The Nothing Girl

by Jodi Taylor

  It was a lovely evening. They both, in their own ways, made me feel comfortable and at home. Andrew told me funny stories about his work. Tanya ordered us both gently around. I had a long bath and emerged in borrowed PJs and an enormous fluffy dressing gown. Andrew laughed and rolled up the sleeves for me. Tanya gave me some cream for my cheek after Andrew checked it wasn’t for ear canker. The food was fine. And no one shouted. We played Trivial Pursuit afterwards and Thomas helped me with the answers until, worn out with the day, I was sent to bed.

  I didn’t mean to listen, but as I left the bathroom, I heard Tanya say, ‘That may be true, but it is too late, Andrew. She is to divorce him.’

  ‘He’ll never let that happen, believe me.’

  ‘Do you think she knows that?’

  ‘Hard to say. She’s nowhere near as stupid as people think.’

  I passed silently down the hall to my bedroom.

  Tanya brought me tea the next morning. We ate a large, late breakfast and afterwards, Andrew settled down to do his accounts. Tanya emptied her briefcase on the table and muttered over its contents and I curled up with a book. Occasionally, one of us got up and made coffee. Classical music played quietly in the background. It was the most peaceful day I’d had for a very long time.

  At two o’clock, someone rang the bell. Tanya put her folder back in her briefcase and Andrew switched off his computer. He went to the door and came back with Russell.

  Tanya pointed to an armchair. ‘You will sit.’

  Wisely, he complied.

  ‘We will make coffee in the kitchen,’ she announced. ‘It will take about ten minutes. You may have two chances Russell, since you will certainly make a mess of your first apology.’

  ‘Apology?’

  ‘One down. Only one attempt left. Use it wisely.’ She and Andrew melted into the kitchen.

  ‘To listen at the serving hatch if they have any sense.’

  He looked at me. I looked back. The silence dragged on.

  For a long time he sat, twisting his hands and looking down at his feet. Just for once, he couldn’t think of anything to say. He’d stood and shouted at my aunt in the street. He’d been publicly slapped. Aunt Julia had accused him of hitting me. He really couldn’t think of anything to say.

  I couldn’t think of anything either. I remembered my shameful struggle to speak. There were no words to make this right. Where did we go from here?

  The minutes ticked away.

  Finally, he looked up and said, ‘Your cat bit me.’

  He held up a bandaged finger.

  Thomas’s snort was echoed in the kitchen.

  I didn’t dare laugh.

  ‘It throbs,’ he said, plaintively.

  ‘You’d better let me take a look,’ said Andrew coming in from the kitchen with mugs on a tray. ‘It might be infected.’

  ‘I expect it is,’ he said, gloomily. ‘That bloody cat hates me.’

  ‘Everyone hates you at the moment, mate,’ said Andrew. ‘Death by cat bite is nothing to what Tanya’s got in store for you.’

  ‘Do you hate me?’ he asked.

  I shook my head.

  ‘Well, you’re the only one that really matters. Everyone else will just have to get over it.’

  Tanya came in with the coffee and he stood, warily.

  ‘Thank you for looking after Jenny. Both of you.’

  To relieve the embarrassment, Andrew began to unwind the bandage. ‘Oh, yuk.’

  ‘What?’ said Russell, anxiously. ‘This is my painting hand.’

  ‘You haven’t painted in years so stop whining.’

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘That’s what we were doing … yesterday. Buying painty stuff.’

  ‘Really? Well, good for you, Russ. About time. Does that hurt?’

  ‘Ow. No,’ he said, unconvincingly.

  ‘Well it should do. You’re oozing.’

  Everyone craned their necks to look at Russell’s ooze.

  ‘I’ll clean it up for you and put a proper dressing on it. If it doesn’t get better go to the doctor.’

  Tanya poured the coffee.

  ‘I wish you’d come home, Jenny. Mrs Crisp won’t stop crying. Your bloody cat bit me when I wasn’t looking. Kevin wants to know whether to uproot some shrub or other, Marilyn keeps wandering around looking for you and Boxer … hasn’t worked out what’s going on yet, but he’ll be upset when he does. And Sharon’s made a cake. Please come home. Why are you crying? Now what have I done?’

  ‘For God’s sake, Russell,’ said Andrew. ‘Just shut up, will you.’

  ‘But …’

  ‘I’m sorry, Jenny, he doesn’t have a clue.’

  ‘But …’

  Tanya yanked Andrew back into the kitchen again. I remembered the way he’d lifted her hair …

  Now Russell really was caught between a rock and a hard place. They were obviously expecting him to kiss and make up, unaware of the terms of the agreement.

  ‘What will he do?’

  He crossed to the sofa and sat beside me, taking my hand. ‘You’re a great deal too good for me, wife.’

  I thought I’d help him out a little and rested my head on his shoulder. He put his other arm around me, gently lifted my chin, and kissed me softly on the lips. And who knows what would have happened next, but the telephone rang.

  He looked down with an expression I didn’t understand at all. ‘Saved by the bell, Jenny.’ Although which of us had been saved wasn’t really clear.

  After we’d drunk the coffee, he said to me, ‘I thought you might like to come back with me this afternoon and help me put my studio back together.’

  ‘You mean the poor girl can lug all those boxes up all those stairs while you arrange your paints in a pretty pattern.’

  ‘No, I meant what I said. You can help me lay it all out, set up my easel, put my paper away. That sort of thing.’

  I remembered him saying no one ever went into his studio. He was making a genuine effort.

  ‘Yes,’ I said, ‘I’d like that very much.’

  ‘I found your Vermeer book. It’s in your room.’

  Your room? I saw Andrew and Tanya exchange a tiny glance.

  ‘We will all return with Jenny and help Russell with his studio,’ announced Tanya. She threw him a challenging glare and he nodded. ‘And then we shall see what Jenny wants to do.’

  ‘You really don’t need me, do you?’ said Thomas. ‘It’s like having your own private Panzer Division.’

  Russell’s studio lay at the end of the other bit of the upstairs dogleg. It was empty. Swept clean. He’d painted it, along with the rest of the house, but he hadn’t bothered with the paint-splattered floor. The windows were bare. The walls were bare. The air was stale. He forced open a window and we all looked around.

  ‘Bleak,’ said Thomas.

  He wasn’t the only one who thought so. Andrew was staring around, his face tight. I guessed he’d been in here in happier times and this had come as a shock. For the first time he saw the full extent of the damage. As Russell went to step past him, Andrew gently rubbed his arm. Neither of them looked at the other. Neither spoke, but comfort was offered and accepted. I looked away, not wanting to intrude. When I looked back, they were about six feet apart.

  ‘Right,’ said Russell with a bit of an effort. ‘Andrew and I will bring everything up here. Tanya and Jenny will open the boxes. We’ll get it all out and then Tanya will tell us where to put it.’ However, he was grinning at her as he said it and she smiled back. Maybe she’d seen that moment too.

  Nobody trusted me with a Stanley knife, so Tanya slit and I unpacked. Andrew and Russell toiled up and down the stairs. Mrs Crisp brought us tea and cake.

  Actually, it was a lovely way to spend an afternoon. Russell and Andrew took an easel each and had a competition to see who could get his assembled first. When compared with pictures of the finished product, Russell’s was back to front and Andrew’s was inside out.

  ‘What is it with humans and flat-pa
ck?’ said Thomas. ‘ It says quite clearly to fit flange A to hinge B. How could they get it so wrong?’

  Tanya pushed them aside. She assembled; I passed her the bits as required. We had them both done in ten minutes. Andrew and Russell, their manhood affronted, sulked.

  Tanya and Russell laid out his paints, I stacked his canvases and Andrew laid his various sketchpads on a shelf, demanding to know why one man needed seventeen, eighteen, nineteen sketchpads.

  ‘I’m an artist,’ said Russell, loftily. ‘Ordinary people wouldn’t understand. Don’t knock yourself out stacking them neatly – I prefer them a bit battered.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘It’s not easy making the first marks in a pristine, virginal sketchbook. It sullies their perfection and I get hung up. So I knock them around a bit first. A friend of mine in college actually used to leave his out in the rain so they were all wrinkled and crinkled when he used them. He reckoned it worked wonders for his creativity.’

  I could see Andrew forming a sentence in which the words ‘pretentious’ and ‘pillock’ were going to play a large part so it was just as well that Mrs Crisp stuck her head around the door.

  Sadly, the news was not good. ‘Mrs Kingdom is here.’

  ‘Do you realise we’ve seen more of her in the last month than in the previous twenty years?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said, wearily.

  ‘Has she come to apologise?’

  ‘Doubt it.’

  ‘She said to tell you there was no rush. She knows you’re busy up here. When you have a moment, she just wants to check you’re recovered.’

  Russell nipped out a moment, returning to say, ‘I dare you to make her wait.’

  ‘For how long?’

  ‘Bet you can’t last fifteen minutes.’

  ‘Don’t do that, Russ. If she has to wait too long she’ll come up here herself. Do you want that?’

  ‘God, no. Jenny, get yourself down those stairs. Now. Chop chop.’

  ‘Aren’t you coming?’

  ‘Are you kidding? Now get down there and sacrifice yourself for the common good. Go!’

  I glared at him, which had about as much effect as liquid on a small floating bird’s back and hurried down the landing to the stairs. Oh, God, he was right. She was half way up the stairs, fumbling in her handbag. She looked up.

  ‘Oh, Jenny, there you are. You look much better.’

  I got as far as, ‘Hello, Aunt Ju–’ and my right foot slid out from underneath me and I crashed backwards. I tried to grab the banister and save myself, but I was travelling so fast I couldn’t get a grip and twisted my wrist. I caught a glimpse of Aunt Julia’s horrified face and then I was tumbling downstairs, hitting every last one of them with knees, elbows, hips: every bone in my body. The only thing I didn’t hit was my head so I was fully conscious for every single, painful moment of it. I finally crashed to a halt, half on and half off the bottom three stairs.

  Above me, I could hear Aunt Julia calling for help. Mrs Crisp and Sharon dashed out of the kitchen. Andrew and Russell ran along the landing.

  I rolled over and fell off the bottom three stairs. I could see people racing towards me from all directions. Tanya stopped at Aunt Julia who had run up to the landing and was now sitting on the top step, her face as white as the handkerchief clutched to her chest.

  ‘No, no,’ she said, hoarsely. ‘Please, see to Jenny. I’ll be all right. I just need a minute. See to Jenny.’

  Russell was there and he was pretty pale too. ‘Jenny? Can you hear me?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said faintly, because the fall had knocked all the wind out of me and breathing hurt. All my bones hurt. You really don’t want to fall down a long flight of uncarpeted wooden stairs.

  Andrew felt along my arms and legs. ‘It’s OK,’ he said. ‘I do this for dogs all the time.’ On his instructions, I wiggled fingers and feet, reassured him about my spine and pelvis, denied any injury to my head and told him he was holding up three fingers.

  ‘Can you get up?’

  ‘Not yet,’ I told him. ‘Give me a minute.’

  I closed my eyes and waited for the comfort of warm ginger biscuits to envelop me.

  ‘There. How’s that?’

  ‘Better, thank you.’

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘I slipped. Please just give me a minute.’

  Russell was gently brushing the hair off my forehead, his own face full of concern. ‘Just take it slowly, Jenny, there’s no rush. We’ll get you an ambulance.’

  I shook my head.

  ‘No arguments. That was a bad fall.’

  I shook my head again and whispered, ‘No, really … I’ll be fine … Nothing is broken.’

  Andrew said, ‘No, I think she’s right. Nothing seems to be broken and she hasn’t banged her head. But I’d get the doctor in just the same.’ He grinned. ‘He can take a look at your hand at the same time.’

  Tanya came down the stairs. ‘Russell, you and Andrew will lift Jenny very carefully onto the sofa and then come back for Mrs Kingdom.’

  I suddenly remembered Aunt Julia’s white, shocked face. ‘Is she all right?’

  ‘Yes, but she too needs a little time. Russell, while you do that I will ring for her doctor. I believe you said Dr Williams?’

  ‘Yes. Jenny, I’m going to lift you …’

  ‘No. I can walk.’

  ‘No you can’t.’

  ‘It hurts whether I … move or … not … so I … may as well … move.’

  ‘ That’s my girl. You’re a bit of a veteran, aren’t you? Do you realise there are whole regiments who’ve incurred fewer injuries than you have this week? ’

  I hobbled very painfully to the sofa where Mrs Crisp was waiting with pillows and blankets. A few minutes later, Aunt Julia was seated on the other, with a little more colour in her face, but still looking very shaken. I didn’t blame her. We smiled tentatively at each other.

  Mrs Crisp went off to make some tea.

  Tanya announced the doctor would be here within the hour.

  ‘Well, he knows the way. Do you think you’ll get family rates?’

  Tanya pulled off my shoes and covered me with a blanket. Slowly, the pain retreated although my ribs still felt as if my heart might burst through my chest. Russell sat beside me and held my hand. The house was very silent. I think everyone was in shock.

  ‘Well,’ said Russell, looking over to her, ‘I have to say I’m very glad you chose to visit us today, Julia.’

  She sat a little straighter. ‘If you mean, Russell, that it was fortunate for you that I was on hand to see for myself that it was an accident …’ Her voice failed.

  ‘Well, I have to admit, it did cross my mind.’

  Fortunately, Mrs Crisp appeared with tea and she gratefully accepted a cup.

  ‘When the doctor’s been, Mrs Kingdom, I think we should run you home,’ said Andrew. ‘I don’t think you should drive today. If you like, we can ring Mr Kingdom and he can meet you at your house.’

  ‘That’s most kind,’ she said, regarding him with rare approval. ‘But perhaps it would be easiest if Richard came here and picked me up.’

  ‘Of course,’ he said. ‘Don’t worry about your car. We’ll see to it.’

  Dr Williams arrived promptly. He examined me and, fortunately, seemed disinclined to take it too seriously.

  ‘You’ll have extensive bruising,’ he said. ‘Or soft tissue trauma as we call it these days. You’ll be stiff. You’ll ache. I’ll write a prescription for some painkillers. Take them because you will need them. I don’t know, Jenny. I don’t see you in fifteen years and then I never seem to be away from the place.’

  We all laughed. Like the last scene in Scooby Doo.

  ‘As for you, Mrs Kingdom, just take it easy for the rest of the day. And tomorrow too. Call me if you need anything.’

  He disappeared.

  Uncle Richard was so sweet I felt my eyes fill up. He said everything that was polite and non-controversial. He thanked
Russell for his care of Aunt Julia, gently patted my hand and wished me better soon, told Russell to ring if he could be of any assistance, and took an uncharacteristically quiet Aunt Julia away.

  We all drew breath.

  Russell took my hand again. ‘What do you want, sweetheart? Do you want me to help you upstairs or do you want to stay here for a bit? Shall we leave you in peace?

  ‘Yes, please.’

  They all went out. I waited, eyes closed, for five minutes after the door closed, just in case anyone felt the need to come back and check on me.

  ‘Have they gone?’

  ‘Yes, they’re outside in the yard, looking at Boxer. No one will come in.’

  I sat up painfully and even more painfully, reached down for my shoes. I turned them over. The left one was perfectly normal, smooth, and dry, but the right sole was dark and glistening with some unknown substance. I sniffed. I knew that smell. I’d smelt it all afternoon as Russell unpacked his stuff.

  Linseed oil.

  ‘Thomas, can you …?’

  He was already at the head of the stairs. ‘ No. Nothing here. A slight smear but that could easily have come off your sole. Did you pick it up in the studio?’

  ‘No.’

  He stood beside me as I pulled a tissue from my pocket and carefully wiped every single trace of oil from the sole of my shoe.

  ‘We’re in trouble, aren’t we?’

  ‘Oh yes.’

  The next day the police turned up.

  Chapter Eleven

  I was reading quietly on the sofa and Thomas was watching one of those hospital dramas where everyone is having inappropriate sex with everyone else.

  Mrs Crisp slipped into the room.

  ‘It’s the police, Mrs Checkland.’

  My heart knocked painfully against my already battered ribs and I skidded into full-blown panic.

  ‘Where?’

  ‘Just pulling up in the yard.’

  Someone knocked at the back door.

  I stared, paralysed with fright.

  This time last week I would have thought – Marilyn! Now I wondered if Aunt Julia had been making mischief.

  ‘What if she has?’ said Thomas calmly. ‘ Falling down stairs is not an indictable offence, especially if carried out in the privacy of one’s own home. It’s probably only about Marilyn again. ’