A Midwinter Promise

by Lulu Taylor

  She felt sick again, the same pang of disgust as in Sally’s kitchen the other day. ‘What?’

  ‘Oh, sorry. Forgive me. I’m sure you don’t sleep around anymore.’

  The disgust swirled with something else, more noxious, in her stomach. ‘Shut the fuck up, Mundo.’

  ‘Calm down, Alexandra.’ He smiled again, amused. ‘We’re all allowed our little peccadillos, aren’t we?’

  ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’ Her voice sounded slightly strangled.

  ‘I’m sure you don’t.’ He leaned over, too uncomfortably close for her liking. ‘Who’s this? Isn’t she pretty.’ He pointed to a photograph of Scarlett, her dark hair pulled back in braids, her blue eyes wide and innocent. ‘She looks just like you.’

  Alex stared at the photo and realised that Scarlett was the age now that she had been when Mum died. That thought twisted something inside her with such pain she could hardly bear it. The idea of Scarlett suffering what she had, all that loss and grief, was almost too much. And then . . . she had a memory of her and Johnnie standing together, drawn close in their shared misery, and Sally pushing Mundo towards them. He was eight, pale and pudgy, with that sulky mouth and pale blue eyes that flickered with mischief.

  ‘This is your brother,’ Sally declared. ‘Your new brother. Aren’t you lucky? I’m sure you’ll make him feel welcome, won’t you?’

  Alex had thought that she didn’t like this exchange at all: losing a mother and gaining Mundo. And then it all began, that subtle and not-so-subtle crowbarring of Mundo into the family, the insistence that he must be treated with limitless kindness, patience and forbearance. Two children who had lost their mother, whose father had disappeared into a pit of grief, must put their new brother first at all times, no matter how he behaved towards them.

  That was it. Pa left us to it. He was never there. We lost him too. I just never realised it.

  Mundo leaned over to pick up Scarlett’s photograph.

  ‘Don’t touch that!’ Alex shouted, and went to grab it, but he pulled it away just in time, laughing.

  ‘What’s wrong? Can’t I look at a photograph?’

  ‘Put it down,’ she shouted, more loudly, more frantic.

  ‘All right, all right.’ Mundo put the photograph down, and shrugged, still laughing. ‘You’re a bit of a tigress, aren’t you? I’m just admiring your peach of a daughter. You should be proud of her.’

  ‘I am. I don’t need your approval.’

  ‘Oh, come on.’ He edged a little closer again, his cool blue eyes looking at her appraisingly. ‘She got her good looks from you. You’re still attractive, Alex, and I can remember a time when you didn’t use to be so fussy either. Can’t you?’

  Her heart was pounding, and she could feel her breath coming faster. ‘I’m warning you, Mundo. Don’t start.’

  ‘What are you trying to say?’ He looked hurt, and then his mouth turned down at the corners. ‘You’re being a bit unkind. I don’t like it when you’re unkind.’

  She stared at him, his face unpleasantly close to hers. He was so powerful. What was it about him that made him so strong and so frightening? Her phone beeped and she looked down. It was a text from Johnnie. The words danced in front of her eyes but she managed to read it.

  I’m stuck in traffic outside town. Won’t be back for a while.

  She looked back at Mundo and tried to sound stronger than she felt. ‘He’s going to be late. I think you should go.’

  ‘But now we’ve got some time to catch up properly, haven’t we?’

  ‘Please go.’

  ‘Why?’ He reached and tucked a strand of her hair behind her ear. ‘I’d like to stay.’

  Alex leapt up. ‘Get out, Mundo, I mean it!’

  ‘Woah! All right. Don’t get het up. I’m just being friendly.’ He moved away and shook his head. ‘Anyone would think you’re frightened of me.’

  ‘I just want you out. Johnnie and I will find a time to meet you and talk about the inheritance issues. Until then, please go.’

  Mundo’s expression turned sour. ‘I see. Fine. You and Johnnie were always the same – ganging up on me. Treating me like an outsider. I see that nothing’s changed.’ He went to the door. ‘You’ll both regret it in the end. I haven’t forgiven or forgotten, and we’re all grown-up now, aren’t we?’

  She couldn’t say anything, just longed with everything she had for him to walk out the door. He looked back at her, and gave another of his sardonic, half-amused looks.

  ‘I mean it, Alex. You’re not going to get away with shutting me out. I’m here to stop that. Understand?’

  Then he was gone and a moment later, the front door closed with a bang. Alex sat shaking, staring unseeing into the room and remembering.

  It had started in little ways. Right from the beginning, when Sally had moved herself and Mundo into the house. Aged only eight, Mundo seemed to have a talent to provoke way beyond his years, and a desire for it. What he hated most was to be ignored, thriving on attention and getting reactions. She would never understand why he wanted to attack her and Johnnie, but he’d been the same since the day he arrived. As soon as the grown-ups’ backs were turned, he’d not be able to stop himself, doling out kicks and pinches, or whispering nastiness and spite. He liked to torment Johnnie by targeting his favourite possessions, often stealing or breaking them or making the grown-ups force Johnnie to hand them over in the name of sharing. Or he’d tease with mean songs and rhymes and nicknames, or repetitive tricks, like tiny balls of paper lobbed over and over at someone’s face.

  With Alex, he had similar methods. He liked to sneak into her room and read her private journals and writings, and then tease her, and he always found what she hid. He put horrible things in her bed: dirty, slimy crawling things. He played practical jokes that left her soaked, filthy or even hurt. He would threaten to drop favourite things down the loo or off the roof, and he was adept at the sudden and painful twist on a wrist, or a flicked towel, delivered swiftly and just out of the eyeline of the grown-ups. He discovered that horrible names and nasty rhymes worked better on her than on Johnnie, so he concentrated on that for a while, provoking her to tears of misery by calling her Smelly Alex and acting disgusted by her smell whenever she was in the room.

  And then they grew up and something changed. She hadn’t thought Mundo could be any more horrible but he found a new seam to mine. It started with pictures from dirty magazines, ripped out and left in her bed: crumpled photographs of naked women or couples engaged in vividly portrayed sex acts. She saw her first naked, aroused man that way and was unable to shake the image for weeks. Alex didn’t want to see them, but he left them where she couldn’t help it. She was too ashamed to tell anyone what he was doing, in case they thought she was somehow complicit in it, so she could only rip them up into tiny pieces and flush them away.

  Then the pictures began to come with notes, printed in capitals.

  DO YOU DO THIS?

  DO YOU LOOK LIKE THIS?

  DO YOU AND YOUR FRIENDS LIKE DOING THIS TO EACH OTHER?

  WILL YOU DO THIS FOR ME?

  It revolted her. Once, sickened by it, she’d run into his room, thrown a crumpled picture down on his bed and shouted, ‘Will you just stop it?’

  Mundo had picked it up with an air of surprise. ‘Stop what? What’s this?’ He looked at it in faux bewilderment and then, in a shocked tone, said, ‘Alexandra! Why are you showing me this? Where did you get it?’

  ‘You put it in my room!’

  ‘Of course I didn’t. That’s disgusting.’ He’d narrowed his eyes at the picture. ‘Although, actually, she’s quite nice, now I look closer. I like those tits. Have you got tits like this? Why don’t you show me?’

  ‘Shut up!’ she’d screamed and run back to her room, her eyes stinging with frustrated tears.

  The pictures kept coming but she grew used to them, able to shut their contents out of her mind as she ripped them up and threw them away. One day, Mundo would leave
. He’d go to university and then she’d be free. It wasn’t long to wait now.

  It was a Saturday in the Easter holidays and she was in the small sitting room, curled up on the sofa watching television. Mundo had just got back from skiing with some of his rich friends. Johnnie was out somewhere. Alex felt her heart sink as she heard the sitting room door open and a minute later, Mundo was sitting on the sofa too, at the other end. She ignored him, watching her programme in studied silence in case he decided to start teasing her in any of his favourite ways, until she became aware of a regular movement out of the corner of her eye. Looking over, she was confused, unable for a moment to understand what she was seeing, until she realised that Mundo had exposed himself and was gently rubbing the erection that rose from his flies.

  Alex gasped in shock and froze, suddenly terrified. He didn’t look at her, but continued caressing himself as though he was completely unaware of her presence. She quickly looked back at the screen but saw nothing on it, aware only of the awful movement at the edge of her vision.

  Then, with a rapid movement, she scrambled away, getting off the sofa and out of the room as quickly as she could. She ran to her room, appalled and incredulous. She was also scared. What did this mean? What was he doing?

  Alex knew she ought to go to Pa and Sally at once and tell them. But she couldn’t. How would she find the words? It was too shameful, embarrassing, mortifying. And what if they didn’t believe her? What then? No. She had to hope it was just a one-off, a moment of madness on Mundo’s part. Perhaps he hadn’t seen her, hadn’t realised he wasn’t alone.

  But she knew in her heart that wasn’t true.

  Alex ran to the front door as soon as Mundo had gone through it, and locked it. The girls were with Tim. Johnnie was still out in the car somewhere. She was alone, and now she was scared. Mundo’s vileness that had scarred her teenage years. It had been the awful secret that he had forced her to share with him, and even now, she couldn’t bear to think about it. A huge part of the guilt was that she was complicit. She’d let him get away with it, and that made her feel wretched, as though there was no way she could be innocent in all this.

  Leaning against the front door, she tried to get her breath and be calm, but panic was still gurgling through her. It had taken years to act normal around Mundo, to be able to pretend that they were simply normal step-siblings. She did it by blanking it out. She had told no one about what he’d done, not even Tim.

  Tim.

  He’d been so different from Mundo, and that was a huge part of what had drawn her to him. Tim might have been a bloody pain in so many ways, but she knew it would never occur to him to treat any girl the way Mundo did. Tim was kind, gentle and safe. He was loving and straightforward and had no idea that love and sex could be nasty, twisted games that were all about punishment and power. When she’d met Tim, his attitude to her – sweet, normal, unthreatening – had been like water in the desert to Alex, and their relationship had done a huge amount to heal and reset her, restoring her real self and giving her back her faith in people. It was just that, when she had been healed, it had become clear that Tim wasn’t right for her after all. His sweetness and straightforwardness were, in the end, not enough.

  Somewhere between the two of them, Tim and Mundo, these two extremes and everything they represent, there has to be something else. The thing I’m looking for.

  But what was it?

  Someone with kindness and sweetness, of course, but also with some vital dynamism, some element of sympathy with her that went beyond romantic feelings and was all about a shared outlook, a shared vision and passion for the same essentials of life.

  Alex couldn’t remember much about the relationship between her parents, so her only pattern was Pa’s second marriage, and what she understood about Sally and Pa was that they were in harmony. Alex had always felt in some vague way that Pa loved Sally, but as a best friend. She was not his great passion, she was sure of it. That had been Mum, she felt it in her core. But a best friend was a wonderful thing to travel through life with. If Tim had been her best friend, instead of an amiable housemate, it could have worked.

  But it hadn’t. And here she was alone. And Mundo was back. Was he up to his old tricks?

  She breathed out slowly, trying to calm her pounding heart.

  Oh God. I hope not.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  When Alex called at the house to see Pa, Sally stood at the front door, white-faced, a little hunched inside her baby-blue sweater, and said, ‘I’m sorry, Alex, it’s not a good time.’

  ‘What?’ Alex half laughed, as if Sally was joking. How could it not be a good time for a man who was completely unconscious? She’d seen Pa virtually every day now, sometimes with the girls, and he had never changed at all, unless being in a different position counted. The nurse turned him from time to time to prevent bed sores or to allow her to wash him.

  Sally looked worried and her gaze slid away from Alex to the evergreen shrubs by the front door. It occurred to Alex that by now Sally usually had decorations and fairy lights up, but not this year. The house showed no sign of the fact that Christmas was so close.

  ‘Is something going on?’ Alex asked. She’d felt that she and Sally had found a new bond over the last few weeks in their shared anxiety for David. For once, the prickle of antagonism that had existed between them for so long had faded a little. The barbed comments and tart remarks had stopped almost entirely and Alex felt for the first time as though she might be seeing the real Sally, the woman below the act. It made her wonder why on earth she had kept it up for so many years.

  The stupid thing is, we might have been friends.

  For years, Alex had wondered what it might have been like if Sally had loved her, and what it would have been like to have a kind, caring stepmother to replace, just a little, what she had lost. She sometimes imagined a world where she had a motherly figure to turn to, to confide in and be guided by. But Sally had rejected that role. When Alex’s first period arrived, Sally had given her a box of tampons and shut her in the bathroom, with no instructions or explanation. Alex hadn’t had the first clue what to do, and had ended up putting wads of loo paper in her knickers to deal with it. It was only the other girls at school and Matron who had explained what she needed and helped her get sanitary towels instead of tampons.

  She wondered what it might have been like to have a stepmother who hugged her and kissed her and wished her real happiness. It had never been like that. Even on Alex’s wedding day, Sally had claimed a bad headache that meant David had to sit with her at all times, and not walk Alex up the aisle after all. Mundo would do it. Alex had protested that she’d rather walk alone or with Johnnie, but no one would listen, and in the end she’d bowed to the general insistence that this must happen, and had taken the arm of the person she hated most in the world in order to be married. Her main memory of her wedding day was that awful walk, the smile on Mundo’s face, Tim’s bewilderment, Pa’s refusal to stand up to Sally. Sally had even suggested that Pa not give his speech but he’d said he would do that, and Sally should go home and lie down if she wasn’t up to the rest of the day. So Sally had left before the speeches, walking out shakily, helped by Mundo. Everyone was asking if she was all right. All the attention, all the concern, all eyes on her.

  Alex had felt as though she was engaged in a battle she had never wanted to fight, against an enemy she wished would be her ally, whose main aim was to divide and rule. Keeping Alex and Jonathan away from Pa seemed to be her overriding concern.

  But why?

  That was always the question. What did she want to gain from it? Tawray? Sally had been the main force behind getting rid of it. Money? Surely she had enough to be content. Advantages for Mundo? He had the best education money could buy, he had a brilliant legal career and a glamorous life – he was by far the most successful of the three children. What more could she want for him?

  It was as though she was obsessed by making Pa choose her over his chil
dren, and she would only be satisfied by erasing Alex and Johnnie altogether. Alex thought of all the school pictures and family photographs that had disappeared over the years, so that only Mundo was represented in silver frames on the sideboard. Mundo was immortalised in an oil painting in his graduation robes. Johnnie’s graduation picture was a photo in a frame propped up in the small sitting room bookcase, half obscured by holiday postcards.

  And now, on the doorstep of Alex’s father’s house, Sally was denying her entry.

  ‘Well, when can I come back?’ Alex asked. ‘Later today?’

  ‘I’m not sure. I’ll text you.’

  ‘What shall I say to Johnnie? He’s expecting to visit.’

  ‘Tell him the same.’ Sally was evidently itching to get away. ‘I must go now. I’ll text you.’ And she slipped back inside and shut the door.

  Alex stood there, bemused. There was not much to be done, she could hardly force her way in. Pa must be all right. She would leave it for today and come back tomorrow. Actually, it would be a good idea to get up to Tawray with some of her decorations. Jasper had sent her a message to say that the Christmas trees had arrived and were in their stands, and she’d begun to see notices of the opening of the house for viewing.

  She shrugged. I’ve got plenty to do. If Sally wants to play a silly game with me, that’s fine. I’ll come back tomorrow.

  But she knew that niggling sense of anxiety about Sally from of old.

  Alex drove up to the house in her small van, painted in the company colours: duck-egg blue with ‘Tawray Flower Company’ on the side in chocolate brown lettering. The back was stacked with boxes that held the baubles in tissue paper and straw, along with strands of tiny fairy lights that would nestle among them.

  She got out and rang the bell, then went back to start unloading the van. A few moments later, the front door opened and Jasper came bounding down the front steps, followed by a pair of small but very hairy dogs, their eyes obscured by fringes and pink tongues hanging out. He was casual as usual, in jeans, a shirt and a blue tank top, his expression bright and welcoming.