The Memory of Midnight

by Pamela Hartshorne

  Tess’s lips curled with self-loathing as she mimicked herself.

  She had tried to be normal, to go out and make friends, but Martin hadn’t liked that either. Wasn’t he enough for her? He would ring every few minutes, or come home unexpectedly, and if she wasn’t there, he would find a way to punish her. Sometimes he would be furiously angry, sometimes she would be subjected to an icy silence, or he would take out his displeasure on someone else – her mother if she rang, or some unfortunate person who happened to call at the door.

  ‘The thing was, Martin could be lovely,’ she tried to explain, risking a glance at Luke, wondering why she was blurting out her whole sorry story to him of all people. His brows were drawn together and his mouth was bracketed by two grim lines. Did he think she had been pathetic? Pitiful? Or just sad? Was he shaking his head inwardly at how easily the girl she had been had let herself be vanquished?

  It shouldn’t matter to her now, but it did.

  Tess had never told anyone all this before. The words had been dammed up inside her, firmly under control. She had known that the slightest breach would let the whole humiliating story burst out in an unstoppable torrent, and so it had proved. Now that she’d started, she had to tell it all.

  ‘Sometimes he’d come home with flowers, or insist on taking me out to dinner so that I didn’t have to cook. He’d be charming and affectionate. He’d buy me presents and tell me how much he loved me, how much he needed me. Just when I’d decided I couldn’t bear it any more, he would disarm me. It was as if he knew just how far he could push me before I’d break.

  ‘I never had any idea what kind of mood he would be in when he came through the door, and he could switch so suddenly . . .’

  She faltered, remembering how eggshell thin the atmosphere had been. The slightest lapse of attention was liable to fracture it. It had been exhausting having to concentrate so hard on not making a mistake. A careless word, a thoughtless gesture, could crush the surface calm like a boot crunching through a rime of ice on a winter puddle. Tess had learnt to move slowly, carefully.

  ‘It sounds crap,’ said Luke bluntly. ‘Why didn’t you leave him?’

  How could someone like Luke understand? Tess took another sip and felt the alcohol burn her throat before it settled, warm and steadying, in her stomach.

  ‘I told myself we just needed time to get used to being married. I thought it would be different when we had a family. I had a miscarriage quite early on and it took me a long time to get over that. I couldn’t think about anything, let alone getting to grips with my marriage.

  ‘When Oscar was born, I hoped things would get better, and for a while they did. But the baby took up too much of my attention, and toddlers and immaculate houses don’t mix well. As soon as Martin realized Oscar wasn’t one of those beautiful, smiley, clean babies you see on the ads, he lost interest. He expected me to have put Oscar to bed and be waiting for him when he came home, looking perfectly groomed with a perfectly cooked meal simmering on the stove.’

  Luke coughed in the middle of swallowing brandy. ‘You’re kidding?’

  Flushing, Tess shook her head. ‘No. I tried, but I couldn’t do it. No one could. You can’t just put a baby away when it’s not convenient.’

  ‘So how did Martin deal with that?’ Luke said Martin’s name as if it tasted unpleasant.

  ‘He hired a nanny to take care of Oscar. He didn’t even consult me.’ Tess’s lips thinned with remembered outrage. ‘The woman just turned up on the doorstep one morning.

  ‘It’s the only time I ever stood up to Martin,’ she said. ‘I sent her away and I told him that I was going to look after my baby myself.’

  ‘I don’t suppose he liked that very much.’

  ‘He was never closer to striking me. I could see in his face how much he wanted to, but then he did the kind of volte-face he specialized in. One moment his eyes were blank with rage; the next he was all smiles and telling me what a good mother I was, how he had only wanted me to have some help as he hated seeing me so tired and how much he loved me.’

  Luke snorted, unimpressed.

  ‘The worst thing is how reasonable he made everything sound. It was so easy to think that I was the one being selfish and silly for rejecting help when he was so understanding and generous.’

  There was a pause. Tess rested the glass on the arm of the sofa and watched as she turned it slowly between her fingers. Afraid that she might read contempt in his face, she didn’t look at Luke, but when he broke the silence she couldn’t hear any judgement in his voice.

  ‘So what made you leave in the end?’

  ‘Oscar.’ Her throat constricted again at the thought of her son. ‘He was such a quiet little boy, so good. It was all wrong, but I kept letting it go. And then one day we were in the kitchen baking those little cakes with rice krispies and chocolate. Oscar liked to help me cook. He was standing on a chair, covered in chocolate, and we were laughing at something when we heard Martin’s car in the drive. He’d said he was going to Birmingham for the day, but he used to try and catch me out like that. He’d come home at unexpected times, just to check that I was where I said I was.’

  ‘Did he object to the mess?’ asked Luke when she paused, and Tess shook her head.

  ‘There was no mess. As soon as he heard the car, Oscar’s face just went blank. He scrambled down from the chair, went over to the sink and rubbed a cloth over his face and hands without being told, and then he ran up to his room. And I . . .’ Tess faltered, swallowed. ‘I didn’t follow him,’ she said. ‘I hid the bowl and wiped the table and by the time Martin got in, the kitchen was immaculate.’

  Her face burned, and she couldn’t raise her eyes from the glass. ‘I was so ashamed that I let that happen,’ she said, her voice low and bitter. ‘Ashamed that I’d let my little boy grow up afraid to laugh and be messy. And that’s when I decided to leave.’

  There. He’d heard the worst. Tess risked a glance at Luke, who was still sitting with a set, stern face. She half-expected him to rise and point at her in disgust, to accuse her of being the worst of mothers, but he didn’t. He just looked back at her with eyes that were warm with sympathy and concern.

  ‘I’m sorry, Tess.’

  Sorry? Was that it? Twisting her fingers in her lap, Tess stared at him in disbelief. Hadn’t he been listening? Why wasn’t he telling her how pathetic she had been, how useless? What a failure she was?

  ‘It was my own fault,’ she insisted in case he had misunderstood. ‘I put Oscar through that because I was too much of a coward to stand up to Martin.’

  ‘And you found the courage to leave.’ Luke leant forward and covered her tangled fingers with one warm palm. ‘You did your best in a difficult situation, and now you’re doing better. None of us can do more than that.’

  Tess swallowed hard. She had been so sure that he would despise her as much as she despised herself. But when she tested her feelings, cautiously at first, she realized that she didn’t feel as bad as she usually did remembering that time. It was like the aftermath of a bad bout of food poisoning: she felt weak and a bit wobbly, but relieved to have got the turmoil and humiliation out of her system.

  Very conscious of Luke’s fingers covering hers, Tess tugged her hand free and Luke sat back. Her skin felt warm where his had touched it. She cleared her throat.

  ‘I tried talking to Martin about a separation, but he wouldn’t discuss it, and in the end I just took Oscar and we got on a bus to York. I knew Martin would guess where we’d gone, but I had nowhere else to go, and I was hoping that once I left, he’d realize that I meant what I’d said.’

  ‘But he hasn’t?’

  ‘No. He turned up at Mum’s house, and in his mind, I think, he let us come to York on holiday. But he won’t have liked it when I moved here and changed my phone and email address. I know I sound paranoid, but Martin has all sorts of shady contacts through his work, and I don’t think it will have been hard for him to track me down. I keep waiting for him t
o appear, but he’s playing some kind of cat-and-mouse game instead. I’m sure of it. That’s what the phone calls are about. He wants me to know that he knows where I am, even though I’ve changed numbers.’

  Luke scowled. ‘That’s harassment, Tess. Can’t you go to the police?’

  ‘I’ve got no way of proving that it’s Martin.’ She told Luke about the landline and how the calls had switched after a couple of days to her mobile. ‘I don’t know what to do about it. I could buy a new phone, but what’s to stop him tracing it again?’

  ‘Nothing, if the paperwork traces back to you.’ Luke rubbed his chin thoughtfully. ‘I’ve got an old phone you could have,’ he said after a moment. ‘It’s very basic, but it works. Martin would have a harder time making that connection. Do you want to try it?’

  ‘I . . . I couldn’t.’

  ‘Why not? It’s just sitting in a drawer.’

  Tess looked at him properly for the first time. Really looked at him. Saw the lines edging his eyes, the tough mouth, the hard, exciting angles of his cheek and jaw. Saw the man he was, not the boy he had been, and her throat tightened at the dangerous stab of hope. Not that they could recreate what they had once had, but that she had found a friend again.

  ‘It’s . . . hard for me when you’re kind,’ she tried to explain, but Luke was having none of it.

  ‘It’s hard for me when you’re brave and insist on doing everything by yourself,’ he countered.

  ‘I need to manage on my own,’ said Tess. ‘I can’t afford to rely on anyone else ever again.’

  ‘No harm in getting a bit of help now and then, though, is there?’

  Tess gave in and let go of a shaky laugh. ‘No, I suppose not.’ She swallowed. ‘Okay, I’d like to give the phone a try. I think it might work. Thanks,’ she said as she got to her feet. ‘And Luke – thanks for listening.’

  ‘Beats working,’ said Luke, making it easy on her. He drained his glass and got up to follow her out into the passage. ‘I’d better get on with Richard’s shelves.’

  Tess was grateful to him for bringing the conversation back to normal. ‘How much longer do you think you’ll be?’

  ‘I reckon a couple more days should do it, and then a day to put the books back once the varnish is dry. I’ve got some more picture-desk jobs coming up and I’ll have to fit round them, but I should be out of your hair soon.’

  He peered over her shoulder as she paused in the kitchen doorway. ‘You made a hell of a mess in there. You sure you don’t want help cleaning it up?’

  ‘I’m sure.’ Tess squared her shoulders as she regarded the kitchen. She had made the mess, she would put it right. ‘This is something I have to do on my own.’

  ‘Okay.’ Luke turned away, then stopped. ‘Tess, are you sure it was just the phone ringing that upset you? You looked as if you’d had bad news before it rang.’

  The worst news. She was to be married to Ralph. The memory rolled queasily in her stomach. It had been awful remembering her life with Martin, but better than thinking about Nell’s misery.

  But she couldn’t tell Luke about that, not now. He had listened enough, and besides, she was wrung out. She couldn’t face another explanation.

  ‘It was nothing.’ Her eyes slid away from Luke’s. ‘Just . . . a lot of stuff happening at once.’

  ‘Hmm.’ Luke leant against the door jamb. ‘How long is it since you’ve had a break, Tess?’

  ‘A break?’ she echoed, as if she’d forgotten what the word meant.

  ‘You know. Got away for a day. Done something different. Forgot about things for a while.’

  ‘Oh. Yes.’ Tess tried to think. It had been a very long time, since before she met Martin. ‘Not for a while.’

  ‘Come to Bridlington tomorrow.’ Luke seemed almost as taken aback by the offer as Tess was. ‘I’m taking pictures of some kitesurfing competition on the beach,’ he said. ‘I’ve got to go anyway. You could come along for the ride.’

  ‘It’s Saturday tomorrow. I’ll have Oscar.’

  ‘Bring him too. He likes the beach, doesn’t he?’

  ‘He’s never been,’ she had to admit. Martin didn’t do beach holidays. They were too messy, too noisy, too crowded.

  ‘Then it’s time he went, don’t you think? It’s a boring drive on my own,’ he coaxed when she hesitated still. ‘I sold out and replaced the bike with a sensible car that can take all my gear, but it’s no fun any more. I could do with the company.’

  Tess thought about a wide, blowy beach, and damp sand between her toes. She had always loved how big the sky seemed on the Yorkshire coast. She and Luke had gone on his bike. She remembered the erotic thrill of it, the speed, the power and the danger of the machine between her thighs. Her arms clamped around Luke’s waist, leaning with him into bends, looking for the first gleam of the sea in the distance. Climbing stiffly off the bike, she had pulled off her helmet and let the wind plaster her hair across her lips.

  It had always been windy. They had a special place in the sand dunes where they would lie on a blanket, sheltered from the North Sea blast, and look up. Above them were only the tussocks of marram grass, bent almost horizontal over the rim of the dune, and beyond that just light and air and space. Tess had sworn that she could feel the earth turning beneath them until she was giddy with it.

  She mustn’t expect too much from Luke. It would be a mistake to get too reliant on him . . . but it was just a day, Tess reminded herself. She thought about how much Oscar would love it, about being away from this flat with its rasping walls and its atmosphere of crouching anticipation.

  ‘I’d love to,’ she said. ‘If you really mean it?’

  ‘Did you touch the cat flap when you came in?’

  Luke looked up, his arms full of books. ‘No. Why?’

  ‘I just found Ashrafar yowling outside on the roof. She was locked out.’

  ‘I haven’t been in the kitchen,’ said Luke, dumping the books on a shelf. ‘Could you have done it without thinking?’

  ‘I don’t think so,’ said Tess. ‘I never lock it. Richard likes her to be free to come and go.’

  ‘Maybe Oscar’s been fiddling with it.’

  ‘Maybe.’

  Tess left him a mug of coffee and carried her own back to the front room. She needed to finish another year of records today, but instead of pulling up the documents, she sat and stared unseeingly ahead of her, gnawing absently at her knuckle.

  The cat flap was only the latest in a series of inexplicable incidents. They were all tiny in themselves – a roll of kitchen paper in the middle of her bed, a bar of soap by the laptop, a lamp left on when she was sure that she had turned it off – but Tess was beginning to get a bad feeling about them. Could they all really be down to absent-mindedness? She had never been vague or ditzy, and the thought that she might be having memory lapses was a disturbing one.

  Otherwise, life was much more under control. She had been using Luke’s old phone, and had been careful to give the number to the school and Vanessa and, reluctantly, her mother, but no one else. Her relief now that the constant ringing had stopped was so great that it was only then that Tess realized how it had worn on her nerves. Luke had never referred to what she had told him, but it felt good to have cleared the air, and although they were not quite friends again yet, that dreadful formality between them had gone.

  There had been no more hallucinations either. Perhaps they really had been due to strain, after all. Occasionally a memory of Nell would surface – of her hair damp with rain on a lovely summer day, or bare feet stained with mud from a paved street – but she pushed it away. There would be a rational explanation if she had the time to look for it. There had to be.

  Just as there would be an explanation for the locked cat flap too. Tess was still puzzling over it as she walked to pick Oscar up from school. Vanessa was already at the gates. Dressed in her usual Lycra, she was bouncing from foot to foot, as if eager to be off. Her energy made Tess feel guilty for the way she strolled
through the streets and out through the bar at such a leisurely pace.

  It was impossible to walk to the school without thinking of Nell and how much she had loved the crofts, or how the tarm-acked roads had once been rough tracks. Of course, it was well known that the area outside Monk Bar had been one of orchards and market gardens until the nineteenth century, Tess reminded herself. There was nothing strange about knowing that. It wasn’t as if she remembered it.

  Sometimes, it was true, the pavements felt precarious, the past very close. Then Tess would keep her eyes down. She didn’t want to look up in case she saw that the streets had closed in, the houses leaning inwards with their overhanging jetties. A blink and the plate-glass windows of the modern shop could be replaced by stalls and shuttered workshops; by women spinning in doorways. Turn her head, and the delivery vans could become carts and wagons. Lose concentration for a moment, and she could find herself amidst the clutter and clamour of the Elizabethan street. Once or twice she had risked a glance up and it seemed that the faces she saw were disturbingly familiar.

  But why wouldn’t they be? Tess reasoned. She had grown up in York. It was a small city. She was likely to recognize all sorts of people.

  Vanessa looked pointedly at her watch when Tess arrived. ‘Sorry I’m late,’ Tess said automatically, and then wondered why she was apologizing. There were other children in the playground with teachers to supervise them. She wasn’t accountable to Vanessa.

  ‘I suppose you’ve been buried in those records again,’ said Vanessa, who for some reason disapproved of Tess earning money in such an unconventional way. In Vanessa’s world, you worked in an office, or a school or – at a push – in a hospital until you got married and signed up to be a full-blown yummy mummy.

  She was being a bitch, Tess scolded herself. Vanessa was kind and generous and she should remember that. Still, she turned with relief when Oscar spotted her across the playground and came galloping towards her.

  ‘Mummy! Mummy!’ His face was pink, his hair tousled, and his shirt had come loose from his trousers. Tess felt her chest tighten at the sight of him looking so messy, so normal. Martin would have made him stop and tuck in his shirt. He would have had to smooth down his hair and straighten his sweatshirt. Pick up the jacket that trailed along the ground behind him.