by NJ Moss
I should have relished the moment, but a cruel feeling settled over me. The smile was all red paint and it looked bloody, like liquid red oozing from broken gums. Troy had encouraged the children to do this today, of all days, when I was especially stressed about work.
I glanced at Troy, still in his dressing gown, worn over pyjama trousers and a baggy T-shirt. He looked so comfortable. Did he know I’d wanted to talk about lowering my hours? Perhaps he’d arranged all this, somehow, so he could work from home forever. Or perhaps he wasn’t working. Perhaps he was doing something else. But then I saw his smile and the genuine love in his eyes. I remembered university and the solid way he’d looked at me when I told him I was pregnant. Troy wouldn’t manipulate me.
Wouldn’t he?
I couldn’t quit, regardless. The World’s Most Hardworking Mummy didn’t throw in the towel when things got rough.
“Eighty-two,” Russ yelled, throwing his hands in the air. “Told you.”
34
It was a cosy autumn evening and, instead of watching a film with my family or making love to my husband, I was in a dead-quiet office copying meaningless reports for a man I had never met.
I wrote out the words feeling like the world’s biggest idiot. Clive was taking advantage. He thought he could bend me over the desk and take me if he wanted. What sort of twisted fetish freaky niche arcane shit was this? The more I wrote the more it felt as if this entire endeavour were designed to convince me I was going mad.
But why, and who? Who? Clive, was Clive the one littering these reports with references to car collisions, rain, slippery roads, and even once an explicit hit-and-run metaphor, a bonnet slicing through the rain and a bicycle wheel spinning around and around and—
I slammed my eyes shut and leaned back in the chair, grounding myself, taking shaky breaths and telling myself to get a grip. I had to be strong. Russie and Mia and Troy needed me. I couldn’t let Cecilia’s genes come out to play. I had to stay here, present.
Heartbeat: hammering.
Breaking my chest and causing big gulping noises to sound at the back of my throat.
I was being foolish, I knew, and soon realised this when I’d managed to get my breathing under control. It was a panic attack, a normal everyday thing, another hazard like needles in the street and knives up dirty alleys and all of life’s rotten shit, except it was in my head. It was in my head and it hurt.
I felt like a coiled spring ready to snap open any second.
I couldn’t explain this pounding inside of me, as though something buried deep long ago was trying to break the surface. Like there was an oil derrick inside my skull slowly bashing away, but why, for what? All I knew was I couldn’t sleep and I felt anxious, but surely that described many people who were beginning a new career. That was what I felt, I decided, I hoped: the usual workplace jitters.
It was a windy night and the office was settling down, which meant it was becoming a creaky tool of paranoia. Each whine through the building became the footsteps of a man who had stumbled in from the street and was here to stab me, charge in here and attack me viciously. Or it was the wind. But it was impossible to know and each time those phantom squeaks came closer, I’d sit back and watch the door like a hunting bird. I’d laugh at myself, as in, ha-ha, the crazy lady is watching the door. But I kept watching.
Each time, it was nothing. It wasn’t Clive, who for some reason was out to get me. Clive Langdale had a grand plan for me. Clive Langdale wanted to turn me into my grandmother. I knew my thoughts were becoming jumbled. Fine, but it was the truth, because the car crash references, the overtime, the phone call… It was Clive. Clive called me up that night. Clive had been writing the reports. Clive sent me to pick up drugs, despite what lies he’d told me afterward. Why, did he record me?
He had a recording of me collecting drugs and soon he’d use it to blackmail me.
Because he hated me? But why would he hate me?
A jagged thought struck as my mind spiralled, the same thought I’d been trying to ignore for weeks.
He was him.
He was the nameless bonnet. He was the rain slashing through the wind. He was the stupid beautiful novelty bike and the unreliable English weather.
Clive had killed Hope and tracked me down and he was using the job to torture me and drive me as mad as my grandmother…
Why, why the fuck would he do that? Even if he’d killed her, and that was nothing more than a sick thought, but even then this made no sense. It was too motiveless. Surely he’d just be happy to get away with it. But then what if there was another reason? Did I know Clive from university?
Shut the fuck up, Grace, I told myself, and forced my eyes to focus on the computer screen. Mr Big needed his reports doing and I wasn’t about to die on this hill. Fine, let my paranoia flare, but this job was supporting my family, and that meant more to me than any false claim on sanity. If my job had to drive me slightly mad to make it bearable, then I would only join the ranks of the majority who felt the same way. Nobody liked work, except Troy’s brother, Keith, the wildlife photographer.
And Troy now, I reflected warmly.
There.
That was reason enough to stiffen my upper lip and carry on.
But then I heard a creaking noise from the Pen.
It was nothing. It was the wind. There wasn’t a killer or a thief or a devil out there. I was already laughing at myself when the quality of the noise changed. It went from the reeeeeek of a persistent wind to the unmistakable pitter-patter of footsteps.
They padded by outside the door and then the handle turned, slowly, as though the person was unsure of whether or not they were allowed to enter. It turned and turned and then cracked open a sliver and my breath caught in my throat like I’d been stabbed.
An arm came around the edge of the door, hazy in the light of the corner lamps.
The arm was a little girl’s and she was wearing a bracelet. There were little clinking seashells and rocks on it. It was the bracelet that hung in Father’s workshop. Except it was here now. It was Hope’s and it was here.
The door swung open and from the deeper darkness of the office the little girl stepped inside.
She looked at me uncertainly, this beautiful girl, this perfect girl. She had braided brown hair and she was wearing the same summery dress Hope had been wearing when she died.
There were rabbits on the dress.
There had been rabbits on Hope’s dress that evening.
I can’t breathe. Why can’t I breathe?
As she took a shaky step into the office, her bracelet clattered quietly as it always did.
“You can never lose Hope, can you?” Father had often said, smiling as she swaggered around the kitchen, shaking her wrist proudly. Hope had danced and twirled into the garden and the bracelet sang like a shell-bird.
She gazed at me, clearly shaken and distressed from wherever she’d been.
“Who are you?” I asked, only the voice wasn’t my own.
I was speaking with a dead woman’s voice.
“H-Hope,” the girl said shakily.
I screamed.
35
The girl spun and darted away from me. Her braid trailed behind her the way Hope’s had, whipping around the edge of the door as she skipped from the room.
My throat tore from screaming, and cruelly I saw myself yanking on her braid once when we were arguing, losing my temper, the sort of horrible memory that was supposed to die with your loved one. I’d yanked her around the edge of the door and she’d let out a puppyish scream, and I’d felt happy about it.
“W-wait,” I gasped.
She pitter-pattered across the floor.
I struggled to my feet, everything feeling sensitive, as though my skin was suddenly sunburnt. Hyperreal, the world speared at me. Any moment somebody was going to leap out and attack me.
Somebody knew about my sister.
They were baiting me with her double.
They would kidnap m
e when I went to see what the hell was going on. They’d sell me at a slave auction and I’d be abused in the most gruesome ways.
I stood at the threshold, these thoughts biting into me as I listened to a door open and then the steps were gone. I moved back. I should’ve chased her and demanded to know who’d put her up to this.
But what if…
No, it was stupid.
But what if it had been Hope?
Of course not, obviously not, there was some explanation, some angle, but I couldn’t think and as I stumbled and held myself against the wall I wondered if maybe it was Hope, my little Hope, and she was back and she’d tell everybody what sort of a sister I really was—
No, no, no, I whimpered in my mind, my voice cut off with a stranglehold of panic. I wouldn’t let my mind veer to nasty places, to trick me and make me even more panicked. It was Derrick or Zora, the sneering double act, or it was Clive, or it was Mother, horrible dear Mother who might enjoy watching me squirm at the sight of a well-made doppelganger. It could have been anybody, because everybody had something on me, some gripe, and maybe that was motivation enough to dress a little girl up like my sister and—
It could have been her.
I tried to focus on dragging my breathing back to something like normal. In the end I had to settle for a mutated version of calm. I withdrew inward and turned myself into a zombie. I stared at the wall, waiting for my pulse to stop shimmering and my heart to stop hurting in my chest.
Time passed and eventually I could sleepwalk to the desk, sitting down and letting my head fall back.
It hadn’t been Hope.
Somebody had hired a little girl to imitate her because they were out to get me. The light had been hazy. I didn’t see her properly.
Her voice, was her voice the same? I couldn’t remember. She’d only spoken her name.
Hope.
She’d said it like it was her name. Not like she’d been coached to say it, a behaviour any mother could pick up on, like when Russ had to memorise lines and he couldn’t help but puff himself up proudly as he said it. But this girl – Hope, Hope – she’d said it like it was her name and had always been.
Had the rabbits been the same?
Feed the rabbits. Hope’s impression one day, munching on a carrot, Mother gleefully impressed with her youngest daughter’s recitation of this famous line.
Feed the rabbits; feed the worms.
Dead now; that wasn’t Hope.
Or that was Hope.
Hope had needed to see me. Even if we’d had our differences, she knew I was her big sister and I’d always protect her no matter what. She could’ve chosen to visit Mother and Father, but for all their fawning they weren’t her sister. That meant something, despite what Mother might like to pretend. This was evidence she loved me more. She’d come to visit me and not them.
I laughed at the thought, forcing a grin at the notion of ghosts and ghouls and dead sisters. This wasn’t one of Troy’s fantasy stories. It was a girl, a flesh-and-blood girl, and somebody had sent her here.
But there was a part of my mind that felt as if it was cracking, or rather that an existing crack was being levered open in violent jerking motions. This part of my mind was focused on the little girl, my dead sister, staring at me and telling me her name. I wondered if she was waiting for me; if I went into the hallway, she’d be standing in the shadows.
“Where are you going?” she’d say. “Don’t leave me, sister.”
Then she’d leap at me like something feral and clamp her hand on my shoulder, dragging me down and gnawing a bloody chunk from my face.
“Get it together, get it together,” I said, achingly aware I sounded like a madwoman.
36
All around me there was laughter and good cheer. It was my birthday party. It was a happy occasion.
Yasmin and my father were talking earnestly. There was something endearing about seeing my tattooed university friend talking with my father about model boats. Troy’s dad was holding court, a big chunky man with a thick neck and thick arms who had worked hard labour since he was fourteen. He had a way of dominating the room, and I could see the crow’s feet at the edges of Troy’s eyes wincing in silent discomfort as he listened. Troy hated it when his father talked about manual labour; it was another slight in their varied catalogue, to be filed alongside, I hear Keith might be up for an award soon.
Mother and Phoebe, Troy’s mum, were sat on the sofa talking about hair extensions, my mother bringing her hand to her chest. “Good heavens, I don’t know if I’d feel comfortable wearing another woman’s hair.”
“Yeah, but trust me, you’d look well lush with a few pink frilly extensions.”
Mother smiled and laughed and I was reminded she was a good person. “You do talk some nonsense, Phoebe.”
Phoebe laughed. “Guilty as charged.”
I stood in the corner, standing over Mia and Russ and Yasmin’s son, Elliot. Russ was explaining that to save Elliot they’d have to electrocute him. “See.” He was grinning, holding up two paper clips as though they were defibrillators. “Just one good zap.”
Mia, arms folded, sat on the edge of the sofa with one earphone hanging out, looking so intelligent and grown-up, looking like somebody I could imagine going to Paris with one day, if she wasn’t too embarrassed, perhaps when she was forty and I was sixty and we’d walk around, the best of friends. “Yeah, sure, that’ll work.”
I took out my phone again, even if I’d promised myself I wouldn’t this evening. I couldn’t bear it. But I stared down at the screen, because it was doing something very strange. It had been doing this very strange thing ever since Hope visited me the previous night.
Almost every time I looked at my phone, there it was, there she was.
A note was open and text was writing itself, typing across the screen. I brought it to my face and tried to breathe quietly as people spoke all around me, and the music played, and Russ laughed and Elliot mock-groaned as he was electrocuted.
Why did you scream? the text read. Do you still feel guilty? Do you think I want to hurt you like you hurt me?
I love you, I love you, I love you.
I shivered and felt tears prick my eyes, but somehow I maintained a look of calm.
“Gracie?” Troy laughed, finally breaking off from the sermon with George. “Hello? Earth to Grace?”
I turned the phone to him to show him the message. I somehow did it without letting out a sob. I expected him to ask me why I’d written it to myself. Had I written it to myself without realising, all these times?
He smiled a little shakily, as though he was trying to work out if I was telling an unfunny joke. “An empty memo, spooky. Have you still not worked out how to use that thing? What was it, a meme?”
I looked at the screen. The note was empty.
It’s him. It’s your husband. He typed the message and now he’s deleted it, and he’s laughing at you. He’s secretly laughing at you. He’s sneering behind those kind eyes, that’s what he does, he works against you and makes sick private jokes and watches as he drives you mad.
Because…
Oh, no.
Because Troy was the one who killed Hope, and that’s why he’d sought me out at the university party. Troy was the one behind the job and the little girl and the text, somehow, he’d what—cast a spell, cast a spell on my phone.
Listen to yourself, Grace, listen to yourself.
I laughed, masking whatever was happening inside of me. I made myself smile radiantly. I was having a fun birthday party and nobody could prove otherwise. “I’ve had a little too much to drink. But you know what? I might get a little more.”
I walked into the kitchen, as bright as I could be, and found Olivia leaning against the counter talking with Yasmin. I flinched at the sight of Yasmin. Hadn’t she just been talking with Father? But it was possible I’d been staring at the text longer than I’d thought. Time did bizarre things when it ran on no sleep.
Oli
via was laughing and nodding and I gestured at the fridge, which was between them.
“Look at Gracie.” Yasmin giggled, giving me a look that threw me back a decade. “Are you going wild tonight then? I don’t blame you. If I’m not absolutely smashed on my birthday, I consider myself a complete failure.”
I cracked open a cider and blackcurrant and took a sip from the can. “Maybe a tad. What were you two talking about?”
I sipped.
Was it me? Were you talking about me?
“About Olivia’s new man, this proper disgustingly handsome hunk she’s been screwing for a few months.”
“We were not.” Olivia glared, and I wondered if it was a lie, a joke to hide the fact they’d been discussing how funny it was my husband had killed my sister and was playing a sick mind game on me.
Shut the fuck up, Grace.
“Really?” Yasmin laughed. “I guess somebody slipped me some LSD then, because I seem to remember you bragging about him being burly and bookish, which seems like an impossible combination to me.”
Olivia gazed, face tight, as though she didn’t want to talk about this in front of me. Why? What was she hiding? What was she thinking?
“Thanks for coming though, guys,” I said, after a pause.
“When you said it was on you, I was in,” Olivia said, in a hiding-something voice. “Nah, I’m joking. Happy birthday.”
We walked over to the window that looked out upon the garden, at the trampoline. I gestured with my cider can, and tried not to think about the text and the little girl, the little girl with the bracelet and Hope’s braided brown hair. She’d been wearing Hope’s dress, and—
And I wouldn’t think about that. “I built that thing, you know.”
“Really?” Yasmin asked. “How absolutely modern of you.”