by Tina Seskis
‘You sure you’re OK, Alex?’ Eleanor had said this morning, before he left. He’d said he was working, as it felt easier than trying to explain himself, but she’d obviously picked up that something wasn’t right.
‘Yes, fine,’ he’d replied, despite knowing that was just about her least favourite of his expressions. It wasn’t a response as such. It was a firewall, when he didn’t want to have to talk about his feelings. Or anything, for that matter. Fine. Yes, fine. Eleanor had raised her eyebrows, but she hadn’t challenged him, and he couldn’t work out whether it had been apathy, discretion or else genuine lack of awareness of his turmoil.
Alex watched the woman opposite devour her muffin, and then wipe her face free of dark soily crumbs, before settling down into her seat and shutting her eyes. She appeared normal, and content enough, and successful, but who knew what people’s truths were, what dark secrets they harboured? He gazed out of the window at the trees and the fields rushing by and it was easy to forget how much empty space there was between the towns. He was miles away still. There was plenty of time to turn back. He hadn’t even been invited – and then he remembered that people didn’t get invited to funerals as such. They were open to anyone. It was only because he’d been left something in the will that Alex had even known about it. But maybe this was the moment to see his family again; try to right some of the many wrongs that percolated in his brain, mixing and thickening, slowing his thoughts down. Perhaps facing up to the past at last would unlock something in him. Even be the making of him.
Alex put on his headphones and played Nirvana, loudly. He contemplated how he’d once thought about putting a gun in his mouth, sure that he would never make it past the age of twenty-seven either . . . But instead here he was: mid-forties and alive. Married. A father. On a journey back to the town of his birth.
As the train pulled into Crewe, Alex felt an urge to get off, turn around, head back to London, but he didn’t. He sleepwalked through the rest of the journey: the arrival in Preston; the long trudge along the platform in the biting wind; the sharpener in the station bar; the queue at the cab rank. It was only once he was in the taxi, and red swirling weals were springing up on the backs of his hands, that he woke up. He scratched at his wrists and felt the thick lines of the veins, and everything was itching on the inside now, as though ants were crawling through his internal pathways, making their way to his nerve centre, ready to invade his brain. When the taxi turned the final corner and he saw the church, and the people milling around outside, waiting for the coffin to arrive, he ducked down, turned his face away.
‘Can you carry on, mate?’ he said.
‘Didn’t you want St Swithin’s?’ the driver said grumpily. ‘This is it here.’
‘No, just drop me round the corner,’ Alex said, in such a way as to make the driver not question him again. He got out and hovered on the pavement, watching the taxi drive away up the road, unsure what to do next. When he finally slipped into the back of the church fifteen minutes later, the service had already started. There were so many people in there, and some of them were his family . . .
And then Alex found himself remembering the man who’d come to take him away, the one whose face he had spat in, whose shins he had kicked, whose arms he had tried to shrug himself free of, while his father and brother had watched on impassively. As if it weren’t even happening.
And now here at the funeral it was the same thing. The eulogy itself was extraordinary, not least because it was as if Alex had never existed. It was one thing not being part of a family any more, but to be airbrushed out of history, as if you had never even been born . . . now that was something else.
Confusion curdled and churned. Alex bent his head, pretended to pray, prayed that no one would recognise him. And then he decided that he couldn’t do this, after all. It was too much. The hurt was too overwhelming. The rage was yet to come. And so, as soon as the service was over, he stood up quickly and left, without having said hello or goodbye to anybody.
Alex’s mood darkened further on the train home, especially as when he tried to call Eleanor, she repeatedly failed to pick up. He was probably being irrational, but he kept thinking about who she might be with, what she might be doing, and after the fourth attempt to get through, his mind was awash with potential scenarios too abject to countenance – and so he gave up, convinced in that moment that he’d been abandoned by her too.
46
CHRISTIE
It was Daisy who’d first suggested that her mother book a holiday, insisting that it was time, and that everything would feel slightly easier now that the one-year anniversary had passed. And it was true that Christie had been forced to stop thinking: this time last year Paul and I were in Cornwall. Or this time last year we were driving home from dinner when we got the call about Mum’s stroke. Or this time last year it was Mum’s funeral and Paul was being fantastic, and I’d wondered what on earth I would do without him. Well, now Christie knew – and she’d got through it. She’d survived. At last enough time had passed for every memory with her husband in it to be more than a year away, making it feel like too much of a stretch for Christie to continue trying to relive it. Christmas had been the worst time of course, but at least it hadn’t been as bad as the first one. Christie and Daisy had got through it this year courtesy of Waitrose and the TV schedules, and it had been more manageable than Christie could have imagined. She’d been sad that Jake hadn’t come home, but in a way him going to a friend’s in Manchester had made it less stressful, and she couldn’t say she blamed him. Death at Christmas, for Christmas, because of Christmas, felt especially cruel. Maybe she and the kids should scrap the whole thing in future, and just do summers together. Yes, perhaps that was the answer.
And so now it was February, and the days were inching themselves longer, and maybe planning a holiday was a good idea, would give Christie something to aim for. She had to at least attempt to enjoy life. It was surely what Paul would have wanted.
Christie knew she was deluding herself. God knows what Paul would have wanted after he’d found that suitcase. She could feel a constant fear now, but of what she wasn’t sure. It wasn’t as if Paul could come back and get her. She still felt mortified about the photo the police had found next to her husband’s body. She’d been horrified when they’d given it to her, albeit in a brown envelope, awkwardly saying they didn’t need it, and that they thought she ought to have it. Was that the last thing Paul had seen before he died? She wished now with all her heart that she’d thrown that suitcase out, but it had been hers, part of her history. It hadn’t remotely changed how she’d felt about Paul.
‘What’s up, Mum?’
Christie realised that she’d been staring into space, picturing the cream walls, the beige carpet, the innocuous backdrop to the horror. Daisy was home from university for the weekend, again, and although Christie would have loved to unburden herself at last, there was no way she could confide in her daughter. She wished now that she’d been honest about the case’s existence, the nature of its contents. Yet Paul had always seemed jealous about her time at Cambridge, as if he’d felt inferior, not just to her ex-boyfriend but to the whole experience somehow, and so it had felt easier to simply not tell him.
Yet now Christie bitterly regretted it. If she hadn’t hidden the case up in the loft, Paul would never have found it, would never have seen the photos, might even still be alive. The idea that Paul had died feeling betrayed by her was overwhelming. Her poor husband.
‘Mum?’
‘Yes?’
‘I said, what’s up?’
‘Oh, nothing, love.’
Daisy’s eyebrows were lifted, and since she’d had them tinted they gave her a rather arch look, so that Christie felt as if she were being told off. It was odd how Daisy looked so much like Alice at times, with her straight sleek hair, the colour of old bronze, yet didn’t have even a smidgeon of Alice’s eccentricity. Daisy knew something, though, Christie was certain of it, and for the mil
lionth time she wondered what she might have said to her daughter the night Paul had died, when she’d been incoherent with grief.
‘Ooh, this one sounds good,’ Daisy was saying now. She was sitting at the kitchen table, on her iPad researching adventure holidays for older singles, but despite the convivial tone her daughter was striking Christie could tell she felt uncomfortable being in the house now. And yet somehow Christie hadn’t been able to bring herself to move after all, as if this was all she had left of Paul. As if even the horror were worth holding on to. Instead she’d simply made do with having the landing repainted a classy blue-grey and the carpet changed. One step at a time, she thought.
‘Mum!’ Daisy said. ‘I said, come and look.’
Christie walked over from where she was loading the dishwasher, holding her greasy rubber-gloved hands behind her back. She looked over Daisy’s shoulder at the page that had just loaded.
‘Horseback riding through Chile?’ she said. ‘You have got to be kidding.’
‘Well, what about cruising down the Amazon then?’
‘No, Daisy.’
‘Oh Mum, it would do you good . . . and I could always come with you, if you like?’ Daisy’s face, with its delicate pattern of freckles, looked anxious for a moment, almost as though she were scared of her mother’s rejection, and she never used to be like that. Both mother and daughter seemed to be experiencing inappropriate levels of distress now, in peculiar, unpredictable ways. Silly things, like running out of stamps, would cause panic verging on meltdown in Christie, and yet whenever something awful came on the news, another terrorist incident perhaps, she’d feel blocked in her grief, seemingly unable to process the trauma. It was as if her responses to things had become utterly random, and it was making it hard for her to even go out, be with people. She didn’t want to risk having a public breakdown over something trivial, like not being given milk with her tea, if a bomb had just gone off somewhere.
Daisy’s foibles seemed to be manifesting themselves in different ways. She had become noticeably more worried about her appearance, although Christie had told her over and over that she had nothing to be unhappy with. Daisy had inherited her father’s tall frame and was now convinced her legs were too thin, too long, too pale. Christie tried to tell her daughter to be happy with what she had, and that everyone looks beautiful if they feel beautiful – but, as Daisy pointed out, it was pretty hard to feel great, whatever your appearance, when your father has fallen out of the loft and accidentally killed himself. And, put like that, it was no wonder Daisy was struggling.
Conversely, Jake, on the surface at least, seemed to be largely unaffected by the tragedy. He’d gone back to Manchester immediately after the funeral and, aside from a text to Christie every now and again, he’d mostly cut himself off from family life, perhaps trying to pretend that Paul’s death had never happened. It almost certainly hadn’t helped that Jake hadn’t made it home from Turkey until two days after Paul had died. It meant he’d been more removed from the situation from the start. Poor Daisy had been the one who’d borne the brunt of it.
Christie looked over at the fridge, where there was an ancient school picture of the two of them, gap-toothed and gawky. They looked so different, were so different, but they were brother and sister. Christie longed for the three of them to bond again somehow. It felt important to bring what was left of her little family together, but she didn’t know what Jake was doing, why he kept going to Turkey, how he could even afford it. It made her anxious about what he wasn’t telling her, but when she’d asked him, he’d shut her down so harshly she hadn’t dared broach it again. She wondered now what she could do to bring him back into the fold, keep him safe from trouble.
Reluctantly Christie’s focus returned to her daughter’s holiday suggestions, which Daisy was currently doing the hard-sell on. She was dressed in a blue-and-white-striped T-shirt dress and Vans, and she looked about twelve, and her enthusiasm was endearing, Christie had to give her that.
‘Well, what about the three of us going away somewhere?’ Christie said, a rare flash of animation in her voice.
Daisy looked confused for a second. ‘Oh, you mean with Jake?’ she said. ‘I . . . I’m not sure he’d be up for that, Mum.’
‘Oh yes, of course,’ Christie said. She felt stupid for having even mentioned it.
‘It’s not personal, Mummy.’ Christie blinked in surprise. Daisy never called her that. She pulled at a chunk of her hair, but her scalp felt numb. If only she could feel something.
‘It’s OK, Daisy. It was a daft suggestion.’
‘Well, we could always ask him.’
‘No, no, it’s OK.’ Christie had often wished that Daisy and Jake were closer, but it seemed that her children had grown further apart than ever lately. Perhaps it was just one of those things – after all, Christie thought, you can’t choose your family and all that. And yet she was concerned about her son. The last time she’d seen Jake before Paul’s death he’d seemed low anyway, but Christie had put that down to the fact that he’d been in one of his ‘off’ spells with his girlfriend, on top of having exams coming up. Christie tried to remember how she’d felt as a student, where exams and lovers and friendships were the only things that mattered at the time, and nothing else invaded from the outside, not even the news. Maybe that’s how it was for Jake too. It was hard to know with him. So when she’d been unable to get through to her son in the run-up to this Christmas, she hadn’t been too concerned. He was tired, she’d told herself. Tired, and newly dumped – as well as bereaved, of course.
But now? Christie wasn’t so sure. Perhaps it was easier for Jake to imagine that Paul wasn’t dead if he stayed up in Manchester. He’d always stayed there throughout the holidays anyway, and he’d hardly ever come home for weekends because he worked in a nightclub. In fact, his behaviour now wasn’t all that different from how it had been since he’d gone off to university in the first place.
And yet something else didn’t feel right with Jake, and although Christie didn’t know what it was, what she did know was that it would do no good to pry. Jake was an adult now. He had his own life to live.
‘Hellooo,’ Daisy said, turning and waving her arms in front of Christie’s eyes in flamboyant criss-cross patterns. ‘Anybody there?’
‘Sorry, love.’ Christie put her hands over her face briefly, pressed the heels into her cheekbones, and breathed out. She smiled. ‘Shall we walk into town soon? Pick up something nice for dinner?’
Daisy ignored her. It seemed she was not to be distracted from her mission.
‘Corsica,’ she said now. ‘You like French bread and cheese. You like walking. What about a walking tour in Corsica?’
Christie curled her lip for comedic effect.
‘Oh, come on, Mum,’ Daisy said. ‘There’ll be no long flights, no jet lag . . . it’s cheaper than South America. And apparently the scenery is spectacular – look at this.’ Daisy pointed enthusiastically at the laptop’s screen, where a rugged-looking silver-haired man was perched proudly high up on a rock, overlooking a sparkling sea and a white sandy beach. ‘Honestly, Mum, it would do you good.’
Christie gazed at the picture, marvelling at how much she adored her daughter, and how that was the one stable part of a world whose sands shifted a million tiny times a day now, where horror and terror seemed to have become a permanent part of the backdrop. Parental love was rock solid. You would love your children, no matter what they did, no matter how much they neglected or betrayed you. No matter what sins they committed. It was hard-wired. It wasn’t the same with husbands. There was always the opportunity to withdraw your love for your spouse – or vice versa. It happened all the time.
And yet, Christie thought now, parenthood wasn’t easy to get right either. Daisy and Jake needed entirely different types of love, and it baffled her at times. Daisy was the faithful dog, with her endearing eagerness, her constant desire to please, her natural tendency to mischievousness tamed by metaphorical treats and tu
mmy rubs. Jake was the cat, with his long absences, his defensive, couldn’t-give-a-damn demeanour. Was that how her son really felt? Christie was pretty sure it wasn’t. But she needed to give him time. Even if he didn’t call her for a year, she would wait for him, to come back.
When Christie’s phone pinged behind her, she knew it was him. She could feel the connection, and she felt sad at the irony, that she’d been longing for Jake to get in touch, but now that he had she was scared at what he might want. For a moment she imagined herself running up the stairs again, and instead of finding her husband dead on the landing, discovering Jake there. His short, squat body hanging, rather than Paul’s long, lean one . . . And then she told herself she was being overwrought. She was a single mother now, and they were all grieving, so it wasn’t surprising how things were with Jake. And he’d always been a handful, especially with Paul, which she still felt bad about. At last she turned, reached for her phone, steeled herself to look at the message – find out what her wayward son had to say for himself this time.
47
ELEANOR
The Heath was looking as lovely as it ever had, and it was such a treat to be out on it, on a Sunday lunchtime, with her husband. The rhododendrons were at the peak of their show-offishness, their huge, intricate flowers smothering bushes that were the width and height of small ships. Families were ambling across the tidy green lawns, and lovers strolled, and dogs strained on their leashes as they headed towards the West Heath, where they knew they would be allowed to run free. Everything seemed so bright and sparkling in the fresh spring sunlight, and it was easy to forget here that evil existed, that terrorist attacks seemed to be an almost daily event now, somewhere in the world. Instead there was an expanding feeling in Eleanor’s heart, which she got purely from beauty itself, and she wondered if other people felt it too. Impulsively she took her husband’s hand, and squeezed it tight, tried to get every last thought of her ex-lover out of her mind, stop the emotions flowing and swirling, risk drowning her in guilt. Alex turned and looked at her, and there was an expression she couldn’t read on his face. And then he stopped and dropped a kiss on the tip of her nose. He seemed more relaxed than he had in weeks.