by Tina Seskis
But in the evening, as it was now, the motorway seemed quite different. It was as if everyone had the same dull desire to get home, and so no one would ever let anybody in, but people were too tired to get overly het up about it either. Christie was glad she’d never had to do a commute like this every day. It would send her crazy.
As the traffic slowed to a crawl once more, Christie dropped down into second and yawned. Her mind felt vacant now, and bright somehow, like heaven. The car was too warm, and her eyes were drooping, as though she might actually nod off to sleep. It was a delicious kind of drowsiness, and it felt like a relief from the sadness of her current reality, and she’d barely slept last night, and she was so exhausted . . .
Wake up!
Christie shook her head, slapped her face, wound down the window. As a further diversionary tactic, she tried to call Daisy, but she couldn’t get through to her daughter. She knew there would be no point trying Jake. His phone only ever went straight to voicemail, and it was clear that her son’s idea of a phone was as an outgoing communication device only. Jake called the shots when it came to interpersonal engagement, and it was infuriating. She tried him anyway, predictably fruitlessly, and then shrugged her shoulders half-fondly, half-exasperatedly, and turned on the radio. After a couple of anodyne tracks, the opening tinkly piano notes of ‘Driving Home for Christmas’ finally released Christie from her soporific state. There was something about the fullness of the song, its heart-lifting expansiveness, the rich warm tones of the singer’s voice, that caused a surge of emotion that had eluded her up until now. It was almost as if there just hadn’t been any time to feel anything before this. When her mother had been dying, Christie had simply been coping – and then the death itself had been so brutal it had left Christie in shock that no one had been able to ease her mother’s suffering. Christie hadn’t known that in this day and age people still had to die like that, and it had been so dreadful to witness that it had taken something from her, something she was unsure she’d ever be able to get back. Nothing seemed to move her any more. Even the funeral, and the burial, and today, witnessing her father struggling to butter his toast, tears streaming down his sunken cheeks, had left her so impassive she’d stood silently, mutely useless, disconnected from her own grief, patting his arm as if he were a stranger.
And yet now, just because of one stupid song, the tears that had previously refused to fall were so blinding that Christie was forced to take one hand off the steering wheel and use her jacket sleeve to wipe her eyes. This was her favourite Christmas song ever, and it reminded her of happy times, of when she and Paul used to drive to Worcestershire with the kids, who would be going out of their minds with excitement about Santa, and seeing Granny and Grandad, and presents, and the possibilities of snow. But today Christie was driving home alone, and her children had grown up and left, and her mum was dead and her father was bereft and barely capable of looking after himself, and she didn’t know how to help any of them.
As Christie sobbed her way through past memories, the music flitting randomly from decade to decade, from bitter to sweet and then back again, an Ultravox song came on that reminded her of her university boyfriend, and the memories shook her. Perhaps it was because her mum had taken such a shine to him, with his huge soppy eyes, his luxuriant hair, his flamboyant sense of style. ‘He’s the only one who ever talks to me,’ she remembered her mother saying, but Christie hadn’t known at the time of course that he’d shoved a whole load of cocaine up his nose to enable him to do so. But still, he and her mum had been fond of each other. Christie even wondered whether she should try to contact him, let him know her mother had died . . . and then she told herself not to be mad. He was a fake, who’d betrayed her. He didn’t deserve to know. And anyway, he probably wouldn’t be interested. Perhaps he was even dead himself. You never knew.
Midge Ure’s voice was so yearning and yet so full of promise that Christie couldn’t stand it any more. It seemed that her responses to everything were inappropriate right now. How could she weep like this over old songs on the radio, and yet stand helplessly by and watch her father sobbing, or her mother being lowered into the cold wormy earth, trying to force out tears purely to meet other people’s expectations? What had that been all about? She squirmed as she remembered how the funeral had become quasi-farcical. Someone (Paul?) had given her a handful of earth and the act of flinging it had felt obscene, and she’d suddenly longed to jump into the grave and pull her mother out, take her home to Ware and tuck her up in bed in the spare room, where it was warm and safe. She’d felt Paul’s hand on her arm, as though he’d realised how she was feeling, was worried she might actually do it. Perhaps it was normal to feel like that. She hadn’t dared ask anyone.
And now this latest act of lunacy was to be howling in her car, semi in time to the music, and she knew she needed to sort herself out. She might even crash if she wasn’t careful. And yet it seemed she just couldn’t help herself. It wasn’t only the loss of her mother. It was also the loss of her own youth and beauty, and the decreasing promise of what life had to offer, and the distressing decline of her father, the vision of his future dun and inevitable and pathetic. And when her shoulders started to shake even harder, she knew she needed to pull over before she killed someone.
Christie saw a sign for Services and, without even thinking, she veered into the nearside lane, causing a van to swerve and honk prolongedly at her. She left the motorway just in time, the grind of her tyres along the rumble strips adding to the panic rising in her. She was still trembling as she pulled into a parking space. Slade’s ‘Merry Christmas, Everybody’ was blasting at her now, her heart thumping along erratically to its cheerful beat.
Nothing felt right. How she wished Paul were here, that she’d let him come with her after all. Why had she insisted on being all grown-up and brave about sorting out her mother’s things? But it hadn’t made sense for Paul to come and have to hang around all day, and besides, he’d had a doctor’s appointment. She’d be fine, she’d told him, and he wouldn’t be able to help her anyway. It was a heart-rending process, but it had to be done sooner or later. And her father had wanted it done sooner, soon, soonest – before Christmas, in fact, which had surprised Christie. But it was as if he couldn’t bear to have his wife’s things any more, if he couldn’t have her too. Love was beautiful, Christie thought now, and then it was tragic and sad. Love always had to end, unless you died together, and hardly anyone ever did that.
Christie put yet another call in to her husband, ostensibly to ask him to take some chops out of the freezer for dinner, but more to hear his strong, steady voice, remind herself how lucky she was to have him. When again she failed to reach him she cursed him . . . and then somehow, suddenly, she knew. She could just feel it.
Of course. He was up in the loft, getting down the decorations, and she was absolutely, 100 per cent certain of it, and it made her feel better, that he would do that for her. Sometimes Paul knew her better than she did, and that was a gift he’d always had. Christie had an urge to let him know how grateful she was, without giving away that she knew his surprise, and so she left him a voice message that simply said, ‘On my way home. Love you loads.’ And then she wiped away her mascara, restarted the Volvo’s engine and rejoined the motorway – and because the traffic had cleared at last, she found herself driving just that tiny bit faster, to get home.
37
PAUL
At last the tree was done. Paul got down from the chair he’d brought in from the kitchen and stood back and admired his handiwork. The star was slightly wonky, and there were more lights on one side of the tree than the other, but it looked pretty good to him. It was amazing what a difference it made to the room. Hopefully Christie would be pleased he’d made the effort.
He rummaged in the box and retrieved a tasteful holly garland and draped it over the mantelpiece. He found matching red stockings that had ‘Jake’ and ‘Daisy’ written in glitter, that their great-uncle had once boug
ht them from Macy’s in New York. Paul hung them carefully on the mantelpiece, where they always went. He stood back and surveyed his work. That was enough, he thought. He didn’t want to go overboard. It felt important to get the balance right.
Satisfied, he took the boxes upstairs to put straight back into the loft before he ran out of steam. He wanted the whole house to look tidy when Christie got home, so as not to stress her out. He held the Christmas tree box under his arm as he climbed the loft ladder, and then manoeuvred it above his head and neatly posted it up through the hatch. The still-half-full box of decorations was heavier, and therefore harder to negotiate on his own, but he managed it. Just as he was about to descend the ladder he heard the scratching sound again, and it was louder this time.
Little fuckers.
Paul climbed into the loft and clambered to his feet. He had his phone with him now and shone its torch into the corners . . . but all was quiet again. He knew they were there, though – he could feel them in the room. He could smell them. He imagined foot-long rats, like the one that had been found behind someone’s dishwasher on the very next road, and decided that straight after Christmas they’d have to get someone in and be done with it.
Now, as if he couldn’t help himself, Paul’s thoughts returned to the suitcase. The kids were at university still, in Manchester and Leeds. It was odd how Jake had chosen to study back in his home town, and Paul wondered briefly just how the family’s relocation down south had affected him. Maybe Jake had always felt like an outsider here. Maybe that was part of the problem . . .
Paul felt the compulsion pulling at him now. Christie wouldn’t be home for ages. He had all the time in the world. He needed to know, insane or not, what the truth was. He retrieved the suitcase and brought it over towards the light. Tentatively he reached out and touched the battered old leather, felt the still-smooth vinyl of the stickers for hotels he’d never heard of and which probably no longer existed, toyed with the stiff rusty catch . . . until finally, against his better judgement and all his screaming instincts, he snapped it open.
38
ELEANOR
‘OK,’ Eleanor said into her mobile, doing her best to keep the disappointment out of her voice. It was three o’clock in the afternoon, and the sky outside her window was darkening already, and she could see the single plant on the window ledge wilting after last night’s frost. She needed to bring it inside. She hunched her shoulder towards her neck to hold the phone in its place while she continued chopping the fresh tomatoes she was about to have on toast, with salt and pepper and torn basil leaves and a drizzle of extra-virgin olive oil. Peanut butter and jelly was a thing of the past for Eleanor, especially as Alex had encouraged her to go on another health kick, seemingly determined for her to get back into her favourite jeans. It pissed her off that her husband could be so shallow, but she knew it would do her good to lose a few pounds. She’d do it for herself, not for him, and she’d told him so.
As Alex spoke, somewhere on the other end of the line, Eleanor felt a sudden stab behind her eyes, and she pushed her lips together, hard.
‘Yes, that is a shame,’ she said now. ‘Well, hopefully Brianna will understand . . .’ She paused, took a breath. ‘You will call her though, won’t you?’
‘Of course I will,’ Alex said, but as Eleanor hung up, she felt so sad for her daughter. Brianna might have a lead role in her university’s charity Christmas show, but her father wouldn’t be there. Alex hadn’t even been able to tell his wife where he was going, and she prayed he’d be safe: she was almost certain it was something to do with the recent terror alert in Manchester. Alex never said, and it was just as well it was him doing this job and not her. It seemed that over the years he was getting closer and closer to the action, and there was no way she would have been able to handle the pressure of having to manage such difficult situations without being able to tell anyone. The stress would have killed her. But Alex seemed to have flourished since taking on this latest role. He had engineered himself from being a lowly bobby on the beat into one of the most prestigious units in the Met. She was proud of him. It was people like her husband who kept this country safe.
And yet.
Eleanor put two slices of rye bread in the toaster and turned and placed her head against the cool smooth surface of the American-style fridge that was nowhere near as solid as the real thing. The clunk of its opening was substandard too, but that was England for you. It was different. Not better or worse, she reminded herself. Just different.
Eleanor took a long, slow breath, and shut her eyes. For years she’d not known what it was, why there was such a pull in her stomach sometimes when she thought about her marriage. She could barely even confess it to herself, and it was only at times like these, when she felt irrationally cross with her husband, that she allowed herself to think it.
There was something missing.
Eleanor shushed the thought from her mind, like the mother duck she’d once seen shooing her babies away from the weir at Camden Lock. It wasn’t true anyway. She loved England. She and Alex had been married for years. He was the father of her two children. He’d been her saviour. Her rock. And yet it didn’t feel like that any more, or at least not at the moment – and maybe him being at work so much was beginning to affect how they were with each other. Perhaps it was inevitable.
Eleanor opened her eyes, turned and stared at the smiley family pictures plastered on the fridge, and acknowledged that it wasn’t only that. The feeling was more fundamental, and therefore terrifying. The toaster popping startled her for a second, but still the hazy, unsettled feeling remained. As she put the toast on a plate and layered the tomatoes on neatly, another unwelcome thought, one she’d tried to bend out of all recognition, swooped and struck.
Rufus.
It still felt odd that he’d re-entered her life, even if it was entirely by accident – and it had rocked her. How did she feel about him now?
Eleanor picked up her plate and took it into the lounge, sat down stiff-backed on the chair by the window, and waited until the day had faded to grey before switching on the lights, rendering the glass instantly black, as if the outside no longer existed. The winter days were too short here. She needed light and air, to bleach the thoughts out of her, but in the meantime she was stuck with them. The tableau was pin-sharp in her mind, like a photo, and the rawness was vivid all over again. She saw herself lying alone on the floor in Rufus’s flat, clenching into herself, coiling her body as tightly as she could, silently howling. And then afterwards, when she’d closed the door on his flat for good, it seemed she had shut the scene out of her mind so completely in her bid for survival that she’d almost entirely forgotten it. Maybe she’d never processed her grief. Perhaps that was why she’d never managed to truly get closure.
Closure. What a ludicrous word for a ludicrous thing. She’d spent her whole life being aware of closure, of course. Her father had treated film stars in their anguished bid for it, while his own family were busy falling apart. It was almost funny.
Eleanor stood up and stared out into the darkness, and there was nothing to see. Nothing going on. All the neighbourhood kids had grown up and moved away, and the road seemed sad in its quietness. It wouldn’t be long before Mason went too, and it seemed that he and Brianna were the glue that had held her and Alex together. Perhaps they’d simply run their course as a couple, and it was nothing to do with Rufus at all, her thoughts about her ex-boyfriend merely a symptom, rather than the cause. Maybe it was simply time to face up to things, investigate new openings, into another, different life. After all, Eleanor acknowledged, Alex was a lone wolf in a way. His mother was long dead, and he had no contact at all with the rest of his family, which was hardly surprising. But maybe Alex was incapable of true intimacy; it was just that she’d never properly noticed it before.
Eleanor drummed her fingers on the wooden arm of the chair, tried to get the energy out. She wished she could talk to someone about how she felt, but who? Even the
thoughts themselves felt like betrayal, as if she were impugning Alex, if only to herself. Alex had always been a good dad, and she had the kids to think of. She couldn’t do it to them, make them feel like their whole lives had been a sham. She needed to try harder, for them.
Eleanor had always been a fan of diversionary tactics, in one way or another. Today’s one, although somewhat prosaic, was to flick on the TV to catch the two o’clock headlines, but there was nothing of note being reported. It was amazing how much stuff went on behind the scenes, and it made her proud of Alex all over again. She’d been being an idiot, had overreacted about him missing Brianna’s show. Alex was as good a husband and father as he could be in his line of work, but he had a job to do.
The phone rang. Alex. Again. Her heart lifted briefly – maybe there’d been a change of plan and he could make the show after all.
‘Hi, sweetheart,’ Alex said. He sounded muffled, as if it were windy where he was. ‘I called Brianna. I told her.’
‘How was she?’
‘Fine.’ Alex sounded upbeat now. ‘She said my job might always have to come first, but at least I’m not a banker.’ He laughed.
‘Well, that’s swell,’ said Eleanor disingenuously, her mouth half-full of tomatoes on toast.
‘What are you eating?’ he said.
Mind your own business, Eleanor thought.