by Emma Cooper
‘And we can make the white chocolate cheesecake.’
This time, Hailey rewards me with a proper smile, dimples forming, eyes creasing at the sides. ‘Can I bash the biscuits?’
‘You certainly can.’
Hailey hops onto her chair and peers over Oscar’s shoulder, whispering into his ear.
‘Banana!’ He scoops a spoonful of cereal so eagerly that the contents of his spoon launch the banana and milk over his shoulder towards Ed, who is walking into the kitchen in just his boxer shorts; eyes half-open, bed hair, stubble and a yawn. The banana slice lands with a slap against the wall.
The kids and I dissolve into a fit of giggles at Ed’s startled look of confusion.
‘Are you coming to the park with us, Daddy?’ Hailey asks, biting into her apple.
‘The park?’ he asks, kissing me on the cheek on the way to the coffee pot.
‘Yes. Mummy says we can have ice cream and then she’s going to make you a disgusting dinner.’
I watch as Ed’s back remains turned toward me. His shoulders are high, tension crawling across his muscles, at odds with his voice, which is enthusiastic and matches his smile as he turns to us.
‘Can we have spaghetti and Marmite instead of horrid canny . . . can-lo-ni?’
‘OK. Disgusting dinner for just me and Daddy then.’
‘Disgusting dinner is my favourite,’ Ed replies.
‘Higher, Mummy!’ Oscar demands from behind the swing. My hands oblige. My eyes are hidden behind my sunglasses as I watch Hailey and Ed. Hailey is climbing her way across some netting towards a red plastic tunnel and they are in deep conversation. Ed occasionally throws a smile in my direction: everything is fine, nothing to see here. My mouth responds appropriately and my hand waves. The day is going well: I haven’t looked at Kerry once, even though right now she is hanging upside down from the monkey bars with a lollipop in her mouth.
Oscar jumps from the swing and runs over to join his sister where she and Ed are giving each other high fives. I follow him nonchalantly, trying not to pay attention to the cautious way that my daughter is watching my approach even though she is grinning proudly.
‘I did it, Mummy!’
The pride in her eyes melts my insides. She’s always been scared to crawl through the tunnel part of the apparatus. Ever since she was little, she’s avoided the tunnels in soft-play areas; she’s never liked to feel closed in. ‘Oh-oh,’ Kerry used to say. ‘She’s coming up to another tunnel of doom.’
‘Nice one, Hailey!! You made it through the tunnel of dooooooom!’ Kerry elongated the ooooh like a ghost. I bat her away as though I’m shooing a bee.
‘You did it!’ I say, stepping in front of my dead sister as I begin to perform the dance of victory that we made up last year. It involves wiggling our bottoms and doing the two-fingers-across-the-eyes dance, like John Travolta and Uma Thurman in Pulp Fiction. But the pride in Hailey’s face has fallen away and she looks at me with embarrassment.
‘Silly Mummy,’ Oscar laughs. ‘Can I try?’
I nod and follow him to the beginning of the equipment, helping him up, noticing that the shorts he is wearing are too tight and that his tummy is spilling over the waistband. I glance over to where Ed is kneeling in front of Hailey, rubbing her arms, reassuring her about something. I squint, but I can’t make out what they are saying. Hailey nods at him and runs off towards the big slide. Ed walks towards me, pulling his sunglasses from his head over his eyes and throwing his arm around my shoulder.
‘Don’t you think Oscar is getting a bit chubby?’ I say from the corner of my mouth as I clap him for pulling himself up to the next rung.
‘He’ll grow out of it. But maybe, you should, you know, stop giving him so much chocolate between meals.’
‘You’re the one who always gives them too much choc—’
Our conversation stops as our youngest tumbles to the floor. Crouched knees, kisses, and sentences ending with the word ‘brave’. Oscar rights himself, wipes his snot on his own arm despite me passing him a tissue from the depths of my handbag; quite where all my packets of tissues have disappeared to I don’t know. He runs off, climbing up the slide rather than the net, and does the victory dance, his T-shirt riding up.
Ed squeezes my shoulder, whispering into my ear. ‘Maybe we should cut back on giving him so many treats . . . do you remember that scene from The Goonies?’
I cover my mouth with my hand, trying not to let Oscar see me laughing as I picture ‘the truffle shuffle’. Ed plants a kiss on my head as I lean into him.
Chapter Forty-Two
Ed
I look up to Hailey as she crawls through the red plastic tunnel joining the parts of the play equipment together. She used to be scared of being closed in, but she nailed it a few months ago.
I’m feeling good, happy. I’m mean I’m not deluded, don’t get me wrong. I didn’t expect that Jen would just be better after our tough love chat. Jen is struggling, of that I have no doubt, but walking into the kitchen this morning felt like . . . like I’d been holding my breath without realising it and when I saw them, saw her face, it was like I could exhale, you know? Things feel normal; she seems normal. Take the kitchen, for instance. I know I’d got used to things being different, the coffee not always on like it used to be, the sounds of classical music playing, the smell of the fabric softener coming from the washing machine . . . things that separately don’t mean a thing but all together? It smells and feels like home. Our home.
Conversation has stayed on track, and I find myself starting to relax, but Hailey isn’t fooled.
‘Why is Mummy acting all—’
‘All what? It’s Saturday, she’s in a good mood.’
‘I guess.’ I reach up and loosen her foot from the netting connecting her way towards the fireman’s pole part, the bit that she is always scared to do. So far, I’ve managed to get her to lean forward and hold it, but she never lets go. ‘Do you think she is feeling better?’ Hailey sits down and reaches her feet forward, crossing her pink trainers over on the other side of the pole.
‘I think so. She’s trying really hard, it’ll take time but yeah, I think she’s feeling a bit better. Now come on . . . you can do it.’
Her hands reach forward as she grips the pole.
‘Good. Right, we’ve got this.’ I clap my hands and rub them together. ‘Come on, Hales . . . you can do it.’
Her bottom shimmies closer to the edge, her eyes peeking over the top of the frame of her glasses.
‘OK. Three, two, one!’
Her eyes screw shut as she pulls her bottom away from the edge and slides down the pole.
‘Yeah!’ I pick her up and swing her around, plonking her back onto her feet and giving her a high five.
Jen and Oscar arrive by our sides, a smile fixed on Jen’s face.
‘I did it, Mummy!’
The smile remains and Jen tells her how proud she is. Hailey’s face is reddening with pride. ‘Well done!’ Jen beams. ‘You did it, you got through the tunnel.’ Then the joy in Hailey’s face drops like a stone.
‘Silly Mummy!’ Oscar giggles and begins swinging Jen’s arms forwards and backwards. ‘Hailey got through the tunnel ages ago!’
Jen flaps her hand, as though there is a fly.
But as the day goes on, I can see it. I can see that she is acting . . . Jen is just playing a part on a stage.
Chapter Forty-Three
Jennifer
‘Harder, sweetheart,’ I say, glancing over to Hailey, who is hitting a plastic bag containing ginger-nut biscuits. ‘Think of something that makes you really angry. Look.’ I take the rolling pin from her hand and begin walloping the bag with gusto, my voice raising so she can hear me above the banging. ‘See? I’m thinking about the woman who pushed in front of us at the ice-cream van!’
Hailey giggles, covering her rosebud mouth with her hand, as though she’s afraid of letting me see that she’s happy.
I pass the pin back to her. ‘Got it?’
She nods and begins hammering the bag, biting down on her lip as she does.
‘That’s it!’
Her eyebrows pull together as she continues. I ignore Kerry, who is licking her finger and turning the pages in the recipe book. I turn away from them and begin breaking up the white chocolate into a pan.
‘You’re doing it wrong, you’re going to burn the chocolate.’
I’m not going to burn the chocolate.
I ignore her. Kerry never baked, she wouldn’t have a clue about the best ways of melting chocolate, but she continues to berate me, telling me the gas is on too high, that I should be using a bain-marie.
You don’t even know what one of those is!
Kerry wouldn’t have known a bain-marie if it bit her on the arse. I grind my teeth, resisting the desperate urge to tell her to fuck off.
Once finished, Kerry has gone and the biscuits inside the bag have been reduced to rubble. ‘All done?’ I ask, but Hailey has started crying. I take the rolling pin from her while tears stream down her face. ‘What’s wrong?’ I ask.
She doesn’t answer but instead runs to Ed, who is standing in the doorway, his face pale. She buries her head in his stomach, wraps her frail arms around him and holds on tightly.
‘I think she’s caught her finger with the rolling pin.’ He nods, concern etched in the lines around his mouth. ‘I’ll grab an ice pack.’
Chapter Forty-Four
Ed
If someone were to walk in right now, they would see the clean tidy house, they’d see my beautiful wife making a cake with our cute daughter, and they might be envious. They would see my chubby, cupid-like son slurping the last of his spaghetti and putting his bowl into the dishwasher. But what I’m about to do would change that. It would show them the cracks.
I want to pretend that everything is OK, I want to believe that she is getting better, but she isn’t. My fingers swipe the screen and I select the video-camera icon. I point my phone in their direction; it doesn’t seem weird that I’m filming them, why would it? From the outside it looks like a happy occasion, mother and daughter baking together.
Hailey is bashing the contents of a plastic bag and Jen is smiling at her. She turns her back and begins breaking up chocolate into a pan but as she does it, she takes furtive glances back towards Hailey. And then goose bumps run up my body. She looks into air and shakes her head, her mouth opening and closing. She is having a silent argument with herself, her hand landing on her hip, a gesture of annoyance.
‘Just fuck off!’
Hailey has stopped bashing the biscuits and is staring at her mother. There is fear in her eyes. Jen turns back to Hailey, oblivious to what has just happened.
Jen doesn’t know what she has done wrong, that much is clear. Or she’s pretending she doesn’t know; fussing around fetching an ice pack, consoling Hailey about her hand, making jokes about how strong Hailey is and how hard she must have been bashing the biscuits.
But Hailey’s hand isn’t hurt. Hailey is hurt. My daughter is hurting because she has seen the same thing as I have filmed on my phone: she has just witnessed her mother acting like she’s crazy and shouting ‘Fuck off’ at the top of her voice. But I let the charade carry on; I let Jen carry on acting and then I take the kids upstairs for their bath. I put them into their swimming gear and empty a packet of Jelly Bath into the water, turning it into green goo while Jen carries on cooking our ‘romantic dinner’ as though everything is normal. I can hear her now, humming away while the smell of garlic rises up from the kitchen.
Hailey’s eyes are red, even though she is giggling as I tip a cup of green slime onto Oscar’s head. I stay in the bathroom as long as I can, keeping the kids . . . keeping the kids: keeping the kids away from their mother.
She comes upstairs as they climb into bed and I try to ignore how my body tenses when I hear her feet on the stairs.
‘Mummy! I haven’t had any pudding!’ Oscar folds his arms.
‘You had pudding first, remember, you had ice cream then dinner.’
She winks at me and I smile back, but I can tell by the way Jen is looking at me that I haven’t quite pulled the smile off.
‘You can have some cheesecake tomorrow.’ She ruffles his hair, kisses him on the forehead and touches his nose with hers.
I follow her out of the room but put my hand on her shoulder as she walks towards Hailey’s room, turning her towards me. I sniff the air dramatically. ‘Is something burning?’ I ask.
She sniffs too. ‘I don’t think so.’
‘I’ll say goodnight to Hailey, you’d best just check.’
I try the smile again. It’s met with uncertainty by Jen, but she nods and goes downstairs.
Hailey’s room is filled with the fading pink light of the sunset coming through her pink curtains. She is lying on her side, a book clutched between her hands, a glittering fairy smiling from the cover.
‘What-ya reading?’ I ask, the bed sinking beneath my weight.
‘The purple fairy . . . she is late for ballet class and the wind has blown her tutu out of her fairy house.’
I try not to shake my head. Why can’t the bloody fairy be a doctor or an astrophysicist? I smooth her blanket with the palm of my hand. ‘I hope she finds her tutu.’
‘She will. Books never have a sad ending.’
I open my mouth, about to correct her, but I close it again, letting her believe that all books have a happy ending . . . she’ll find out soon enough that they don’t.
Chapter Forty-Five
Jennifer
It’s so nice to feel normal. I’ve ignored Kerry all day, well, most of the day. The kids have been good, the house is clean, and I’ve managed not to burn the dinner. I close the oven door and put the oven glove back into the drawer, noting as I do that I’m almost out of clean tea towels. I’ll put a wash on in the morning.
I can hear Ed and Hailey talking as I make my way upstairs; soft voices meet me as I rest my hand against Hailey’s bedroom door.
‘Listen Hales . . . about Mummy.’
My hand stays against the door, my feet stay still, and I hold my breath in my lungs.
‘She was weird, Daddy, AND she swored. She swored a really bad word. Even worse than—’
I lean my ear against the door but miss the end of the sentence.
I swore? When was that?
‘You told me to fuck off.’ Kerry is sitting at the top of the stairs, licking cheesecake filling from the back of a wooden spoon.
A feeling of unease is climbing up my spine.
‘I know, sweetheart.’ Ed’s voice comes from behind the door. ‘But I’m going to help Mummy, I’m going to help Mummy get better. I promise.’
‘Pinky promise?’ Hailey asks.
‘Pinky promise. I hope she finds her tutu.’
The noise of the bed creaking warns me that Ed is finished and so I hurry back downstairs as quietly as I can, my heart beating hard inside my chest. I reach for the bottle of red wine and fill our glasses, draining half of mine as I hear the click of the bathroom door above me; I refill it.
‘It’s almost ready,’ I announce as Ed walks into the room. I keep my back turned, afraid to see the look of worry that I know is going to be on his face, wanting, instead, to carry on as we were. My hands grip onto the handles of a pair of wooden utensils.
Ed’s hands find mine, stilling my salad-tossing. He rests his chin over my shoulder; his warm arm is around my waist. With his other hand, he pushes the salad bowl away and places his phone in its place, his finger tapping on the videos. I hold my breath as I watch the film: Hailey smashing the biscuits, my back turning away. Bile rises in my throat as I see myself talking to Kerry, my mouth working. I’m not watching an old memory, not imagining my sister . . . I’m talking to her. Hailey’s face drains of colour as she watches me, her mother gesturing with her hands, mouth opening with a silent conversation, and then the speaker blaring out the words ‘Just fuck off!’ as my daughter’s body visibly jumps. The
phone screen tips and stops at this point where Ed must have intervened, taken Hailey in his arms while I prattle on about an ice pack.
The timer beeper from the cooker interrupts the sounds of me breathing. Beep-b-b-b-beep. Beep-b-b-b-beep. Ed leans towards the cooker and stretches his arm, turning it off. The warmth of his arm returns to my waist; his chin is propped back onto my shoulder. He doesn’t say a thing: he doesn’t need to. The beat of Ed’s heart is penetrating between the soft fabric of my blouse, through my shoulder blades, hammering against my own. He begins to explain how I keep looking off into the distance, how he’s heard my voice in the garden when there is nobody there.
‘I keep seeing her . . . Kerry. I thought I was just replaying memories, but now . . .’
I begin to flit through the past few months: Kerry sitting at the top of the stairs, licking cheesecake off the spoon; the day inside the café when I ran into Nessa, how she had told me Nessa couldn’t resist a cookie; her worried face beckoning me back from the ledge at Lovers’ Leap . . . those events never happened. I turn to look at her.
‘Surprise,’ she says, blowing me a kiss, a sad apologetic expression on her face. I let my eyes meet hers, acknowledging what, deep down, I have known all along but haven’t wanted to admit to. I haven’t been replaying memories; I’ve been hallucinating my dead sister for months.
‘She’s standing right next to us.’
‘Boo!’ she says in Ed’s ear.
I laugh quietly. ‘I’m not crazy, I know she’s not really here, but the images keep coming. I’ve tried to ignore them, her, but—’
‘I can’t imagine anyone being able to ignore Kerry.’ His chin digs into my shoulder as he talks. ‘Do you think she’s a . . .’ he clears his throat, ‘a ghost?’
‘No.’ I want to explain to him how I know, how I have known for months that I’m not well, that something is wrong with me.
‘So. What are we going to do about her?’
‘Ask her to leave?’ I say, licking a salty tear from my lips with the corner of my tongue.