by Louise Voss
‘He’s off his head,’ I said, as I hugged Stella in panic. ‘All we have to do is play that to the police, and it’ll count against him in court. He’s threatening you, and he’s out on bail. They could nick him.’
Stella said softly into my shoulder, ‘I don’t think I want it to come to court.’
‘What?’
‘I can’t face it, Em. Having to tell a load of strangers all that intimate stuff. Having them judge me. Having the defence make out that I’m a tart who deserved it…. I can’t do it.’
‘But what about Charlie? He can’t get away with it!’
She shrugged, a small flutter against me which felt almost like it came from inside me. ‘He hates me now. If he goes to prison it won’t be for very long, and he’ll hate me even more. I’ll always be afraid that he’d …. you know…..
‘Oh, Stella.’ How could I protect her? I felt like a failure, because I wouldn’t always be there for her when she needed me. ‘Don’t make any decisions yet. Let’s wait until the lab results come back, OK? Then you can decide. If there’s no evidence, they won’t be able to charge him anyway.’
‘OK,’ she said painfully, and I breathed in her scent, the pure, familiar scent of my family.
As she broke away from my arms, I thought I smelled something else; a whiff of a different sort of familiarity, a delicious, musky note of something from my past…..aftershave? Gavin’s aftershave. I couldn’t stop myself.
‘Stell – what was Gavin doing here?’
Stella’s eyes filled with tears again.
‘Is that all that matters to you? I’ve just had this really traumatic message from Charlie to deal with, and then a row with Suzanne, and all you want to know is about your ex? I bumped into him outside the gym and he gave me a lift back on his bike; said he wanted to see you. I played the message and was upset, and he gave me a hug, that’s all. You just missed him.’
Stella was staring hard at me as I spoke, holding me with her eyes as if challenging me to disbelieve her. I thought that we resembled two tigers circling around one another, testing each other’s nerve; and then I thought, no, that was ridiculous. Stella had had a new shock, that was all. It was a good thing Gavin was there to help her through it. He was the closest thing she had to a father.
‘Sorry, Stell. Please don’t think I’m accusing you of anything, because of course I’m not. I’m glad he was there for you. Let me just hang up my coat and we’ll have a cup of tea and talk more about Charlie’s message, if you want to.’
I walked over to the hooks in the hall, sliding the shoulders of my coat carefully on to a hanger. Overcome with all this new emotional turmoil, I buried my face into its soft afghan-furry collar, allowing myself just one tiny thrill of excitement at the thought that Gavin had come over especially to see me. It skittered briefly up and down my ribs, before vanishing back into the morass of rage at Charlie’s message.
I let her rant. I let her whinge about Suzanne, spit vitriol about Charlie; speculate as what she’d do to him if she could – it involved his testicles, naturally enough, two large spikes and a barbecue – and tried to calm her down as she paced the room and fretted. Then I made her phone Suzanne and apologise, since it was obvious that Suzanne had only acted in what she believed was a sisterly fashion.
Finally, once she’d got it all out of her system, I said as casually as I could,
‘So do you know why Gavin wanted to see me? Did he say?’
Stella looked cagey. ‘Not really. He just asked how you were, and said it would be nice to see you and would I like a lift home.’
‘What was he doing at the gym?’
‘He joined recently. His new – I mean, someone - said he was putting on weight.’
‘His new girlfriend? He’s got a new girlfriend?’
Stella turned to face me, her mouth in a rueful wavy line. She bit the inside of her cheek, chewing on it as if she actually wanted to eat herself up.
‘Sorry, Em,’ she said uncomfortably. ‘I’ve been putting off telling you. But he seemed genuinely keen to know how you were. Told me to tell you to call him, and maybe you could meet for coffee or something. He wants to stay friends with you.’
I snorted. ‘That’s big of him.’
‘Don’t be bitter about it, Em. You’ll meet someone else. He’s not worth it. You’re better than him.’
‘I hate men.’
‘So do I.’
I did call Gavin, though. I left a message on his mobile, a stilted um-er type of message, but permeated with so much artificially-injected jollity that it nearly choked me. He didn’t ring me back again.
Chapter 25
‘Em.’
Stella’s voice was muffled in the rough towel covering her pillow. I was straddled across her giving her a massage, working my thumbs into the small hollows surrounding each of her vertebrae. ‘You know Suzanne’s family moved out of London last year, down to Wiltshire. She’s invited me to their house for Christmas.’
I stopped at the seventh vertebrae and sat back on Stella’s bottom. ‘Oh great. So what am I supposed to do then; hang about here on my own all day?’
Stella twisted her head around and sat up as far as she could. She was naked except for a very small pair of pants, and her long, hard body was beautiful, flawless, just like our mother’s had been. For some reason, an image of Gavin racing away on his Harley jumped into my head, and I shook it out again, puzzled.
‘No, listen, Em. Of course I wouldn’t leave you on your own at Christmas time. I said I’d only go if you could come too. What do you think? It’ll be fun. Please come. You know how much you moaned last year, that all we ever do is lie around and watch telly all day. It’s a lovely village, apparently, near Salisbury. Just think: country air, a change of scene. Someone else cooking a yummy dinner for us. We haven’t had a family Christmas since Mum and Dad died. Oh go on….’
‘But the Hiscocks aren’t our family. And Salisbury’s down the M3’. Even as I said it, my throat constricted. Teffont, where Ann Paramor had once lived, was also near Salisbury. Why did this place seem to be the epicentre of all my emotional dramas? I’d never even been there.
‘Well, beggars can’t be choosers,’ said Stella, flopping morosely back down on the bed. ‘Could you just do my right shoulder, please? I’ve got so many knots that I could - OW! Yes, that’s them.’
‘I can’t drive down the M3.’
‘You can. It’s just another road; I don’t know why it upsets you so much. We don’t even know exactly where the accident happened. I get far more upset at the thought of going to their graves.’
I worked my way around both of Stella’s shoulder blades, worrying at them with my thumbs until the kinks in her muscles gradually straightened out.
‘Not that we do that very often, either.’
‘Yeah. I know.’
We were silent for a moment. I poured a little well of oil into one of my palms, rubbed them together, and began to push in great long sweeps along Stella’s downy golden back. Five years ago neither of us would have been able to have this conversation without crying.
‘So who’s going to be there?’
‘Um…Suzanne, obviously. You remember her mum, don’t you? And you’ve probably never met her stepdad, Greg, but he’s really nice too. And she’s got a kid stepbrother, Ben. That’s it, I suppose. Oh, and two guinea-pigs, Scratch and Sniff. Suze told me a very funny story about those guinea-pigs: her mum had to take them to the vet’s for some booster shots, right, and she was sitting in the waiting room, which was packed, and when it’s her turn, the vet’s assistant shouts out in front of everyone: ‘Scratch and Sniff Hiscock! - geddit?’
I laughed, grateful to Stella for lifting the sombre mood. I did remember Denise Hiscock well, actually, and had always really liked her. We had chatted on several occasions, when dropping off or collecting Stella and Suzanne from each other’s houses when they were much younger. Naturally, since they started making their own social arrangements, o
ur paths no longer crossed.
‘Yeah, that is pretty embarrassing. Are you sure they don’t mind us coming?’
‘Well, apparently it was Denise’s suggestion to invite us.’
‘Oh, all right then. It’s got to be better than hanging around here, drinking too much and feeling guilty that we didn’t go to midnight mass.’
Stella pushed me off, gave me a slippery hug, and then dragged on Dad’s old holey fishing jumper. ‘Brilliant! I’ll go and ring Suzanne to tell her.’
I sighed, replaced the cap on my bottle of sweet almond oil, and threw the towel Stella had been lying on into the laundry basket.
I survived the car journey. In fact, I was feeling somewhat foolish for having made such a fuss about it. Ten years was a long time, and since I didn’t know the site of the crash, only that it was somewhere just past the Fleet Service Station, it was thankfully difficult to visualise. During the three mile stretch of road after Fleet, though, I had an unpleasant sick feeling in my stomach, and the conversation in the car petered out into a tense silence. I scanned the motorway verge, as if there might still be skid marks or broken glass to mark the spot, but no scars betrayed the loss of life which had occurred there. It was as if a new grass tide swept in each year and cleared away more memories; rain washing out the bloodstains many times over until nothing was left. I didn’t know whether this made me more sad or relieved.
‘Maybe we should have put a cross there, so we could leave flowers and stuff,’ I said, after we were safely past the danger zone.
Stella extracted and lit a cigarette, which she pulled from a pack in her handbag. ‘It’s not exactly the most accessible place to make into a shrine,’ she said, through a mouthful of smoke.
I wound down the window a few inches to let the smoke out, and the noise of the wind screaming around the car rendered further conversation futile.
Suzanne’s family lived in the quaintly-named village of Tidpit, a few miles west of Salisbury. When Stella and I drove through it on Christmas morning it appeared completely deserted, only the green and red lights twinkling on Christmas trees in the windows of a few of the cottages lending any sort of festive air to the place. It was a still and cloudy day, leaden and unchristmassy, no movement anywhere except for a pile of horse dung in the road which was still steaming mysteriously, even though no living creature was in sight.
‘There’s her mum’s Merc - that must be Chestnut Cottage then. We’re here.’
The house was the building equivalent of Suzanne’s mother’s car – it sounded smart in theory; a thatched 18th century rose-covered cottage, but the reality was not quite as glamorous. Like the Mercedes, it was shabby and clapped out; the thatch looked as if it needed a leave-in conditioner, and one of the gateposts had crumbled into a ruin.
Stella parked the Golf, badly, and we gathered up our overnight bags, armfuls of gifts, and bottle of dessert wine for our hosts. A small face pressed itself briefly up against the front window of the cottage before vanishing again, and then the door opened.
‘Hi, Merry Christmas!’ Suzanne ran down the path to meet us, followed by the owner of the small face, a skinny red-haired little boy of three or four.
‘Oh, Ben, for God’s sake, where are your shoes? Your socks will get filthy; go back inside.’ As Suzanne hugged Stella she said gaily, ‘Thank God you’re here. Family Christmases are such a drag.’ Stella and I exchanged rueful glances, and I felt a pang of loss.
No, I told myself firmly. You are not to get all mopey at the sight of parents and children and presents under trees from aunties and uncles. Just don’t.
‘Come in, come in. Hi, Emma, how are you? Did you have a good journey down? Lunch isn’t going to be ready for ages, so let’s go and have a drink and open some presents. Ben’s gagging to get stuck in.’
Inside, the cottage was a low-beamed jumble of warm chaos. An indolent cat lay in front of an open fire, and there were chintzy sofas and armchairs scattered haphazardly about, as if dropped from a great height. Everything had the appearance of being covered with dog hair, although I later discovered that the Hiscocks did not own a dog; only the two aforementioned guinea-pigs. The tree was magnificent, crammed into the low-ceilinged room so that the angel on top had to be squashed against the beams in order to fit. It took my breath away. Stella and I never bothered getting a real fir tree; we just got out our tiny silver fake one every year. It had one sorry strand of red tinsel draped over it, and nothing else.
Denise rushed out and kissed me on the cheek. I’d forgotten how pretty she was, with blonde straggly hair and a soft Welsh accent, as different as she possibly could have been from her beautiful olive skinned, dreadlocked daughter. She had split up with Suzanne’s father years ago and, until meeting Greg, had brought up Suzanne single handedly.
I should have made more of an effort to be friends with her, I realised, with the benefit of hindsight – we’d had a lot in common, and plenty of opportunities to spend time together. She’d seemed to like me, even though I was so much younger than her. But back then I’d been far more readily poleaxed with shyness, and I remembered how in control she always appeared; how I’d been intimidated by her composure, next to my own haphazard, untrammelled attempts at parenting. Plus Stella and Suzanne would probably have had fifty fits at the thought of their two sole guardians in cahoots.
‘It’s really lovely to see you again, Emma. I’ve thought of you often,’ Denise said, squeezing my arm. ‘What can I get you to drink - Greg makes a mean G&T, and there’s champagne, or wine, or a soft drink if you prefer?’
‘Champagne, please. Thanks for inviting me – I was looking forward to seeing you again too.’
Ben came back into the room holding a doll in his hand, to which he was, somewhat indiscreetly, trying to draw my attention by tapping it insistently on my leg. I crouched down so that I was at eye-level with him.
‘Who’s this, then?’
‘It’s Jessie, from Toy Story. She guards rooms when nobody’s not in them.’
‘Really? Can I have a look?’ I took the doll and scrutinised it carefully. Jessie had a big surprised face and such enormously round staring eyes that it looked as if she was still suffering the effects of a particularly unpleasant encounter with some PCP. ‘Ooh, she’s lovely, isn’t she?’
‘Yeah but Buzz is better, ‘cos he’s a boy. I want Buzz for Christmas: To Imfinity Am Eyonne!’ he suddenly shrieked, swooping Jessie through the air and rushing off into the kitchen, whacking Stella in the shins with Jessie’s hard little cowboy boots on the way.
‘What did he say?’ Stella turned to Suzanne for a translation, rubbing her leg.
‘To Infinity and Beyond – obviously. It’s what Buzz Lightyear says; don’t you know anything?’
‘Not about small children, no.’
It was true, I reflected. Stella probably hadn’t encountered anyone that age since her own kindergarten classmates, and she was gazing after Ben now with a bemused expression. Bemused, and with faint but definite overtones of horror and disgust. Uh oh, I thought. This could be where we discover that Stella and kids do not mix.
A short, squat man with a shock of auburn hair and a bright red friendly face appeared, wearing a white chef’s apron and a tartan paper crown from a Christmas cracker. He was holding four flutes of champagne, which he distributed, keeping one for himself. ‘Hi, Stella, how are you? Hello, you must be Emma. I’m Greg. Sorry I didn’t come out earlier; I was at a crucial stage with my gravy. Anyway, cheers, all.’ Denise and Ben joined us; Denise with a glass of wine and Ben with an orange plastic beaker. ‘Glad you could come. Merry Christmas.’
We all raised our glasses, including Ben. ‘Merry Christmas!’ As the first pale amber bubbles began to fizz down my throat, I began to relax.
‘So,’ Greg said at lunch, as he carved the turkey and everyone grappled with serving spoons and bouncing Brussels sprouts, ‘Do either of you know this part of the world at all?’
I couldn’t help a guilty blu
sh spreading over my face, which I was sure clashed nastily with my red paper hat. ‘No – well, no, I’ve never been here before. I used to know someone who lived in Teffont though. Is that near here?’ For one mad minute I fantasised that Teffont turned out to be down the road, and I could go and quiz Ann Paramor’s old neighbours, in the middle of the Queen’s Speech or as they opened their presents, as to her whereabouts. I wondered if Rose Cottage had been like this one; warm and festive and welcoming.
‘Who was that, then?’ asked Stella, pouring so much gravy over her roast potatoes that I felt like throwing them a life raft. Gravy was not a substance which featured much in post-parental Victor cuisine, and Stella was making up for it now.
‘Oh, um, just a girl who was on my aromatherapy course,’ I lied unconvincingly.
‘Teffont’s on the other side of Salisbury. About, what, twelve or fifteen miles from here?’ Greg looked at his wife for confirmation and she nodded.
‘Nice little place.’
‘Urrrgh! This is ‘gusting!’ Ben had taken a forkful of his turkey, and had mistakenly ingested some stuffing as well. He began spluttering and making faces like Tom Hanks in Big. Denise reached over and slid the offending stuffing off his plate and onto her own.
‘Gone now, Bence. Here, you love potatoes and turkey and sausages, don’t you?’
‘No. I hate them. I want Shreddies instead.’ Ben stared belligerently at his plate, and Suzanne narrowed her eyes. ‘Oh, just eat it, you little snot. It’s Christmas.’