by Laura Elliot
‘I tried ringing your mobile. You’re not answering.’
‘It’s broken. Grace’s handiwork. I haven’t had time to pick up a new one.’
‘Oh, my!’ Tara hunkers down as Grace walks towards her. ‘This can’t be Grace. I thought she was a baby.’
‘This little fellow usurped her.’ Elena gestures towards the carrycot, where Joel lies sleeping.
‘Wow!’ Tara dutifully admires him. ‘He’s beautiful. How old is he now?’
‘Four months.’
‘And Grace is?’
‘A year and six months.’
‘Irish twins. You have been a busy girl since I saw you last.’
‘Wine,’ says Elena. ‘White, I presume?’
‘Sounds perfect.’ Tara collapses into an armchair and coaxes Grace onto her lap.
In the downstairs bathroom, Elena takes off her sunglasses. The bruising is still livid around her eyes and across her forehead. She runs a comb through her hair and splashes cold water over her face. She cannot remember what ignited this last row and anyway it is no longer possible to anticipate the ‘trigger’. Her back aches and a pain at the base of her neck worries her. She walks slowly towards the kitchen and takes a bottle of white wine from the fridge. She uncorks it and returns to the conservatory, where Joel, awake now, is demanding to be fed. Grace immediately abandons Tara and demands her mother’s attention.
‘How do you do it?’ Tara asks as Elena settles him at her breast and perches Grace on the chair beside her.
‘It’s an innate skill,’ Elena replies. ‘You’ll discover you have it when your own brood arrive.’
‘Perish the thought.’ Tara spins the wine glass between her fingers. ‘I don’t possess a single maternal bone in my entire body.’ She stops, startled into shocked silence, when Grace, reaching upwards, pulls the sunglasses from Elena’s face.
‘Oh my God! What’s happened to you?’ The expression on her face tells Elena that her friend has already guessed the answer.
‘I was standing on a stepladder looking for something on top of the kitchen cupboard. I overbalanced.’
‘Did you go to hospital?’
‘No need. No bones were broken. I was lucky it wasn’t more serious. I only fell down four steps.’
‘Four steps too many, Elena.’
‘It happens.’ She refills Tara’s wine glass and puts the bottle back on the coffee table.
‘Won’t you join me?’ Tara asks. ‘You look as if you could do with a strong drink.’
‘My body is an alcohol-free zone when I’m feeding. But I’d love a glass of water. Would you mind bringing me one in from the kitchen?’ She needs a moment to compose herself. Tara’s expression, that sceptical grimace she was unable to hide, has caused the heat to rush to her cheeks. Grace, still holding the sunglasses, wriggles to the floor and flings them into the playpen. Joel, sated, pokes a matchstick finger into his mouth and drifts asleep.
‘Are you happy with Nicholas?’ Tara asks when she returns with the water. A slice of lemon floats on top. Elena’s face scrunches, as if she has bitten into its tartness. He has destroyed her hopes of independence, shamed her sense of self so severely that she is unable to confide in her friends. She hesitates too long, unable to form the words she needs, and Tara, frowning, kneels before her. ‘Does he hurt you, Elena?’
The question shocks her into an immediate response. ‘I’ve already told you what happened, Tara. Why on earth would you ask me a question like that?’
‘I’m sorry. Sorry. It’s just… Steve said you seemed different when you met him in that restaurant and Susie told me you were a mess when she saw you in hospital.’
‘Did you have a conference on my general welfare?’ Elena snaps. ‘Is that why you’re here today? To check me out?’
‘I’m here because I’m your friend. As are the others. You’ve cut yourself off from us, Elena. You seldom answer my texts or return my calls. If there’s anything―’
They are alone, apart from the children, yet she has a sensation that she can be overheard and it causes her heart to beat faster. ‘I’ve told you exactly what happened. As for not being in touch, you try managing two babies and you’ll really understand the meaning of busyness.’
‘I’ve upset you.’ Tara sighs. ‘I certainly didn’t come here with that intention.’
Her concern is unbearable. What will she tell the others? A black eye, face swollen. Elena imagines a Skype session, opinions hardening, the truth decided. What then? Will they ride off into the sunset with her and her two babies? She doesn’t want to think about that night. How she turned on the stairs to hit back at Nicholas. It happened so fast, her feet sliding from under her. She doesn’t remember anything else except his expression as she lost her balance. So detached… she can’t forget it, no matter how often she convinces herself it’s all in her imagination. Tara is forcing her to confront it. He might have stopped her fall. He might have caused it. He might be completely innocent. He could be a monster.
‘If Susie told you I was unhappy, she’s wrong. And Steve… meeting an ex-boyfriend when you’re with the person you love is never easy.’ Where does the truth lie in all of this? Her thoughts surge and clash and threaten to undo her. ‘I want to hear about your new promotion. Senior advertising executive! Sounds pretty impressive. Steve says he wants to poach you but you’re incorruptible.’
Tara looks as anxious as she does now to change the subject. The talk turns to office politics and an agency full of creative, dysfunctional geniuses, who drive her crazy. It sounds exhilarating. Like the rush of the Big Wave. Nicholas will be home soon. His evening meal needs to be ready, the kitchen spotless.
After a little while, Tara phones for a taxi to take her back to the train station. ‘You will ring me if you ever need to talk, won’t you?’ Her fierce embrace suggests she hasn’t been deceived in the slightest by her friend’s explanation.
Elena closes the front door and leans against it. The setting sun slants through the fan-light. She has squandered precious hours with Tara, whose life is independent, free, well-paid, stimulating. She slaps her hand to her forehead, as if force will dislocate her envy, and winces as pain shoots through her head.
* * *
‘How was your day?’ Nicholas asks, as he does every evening.
‘Same as usual.’ Elena checks her watch. He likes his fillet steak rare, two and half minutes each side.
‘Exactly the same as usual.’ He closes the fridge door and stands too close behind her.
‘Almost. Apart from Grace emptying the coal scuttle and doing a pretty good imitation of a chimney girl from a Dickens novel.’
‘Were you too drunk to notice what she was doing?’
‘Drunk?’
‘On white wine? At a rough guess, you had at least two glasses.’
‘Oh, that…’ The oil sizzles hotly as she flips the steak. ‘Tara called in.’
‘So, your day wasn’t the same as usual?’
‘She was only here for a short while.’ Elena walks to the sink and sieves the potatoes, lowers the heat on the mushrooms, gives the onions a final toss. Golden brown, exactly as he expects. She had been afraid to remove the wine bottle from the fridge, so had just hoped he wouldn’t notice the dropped level. His awareness of everything in his house no longer astonishes her. Instead, it terrifies her. He is still shadowing her, demanding to know what they discussed.
‘Her father’s party. And her promotion to senior advertising executive.’ She carries his dinner to the table, waits for him to sit down.
‘Did you talk about us?’
Elena shrugs. ‘We’re not that important in Tara’s scheme of things.’
‘Answer my question.’
What do you think we discussed? That you’ve beggared me with your reckless Ponzi schemes. That you lift your hand or your foot to me every time I mention your dead wife. That you monitor every aspect of my miserable existence yet I’m afraid to run from this haunted house and beco
me homeless with two babies.
‘She asked if I was happy. I said I was. Ecstatic.’
‘I hope you sounded more convincing than you do now.’
‘Nicholas, eat your dinner before it gets cold.’
‘Did you tell her I’m a failure?’ He flings the chair out from the table and sits down. ‘Isn’t that what you really believe? You don’t trust me to recoup your losses, even though I’m working flat out to make it up to you.’
‘I know you are. I didn’t discuss our personal business with her. Why are you trying to start another argument when there’s no reason to do so?’
‘This is not an argument. It’s purely a discussion as to whether or not I can trust you to be honest with me.’
Joel cries. It’s time to feed him again. Nicholas grabs her arm as she moves past him. ‘Don’t lie to me again, Elena. I will always find out and that will upset me very much. Do we understand each other?’
‘Perfectly.’ She is free to go. Joel’s scrunched face relaxes as she feeds him. Her tiny protector. He is unaware of how often he keeps her safe.
Seventeen
Elena sits on the patio in the back garden and watches Grace run with growing confidence across the flagstones. Joel, in his buggy, lies under the shade of the apple tree. He laughs when the breeze blows through the branches and sets the glass butterflies tinkling. Their rhythm is disturbed when two pieces, placed too closely together, collide. This has happened before, but today the sound clangs through Elena’s head. Pain jabs her temples, sudden flashes that blur her vision.
She settles Joel down for his afternoon nap in the living room. The French doors are open, so she will hear him if he awakens. Grace is still playing on the patio when Elena enters the garden shed. She pauses in the doorway to survey the order with which Nicholas organises his tools. Each item has a specific hook, shelf or drawer. This is the same symmetry she saw during her brief intrusion into Amelia’s bedroom and she now applies it to Woodbine herself. Her old habits of leaving unwashed dishes in the sink or splaying the pages of newspapers over the table only displeases him.
He won’t miss one butterfly from the cluster, she thinks as she searches for a wire-cutter and a ladder. Is this the same ladder Amelia climbed to paint the ceiling in the nursery? It’s heavy to carry but Elena manages to drag it across the lawn towards the apple tree. The constant colliding has cracked the wing of one of the butterflies. She cuts it down and shoves it to the bottom of the wheelie bin. What is she doing, hiding evidence like a deranged criminal? Crazy… stultifying craziness. Where is it going to end? He almost drowned her. Almost crashed his car when she was beside him. Pushed her down the stairs— no, he didn’t, it was an accident, her own fault, and the car was just a stunt, showing off, and in the water, not knowing his own strength. Frantically, she replaces the ladder and runs a rake over the grass, trying to eradicate the telltale grooves. She opens the organic bin and flings the leaves she has raked into it. She grimaces as the smell of rotting food is released. A bunch of dahlias, crushed and wilting, lie among the potato peelings. They are the distinctive shade of purple that Billy grows in his garden and lays out on the grassy bank. She remembers Billy’s expression on the only occasion they met; the certainty in his voice when he told her the flowers wouldn’t last long. Was that what he meant? Is Nicholas the person who constantly removes them from the embankment? Why would he dump them in the bin?
They were placed there by Billy to remember Amelia’s father. Was Nicholas’s relationship with his father-in-law so difficult that he cannot bear to see these floral reminders of him? So many questions – but Elena knows the punishment she will receive for demanding information Nicholas doesn’t want to give her.
When she looks up from the bin, alerted by the silence from the patio, she can see no sign of Grace. She hasn’t wandered into the living room where Joel is still sleeping, and the side gates are bolted. Elena’s knees weaken with relief when she hears a cry from between the trees at the bottom of the garden. A trail, partially obscured by weeds, wends between these trees and Woodbine’s boundary wall. She is still unable to see Grace, but her plaintive cry sounds closer.
She calls Grace’s name as she runs under the leafy canopy, then spots her sitting under a tree, her legs sprawled out in front of her. Once her daughter is safely in her arms, Elena continues walking, curious to see where the trail leads. It’s obvious that no attempt has been made for years to cut back the foliage and it becomes more and more difficult to press ahead. She reaches a wire fence that separates their garden from Billy’s land. The fence is broken and allows her access into a meadow where a swathe of bright yellow rapeseed is in bloom. The hedgerow bordering the top of the field is overgrown with elderberry trees and blackberry bushes whose fruits have yet to ripen. She notices a stone arch that she takes to be the brow of a bridge. Dead wood snaps underfoot as she moves closer, expecting to hear the murmur of water but unable to see where it could possibly flow. The red-brick structure, partially hidden in a stranglehold of briar and ivy, turns out to be a small building with a low, arched doorway.
The door is bolted, the padlock rusted. She hurries back the way she came. She has been away from the house longer than she planned and Grace is heavy in her arms. Joel will soon be awake. She runs through the French doors into the living room, where Yvonne is walking up and down with Joel in her arms. He has been crying, his flushed face wet with tears.
‘I can’t believe you left him alone,’ she says as Elena lowers Grace to the floor and tries to catch her breath. ‘How irresponsible is that?’
‘I was in the garden for a few minutes.’ Elena doesn’t want to sound defensive, yet there it is again, that high, self-justifying tone she adopts whenever Yvonne calls. How did that happen? How can it be stopped? She takes Joel from the older woman and opens her blouse. Outside in the garden the butterflies, minus one, hang motionless.
* * *
‘You should have asked my permission before you vandalised my garden,’ says Nicholas. ‘I cleared the house of Amelia’s possessions but you’re still not satisfied. What will be next? The sculptures, the trees and flowers she planted?’
Did he stand beneath the apple tree and count the butterflies or find the broken one hidden at the bottom of the wheelie bin? His obsessive need to be in control is destroying her.
‘It’s only one butterfly,’ she says. Explaining is a robotic process, yet she continues to justify her actions. He silences her with his fist. She will wear long sleeves in the days to come.
* * *
‘Anyone home?’ Yvonne sings out as she slams the front door and breezes into the kitchen. Joel cries, as if on cue, while Grace, who had been playing happily in the playpen, knocks her bricks over with a petulant swipe and drums her heels off the floor.
‘My poor eardrums.’ Yvonne dumps a bag of groceries on the table and covers her ears in mock-alarm. ‘Am I interrupting those temper tantrums again? Nicholas says you’ve been feeling poorly so I decided you could do with a break. I’ll put the kettle on. Nothing like a cup of tea for mending shattered nerves.’ Still talking, she switches on the kettle, tidies the toys from the floor and sits Grace in her high chair. ‘Have you had breakfast yet, Elena? I thought not. You sit right here and I’ll make scrambled eggs and toast. You know what they say about breakfast being the most important meal of the day. Oh, my dear, you’re not still feeding Joel. He’ll be opening your buttons soon. That’s why you look so exhausted.’ She averts her eyes to the wall behind Elena, a blank space being preferable to the sight of Joel’s greedy suck.
‘So, tell me what’s wrong?’ She sets a cup of tea at Elena’s elbow and butters toast. ‘Nicholas sounded quite worried when he rang.’
‘Nothing’s wrong,’ Elena replies. ‘I’ve no idea what he’s told you.’
‘Just that you’re down in the dumps again. I reminded him it’s no joke having two small babies and any mother is entitled to her off days. Anyway, I decided there’s only one th
ing to do and that’s to take this pair off your hands for a few hours. Give you a break from all that feeding and teething. Why not go to the hairdressers? Your roots are growing out again. A new hairstyle will cheer you up and make you look more like your old self again.’
Elena holds her temper with an effort. She needs time on her own and if that means enduring Yvonne’s implied criticisms, she will smile gratefully as she hands her children over. She pumps milk and fills a bottle. Yvonne’s expression, when she takes it from her, suggests that she has in fact been handed a grenade.
As soon as she is alone, Elena removes a slasher and a jemmy from the garden shed. She cuts feverishly through the undergrowth, venting her anger on the snapping branches until she uncovers the wooden door. She forces the bolt with the jemmy and after a few minutes it splinters apart. The mouldering smell of trapped earth rushes at her when she enters. Her suspicions are right. She has uncovered an old ice house that had been built into an embankment of earth. The beam from her torch sweeps over steps leading downwards, an arched ceiling above, a flagged floor and craggy walls. How old is this ice house? How long since it functioned? Eighty, ninety years, maybe more, and since then abandoned and forgotten— no, not forgotten. Candles have burned here; their stalactite remains are still clinging to their glass jars. Mouldering cushions lie scattered on the floor and a pair of old curtains hang from the wall.
Despite the heat from her exertions, Elena shivers. She is not alone here. Someone else is breathing at the same rapid pace. An echo, she realises, as she stills her breath and collects herself. It would be all too easy to allow her overwrought imagination to take flight, yet she knows she came here for a reason. Amelia. Her awareness is instinctive. It explains the reason why she has been unable to stop thinking about her. An obsession, Nicholas called it, but it was her own intuition that led her to this earthy hole.