by Lisa Jewell
‘What?’
Freddie pulled a croissant from a packet on the counter. ‘You and that woman.’
His dad stopped buttering his toast for a second, then continued. ‘Oh. Josephine,’ he said, through a pretty theatrical yawn that was fooling no one, least of all Freddie. ‘She was at the same gig as me last night. Turns out she lives two doors down.’ He yawned loudly again. ‘She was a bit the worse for wear so I got her home in a taxi.’
‘Oh, Dad. You’re such a thoroughly good guy, not just saving schools but now rescuing damsels in distress too!’ Freddie couldn’t help himself sometimes. His dad was just so fucking perfect. Or at least that was the overriding narrative. Amazing Tom Fitzwilliam. Isn’t he handsome? Isn’t he clever? Isn’t he charming? Isn’t he tall? Hasn’t he got an enormously huge dick? Well, no one had ever actually said that, but he did. Freddie had seen it.
His mum subscribed to this narrative too. She looked amazed and grateful every time Dad walked in through the door at the end of the day, took his hand when they were out in public to show the world that he was hers. So in the absence of any peripheral checks and measures in the form of siblings, Freddie kind of felt it was his duty to keep his dad in his place, to remind him that he was not the be-all and the end-all. His dad took it in good grace. He did seem to like Freddie. But possibly that was because he didn’t realise quite how deep the rivers of Freddie’s antipathy sometimes ran.
His dad ignored Freddie’s sarcasm and flicked the switch on the coffee filter. Soon the kitchen was dark with the smell of warm coffee. His dad stood with his hands in the pockets of his dressing gown and stared through the French windows towards the end of the garden. The hair on the back of his head was matted and flat where he’d slept on it.
‘What’s she like?’
‘Who?’
‘The damsel. The one you rescued from being raped in an illegal minicab?’
There was a prolonged silence and Freddie wasn’t sure if his dad had heard him or not. But then he turned slowly and leaned against the counter. ‘She’s nice.’
‘Nice?’
‘Yes. Perfectly nice. I didn’t really talk to her. We were watching the band. And then it became apparent that she was horribly drunk so I got us a taxi. She slept most of the way back.’
‘She looked like she wanted you to kiss her.’
‘What?’
‘When you got out the cab. She looked like she was trying to kiss you on the mouth.’
His dad grimaced. ‘Er, no. I sincerely doubt that.’
Freddie offered him a sardonic lift of his eyebrow and said no more. He knew what he’d seen. Yet another tragic woman succumbing to the inordinate charms of his father. Yet another woman allowing herself to be dazzled by the glittering illusion of a gold coin at the bottom of a well.
Nicola walked in damp-haired, scrubbed-faced, shower-fresh after her early-morning run. ‘What do you sincerely doubt?’ she asked.
‘Nothing,’ said his dad, sending Freddie a warning glance across the kitchen. His mum got really jealous sometimes. ‘How was your run?’
‘It was superb,’ she said, pulling a mug off a shelf and pouring herself a coffee from the filter. ‘It’s beautiful out. We should do something.’
Freddie would have much preferred to do nothing at the weekend. The idea of doing something, with its undertones of brisk walks and silent art galleries and awkward lunches in smart restaurants, filled him with sick dread.
‘I’ve got loads of homework,’ he said. ‘I need to stay at home today.’
His mum pulled a sad pouty face. ‘Maybe you and I should do something?’ She gripped his dad’s arm and looked up at him hopefully. ‘Pub lunch?’
His father patted her hand and smiled down at her. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘A pub lunch sounds just the ticket.’
Freddie saw pure joy bloom across his mum’s face and then he thought of the taxi pulling up last night, of Red Boots grabbing his father and the stern look on his face as he bundled her towards her front door. He thought of all the other times, the other women and girls who’d looked at his dad just a little too fondly or held his arm for a little too long. He thought of the smell of old beer coming off him this morning, the sour smell of secrets and lies.
He nodded just once towards his father, knowingly, and saw him flinch.
15
20 February
Jenna pulled the zip round her suitcase and hoisted it on to its feet. It weighed a ton: make-up brushes and hairbrushes and palettes of petrol-hued shadows and bottles of fixers and primers and toners. Barely any clothes really. Just make-up.
Year eleven were going on a four-night trip to Seville. The coach to the airport was due outside the Academy at 5.45 a.m. It was now just after five and the sky was still lit with night stars and the pearlescent sheen of the moon. Jenna peered into her mother’s bedroom and caught the outline of her sleeping body and the whisper of her night-time breath. She would not wake her. Her mother was like a child – much easier to manage when she was sleeping. She tucked a packet of Nature Valley cereal bars into her rucksack, double checked inside the front pocket for the solid edges of her passport, took it out, double-checked that it was hers, slid it back in, smeared on some lip balm and silently left the house.
Bess stood on the corner with a battered metal suitcase at her feet, her hands tucked inside the sleeves of her blue Melville Academy hoodie, her bare legs glowing blue white in the early dawn. She yawned widely as Jenna approached.
‘Morning,’ said Jenna.
Bess groaned and lifted her case. It had no wheels and she had to carry it with both hands. It banged up against her shins as she walked. ‘International travel sucks,’ she said.
‘We haven’t even got on the coach yet.’
‘Yeah. Exactly.’
‘Would you rather be going to school today?’
‘Yes,’ said Bess. ‘Actually. I really would.’
Jenna smiled wryly. She knew that Bess would be the one at the back of the coach waving at lorry drivers in a few minutes.
Outside school, the coach rumbled and the pavement filled slowly with sleep-glazed teenagers. Bess kicked her in the shin and said, ‘Oh God. Look!’
When she turned she saw Mr Fitzwilliam striding towards them, a rucksack slung over his shoulder. He was wearing a dark hooded jacket and jeans.
‘Buenos días, everyone,’ he called. ‘Señor Delgado’s wife has gone into early labour and I’m the only other fluent Spanish speaker in the school so I’ve been dragged from my lovely warm cosy bed to accompany you all to Seville – you’ll no doubt be delighted to hear.’
Jenna felt Bess’s bony elbow between her ribs and slapped her away. She felt Bess’s hot breath in her ear. ‘Oh. My Fucking. God.’
Jenna sighed.
‘Oh my fucking God,’ Bess repeated. ‘I’m going to die. I swear. I’m dying right now. Literally. I’m dead.’
‘Shush,’ said Jenna. ‘He’s only over there.’
‘Don’t care. Just … I just …’
‘Please don’t make a twat of yourself,’ said Jenna. ‘Promise me.’
Bess looked at her aghast. ‘God, Jen – what do you take me for?’
Jenna turned towards the village, the soft glow of the street lights just visible from where they stood. She thought of her mother, folded warm within her duvet. She imagined her awaking and remembering that Jenna had gone. She pictured her rising from her warm bed and forgetting to eat breakfast in her compulsion to check the house for signs of them, the unknown, unwieldy gang who made it their lives’ work to stalk, harass and torment her, who came into her home nightly to displace her ornaments, untwist her lightbulbs, drill small holes into her walls and scratch tiny hieroglyphics into her work surfaces. She would then retire to her computer to log all the nightly modifications before signing in to one of the many chat rooms she frequented with other ‘victims’ of so-called gang-stalking to give credibility to each other’s madness.
Jenna had not left her
mother alone since she got properly ill, not for longer than the occasional sleepover. Her dad had persuaded her to go on the trip; he’d paid for it and said he’d check in on her mum daily, that she must go and enjoy herself and not look back. Jenna strongly suspected that her dad would not check in on her every day; it was a ninety-minute round trip from his house in Weston-super-Mare where he ran a very busy ironmongery virtually single-handedly as well as looking after Jenna’s little brother, Ethan. But now as she stowed her suitcase in the belly of the coach and took her seat next to Bess, it was far too late to worry about it all.
The coach pulled away and Melville faded to a tiny blurred point on the horizon and Jenna allowed herself a moment of excitement at the prospect of five days of sanity. Then she turned to share a smile with Bess and saw her staring dementedly at the back of Mr Fitzwilliam’s head.
16
When Freddie awoke that Monday morning he could tell immediately that something was different. He’d heard the phone ringing late last night, heard cupboards being opened and closed, voices when there weren’t normally voices.
‘Daddy had to go to Spain,’ said his mum, running water into the spout of the kettle. ‘School trip. The Spanish teacher’s wife went into early labour last night. She’s only thirty weeks along – very scary.’
‘Why him?’ he said. ‘Surely he’s too important to go on school trips.’
‘Daddy was the only other teacher at the school who can speak Spanish.’
‘Dad can’t speak Spanish,’ he muttered incredulously.
‘Well, he can speak enough to get by.’
Freddie grunted. This was exactly the sort of thing his dad loved. Spending quality time with his students. Getting to know them. He thrived on the intimacy. He would have jumped at this opportunity.
‘When’s he coming back?’
‘Friday.’
He nodded but felt quietly anxious. Freddie didn’t like changes in routine; he didn’t like it when unscheduled things happened. He didn’t like the way little holes opened up in the weft of his existence and let other, unexpected things in.
He walked the slow way to school so that he could pass by Whackadoo just as it opened its doors. He bought himself a bottle of mineral water and sat on a bench across the street to watch for Red Boots. Or Joey. Or Josephine. Or whatever the hell she was really called. He sat his phone on his lap, the video button just under his thumb and he waited. At eight fifty-five the 218 bus pulled up and the doors hissed open. There she was. He pressed the record button and filmed her as she half ran towards the play centre. Her blond hair was pulled back into a ponytail and she was frowning into her phone. She forced it into her rucksack as she approached the doors, pressed the bell and then stood with her hand in her pockets until a large woman with very short hair and lots of keys hanging from her belt came to let her in.
Freddie replayed the video and zoomed in on to Joey’s face. She looked puffy and blotchy. She looked like she’d been crying. He wondered if it had something to do with Friday night, if it had something to do with his father.
17
‘Hi, Mum!’ Joey pulled a cloth from her coat pocket and used it to clear away the winter dust that had collected on her mother’s gravestone. The flowers she’d left on the second day of the year were still there as well as another small posy; 50p-a-bunch daffodils from Asda that her dad would have brought.
Joey hadn’t realised that her dad visited so frequently. Her dad was not one for grand gestures or shows of emotion. He’d maintained a cool detachment in the days and months after Mum had died. They’d been talking about splitting up for a year or so before the accident. Neither of them had been happy. But on the day of the accident they’d been in a good place. They’d been up to see Jack and Rebecca’s house renovations. Afterwards Jack had taken them for lunch at the Melville. They’d had wine; Mum and Dad had shared a sticky toffee pudding. It had been a good day. Jack had said he thought maybe they wouldn’t split up after all. And then later that day Mum had been halfway to the shops at the bottom of the road to buy a lottery ticket when a ninety-year-old man called Roger Davies mounted the kerb in his Ford Fiesta and pinned her to a letter box. She’d died ten days later.
Dad didn’t talk about it much. Jack had tried to set him up with a grief therapist. He’d gone to one appointment and never returned. He’d cleared Mum’s stuff out within a week of her death, rearranged things over the hollows so you’d never know it had been there. And, to the absolute horror of both Joey and Jack, he already had a girlfriend. Her name was Sue and Jack was convinced that she had been in the picture long before their mother’s death. The day their father had told them about Sue had been one of the worst that she could remember and neither she nor Jack had seen their father since.
But here, with these cheap but carefully placed daffodils, was proof that he hadn’t moved on entirely. Joey tried to picture her father here. She tried to imagine what he did, if he talked to her, how long he stayed. She wondered if he cried. She hoped that he did.
‘So. Lots has happened since I last saw you. I’ve got a job. It’s a bit of a classic Joey job. As in, you know, crap. But at least I’m earning some money. Alfie’s still at the bar in town but he’s trying to get some more work as a painter and decorator. So, we’re kind of getting there. But …’ She paused and looked briefly over her shoulder, as though someone she knew might be hanging around in a cemetery on a Monday afternoon. ‘I’ve done something really bad. Like, really, really, really bad. Worse than anything I’ve done before and I know I’ve done a lot of bad things. I’m not even sure I can tell you what it was because you’ll disown me. Actually, I’m not going to tell you, because even thinking about it makes me want to throw up.’ She sighed and looked down at her fingernails, pulled at a loose tag of skin. ‘I really thought that I was growing up at last, Mum. I really thought that getting married and moving back to Bristol was going to be the start of the big new grown-up me. But if anything, I’m regressing. Because that’s the problem, isn’t it, that’s what I’m starting to realise. I’m still me, Mum, wherever I go in the world, I’m still just me. Joey the fuck-up. Joey the pain. And I wish you were here because I know that was always enough for you. And I’m not sure it’s enough for anyone else.
‘Anyway.’ She pulled herself to standing. ‘I’m sorry to come here and just be all me me me. Nothing new there though, I suppose. I love you, Mum. I love you so much. I’ll come again soon and hopefully by then I’ll have sorted out my life. Bye, Mum. Sleep tight.’
Joey turned at the sound of Alfie bursting into the bedroom.
‘I’ve got a painting job!’
‘Huh?’
‘Just now. Like, literally! The woman two doors down. She saw me in my overalls and she asked if I was a decorator and I said yes and she said can you decorate my living room and my kitchen.’
‘What woman two doors down?’
‘Here.’ He felt in the pockets of his overall and pulled out a card. ‘“Nicola Fitzwilliam”,’ he read. ‘She lives there.’ He pointed. ‘In the yellow house.’
The very sound of the word Fitzwilliam on Alfie’s tongue made her shiver.
‘Did you go in?’
‘No. We just chatted on the street.’
‘And literally, she just literally asked you to paint her house? Just like that?’
‘Yeah! It was so cool! I’m going over later to cost the job for her.’
‘You’re going to her house?’
‘Yeah! Gonna jump in the shower and head over. Wanna come with?’
All the blood in Joey’s body rushed to her head. She pictured Tom’s face when he saw her standing in his hallway. For a moment she found it hard to breathe properly. ‘No.’
He looked at her curiously. ‘You OK? I thought you’d be really happy.’
She cupped her hand over her temple. ‘Sorry. I’m just a bit headachy. Long day. Kids. You know.’ She wanted to jump to her feet, to throw herself at big, handsome Alfie and hu
g him and tell him she was proud and delighted. But fear kept her anchored to the spot. She glanced at him and said, ‘I am really happy, Alf. I really am. It’s brilliant.’
This seemed to satisfy him and he beamed at her. ‘I’m getting there at last,’ he said. ‘Finally getting there. Before too long we’ll have a place of our own. And then …’ His smile faded and he didn’t finish the sentence. She knew exactly what he’d been about to say.
She watched him peeling off his clothes, leaving them snaking across the floorboards in his wake. She let her eyes linger on his buttocks for a brief moment before he disappeared into the en suite. Such remarkable buttocks. Why would a woman with access to such a pair of buttocks ever wish to place their hands upon any other? Why would a woman married to the nicest man in Bristol want to waste even a moment thinking about Tom Fitzwilliam? What was the matter with her?
Shouldn’t the memory of the look of utter dismay on Tom Fitzwilliam’s face as he pulled her hands away from his body outside the Weaver’s Arms have been enough to kill off her fixation?
Shouldn’t the thought of him struggling to find the words to express his shock and displeasure – Christ, God, no! I mean, no! You’re gorgeous! You’re really gorgeous! But you’re married! I’m married. And I would never. I would just never. God! – have stopped her in her tracks?
Technically speaking, Joey had assaulted him. If he’d wanted to report her to the police, he would have been completely within his rights.
But there’d been a moment, when her hand had first gone between his legs: his whole body had lurched towards hers; he’d tipped his head back at the feel of her fingers going to the back of his neck, he’d groaned and for a short moment his lips had met hers. That had happened. As drunk as she’d been, as pumped full of adrenaline and hormones and lust, she knew that had definitely happened. And it was that, that single, gossamer-thin element of time, that stopped her from wanting to kill herself out of pure humiliation.
She heard the shower start running, the shower door open and then close. She looked at Alfie’s clothes on the floor: the paint-splattered overalls, the ripped T-shirt, the old boxers, the small rumpled socks. In the corner of the mirror she could just make out the blurred pinkness of Alfie’s naked body in the shower.