You Let Me In

by Lucy Clarke

  I’m left standing in silence, looking out onto the empty, dark lane.

  I return to my desk, thoughts agitated, tied around Bill.

  Had I seen him?

  I try focusing on my manuscript, pushing deeper into the story, but I can’t seem to reach it.

  I arch my back, stretching to release the tension. I can feel the pulse of pain in my left wrist, an old flirtation with RSI. My head feels hot and I am uncomfortable, my stomach knotted.

  I take a sip of water – and as I do so, a wave of cramp grips my middle and I bend forward, arms hugged around myself. After a few minutes it passes, but the churning sensation in my stomach remains. It must be anxiety, I think, taking several long, deep breaths. It won’t help me write if I am this knotted with tension.

  I select a playlist I’ve created for my protagonist. The songs help me find my way into the protagonist’s voice – to visualise the set of her shoulders, to hear the tone of her voice. I close my eyes and, as the music washes over me, I picture my character. A young woman wearing a loose cotton dress.

  I find myself getting to my feet, moving across the room as my character would: the long back, the drift of her strides, the narrowed gaze. I need to feel her to transcribe her to the page.

  I return to my laptop for a moment, bending to read the words on the screen.

  ‘I won’t believe it,’ I say aloud to the room, trying on my character’s voice. I close my eyes and repeat the words again, waiting to hear what she will say next. As I listen for them, feel them flowing out of my mouth, another wave of cramp clutches at my stomach. I reach for the back of my chair to steady myself. A lurch of nausea takes me by surprise, and I clamp a hand to my mouth.

  My God, I’m going to be sick. The moment the thought strikes, I am turning towards the door – racing for the bathroom.

  My fingers grip the cold ceramic sink, knuckles turning white as I heave, the contents of my stomach lifting, surging from my throat.

  I know instinctively it is the seafood pasta. I can’t remember how long it’d been in the freezer. Or maybe I didn’t defrost it thoroughly—

  The next punch of cramp obliterates thought.

  It is only the grip of my hands against the sink, the curve of my back, the upwards thrust of abdominal muscles.

  Afterwards, I cling to the sink, spent, panting. A strand of hair hangs loose, slick with vomit. I eye myself in the mirror: my skin is white, eyes bloodshot, lips mottled. There is a sheen of sweat across my forehead.

  Running the cold tap, I lean close to the icy gush. I take a small sip – but my stomach knots into a fist, and again I’m sick, the tendons in my throat standing proud from strain.

  On and on it goes – a deep cramping urgency to expel everything from my stomach. My thoughts disengage from my book deadline – from everything – so all I can do is concentrate on breathing, on keeping myself very still, from not further aggravating the twisting fist in the very centre of me.

  The tiles are frigid as I sink onto the bathroom floor. I drag the bath mat nearer, laying my head on it. I curl onto my side, knees hugged to my chest. I’m alone. Alone …

  Light bleeds from the bathroom as I drift in and out of sleep. Dreams and waking thoughts wash together, a flow of disturbing images seeping into my mind. I feel my mother’s warm hands against my cheeks, but when I look up at her, I see a red pen has leaked in her breast pocket, as if she is bleeding from her heart. Flynn emerges into my dream in a black suit, eyes dead – but he can’t hear me – even when I am shouting his name, he doesn’t hear. I see the empty pages of my journal ripped clean out – blank pages at my feet, scattered, swelling like waves. I see a fan’s face pressed to the window of the house, hands cupped, a moth’s beating wings within the cage of their fingers.

  My breath is ragged, shallow when I wake shivering into a heavy darkness. I reach along the floor, feeling for the base of the towel rail. My fingers edge up it until they meet the soft fabric of a bath towel, which I tug free, pulling it across my body.

  I am vaguely aware of the sound of a door opening somewhere downstairs. The tread of footsteps, perhaps. Or is it only the wind? I try to explore the shape of the noise, examine it more closely, but my eyes begin to close, the thought blowing free as I give in to sleep.

  Previously

  I’ve spent the best part of two days in your writing room. I’m drawn to it, there’s something about the space that is intoxicating.

  Sometimes, like now, I stand at the glass wall, looking out across the bay. I’m beginning to know the patterns of the tides, to expect a high in the late afternoon, just before the light fades. I don’t know the names of all the shorebirds that visit – there are certainly oystercatchers with their long orange beaks and striking black and white jackets – but if I lived here, I would make it my business to learn.

  I know there was a cost to building this writing room. I remember what stood here before – the quaint fisherman’s cottage, with the old chimney puffing clouds of smoke into the sky. You made all those promises about keeping the original cottage, updating it with integrity. But once the deeds were in your name, it was bulldozed to the ground, dismembered for something newer and sleeker.

  But now I can see why.

  A couple are walking on the beach, the man’s arm linked through the woman’s. As they grow nearer, I decide from their postures that the man is much younger than the woman. She walks slowly, uncertainly, a curve to her shoulders. She looks this way and I wonder if she sees me standing here at the glass wall. I realise that I want her to. I have the urge to rap on the window, shout, ‘Look at me! Look at where I am!’

  I turn away, moving towards the back of the room. In the corner, angled to face the view, is a reading chair. It looks antique from the twist of its legs and the beautiful detailing of the carving, but it’s been reupholstered in a quality duck-egg-blue fabric. I don’t choose to sit there. Instead, I kneel beside it, positioning myself in front of the aged wooden trunk.

  The wood is split in several places, the hinges rusted. A reddish nail sticks out from the back, bent and rusty. As I open the lid, I catch the faint smell of dust and old paper.

  It is a treasure chest of you. It is as if I’m peeling back your skin and looking right inside because this chest contains everything. There are a dozen diaries and journals stacked in a cardboard box, a bundle of cards and letters tied with an elastic band, a tin of beads and buttons, a bag of dried flower petals with a slip of paper reading: From my wedding bouquet, a cluster of mix tapes – a childish hand detailing each song on the sleeve.

  I could close the lid, move away.

  But I don’t. I’m curious.

  I remove one thing at a time, careful to recall the exact location so that I can return it, like building a puzzle in reverse.

  Your handwriting is neat, blunt – blades of grass mown short. I quickly work out that you’ve kept diaries between the ages of twelve and eighteen, and then there is a five-year gap, before you started again in your mid-twenties.

  There is not a word written from your time at university.

  I find that particularly interesting.

  I’m about to close the trunk when the sight of a white envelope catches my attention.

  On its front, a date has been inked in your handwriting. There is nothing else on the envelope. Intrigued, I turn it over and open the unsealed flap.

  The photographic paper is slippery and thin, it trembles lightly as I hold it, examining the shape of the foetus’s head, the tiny curve of its nose, the unformed legs curled towards its chest. A computerised notation reads: 16 weeks, 3 days.

  I turn the envelope around. Check the date once again.

  I tuck the scan picture carefully back into the envelope, return it to the wooden trunk and shut the lid.

  18

  Elle

  ‘When you’re a writer, there are no bad situations – only material.’

  Author Elle Fielding

  When I next wake, dayli
ght streams across the bathroom floor. My mouth feels dry, my tongue swollen. Lifting my head, I experience a deep throbbing sensation at my temples.

  Water. I need water. I manage to stand, my legs weak and unsteady. I drink from the tap, forcing myself to take only small sips. My stomach is bunched and tender, but thankfully the water stays down.

  Feeling more certain on my feet, I splash my face, refreshed by the gasping cold. I pat my skin dry, then glance at my watch. Three o’clock. I blink, confused. Three? I must have slept through the entire morning.

  For me that is just … unheard of.

  Something is nagging at my thoughts as I pick up the towel from the bathroom floor, folding it and re-hanging it over the rail.

  The funeral!

  Flynn’s mother’s funeral is today. The service was at two o’clock.

  I look at my watch again even though I know the time. Know that I’ve missed it.

  My fingers push into the roots of my hair, squeezing. How could I have missed something so important?

  Maybe there’s still time to catch Flynn at the after-ceremony. It’s a forty-five-minute drive to the pub where it’s being held. If I leave now, I might just make it.

  There is no time to shower. I brush my teeth, throw on a black dress, and race from the house.

  I hurl the car along the narrow laneway. It jolts and rattles over potholes, the chassis complaining as it connects with a hump of gravel. Once I reach the main road, I put my foot to the floor, trying to ignore the banging headache reaching across my temples.

  Forty minutes later, I pull up in the pub car park. I sit for a moment, dazed. I have no recollection of the second half of the drive. I got here on autopilot, I realise, unnerved.

  My throat feels coarse and dry and I search the footwell for a bottle of water but find none. Locking the car, I enter the pub and go straight to the function room. The only signs of a funeral party are a stack of crumb-lined plates, and two trays of flagging sandwiches, the crusts already stiffening in the centrally heated air.

  I cross the main bar, then turn down a flagstone corridor lined with gilt-framed prints of hounds wearing flat-caps. The headache has spread from my temples into the back of my skull, and I move tentatively, trying to limit the impact of my steps.

  Turning a corner, I descend into the alcove at the rear of the pub – and there he is.

  Flynn is dressed in a charcoal-grey suit that I last saw him wearing at my mother’s funeral. The top button of his shirt is undone, his tie loosened. An elderly woman I don’t recognise is clasping his face, as if trying to impart something of great importance. Then she presses a kiss to his forehead, before releasing him and shuffling from the room.

  Flynn looks up and sees me. His expression is blank.

  As he comes towards me, I clock the light stoop of his posture, the slackness at the edges of his mouth – and see immediately that he is drunk.

  ‘Flynn.’

  ‘So,’ he says. ‘You came.’

  His sister, Rea, and her husband, Iain, are getting to their feet, moving towards me. Rea kisses me on the cheek.

  ‘It’s good to see you!’ she says, squeezing both my hands in her own. The last time we were together was New Year’s Day, two years ago, when Flynn and I were very much still married. Rea and I had got hopelessly drunk on White Russians.

  ‘We’re going for a cigarette,’ Rea says. ‘But catch you later?’

  ‘Yes,’ I say. ‘I’d like that.’

  She looks from me, to Flynn. She presses her lips together. Nods once.

  Alone in the alcove, Flynn sinks onto a wooden chair, cradling a whisky. I draw a second chair close, sitting with my knees almost touching his. I try not to betray my shock at the hollows beneath his eyes, or the grey pallor of his skin.

  I can’t imagine I look any fresher.

  ‘I’m so sorry I missed the service, Flynn. I wanted to be there. I’ve had food poisoning. I haven’t left the bathroom in hours.’

  ‘Do you mean your writing room?’

  I flinch, the speed of the jab catching me by surprise. ‘That’s not fair.’

  Flynn finishes his whisky and sets down the glass without care. He is a bad drunk – alcohol masking the best parts of him.

  ‘Fiona and Bill both send their love. Bill said when he’s next in Bristol, he owes you a pint.’

  A flicker of a smile spreads across Flynn’s mouth. ‘And the rest. His squash debts go back years.’

  I feel a glimmer of relief. There is the Flynn I know.

  He looks at me. ‘How’s Drake?’

  ‘Good. He’s started nursery. Still talks about that wave you paddled him into on the bodyboard.’

  ‘It’d be nice to see him again – see all of them.’

  ‘I know.’

  He sucks in a breath. ‘We’ve started going through Mum’s things. Thought we better get on it while Rea’s over.’

  I don’t envy them the task. When I lost my mother, I remember the heartache of clearing out her things. Fiona had handled it with brisk efficiency, masking the brutal depths of her grief. She came armed with cardboard boxes, storage bags and a plastic folder filled with labels and marker pens. A Sue Ryder delivery van was pre-booked for the larger items, and everything else was put into boxes.

  I’d felt stunned, as if all I wanted to do was be in that space and remember, freeze each frame of it in my mind so that I could gather the remaining pieces of my mother. Each of her belongings – be it a necklace, a pair of hiking boots, a mug with a hand-painted feather – was a relic of our family life. I wanted to hold onto each item, re-read the story. Fiona had no patience for it. There was an argument. I called her unfeeling, which was cruel and inaccurate. Later I understood that Fiona simply couldn’t bear being in the flat without our mother there.

  During the clear-out, I filled my car with all the boxes that would fit. Flynn said nothing when the one storage cupboard in our flat was overtaken with my mother’s belongings.

  ‘Yesterday we tackled Mum’s study,’ Flynn tells me. ‘Do you know how many copies of your book I found? Eleven.’

  I smile. ‘She’d chosen it for her book club to read. She must have bought copies for them all.’

  Flynn says, ‘Every time she went into a book shop, she always adjusted the displays so that yours was at the front.’

  My smile widens.

  ‘She was so proud of you.’ His eyes lower, his mouth turning downwards. ‘I can’t believe she’s gone.’

  I reach for his hand, but Flynn pulls away, gripping the sides of his chair.

  ‘How did the service go?’

  His voice has a harder, clipped edge as he answers, ‘Hymns. Readings. Incense wafting around the coffin. Then they took her away. Put her in the earth. Held out a metal box filled with soil to sling at the coffin.’ His expression is set.

  ‘I bet there was a good turnout. Your mum was so loved.’

  He looks up, right at me. Something in his expression has shifted.

  ‘No grandchildren to wave her off, were there?’ His eyes are shining.

  I flinch, as if I’ve been slapped.

  ‘That was all she really wanted. To be a grandmother.’

  ‘Don’t,’ I warn. ‘Please. Not here. Not today.’

  Yet, of course, this is exactly the moment. The alcohol, the bleak depth of his sadness, the vindication that I didn’t even make it to the service – it is all crashing together in Flynn’s thoughts, the perfect storm.

  A muscle in the side of his jaw clenches and releases. ‘You know,’ he says, leaning forward, and I can hear something sharp in his tone. ‘I never told my mum.’

  For weeks, for months, after Flynn found out, I’d tried to encourage him to talk about it – but it was like he’d parked that set of information in a room, pulled the door to, and no one could enter. Now I sense that that door is about to be yanked open, and I’m not sure whether I want to go inside.

  ‘I didn’t want her to think less of you. Thought
I’d reserve that mantle for myself.’

  I keep my tone level. ‘I know today is just horrible, and that you need someone to lash out at but, please, I’m begging you, Flynn, let’s not talk about this now.’

  ‘Would you prefer to wait another seven years? Shall I wait until I’m sitting next to you in a consultant’s office, so that he can be the one to bring it up – because that was fun, Elle. That was a real party!’

  Cold shivers along my spine at the memory.

  I recall the way the consultant adjusted his glasses as he read through his notes, explaining, ‘We’ve found a thickening of the uterus concurrent with scar tissue. It’s making implantation harder.’ He’d looked up then, asking me, ‘Have you had a previous termination?’

  I heard the strain of Flynn’s chair as he shifted, turning to look at me. He must have read my hesitation. ‘Elle?’

  I didn’t look at him. I couldn’t.

  ‘Yes,’ I answered the doctor. ‘When I was twenty-four.’

  Instead I looked down at my hands, which were balled in my lap. It was your baby, Flynn. Ours.

  Flynn lurched to his feet. ‘I … I need to …’ He’d fumbled with the door handle. Cursed.

  ‘Push,’ the consultant said.

  He pushed the door open with force.

  I sat very still, listening to the thunder of feet disappearing down the clinic corridor.

  Now his gaze is fixed to me. ‘Why didn’t you talk to me about it?’

  ‘We’d only been together for six months. You’d left to travel the world. I didn’t know if you’d come back for me.’

  ‘But I did. Three months later – because I loved you, I didn’t want to see the world without you. And you said nothing. Actually, no – that’s not right. You said vows to me in church, about trust and love. We talked about a future with children in. We tried and tried to make that a reality – but all the time you were keeping this from me.’ His voice is gaining volume. ‘We kept an ovulation calendar, we cut out alcohol, we had sex on a monthly schedule, you did post-coital shoulder stands – and throughout all of that you never once thought to mention it?’