare…’ I shouted, but I couldn’t even finish the sentence.

  Damian dropped the towel by his side, pulled his lips together and looked at me solemnly.

  ‘It’s been twenty years, Frankie. Why do I feel as though there is so much you need to say yet you won’t say it?’

  I ignored Damian’s attempt to dig into my past. He rarely asked about that night. Except when things like this happened and he began to doubt me all over again.

  ‘I’ve done my therapy,’ I said.

  He stood the end of the bed and looked at me gravely. ‘I’ll take Maddox to the park for a bit while you take Pixie to her class.’

  Damian pulled a sweater from his wardrobe and headed out of the bedroom.

  I hadn’t noticed the tears that were streaming down my face to start with and then my whole body was shaking with anger as I curled up into a ball under the covers.

  12

  Now

  Pixie waved at me from the middle of the room, looking self-conscious in her leggings and t-shirt. I cursed myself again for not having the leotard at home ready for her. I knew she was nervous. I gave her a wave back that was probably too enthusiastic but I wanted her to feel loved and that I had her back. Once I could see she had settled into a group with her teacher I took my phone out and brought up the message again. I hated being that mum who sat there with her phone, but I hadn’t been able to stop looking at it since this morning. After I had finally dragged myself from under the covers to the bathroom, I had sat on the toilet seat and stared at the message before getting in the shower.

  Hope you enjoyed yourself last night

  That was it. No sign off or indication of who sent it. I had been thinking of how to reply all morning. Before I hesitated any longer, I typed out the words:

  Sorry, did we meet last night?

  I hit send. I didn’t want to appear rude, as my memory of the evening was pretty shady as it was. If this was someone I met in the pub or after the pub then I need to know what I did and how they got my number.

  Pixie came running over half an hour later for a drink from her rucksack.

  ‘Well done, Pixie,’ I told her. ‘You’re doing really well.’

  She gave me a big grin and skipped back over to the floor where she immersed herself in a circle of girls roughly her age.

  I was distracted once more by my phone. As I watched the seconds tick by with no reply I started to get fidgety. My hangover had come on thick and fast. The pint of water I drank before I left was not enough to shift the headache that was making my head feel fuzzy.

  My phone pinged. I looked down and saw a message from Damian.

  Hope her first lesson is going well. And that your head hurts

  It was a sign that he had forgiven me, at least.

  Pixie and I walked hand in hand to the café on the high street after her lesson, and I watched her indulge in a crazily high calorie treat. She offered me some and I gladly received it; the sugar would help my hangover.

  The reply came just after I had taken a bite of the cake off the top of the freak shake.

  You know me better than you think you do.

  The cake in my mouth now felt too sickly sweet and I forced myself to swallow.

  ‘I’m just going to get a glass of water, baby, want one?’

  Pixie shook her head but I poured out two glasses of water from the jug at the counter and headed back to the table, all the time aware of my stomach growling. I hadn’t eaten enough today and I felt sick.

  My phone ringing startled me.

  I looked down and saw ‘Mum’ on the screen. In a mixture of relief and anxiety at the prospect of answering I pressed the green button, wishing I could just feel one static emotion when it came to my family. I was always longing to be home, to be somewhere familiar, only to arrive and to feel angst fuelled with shame, and then a longing to be somewhere else, but I never knew exactly where.

  ‘Hi, Mum,’ I said, monotone.

  ‘Hiya, love.’ Mum spoke slowly and softly, the drugs that she has been on for years still slurring her speech.

  ‘You ok?’

  ‘Yep, everything is fine. I wondered if you were popping in today, your dad was asking after you.’

  Mum couldn’t say it herself, that she longed to see me, that she missed me. Instead, Dad, who had the onset of dementia, was use
d as a ploy to get me there. Just to check that she still had one child who was living and breathing.

  ‘Yes Mum. I’ll see you soon.’

  Half an hour later Pixie and I arrived at the semi-detached house I had spent my childhood in and the nostalgia was palpable. I often questioned myself: after it all happened, why didn’t I just pack up and move away? But I busied myself with finishing college and then the local university and before I knew it, I had met Damian. I often wondered what would have happened if I had left. How different my life would be now.

  I walked through the door and looked at the faded red carpet my parents had had since the day we moved in when Kiefer was just tall enough to reach the door handles and I was still crawling about in nappies. I wiped my feet on the mat and walked along the brown runner in the hallway. Mum greeted me with her usual pat on my arm.

  On the wall to my right was the photograph of Kiefer and I from our primary school days. We were all goofy, gappy teeth, starched white shirts and shiny blue blazers. My hair was pulled into tight neat plaits, Kiefer’s was slicked to one side, our small round faces were pressed against one another. I stole a moment’s glance as I always did, and felt my eyes well up with tears for a second at the sight of the two us. So innocent. So unaware.

  We headed into the lounge. Pixie had run ahead and was already perched on Dad’s knee. His face was illuminated with one of his golden smiles and my heart sank at the injustice of it all. I walked past Mum, who was fluffing up the already perfect cushions, and planted a firm kiss on Dad’s cheek. He slowly turned his attention from Pixie to me.

  ‘Here she is.’ His smile didn’t fade. It was strange how Dad’s interest in me had piqued as his illness took over. He was never the sort of dad to show me much attention as a kid, but now, with the dementia slowly taking over his mind, he seemed to look at me with the joy and intrigue that one had for a baby.

  ‘Hiya, Dad.’ The sadness pressed against my chest. ‘Have you had your lunch?’ I motioned to an empty plate.

  ‘Where’s Kiefer then?’ Dad looked at Mum with concern etched across his face.

  ‘No, he had a flapjack. Do you want a flapjack, love?’ Mum came up behind me. I noticed how she ignored Dad’s question. It wouldn’t matter if we sat and explained it all to him, he would be asking the same thing again tomorrow, she would say.

  My mind was cast back to the sickly sweet ‘freak shake’ and the text messages on my phone from the unidentified number and I felt my stomach swirling. ‘Er, no thanks, Mum.’

  Mum turned to Pixie.

  ‘And she can’t have one either,’ I said. ‘Tell Nana and Grandad what you just had in the café.’

  Pixie began describing the concoction and I sat down on the sofa opposite them and listened to her enthusiastic description coupled with Dad’s cooing and ahhing.

  ‘Is it nice out there today?’ Mum looked absently towards the window.

  ‘It’s not too bad.’ I sat back and stroked the fabric of the sofa.

  ‘Going to start getting cold again soon, once the clocks go back,’ Mum said with obvious deliberation. Her obsession with openly discussing this time of year far outweighed mine. I remained silent in the hope she would let the subject slip away, but I knew she wouldn’t. She had that faraway look in her eye as though she were right there again. ‘I still don’t know why they have to change the clocks like that.’ I wonder if she knew she was repeating herself, or if after twenty years it was inbuilt and there was nothing she could do but keep churning out the same words on a loop.

  I wondered if she would ask me about my job that I’d been in for a week. Of course, I knew by now these conversations would never happen, but I waited for them all the same.

  ‘My job’s going well, Mum.’

  ‘Well, you always were a clever girl. Cleverer than me,’ Mum said dreamily, and I thought about the antidepressants and how much they had changed her.

  I didn’t have the patience to wish for more from her. I could feel the hangover shaping into something impenetrable and the only thing that would see it off was a bath and an early night.

  Half an hour later I made our excuses and told Pixie it was time to go home.

  I scooped up our coats and my bag, kissed Dad on the forehead and herded Pixie to the door.

  ‘See you soon, Mum.’ Mum followed us and I embraced her for a second.

  ‘Yes, love. See you again. Take care. You’ll have to tell me all about your new job next time. Don’t work too hard.’

  ‘Yes, Mum.’

  I walked down the path to the car and felt the usual chasm of sadness open up within me.

  9 December 1998

  I feel most inclined to write this journal when I have had my counselling. It’s the only time the feelings surface enough for me to need to write anything. It’s as though the counsellor has got a stick and stirred it about in a pond and dredged up all the muck and debris from the bottom, I could wait until it settles again or I can pick it all out and put it in this journal. To wait until it settles takes too long, sometimes days, and I walk around in a fuzzy haze with a film of anger and resentment, so I’ve started writing things down straight away. Because this therapy is the thing that everyone has told me I must have or I couldn’t possibly get over the fact that you died within an inch of my face. I will forever carry the grief that I was in the car when we crashed, trapped with you for over half an hour until the fire service could get to us. I guess the therapy is working. I couldn’t speak those words before, let alone write them down.

  I can begin to talk about it but it doesn’t make me feel less angry. It doesn’t stop the hurt or the fact that I’m here but you’re not.

  13

  Now

  Damian had made dinner. It unnerved me at first, I couldn’t remember the last time he cooked anything. My hangover had reached peak state. He looked sheepishly at me when I arrived in the kitchen, as though it was he who had behaved outrageously last night. It had been a while since we had been here, him creating something to smooth over the mess from the night before. I remembered when I would do crazy stuff when we first got together. I would sidle off somewhere for an afternoon beer with some of the gang who still knocked around, trying desperately to keep alive something that died the night Kiefer did. I would roll in at 3 a.m., a whole fourteen hours later. Perhaps Damian thought we were in danger of sliding down that slippery path again.

  Food was the unspoken message; a home cooked meal in return for some stability from me.

  ‘Smells good,’ I said as I approached Damian’s side at the hob.

  Maddox was stretched out on the sofa in the kitchen watching something on the iPad. ‘Thought you might need some carbs to soak up all that alcohol.’

  ‘I’m fine,’ I lied, knowing that all I wanted to do was collapse upstairs in a dark room. But I couldn’t let my family see what last night had done to me. I was struggling to remember and that was the scary thing. I got too drunk, too drunk to remember the second part of the night and how I got home. And, most alarmingly, whom I had given my number to.

  ‘It was just a few drinks after work, to celebrate my first week in the job.’

  ‘Well, a spot of spag bol will sort you out.’ Damian stirred and I watched him as he did, the smell of the sauce mingled with the scent of fresh linen coming off his clothes. I could see he was wearing a clean t-shirt, not the one he had been wearing that morning. I wondered if he had changed for me or if Maddox had spilt something on him.

  ‘How’s Maddox?’ I motioned over to the stationary body on the sofa fully absorbed in the screen.

  ‘Yep. All good. He went over to Cody’s house this afternoon for a couple of hours.’

  ‘Oh, right,’ I said, alarmed by the news even though Cody only lived two doors down.

  ‘Yes, I had to get this proposal together, Craig has found me a manufacturer interested in designing the app, without me putting in any capital. I would earn back on a rising scale, as the app makes money.’

&
nbsp; ‘Oh, wow.’

  ‘Yep, pretty good, isn’t it.’

  ‘So, you stayed here to do that?’

  ‘Yep. We were just coming back from the park and saw Harriet. She asked if Maddox wanted to come over and so I thought great, gives me a bit of time to prepare for the meeting and make some dinner. So, grab a pew, it’s ready in ten.’

  Everything about the situation was ringing alarm bells. Damian’s clean appearance, the smell of a fresh meal cooking on the stove, and Damian talking about his project so animatedly whilst rushing through the information about Maddox’s play date.

  But then I felt my head start to pound and I stopped overthinking.

  I sat myself down at the island in the kitchen. Damian produced a bottle of red wine and placed it near to me. He took out two glasses.

  ‘Don’t suppose you’ll be wanting one of these, or is time for a hair of the dog?’

  I couldn’t decide if I detected a hint of malice in Damian’s tone.

  ‘Kids!’ Damian shouted without waiting for my response. He put my bowl of spaghetti in front of me and nudged a bowl of grated parmesan my way.

  The kids gathered round without needing a second or third call, and I really started to feel as though I was in a trippy dream.

  Damian poured out half a glass of red wine and handed it to me,

  ‘Here’s to your first successful week at work. One can’t hurt, can it, Frank?’ Damian held my gaze as he raised his own glass to me. It was something we always did, always eye contact when we toasted with a drink. I held his gaze for as long as it took for our glasses to clink then I busied myself with cutting up Maddox’s spaghetti. I was acutely aware that Damian’s eyes were on me and that his overall demeanour had shifted, as though there was some sort of power trip going on.