The Memory of Midnight

by Pamela Hartshorne

  She wasn’t going anywhere near a doctor. Doctors would talk about drugs and psychiatric evaluations. Doctors put records on computers. Tess didn’t trust Martin not to find them, and use them against her.

  She had told Luke about the cutlery drawer on the drive down to Lincoln, and his response had been instant.

  ‘Change the locks,’ he said.

  ‘I might be wrong. I could have tidied it up without thinking.’

  ‘Change them anyway,’ said Luke.

  ‘But how could Martin have got into the flat? There was no sign of a break-in.’

  ‘You told me yourself that he’s got money and contacts,’ Luke had said. ‘You can get pretty much anywhere you want if you’ve got enough cash, and a flat like Richard’s would be a cinch. I could probably get in myself if I put my mind to it. Get some new locks,’ he had said, ‘and be very careful about who you give spares to.’

  Tess locked up with special care that night. Oscar had been tired and whiny by the time they picked him up from her mother’s and it was some time before she could get him to bed. Feeling guilty still over how easily Nell had been able to push him from her mind, she had allowed him extra time watching television and gave in to his demands for two more stories, but at last he was asleep and, worn out by the emotional turmoil of the day, Tess was ready for bed too.

  Change the locks. Luke’s words rang in her head as she checked that the door was firmly closed. It seemed secure enough. He had promised to come and do the locks himself the next day.

  ‘I’ll be fine,’ Tess had said when he left. ‘Nobody’s going to come into the flat while I’m there.’ She was perfectly safe, but on an impulse she hooked the chain across the door.

  Her fingers still resting on the door handle, she stood and listened. For Nell or for Martin? Tess wasn’t sure which.

  The flat was quiet. She could hear the faint hum of the fridge in the kitchen, the muted sound of the television in the front room, and, louder than both, the roar of her own pulse in her ears.

  No sinister creaks, no creepy footsteps.

  Still, there was something. She had been aware of it all evening. As if the air had been disturbed and was still settling.

  Tess let her hand fall. She was getting paranoid. She switched on both computers in the front room, and got out the transcript she had printed out so far to check, but she couldn’t concentrate. She kept thinking about the flat, about that sense that something didn’t belong.

  Deliberately, she turned and studied the room. There was nothing out of place here, she was sure of it.

  She checked the kitchen. The cat flap was open as it should be. Ashrafar was out patrolling the rooftops, but she could get in whenever she wanted. Bink was squashed under Oscar’s arm, tail flopping over the duvet, while Oscar breathed deep and slow. Tess stood looking down at him for a long time, watching the dark sweep of his lashes on his cheek, the way he lay sprawled as if he had taken a knockout blow to the chin.

  Hugh had slept like that too.

  ‘No,’ she whispered, curling her fingers into defiant fists and deliberately forcing Meg and Hugh from her head. ‘No, this is my son.’

  The bathroom was undisturbed.

  In the doorway to her bedroom, she paused, braced for the icy wave of horror and panic that would roll over her without warning sometimes when she walked into the room. It was muted today, like a ripple lapping at her shore rather than a breaking roller. Tess stepped past it and stood in the centre of the room, turning very slowly.

  Silence. Not even the desperate scrabbling that still woke her sometimes in the night.

  Tess’s eyes moved from her bed to the chest and onto the wardrobe, before jerking back to the chest. Frowning, she went over and laid her hand on the top. Her favourite picture of Oscar as a toddler was there, along with a china dish where she kept the few pieces of jewellery she had brought with her. She touched them one by one. Everything Martin had bought her, she had left in the house in London, but she had her grandmother’s pearl necklace and a pendant that had been her father’s last gift to her, and a pair of earrings Luke had given her the last Christmas they were together. They were tiny silver squares and Martin had hated them.

  ‘They make you look butch,’ he had said dismissively. ‘Wear those pretty pearl drops I gave you.’

  And, God help her, she had done. She had given away her worn jeans and leggings. She had thrown out her comfortable bras and knickers and worn silk and lace instead. Every morning now when she pulled on jeans and a T-shirt it felt like a dangerous act of defiance.

  Nothing was missing, nothing was wrong. It was all fine. She was just spooking herself.

  Tess didn’t know what made her do it. Perhaps the drawers had been too carefully closed. Perhaps there was some other sliver of wrongness that tugged at her subconscious, but before she had even thought about it, she had jerked open the top drawer, where she kept the plain bras and knickers she had bought since leaving London, shoved in anyhow where she could grab at them the way she had that morning.

  Inside, beautifully rolled in neat lines, lay an array of lingerie. Lacy bras. Wispy thongs. Silky camisoles and French knickers. Suspenders and gossamer stockings. Everything that Martin had insisted that she wore. Everything she had left behind in London.

  Sick at heart, Tess stared down into the drawer. How was Martin doing this? Why was he doing it? Her blood felt thick and sluggish with fear until an unfamiliar sensation began to throb through her veins. It was so long since she had felt it that it took her some time to recognize what it was.

  Rage.

  She was angry.

  Angry with Martin; angry with herself for ever having loved him. Angry with Ralph, and with Tom for leaving her to endure alone. Fury surged through her. It filled her up, pouring into every cell, shimmering to the ends of every nerve, making her bigger, taller, stronger, like a new leaf unfurling in the sun. It felt better than guilt, better than shame, better than fear.

  Slamming the drawer shut, she fetched her phone.

  ‘How dare you come into my flat?’ Her voice shook with rage when Martin answered. ‘How dare you?’

  ‘Theresa?’ He drew a breath of satisfaction. ‘I’ve been waiting for you to call.’

  ‘You had no right to come in here!’

  A tiny pause. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

  ‘I know it’s you. I know you’ve been here.’

  ‘Darling, calm down and tell me what the problem is.’

  ‘You’re the problem! I don’t want you in here, Martin. This is my home.’

  ‘Theresa, Theresa,’ said Martin soothingly. ‘You’re overwrought, darling. And no wonder, trying to manage everything by yourself. Isn’t it time you stopped this silliness and came home so that I can look after you?’

  Too late, Tess realized her mistake. What a stupid thing to do! Now Martin would see her getting in touch as weakness on her part. Her solicitor would be cross with her. She had specifically told Tess to avoid all contact with Martin, but Tess had been too angry to think clearly. Martin would be recording the call, she was sure. ‘Look,’ he would say, waving his phone records at the judge, ‘she said she didn’t want to hear from me, but she was the one who rang me.’

  Fool. Fool, fool, fool.

  Should she end the call now, or try and retrieve something from the conversation? Tess swallowed her anger and strove to sound reasonable. If they could have a rational conversation, perhaps all might not be lost.

  ‘I’m not going back to London, Martin,’ she said. ‘This is my home now.’

  ‘That poky little flat!’

  Tess refused to rise to his contempt. ‘How do you know it’s poky?’ she asked, hoping that he might incriminate himself and wishing that she had thought to record the conversation herself.

  ‘Your mother told me.’

  ‘Mum?’ Her fingers throbbed painfully as they tightened around the phone.

  ‘She’s very worried about you, Theresa,
and so am I. She says you’re very tired and very tense, and that you’re not sleeping well. That’s not good when someone’s as highly strung as you are.’

  ‘I am not highly strung!’ So much for her resolve to stay calm and reasonable.

  ‘It’s not me that says that – it’s your own mother. She knows what an overactive imagination you have. You’ve blown everything out of proportion.’

  ‘Am I imagining the fact that you made Oscar sit in his room when you came home every night?’

  ‘Theresa, I’m very tired at the end of the day. I work really hard to keep you and Oscar in the lap of luxury, and I don’t think a little peace and quiet is too much to ask in return, do you?’

  ‘Oscar’s five. He’s too young to be shut in his room.’

  ‘Five’s old enough to understand discipline. Oscar needs to learn to consider others.’ Martin’s voice thinned. ‘You overindulge him, Theresa. If you treat him like a baby, he’ll act like one, and he’ll turn into a mummy’s boy. I’m not having anyone say that about my son. If you persist in this ridiculous charade of asking for a divorce, I will sue for custody of Oscar and bring him up myself.’

  Impotent rage and frustration dropped over Tess so heavily her legs almost buckled. ‘Do not you dare take him from me, Ralph,’ she said stonily.

  There was a silence. ‘Ralph?’ said Martin.

  Aghast at the slip of the tongue, Tess clapped her free hand over her mouth. What had she done?

  ‘Stay away from us, Martin,’ she said, hoping to recover, but of course Martin wasn’t going to let something like that go.

  ‘Ralph?’ he said again in a glacial voice. ‘Who is Ralph?’

  ‘No one,’ she said desperately.

  ‘No one? And how is this “no one” part of your life and the life of my son?’

  ‘He isn’t! He isn’t anyone.’

  ‘He’s an imaginary person?’ Martin’s words dripped with disbelief and Tess struck the heel of her hand against her temple in frustration. What had she been thinking?

  ‘It was just a mistake.’ She drew a breath, tried to move on. ‘Look, Martin, this isn’t getting us anywhere. Oscar and I are happy here. You don’t want to live with a small boy. You said yourself that you need peace and quiet. Please, just sign the divorce papers and let me go.’

  ‘Let you go?’ Martin echoed blankly. ‘Let you go?’ A polite laugh, as if she had tried a feeble joke. ‘No, Theresa,’ he said pleasantly. ‘You’re my wife. The sooner you accept that you belong here with me, the better it’ll be for you – and for Oscar.’

  ‘What’s this about you having food poisoning?’

  Vanessa had rung that morning, suggesting that they take the children to the Museum Gardens. ‘Let them run around somewhere different,’ she had said breezily, sounding so much her old self that Tess almost wondered if she had imagined the tension between them the last time they had met.

  ‘I’ve got a hidden motive, I have to confess,’ Vanessa said.

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘I don’t get a chance to run when the kids are on holidays. I wondered if you’d mind watching Sam and Rosie for me while I get some exercise. I won’t go far, just along to the Millennium Bridge and back.’

  ‘Of course,’ Tess had said, relieved to have restored her relationship with Vanessa. ‘It’s a brilliant idea.’

  Getting out of the flat was just what she and Oscar had needed. Oscar had been whiny all morning, and Tess herself on edge all week. It had been raining on and off since the school holidays started, and trapped inside the flat in Stonegate, she and Oscar had grown increasingly fretful. It was too gloomy to be inside all day. The air was dark, damp and disquietingly taut. Luke had changed the locks, but Tess was still alert to the slightest sound, jumping at every noise from the street below in case it meant Martin was at the door, and whirling at shadows, terrified that Nell would drag her back and make her forget Oscar again.

  Luke had finished the shelves, and Richard’s books were stacked in order. Tess missed Luke’s fierce presence more than she wanted to admit. He was busy on other jobs now, and although he had dropped round once or twice to see Oscar, who was always asking for him, Tess had been skittish, wanting him to stay, wanting him to go before she forgot how determined she was to stand on her own two feet. She wanted to be friends, but she wanted to be more than friends too, and the arguments for and against circled endlessly in her head until she was worn out and ready to decide that it was easier not to see him at all. She was still on edge, waiting for Martin, waiting for Nell, never knowing when either might appear. Casual friendship or passionate affair, it was crazy to even think about embarking on a relationship of any kind until things were resolved.

  When she’d tried to explain that to Luke, he hadn’t argued. He had just looked at her for an uncomfortably long moment before shrugging. ‘If that’s what you want,’ he’d said. ‘It’s up to you, Tess. I’m not going to make you do anything you don’t want to do. You’ve got my number. Call me if you need me.’

  So then, of course, she couldn’t call without sounding needy.

  All in all, she had been glad when Vanessa had rung. After the last few dreary days, the sun had finally come out and the gardens were crowded with people sprawled on the grass or strolling along the paths, feeding the squirrels or playing Frisbee, or dutifully admiring the ruins of St Mary’s Abbey. Surrounded, Tess let herself relax. There was safety in crowds, surely, from both Martin and Nell.

  Once Vanessa had jogged off, Tess was happy to sit with her book, keeping an eye on Oscar as he chased pigeons with Sam and Rosie. She refereed the occasional dispute, but they were absorbed in some game, the rules of which she didn’t try to understand, and in the end she was too lazy even to read and she leant back on her hands to watch the city expanding in the sunshine around her.

  But now Vanessa was back, pink with exertion. She dropped onto the grass beside Tess and began doing a complicated series of stretches, bending low over each knee to hold first one ankle then another.

  ‘Food poisoning?’ Tess was caught unawares by Vanessa’s question.

  ‘Your mother said you’d been sick when you were out with Luke the other day.’

  ‘I didn’t realize you talked to Mum.’

  Vanessa lay back and stretched one leg above her. ‘Hard as it is to believe, Tess, we’re both worried about you. Or have you forgotten that you passed out in my kitchen?’

  ‘You didn’t tell Mum about that, did you?’

  ‘Of course I did. You’d want to know if Oscar had passed out, wouldn’t you?’

  What else had Vanessa told her mother? If her mother knew about Nell . . . Tess felt sick. It would be just the incentive her mother needed to call Martin. But if Vanessa had carried through her threat to contact him herself, surely she would have said something? And Martin would have been here already.

  ‘I just had a bad piece of fish or something. I was vilely sick.’

  ‘What were you doing with Luke anyway?’ Vanessa had her leg up by her ear now. Tess couldn’t imagine ever being that flexible. She hunched a shoulder, feeling clumsy and tense and defensive, just as she had at fifteen.

  ‘We went to Lincoln,’ she half-lied.

  ‘Lincoln? What on earth for?’

  ‘It’s an interesting city. The cathedral’s lovely. It was nice,’ Tess added defiantly.

  Up went the other leg. ‘Your mum thinks Luke’s a bad influence on you.’

  ‘I know.’

  Her mother had been frigidly disapproving when Tess eventually turned up with Luke on their way back from Lincoln the previous weekend. ‘She never liked him.’

  ‘Mothers usually know what’s best for their children,’ said Vanessa, then she held up her hands in mock surrender at Tess’s glare. ‘Just saying. I think it’s a very bad idea for you to get involved with him again.’

  Her words flicked on the raw indecision festering inside Tess. She didn’t want Vanessa to tell her what to do about Luke.
/>   She didn’t want Vanessa to be right.

  ‘I’m not involved with Luke, Vanessa,’ she said tightly. ‘As you pointed out the other day, I still haven’t been able to extricate myself from my marriage and the last thing I want to think about right now is another relationship.’ All true, so why did she feel so leaden? ‘Luke and I are just friends.’ She got to her feet to end the discussion. ‘I’m going to get an ice cream. Would Sam and Rosie like one?’

  ‘I don’t usually encourage them,’ Vanessa began, but the children had already seen Tess get up, and some sixth sense had them running over, clamouring for the treat. ‘You can come and choose,’ Tess said to them, laughing. ‘Van, do you want one?’

  ‘Oh, go on then, since you all are. No extra chocolate, though. It’s unhealthy enough as it is.’

  The children chattered as they queued at the van, and Tess smiled down at them, enjoying their delight in such a simple pleasure. She loved seeing Oscar animated like this. He would never have jumped up and down and tugged at her hand impatiently in London. Whatever it took, she would make sure he never went back to the timid child he had been.

  She handed down the ice creams once each of them had made their agonizing choice, and Oscar ran off with Rosie and Sam. Tess followed more slowly, licking her own cone and enjoying the warmth of the sun on her back.

  ‘Here you go.’ She passed the ice cream down to Vanessa and then froze, still half stooped, as her eye snagged on the little boy standing in the shade of a tree behind. He had a cap tied over his fair hair and was wearing a linen smock and as she stared at him, he lifted his arms towards her.

  Tess’s heart stopped. ‘Hugh,’ she whispered.

  ‘What? Who’s Hugh?’ Vanessa looked up and her expression changed as she looked over her shoulder to where Tess was staring. ‘Tess, you’re creeping me out. There’s no one there.’