by Louise Beech
The Mountain in My Shoe
Louise Beech
This book is dedicated to my son Conor. Though the character in the story is not you – and not supposed to be you – aspects of you did inspire him, especially you as a child. So I love him the way I do you, and named him after you.
Also to Suzanne, the young girl I befriended while she went through the care system. She came out a survivor, and has a permanent place in my life and heart.
For the late Muhammad Ali.
And Baby P.
‘It isn’t the mountains ahead to climb that wear you out; it’s the pebble in your shoe.’
Muhammad Ali
Contents
Title Page
Dedication
Epigraph
1 The Book
2 Bernadette
3 The Book
4 Bernadette
5 The Book
6 Bernadette
7 The Book
8 Bernadette
9 The Book
10 Bernadette
11 The Book
12 Bernadette
13 The Book
14 Conor
15 The Book
16 Bernadette
17 Conor
18 The Book
19 Conor
20 The Book
21 Bernadette
22 The Book
23 Conor
24 Bernadette
25 The Book
26 Bernadette
27 The Book
28 Conor
29 The Book
30 Bernadette
31 The Book
32 Bernadette
33 The Book
34 Conor
35 The Book
36 Conor
37 The Book
38 Bernadette
39 The Book
40 Bernadette
41 The Book
42 Bernadette
43 Bernadette
44 The Book
45 Conor
46 Bernadette
47 The Book
48 Bernadette
49 The Book
50 Conor
51 Bernadette
52 The Book
53 Bernadette
54 Conor
55 Bernadette
56 The Book
57 Conor
58 The Book
59 Bernadette
60 The Book
61 Bernadette
62 The Book
63 Bernadette
64 The Book
65 Conor
Acknowledgements
About the Author
Copyright
1
The Book
10th December 2001
This book is a gift. That’s what it is. A gift because it will one day be your memory. It will soon contain your history. Your pictures. Your life. You. Isn’t it a lovely colour? Softest yellow. Neutral some might say, but I like to think of it as the colour of hope. And I’m hopeful, gosh I am. I hope this book is short because that’s the best kind.
But now – where to begin?
2
Bernadette
The book is missing.
A black gap parts the row of paperbacks, like a breath between thoughts. Bernadette puts two fingers in the space, just to make sure. Only emptiness; no book, and no understanding how it can have vanished when it was there the last time she looked.
The book is a secret. Long ago Bernadette realised that the only way to keep it that way was to put it on a bookshelf. Just as a child tries to blend in with the crowd to escape a school bully, a book spine with no distinct marks will disappear when placed with more colourful ones.
So Bernadette knows absolutely that she put the book in its spot between Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights three days ago, as she has done for the last five years. She peers into the black space and whispers, ‘Not there’, as though the words will make it reappear.
She was waiting by the window when she realised she’d forgotten to pack it; when it occurred to her that the first thing she should have remembered was the last. Bernadette viewed the community of moisture-loving ferns and mosses in the garden below – as she does most nights – and the evergreen leaves had whispered, the book, the book. At the front of the garden, the trees appear to protect the house from the world – or do they protect the world from the house? Bernadette is never sure. She often thinks how sad it is that they must die to become the paperbacks she prefers over electronic reading, and vows then to change her reading habits; but she never does.
She waits in the window every night for her husband, Richard, to return from work. He always arrives at six. He is never late or early; she never needs to reheat his meal or change the time she prepares it. She never has to cover cooling vegetables with an upturned plate or call and ask where he is.
Where on earth is the book?
The thought pulls Bernadette back into the moment. Books don’t get up and jump off shelves; they don’t go into the sunset seeking adventure, with a holdall and passport. It has to be somewhere. It has to be. If she doesn’t find it she can’t leave.
Push away the anxiety and think calm solutions; this is what Bernadette’s mum always says.
Maybe she left it somewhere else. Perhaps the panic of preparing to pack for the first time in ten years had her putting things in the wrong place – a toothbrush in the fridge, milk in the fireplace, her book in the laundry bin. So, just to make sure she hasn’t misplaced it, Bernadette decides to explore the flat.
She starts at the main door. The room closest to it has a fireplace dominating the right wall and this is where she and Richard sleep side by side, him facing the door, her facing the wall his back becomes. Often the distant foghorn sounds on the River Humber, warning of danger in the night. It’s never been replaced by an electronic system and it has Bernadette imagining she’s slipped into some long-gone time when people used candles to walk up the house’s wide stairs. Then she’s happy Richard is at her side; the anxiety his presence often brings is cancelled by her gladness at sharing the vast space of the flat with another person.
Their bedroom enjoys late light from its west-facing window. Richard let Bernadette decorate how she wanted when they moved in and she painted the walls burnt orange to enhance the invading rays.
If she left the book in here it can only be on the bed. Sometimes, when she’s absolutely sure Richard won’t be home, she lies there and reads it. But never has she left it there – and she hasn’t now. It isn’t by the bed or under it or in the bedside table. Searching for it is like when you pretend to show a child there aren’t any monsters in the wardrobe – Bernadette half knows the book won’t be there but she checks anyway.
She goes into the wide corridor of their purpose-built flat. It starts at the main door, ends at the kitchen and tiny bathroom, and looks into three high-ceilinged rooms that their things and her constant attention don’t fill or warm. Last winter’s coldness drove the remaining residents away. Being on a river means the air is damp and the rooms difficult to heat. Low rent attracts people initially. It appealed to Richard. He hates wasting money on unnecessary luxury. It had a roof and walls and doors; it was enough.
Now – with everyone gone – the Victorian mansion called Tower Rise is just theirs. The four other flats are vacant. Their apartment beneath the left tower, with rotting bathroom floorboards and sash windows that rattle when it rains, gives the only light in the building. Cut off from the city and choked dual carriageway by trees and a sloped lawn, soon it will just be Richard’s home.
Tonight Bernadette is leaving.
If she closes her eyes she can picture him parking the car perfectly parallel to the grass and walking without haste i
nto the house. She can see his fine hair bouncing at the slightest movement. Physically Richard is the opposite to his personality; it’s as if he’s wearing the wrong coat. All softness and slowness, pale skin and grey irises and silky hair. With her eyes still shut Bernadette sees him enter the lounge and fold his jacket and put it on the sofa and kiss her cheek without touching it. She imagines her planned words, her bold, foolish, definite words – I’m leaving.
But not without the book.
Bernadette has always been fearful of Richard discovering the one thing she has carefully kept from him for five years. When she got it she knew she would have to hide it from him. Coming home with it that first time on the bus, she wondered how. With its weight numbing her lap, she had noticed a young girl across the aisle; a teen with a brash, don’t-mess-with-me air. A girl in a yellow vest with clear plastic straps designed to support invisibly and make the top look strapless, her breasts pert without help.
It occurred to Bernadette that when you half hide something you draw more attention to it. The straps stood out more than the girl’s pearly eye shadow. The book must go where all books go, Bernadette thought. And so when she got home, that was where it went.
Now she continues her game of prove-the-monster-isn’t-there and looks for it in the second room. She hasn’t been in here for perhaps a month, so what’s the point? It’s empty. The book has never been here. This room she had once hoped would be a nursery and had painted an optimistic daffodil yellow. But children never came. Richard said they had each other. He said that was all they needed.
Bernadette closes the door.
Richard decided the third room should be the lounge. A fraction smaller than the others, it’s easier to heat and the two alcoves are home to his computer desk and Bernadette’s bookshelf. She put their table and chairs by the window so she could look out when they ate. It overlooks the weed-clogged lawn and the gravel drive that leads through arched trees to the river. Over the years, during their evening meal, she has often stared down at the stone cherub collecting water in its grey, cupped hands. A wing broke off years ago and a crack cuts its face in two. Birds gather to drink, their marks staining the grey.
‘We’ll tear that down,’ Richard said when they moved in.
But they never did.
Instead Bernadette filled the lounge with plants in brick-coloured pots, gold candles, dried flowers, homemade cushions, and books. In the window she has read Anna Karenina, and true accounts of survival at sea and travelogues that took her to Brazil and India and Russia.
Still it feels somehow like Richard’s flat. Her choices of wall colour and curtain fabric make little difference because even when he’s not here his presence surrounds her, like when wind rushes down the chimneys sending black dust into rooms and the trees sway together like an army united against some invisible enemy.
Bernadette looks in the desk and under the sofa and through Richard’s magazines. She searches behind the bin and through the cabinet drawers and on the wall shelves. There’s a damp patch near them that no amount of scrubbing will erase. She once said it looked like a streak of blood at a murder scene. Richard shook his head; he always tells her she sees too much in things. She wonders if he will say it tonight when he gets home and finds out she’s leaving. The thought chills her. She’s not brave or brash and doesn’t have a don’t-mess-with-me air. She would never wear see-through straps or pearly eye shadow.
It has taken everything for her to bring herself to leave.
What if Richard doesn’t let her? What if he shuts the door and won’t let her out? What if he talks about locking her away in the dark again? Puts a finger on her lips to shush her? Will he cry when she says she’s going? Will he be sorry? Will he just be angry she ruined his evening?
Bernadette goes back to the bookshelf. She spent a long time this afternoon deciding whether she could carry her many beloved hardbacks and paperbacks out of the door, concluding sadly they were too heavy. She is surprised she didn’t remember to pack the one book that matters most. She can leave the others with Richard, wordy reminders that she once existed – but not the yellow one.
Perhaps if she closes her eyes and opens them again it will appear by magic, like a Christmas gift sneaked into a child’s room while she sleeps. But no, the gap between Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights seems bigger now. She puts fingers between them to check again.
How long has it been gone?
When did she last definitely see it there?
Is it possible she didn’t slide it into its usual spot at all?
3
The Book
Begin at the start is what they say. Begin at the birth is what we’re supposed to do. And I will. But first, welcome to your book.
I’m trying to write as neatly as I can because I’m the first, and also so you’ll be able to read my handwriting – it’s just terrible. Everyone tells me I should have been a doctor (they’re renowned for their bad writing, you see), but I’m not clever enough to cure people and I’d rather help them in other ways.
I’ve only written in one or two of these books so forgive me if I get it wrong. I believe the idea for them started in the USA. Whoever thought it up was just great. I’ve seen adults read the words in pages like these, lost for hours, smiling and crying and finally somehow changed. That’s what these books do – give a chronological account; although I’m already meandering, aren’t I? They’re supposed to help you understand the why and the where and the how and the who – that’s how I like to put it.
Gosh, I should introduce myself, shouldn’t I?
4
Bernadette
Outside, the late-September sun drops behind the trees. The clock reaches six-fifteen. Richard is late. Bernadette frowns at the clock like it might have rushed ahead. He has never been late, not in ten years. No, that’s wrong. There was one time – but she won’t think about it now.
He’s so predictable in his punctuality that she can prepare a meal so he walks through the door and is greeted with the aroma of his favourite beef and herb stew at just the right temperature. She can abandon what she’s doing at five-thirty, cover the table with a white cloth and place on top a napkin folded twice, polished silver knife and fork, and glass of chilled water.
Tonight there is no food. Instead of peeling potatoes and preheating the oven, she packed clothes, toiletries and money into two suitcases she has never used. She cleaned the kitchen and bathroom, and changed the bedding, feeling it wasn’t fair to leave the place dirty. Really she was trying to keep busy. Block the thoughts. The why don’t you just stay? The it would be much easier. The he isn’t going to just say, yes, fine, off you go, Bernadette.
Sometimes – mid chopping onions or polishing the mantelpiece – Bernadette stops and pauses to wonder what she feels exactly. Sad? Happy? Tired? Scared? Angry? Have her emotions run off like a bored husband?
When she and Richard first wed she could list every single emotion. There was pride that this strong, sweetly succinct man wanted to be with her. Excitement when he came home after work. Confidence that giving up a career to be a wife and eventual mother would reward Bernadette as much as it had her mother.
Six-nineteen now. Should she call Richard’s work phone? No, she’ll have to pretend everything is normal and isn’t sure she can. Anyway, the rare times she has called it she got his answering service, an accentless woman who says he’s busy. All she needs to know now is that he’s coming home; it doesn’t matter what the delay is, what has messed up his schedule.
Bernadette doesn’t have a mobile phone. What would be the point? Who would call it? She’s rarely anywhere but Tower Rise and there aren’t many friends who might call to arrange a coffee, no colleagues to discuss work. So Richard can’t leave a message explaining his curious lateness.
Just find the book, she thinks, and you’re ready to leave when he turns up.
Maybe she did pack it after all. Maybe she did it without thinking, just took it from the shelf and walked in
a daze to the case. Of course – that’s where it is. She goes to the luggage by the door and rummages, imagining she’ll see the buttery cover, neutral like a blanket for a baby not yet born. But it’s not there. Now an emotion: confusion. And another: fear.
The telephone rings. As though startled, birds flee the treetops in a flap of wings and a shrill of squawks. If it’s Richard with his reasons then she doesn’t want to talk. Let the machine answer, though this will infuriate him. At least she’ll know he’s on his way.
Bernadette’s own soft voice fills the room – We’re sorry we can’t take your call but if you leave a message we’ll ring as soon as we return. We. She always speaks in we; not me or I.
It isn’t Richard – it’s Anne. Anne knows not to call when Richard is there because he doesn’t know about their situation, so for her to ring after six means it must be urgent. Bernadette picks up the receiver.
‘He didn’t come home,’ says Anne, tearful.
For a moment Bernadette wonders how she knows. It isn’t possible. Anne has never met Richard. The women have become close recently and despite not being the most forthcoming person, Bernadette opened up once about her marriage worries. She didn’t share any specifics but admitted she felt isolated at Tower Rise. It was good to share with someone – a someone completely separate.
‘Is he there with you?’ asks Anne.
And now Bernadette realises she doesn’t mean Richard.
She’s talking about Conor.
Conor is missing too? Everything is missing. How is it possible? Perhaps they are all in the most obvious place, like books in a library. But where would that be? If everyone were where they’re supposed to be, Richard would be eating his beef and reading the paper, Conor would be with Anne, Anne wouldn’t be on the end of the telephone, and Bernadette would be measuring out Richard’s ice cream so it has a few minutes to melt slightly.