by Tina Seskis
She just wanted him to stay safe.
Eleanor remained stationary. The dog hovered, starting to whimper. The crackling of soft matter underfoot was so subtle as to be barely audible through the downpour still sieving its way through the trees. Her face was wet with cold rain and hot tears. She kept her head thrown back, to the elements, despite the danger she felt, closer now. She was a still-attractive woman in all-black Lycra, provocatively curvy, ripe for picking. It would be easy, so very easy, for someone to take her by the throat and twist her to the ground. So she wasn’t really surprised when she felt his mouth close to her ear, and smelled the damp staleness of cigarettes. His voice was shocking in its bald desire.
‘Hello, Eleanor,’ he said.
30
PAUL
Paul had had a bad stomach for ages, but he’d ignored it. Finally though, he’d capitulated to Christie’s entreaties and gone to the GP, and they’d done all the tests, and when Paul had gone back for his follow-up appointment, the doctor had confronted him, not aggressively exactly, but certainly without any frills. Dr Singh must have been in his sixties, with a short, neat white beard and side-parted hair, and it was clear that he had seen it all in this practice, and besides he only had ten minutes per patient, so ‘anxiety and depression’ it was then, and there was no time for small talk.
And so now Paul was walking home from the surgery through the housing estate, with a prescription for happy pills in his pocket, and it was like a shameful secret, and he wondered how it had come to this. He wouldn’t take them, of course. The doctor didn’t have a clue what was going on in Paul’s head: he barely knew him. In over a decade of living in Ware, Paul had only been to the surgery once before this. Paul rarely got ill. He certainly didn’t suffer from depression – Dr Singh didn’t know what he was talking about. Paul wondered what he should say to Christie. He knew she was worried about him, kept saying he was working too hard, but Paul knew it wasn’t that. His gastric problems had first started a few months ago, after his mother-in-law had suffered a severe stroke, which had overnight rendered her crooked-mouthed and helpless. It had been harrowing to witness – plus Paul and Christie had been exhausted by the sudden change in their schedules, by having to travel up to Worcestershire at least weekly for months, until poor Jean had finally died, which had devastated Paul almost as much as it had his wife. Christie was being so stoic though, mainly because there was still no let-up, as now she had her father to think of too. And although Paul normally went with her to visit him, Christie had insisted on going alone today, saying that she and Alice would be busy helping her father go through their mother’s things, and that Paul had his doctor’s appointment anyway. Paul hadn’t liked to argue. Christie had been in one of those moods.
As Paul crossed the road outside the pub where he and Christie had sometimes used to go, before events had overtaken them, he found himself admitting that perhaps the doctor had been right that his mental state wasn’t the best. It seemed it had been creeping up on him for years, undetected until it was almost too late. But there was something about time passing, and his mother-in-law dying, and the children growing, and his difficult relationship with his father and his son, that had made Paul start to seriously doubt himself again, wonder where he was going wrong. Maybe he’d been right all those years ago that fatherhood wasn’t for him. He loved his kids, of course he did, but Jake was something else these days. Paul didn’t know what the hell to do with him, but he was eighteen now and at university, had no obligation to listen to his father, or show him a modicum of respect.
It was a dismal winter’s day, one where the clouds seemed to meld with the rooftops, making everything dreary. Paul’s eyes were watering – from the cold, surely. An older woman with long silver hair, wearing a shiny blue coat and flip-flops, was bending down to clean up after her dog, a white yappy creature that Paul had seen a thousand times but had never paid attention to before. The dog walked stiffly and was obviously ancient, and he wondered how long the poor creature had left. He wondered why the woman was wearing flip-flops, in this weather. She caught him staring at her, but instead of smiling she looked alarmed, as though she thought he was a weirdo. And maybe he was.
Paul nodded awkwardly and turned away, walking quickly down the hill to diminish the threat the woman had appeared to feel. He decided he wasn’t going to tell Christie what the doctor had diagnosed. She was grieving, had enough on her plate as it was right now. And besides, Paul had always been taught it was better to be circumspect, to not confess to weakness – so surely in the current circumstances staying quiet was the best course for everyone.
31
ELEANOR
It was a shock to see him. Afterwards she wasn’t sure whether it had simply been the fear that had made her heart go crazy, as initially she hadn’t even recognised him. Back when she’d fallen in love with him, at an idyllically located summer camp in the States, he’d been wiry, with high cheekbones and a wide, flaring mouth. Now, his face was rounder, and older, and his hair was no longer floppy, but instead neatly trimmed, and his Barbour jacket was befitting a man of his age – and yet the flicker of anguish in his eyes was still sexy somehow. Seeing him here was traumatic, on so many levels.
‘Oh, my gosh . . . Rufus?’ For a moment she was lost for words. ‘What in hell do you think you’re doing? You . . . you frightened me.’
‘I’m sorry,’ said Rufus. ‘I didn’t mean to. I only realised it was you when I got close enough, and then I just wanted to say hello.’
Eleanor tried to catch her breath, calm the thrumming that was working its way up and down from her stomach to her throat, as if he’d physically punched her in the gut. Yet to be fair to him, he wasn’t to know that she was an overly nervous survivor of stalking. She stared at her ex-boyfriend, and he seemed to have been distorted. It was as if she were looking at him in one of those fairground mirrors. Shorter. Stockier. Older.
‘Well, you shouldn’t go round creeping up on people like that,’ she said at last. She could hear that her tone was hostile, although she hadn’t necessarily meant it to be. It must have been the fear, mixed with the relief, and the utter mind-fuckedness of his appearing back in her life, after twenty-odd years. The boy who had broken her heart. Here, on her patch. It was too much.
‘How are you, Eleanor?’
‘I’m fine. You?’
‘Not too bad,’ Rufus said. ‘I live around here now.’
‘Oh.’ She didn’t volunteer that she did too, and she wasn’t sure why. She didn’t know what it was about Rufus. He was getting to her all over again. Her emotions were heightened by the unexpectedness of seeing him, certainly, but it was something else too. Even his appearance confused her. It was as if he’d aged overnight but now, while she gazed at him, was miraculously growing younger and younger again, like in The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. She wondered if that was how it felt to Rufus too, seeing her for the first time in over two decades. Her wrinkles, magically dissolving, like ripples on a lake. Her shorter, primmer hair growing long and luscious again. Her softer, saggier shape firming up, as if pneumatically.
‘Well, look, it’s great to see you,’ she said. ‘But . . . but I need to get going.’
‘I’ll walk with you,’ he said. ‘If you don’t mind?’
Eleanor didn’t have a clue whether she minded or not. Her entire body felt as if it were crawling with too many nerves, too much emotion. Part of her wanted to throw herself into his arms and beg her to hold him, and another part wanted to launch herself at him with a hammer. But mostly she felt shocked. Traumatised even. She wondered where he was going, what he was up to. As she walked alongside him, even in the rain there was a buzz of magnetism between them, but as well as attraction there was repulsion now too, in the very base sense of the word. She wanted him to stay here, but she also wanted him to go, not intrude on her memories of the beautiful complicated boy who had loved her once. She wanted the heartache to remain pure and untainted, fossilised into som
ething solid, something that grounded her in her marriage to Alex. Rufus’s reappearance was disruptive. It was disrupting her truth, her life, the history of her love.
‘So, what are you up to these days?’ she asked, as politely as if he were a distant relative at a funeral.
‘Oh, this and that,’ he said, as he ambled along beside her. It was his clothes that unsettled her the most. She could forgive the fact that he’d grown older. She could even forgive that he’d cut his hair. But Rufus had always been delicate, and rakishly bohemian – and now his dress sense was so . . . sensible. It was discomfiting. The silence between them was mile-wide now, the rain-filled air jangling, and it was almost a relief when they reached the bridge by the school. It wasn’t the exit from the path that she normally used, but she felt the need to get away, give herself some time to work out what in hell was going on.
‘So, this is me,’ she said, as brightly as she could manage, but her tone gave her away. She called Peanut, to put him on the lead.
‘Eleanor, will you have coffee with me?’ Rufus said, suddenly. ‘It’s nothing inappropriate, I promise. I just want to have the chance to explain myself.’ His eyes were glassy, and she assumed it was the cold wind. ‘I’ve always felt bad about what happened between us.’
‘Rufus, it’s all in the past.’
‘Nelly, please,’ he said, and the nickname made them both start. His tone was softly deep, and it sent a sliver of memory through a tiny hole in her heart. ‘Look, I know you’re married,’ he continued. ‘It’s nothing untoward, I promise.’
As Eleanor stared at Rufus, she was so confused she didn’t know what to think. But now there was that look there again, deep in his eyes, and it made her respond to him, made her want to understand. Maybe a post-mortem would help both of them.
Who was she kidding? Eleanor knew the risks of seeing an ex-lover again, especially one who had dumped her in such cruel circumstances. She also knew that Rufus had been her very first love, and that you never truly got over those. Alex might have rescued her from an unhinged stalker, but Rufus had been the one who had woken her up to what love even was. Surely it was an insane idea to agree to meet up with him . . . and she found herself wanting to ask Alex what his view was, but he was working, and she didn’t know when she’d next get to speak to him . . . She tried to resist the thought, but it was there. Why should she consult with her husband anyway, when she could never bloody get hold of him?
‘OK,’ she said.
32
PAUL
In a fit of sudden and unheralded energy, Paul loped up the beige-carpeted stairs of their new, bigger house, doubled back along the landing, yanked open the cupboard door and took out the long metal pole that was propped up in the corner, where he knew it would be. He was filled with an enthusiasm he hadn’t felt for a while, and it was a relief. At least this was something concrete he could do to try to cheer up his wife. It was clear the thought of Christmas this year was hard for Christie, although she would never say it. Even the prospect of the kids coming home from university hadn’t seemed to lift her, and it was as if she felt torn as to what was the best thing to do. To decorate or not to decorate. To strive to be festive, or not bother pretending. Daisy and Jake were far too old to get all excited about Christmas anyway, she’d said, and so they’d agreed to skip doing the tree this year. Paul thought it was partly a guilt thing, so soon after her mother’s funeral – but what was the point, Christie had said, seeing as they were going up to Worcestershire to spend Christmas at her dad’s? They wouldn’t even be there.
Paul wasn’t into grand romantic gestures. His and Christie’s relationship had never been a wine-and-roses sort of affair. He wasn’t that kind of a man. The right words had always eluded him when Christie was upset, and he wasn’t a neck-rubber or a foot-massager either. There was caring and then there was wet, he always said to Christie when she tried to persuade him. But this was a good idea, he was sure of it.
Paul hoisted up the pole and used its hooked end to unlock the hatch and pull down the ladder. The metallic click as it finally slotted into its locked position was curiously satisfying. As he climbed the rungs, he realised he hadn’t been up here since he’d put away the decorations from last year, all the way back in January. They hadn’t needed their suitcases or camping stuff this year, which were pretty much the only other reasons he ever went up in the loft. There’d been no time for holidays in between work and dashes up to Worcestershire. Paul wondered why Christie had been so insistent she went alone today. Perhaps she just hadn’t wanted to risk there being any friction between him and Alice, potentially upsetting her father. Paul knew he needed to be more tolerant of Christie’s sister, especially now Jean had died. He still couldn’t work out what it was about Alice that got to him so. It wasn’t only her ludicrous obsession with Tarot cards and crystals and what the stars supposedly ordained. Sometimes, in his more enlightened moments, Paul thought he might even be jealous of Christie’s closeness to Alice. After all, he had no relationship with his own sibling, didn’t even know where he was these days.
As Paul hauled himself through the hatch opening, he began to have misgivings about his mission, as though this might be a Very Bad Idea. And then he told himself that Christie wasn’t being anti-Christmas per se – just apathetic about it. In fact, she seemed to find it hard to enjoy anything at the moment, but that was normal after bereavement. He just had to give her time.
The loft had a chilled, faintly animal smell about it. Paul knew there were mice up here – he and Christie could hear them sometimes, scuttling their way across the boards when they were in bed, and the noise the creatures generated convinced Christie they were rats, but Paul had persuaded her that it always sounded much worse than it was. Now he wasn’t so sure. Mice he could deal with, but rats were filthy and spread disease. Even now he could hear scratching sounds – or was he imagining them? Perhaps he should get the pest-control people in. He didn’t like the idea of killing things, but he couldn’t let the situation get out of control. As he pulled himself to his feet, he flicked on the light and stared fruitlessly into the darkest corners. The air hung sullenly, shrouded in an orange dusty glow that emanated from the bare light bulb. At last his eyes adjusted enough for him to see that the Christmas decorations were over near the camping stuff, where he’d left them, the enormous tree they’d bought last year neatly in its box. Remembering how much Christie had loved that tree made Paul feel more confident. Doing this would make her happy, he was sure of it.
Being tall, Paul had to bend his head to cross the loft. Just as he reached the decorations, he heard the scrabbling noise again. It appeared to be coming from the corner nearest to him, just beyond where the boarding-up ended.
Paul stayed still, listening in the dim light.
Nothing.
And then he heard it again.
He bent down quickly, snatched at the loft insulation and ripped it back. He wasn’t sure what he was hoping to find, or what he was planning on doing with whatever he did find. But it was too dark for him to see much anyway – he’d have to bring a torch up to have a proper look. As he removed another clump of insulation wool his hand hit something, and it made him jump. Thankfully the object was cold and hard, definitely not rat-like – and when he realised that it was a small leather suitcase, charmingly battered and stickered, he wondered what it was doing there. He’d found it in a similar place in their old house in Manchester, and he’d initially assumed that it had been left by the previous owners. But when he’d opened it up and started rifling through, a sick kicked feeling had begun building in his chest cavity – and so he’d closed the case and replaced it where he’d found it. Afterwards he’d pretended he’d never seen it, that it didn’t exist – even to himself, it seemed, which had taken some doing. But now, mysteriously, here it was again, and he had no idea how it had got here – and, more to the point, when. To his knowledge he was the only one who ever came up here.
Just as Paul bent down to
pull out the case, his head spinning with memories, he could dimly hear his mobile ringing downstairs, and then when that cut out, the annoying sing-song tune of the home phone – but he knew that by the time he got down to it he would have missed whoever was calling. A scurrying, scuffling noise started up once more, making him flinch. He pressed his hands to his temples, and he could feel his heart pumping through his fingertips. Still the ringing continued, hitting a frequency inside of him, scraping along the sheerest edges of his nerves. When was it ever going to stop?
Paul brought his hands down from his face and made them into fists, a slow-burning anger building inside him, one he hadn’t even known existed still, as the phone carried on.
33
ELEANOR
When she arrived home Eleanor still felt uneasy, and in a way she wished Alex were here, so she could tell him face to face about Rufus – but he wasn’t, and if she called him, he’d probably be busy anyway. Instead she’d just have to make do with a cup of tea to calm her nerves, and again she marvelled at how English she’d become. But when she went to the fridge, inevitably there was no milk, and these days it wasn’t her husband who drank it all.
Bloody Mason, Eleanor thought, not entirely benignly, as she slammed the fridge door. Her son might be a lovely boy, but he seemed to eat and drink more than the rest of the family put together. Peanut looked hopeful at the possibility of another walk, seemingly aware of the significance of the empty milk carton, and the cute way he cocked his head at her always got her . . . and so eventually she capitulated.
It had only just stopped raining when she left the house and between the rooftops further up the hill she could make out the faint stump of a rainbow. She couldn’t remember ever seeing one there before, and somehow it reminded her of Rufus’s garden in Hampstead, the bright primary colours . . . and she couldn’t believe he had arrived, without warning, back into her life and, even more extraordinary, that she’d arranged to have coffee with him.