by Andrea Mara
“Nothing. Something for work. Are you okay?”
“Just getting a glass of water.”
I pat the chair beside me.
“Sit down for a minute and have a chat. I feel like we haven’t talked in ages.”
She rolls her eyes. “Um, we talked at dinner, like three hours ago. Anyway, I’m wrecked, I need to go to sleep.”
My face stays neutral while she fills her glass and walks out of the kitchen. I call goodnight to her and she mumbles something I don’t catch.
Then my head is in my hands, and suddenly I think if I don’t hold myself on this chair, I might just slip to the floor and lie there in a sobbing, miserable heap. For all of it – the stupid marriage and my broken girl and the messages that won’t stop no matter how many photos I delete. And all the pretending we’re fine when we’re not fine, and the cracks that are everywhere, not just in the tiles in the hall. That’s the thing about cracks – once they start, there’s no way to reverse the damage. Painting over them only works for so long, then they’re back, longer and wider and deeper than ever, and no matter what I do I can’t seem to stop the spread.
Chapter 46
The doorbell rings, clanging loud in the silent house, and I curse myself as I do every Halloween night for not being organised. I’m tipping packs of jellies into a bowl when the doorbell rings a second time, impatient now.
It’s not a trick-or-treater though, it’s Dave.
“Hey, can I come in?” he says, already stepping into the hall. He takes a pack of jellies from the bowl and grins at me. “Cheers. There are no goodies in Nadine’s.”
“Dave, what are you doing here? The girls are both staying with friends – I told you that.”
“Yeah, I know,” he says, sitting down at the kitchen table, tipping a handful of sweets into his mouth. “I just don’t want to answer the door to trick-or-treaters. You know I hate it.”
“Why don’t you let Nadine do it?”
He folds his arms and presses his mouth to a perfect sulk. “She’s gone out to a Halloween Ball with her girlfriends. I wasn’t invited.”
“But what difference does it make whether you’re here or at home? There’ll still be trick-or-treaters calling here.”
His eyes open wide. “But sure you’ll answer the door here, you always do.”
There’s no hint of irony, just Dave being Dave. I sigh and open a pack of jellies myself.
“Nice witch’s hat by the way, Lauren. I see you went all out with your costume this year.”
“Very funny. Anyway, my jeans and jumper are black – it’s a fine costume. And the girls aren’t even here – I’m not sure why I bothered. God, I kind of miss all those years of homemade costumes and too many sweets now.”
But Dave’s not interested in a discussion on the passage of time or nostalgia for years gone by.
“So what’s new – how’s work?” he asks, his mouth full of sweets. The chewing makes a squelchy sound and reminds me there are things I don’t miss.
“It’s fine –”
The doorbell interrupts me, and I go out to a ballerina and a Spider-Man. Their mother is hovering halfway down our front path and I recognise her from one of the barbecues in Nadine’s last summer. I wonder what she’d say if she knew Dave was in my kitchen. I wave and smile, and she waves back, then hurries the kids down the path.
Inside, Dave is leafing through a magazine. He skips past an article on gender balance in the media and one on US politics, and stops on a city-centre restaurant review.
He looks up at me. “Why are you smiling?”
“I can’t decide if the fact that you never change is a good thing or not.”
“Probably not, to be fair. What’s the latest on the article you’re doing – the one about the internet stuff?” he asks, closing the magazine.
“Going well, I think, though I haven’t seen it yet. I met Caroline – the journalist – a couple of times and we’re due to meet again on Saturday morning for the final interview.”
“Hang on,” Dave says. “You haven’t seen it yet? But sure she could be writing anything!”
Oh Lord, here we go.
“I get to see it before it goes in to the editor. And she’s not some total stranger – I’ve met her, remember, twice now. She’s very nice.”
“All I’m saying is, if I was a journalist, my greatest trick would be to convince everyone I’m nice.”
He actually taps the side of his nose as he says it, and I want to throttle him, even if there’s a tiny part of me that knows he has a point.
We’re both saved by the bell – this time there’s a pirate and a witch, and no visible parent, though it’s hard to see much in the dark.
When I go back to the kitchen, Dave has finally given up waiting for me to make tea and is boiling the kettle himself.
“Listen,” he says, turning around, “you haven’t said anything about me to the journalist, have you? Anything about us, or Nadine? It’s just that it’d look bad at work.”
“Yeah, Dave, it’s all about you – everything is about you.”
He looks confused. “What?”
“I’m joking,” I sigh, “though it clearly missed its mark.” I mutter the last bit.
He’s busy pouring water and doesn’t hear.
“And in the messages you’ve been showing Caroline for the article, there are none about me?”
“No, because the troll doesn’t mention you.”
He gives me a funny look – surely he’s not feeling left out? It would be exactly like Dave to feel left out.
He sits down with two mugs of tea and opens a second pack of jellies, tipping the entire contents into his mouth in one go.
“Actually, did you ever get your friend to look into finding Leon’s IP address? You said a couple of weeks ago you were going to ask again?”
He points at his mouth – it’s too full of jellies to answer. I wait. His chewing is the only sound in the kitchen now, and I get up to boil the kettle again, though I haven’t touched my first cup of tea. Finally he swallows.
“Oh shit, yeah, I forgot to tell you. He said he can’t, because it’s illegal. You need a court order to get an IP address.”
“Dave, I know you need a court order to do it the official way, but I thought your friend could kind of work around that?”
He holds up his hands. “No, no can do. Sorry.”
I sit back down and face him. “Fine. It doesn’t matter anyway, the Guards are dealing with it now.”
“Really?”
“Yeah. I thought it was someone in particular – this guy in New York – but it turns out it wasn’t. So Clare came down with me to the Garda station last week and I reported it, and sent them all the emails and screenshots from VIN, and the ones from Leon too, in case it’s the same person.”
“Really?” he says again. “But what will they do?”
“They’ll investigate obviously. Try to find out who sent both sets of messages and if they’re the same person.”
“But, like, I presume internet trolls are careful about deleting all their sent items afterwards. It’d be some job to find them.”
A laugh escapes before I can stop it. “Dave, deleting doesn’t do anything. He can delete all he wants from his sent items, but nothing really disappears.”
He pushes back his chair.
“Anyway, I’d better go.”
“I thought you were going to hide out here till the trick-or-treaters finish up?”
“Yeah but if Nadine phones and I’m here, there’ll be trouble.”
And then he’s gone, whirling out of my kitchen and into the night, leaving his mug on the table, because some things don’t change at all.
The bowl of sweets by the front door is almost empty, but there haven’t been any callers for twenty minutes – figuring I’m home free, I go out to the hall to take it away. On cue, the doorbell rings again and on the doorstep three boys Rebecca’s age silently hold out plastic bags. All three are wearing clown masks
but no costumes. I tell them they’ll have to split two bags of sweets between them. They take my meagre offering and turn to leave without a word.
I’m about to close the door when a noise out on the road makes me look up and I spot a dark-coloured car outside my front gate. The engine is idling but the headlights are off. I can see someone in the driver’s seat – the boys’ dad maybe? Though they’re too old for chaperones. The boys continue down the path and out onto the road, heading for Clare’s house. I stare at the car, trying to make out who’s inside but it’s too dark. Suddenly I get the sense that he’s staring back at me, and I don’t want to be there any more, standing in my doorway, lit by the porch light. I close the door, lock it, and after a moment’s hesitation, I put on the chain.
In the sitting room, I peek through the gap in the closed curtains. The car is gone. Now there’s just black moonless sky and the outline of the trees at the end of our garden, swaying in the night-wind. Maybe it was a parent after all.
I draw the curtains tighter and switch on a lamp, pulling my too-thin cardigan around me against the chill. In the fireplace, there’s an unused candle – a fat orange one Rebecca picked up to mark Halloween. I light it and the small flame works hard to dispel the cold atmosphere but doesn’t quite succeed. Water gurgles in a pipe somewhere and I wish the girls were here tonight. My laptop beckons from the coffee table; online company will have to do.
Molly and Lill have changed their names to Molly-ween and LillWitchGirl for the night that’s in it. Catherine is having a glass of wine to get over her youngest throwing up all over the carpet after too many sweets. Anna is watching Nightmare on Elm Street with her teen son. And I’m on my own, half missing my husband, but only because the house is too quiet. I type that out in a tweet, but then delete it. Instead I tell them Dave is here and we’re watching a film with the girls. Molly and Catherine immediately zone in on Dave’s presence and I feel bad for lying. But safer.
Catherine moves to our private Twitter group to ask how it’s going with the article, and I tell her it’s nearly done.
Did you go for anonymous in the end? she asks.
I will. The journalist said I could decide for sure once it’s ready, but I already know I will go anon. My gut tells me it’s the easier path.
A niggling thought pops up. What if VIN tries to expose me as the anonymous contributor after the article comes out – could he do that? Then again, there’s nothing controversial in what I’m saying. And I don’t think he has enough followers on Twitter to do any kind of exposé. I go into his account to check, but his follower count is zero and the only person he’s following is me. The link to the blog is still there and, taking a breath, I press it. There’s a new post up, called Backfire. I sit up straighter, and start to read.
It was dark in the Whore’s kitchen, and messy. Breakfast dishes still on the table, and a buttery knife stuck in a jar of marmalade. My mother would never have let my dad do that. Half-eaten toast sat on plates, and cups with dregs of tea stood beside them, the kind of mess a whore leaves. On the counter, I saw a hairbrush – I pulled out some hair, wrapped it in a tissue, then slipped out before anyone caught me. Now I could make my voodoo doll. The Whore was going to be sorry.
Only it didn’t quite go to plan.
I took some candles from the sitting room, and a box of matches from my dad’s old pipe box in the shed. I waited until my mother was watching TV and then I lit the first one. I let the wax drip down onto a piece of paper I’d laid out on the carpet. The wax kept spilling over the lines I’d drawn, and the candle burned very slowly. The wax drips made a sound every time they hit the paper. It was too hot to hold after a while and I wriggled my wrist to get the sleeve of my jumper down over my hand.
Then I heard a door open downstairs and it made me jump. The candle dropped onto the floor, and the flame snaked along the carpet, leaping forward, so much faster than I'd ever have imagined. For a moment, it was beautiful.
But I didn’t want the house to burn down – I got up and ran for the door, shouting for my mother. I heard footsteps on the stairs, and then she was inside my room, shouting at me to get out. I watched as she grabbed a blanket and threw it on the carpet, smothering the flames. She stamped on it, and I remember wondering if she could feel the heat through her slippers. There was a smell then, a horrible smell that hurt my eyes and my nose. I watched as she lifted the blanket to check underneath, then rolled it in a ball and put it in the corner of the room. I craned my neck to see the carpet. It wasn’t dark blue any more in the bit that got burnt – it was brown and black and horrible. My mother came towards and looked at me for a second, then lifted her hand and smacked me, hard across the face. My cheek stung like it’d been cut with a whip.
“Don’t you think I have enough to be dealing with?” she said, and went back down the stairs.
It was all the Whore’s fault And I knew second time round, I’d get it right.
Is this really VIN’s childhood? And if so, why is he telling me? I check the About page on the website but there’s no information, and an online search to find out who owns the website Vinhorus.com yields nothing – it’s hosted on Wordpress, so there’s no personal information available. I slump back on the couch, trying to make sense of it all. Clearly VIN has a grudge against the person he calls the Whore, but what the hell does that have to do with me?
Chapter 47
As I’m clearing away dinner on Wednesday evening, the doorbell rings, and at first I don’t recognise Grace – she’s muffled up in a giant parka, far too big for her tiny frame. She pulls the hood back from her face and half-smiles as she says hello, but she’s visibly uneasy.
“Come in out of the cold,” I tell her, closing the door against the early November chill. “How are you, is everything okay?”
She nods but looks anxious.
“Could I speak to you about something?” she says.
I beckon her in to the sitting-room and close the door behind us.
“This is awkward,” she starts, as she sits down on the couch.
Something squeezes my heart. No good comes of any conversation that starts with this is awkward.
“I should have told you this the last time I called,” she continues, “but I wasn’t sure it was my place to intrude, and you seemed like you had enough on your plate.”
Now I feel sick. “Is it about the girls?”
She shakes her head. “No. It’s about your husband.”
I let out a slow breath. “Okay, what’s up with Dave?”
“It might be nothing at all, but I think it’s better if you decide that. The first time it happened was about three weeks ago. I was cleaning on the Wednesday morning, and he was at home a bit later than usual. He was in the study – I don’t think he knew I was in the house. I’d used my key, thinking he’d be at work already.”
She pauses.
I have no idea where this is going, but I’m starting to feel sick again.
“I was dusting the little table in the hall and I heard him on the phone in the study. At first I couldn’t make out what he was saying and . . .” she looks up at me, “obviously I wasn’t trying to listen. But then he got … I supposed you’d say agitated, and his voice went up a bit. That’s when I heard it.”
She stops again.
“What did you hear?”
“He said something like, ‘I didn’t realise there was any harm in it, I was just trying to teach Lauren a lesson. But if she finds out I’m Leon, I’m screwed’. I don’t know who Leon is, but . . .”
Grace is still talking – I can see her mouth moving but I’m not listening anymore. Dave is Leon. A cold breeze flicks the back of my neck as my eyes watch Grace’s mouth. It makes no sense, and I shouldn’t believe it, yet somehow immediately I do. And perhaps that’s the saddest thing of all.
“Are you okay?” Grace is saying.
I nod and swallow.
“I’m sorry, I missed what you said just there,” I tell her.
&nb
sp; “I didn’t know what he meant by ‘I’m Leon’ and it might not have been anything but the bit about ‘teach Lauren a lesson’ had me worried. I came here that night to tell you. Then I didn’t say it in the end, but it was on my mind.”
“Of course. I can see it was a difficult situation for you – what else did he say on the phone that morning? Do you know who he was talking to?”
“Well, I stopped dusting and listened at the door.” She looks up at me and I nod to tell her it’s okay. “But he started to say goodbye so I slipped into the kitchen. I’m afraid I don’t know who it was or what it was about.”
I get up to fill a glass of water and bring one back for Grace too. When I sit, she starts talking again.
“I went home that night and told Tom – my husband. He said it might be nothing, but the best thing would be to keep an eye out for anything that would explain it, and then tell you if I had something more concrete. That seemed sensible.” She smiles. “He’s not much use with the housework but he’s good in a small crisis.”
There’s more coming, I can feel it.
“So did you keep an eye out?”
“I did. I don’t mean I was spying now or anything, but I’m in the house a lot and they tend to forget I’m there. And for a while there was nothing. But then this morning when I let myself in, your husband was there, again in the study. I knocked and went in, because Nadine’s note said I was to hoover in there. He closed the laptop really quickly when I opened the door, and I wondered if it was just work stuff or something else. He looked flustered, but said he was heading in to the office and rushed off. And then I –” She stops, again looking for some kind of retrospective permission. I nod. “I opened his laptop. I know it’s a terrible thing to do, and I’ll be fired if they find out but there was just something wrong with the whole thing. I could feel it in my gut.” She pauses. “So I opened it, and it was just a Google page, but then I saw what he was searching – look, I took a photo for you.”