by Camilla Way
After the phone call in the square, there’d been no sign of her for a week. Anxiety had nagged at me every day. What had Connor wanted Edie to do? A dull foreboding had grown inside me and I’d stepped up my surveillance of her house, spending longer and longer at the end of her street, waiting for her. And then a few days ago, when the afternoon had begun to stretch into evening and I was about to give up and go home, I’d seen her approach and watched as she’d let herself in.
Quickly I’d followed her, slipping through her side gate into the tiny scrappy garden. Hearing raised voices I’d crept up to the kitchen window and peered in. Edie’s mum had her back to me but her voice was loud and clear. ‘You’re a bloody liar,’ I heard her say. ‘I phoned the school and they said you haven’t been in today, or to any of your classes this week!’
Edie was staring at her feet and she’d looked so thin and tired that my heart had hurt. Her mum must have seen it too, for her voice had softened. ‘Edie, I’m worried about you. There’s something wrong, I know there is. Please talk to me.’
To my surprise, Edie sank into a chair and put her head in her hands. Her mother and I both watched as her shoulders began to heave. ‘Oh, Mum,’ she’d said when she could finally speak. ‘I just … it’s all just so …’
Silently I’d urged her, Tell her, Edie, please, tell her.
‘What’s the matter, Edie?’ her mum had said, going to her and putting a hand on her shoulder. ‘Come on, love, it can’t be that bad, can it?’
Edie had looked up, an expression in her eyes as though she were pushing a lorry up a hill. I’d held my breath as she’d opened her mouth to speak.
‘Is it a lad? Is that it?’ her mum had gone on. ‘It is, isn’t it?’
And silently Edie nodded.
‘I knew it,’ her mother said triumphantly. ‘I bloody knew it! That’s why you haven’t been going to school! Oh God, Edie, don’t be a bloody fool, don’t let a lad screw your life up the way I did! You want to be like me? Pregnant at seventeen? Your life over? Don’t make the same stupid mistakes I made!’
And just like that, the shutters in Edie’s eyes had come slamming down. ‘That’s all I am to you, isn’t it?’ she’d said. ‘A stupid bloody mistake! Well fine, maybe I’ll do what Dad did and leave too.’
She’d stormed from the room, her mum following awkwardly on her crutches saying desperately, ‘Edie, I didn’t mean it like that, you know I didn’t!’ But Edie had run from the house, leaving her mum and me to stare after her in the silence.
It’s this I’m thinking about when Dad stands up to clear our plates away. I haven’t touched my own lunch, but he makes no comment as he scrapes the cold mess into the bin. As I’m about to mutter something about homework and leave, the doorbell rings. We look at each other uncertainly for a moment or two before I go to answer it. When I open the door, there, standing on the front step, is Edie.
After
I get to the café before Jennifer, a greasy spoon on the Euston Road. I’ve missed the morning rush of commuters and, apart from a couple of builders with their tabloids and fry-ups, I have the place to myself. While I find a seat, awkwardly manoeuvring Maya’s buggy and cursing myself for bringing it, there’s a flurry of activity as the Italian owner bears down on us, scooping Maya up and cooing, ‘Ciao, bambolina!’ while he whisks her away to the counter and, before I can stop him, presents her with a cupcake thick with chocolate icing. Maya’s face lights up, and she sinks her two tiny new teeth into it with such a look of bliss that the café owner and I both laugh. And when I next look up, Jennifer is standing in front of me.
I’m unprepared for the effect it has on me, seeing her again. I’d met her only a handful of times back then, but instantly I’m sixteen again and standing in her kitchen. Despite the eighteen years that have passed she still has that same cool demeanour, the same air of disapproval.
‘Edie,’ she says, and awkwardly I half stand.
‘Hi, Jennifer,’ I say, and the fear that had begun to swill around in my gut since I’d agreed to come today gathers strength: How much does she know about what happened? How much had Heather told her? Nothing, surely? Surely nothing? ‘Please, sit down,’ I say nervously, almost sending a bowl of sugar flying. ‘Can I get you a coffee?’
She nods and takes a seat opposite me while I order from the girl behind the till. ‘You have a baby,’ she says, when I’ve sat back down.
‘Yes, this is Maya,’ I tell her, ‘she’s eight months old now and—’
But Jennifer interrupts me. ‘You said you’ve been in touch with Heather?’
‘I … yes.’
‘You’ve seen her?’
I nod. ‘She stayed with me for a while. I … I was struggling a bit with Maya and she … looked after us.’
Jennifer’s eyebrows shoot up. ‘Really?’
I hesitate. ‘When did … I mean, can I ask, when did you last see her?’
She doesn’t answer at first, and then, not quite meeting my eyes, says, ‘About a year ago. It was the first time in seventeen years.’
I look at her in surprise and she says defensively, ‘I suppose you know about all the trouble we had before she left Fremton?’
‘Trouble?’ I say, my stomach churning. ‘I – no, what do you mean?’
A silence. ‘Well, it was … you see …’ she falters, and for the briefest moment I glimpse a flash of an old, long-buried pain before the shutters fall once more and she says tightly, ‘I’d prefer not to discuss all that, if you don’t mind.’
We drink our coffee. ‘When did she leave Fremton?’ I ask.
Jennifer purses her lips. ‘When she was seventeen.’
A year after I did.
She sighs. ‘And then, just over a year ago, there was a phone call. From a hospital.’
I stare at her. ‘A hospital?’
‘A psychiatric hospital. Somewhere in London. I believe she’d been living in hostels for a time before she was admitted.’
I shake my head. ‘I don’t under—’
‘Heather had always been a rather … highly strung child. I suppose her difficulties became more pronounced after her sister died, and later, when she … well, after all that dreadful business before she left.’
‘What … business?’ I force myself to ask again, but Jennifer ignores me.
‘The doctor who rang told me she’d had a nervous breakdown,’ she goes on, quietly. ‘They wanted us – her father and me – to go and see her.’ She sniffs primly. ‘Brian and I had reconciled by that point, you see. The doctor thought it would be useful for the three of us to undertake … family therapy, I suppose you’d call it.’
‘And did you?’
Her gaze drops to her cup and for a second the old Jennifer vanishes and someone far more vulnerable takes her place. I realize that she must be almost seventy now and for a second my nervousness is replaced by pity.
‘I did, yes. Her father felt it would be too much for him, so I went alone.’
I nod. ‘And … how was it?’ I ask.
She sighs. ‘Awful, actually. Heather had made it abundantly clear what she thought of her father and me when she’d left home all those years ago. She attacked me, in fact. Smashed up her father’s clocks. She was quite out of control.’
I am too shocked to do anything but gape at her.
‘And at the hospital, she left me in no doubt that she still felt the same. The way she spoke to me was completely unforgivable.’ Her face is flushed a deep red, and I see that her hands are trembling. She glances at me angrily. ‘Her father and I had only been acting in her best interest back then, after all.’
As I watch her pull herself together I try to make sense of what she’s told me. Quietly I say, ‘She thought you blamed her, for what happened to her sister. She thought you felt it was her fault.’
She drains her cup of coffee and replacing it on the table considers it for a long time, then says softly but very clearly and with infinite sadness, ‘It was her fault. I did bla
me her.’
‘But it was an accident,’ I say, ‘a terrible, tragic accident.’
‘Is that what she told you?’
I shake my head in confusion. ‘She said Lydia fell into the lake.’
Jennifer doesn’t answer for a moment. And then, choosing her words carefully, says, ‘I think Heather probably convinced herself that what happened was an accident. But I don’t believe it was.’
‘But why on earth—’
‘Heather was very jealous of Lydia. Horribly so. And she’d always had a temper. She would fly off the handle about every little thing. She would lash out at Lydia sometimes and barely know she was doing it. One time I watched her from my kitchen window push her off the garden swing, then she lied about it.’ She stops and her eyes are bright with emotion. ‘I had to watch her every single minute. The night before Lydia drowned there had been a scene. A huge tantrum, Heather saying that I didn’t love her – that I loved Lydia more. She became completely hysterical, it took hours to calm her. And then, the next morning …’
Her words hang in the silence. My thoughts chase round and around. ‘Did you ever tell Heather that? That you thought she’d killed her sister deliberately?’
There’s a long pause, before she says very quietly, ‘I tried for many years to convince myself that it had been an accident. I never spoke about it to anyone. But when I saw her at the hospital, when she was shouting and raving at me, so out of control, I saw it: I knew it. I knew what she was, what she was capable of. And suddenly I couldn’t keep quiet about it any more. So I told her. I told her I knew that it had been her, that it had been her fault Lydia had died.’ She looks at me with defiance, as though daring me to protest.
‘What did she say?’ I ask.
‘She went crazy. She screamed and shouted, clawing at her skin and drawing blood with her nails. She had to be sedated and I was asked to leave.’
I’m silent as I digest all this. At last I say, ‘Jennifer, why did you want to meet me today?’
‘I wanted to tell you to be careful.’
My eyes shoot to her face. ‘What do you mean?’
‘I’ve seen for myself too often how unpredictable she can be when she loses her temper. But in the hospital, it was worse. She’d changed. She was so out of control, so angry. I was frightened of her. Very frightened. Just be careful, that’s all.’
When I return to my flat an hour or so later and see that my door is ajar I know with cold certainty that Heather has been there. The door’s easy enough to push open if it’s not Chubb-locked so I do it instinctively whenever I leave the house. I’d done it this morning as usual – I know I had. Fear grips me. Is she in there? I stand outside and listen. Nothing. Maya squirms impatiently in my arms and I push the door open and step inside.
The flat’s empty, but I can smell her, I’m certain of it: I can smell Heather. I walk from room to room, my scalp prickling, but nothing has changed. And then, suddenly, standing in my hallway, I look up, and my heart freezes. The sliding hatch to the loft, where I’d put all Heather’s belongings, has moved. Just a fraction. I stare at it uncertainly. Had I closed it properly, before? I was sure I had. I stand very still, listening. Nothing. You’re being ridiculous, I tell myself. You can’t get up there without a chair or a ladder, and if someone was up there, the ladder would be down here.
I sit with Maya and try to tell myself that I’ve imagined it; that I had left the door unlocked myself, had not completely closed the hatch. I hold my breath and listen but there’s only silence. You’re going mad, I tell myself, you’re paranoid, that’s all. On sudden impulse I drag the stepladder from the cupboard, and in one quick movement pull the loft door back into place. I stand there staring at it for a long time, unease twisting inside me.
I barely sleep that night. Instead I lie awake, alert to every tiny sound and when I eventually drift off I dream so vividly of Fremton, of Heather and of Connor that I wake again, my heart racing. As soon as the first light trickles in beneath my curtains I get up, dress quietly so as not to disturb Maya, and sit in the half-light of the kitchen drinking coffee, my head banging, staring out of my window until the sun rises. When Maya wakes I dress and feed her, carefully lock the door behind us, then take her with me to the ground floor. I knock on Monica’s door, praying that she’ll already be up, and relief floods me when I hear her begin to draw back the bolts.
She looks shattered when she opens the door. ‘How are you?’ I ask as she leads me to the kitchen.
‘Knackered.’ She yawns and puts the kettle on. ‘I’m not sleeping at the moment. I just lie awake, listening to every little sound, imagining that it’s Phil.’
I glance around the room. Even though the flat’s been tidied there’s still evidence of the break-in: broken furniture, pictures that had been smashed now missing from the walls, a door off its hinges. Monica makes the tea and as she passes me my cup she sits down and looks at me properly for the first time. ‘You don’t look too clever yourself. You all right?’
I stroke Maya’s hair, ‘I’m fine,’ I lie, swallowing hard. ‘Just a difficult night with this one, she couldn’t sleep either.’ I make myself smile. ‘Should have brought her down here, could have kept each other company.’ And at that moment, to my surprise Monica begins to cry, and for a second or two I freeze in indecision, clueless as to what I should do. She doesn’t bother to wipe the tears from her face but sinks her head into her hands in a gesture of such defeat that I get up and walk around the table to her, and put an awkward hand on her shoulder.
I want to tell her that I understand what it’s like to not be able to sleep at night, to be frightened in your own home. I want to confide in her about Heather, sympathize with her, give her comfort and have her comfort me. But of course I don’t. She’s frightened of a violent man who has physically harmed her. Heather has never attacked me, never tried to hurt me in any way. And yet I do fear her; I am more frightened of her than I have ever been of anything or anyone in my life. At last I whisper, ‘Monica? Don’t cry, please don’t cry.’
She doesn’t answer at first, but instead scrabbles around for a tissue and blows her nose. ‘I’m so sick of it,’ she says at last. ‘He’s still doing this to me, you know? Trying to get into my head. Still trying to control me. When’s he going to leave me alone?’
‘I don’t know,’ I say miserably. ‘I guess if he does something else the police will have to—’
She cuts me off impatiently. ‘The police? What can they do? They don’t give a flying fuck.’ She sits up and wipes her eyes, staring at me angrily. ‘When he was pissed out of his mind he’d come home and pick a fight then force me to do whatever he wanted. He made me feel like nothing, like I was nothing. Now he’s doing it again. Making me feel like this in my own home, making me feel like I’m nothing again.’
I put my arms around her and feel my own tears begin to fall as I say, ‘Oh Monica, you’re not nothing. You’re not nothing, Monica, you’re not.’ And as I hug her tightly I try to quell the horrible, sickening thought that it was Heather and not Phil who’d been responsible for wreaking such havoc in Monica’s home – that all she was going through now was down to me.
PART FOUR
Before
I’m so surprised to see Edie on my doorstep that at first I can only stare at her. ‘Do you want to come in?’ I say at last.
She shakes her head, and not quite meeting my eyes, mumbles, ‘I want you to start coming to the flat.’
I gape at her in astonishment. ‘Why?’ I ask. She shrugs but doesn’t answer. I think of the phone conversation I’d overheard in the square. ‘Did Connor tell you to ask me?’
She glances at me, then quickly away again. ‘No, course not.’
I think about this. ‘I don’t want to,’ I tell her. ‘I don’t like Connor. He scares me.’
She doesn’t speak for a moment or two, and then says simply, ‘Please, Heather.’
‘But why?’ I ask.
Her eyes fill with tear
s. ‘I just need you to come to the flat,’ she says.
‘He’s made you come, hasn’t he?’
‘No,’ she says, then adds, ‘He’ll be nice to you, I promise. He’s not going to do anything.’
I hear my father moving about in the kitchen down the hall and I know that I don’t have a choice, not really. Edie needs my help, she needs her best friend to help her, and no matter how much I hate Connor, that’s what I’ll have to do. ‘OK,’ I say.
She smiles in relief, making my heart lift, despite everything. ‘When will you come? Will you come tomorrow?’ she asks.
‘Yes,’ I say, ‘all right.’
‘Do you promise?’
She looks so like a little girl, her eyes so pleading, that for a second she reminds me of Lydia. ‘I promise,’ I say.
She nods and turns away, hurrying off down the front path, the gate swinging shut behind her.
And so I keep my promise. I go back to the flat the next day, and the day after that, and I keep on going round there until pretty soon it’s as if I’ve always been a part of it here – have always known this crowded, stuffy room with its worn, dirty carpets and its sour smells and thudding music, have always been familiar with the faces that find their way here day after day, like me.
For the most part Connor leaves me alone, as if it’s enough at least for now that I have done what he wanted by coming back, though for what reason, I still don’t know. Sometimes I’ll catch him looking at me, as though smirking at his own private joke. ‘Heifer,’ he’ll say, because that’s what he calls me now, ‘pass me that lighter’ or ‘move your fat arse’, but mainly he ignores me. And so, too, does Edie, as though the moment on my doorstep when she’d cried and pleaded had never happened, her eyes skimming over me, darting away whenever I try to meet them. I don’t mind: at least if I’m here I can watch over her, make sure she comes to no harm. I feel as if we are all waiting for something, although I have no idea what.