The Unheard

by Nicci French

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  To Patricia the Valiant

  ONE

  People say you can’t die in your dreams but last night I felt I was going to die. I was falling, like she fell, and it was just before I hit the concrete – dark, rushing up at me – that I woke, gasping, sweating. I hadn’t got away. It was happening again.

  I tried to think of a smooth sea, of a blue sky, of a forest with the wind gently stirring the leaves. It didn’t work.

  I was awake but I was still in the dream. I was back where it all began.

  * * *

  I was sitting in the window seat of a café off Broadway Market. I was early and so I saw Jason and Poppy before they saw me. For a brief moment it was as if nothing had changed. Poppy was riding on Jason’s shoulders, clutching his ears, her mouth open in precarious joy, her glorious red hair like a banner in the soft breeze. The father with his little daughter, walking down the street towards the waiting mother.

  Even at that moment, even though I had come here straight from being with Aidan, and had walked to the café in the glorious May warmth feeling alive with hope and desire and excitement and a sense of life unfurling, I felt a ripple of sadness. Poppy was so small, so vulnerable and trusting. And Jason and me, we’d done this to her – split her world in half. But we would make it better, together.

  I watched as they drew closer. Jason was holding Poppy’s legs so that she was steady and he looked like he was singing. He had a nice voice; he always used to sing loudly in the shower. He probably still did.

  As they passed the window, he saw me and gave that familiar, funny half-smile, as if there was a shared joke between us, like in the early days. He put Poppy’s little overnight bag on the pavement so that he could lift her up and off and down to the ground. Poppy pointed excitedly at me, then put her face to the window, her nose squashing against the glass and her breath misting it. ‘Mummy,’ she was saying soundlessly.

  I stood up and met her at the door and hugged her and she pressed her face into my shoulder. She smelled like sawdust and sap. I’d assumed Jason would leave immediately, but he ordered coffee for himself and a hot chocolate for Poppy and we all sat down at the table. Poppy wriggled onto my lap and I looked at Jason a little uneasily. I was always anxious to avoid any competition for her affection. But he just smiled.

  He was still good-looking. There were grey flecks in his neatly trimmed beard; he was bulkier. He was a grown-up now, a headmaster, he had status, but I could see the young man I’d fallen for – the young man who’d fallen for me.

  I had a sudden, vivid memory of that first evening all those years ago. It had happened so quickly, right at a time when I was thinking I never wanted to get involved with another man, ever again. I was emerging from a spectacularly distressing break-up. My boyfriend of seven years – my first real love – had gone off with a close friend, someone I’d known for most of my life. I lost them both. Even the past I shared with them was wrecked by lies. It had left me a frail, raw, sore, pulpy mess of a human being.

  But on a spring day like today, full of blossom and fresh green leaves, my friend Gina had persuaded me to go to a party with her. She said it would do me good and wouldn’t take no for an answer. She stood over me while I put on a dress that looked more like a sack, and brushed my long red hair, and refused to wear make-up. Jason was there, tall and rangy, with grey eyes, a cleft in his then-beardless chin, and a faded blue cotton shirt. I could still remember how he looked at me and didn’t look away. We got talking. We danced together and I felt the heat of his body. I suddenly thought: so my life isn’t ruined after all; so I am still desirable and I can still feel desire; so my boyfriend was a scumbag and my girlfriend crap, but I can still laugh and dance and have sex and feel life rippling through me. I can begin again.

  We’d gone on to a bar in Camden High Street. I remember I had a tequila and my head swam and I was thinking to myself that I had to be careful, I mustn’t be a fool, not again. Jason laid his hand over mine, told me that he was with someone else and it was as if he had slapped me. I was suddenly sober. I said I wasn’t going to get involved with anyone who was in a relationship. I knew what it felt like to be betrayed. Jason nodded, kissed me on the cheek, a bit too close to my mouth, and we said goodbye and I thought I would never see him again.

  The next day, he texted me. I could still remember it word for word: I’ve just broken up. No pressure. But I’d love to see you.

  Now we were here, all those years later, with our beautiful three-year-old daughter, and in July it would be the first anniversary of our separation. So much promised and so much lost. It hadn’t been a divorce because we’d never married. But we’d shared a child and a house and a life.

  The young, fresh-faced barista came over with the drinks. She put the large mug of hot chocolate in front of Poppy.

  ‘This is for you, young lady, I guess.’

  Poppy glared at the woman, who looked disconcerted.

  ‘She’s a bit tired,’ said Jason.

  ‘I’m not tired,’ said Poppy firmly, but she had that twitchiness about her. A storm was coming.

  The woman raised her eyebrows and moved away.

  ‘How was your weekend?’ I asked.

  Jason looked at Poppy. ‘How was it, Poppy?’

  ‘It rained.’

  ‘Well, not all the time.’

  ‘It rained and it rained and it rained.’

  ‘I know, honey. You and me and Emily played games and you did pictures and you cooked with Emily.’

  Emily was Jason’s wife. She really was his wife. This time Jason had got married. Poppy had gone to their wedding. I had made a yellow dress for her and washed her hair the night before, and later I saw the photograph of the three of them, a whole new family without me in it.

  ‘That sounds good,’ I said, trying to sound like I meant it. I did mean it, I told myself. How could I not want Poppy to have a good time? I looked at my ex-partner. ‘Thanks, Jason.’

  Jason smiled again, his small, secret smile inviting my complicity: him and me against the world. He’d always been like that.

  ‘We’re doing OK, aren’t we?’

  ‘How do you mean?’

  ‘Us two.’ He gestured towards Poppy who was dangerously lifting her mug. ‘People make such a mess of it. They turn on each other. We haven’t done that.’

  I slid my eyes to Poppy. She had chocolate round her mouth and she was carefully blowing into her drink. Poppy often seemed to be in her own world, not paying attention, but she was a human sponge, soaking up everything. It was impossible to know what she saw, what she heard, what she understood.

  ‘We haven’t.’

  ‘And we won’t.’

  When we agreed to separate, we laid down ground rules: never to be angry with each other in front of Poppy. Never to compete for her. Never to try and buy her affection with treats and toys, or not be firm with her about behaviour or the structure of her days. Never to let any disagreements leak out into our relationship with her. Never to criticise the other to her. Always to collaborate on how we raised her. Always to assume that we had her best interests as a priority and to trust each other as parents. And so on. There were loads of them. It was like a self-help book. Jason wrote them all down and he emailed them to me, as if it was a contract. And by and large we had kept to it.

  I looked at the man who was the father of my child. He us
ed to hate buying clothes for himself, so I would buy them. The jacket was a birthday present I’d got him three years earlier. But I hadn’t bought his patterned shirt. I hadn’t been with him when he chose that pair of soft leather shoes. I unfolded a paper napkin and wiped Poppy’s mouth.

  ‘Shall we head off, poppet?’

  As we stood up, Jason leaned close, almost as if he were going to kiss me, but instead he whispered something.

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘Everything will be all right.’

  ‘What?’ said Poppy.

  ‘We’re just saying goodbye,’ said Jason.

  * * *

  The shared entrance to my flat was always cluttered with junk mail. Bernie, who lived upstairs, kept his bike there and he was lifting it off its rack as I opened the door.

  ‘Tess!’ he said, as if I’d been away for months. ‘And Poppy!’ He leaned forward with a look of concern. ‘Is everything all right?’

  He was about my age, in his mid-thirties, thin, with muddy brown eyes, brown hair in a ponytail and a wispy brown beard. The tops of two of the fingers on his left hand were missing, which Poppy always found fascinating, and he had a habit of standing just a little bit too close to people. He stooped down to Poppy and she took a step back and stared at him with round eyes.

  ‘She’s tired,’ I said and slid a toe through the mess of letters. A couple of envelopes were addressed to me: more bills.

  ‘If I can do anything,’ he said.

  I mumbled something that I hoped was both polite and discouraging.

  Our cat was waiting at the door of the flat. I’d taken Sunny when I left and I’d taken my old sewing machine and my garden tools and almost nothing else. I hadn’t taken the pictures, the furniture and light shades and mismatched plates and glasses, the Christmas decorations, all the stuff that we had chosen together and accumulated over the years and which would remind me of those early days of happiness and then how they slipped away. I needed to shut the door on all of that, but I couldn’t have left Sunny behind with Jason and Emily in Brixton, even though he had lived in that house for years. He was my companion, old and fat and scruffy, his coat a fading orange, with disapproving green eyes, a limp, and a ragged ear.

  Poppy picked Sunny up, his legs dangling uncomfortably from between her arms, and hefted him into her bedroom. It was the first room I’d decorated when we moved in, putting up shelves, making the sky-blue curtains, painting the walls, assembling the bed, buying bed linen and bright throws and the little wicker chair. Poppy had helped me, choosing colours and standing beside me when I rolled on the paint, laying on small clean licks of paint with the brush I’d got for her.

  I unpacked Poppy’s bag, putting the dungarees into a drawer, tossing the tee shirt, knickers and socks into a corner to be washed. I took out the squashy teddy with button eyes and the slightly shabby rag doll, Milly, with her red felt skirt and hair of orange wool, and half-tucked them into her bed, according to Poppy’s strict instructions. Poppy wouldn’t go to sleep without them on either side of her. I returned Poppy’s favourite picture books to her bookshelf and put the pouch of pens and crayons on the desk.

  At the bottom of the bag was a pile of paper: Poppy’s pictures from the weekend. I sat on the bed.

  ‘Can you show me your drawings?’

  Poppy sat beside me, the cat sliding off her lap. I looked down at the small figure. Pale-skinned, dark-eyed, with unequivocally red hair, redder than mine. A fierce, demanding, joyful little girl who still didn’t understand what was happening in her life. The thought of it gave me an ache in my chest.

  The first picture consisted of a bright orange splurge at the top and dotted streaks of blue below.

  ‘Is that the sun?’

  ‘It rained,’ said Poppy.

  ‘It’s beautiful.’

  This was followed by a creature I thought was a lion or a horse; a princess; a house; all of them in yellows and reds and blues.

  ‘These are great. I’m going to choose one of them and put it above my bed, so I can look at it and think of you.’

  Poppy seemed unimpressed by this.

  I lifted the house and came to the final picture. It was so different that for a moment I wondered whether there had been some mistake, whether it had been drawn by someone else. It was entirely in thick black crayon. It was simple and basic and violent. There was what looked like a lighthouse or tower and next to it, at the top of the tower, if it was a tower, was one of Poppy’s triangular figures, with legs and arms like angry sticks coming out of it and a clotted scribble of black around the head. The figure was slanted, with its head pointed downwards.

  ‘Is that a tower?’

  ‘It is a tower.’

  I wasn’t sure that Poppy wasn’t just repeating back to me what I’d said. I pointed to the figure.

  ‘Who’s that?’

  Poppy put a finger on the head with the scrawl of dark lines around it.

  ‘I done her hair.’

  ‘Did,’ I said faintly. ‘But who is it? Is it an angel? A fairy?’

  ‘A fairy godmother.’

  I stared at the jagged lines with a sense of disquiet.

  ‘Is she flying?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Is it a story? Is it a magic story?’

  ‘She was in the tower.’

  ‘Like Rapunzel?’

  ‘Her,’ said Poppy, jabbing at the figure in the picture.

  ‘No, I mean, is that someone in a story?’

  ‘He did kill her.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘He did kill. Kill and kill and kill.’

  ‘Darling, what are you saying. Who?’

  But now Poppy was confused and she said she was hungry, and then she said she wanted to have been a cat, and then she started to cry. I put the pictures on the desk, except for the one in black crayon, which I took with me.

  TWO

  I dreamed someone was calling me and then blearily realised it wasn’t a dream. I slid out of bed, still half asleep, and went into Poppy’s room, turning on the bedside lamp. Poppy was sitting up, her hair wild and her face a tragic mask. I could smell and feel what had happened.

  ‘Don’t worry about that. Let’s get you clean and dry and I’ll put some new sheets on your bed.’

  ‘I did it.’

  ‘Did what?’

  ‘I did wet it.’

  ‘It’s just a little accident.’

  Though Poppy hadn’t wet her bed for many months, I thought, as I pulled clean pyjamas onto her and stripped the bed.

  ‘Climb into my bed,’ I said, ‘while I get this done. Take Teddy and Milly with you.’

  ‘I did it. I did it.’ Her face puckered up and she started to sob.

  ‘Never you mind.’

  ‘Don’t hit me!’

  ‘Hit you! What are you saying? Of course I won’t hit you. I’ll never hit you, my darling one. Come with me.’

  * * *

  Poppy slept with me for the rest of the night. She pressed her strong hot body against mine and wriggled until she got comfortable. Her breath smelled like hay.

  ‘Are you still dead?’

  I gave a splutter of startled laughter.

  ‘I’ve never been dead.’

  ‘You didn’t die?’

  ‘No. I didn’t die, my darling. I’m here. Go to sleep now.’

  And Poppy did sleep until five in the morning, when a grey light was showing round the edges of the curtains, and then she woke with such a violent jerk that it woke me too. Her eyes were wide open and she stared at me as if I was a stranger.

  * * *

  ‘Jason, sorry to call like this, but I just wanted to know if anything happened over the weekend. Anything that might have disturbed or distressed Poppy.’

  I was downstairs in the conservatory – a room of glass and steel girders, and the reason I had bought this flat in the first place, in spite of its poky bedrooms and the miniature kitchen off to its side – speaking softly into the phone in case
Poppy overheard. In the garden, there were two goldfinches on the feeder.

  ‘It’s not even half past six.’

  ‘I thought you’d be up. You always get up early.’

  ‘Nothing happened. Nothing disturbed her. She’s fine. You shouldn’t worry over every little thing.’

  ‘This isn’t a little thing. She’s acting strangely. And she wet her bed.’

  ‘She’s just a kid, Tess.’

  I thought of the drawing, the words she had said. I thought of the way she had clung to me.

  ‘It doesn’t feel right.’

  ‘I’ve got to go.’

  ‘Right,’ I said tiredly. ‘I mean you’re right. I’m sorry. I do worry.’

  * * *

  I fed Sunny and emptied the dishwasher. I put clothes on Poppy (the stripy cotton trousers that I’d made for her a few weeks ago, a baggy tee shirt, her denim jacket and green pull-on plimsolls), and clothes on myself (rusty-coloured shirt dress, denim jacket, ankle boots). I brushed Poppy’s red hair and plaited it and Poppy yelled. I brushed my own not-quite-so-red hair and tied it back. I made us both porridge. I put Poppy’s lunch (sandwich, slices of raw carrot and cucumber, apple) into her lunch box and my own lunch (ditto) into mine. I cleaned Poppy’s teeth and cleaned my own. Just before leaving, I put the drawing into my backpack.

  At a quarter to eight, I dropped Poppy off at Gina’s house. I’d known Gina since secondary school: we’d gone on holiday together, shared a house, shared secrets; we’d seen each other fall in love, go through break-ups, get spectacularly drunk or stoned; we’d argued and made up. For a while, Carlie had been part of our small friendship group as well, until she went off with my boyfriend – and then Gina had refused to have anything more to do with her and still spoke of her with an icy contempt. Gina and I had been pregnant at the same time and given birth a couple of months apart.

  I sometimes thought we were more like sisters than friends, bound together by a shared past. She was part of the reason I’d moved to London Fields. Her son Jake was in the same nursery class as Poppy. She had another child too, six-month-old Nellie, with chunky legs, cheeks like red apples and a roar like a motorbike accelerating.