The Doll House

by Phoebe Morgan

  Ashley picks up a magazine from the side, flips through the pages to distract herself. The women in it are young, glossy. She thinks of her own eye cream sitting in the fridge. She’d given in, bought the anti-ageing stuff that her friend Aoife had raved about. Corinne had laughed at her, told her not to be so silly. She isn’t being silly, she’s being realistic. She’s got four years on her sister, perhaps when Corinne gets to her age she’ll be buying eye cream herself. She turns another page, winces at the bright pink heading. New year, new you! Should she be doing a January diet? She puts a hand in the waistband of her jeans, feels the indents the zips have left in her flesh. She doesn’t know how other people do it, pop kids out then spring back to size. She’s never been able to manage it, but perhaps she isn’t trying hard enough.

  She ought to give Corinne a call. Her insemination is coming up. Insemination. When Corinne first started the fertility treatments the word had made Ashley uncomfortable, conjured up grotesque images of cows and oversized pipettes. Now it trips off the tongue as easily as a hair appointment. Ashley sighs. Corinne has had to go through the process more times than anyone should have to bear. It makes Ashley’s heart hurt. When Holly was born, Corinne had come to the hospital room, bearing a huge bunch of yellow balloons and a smile that looked as though it might crack at any minute. They had sat together on the bed, staring at Holly as she nuzzled Ashley’s chest, nudged for the nipple. Ashley had pretended not to notice the tears in her sister’s eyes, knew Corinne wouldn’t want her to see.

  Yes, she needs to call Corinne. While she’s at it she should ring her mother too; Ashley worries about her, all alone in Kent, rattling around like a penny in a jar. Mathilde moved last year, barely two months after their dad died, said she couldn’t face being there, surrounded by all his things. They had packed up the Hampstead house together, boxing things up, making endless trips to the charity shops, clearing room after room until at last the big house was empty, full of nothing but dustballs clinging to the floorboards. Ashley had stood for a moment in their old living room, her hand on the light switch, staring at the bare walls, the stripped shelves, the blank windows. Then she had snapped off the switch and closed the door, blinked back the tears that threatened to fall.

  Mathilde was installed in her new place quickly, a small house in Kent with a gravel drive and double-glazing. It is better for her, really. Ashley should go and see her, take the children. If James can spare the time.

  Ashley looks at the clock again. Ten to ten. Holly will wake up at about eleven, no doubt. Then again at twelve, one if she’s lucky. She has finished the wine so she stands up, pours herself another, fills it to the rim. Her hand is shaking slightly and a droplet of wine hits the work surface, spreads rapidly across the wood. Ashley reaches for the sponge and, as she does so, the phone begins to ring. Ashley stares at it as though it’s a bomb; the little red light flashing again and again. Then she remembers the children, sleeping upstairs, and she reaches for it, taking a big gulp of wine as she does so.

  This time there’s breathing. Quite loud, as though the person on the other end of the line might be out of breath. Ashley’s mind pictures a horrible host of possibilities; women flash through her head in various states of undress, bosoms out, taut stomachs, lips pressed to the phone, wanting her husband. Stop it, Ashley, she thinks to herself, and she takes another sip of wine and says:

  ‘Who is this, please?’

  No answer. The breathing increases in tempo, and as Ashley listens, she thinks she can hear a sort of rattle, as if the person on the other end of the line is ill, or elderly. Perhaps it really is a wrong number. She is about to speak again when the line goes dead, and at that moment James walks through the door, his briefcase in his hand.

  ‘You’re so late,’ Ashley says, and he immediately looks guilty. She feels sick. ‘Where have you been?’

  ‘I’m just working, Ash,’ he tells her, and he comes forward, takes the wine glass and the phone from her hand, puts his arms around her waist. He nuzzles her neck. ‘Mmm, you smell nice. Did I buy you that perfume?’

  For a second she tenses, imagining the weight around her stomach, the soft cushion of her skin. She shouldn’t have had the wine. He leans towards her, kisses her quickly on the mouth. She puts her hands to the back of his neck, feels the tiny hairs prickle beneath her fingers.

  ‘You’re always working, James,’ she says, and she pulls back from him, looks into his eyes. They are grey, flecked with brown around the edges. She loves his eyes. ‘Is everything all right?’

  He isn’t meeting her eyes. He runs a hand through his hair, the brown curls spring up beneath his fingers. He looks so like their son when he does this, the gesture makes Ashley’s chest tighten, just a little.

  ‘Everything’s fine, Ash,’ he says. ‘I’m sorry, I’m really tired. Did Holly go down OK tonight?’

  Ashley nods. ‘Yes. But, James—’

  ‘Can we go to bed? Please?’ He interrupts her, and she swallows. She stares at him, at the bags underneath his eyes, the wrinkles that are forming around his temples.

  ‘Of course we can,’ she says, and he looks so relieved that she can’t face telling him about the phone calls, not just now. They troop upstairs to where the children are softly snoring. Holly’s bedroom door is ajar, the end of her cot just visible. Ashley tiptoes past, holding her breath, but James forgets and the sound of his shoes on the floorboards cuts through the quiet.

  ‘James!’

  There is a pause. Three, two, one – the sound of Holly’s cry spills into the corridor, as if on cue. As she goes to her daughter, Ashley catches sight of herself in the wall mirror. Her lips are dark red, stained with the wine.

  5

  London

  Dominic

  Dominic sits at his desk in the newsroom, gulps down his slightly burned tasting coffee as he prepares to start writing up his copy. He thinks of Corinne shading her eyes as she stared at Carlington House yesterday, of her small hands running over the derelict white walls. She was thinking about her dad, he knows she was. Richard looms as large in death as he did in life.

  As he types up his notes, Dominic grits his teeth, remembering the way Warren leered at Corinne. He probably shouldn’t have brought her along, but he hasn’t wanted to leave her alone much since the doctor called. He pictures her lying in the bath, her eyes shut, the water cold. A shiver goes down his spine and he shakes himself slightly, pushes the thought away. She’ll be all right, he knows she will. This is just a setback.

  He works quietly until lunchtime, when a hand comes down, claps him on the shoulder. Andy, the court reporter, is grinning down at him, Cheshire cat-like.

  ‘Stop slaving away over property stuff, Dom. I want you to meet Erin.’ He gestures to a young-looking blonde girl standing beside him, who is holding her hands behind her back nervously. ‘She started last week, while you were away. Erin, this is Dom.’

  Dominic stands and shakes hands with Erin, noticing as he does so that he has a large black ink spot on his thumb, brilliant against the smooth white of his skin.

  ‘Sorry.’ He laughs, rubs at it with the fingers of his other hand. ‘Comes with the territory, I suppose. Good to meet you!’

  Erin smiles back. ‘It’s lovely to meet you, Dominic,’ she says. ‘I hope you don’t mind but Andy said you guys were going for lunch together – is it all right if I join you? I’ve only just started and I don’t know the area yet.’

  Behind Erin’s back, Andy winks at him and Dominic nods quickly.

  ‘Sure, of course.’ There’s no point protesting. Erin is Andy’s usual type; he has a big thing for blondes. In the five years that Dominic has known him he has never stayed with a woman for more than six months.

  Dominic swings his chair around, pulls his jacket off the seat behind him and shrugs it over his shoulders. The three of them make their way through the newsroom to the lifts.

  ‘What’ve you been working on this morning, Erin?’ Dominic asks.

 
; ‘God, it’s a horrible court case. Mother accused of neglect. Claudia Winters?’

  The image immediately flashes into Dominic’s mind: a small woman, dark hair tied back off her neck, hand raised to shield herself from the lights of the media. She has been all over the papers. Extreme neglect leading to infant mortality. He swallows.

  ‘See, this is exactly why I became a features man!’

  ‘I know,’ Erin says, ‘It’s not a nice one to start with. In at the deep end!’

  They step into the lift together.

  ‘How you finding it here so far?’ he asks.

  ‘Good, good, you know, still settling in. Everybody seems friendly.’

  ‘Oh, yeah? Where have you come from?’

  ‘Oh, I grew up in Suffolk if you know it, over by the coast.’

  ‘Bit of a change from Finchley Road,’ Dominic says. ‘Lot less stabbings, I bet, although we’d all be out of a job without them.’

  ‘Right.’ She nods. ‘I’m living in Tooting now, though, just got a flat.’ She laughs. ‘It’s in serious need of decoration, bit of a shit-hole actually. Tooting seems a bit dodgy so far! Or maybe I just notice it more cos of the job. I’m still getting to grips with it all!’

  ‘Takes a while,’ Dominic says. ‘You’ll get there!’

  They have reached the ground floor; he fumbles for his lanyard in his pocket but Andy dangles his own in front of his eyes.

  ‘Honestly, mate, what are you like.’ He grins at Erin, opens the door for her and guides her through, his large hand on her back. Dominic rolls his eyes and follows the pair of them out onto the high road. He can already tell what Andy is thinking, almost see the cogs turning in his brain. He never takes long to make his moves.

  *

  They make their way to the pub on the corner, the Hare and Hound. An abandoned Christmas tree sits outside it, next to a pile of empty beer cans. Pine needles blow along the pavement, dry and brown.

  The three of them chat about Andy’s court case. It’s a drug deal; he says that today was the sentencing, he watched a nineteen-year-old girl go down for twenty years. Dominic shivers – he has always hated sentencings, hated seeing the look on people’s faces when the enormity of what they’d done would crash down on them. Always too late, of course. Half the kids he went to school with are behind bars now.

  ‘I hate sentencings, actually,’ Erin says. ‘So final, aren’t they? Imagine being locked away like that. God, it would be awful.’

  Dominic looks at her. She really is very young; she can’t be more than a few years older than nineteen herself, mid-twenties at the most. It will still take a while for the edges to form. He’s surprised they’ve started her on the Winters case, it’s a high-profile job.

  ‘Well, prisons are hardly prisons any more, are they?’ Andy says. ‘It’s not as if they’re off to Bedlam. Most of them have gyms attached.’

  ‘I think gyms is a bit of an exaggeration,’ Dominic says.

  ‘Do you do any court stuff, Dominic?’ Erin asks him. ‘Or do you stick to the features?’

  ‘I’m a features man,’ Dominic says, ‘I used to cover the court stories too, but it got a bit much. I just found it a bit depressing, really. All that horror. All those wasted lives.’

  He looks down, feeling suddenly embarrassed, but Erin nods sympathetically.

  ‘I know exactly what you mean. It gets you down, doesn’t it?’

  Andy interrupts, flexes his knuckles on the table. He’s a big guy; Dominic can see the tendons in his arm straining.

  ‘So, Dom, how’s Corinne doing?’

  Dominic shifts in his chair, pretending to be engrossed in a remaining chip congealed on his plate.

  ‘She’s . . . she’s doing OK, man,’ he says, although he is not sure that it’s completely the truth.

  ‘Corinne is my girlfriend,’ he tells Erin.

  ‘Beautiful name – unusual. Is that after anyone? Grandmother, or anything?’

  ‘I don’t think so,’ Dominic says. He doesn’t actually know, has never thought of it.

  ‘Well, it’s lovely,’ Erin says. ‘Have you been together long?’

  ‘A while, haven’t you, Dom?’ Andy says, grinning at him. ‘They’re joined at the hip.’ His chair has moved closer to Erin’s, the tip of his elbow grazes her water glass as he spreads his arms across the table. Dom is reminded of an animal, a monkey asserting his territory. He’s no idea why Andy bothers.

  ‘Yeah, years now actually. She’s great. We’re very—’ he bobs his head, awkwardly ‘—very happy.’

  ‘Most of the time,’ Andy says. Dominic ignores him.

  ‘What does she do?’ Erin says, and Dominic feels grateful to her for changing the subject.

  ‘She works in a gallery,’ Dominic says. ‘Over in Islington. They do really well, a lot of nice pieces. She’s very arty, talented, that sort of thing.’

  ‘Do you live in Islington then?’

  ‘No, we’re Crouch End way,’ he tells her, ‘closer to the rough side.’

  Erin sighs, dramatically. ‘An art gallery though, wow. I always wished I could draw. The best I can manage is stick people.’

  ‘Stick people, hey?’ Andy asks. ‘I like stick people.’

  ‘Maybe I’ll draw you some sometime.’ There is a note of flirtation in her voice.

  Dominic looks away from them both, traces a pattern on the tabletop. A bored looking waitress who is hovering around behind the bar calls over to them.

  ‘Can I get you anything else?’

  ‘Just the bill, please,’ Dominic says. He doesn’t need to watch Andy start to make his moves. What right does he have to comment on Corinne? Just because she wasn’t taken in by him at the Christmas party, wasn’t won over by his charms like the rest of the female population, he seems to have got it into his head that Dominic is making a mistake. Well, he isn’t.

  They head outside, back to the office. Erin is going back to court after a quick briefing with the boss on the Claudia Winters case.

  ‘She just doesn’t seem to show any remorse, that’s the thing,’ she is saying. ‘I mean, her daughter ended up dead! And Claudia sits in the courtroom like she’s not even listening, like she’s in another world. It’s mad.’

  Dominic nods. ‘She’s quite ill though, isn’t she? I read somewhere that she had post-partum depression.’

  Erin nods. ‘Yes, but how far can you take that, you know? The blame has to fall somewhere.’

  They reach the office. Andy holds the door open for them both. He places a hand on Erin’s back as she enters the building and Dominic rolls his eyes. Poor girl. God knows he wouldn’t want Andy homing in on Corinne. As a mate he’s all right, but with women . . . Dominic rubs a hand through his hair and follows them into the newsroom, the clatter of keys quickly surrounding them, swallowing him up.

  6

  London

  Corinne

  I gave in and showed Dom the chimney pot when I got home from the gallery yesterday. But I was right – he didn’t really understand.

  ‘You know it’s just a piece of pot, babe?’ he said, and I could tell he wasn’t properly paying attention because he was still focused on the news, reading the headlines as they streamed across the bottom of the TV. They were showing footage of that awful woman on trial for the death of her daughter – Claudia Winters. I don’t understand how anyone could ever hurt their child. Anyone lucky enough to have one in the first place. There were pictures of her as she came out of the court room, the paparazzi lights in her face. Her head was bent. You couldn’t see her eyes. The sight of her hunched body made me shiver.

  Dom had his laptop out on his knee, he was meant to be writing notes on the property piece, the house we went to together. I dreamed about it last night, I dreamed I was trapped inside and when I woke up I was sweating, a cold sweat that drenched the sheets. I wish he’d write about something else.

  ‘Yes, of course,’ I said, ‘but it looks so similar, it’s weird. You’d have to see the doll hou
se to know what I mean, I’ll show it to you. I feel like it’s a sign, Dom, like it’s Dad reminding me that things will be all right.’

  Dominic rolled his eyes as I knew he would, grabbed the end of my socked foot and wiggled it.

  ‘Maybe.’

  I smiled at him, put the chimney on the dresser, next to the photograph of my dad and my old set of paints.

  I haven’t seen Gilly today, I looked for her as I got home, checked to see if she was in. I’ve been trying to think why she sounded familiar, it’s annoying me. But the front door was closed and I couldn’t hear anything. I might knock tomorrow. I ought to be friendly.

  When we went to bed, I lay awake for ages, burrowed my face into Dominic’s back, breathing in his warm smell. My feet were cold so I pressed them up against his. It was only then I remembered that I needed to remind him to get the front door fixed. I’m sick of the draught in this flat.

  I drifted off around two, and then when I woke up later I felt surprisingly strong and positive, as though a little window had opened in my head. The little chimney pot feels like the first sign of hope in a year, this horrible time since Dad died and the IVF all started.

  So, I’m not going to let anything upset me today. I’m going to work, and I’m going to be productive. I make Dominic a nice filter coffee and get myself ready to go, choosing my clothes carefully. A red jumper, my purple earrings. Crimson coat. Triumphant colours. I knock on Gilly’s door before I go to work; this time she’s in, I can hear the child crying.

  ‘Hi!’ I say. ‘It’s Corinne, I live a number twenty.’ I point at my front door and she nods, smiles. She looks a tiny bit guarded but I can’t really blame her.

  ‘I just wanted to apologise if I seemed a bit blunt the other day,’ I say. ‘I’m actually . . .’ I spread my hands. I may as well just tell her. ‘I’m actually trying for a baby at the moment and it’s been a bit . . .tough so, so I reacted a bit weirdly when you mentioned kids. That’s all. I’m so sorry!’