by Jane Holland
Chapter Twenty-Two
Back at work, I try not to catch Sharon’s eye. Lunch with Louise has not helped me work through my confusion about the signatures on the paperwork. In fact, I feel worse, and keep checking over my shoulder, as though afraid my colleagues are looking at me sideways. Though I’m sure Sharon won’t have told anyone else about the forms. After all, she could get into trouble for having handed over that paperwork to a subordinate instead of doing it herself.
People who’ve survived a traumatic event where others died, even when they don’t remember it properly, can experience an overwhelming sense of guilt.
Is Louise right? Am I simply going through some kind of post-traumatic experience, triggered by the stress of getting married?
Thankfully the rest of the afternoon goes quickly. Sharon does not speak to me again, working in her office most of the time, head bent over her desk.
I wonder what she thinks about me.
That I’m crazy, perhaps.
I cringe at that possibility, and feel inexplicably cold, too. The tips of my fingers tingle as though I’ve been touching glass. I’m not crazy, I tell myself. But it’s getting harder to believe that, despite Louise’s insistence that I am not mad.
Merely stressed.
I’m not alone in feeling stressed, of course. As I have daily proof of in this job. The world is getting darker and colder for everyone, not just me. I’m getting ready to leave for the day when a young woman barges in through the entrance doors, pushing a buggy and looking flustered. She stares around the place, then fixes on me. Her eyes widen, and she heads in my direction, biting down hard on her lip as though repressing the urge to scream.
I know that expression. It’s very common in the food bank. It’s the look of a woman at the far edge of what she can deal with, in need of only one push before total collapse.
‘Hello?’ She stops walking. ‘I need food. My kid’s starving.’
‘Of course.’
She’s surprised by that response. I see it in her face. She expected a struggle. To be knocked back by the system.
The woman parks the buggy in front of me. Her child is about two years old, a sallow-faced girl with huge eyes. She’s clutching a fluffy soft toy to her chest. Some kind of cat, perhaps?
‘Do you have a referral?’ I ask, smiling down at the child.
‘A what?’
‘You need a referral to use the food bank. It’s usually a letter from social services, or a reference from a GP.’ She just looks mystified. ‘I’m afraid we can’t help you without one,’ I add.
‘Are you kidding me?’
Sharon comes out of her office and stands listening.
‘I’m really sorry,’ I tell the woman awkwardly. ‘But I could make a phone call.’
‘Catherine?’
I ignore Sharon, not even looking in her direction. ‘It might be possible to arrange some emergency cover,’ I say to the woman, ‘if you’re really desperate. I’d just need some details from you.’
‘What kind of details?’ the woman asks in a suspicious tone, though I can see she’s thawing.
‘Your name and address, for starters.’ I get out a notebook and pen. ‘Don’t worry, it’s all confidential.’
‘Thanks, Catherine, I’ll deal with this,’ Sharon tells me, and there’s a warning note in her voice. She turns to the woman, her manner brisk and unemotional. ‘We only deal with direct referrals.’
‘But I’ve come a long way,’ the woman says. ‘I had no money to top up my Oyster card. I had to walk.’
‘And I’m sorry you’ve had a wasted trip.’ Sharon’s smile is utterly fake. I can tell she has decided this woman is going to make trouble. ‘Let me fetch you an info sheet on how to go about getting a referral.’
‘I don’t want one of them.’
‘It’s the best I can do, I’m afraid.’
‘Says you.’ The woman looks Sharon up and down. Her finger stabs towards me. ‘I want her. Not you. Got it?’
‘I’m in charge here.’
The woman starts to say something, but Sharon interrupts. ‘I’m sorry.’ Her voice has risen slightly, but she’s still in control. ‘If you don’t want the information I’ve offered, then I think you’d better leave.’
Heads have turned towards us. Petra comes out of Sharon’s office too, a clipboard under her arm stump. She looks across at me and raises her eyebrows. I shake my head.
‘What if I don’t want to leave?’ the woman asks, her voice also rising.
Nobody says anything.
‘I need help.’ The woman jiggles the buggy from side to side and the child cries out in fear. ‘She needs food. Are you going to stand there and say no?’
‘I’m sorry,’ Sharon says again.
‘You’re not fucking sorry. You’ve got everything. What have we got, eh? Nothing.’ Abruptly, the woman wheels the buggy about and strides furiously towards the exit. ‘And none of you give a fuck.’
She bangs through the double doors, and I listen to the unhappy wail of her child with a sinking heart. This isn’t why I came to help out here – to turn people away who are in absolute need.
Sharon sees my expression. ‘I offered to help her get a referral. You heard me. She didn’t want my help. This may be a charity, but we have rules about referrals. We have to do things by the book.’
I grab my bag and run after the woman.
‘Catherine, don’t!’
But I ignore Sharon’s warning.
Dusk is falling outside. The street lights have come on. I walk down the road and soon spot the woman, who has not gone far. She has stopped at the corner by La Giravolta, head down, while her daughter continues to cry.
‘Hello?’
She looks up at my voice. She is shaken and upset. ‘What do you want?’
‘I don’t want to offend you, but I thought maybe . . .’ I’m not sure how she will react as I start to rummage in my handbag for my purse. I take out a twenty and hand it to her. ‘Just to tide you over. If you want it.’
She stares at the note in disbelief, then takes it. ‘Thank you.’
‘You’re welcome.’
‘I’ll let you have it back.’
‘No, it’s fine.’
‘Honestly,’ she says, pushing the note deep into the front pocket of her jeans. ‘Cross my heart. Soon as I get my social through.’
I smile and say nothing, but we both know that’s unlikely to happen. Not in her circumstances.
‘What’s your name?’ she asks abruptly.
‘Catherine.’
Her smile surprises me. ‘That’s a nice name.’
She does not tell me her name in return and I don’t ask.
The child is leaning forward in the dusk, peering round the side of the buggy at me, curious and damp-eyed. She’s still clutching the soft toy to her chest.
I grin at her, and the little girl shrinks away, instinctively wary.
‘Right, better get this one home for her tea. It’s nearly dark.’ The woman is no longer looking at me or the kid. She’s staring ahead at the oncoming car lights with a distracted expression, her mind already elsewhere. ‘See you later, yeah?’
And with that, she’s gone.
As I watch her push the buggy down the road, a car drives past in the opposite direction with excruciating slowness, perhaps waiting for the lights ahead to change.
The car is a silver Jaguar.
The driver’s window is partly open, an old familiar Christmas carol blasting out into the evening. ‘Good King Wenceslas’. One of my mum’s favourites, it always reminds me of home and the sweetly nostalgic Christmases of childhood. I listen with a smile, singing along to the refrain under my breath.
The driver looks at me.
I glance at him casually, still smiling, and our gazes lock. Just for a fraction longer than is entirely comfortable. Long enough for me to pause, wondering if I know him. He certainly looks as though he knows me.
My dad used to dri
ve a Jag when I was a kid. This one isn’t quite the same as his; Dad’s was an older model with one of those silver leaping jaguars on the bonnet.
The driver is in his sixties, I’d guess. Grey hat, iron grey moustache, his coat collar turned up. He’s unsmiling, head turned, staring straight at me. Not ahead at the road.
My smile fades.
The lights ahead change to green.
For a few seconds he doesn’t react, still looking at me, then one of the drivers behind sounds a horn, and he drives on, suddenly accelerating.
A moment later, the Jaguar is lost in traffic ahead, rear lights red in the darkness, soon indistinguishable from all the rest.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Mum and Dad have been arguing again. I can tell as soon as I walk into the kitchen.
Mum’s face is bright with fury, her cheeks flushed, eyes wide and damp. Dad is standing by the kitchen window, staring out at the dark garden. From the way his silvery hair is ruffled, I guess he’s been running a hand through it in agitation.
When he turns towards me, I recognise the sullen, shuttered look on his face. It’s clear she’s been nagging him about something, as only Mum can, in that shrill, persistent way she has. But what about?
‘Catherine, darling, there you are at last.’ Mum gives me what is meant to be a brave, appealing smile. ‘You’re so late this evening. I was just saying to your father that he should go out in the car to pick you up from . . . that place where you work.’
‘The food bank. I’m a volunteer.’
‘That’s right.’ She sounds apologetic, but I know she isn’t. ‘I hate it when you don’t get back on time. I worry.’
There’s a heaped plate of scones on the kitchen table. Fresh-baked, by the gorgeous smell of them.
‘It’s nearly Christmas, Mum. I had to stay late at work, then I did a spot of present-shopping on the way home.’ I drop my bag on the table and help myself to a scone. It’s cheese, I realise. ‘These smell amazing. Kasia’s?’
‘Well, I certainly didn’t bake them myself,’ Mum says sharply.
Kasia wanders in from the cold pantry at that moment, carrying a whole cooked ham. It looks delicious, breaded on one side and dotted with black cloves.
‘Hello.’ I look at her, surprised. ‘I didn’t know you were still here.’
Kasia shrugs, saying nothing. But her English is not brilliant, so she rarely says much to anyone.
She places the ham carefully on a steel platter in the middle of the table, as though ready for carving. Then turns to wash her hands at the sink, her back very straight, long blonde hair twisted up in a neat chignon for work. Willowy-thin, with angular hips and a perpetually sulky face, Kasia Lecinska is not the friendliest of people. But she’s an excellent cleaner, and not too bad at baking either.
Certainly my mother says she couldn’t cope without her.
I frown though, perplexed to see her still here. Kasia usually keeps such regular hours, having a young family of her own, and it’s nearly seven o’clock.
I glance at my mother. ‘Are you having a dinner party tonight?’
‘Don’t be ridiculous.’ Dad glares at me. ‘I asked Kasia to stay on until you got home, that’s all. Just in case she was needed.’
‘Needed for what?’
He hesitates. ‘You were late. We weren’t sure what had happened.’
‘I’m only half an hour late.’
‘Forty-five minutes,’ my mother corrects me, her face strained.
‘Even so, it’s not exactly . . .’ I stop and look from her to my father. They both seem so tense. As though something has happened. A sense of dread creeps over me. My mouth is horribly dry. ‘I don’t understand. What’s the matter?’
‘Nothing,’ my mother says quickly, but I don’t believe her.
‘I didn’t realise I was on a timetable.’ It did take me a while to calm down after Sharon blew up at me. But even so . . . ‘I’m sorry, I suppose I’ve got used to doing my own thing.’
‘We expect you to keep regular hours under this roof.’ Dad’s voice grates at my nerves. ‘Our house, our rules. Remember?’
I stare at him, speechless.
‘Of course, you’re free to come and go as you please—’ Mum begins in a placating tone, but Dad interrupts her.
‘No, she bloody isn’t,’ he insists. I haven’t seen him this angry since the night he took me upstairs to look at Rachel’s toy chest and we found the snow globe was missing. ‘Not when we don’t know how stable she is.’
I turn, hearing the door open, and see that Dominic has come into the kitchen.
‘What . . . what do you mean?’ I feel suddenly rigid, as though something inside me – my heart, perhaps – has turned to stone. ‘How stable I am?’ I look at my husband pleadingly. ‘Dom, what are they talking about?’
Dominic says quietly, ‘Louise gave me a call at work this afternoon. She’s worried about you.’ He pauses. ‘We all are.’
‘Louise?’ I echo, shocked.
‘It’s okay. She told us what happened at the food bank today. About the paperwork you signed as Rachel.’
‘That I signed . . . ?’ I shake my head in instant, furious denial. It’s important to stay calm, I know that. Yet how can I? My chest is tight and I can hardly breathe. ‘She had no right to say anything. I told her in confidence. And why the hell is everyone assuming it was me?’
Dominic looks at me in silence, his eyebrows raised.
My parents say nothing, either.
Kasia, typically expressionless, hangs up her apron beside the range, then slips out of the kitchen without meeting my eyes. God only knows what she makes of all this, our crazy English family.
Meaning to go upstairs to my room, I make for the hall door but blunder into Dominic. He grabs me by the shoulders, his face sympathetic. ‘Darling, please.’
‘Please what? Please don’t have a nervous breakdown? Please don’t crack up?’
‘She’s hysterical.’ My father, of course, ready with his expert male opinion. ‘We should call her doctor.’
‘Oh, why bother with a doctor? Why not just give me a good slap?’ I turn on him, tasting salt in the corner of my mouth. The familiar brine of sorrow. Though this time it’s more like rage. Long-suppressed rage escaping as tears. ‘I’m sure you’re dying to give me a good slapping, aren’t you, Dad?’
My mother says something in quick protest, but I don’t catch it over my father’s roar of anger. ‘How dare you?’ He comes towards me, fists by his side but clenched tight nonetheless. ‘After everything we’ve done for you . . .’
‘So why say it was me who signed that paperwork?’ I almost scream at them, and duck away from Dominic, who’s trying to restrain me. This isn’t his battle, it’s mine. It’s been mine for a long time, and I know all the manoeuvres. ‘Why not admit the truth?’
An awful silence falls again.
Mum looks frightened now, a hand at her mouth.
Dad stops where he is, staring at me. There’s some expression in his eyes that I don’t quite understand.
‘And what truth is that, Catherine?’ he asks.
‘That Rachel isn’t dead. That she didn’t die like you told me. That my sister is still alive somewhere.’ I’m gasping, and barely recognise my own voice. Or the words coming out of my mouth. They feel sharp and pointed, like knives I’m throwing at my enemies, my parents. ‘And she’s coming back to finish what she started, and destroy my life.’
Chapter Twenty-Four
Upstairs in our self-contained flat, I sink down on the white leather sofa and bury my face in my hands.
I want to cry but dare not.
They denied it, of course. What did I expect? They looked at me as if I’m going crazy. Even Dominic. He thinks I’ve lost my mind or am about to lose it.
Perhaps I am crazy.
But the last thing I want is for Dominic to find me crying up here on my own like a kid. He would only assume I can’t cope. That I need help. Not simply
his, but of the professional variety. Someone Louise knows at the hospital, perhaps. Or Doctor Holbern, the doctor who used to see me occasionally in my teens, when I would get ‘hormonal’, as my dad used to put it, and do stupid stuff.
Doctor Holbern. A strangely angular man with a ginger beard. He had long legs that he would cross and recross as he sat listening to me. As if he could never get comfortable. I haven’t seen him in ages.
Dad’s probably on the phone to him right now.
The thought frightens me.
I’m not going crazy. I didn’t send myself Rachel’s snow globe with a bull’s eye inside it. And I didn’t sign any documents at the food bank in my dead sister’s name.
Unless I did, and have simply blanked it out of my memory.
‘No way.’ I rock back and forth, making a moaning noise under my breath. ‘I didn’t do any of that. I’m not mad.’
Except I’m acting mad. Rocking back and forth. Talking to myself.
I sit up, then close my eyes and try to centre myself. To focus my energy on feeling calm again. I practise the deep-breathing technique Doctor Holbern taught me years ago. In and out. In and out. Drawing the air right to the base of my stomach, then letting it go again, slow and deliberate, out through my nose.
My chest heaves and I catch my breath, struggling against the rhythm. The technique doesn’t seem to be working this time.
I raise my head, listening for Dominic’s tread on the stairs.
But he doesn’t come.
What are they talking about down there?
‘I think you should go and lie down,’ Dominic said after my outburst. I didn’t argue with him. By that point I was only too happy to escape the claustrophobic atmosphere of the kitchen.
I thought he would be right behind me. But there’s no sign of him. The room is silent, my rapidly beating heart somehow obscenely loud here.
I look around at the clean, black-and-white-striped wallpaper, the pristine glass and chrome furniture. The freshly painted door stands slightly ajar.
This used to be Rachel’s bedroom when we were kids, but Mum and Dad have cleared it out and turned it into a bright, modern sitting room for us. Rachel’s dusty old curtains have finally gone, replaced by Roman-style blinds in stern black. I haven’t opened them yet, but I know that view intimately. This side of the house overlooks the street, the quiet evenings often disturbed by sirens or car horns. There’s a flat-screen television and a DVD player where Rachel’s bed used to be. Before the new wallpaper went up, her old pop posters and the various pictures she had painted as a kid were taken down.