The Silk Factory

by Judith Allnatt

  Tally, alarmed at the thought of her striding into her in-laws’ house like a madwoman, said, ‘Hang on a mo. It’s still the middle of the night. Maybe better wait until the morning?’

  ‘Is it? Oh, yeah, of course it is.’ Rosie pushed her hand through her hair. ‘I’ll go first thing tomorrow.’ She rooted through her bag for her phone and set an alarm.

  Tally went to find her some pyjamas, a towel and a toothbrush. When she came back, she said, ‘Would you like me to come with you?’

  Rosie hesitated. She couldn’t really believe what she was planning to do. ‘No,’ she said. ‘Thanks, but this is between me and Josh. I think I have to do it on my own.’

  Rosie got up while it was still dark. She pulled on her jeans, sweatshirt, and the old grey canvas shoes, had a quick chat with Rob as he left for his shift, and then left a note for Tally, who was still sleeping. Outside, the streetlamps showed a world transformed by a fresh snowfall. The snow stood inches thick like a cap on cars and fence posts and muffled hedges and shrubs, rounding sharp angles to indistinct softness. Her house was in darkness, lights off and the curtains all closed, its expression blank and secret. Rosie shivered as she passed the front door and went straight to the car.

  She edged tentatively backwards and forwards to get out of the tight parking space and crawled along the snowy street. Once she was out of the village and on to A roads and then motorway, the journey to Hertfordshire was straightforward; the roads had been gritted overnight, but as she returned to countryside at the other end of the journey the lanes were treacherous and she was glad it was now light, the trees casting long blue shadows over the fields. She passed the little station where her father-in-law, Gareth, caught the commuter train to his job as an actuary in the City; it was closed and deserted, the empty car park a carpet of white.

  Sandra and Gareth lived a mile outside the village and as she turned along the sunken track that led down to their barn conversion, the back wheels of her little Fiat slewed to the right and almost put her in the ditch. Carefully, she pulled off again, straightening up, and made slippery progress in the wide tyre tracks of more practical vehicles that had compacted and printed the snow. Gareth’s four-by-four no doubt made light work of this weather. She emerged into open fields and ahead of her the huge windows that had replaced the original barn doors flashed out, catching the sun and making her blink. She’d not been here for a couple of years and had forgotten quite how spectacular it was, the original building gutted and re-formed with cantilevered ceilings and green glass stairs up to mezzanine floors.

  She swung the car round on a sweep of gravel. As she pulled up beside the garage block she saw that the house had been extended still further. From a long, low building, a vent exhaled a steady stream of steam. A pool-house, she thought, Gareth must still be doing well for himself. Then, almost immediately: Had the children been in the pool? Sam had never mentioned it.

  In the garden stood the broad tubular structure of the new trampoline, its blue netting showing through the snow, and beyond it, the humped shapes of a slide and a climbing frame with a pirate deck. There are whole worlds in my kids’ lives that I know nothing about, she thought. She sat for a moment with her hand on the ignition, then took a deep breath and got out, the snow soaking instantly through her canvas shoes.

  Josh answered the door. He was dressed in a white cotton shirt, navy chinos and leather flip-flops. He had a piece of toast in his hand and he looked a bit the worse for wear. ‘What the fuck!’ he said when he saw her.

  ‘Happy Christmas to you too,’ Rosie said.

  ‘What’re you doing here?’

  ‘I’ve come to fetch the kids home.’

  He ignored that and said, as if she were a tradesman who had turned up at an inconvenient moment, ‘It’s a bit early, isn’t it? For dropping in out of the blue?’

  ‘It’s after nine, Josh. It’s hardly the crack of dawn.’

  Josh glanced behind him down the hallway towards the kitchen door, as if checking whether anyone could hear. Rosie had the distinct impression that what he’d really like to do was to shut the door on her. ‘Look,’ he said, as though he was reasoning with an idiot, ‘I said I’d bring them back tonight. This isn’t what we arranged.’ He glared at her.

  ‘I can save you the trouble,’ Rosie said stolidly.

  Gareth came out of the kitchen, saying, ‘What is it? You’re letting in an awful draught …’ Then: ‘Rosie! What a nice surprise!’ In the same old corduroy trousers and baggy oatmeal sweater that Rosie remembered him jokingly calling his ‘leisurewear’, he slopped along the hallway in his slippers towards her and Josh had to step aside. Gareth enfolded her in a bear hug and rocked her to and fro, his stubbly chin rasping against her face. ‘Come on in, come on in!’ He led the way to the kitchen where, over his shoulder, Sandra and Tania were sitting at a round oak table. The two chairs that Josh and Gareth had left vacant sat in front of plates full of congealing fried breakfasts. Tania, dressed in taupe trousers and a matching cobweb knit jumper, was leafing through a glossy magazine with nothing in front of her but black coffee. Sandra was in the middle of helping herself to scrambled eggs and muffins, her grey bobbed hair with its stylish streak of white at the front tucked back behind her ears.

  Gareth took her hand and drew her into the room. She felt everyone’s eyes on her and was acutely conscious of the snow she had tramped in with her, melting in little pools around her feet, and the dark water-stained canvas of her cheap pumps. Their relaxed demeanour in their casually expensive clothes, clearly at home in the designer kitchen with its range of fancy appliances, breathed entitlement. In her baggy sweatshirt with its dangling toggles and drooping hood, her usual wisps of hair escaping from its scrunchy, she felt faded, threadbare, a person with no definite outline.

  ‘We’ve missed you,’ Gareth was saying. ‘Why don’t you come and see us? Bring the kids?’

  Tania visibly winced. She glanced at Josh accusingly.

  ‘Rosie and I seem to have got our wires crossed,’ Josh said disingenuously. ‘I’ve been telling her that we’ve got all the cousins coming back for lunch today so the kids won’t want to go yet. I’m sure she understands.’

  Rosie opened her mouth to disagree but Sandra, seeing Rosie’s tense, white face and sensing that all her preparations for a perfect Christmas might be about to go up in smoke, said smoothly, ‘Perhaps Rosie would like to stay and join us for lunch?’

  There was a silence while everyone considered the prospect of awful awkwardness that would entail.

  ‘Thank you, but no. We need to be getting back,’ Rosie said, mustering her reserves of politeness.

  ‘It’s out of the question,’ Josh said. ‘We had an arrangement.’

  Sandra and Gareth exchanged a glance. ‘The children would be very disappointed,’ Sandra said. ‘They’ve all been getting on so well. Let me pour you a coffee while you think about it.’ She reached for the pot and then let her hand fall as they all realised that there was nowhere for Rosie to sit.

  Gareth said, ‘Well, never mind all this tea and coffee lark. I think it’s time for a real drink. Rosie? Sherry with your old dad-in-law?’ He held the kitchen door open for her to pass through. Before it swung shut behind her, she distinctly heard Tania saying, ‘If you start giving in to her now, she’ll take you to the cleaners when we get to court.’

  Gareth led her into the lounge opposite, with its massive windows extending the whole height of the building. A fire roared in a wood-burning stove and a huge Christmas tree stood decked with white fairy lights and shiny white ceramic hearts and icicles. ‘Do you like the tree?’ he asked mildly. ‘Sandra’s idea: to use the height we’ve got here. You can’t get one that size in most houses. You know Sandra, she goes in for Christmas in a big way.’ He sighed.

  Rosie nodded. ‘I bet the kids really loved it. Where are they, by the way?’ She tried to sound casual although all she really wanted to do was to tuck them one under each arm and run.

 
; Gareth put a glass of sherry into her hand and beckoned her to follow him. He pushed open the door of the snug where Sam and Cara were both fast asleep on the sofa in front of the TV, a cartoon running with the sound turned right down. They withdrew, Gareth saying, ‘We let them come to midnight mass on Christmas Eve and then they were up at six on Christmas morning. I think it’s finally caught up with them.’

  They sat down on sofas opposite each other.

  Gareth looked awkward. ‘The thing is, Rosie, love, Sandra’s gone to a lot of trouble. She wanted to get everyone together.’

  ‘Not quite everyone,’ Rosie said drily.

  ‘And she was trying to do you a favour, really …’

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘As you weren’t feeling well. She thought it would give you a break.’

  ‘Who said I was ill!’

  ‘Well – Josh.’

  ‘Because, as you can see, I’m not.’

  He rubbed his head, appearing to digest this, and then shrugged. ‘This family stuff’s really Sandra’s area. I try to stay out of it.’ He took a drink. ‘I just bring home the bacon.’

  ‘Look, I didn’t come to make a scene. It’s not unreasonable to want a share of my own kids’ time at Christmas. Josh hasn’t been playing fair.’

  ‘Couldn’t you just stay for lunch? I’ll get it in the neck if I don’t persuade you.’

  Rosie snorted. She was pretty sure Sandra had been bluffing with her invitation, simply intending to embarrass her into giving in and going away. ‘I don’t think anyone really wants me to stay. I’d be like Banquo’s ghost.’

  The door from the snug opened and Sam came in, his hair tousled and his shirt done up on the wrong buttons. Still half asleep, he wandered over to Rosie and climbed on her lap, snuggling in. Rosie hugged him. ‘Time to go home, soldier,’ she said. ‘Can you show me where your bag is and help me pack up your things? And Cara’s things too?’

  ‘Rosie …’ Gareth remonstrated, raising his hands in a helpless gesture.

  She lifted Sam down off her lap and they went upstairs together.

  When they returned, Josh, Tania and Sandra had joined Gareth in the lounge. Sandra had a sleepy Cara in her arms and Tania stood at Josh’s elbow as if ready to give him a nudge. Josh said, ‘What’s this, Sammy? I thought I was going to teach you how to hit a snooker ball today? You’re not going already, are you?’

  Sam stood in the middle of the room looking uncertainly from his mum to his dad. Rosie began to feel angry. How could Josh play on Sam’s feelings like that? It was a low trick, dragging him into it, putting emotional pressure on him. Keeping her voice even, she said. ‘Go and pick up your Lego, Sam, and put the box in your bag, please.’ Sam trailed over to the tree and began dropping pieces of Lego one by one into the box.

  Rosie walked over to Sandra to take Cara from her but Cara let out a wail and turned away, burying her face in Sandra’s shoulder. Rosie stopped as if someone had slapped her, even though she knew that Cara did this every time at nursery when she picked her up: a toddler’s protest at having been left by her mum.

  Josh pounced on it. ‘Look, this isn’t going to work. It’s just confusing them. Why don’t you go home and I’ll bring them back later as I told you in the first place.’

  From the corner of her eye she saw Tania give a tiny smile.

  ‘Perhaps that would be best,’ Sandra said. ‘If that was the agreement.’

  She looked to Gareth for support. He took another drink and said nothing.

  Suddenly, she felt Sam’s hand slip into her own. She squeezed it tight and took a deep breath. ‘Right then, let’s talk about agreements,’ she said to the adults. ‘The bald fact is, Josh’s access agreement is every other weekend, as he very well knows. Today it’s not a weekend and he hasn’t any right to have the kids. I think things’ll go a whole lot more smoothly if Josh respects that in future.’ She put the kids’ bags over one shoulder and then firmly took Cara from Sandra, hefting her on to her hip.

  She got as far as the door and then stopped. ‘What do you say, Sam?’

  ‘Thank you for having me.’

  ‘Good boy. Now go and give everyone a kiss and then we’re going home.’ Even Josh had the grace to look a little shamefaced as he bent to be hugged and kissed on the cheek.

  Rosie drove back towards the motorway while next to her Sam played a game on her phone and Cara dozed in the back. She tried to calm herself. The mixture of anxiety over taking on Josh and elation at her success had left her feeling strung out, every nerve overstretched and humming. She had won the battle; she was taking the kids home, but when she thought of going back into the house she found herself taking in a deep breath and holding it. She let it out slowly through her mouth in a long, blown-out sigh. Last night, in the warmth of Tally’s home, safe among friends, she had almost managed to believe that she’d imagined it all, that the long-term strain she’d been under and the distress of remembering how Lily died could have flipped her mind in some peculiar way: the broken plate a mere accident; the whole experience in the cellar the hallucination of a troubled mind, brought on by a mix of drugs and wine she knew perfectly well she should avoid.

  Now, alone, and with time to think more clearly, she could see the way this rational explanation held together but try as she might she couldn’t feel it. How could an imagined experience be so complete: smells, sounds, even touch?

  And now she had to go back. The thought of returning to the scene of last night’s nightmare filled her with dread. She drove on through the snowy fields slowly, although the roads were clear, almost everyone tucked up indoors for the holiday. Longingly, she thought of last Christmas, at the flat, when she and Mum had cooked dinner and got tipsy together in the process.

  Soon she would reach the motorway. She could turn right for the Midlands or left for London. She didn’t have to go back; she had a choice. A picture of the flat as she’d left it came into her mind, the living room small and shabby but full of familiar, comforting things: her books, the battered leather sofa, a litter of the kids’ toys. And her bedroom … the light through the branches of the plane tree in the street, the quilt Mum had made for her, spread smooth on the bed.

  They passed the first sign for the motorway junction. Was it a good idea? Once she was back at the flat, it would get harder and harder to return to the house, and there were things she had to do to be able to move forward: sort out all the contents, get it ready for sale; no one was going to buy it with that ancient wiring and the garden like a jungle. She should really just grit her teeth and get on with it. Nonetheless, she imagined the padded texture of the quilt under her cheek, lying down, forgetting everything, feeling safe. Where was the harm? Just for a few days, to get her head back together?

  They would soon be at the roundabout. She glanced at Sam, still deep in his game. ‘I’ve been thinking, do you want to go home, chump-chop? What do you say?’

  ‘Of course.’ He looked up. ‘Can Nicky and Amy come round to play?’

  Rosie paused, amazed at how quickly Sam had laid aside his old home.

  ‘They’ve gone to relatives today,’ she said automatically. ‘They’re seeing their family.’

  ‘But they are their family,’ Sam said logically.

  ‘No, I mean aunties and uncles and their granddad and … and their granny.’

  ‘Oh.’ Sam went quiet.

  Rosie glanced at him. His head was bent over the phone as if he was playing, but the screen was blank.

  ‘I know you miss your granny; I miss her too,’ she said gently. ‘She wouldn’t want you to feel sad though, not at Christmas.’ She reached over and touched his cheek. ‘Tell me what you’d most like to do today.’

  ‘Can I open my presents? Can I show Amy tomorrow?’

  Rosie signalled right, got into lane, took the Midlands exit.

  Leaving the kids asleep in the car, Rosie braced herself and let herself into the curtained house. The dim hall was warm and quiet, the only sounds the familia
r whoosh of the boiler and the trickle of water in the radiators. She snapped on the hall light. A yellow glow shone on the bike, knocked askew by her frantic flight, and on the cellar door, which she saw Rob had bolted: a protective gesture that Rosie found touching. She straightened the bike’s handlebars, wheeled it forward and leant it against the door as if to barricade it. She stood and listened, as she had last night, down there in the dark. It was quiet and calm now, yet she felt weak at the memory of her fear. It hadn’t been all in her mind; she was sure of it. There had been something outside her self: a presence. You knew it in the same way that you sensed a spider’s eyes on you or smelt rain before it came. Instinctive. The child had been there, right beside her. She looked at her makeshift barricade and knew that if the girl were to come again, neither the bolt nor this mechanical barrier would be any use whatsoever.

  Without allowing her eyes to wander to the shadows at the kitchen door or at the turn of the stairs, she hurried into the living room and swept the curtains back. She found the batteries that had rolled under the bureau the night before, fitted them, wrapped the presents quickly and put them on the hearth. It’s no good averting your eyes, she told herself strictly; you’re going to have to look before you can bring the kids in. Forcing herself to be thorough, she checked all of the rooms. Taking a deep breath she walked into the centre of each and turned slowly all the way round. Only when she’d scanned every corner, and sensed in every room an ordinary everyday emptiness, did she go to fetch the children in.

  Carrying Cara and leading Sam by the hand, she brought them into the living room and said brightly, ‘Oh look! Santa’s been while you were away!’ The wrapping paper was off in seconds and Sam danced about, desperate to get outside and try the loader in the snow.