Erin nods. ‘In the café. I bought her a hot chocolate, bless her. She seems a bit upset about something. You’d better go up. I’m so sorry, I’d have come and got you ages ago if I’d known you were here.’
‘Don’t worry about it,’ he says, quickly grabbing his jacket. ‘Thanks for taking care of her! I’ll go up now. Did she say what was wrong?’
Erin shakes her head. ‘No, I’m sorry. I hope everything’s OK.’
Dominic takes the stairs two at a time, his heart beating fast. Why the hell did Andy say he was out on a job? Has he really got such a problem with Corinne that he’d go that far? Jesus, it’s pathetic. There are enough women boosting Andy’s ego without his girlfriend needing to be one of them. He looks at his watch. It is gone five-thirty, now. The stairs seem to rise up before him, as though they are multiplying, they are never-ending. He moves faster. Sweat pools beneath his collar.
29
London
Corinne
Dominic hasn’t come up to the café. I wait and wait. An hour passes. An hour and a half. Every minute that goes by feels twice as long.
At five-thirty the cleaner tells me they’re closing.
‘But I’m waiting for my boyfriend, he works in this building, he works downstairs,’ I say.
The blonde girl from Dominic’s paper was so sweet and apologetic, she said she had to get back to her desk after we’d had a hot chocolate each and shared a gingerbread man, though I couldn’t eat much.
‘I’m so sorry, Corinne! But look, I bet Dom will be back soon and I’ll grab him as soon as he gets in, tell him to come meet you up here. OK?’
‘Thank you so much,’ I say, and I smile weakly at her. Although I feel calmer, more in control, I don’t really know where else to go, I don’t want to go home to the flat alone. So I stay huddled up in the cafeteria, wrapped in my big scarf, waiting for Dom to come up. I’ve tried his mobile, several times. He’s probably got it on silent, he often does when he’s working. Still, I wish he’d check it occasionally.
I realised after she’d gone that I’d been rude, hadn’t even asked her name. I can’t think straight. She talked to me, I think, but I wasn’t really listening, just drinking my hot chocolate and trying to keep calm, picturing the horrible sight of Dad’s gravestone, the flash of black paint smeared across it. That awful word.
I should have thanked her properly, she seemed to know exactly what I needed and just talked to take my mind off things, like you would to a child having an injection. She didn’t pry, didn’t make me tell her what was wrong. She chattered to me about what did I do, and did I have a family, and how lovely Dom is. Apparently they work together, she started as a court reporter at the beginning of the year. She’s been working on the Claudia Winters case, the woman who got life imprisonment the other day.
‘It was brutal,’ she tells me, ‘It got to me a bit. That poor daughter of hers. Left all alone in that house.’
I nod. ‘Dominic hates things like that, it’s why he does features.’
‘He’s a real diamond, that one,’ she said to me, munching on the leg of the gingerbread man. ‘You’re lucky.’
I’d smiled weakly back at her, pushed the rest of the biscuit towards her. She didn’t seem to mind that I kept glancing at the door, she just kept me calm, kept me talking – where was I from, was I always arty, did I like living in London? She’d only just moved here, was still getting to grips with the city.
‘You’ll be fine,’ I told her. ‘You’ll love it in the end.’
She’d raised her eyebrows, slurped her hot chocolate. ‘I hope so!’
Then she paid for both our drinks and told me to take care of myself.
‘Don’t worry,’ she said, ‘I’ll make sure Dom comes up as soon as I see him. Promise.’
‘Miss.’ The cleaner is in front of me, hands on her hips. ‘We’re closing the cafeteria. I’m sorry, but you’ll have to leave.’
I get up to go, and that’s when he comes in. He looks as though he’s been running.
‘Corinne! What are you doing here?’
I can’t speak, I’m so relieved to see him. The cleaning lady stares at us as I fall into his arms, cling to his shirt. Liar. Liar. Liar. An image comes to my mind, suddenly, of my mother clinging to my father, just like this. She’d been crying too, and he’d held her tight, close to his chest, her head tucked under his shoulder like mine is now. The memory makes the tears come faster, my ribcage seems to strain under the pressure of what I’m feeling and my knees buckle slightly. Dominic is saying something, and his voice sounds panicked, he wants to know what’s wrong, but I’m so exhausted and scared that I can’t form the words properly. All I can do is hold on to him, standing here in the newspaper café, while the light fades outside and the cleaning lady switches off the lights, one by one, until we are standing there in the darkness, surrounded by chairs on tables, the only sound the drip drip drip of the cafeteria tap.
Then
He came round today. He actually came to our flat. I couldn’t believe it. Mum told me not to come down so I stayed at the top of the stairs, peering through the banisters. It felt like I was in prison.
I could hear them talking and then it got louder and louder, they started really shouting, and I put my hands over my ears because it felt really frightening. I don’t always like Mum but I don’t want her to cry. It went on for a while and I was just starting to think that I would have to go downstairs when there was the sound of the front door slamming, then silence.
‘Mum?’ I yelled, and I took my hands away from my ears and ran down our staircase. There was no one in the flat. I reached up and opened the front door, she hadn’t locked it, and then I saw her in the street. She had no shoes on, her hair was blowing everywhere. There were tears and snot running all down her face and her hand looked as if it was bleeding. I looked around for him but he wasn’t there, he was over on the other side of the street, getting into a car. I only saw the back of his head, the shine of his waxy coat. Mum didn’t even hear me calling to her, she just stood there, crying and shaking in the cold. It was horrible. I looked around and I saw them, all the faces at the windows on our street, staring out at Mum, shaking their heads and drawing the curtains. They don’t like her. They don’t like me.
30
London
Ashley
Ashley’s handbag hits the floor with a thump as she deposits it by the front door. She heads straight to the loft, doesn’t bother knocking on James’s door. He’s home for once so she is just going to ask him, she’s going to find out what’s going on. Enough is enough. The bank had been absolutely humiliating. Ashley had stood in front of the cashier for a few seconds, let his words sink into her brain. That account has been emptied. Then she had turned around, walked blindly out of the bank, all the way home, as if in a trance. All she can hear is June’s words in her ear: be careful, and be prepared. Her heart thuds. Sweat coats her underarms.
Ashley turns the door handle and barges into the room. Nothing prepares her for what she sees inside and, despite herself, she lets out a gasp.
Her husband is crying. Big, fat tears slide down his cheeks, seep into the collar of his crisp blue shirt, and his broad shoulders shake as he sits in front of the computer screen, the page before him filled with digits.
Ashley has only ever seen her husband cry three times in their whole married life, when each of their children were born. In a few seconds, she is beside him, holding his shoulders, her throat contracting in total, instant fear.
‘James!’ She shakes him slightly and his hands go to her waist. His tears continue and Ashley strokes the top of his head, trying to be gentle, but her mind is racing and she just wants him to tell her, to come clean.
‘James,’ she says. ‘I know about the money. I went to the bank. Enough. You have to tell me now. You owe me that, James. Please.’ Her voice breaks.
His face is buried against her stomach, a hot mass, and she holds his cheeks and pulls him away from her
so that she can look into his eyes. He can’t look at her, and as she realises this, Ashley feels as though her heart is breaking inside her chest, because she can’t believe this is it, that he’s really done it, he’s betrayed her after all these years. It must be a woman. He’s spent all the money on some woman. He’s leaving her. She knows it, can feel it in her bones.
‘I need you to calm down, James,’ she says, and her voice is low and steady now, at odds with her scrambling insides. ‘Let’s go downstairs, we can talk this through.’
She wipes her own eyes, lets go of him and heads for the stairs, leaving him up there in the half-light, waiting for him to follow.
In the empty kitchen, Ashley goes to the cupboard and finds a bar of dark chocolate. She pulls apart the silvery foil and crams the cold pieces into her mouth without tasting them properly, they lodge in her throat, her stomach too knotted to eat. James’s footsteps come up behind her. She braces herself, interlocks her fingers behind her back. Be prepared.
‘Let’s sit down,’ she says, and suddenly she feels absurd; like all of this is happening to someone else, like she’s watching it in one of the bad television shows that Lucy likes. They sit at the table with the clutter of phone chargers and soup stains and Benji’s pencil drawings. He has been drawing the solar system but the planets are outsized: a tiny Jupiter cowers next to a towering Earth. Alien figures dot the surface of the sun, rainbow coloured. Ashley puts a hand to her chest. Her heart is beating so fast she worries it will stop altogether. In her mind she suddenly begins to see a roll of images, as though on a video – her and James getting married, him standing before her in the church, them laughing together at a party, her younger self screaming when he asked her to be his wife. She can’t bear it. She will have to bear it.
‘Ashley,’ he begins. She takes a deep breath, looks him in the eye. She’ll deal with it. She’ll deal with it. She. Will. Deal. With. It.
‘Ashley, I made a mistake.’
The ceiling is crashing in, coming down towards her. Her mouth is dry. It is how she knew it would be.
‘OK,’ she says, and she doesn’t know where the word has come from, she cannot feel the tips of her fingers. She can’t bear it. She loves him.
He can’t look at her, his gaze flits away and he hangs his head. ‘I lost Parkway Publishing a deal, a big deal in America. The eReaders cannot be sold in the States, I got the figures wrong, created a backlog of money that the company can’t clear. Daniel is . . . well, Daniel’s fuming.’
She stares at him, her mouth open, her mind frozen.
‘I’ve tried, Ashley. I’ve spent the last few months in meetings, begging Daniel for a chance, trying to persuade him to let me keep my job,’ James says. ‘It’s why I’ve had to work so much, it’s why I’ve been taking phone calls all the time. I offered to try to make up the company shortfall. I’ve had to use our money.’
His face is drawn; there are purple pockets underneath his eyes. ‘I’ve just been trying to sort it out, and I didn’t want to tell you unless . . . unless I had to. I didn’t want you to be ashamed of me.’ His voice breaks, but he takes a deep breath, carries on.
‘It’s not . . . certain, yet, what’s going to happen, but it means that I . . . that we’ve . . . it means we’ve lost a lot of money, Ash. I’m so sorry. I hired a lawyer last month to help me, to try to get us out of the loophole that meant we lost the deal. It was expensive. God, I’m sorry. It means that . . . it means that things don’t look good. For me, I mean. For us.’
Ashley stares at him. The dark chocolate tastes bitter on her tongue. The silence stretches out between them, broken only by the ticking of the clock on the wall.
After a few minutes, she finds her voice. She almost wants to laugh. It is so not what she had been expecting.
‘James,’ she tells him, ‘I thought you were having an affair.’
He stares at her. He looks shocked, upset. ‘Ashley!’
‘I did, James, I’m sorry but I did. You’ve been acting so strangely, and you’re never here, and—’ She breaks off. ‘The phone calls.’
‘What phone calls? I told you, I’ve had to be on the mobile whenever the office call.’
‘No.’ She shakes her head. ‘Not that. The phone calls to the house, to my mobile phone. I’ve had what, four, maybe five, prank calls. From a woman. I thought they were for you.’ She stares at him, frowning. ‘And I had another, two days ago, and she was laughing, the voice on the other end was laughing at me. It was horrible. I wanted to tell you but then Lucy . . . Lucy went out.’
James is looking at her, bewildered. ‘Nothing to do with me,’ he says, his words oddly defensive, as though he’s forgotten what he’s just told her. ‘Perhaps they’re just prank calls. Why didn’t you tell me?’
‘I was scared to ask,’ Ashley says. ‘I thought . . . I was so sure you were . . and I couldn’t stand to hear it. I thought maybe if I ignored it for long enough it would go away.’ She dips her head, stares at the tabletop. Heat floods her cheeks. ‘I suppose they must just be prank calls. If you’re not—’
‘God, no!’ he cuts her off, shakes his head, looks so sure that in that moment Ashley cannot doubt him.
She puts a hand to her head. She feels foolish now, a wave of embarrassment comes over her as she recalls herself screeching into the telephone. Can they just be prank calls? Is her husband telling the truth?
‘How could you have thought that of me, Ashley?’ James says, and he suddenly looks so hurt that Ashley starts to feel awful, because she doesn’t know really, she has let herself get carried away, she knows she has. This is James, this is her James. Her husband. Oh, thank God. She leans forward, puts her head in her hands. James touches the top of her head.
‘I’m so sorry, Ash. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you, but I was – I am – so ashamed. I don’t know what we’re going to do. It’s why I panicked, you know, at the weekend. Because of the money you gave to Corinne. It was . . . it was the last bit of money we had.’
31
London
Corinne
Dominic wants to go out for dinner. He drives me home from his office, trying to cheer me up the whole way. He makes jokes, touches my knee, says he’s happy I came to meet him at work. I have to tell him about the headstone. I can’t find the words. He chatters on, he’s like a monkey. He thinks I’m upset about Dad, that the cemetery has made me sad. If only that was it.
‘Come on, Cor. It’s the best news. The very best news. We’re going to be parents. At last. Christ, I think it’s only just sinking in.’ He turns to look at me, taking one hand off the wheel to touch the side of my face. ‘Your dad would want you to be happy. You know he would.’
When we get home, he jumps in the shower, comes out all wide-eyed. His cheeks are flushed. When he puts his arms around me, he smells of minty shower gel and toothpaste. My stomach is between us. Just for a second I think of how happy I could be, how happy I would feel if we were a normal family, if all these horrible things weren’t ruining it all. I feel like the moment I tell him, I’m ruining things, spoiling the happiness for us both.
‘I’ve booked us a table,’ he says, ‘at Daphne’s in Holborn. You ready for dinner?’
‘I . . . Dominic, Dom, I need to tell you something.’ I don’t want to go out for dinner, right now it’s the last thing I feel like doing.
‘OK, OK, but the reservation is for seven – tell me over dinner?’ He grins at me, puts on his nicest blue shirt. I watch as he fastens up the buttons, so capable, so in control. Not like me. Reluctantly, I splash cold water onto my face, smear foundation across my cheeks. On the street outside he flags down a taxi.
‘Special occasion. Let’s travel in style.’
In the taxi, I catch sight of myself in the rear-view mirror. I look awful; I think of the beautiful blonde girl at his office today and cringe inside. I don’t want to go to a fancy restaurant looking like this. Why is he being so over the top?
‘Is everything OK, Dom?’ I ask
him.
He turns to me and kisses me. ‘It’s more than OK. Isn’t it?’
I put my hand on the car door, feel the lock snapped shut between my fingers. Dominic sees me and reaches out his hand to take mine, holds it tightly between his own. My eyes stay fastened on the lock.
The restaurant is gorgeous, all twinkly lights and crisp white tablecloths. The waiter pulls back my chair for me and I sit down, feel the tension in my shoulders lift slightly.
‘Dom, listen. The reason I came to your building earlier is because I went to the cemetery, I went to Dad’s grave.’
‘I know you did – how was it? I was just about to ask. I wanted to give you a chance to calm down.’
He smiles at me, grips my hand across the tabletop. Calm down. He doesn’t mean it how it sounds, I know he doesn’t. He looks so handsome tonight that the feel of his hand makes my breath catch slightly in my throat. I take a deep breath, and tell him about Dad’s headstone.
‘Fuck,’ he says, shaking his head at me. ‘Cor, that’s horrible! Don’t worry, OK, we’ll clean it off, we’ll go sort it out. It’s probably a bunch of vandals. Teenagers with nothing better to do.’
I can’t eat my meal; the waiter’s brought over a beautiful plate of scallops but my stomach is in knots.
‘I don’t think so, Dom, I don’t think it’s kids,’ I say. ‘Why would they choose that word? Why would they write liar? Dad didn’t lie about anything. I feel like . . . I feel . . .’ I drop my head against my chest. The restaurant feels wobbly, as though the walls are closing in around me. I force myself to look up. ‘There’s been a lot of weird stuff happening, Dom. I know you think I’m making it up—’
‘I didn’t say that!’
‘But I feel as though – I feel as though I’m going mad. It’s such a horrible feeling. Like my mind’s playing tricks on me, and it’s getting worse. That rocking horse . . .’
He keeps looking at the scallops, I can tell he wants to start eating.
The Doll House Page 18