by Claire Dyer
As Honey steps out onto the path, she glances down the road and Reuben is there again under the horse chestnut trees. It’s spitting with rain and he’s leaning up against the trunk again, staring at her. He’s wearing a jacket with the hood up, his hands are in the pockets, he isn’t moving. Her blood chills.
‘Shit,’ she says.
And it all comes rushing to the surface again: her guilt, the need to leave, the fact that she’s the only one who can protect Boyd from the real her.
She doesn’t look at Colin’s house but hurries up the path, or goes as fast as she can with her sore ankle and slams the door behind her. She hauls herself up the stairs to check her phone. There’s no message. She goes into Vita’s room and peers around her curtains. The man has gone.
‘Fuck. Fuck you,’ she mutters as she climbs back into bed and draws the covers around her.
Boyd
It’s the 2nd of January; the day before his mother’s funeral.
‘Did you have a good New Year?’ Boyd asks Trixie as she puts the phone down and turns back to her computer.
‘It was OK. Quite quiet.’
‘Were the boys at home?’
‘No, they were off doing their own thing. I don’t blame them; if I was them I wouldn’t want to spend an evening in the company of us old fuddy duddies!’
‘Oh, surely not,’ Boyd says, laughing. ‘There’s nothing remotely fuddy duddy about you.’
‘Don’t you believe it,’ Trixie replies, a slight sharpness to her tone.
If Boyd is surprised he doesn’t show it, but a tiny alarm bell rings in his head at the unwelcome thought that all might not be as it seems with Trixie. She’s been, a bit like Honey has, a little on edge of late; it’s nothing he can put his finger on, just a slight raggedness around the edges.
She’s continued to be kind and patient with Honey and friendly towards Vita and for this he’s grateful and so, maybe, it’s because of this that he says what he says next.
‘Do you fancy going for a drink after work tonight? To celebrate the New Year? I could do with a change of scene before tomorrow.’
‘That would be nice,’ Trixie says. ‘If you’re sure you don’t need to get back to Honey …’ there’s a pause before she adds, ‘… or Vita.’
‘I’ll let Honey know. It’ll be fine.’
‘And you’re sure it’s OK to shut the office tomorrow? For the funeral, I mean?’
‘Of course. We’ll put a notice on the website and the door and if you could change the answerphone message, that’ll cover it. I’m sure people will understand.’
‘They bloody well should,’ Trixie says and, again, Boyd feels a frisson of unease at the vehemence in her voice.
He calls Honey and explains that he’s taking Trixie out for a drink.
‘That’s a nice idea,’ Honey says. ‘Just text when you’re on your way back and we can decide what to do for dinner?’
‘Will do.’ He pauses and then asks, ‘Is Vita home yet?’
‘Yes, she’s here.’
He’s saying goodbye as an email from the solicitor doing the conveyancing for the house in Silchester Avenue pops up on his screen.
* * *
‘Bet you’re going to find tomorrow difficult,’ Trixie says as they settle into a booth at the pub.
‘Yes, I will. We all will, I mean,’ he adds hastily.
She’s drinking red wine and he a beer. He’ll let himself have one and then if Trixie wants another drink, he’ll switch to something soft so that he can drive her home. Like when she went for the drink with Honey, she’s said she’ll get a cab in the morning and collect her car then. ‘I’ll drive straight to the funeral from the office,’ she said.
‘Is Richard able to come?’ Boyd asks, picking up his pint.
‘No, I don’t think so.’
‘That’s a shame.’
‘Yes, it is.’
They are silent for a moment. Around them the bar is bustling with people, a fire is crackling in the grate and a David Bowie song is coming out of the speakers. Boyd stretches his legs and cracks his knuckles. He feels strangely relaxed, almost as if time’s on hold and all that matters is here, now. He’s always felt easy in Trixie’s company.
‘Are you going to be OK, though?’ she asks. ‘I mean, there’ll be painful reminders, won’t there?’
Her question prompts Boyd to analyse his feelings, something he’s shied away from since his mother’s death. ‘Yes and no,’ he says, after a while. ‘It’ll be different because it’s not a church service like we had with William. I presume you mean it’ll be painful because of him?’
Trixie nods and takes a sip of her wine. She is looking directly at him. Her eyes are bright and clear. She has, he notices, a faint blush on her cheeks and has done her hair a little differently; it’s more puffed up than it was earlier in the day. He watches her lips as she runs her tongue over them, the wine has stained them slightly, making them redder than they usually are.
‘And,’ he continues, ‘it’s different because …’
‘Yes?’ She leans forward, resting her chin on her hands.
‘Well, because there’s a certain rightness to burying one’s parents, that’s the natural order of things. What’s not right is burying your child. No parent should have to do that.’
It’s been ages since he’s spoken of this, and he wonders whether he’s actually ever articulated it in quite this way before.
‘It was an awful time, wasn’t it?’ she says.
‘We wouldn’t have got through it without you. You know that, don’t you.’
She nods again and picks up her drink.
And he remembers how good she was in the days after William had been born and then during those awful months after he died. How she’d try and coax Vita out of bed and how she’d kept him on track at work, carefully and quietly doing the things he’d let slip. And she’d never once complained or taken either him or Vita to task. There were no, ‘Isn’t it time to pull yourself together?’ kind of speeches and no platitudes either. She’d seemed to know exactly how much it hurt without him having to tell her. He wonders now if he’s ever thanked her enough for this.
But whatever she’d done, it hadn’t been enough to stop him and Vita from falling apart. She’d not been able to forewarn him that day he’d got home to find Vita packing up William’s clothes, stuffing them into a black sack, her hair all wild, her face fierce and strange.
It had, he remembers now, been pouring with rain. Work had been awful, with a sale falling through at the last minute and the despair he’d been feeling since William died was, if anything, growing heavier rather than lighter.
He and Vita had said some dreadful things to one another that afternoon in the gloom of William’s bedroom, the duckling yellow paint on the walls seeming to mock him. He’d felt so buoyant when he’d decorated the room in the weeks before the birth. How stupid he’d been to have believed it would all be all right. Such presumption, he’d thought at the time. How could he not have predicted what would happen? Why wasn’t he prepared for it?
And he’d slept on the sofa for the few days it took him to move out and when he had, he’d expected the pain to lessen. Without the daily reminders – his wife’s slow footsteps on the stairs, the way the light fell through the window in the room that had been his son’s, her talking to him about the weather or what was on the news, her voice always holding a rebuke – he’d thought his grief would ease. But the pain hadn’t diminished like he’d expected it to.
So many people have told him over the years that time is a great healer, but Boyd knows this is rubbish. Time doesn’t heal a broken heart, it only hardens it. It covers it with a layer of something that’s as thin as silk and as strong as steel. And it’s always there – the soft, damaged heart – underneath, ready to be exposed should this layer ever slip. He’d told Honey he thought he’d done his mourning, but he hasn’t.
‘Penny for them,’ Trixie says, interrupting Boyd’s though
ts.
‘Oh, sorry. I was miles away then.’ He smiles apologetically at her.
‘That’s OK. You have a lot on your mind.’
‘You could say!’ he replies. ‘But enough about me. Tell me, how are things with Richard? Has he got any promising leads, job-wise?’
Trixie sighs and runs a fingertip around the rim of her glass. A man standing at the bar laughs loudly and music’s still coming out the speakers; it’s Michael Jackson this time.
‘No,’ she says. ‘No strong leads. He tells me he’s got some enquiries out, but that for a man his age in the current economic climate we shouldn’t expect anything anytime soon. I try to understand, of course I do. But he doesn’t make it easy.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Oh, it doesn’t matter. Not right now. You have enough on your plate.’
Boyd reaches out a hand and touches Trixie’s arm. ‘You know you can talk to me anytime, don’t you? About anything? I owe you so much, it’s the least I can do.’
‘Thank you,’ Trixie says, her voice a little strained. She swallows hard and looks down at her glass. ‘Time for another?’ she asks.
* * *
When Boyd gets home, Honey and Vita are sitting companionably in the lounge. Vita is reading but doesn’t look up as he comes in. Honey is looking at something on her phone.
‘What have you two been up to?’ he says, placing a kiss on Honey’s head and touching Vita’s shoulder as he walks by her to go to the kitchen. ‘I’m famished. What’s for dinner?’
‘You didn’t text,’ Honey says. ‘So I’m not sure.’
She doesn’t sound cross; but perhaps she should. Boyd has stayed out later than he said, but when Trixie asked if he wanted another drink, he couldn’t refuse. She’d seemed to need the company.
‘Right,’ he says, ‘fish and chips it is, then. You joining us, Vita?’
‘OK,’ she says, putting down the book she’s reading and then adds, grudgingly it seems, ‘thank you.’
He pops back out to pick up their supper and they eat it on trays watching TV. It’s a way of passing the time, Boyd thinks. Tomorrow is edging ever nearer.
And when tomorrow comes, the weather is bright and cold for a change. The sun is low and large in the sky and his mother’s funeral passes without a hitch: the cortège arrives, there is a service, there are no hymns because Belle didn’t want any, and the curtains close on the coffin; he can hear the sound of the rollers rolling it away.
Sophie’s come, and Jean from Queen Anne’s, and Trixie, of course. And Colin has come too. Boyd’s not sure how he feels about Colin being there. Colin and Vita stand without touching; they barely speak to one another and Boyd finds he minds this more than if Colin had spent the whole service with his arm around Vita, whispering words of comfort into her ear.
There’s a brief moment when he catches Colin on his own. Vita has gone to the Ladies’, Honey is talking to Trixie and he and Colin are waiting by the door. The organ is playing its last notes and the few people who came are trickling away. He studies Colin, briefly taking in the colour of his skin and his poise, and thinks back to that first evening when he’d come out to water his tomatoes and how Boyd hadn’t known then about him and Vita.
‘Thank you for coming today,’ he says now.
‘That’s OK. I wanted to be here,’ Colin pauses, ‘for Vita,’ he adds.
‘Mmmmm.’ Boyd finds he doesn’t know what to say next. He sees the undertaker wave at him and knows he has mere seconds to say whatever it is he wants to say. ‘Don’t hurt her,’ he says, his mouth tight, his heart a silent, thudding thing.
‘Hurt Vita?’ Colin asks.
‘Yes.’
‘If anything, I think it’s going to be the other way around,’ Colin says, smiling a little sadly, Boyd thinks.
And Boyd doesn’t have time to ask him what he means because the undertaker is still waving at him and he has to go.
And when it’s all over, he and Trixie go back to the office and take down the sign from the door and update the website and Trixie re-records the answerphone message and Colin and Vita and Honey go back to Albert Terrace where, Vita says, she needs to carry on working on a picture she’s got on the go. There is no wake. Sophie has slipped away, back to the hospice and Jean has gone back to Queen Anne’s. He emails the Crematorium to ask about the interment of his mother’s ashes in Bristol. There is, he realises now, no rush for this.
He sends the email as Trixie says, ‘I’m just nipping out to get some milk. We’re running low.’
‘OK,’ he says. ‘Thank you. And thank you for being there today.’
‘Oh, that’s OK. It’s what friends are for,’ Trixie says, putting on her coat and opening the door.
Honey
She’s on the boat. She can hear the smack of the waves against the hull. She doesn’t want to be here.
‘You will go,’ Camilla said, lifting her drawn-on eyebrows and tapping the desk with a talon-like fingernail. ‘You will do what you have to do and he will pay us. This is how it works. You’re in too deep to get out now. You know he’ll always ask for you. That’s the deal. He can’t risk anyone else knowing. It’s a matter of damage limitation and so it has to be you. If you hadn’t gone that first time, then maybe someone else would be in the position you’re in now. But you can’t change it. So just suck it up, lady, and go and do what you’re paid to do.’
And so Honey goes because he asks for her. Again and again she goes to the boat and he fucks her and hurts her and she’s shamed in her own eyes because she takes the money and because she’s too weak to say no.
Until that particular night.
Earlier she’d awoken to all the particular alignments: the sun, the dust motes, the shout, the birdsong, and she’d made her decision and now she’s here and he smells of cinnamon, one of his arms is pinned across her chest and he’s holding on to her free arm and her other arm is wedged under her. He’s pulling at her clothes and she’s saying ‘No,’ and his mouth is opening and closing but no words are coming out of it.
‘No,’ she says, louder this time. ‘You’re hurting me. Stop. You have to stop.’
But he doesn’t, he never does. He likes this. To him it’s a game. To Honey it’s not.
And so she says it. ‘Gas! I smell gas.’
She has to; it’s too late to stop it now. This is the only way she can break the cycle of this.
His mouth moves again, his eyes are black buttons, like a toy’s eyes. They don’t seem to move or reflect the light. They go on for ever into the back of his head.
She feels his weight shift a fraction and slips out from under him. It’s like she has scales, like a fish does and that she will die if she doesn’t get into the water. Her lungs are gills. She has openings in her chest that flap with her breaths.
‘Shit,’ he says. He says it loudly and definitely. ‘Did you knock something, you silly bitch?’
She shakes her head and her vision blurs but she can make out a pile of red cushions, a black marble counter top, a silver ice bucket. She is inching away from him, he has his back turned to her and has lifted his head as if he is an animal scenting danger in the air.
‘I can smell it too,’ he says. ‘Go. Just go.’
He doesn’t have to tell her twice. She runs up a set of white steps, the railing she’s holding on to already feels hot.
But what he doesn’t know is that when she arrived and said, ‘I need the loo,’ and he’d said, ‘Go on then, be quick,’ she’d fractured the seal on a pipe to one of the gas cylinders he has on board and which she knows he never stores safely. She’d used a wrench she’d brought with her and had hidden in her handbag and which she’d then dropped overboard as he got undressed and lay down on the bed in the cabin, his skin dusky against the pale sheets. And, as he pinned her down and she was saying, ‘No,’ she’d known the gas was leaking and what she had to do next.
And so, when he says, ‘Go. Just go,’ she goes and, as she runs, she pick
s up the box of matches she’d hidden behind one of the steps up onto the deck. Her hands are shaking and it’s hard to light the match but she lights it and drops it and prays it reaches its target. It is a mad plan and she’s sure it’s not going to work.
But it does, and there’s an explosion and that sound of tin foil crackling and she is jumping off the side of the boat and swimming through the heavy water.
And this time it’s definitely not a dream.
* * *
January and February slip by almost unremarked. Every day she tells herself that today will be the day she will leave and yet still she hasn’t. There have been no more texts and she hasn’t seen Reuben under the trees at the end of the road.
Countless times she tries to tell Boyd, but she always stops herself, fearful of the damage it will do. She tells herself that if he really loves her, he’ll forgive her anything, but she doesn’t want to put this to the test. She is afraid to find out that he doesn’t. That’s the trouble with ultimatums, you always run the risk of not getting the answer you are hoping for.
* * *
But then it’s early March, Honey’s in bed with Boyd and he’s snoring gently next to her. Dawn is beginning to break and Honey is pregnant with Boyd’s child and knows for sure that her time here has finally run out.
She has to go because what she did she did on purpose and Reuben knows this and now he’s done what’s he done, she realises the game he’s been playing is coming to an end. He’s getting ready to make his final move.
They say what you don’t know can’t hurt you. She can’t risk Boyd finding out about the baby. She must take herself away from here and start again because she can’t bear to see the look in his eyes when he finds out what she’s done and how she could be putting his unborn child at risk by staying.
The decision is out of her hands and, after all the times she’s made up her mind and then changed it again, it’s a relief to know that, at last, the end is in sight.
She lies totally still, fearful of waking him. Boyd snuffles and turns his massive body a little so that he’s facing away from her. This makes it easier for her to bear; she doesn’t know how she is going to manage without him and his goodness in her life.