I hesitate. I’m keen to get into bed and lie down but I promised myself I’d be friendly. I could just have a quick drink; it might take my mind off things.
‘Sure,’ I say, and I help her get the buggy inside, put my bags down at the foot of her stairs. She sits me down at the table in the living room, it is small and round, Tommy’s high chair is next to a couple of wooden stools. There are beads for him to play with attached to the front, the remains of a yogurt pot stuck to the little tray. I perch on one of the stools gingerly.
‘Earl Grey all right?’ she calls to me from the kitchen.
‘Have you got decaf?’ I ask. ‘I’m not meant to have caffeine, you know, because of the baby stuff.’
‘Oh God, of course, sorry. And I’m sorry about the mess! Ignore it, please. How was Kent?’
I look up. Did I tell her we were going to Kent? I must’ve done.
‘It was – it was OK thanks,’ I reply, not wanting to relive the horror of the rabbit all over again. To distract myself, I look around her sitting room while she makes the tea, taking in a couple of hastily unpacked books, the small pile of toys that I guess belong to Tommy. They haven’t got much stuff. It looks like they moved in a hurry. She’s started to make the place homely though; there are a row of pot plants on the windowsill, their leaves straining towards the sunlight, and one or two photographs framed on the sideboard. One of them catches my eye and I lean forwards, frowning.
‘Gilly?’ I call out to her, and she pops her head back into the sitting room, a carton of open milk in her hand.
‘Yes?’
‘Is this you and your husband?’
She nods. ‘God, I didn’t even put that out. Tommy must have hoiked it from the boxes.’ She comes into the room, picks up the photo and turns it over, places it face down.
‘Sorry. That’s Ben – he’s my ex-husband now. That was us on our wedding day. Can do without it staring me in the face! Two ticks.’ She disappears into the kitchen again and comes back holding two mugs of tea and a little plate of biscuits on a plastic pink tray.
‘Hobnob?’
She offers me the plate and I take one.
‘I didn’t mean to pry about your husband,’ I say, but she’s waving a hand in the air, dismissing my apologies.
‘Oh, God, don’t worry about it. Water under the bridge.’ She sips her tea. ‘These things happen.’
‘I’m sorry,’ I say.
She shakes her head at me. ‘Don’t be. Honest. We’re better off.’ She smiles. ‘I worry about Tommy, but you know, what can I do. Better to be apart than bring him up in a household full of arguments.’
‘What happened?’ I ask, and then feel rude – the question is too personal. It’s been so long since I’ve relaxed in female company like this that I worry I’ve forgotten how to be. She doesn’t look bothered, takes a big bite of her biscuit and crunches thoughtfully.
‘Money,’ she tells me, ‘That’s what started it. Isn’t that always the way? Well, money or a woman, I suppose.’ She sighs. ‘It wasn’t really his fault, actually.’ She looks down at her biscuit plate, then back up at me. There is a sudden sharpness in her gaze as our eyes connect and I look down at the tabletop, feeling a tiny bit uncomfortable.
‘I’m sorry,’ I say. ‘That’s awful.’
She sips her tea again, her gaze softer now. ‘Yeah, well, it was for a bit. He just lost it, you know, couldn’t keep it together, terrible mood swings. I’d tell him it wasn’t his fault but he wouldn’t listen . . . It ate away at us, as these things do. We just fought all the time. Maybe we got married too young. Me wanting to get away from my mother.’ Something flickers in her eyes and I push the plate of biscuits towards her. She grins at me. I want to ask her more, find out what happened with the money. I open my mouth but she shakes her head, begins to speak again before I can.
‘Hey, look at me going on. Sorry! Really, it’s OK now. Tommy sees him, from time to time. But I wanted a fresh start. Hence—’ She gestures at the room. ‘New place.’ She frowns. ‘It’s a bit bare, isn’t it? I don’t really have much stuff of my own. Need to get down the shops.’
I shake my head. ‘It’s a lovely flat. I like your plants. Where were you before?’
‘Oh,’ she says, ‘all over, really. We lived in Camberwell when we were married. What about you? Have you always been a North London girl?’
‘I grew up in Hampstead,’ I tell her.
She raises her eyebrows, smiles at me. ‘Fancy. Lucky you! Hampstead is gorgeous.’
I shift slightly on my stool, feeling embarrassed. I always worry about sounding privileged, whenever I mention Hampstead the reaction is the same. She’s looking at me over her tea, thoughtfully. I feel a splash of panic; I don’t want her to dislike me, not now, not now I’m making friends for once.
I try to change the subject. ‘So, since your husband . . . has there been . . . is there anyone else on the scene?’
Her face brightens and she leans forward. I breathe a sigh of relief, feel my stomach muscles unclench. It feels fun to have this kind of chat, it’s been ages since I’ve talked to a friend like this. A lot of my old friends have stopped calling, given up on me when I never called them back. I let the IVF take over everything, I know I did.
Gilly is blushing, just a little, and I squeal.
‘Tell me!’
‘No, no,’ she says. ‘It’s nothing really – it’s, well, we’ll see.’ She lowers her voice. ‘He’s with someone else, actually. At the moment.’ She bites her lip. She reminds me of a teenager, suddenly, furtive behind the bicycle sheds. ‘I know what you’re thinking, you’re thinking I’m awful, but it’s not like that, really it isn’t. He’s trying to leave her. He’s a good guy, bit older than me.’
I swallow. I don’t know what to say. I can feel my face tightening with the effort of trying not to look shocked, my mouth contorting weirdly as she leans forward, covers her hand with mine. ‘Oh, please don’t go thinking I’m some sort of hussy! I’ve never done this before in my life! Nothing’s happening, not really, not until he leaves. I’ve told him it can’t.’
I drink the rest of my tea, feel the hot liquid trickling down my throat. Gilly looks worried, as though she knows I don’t approve. I don’t really know what to think about it to be honest – the thought of infidelity has always seemed so alien to me. But, saying that, she seems a nice enough girl. Woman. I try to be open-minded. I suppose things do get complicated. I’ve been with Dominic so long that I can’t remember what it’s like to be on your own. Maybe this guy really loves her.
After a while, I start to feel really tired so I thank Gilly for the tea and say she’ll have to come to mine next time.
‘Definitely!’ she says, looking relieved. ‘It’s lovely to know a neighbour. Have a good evening, won’t you.’
I give her a kiss on the cheek and say goodbye, walk down the corridor to our flat. I can’t help wondering about this man she’s seeing – someone who wants to take on a young mother and a child that isn’t his? I wonder if he already has children, has babies. I think of Holly and remember my sister, her worried face in Mum’s garden, and I feel a bit sad. People’s lives are so messy. Is there ever an excuse to stray?
When I get in, the flat feels strangely warm, which is odd because I’m sure we turned the heating off before we left; Dom is annoyingly strict about things like that, but I’m more forgetful. Still, at least I don’t have to shiver my way to the bedroom. I put on my comfiest socks, the ones Ash bought me last year, and go to the bed. Without the distraction of Gilly, everything comes back; I think about the poor dead rabbit splayed on the bonnet, about Mum telling me the doll house is upstairs. Perhaps a sleep will do me good, give my thoughts a chance to clear. Then I can think rationally, work out what to do. I stretch out my hand to pull back the covers, stop deadly still as I see it. My stomach churns.
It’s there on my pillow. A little wooden rocking horse, painted yellow with a brown saddle and a flowing mane of hair. Its tee
th are bared, big and white, and its eyes are huge in its head, one on each side. It’s miniature, the size of my fist. I freeze, stand totally still as my breath catches in my throat.
This time I’m not imagining things. I back away from the bed, spin around to stare at the room. My heart racing, I check the kitchen, the hallway, the bathroom. Nobody is there. I find my mobile, dial Dominic, my fingers stumbling over the buttons so that I have to start again twice. No answer.
I return to the bed, pick the little horse up with shaking fingers. It stands on wooden rails, I know if I put it down it will begin to rock, backwards and forwards, backwards and forwards. I remember the day Dad gave this to me. It was my eighth birthday. I’d saved his present till last, seen all my party guests off with cake and balloons. The horse was wrapped in brown paper and Sellotape. He had carved it himself. We put it in the nursery of the doll house, the baby’s room. I can remember it as clear as day.
I run to the windows, check that they’re all locked tight, which they are. The house is deadly quiet and I can’t help it, as I pace around the rooms I start to cry a little, ugly hot tears that spill down my cheeks. What is going on? Someone has been inside this flat, has touched our things, walked across this room. I’m sure of it now. I know this horse is the one Dad gave me. I know it is. Someone has got our things, and someone is making sure I get them back.
Then
I’ve only seen the bad man once. He gave me a coat with a blue furry hood. I wish I could properly remember but I can’t, all I can remember is the way the material felt between my fingers, soft and warm. I’ve still got it, I wear it all the time but Mummy says it’s getting too small for me, that I look ridiculous. Once she said that and I cried, and then she cuddled me. I think she felt sorry. After a while I realised that she was crying too, and then I was a bit annoyed because she’d made the blue furry hood all soggy and wet. She took it away from me to wash it and I was scared I wouldn’t get it back, but I did. She told me not to get used to that though. She said often when you’re a grown-up, things go away and you don’t get them back. You never get them back. I put my hands over my ears when she said that because I don’t want it to be true.
Anyway, I don’t want to think about that now. Mummy has made me a nice dinner tonight. It’s on the table for me here, all red and yummy looking. Pasta with tomatoes and cheese, my favourite. She says she’s sorry that she has been mean lately and that she is going to try harder. She doesn’t eat any pasta herself, but she eats from her little blue bottle, one, two, three little pills. She says these ones are to help her be better. To care less.
I frown at her when she says that. I don’t want her to care less, I want her to care more. I want her to care about me more, but I want her to care less about him and about them. I’m not sure she’ll ever do that.
I start eating my pasta, the cheese tastes funny in my mouth, it sticks to my teeth. She’s watching me.
‘You know I didn’t used to be like this, don’t you?’ she asks me. I freeze. I don’t know what to say.
‘I used to be different. I used to be like them. But when someone does this to you, it’s hard to forgive. It makes you different.’
I still don’t say anything.
‘One day you’ll understand,’ she says, and she has one more pill, a little white one which she drinks with a glass of water. ‘One day you’ll want to help me.’
I still don’t say anything. I don’t know what she means.
After dinner, Mummy has to lie down in her bed, which means we don’t go to the house. I sort of miss it, but I don’t tell her that. I miss the bunny rabbits and the crawly worms and the rustle of the trees around me. Sometimes the rustles sound like whispers. The other day one of the bunny rabbits was out of its cage and I held my breath to see if it would come near me, but it didn’t. I watched the way its ears twitched in the wind; I think maybe it knew I was there.
While Mummy lies down, I run myself a bath and get in, feel the water swallow me up. I put my head underneath the surface and blow bubbles, pretending to be a deep sea diver like we learned about at school. I’d like to be a deep sea diver, I think. I’d explore all the oceans and see all the fishes, and Mummy couldn’t grab me and the bad man couldn’t upset her and the money wouldn’t matter because you don’t need money in the sea. Everything is free.
14
London
Dominic
Deadline day at the paper is always horrendously busy, and he has so much left to finish. His head is full of Corinne, how jittery she was on the car ride home from Mathilde’s. Every time he’d looked at her she was staring at him anxiously, tapping her fingers on the side of the window like she does when she’s nervous. When she’s got something on her mind. He knows the incident with the rabbit was horrible –Christ, it freaked him out a bit too, but he knows she will latch on to it, think it is something more sinister than it is.
He had stared at the poor creature as they covered it with soil, wondered about who would go to the trouble of doing something so morbid, so macabre. He hadn’t want to overreact so had tried to keep calm, even though the sight of it on his car like that had been unsettling to say the least.
Andy is making himself a coffee in the tiny kitchen, spooning granules into his Arsenal FC mug with the faded red logo emblazoned on the side. He looks rough, his chin stubbly, his eyes slightly bleary.
Dominic claps him on the shoulder. ‘Good weekend?’
He looks up, shakes his head, a smile forming on his face.
‘Late one last night.’ He winks, jerks his head in the direction of the lower bank of desks, where Erin’s blonde head is bent over her computer.
Dominic groans. ‘Already?’
Andy holds his hands up in a gesture of mock defence. ‘Hey, what can I say. She didn’t seem to mind.’
The kettle clicks; he pours boiling water into his mug, slurps it quickly without bothering to stir.
‘How’s things with you? Had the morning off?’
‘We went to my mother-in-law’s. Only just got back.’
Andy snorts. ‘Since when have you had a mother-in-law? Something you forgot to mention?’
Dominic frowns. ‘No, well.’ He shrugs and looks down, thrown a little. ‘You know we’re not . . . married, yet, but you know, whatever, we’ve been together so long we may as well be.’
‘So why aren’t you?’
‘What?’ Dominic feels a flash of annoyance. He wishes Andy would stop with the Corinne jokes.
Andy is raising his eyebrows, grinning like a Cheshire cat. ‘Don’t worry, mate, you don’t need to tell me. Wouldn’t catch me going down the whole ball and chain route.’ He winks again and nods at Dom. ‘I’m just winding you up, mate, you know I am. Jesus. Relax!’
Dominic looks away, out across the newsroom. He sees the peeling walls, the empty desks, the gaps that haven’t been replaced. The only reason he and Corinne are not married is because they can’t afford it; all the money they have has gone on IVF. He has always imagined that they will marry, in the future, has pictured the day in his mind. His mum wants them to, is always on at him about it. He doesn’t think she realises how much a wedding costs these days.
‘We will get married,’ he says to Andy, ‘we’re not all of the wild oats variety. Go easy on the new girl, hey? She looks about twenty. Even for you, that’s young.’
Andy stiffens slightly, as though Dom’s words have touched a nerve. Dominic ignores this, reaches for the kettle, starts to refill it for himself. He feels his friend’s eyes on his back for a moment, but by the time he has turned around Andy has gone, is making his way through the newsroom to his desk. He passes Erin’s chair without stopping, and Dominic winces when he sees the look on her face. And so it starts again. Another one down.
Later in the morning, he passes Erin on the stairs. She looks a bit lost, slightly forlorn.
‘Hey,’ he says. ‘How’re you? Getting on OK?’
‘Oh, Dominic,’ she says. She looks relie
ved to see him. ‘Sorry, I must look silly – I’ve got to go out on a job and I don’t know where the cameras are kept. Are they around?’
‘You’ll get used to it,’ Dominic says. ‘This place is a bit of a shambles. Alison keeps talking about getting organised, but, well . . .’ He shrugs, shows her to the cupboard where the reporters’ cameras are stored. ‘What’s the story? Anything good?’
She takes one gratefully. ‘Thanks, you’re a lifesaver. It’s the Claudia Winters sentencing today. I’m hoping to get a picture of her when she comes out. They think she might get life. You know she has another daughter too? Older. It’s her I feel sorry for.’
Dominic shuts the cupboard door.
‘I didn’t know that. God, poor thing. Mother banged up and her sister dead, Christ. Rather you than me!’
Erin smiles at him. ‘You really are a features guy. In a good way. What you working on today?’
‘I’m trying—’ they thread their way through the newsroom, back towards the desks ‘—I’m trying to write up a piece about Carlington House, a mansion just outside London. Alison’s a bit obsessed with it. It’s a big Georgian building that was damaged in the war, the owners are paying God knows how many pounds to fix it up again. Nice houses always attract readers though, especially round here. Sounds like there could be a bit more to it, as well. More interesting than the usual rich kids showing off their flats.’
‘Oh?’ She looks interested.
‘Yeah, but I’ve lost my notes. I haven’t finished writing it up and I need the boring stuff – dates, names, you know. ‘
‘I do.’ She smiles at him. ‘Well, I’ll leave you to it, then – you write your Georgian piece and I’ll go try to snap some seedy shot of this woman.’ She grimaces. ‘See you later. Hope you find your notes!’
As she leaves him, Dominic catches Andy’s eye from across the room. He is staring at them head on, not bothering to look away. Dominic stares back. What’s the matter with him? Surely he can’t be jealous. He’s only talking to her!
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