2:20 a.m. ‘Babe, you really need your sleep,’ Ciaran says.
I love him so much. But I resent him sometimes, too. When he’s been away and he comes back, I know that I can’t live without him. He’s my rock. He has transformed me. But because of him, I am under this yoke. I know he didn’t do anything wrong, he explained it all to me, but if I’d just been able to tell Yvonne to back off when she started her usual digging into his background, I wouldn’t have had to …
‘I can’t sleep,’ I say to him.
‘Is this about Yvonne?’
‘A little bit,’ I say. A little bit and a lot of bit because of what you told me. Because of your secret that I have to keep buried deep inside. Am I turning on my friends because I can’t be honest with them? If I tell them, they’ll never let me near their children again. My children will be shunned. It’s a big thing, living with his secret.
‘I’m sorry, babe. This whole thing is rotten.’ He takes my hands and tugs me to my feet. ‘But come on, you’re going to make yourself ill if you carry on like this. Come to bed. I’ll cuddle you until you go to sleep. OK?’
‘OK,’ I reply. I can’t sleep, but I’m too tired to argue. ‘OK.’
Anaya
8:15 a.m. ‘Hazel! Hazel!’ I am calling and running after my friend, who has just blanked me at the school gates. We arrived on time for once and I spotted her, standing a little way away, waiting for the bell that signalled that we could all leave.
I went to speak to her, because we all agreed after Cece joined us for the knitting and then for cocktails that we’ll try to act normal in the outside world, despite Trevor ringing and texting. We’ll speak at the gates, we’ll text each other but still delete them, just in case. But when I went to speak to Hazel, she’d stared right through me. As soon as the bell sounded, she turned and walked the other way, back towards home instead of towards work. I carried on trying to get to her in the dispersing crowd and she sped up. I called to her and she sped up some more. And she’s practically running now and I’m jogging to catch her while calling her name. I break into a full-on run, slipping on the blanket of leaves that has fallen and has not been dealt with by the council yet. Eventually, I catch up with her as she turns the corner not towards her home but the other way.
‘STOP!’ I cry and put my hand on her shoulder.
She does stop but doesn’t turn around. I step around her so that I can see her face. She’s deathly pale; her bloodshot eyes are scored underneath with grey and her lips are dry and look like they have been chewed and chewed. This is what she looked like when Walter first left her. ‘What was that about?’ I ask her. ‘Why did you blank me and run like that?’
‘I didn’t want to talk to you,’ she says. She’s so plaintive about it I have to take a step back.
‘What? What have I done?’
‘I don’t know, what have you done, Anaya?’
‘What the hell is going on? I thought we agreed we had to stick together, especially right now?’
She scoffs, a small, dismissive sound, and cuts her eyes at me. ‘Yeah, right. How’s your new friend Cece? Is she part of the sticking-together thing? And how’s Maxie? You and her having tea together soon?’
I step back again. It’s like Hazel has been possessed by the mean spirit of Yvonne. ‘What’s wrong with you?’
‘Nothing, nothing a little attempted murder shouldn’t put right, anyway.’
‘I didn’t try to murder Yvonne, if that’s what you’re saying.’
‘How do I know that? Hmm?’
‘Because I’m telling you so. And you know me, you know I’m not capable of such a thing.’
‘Do I know you, Anaya? Do I really know you? Because I’ve been thinking a lot over the past couple of weeks and I’ve realised I don’t know you, or Maxie for that matter, very well at all. I know more about Cece than I do you.’
‘That’s not true.’
‘I know where she met her husband. I know that her oldest child is someone else’s. I know she saved up all her money from her first job in a department store to buy that leather jacket she wears. I know she grew up in south-east London but moved to north London. I know her husband waited nearly a year to kiss her because she was so determined to not date until her daughter turned eighteen. I know all that about her and I’ve known her two minutes. I know none of that stuff about you.’
‘But those are just facts. You know the real me. The stuff you don’t get from answering questions. I’m your friend.’
‘My freedom could hinge on you and I don’t even know how you met your husband. I’m actually scared that you and Maxie could conspire against me to make me take the blame for what happened to Yvonne. I thought I knew you, but the more I think about it, the more I realise I need to find out more about you both to keep myself safe.’
What?! WHAT?! ‘Who died and made you Yvonne?’ I say. I should feel bad, I should be desperate to bite back those words, but I’m not.
‘You know, it’s funny, because I’m starting to see what she was so paranoid about. I lied to the police for you and I’m not sure if that was such a wise thing to do.’
I take a step closer to her and lower my voice. Generally people come down here in cars, but you never know who is listening. You never know if one of those parked cars has got plain-clothes police officers in it. ‘We all lied to the police, for all of us and for ourselves. You’re the one who suggested it. You’re the one who came up with what we should say. I wanted to tell the truth, but you reminded us what it would look like. So we all lied and we all agreed to it.’ I lay my hand on her forearm and I’m sure I can feel her racing pulse through the rough material of her coat. ‘I know you’re stressed, Hazel, believe me, we all are. But turning on Maxie and me isn’t the way to go.’
‘Is that a threat?’ She snatches her arm away. ‘Are you threatening me? Who’s being like Yvonne now?’
‘I’m not threatening you, Hazel. But I am scared of you right now. I don’t know how to reassure you, but I am your friend. I love you. I can’t tell you any more than that.’
I have to walk away from her before I break down. I’ve never seen her so close to the edge. So brittle and vulnerable and terrifying at the same time. I’m scared for her but more than anything I’m scared of her. She is slowly unravelling; the strain is obviously too much. And I feel the same. We didn’t tell the police everything that happened from when Yvonne arrived at the beach hut that night to when she was found at the school later. We didn’t all leave together after Yvonne walked away. We didn’t all go straight home. I know I didn’t. When they asked Sanjay, of course he said whatever time he saw me, and that I’d been sitting downstairs for a while before I came to bed. Because that’s what I told him. That’s what we all told the men at home. And it wasn’t true.
Maxie
9 a.m. I’m sure I saw Anaya chasing Hazel up the road earlier. Actually running they were. I’d almost gone after them, wondering what on Earth was happening. Then I realised: I didn’t want to know. Really, I didn’t. I wanted a break from it all. When we’re together and Cece is there, the Yvonne effect is mitigated. We’re able to relax and enjoy being around each other. When Cece is not there, all of it is blown up, writ large all over our faces. If Anaya was chasing Hazel, even though we’d agreed to act normal, then something I didn’t want to know about was happening.
I sit down at my desk with a cup of coffee and look at the pile of paper. Large A3 sheets, designed with cut marks, marked up in different-coloured pens with multicoloured Post-it arrows stuck to the margins. I’ve been working as much as possible since June. Preparing, I guess, for what’s about to come. Right now, I know I should dive in, get on with it. But I can’t face it. The sight of Hazel and Anaya running up the road comes to mind. So much for acting normal. So much for not drawing attention to ourselves.
May, 2017
‘Have you seen the way those jeans look on her?’
‘She actually looks like a sack of potatoes in t
hem. An actual sack of potatoes. All those lumps on her hips. I mean, does she not have mirrors in her house?’
Yvonne smirked at that. A nasty, derisory smirk, like she was so much better than the person she and another mother, Teri, were talking about. ‘I ask myself that every morning. I swear, you’d put a bag over your head if all you had to wear were those clothes.’
‘I bet that’s what her husband does every time he wants to get some action.’
I looked across the playground at who they were bitching about. Her name was Alysa or something like that. She wasn’t as polished as Yvonne and the bitch she was talking to. But she looked like most of us did most mornings – just grateful to have got out of bed and made it to the gates before the bell went and Mrs Carpenter magically produced a clipboard to start marking down the names of those who were late. She was talking to another mother, and laughing, gesticulating, existing like any of us in this world.
This was a side to Yvonne that I really didn’t like. In fact, I hated it. When she was in the playground at drop-off and pick-up, when she was surrounded by a particular type of person, she had to play Alpha Mama. She had to become a mega-bitch, to prove to everyone that she was superior.
Lately, Yvonne would arrive, Scarlett and Madison in tow, almost always wearing sunglasses, always perfectly made-up, with lipsticks to match her suits, a hairstyle to match her jewellery (hair down to suit dangly earrings and long necklace, hair up for small studs and choker), and the sky-blue bag she always carried no matter what colour her shoes or outfit. Yvonne never came out without looking perfect. And she had a habit of judging those who did.
‘That’s a horrible thing to say!’ Yvonne exclaimed. ‘Like her husband would actually want to have sex with her.’
The two cackled quietly and the laughter tore through my bones like hot pokers. I looked again at the woman. She’d obviously thrown on a pair of red jeans that didn’t flatter her, she’d pulled on a crumpled T-shirt and a crumpled knee-length cardigan. Her hair was pulled up into a messy ponytail and she had not a scrap of make-up on. But those were just outward looks. Outward looks weren’t everything.
I remember a time in my life when I could barely get dressed. When I did get dressed I didn’t look in the mirror for fear of seeing who I truly was. I remember not caring if my clothes were creased, if they had the faint smell of the laundry pile, if they made me look like I had gained six stone just on my bottom and thighs. I just didn’t care. I would brush my teeth, most of the time, I would remember to tie up my hair sometimes to stop it tangling. I’d get around to washing my hair some weeks. I was a mess. And even when I stopped being a mess, when I stopped feeling like everything was pointless, I still struggled not to look like I had. Maybe Alysa (if that was her name) was coming out of a time like I had been through. Maybe she wasn’t. Maybe that was how she looked and she didn’t need to be made-up or designer-clad or crease-free to feel like a human being. Maybe how she looked was how she looked.
‘She’s one of those women who would complain if he went off with someone else.’
‘Instead of thinking, “who could blame him”, she’d actually call him a bastard.’
‘When it’d just be a case of him wanting someone who looked like a woman for a change.’
I rotated on the spot and glared at them. They both stopped talking but in that naughty-schoolgirl way – like they were going to carry on once my back was turned, like they hadn’t really been doing anything wrong. ‘You two are a pair of bitches,’ I said to them. I didn’t intend to, but my voice was raised, enough to draw the attention of a couple of other mothers. They all looked over at Yvonne and Teri. The pair of them flamed up, even under their perfect make-up. More people had joined the queue to see the school’s summer choir recital, and they were all staring. This was my moment to bring down the mean girls, put them in their place. Make a name for myself as the bully slayer.
But I couldn’t. Not really. Not at all. I just couldn’t stand by and listen any more. Every time I’d heard this type of bitching and had not challenged it, I’d walked away feeling dirty, low, like I had done something wrong. I should ignore it – it was nothing to do with me, it was never aimed at me – but that didn’t make it acceptable to not put a stop to it. To not even speak up, especially when I was pally-pally with one of the main perpetrators. Teri I could easily continue to ignore. But I had to deal with the other one.
I pointed at Yvonne. ‘I can’t be friends with you any more, Yvonne. Not if you’re going to behave like this.’
Yvonne’s eyes widened in horror. ‘What’s with the holier-than-thou routine, Maxie? We were only joking. And anyway, it was a private conversation. You can’t eavesdrop on a private conversation and then take issue with it. You shouldn’t have been listening.’ Teri, her clone friend, nodded her little blonde head so vigorously it looked like it was going to fall off.
‘That’s what you’re going to say to me?’ I replied. ‘Seriously, Yvonne, I’ve called you out, as the Yanks say, about being a bitch and you’re going with the “you shouldn’t have been listening” defence? Well, yes, you’re right, I shouldn’t have been listening to the bitchy conversation that you were having in my earshot. And, if we’re going down that route, you should, technically, have been having that “chat” telepathically if you had issues with people hearing it.’ I stopped talking and looked again from one of them to the other. Shook my head slowly, disappointedly, at Yvonne. ‘Just delete my number, Yvonne. It’s just better all round if we stop being friends, all right?’
Before she could protest, the gates were opened and the line of parents began to move towards the door and the hall. I folded my arms across my chest with the air of finality of a judge who has delivered her verdict. I didn’t look at Yvonne again the whole way through the concert, even though Madison and Frankie stood next to each other in the back row, the two tallest in the choir, and I could feel her eyes on me whenever our children weren’t performing.
She called out to me across the playground on the way out, obviously wanting to talk, needing to make things right, but I ignored her. Some things you just couldn’t make right, not even with the sincerest of apologies.
Anaya
9:30 a.m. Sanjay’s mother is in my house. Again. I can hear her clattering around in the kitchen. Probably cooking something and tutting, quietly cursing because I don’t have the right spices, the correct equipment, the right breeding to be the daughter-in-law she really wanted. She’d been desperate for her son to get married, simply not to me.
I can’t deal with her right now. I should tell her to leave, remind her that she has a perfectly good house not far from here and she can do all the cooking she wants there, but I decide to shelve that discussion. I’ve already dealt with one crazy woman today, I can’t face another before lunch. I sneak up the stairs and then go to the top floor before she knows I’m there, and I go to the en suite in the spare room and lock myself in. I probably should have brought a magazine or a book, because I plan to be here a while. Until she goes, basically.
I sit on top of the lowered toilet seat lid and allow my face to fall into my hands. This is all such a mess. How was I to know that something I did twenty-odd years ago would come back to haunt me in such a huge way?
My mobile bleeps in my handbag and I rush to grab it before it echoes throughout the house and lets my mother-in-law know I’m here.
What was going on with you and Hazel earlier? M x
Craziness. You actually don’t want to know. And I can’t tell you anyway because she thinks we’re plotting behind her back. A xx
???!!!! M x
Don’t. Just don’t. Enjoy your day. A xx
I delete the messages, turn off the phone’s ringer and drop it back into my black handbag. This is what Yvonne did. How she controlled us, by making us feel guilty if we dared interact without her. I remember one time in Year One, Madison wasn’t invited to a party. Priya hadn’t been, neither had Camille or Frankie. I suspected that i
t was down to Hazel being a single parent, Frankie and Priya not being white and Madison because Yvonne wasn’t über-rich along with her good looks. If she had been both, Madison would have been on the invite list. Hazel, Maxie and I didn’t bat an eyelid. We told our children that they couldn’t be invited to everything and it didn’t matter if they were left out of stuff because their lives were full and interesting anyway.
Yvonne, though, took it personally. Nothing any of us said could stop her mounting a vendetta against the mother. I don’t know what she eventually did, but she told us that the mother had decided to move her three kids to another school on the other side of Brighton – before the woman had even handed her notice in to the school. We joked at the time that Yvonne must have uncovered some serious dirt on her for that to happen. Everyone in that year group learnt a valuable lesson from that – leave Yvonne out at your peril. (Yes, it was the children who were meant to be invited, but it was actually all about Yvonne.) After that, Madison was invited to every party – even the boys-only ones. I was sure it was because they knew what might happen if they didn’t.
With us, it wasn’t about uncovering dirt, not then, anyway. With us, she guilt-tripped us into including her in everything. That’s what Hazel is doing now, whether she realises it or not.
April, 2017
The alarm didn’t sound when I opened the front door and since Sanjay’s car wasn’t there but his mother’s was …
I tried very hard not to roll my eyes. I tried to channel my mother and her yoga calm. I tried to think of all the ways I was a successful person and I did not need Sanj’s mother’s approval to feel like a complete human being. I tried very hard to remember the tradition of respecting your elders and making all visitors welcome in your home.
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