Look What You Made Me Do

by Nikki Smith

  ‘Who had these out last?’ I ask.

  ‘I was doing colouring,’ Livvi says. I hand her the book and pens and wave the teddy at Grace.

  ‘This must be yours, then?’ It doesn’t look familiar, but the girls have so many soft toys stuffed into boxes in there that I can’t remember every single one.

  She shakes her head.

  ‘No? So, neither of you are claiming it? I’m pretty sure it’s not mine.’ I can’t hide the sarcasm in my voice as I start to lose my temper, and I can see the girls staring at me hesitantly, aware this is a situation where, if they say or do the wrong thing, I’m likely to explode. The pain that has been sitting in my head, waiting patiently, reaches its fingers around my brain and begins to squeeze, and I screw up my eyes in agony.

  Both girls remain silent. ‘It really doesn’t have an owner?’ I shout. ‘Well, it can go to the charity shop, then.’ The small black eyes in the teddy bear’s face stare back at me, a tartan ribbon tied neatly in a bow round its neck. It’s heavier than I expect. I look at it more closely, running my fingers across its nose, feeling the shape of the plastic. Is it plastic? I tap it. It’s not plastic. It’s glass. And under my fingertip it feels smooth, a perfect hemisphere. I squint at it. Although I thought it was black, it’s not completely opaque; I can see a miniature version of my face reflected in it.

  I turn it over in my hands, looking at a small gap in the seam of its fur, and put my finger into the space. There’s a familiar ripping sound as the Velcro pulls apart. I expect to see stuffing underneath, but instead I’m looking at a grey metal solid panel. My headache is now so bad that I have to sit down on the sofa as a series of flashing black-and-white dots appear on the outer edges of my vision. I try to take a couple of deep breaths. I think I’m getting a migraine. It’s the first time I’ve had one for years.

  ‘Livvi, can you get me a glass of water, please? And Grace, can you bring me that packet of ibuprofen that’s in the kitchen drawer?’ They slink off, relieved they can no longer hear the anger in my voice. I look at the teddy. There’s a small slit in the middle of the metal panel in its back. I stare at it, a realisation of what I’m holding in my hands slowly dawning.

  I stand up, my legs wobbly, ignoring Grace as she holds out a blister pack of tablets, and walk through our utility room to the back door, holding the bear by one ear. I don’t bother to stop and put my shoes on as I take it outside, feeling the heat of the paving stones under my bare feet, dumping the lump of metal and fur in the black dustbin.

  I run back inside and lock the door behind me, jamming the bolt across the top of the frame. I call Paul, but his phone goes to voicemail so I leave a message telling him he needs to come home immediately. Someone has been in our house. Watching us.

  FRIDAY

  Caroline

  I wake up in bed with a jolt, frantically searching the duvet cover for anything moving in front of me, my breathing only slowing once I’ve convinced myself I can’t see anything on the white cotton. I glance at my alarm clock. He must have already left for work and not woken me. Or maybe he’s downstairs, waiting to see what I’ll do when I get up. He’s watched every move I’ve made these past few days, but hasn’t asked me to go around to their house again. The anticipation is like stretching an elastic band – I know it will only extend so far before it snaps. He won’t even let me go to work; taking my car keys, mobile and the home phone with him when he leaves in the morning, saying he’ll call the office to let Alice know I won’t be in. The bruise across my cheekbone from where I fell is fading, but it’s still livid enough to suggest our perfect lives aren’t as perfect as they seem.

  He’d assumed what he’d done would break me. It almost had. I flinch whenever anything touches my skin and I think I must have damaged the nerve under one of my eyes when my face hit the carpet as it hasn’t stopped flickering. I feel it constantly, like the flutter of an insect’s wings, but when I stand in front of a mirror it’s barely noticeable. He smiles when he sees it, and I feel betrayed by own body, my distress revealing itself without permission.

  I think of Adam lying on a beach, the sand shifting beneath him to fit the outline of his body, and I remember what’s under his mattress. These two things have got me through the past week. Rob must have picked up all the crickets whilst I’d been passed out on the floor. When I’d woken up, he hadn’t mentioned it, like so many other incidents that happen in our house and are then never spoken about again, the horror sinking into the floors and walls, contaminating them. I’d wondered whether I’d imagined the whole thing, unable to stop myself flinching each time I thought I’d heard something rustle. It had only been when I’d gone to bed last night and had moved my alarm clock to find an insect lying underneath it that I’d been certain it had really happened. I hadn’t been able to see it was dead without my contact lenses in, and had held my breath, swallowing a scream, narrowing my eyes until they could focus enough to see the tiny desiccated body, one of its wings detached. I’d lowered my clock back down on top of it and had pushed it very slowly over to the other side of my bedside table. Rob had been lying with his back to me, oblivious to the shudder that ran involuntarily across my skin.

  I get up, squinting as I go into the bathroom to put my contact lenses in before pulling on the same pair of shorts and T-shirt I’d left on the end of the bed last night. I hesitate at the top of the stairs, listening intently, but can’t hear him. I come down slowly, one step at a time, but when I reach the bottom there’s only a heavy silence. His study door is open; the room is empty and he’s not in the kitchen. His car isn’t in the drive. He’s gone.

  After so many hours of having him near me, my body refuses to relax. I take deep breaths and lower my shoulders as I make myself a cup of tea, staring out of the window into the early sunshine where the trees at one side of our garden cast dark shadows across the lawn. Holding my cup in one hand I open the back door, breathing in the fresh air. I can feel the heat already; it remains in the earth overnight, warming it like a blanket. He’d run the mower over the grass yesterday evening, and I can smell the leafy green scent that’s a chemical reaction released by the grass as a result of being in distress. I walk down to my greenhouse, stopping on the path to bend down and touch the lawn, the short blades tougher under my fingers than I’d expected. People underestimate grass. It’s one of the most resilient plants in the garden and one of the most unappreciated. Continuously chopped down it always regenerates, surviving even in the harshest conditions.

  I slide open the door of my greenhouse, the aluminium frame squeaking in protest. The air in here is even warmer and I inhale the distinctive scent of tomato plants and compost. I’ve stacked up the few canes that aren’t being utilised in a growbag in one corner, leaning them against one of the panes of glass, and I watch now as a small spider climbs across its web from one stick to another, the strands heavy with moisture. I run my hand across the wooden counter, brushing dust and pieces of dry earth onto the ground between the slats, realising for the first time in days that my eye is no longer twitching. I only keep essential items in here, so if he looks inside, he won’t see I’ve made any kind of an effort. There’s a rusty trowel next to a black plastic tray in which I’ve planted radish seeds and a few flowerpots, the various sizes all stacked inside one another like Russian dolls. In the top one are the white labels that I write on in pencil each year to remind me what I’ve planted when the pot resembles nothing but a pile of earth. I pull one out. I can still see the faded grey letters. Pak Choi. Something I’d tried to grow for the first time last year, but probably won’t again; it has a tendency to bolt. It’s another reason he lets me come down here – I tell him I’m saving money by growing our own vegetables. I get a tissue out of my pocket and lick it – wiping it on the narrow stick to remove any trace of the letters until it’s a blank surface again; the potential to be anything, and a flicker of excitement runs through me.

  I bend down under the counter to look at the one small patch of ba
re soil on the ground beneath. It’s only shallow – not deep enough to cultivate carrots or tomatoes. I’d attempted to grow them the first year we moved in, when I knew nothing about gardening. I couldn’t understand why they didn’t thrive until Dad told me their roots needed more space. I dig down a few inches. The soil is loose and dry as it hasn’t had anything in it for months and is easy to move with my hands. I stop when my fingertips touch plastic and pull out a small box, wiping my hands on my shorts until the only bit of blackness that remains is a narrow line underneath my nails.

  I open the lid and carefully take out a tiny pair of pink bootees. It’s the only thing of hers I still have, the only thing I’d had a chance to buy. I’d lost her at six weeks, just after I’d told him I was pregnant. He hadn’t been pleased, like he had when I’d told him about Adam. That first time he’d thought having a baby at twenty would tie me closer to him, make it harder for me to leave. It had in many ways, but having a son had changed our relationship in a way he hadn’t expected. I had developed a bond with my baby that was stronger than the one I had with my husband, and Rob knew it. Just as he knew another child would be an additional drain on his finances and something that would take my already divided attention even further away from him.

  I’ll never know if he caused it or whether it would have happened anyway. He’d muttered that it must have been something I’d eaten when he’d found me on the bathroom floor that morning, but we’d both had the same meal the night before. I’d asked him to call a doctor but he’d ignored me, lifting me back into bed, tucking the duvet in tightly around me, holding me in place. He’d stroked my damp hair and told me I mustn’t worry, that he’d look after me. That perhaps it was a virus I’d caught off Adam. I’d seen him frown as I’d moaned in pain, grabbing his hand. He’d stared into my eyes, searching for something, handing me tissues each time I’d been violently sick. Looking back, I’m still convinced his concern had been genuine. I’m just not sure it was for me.

  I touch the woollen bootees with my fingertips. I don’t know if she actually had been a girl, but that’s how I’d imagined her on the day I’d found out. I’d always wanted a little girl. A baby sister for Adam. Someone whose hair I could tie up in those pretty clips I’d seen Jo use on Livvi a couple of years ago. Seeing how Rob is with her opens up a series of what ifs, like looking at a mirror in a mirror, infinite possibilities. Perhaps he would have been different if I hadn’t lost her. Perhaps we could have been a normal family. I can torture myself with the lives I never had. As I put the tiny shoes back into their box, I tell myself it had been better this way. It had taken all my energy to save Adam. I only need to look at what’s under the mattress in the spare room to know I wouldn’t have been able to save her too.

  He’d told me we could try again but I’d come home from dropping Adam at school a few months later to find a letter from the local surgery tucked into the back pocket of his jeans confirming the tests following his vasectomy showed he was sterile. I’d waited for him to tell me but had realised after a while he never would. He’d stopped looking me in the eyes, had spent more and more time in the office, and had begun a competition with his own son for my affection, one that he’d lost before he’d even started.

  I lower the box back into the small hole in the soil and cover it up with parched earth. I’m not sure if I’ll be coming in here to dig it up again. As soon as I’ve heard from Adam once more, I can do what needs to be done.

  I’ve realised appearances are so deceptive. I used to want to be one of those people who seem as if they’re having the best time, the ones who post the most photos on Facebook with their friends, so many different friends, always laughing. The ones I used to see on the train. They used to make me feel inadequate, as if I had something missing. Not an arm or a leg but something they were born with that I could never have; an innate sense of how to be. The ones who have the largest number of contacts on their phone. The ones who are always the centre of attention at a party, the ones who drink the most and shine the brightest. The ones everyone else thinks they want to be. And I could have been one of them. You would have been my pass in. But now I don’t want to be them at all. I just want you to leave me alone but I think it’s too late. You’re not going to stop. And I can’t make you. I’ve tried telling you I don’t want a lift anymore but you still insist on picking me up. Pulling up beside me in the car and waiting for me to get in. And now I understand that those people I used to envy are actually the ones we should watch the most. They have the furthest to fall and the ground is always so much harder when they do.

  SATURDAY

  Jo

  ‘I’m taking the girls out to the supermarket,’ Paul says. I’m sitting eating breakfast on the patio and he puts a cup of coffee down on a mat on the small wicker table next to my seat. ‘Give you a bit of time to yourself.’

  I nod briefly but keep my eyes on my laptop, ignoring him. His gesture is designed to placate me but I can’t hide the fact that I’m still furious.

  He hovers, waiting for me to respond, but I say nothing, not wanting to start a conversation in case it ends up in an argument, my guilt and fear metamorphosing into insults that will leave me feeling worse than I did before. The girls flit in and out of the kitchen and I don’t want them as witnesses while we shout at each other, feeling obliged to pick a side.

  ‘Fine. See you later.’ He leans down to kiss me but I turn my head away before he can reach my cheek, leaving the feel of his dry lips on the side of my forehead. He hesitates briefly, almost long enough for my outer layer of anger to thaw, struck by a sudden fear over what is happening to us, before he walks away and the moment vanishes. Livvi runs over to me and throws her arms round my neck to say goodbye, telling me she’ll make sure she puts some dark chocolate digestives in the trolley as she knows they’re my favourite. I’m relieved I’ve got my sunglasses on so she can’t see my eyes well up.

  I hear the door shut and the noise of the car reversing over the gravel before I get up and walk into the kitchen, looking out of the window to check they’ve gone. Anna’s car is still in her drive; I can’t see any signs of movement as I stare at her house across the road. Buddy whines, annoyed that he’s been left here, but I need to do this first so he’ll have to wait for me to walk him.

  Paul had come home on Thursday night to find me awake in bed with the girls asleep beside me. He’d said his meeting with a new client had ended up with him going on for a few drinks and he hadn’t checked his phone to see my frantic messages until he was on his way back. The relief as I’d heard his key in the door had quickly been replaced by a fury that had filled my insides and whose embers were still burning two days later. I’d told him to sleep downstairs in the snug; the scent of stale beer and perspiration mixed with something I couldn’t quite put my finger on emanating from his skin.

  I’d showed him the teddy the next morning whilst the girls were cleaning their teeth before we left for school. We’d stood outside the back door as he’d turned it over in his hands, ignoring the rancid smell on its fur from being in the dustbin overnight. He’d insisted he recognised it, that Livvi had bought it from the local charity shop a few months ago, something she’d paid for with her pocket money. He hadn’t realised it was a camera. If that’s even what it was. I’d told him Livvi had denied it was hers and he’d laughed, telling me she had so many soft toys in the snug he wasn’t surprised she couldn’t remember all of them. He’d said I was overreacting; that even if it had ever been a recording device, it probably didn’t work and there was no SD card in it now, so it clearly wasn’t being used.

  I’d almost believed him, but something in his eyes as he’d dumped it back into the dustbin had made me feel as if I had been looking at a reflection of myself, the mirror image of someone trying desperately to hide something. A pair of icy hands had wrapped themselves round my heart. I hadn’t been overreacting. Livvi hadn’t recognised it and she always remembers everything she’s bought in that shop. So many toys that h
ave seen better days with bits hanging off them that she’s had to soak in Milton overnight before being allowed to play with them. This one had looked brand new before I’d thrown it away.

  I walk outside, over the patio across the grass to his office; unlocking the door with the spare key. The bottom sticks as I pull it open, the wood has warped in the heat. It’s quiet once I get inside, the faint hum of the traffic from the road and the birds are silenced when I push the door shut behind me. I can see our house from the small window above his desk. I hope he’ll be out shopping long enough for me to do what I need to. I walk past the shelves that he’s screwed to the wall; Dad’s boxes sitting amongst his files. I need to sort them out but I can’t face doing it at the moment. I open Paul’s laptop, the screensaver springing into life; a photo of us all in a restaurant in France a couple of years ago, experiencing a stab of anguish. It had been the last holiday when we’d been blissfully unaware of the seriousness of Dad’s cancer.

  The box asking for a password flashes, and I have no idea what it is. I try our birthdays, Paul’s favourite football club and our wedding anniversary but the box remains red, refusing to let me in. I don’t know how many times it will allow me to guess, but it’s pointless to continue trying. I have no idea what it could be. I flick through the various papers lying on his desk and pinned to his noticeboard. Invoices to clients, various half-finished draft proposals, hand-drawn flowcharts full of computer-related jargon that are all meaningless to me.