by Karen Perry
Vaguely, she becomes aware of cigarette smoke on the air. It filters through into her bedroom, prodding curiosity inside her. She knows he’s out there in the darkness.
Quietly, so as not to disturb Jake, she gets out of bed, tiptoes across the hall.
She finds her cardigan on the back of a kitchen chair, pulls it around her. She shouldn’t do this. She has made promises to Jake. But there is an emptiness inside her that he cannot fill, that he cannot come close to. He doesn’t understand what it means to be hollowed out with guilt. He doesn’t know what a burden it is.
She steps out on to the patio, feels the warm air against her skin. It seems like an act of recklessness, yet she is drawn on. Her bare foot steps up on to the grass. It crackles under her skin, dry and parched for rain.
The branches of the fruit trees sway gently above her, their leaves silvery under the moonlight. The air smells cleanly of jasmine and lavender, and when she turns to look up at the house, something moves in the garden. Instantly, her attention snaps to it. Through the darkness, she strains to see.
‘Hello?’ she calls. ‘Is someone there?’
No answering voice, no flare of a cigarette glowing through the darkness. The garden is empty – a tangle of weeds and little else.
She thinks of Charlotte, and is surprised the woman has strayed into her head. In the rooms upstairs, there is no framed photograph of her, no wedding-day snap, no tender portrait of mother and children. Leah thinks of the dead woman’s clothes, remembers the feel of that silk on her skin, how she had allowed herself, just for a moment, to be wrapped in that woman’s dress, in that woman’s bedroom, a secret imagining of what it would be like to occupy that woman’s life.
A sudden chill in the air, she wraps her cardigan tight around her. Somewhere in the garden she hears the rustling of night creatures. The snap of a branch. Or maybe it’s just the thought of the ghost that’s been summoned making her cold.
Whatever thoughts she’d had of seeking solace fly past. The garden tonight seems changed. A different presence here. One that is watchful, unfriendly.
Taking fright, Leah hurries back on to the patio. When she closes the French windows behind her, she finds her limbs are trembling, new blood leaking between her legs. In the bathroom, she cleans herself quickly. Someone was watching her in the darkness. Jake doesn’t stir when she climbs back into bed.
21
Hilary
Hilary is upstairs one evening when her attention is caught by the windows of Anton’s house, her eyes widening in horror and disbelief. For in that moment, she sees Charlotte. Standing right there in the front bedroom, gazing at her reflection in the long, oval mirror that stands by the window. A dead woman in a printed silk dress. Hilary’s heart flutters wildly with fear.
But then reality breaks through, and she realizes it is not Charlotte, but Leah, and a new confusion creeps in to replace the fear that slid away. Her attention rapt, she watches as Anton comes and stands behind the young woman – the ingénue – and reaches out to touch her, gathering the swathe of her hair and gently drawing it away from her face. That one gesture makes everything inside Hilary go very still.
Down below, the street is empty, the cars all nestled together in a row against the kerb, a peaceful scene. But here, in her bedroom, a new turmoil has taken hold. They have disappeared from view, and her mind races, wondering what on earth is happening. What can they be doing?
Hilary scratches her upper arms, as if she has a rash, panic taking hold inside her. It’s all she can do not to run downstairs and out on to the street, then march across to Number 14 to demand answers.
She doesn’t do any such thing. She knows it would be rash – foolish – to draw attention to herself in that manner, blowing the plan with her impatience, her misunderstanding. For that is what it is. Something simple she’s misinterpreted that she and Anton will laugh about later when all this is done.
For the next few days, she monitors the situation closely.
Having spent two decades observing the comings and goings on in Wyndham Park – the births and deaths, the divorces, repossessions, feuds and scandals – she sees herself as the custodian of the street’s history. Nothing escapes her attention. Sometimes she feels as if she has spent her whole life staring out of her bedroom window.
She remembers the first time she stood in this room, taking in the ancient flocked wallpaper, its ceiling crusted with spreading brown stains, and trying to envisage the two of them – her and Greg – spending their lives there, possibly with children of their own.
‘What do you think?’ Greg had asked, a breathy bewilderment still in his voice.
He could hardly believe he was in this position, she knew. Barely thirty and already married, getting his hopes up about this house. It was an executor’s sale.
‘Did he die in this room?’ she had asked, and he had laughed, then accused her of being squeamish, coming to stand behind her, his arms wrapped around her waist, his hold firm.
She had married Greg because he was solid, reliable. ‘A safe bet,’ her father had called him. But that was in the early years of her marriage, before she discovered something vital: that feeling safe can be constricting. It takes all the air out of life. She wanted excitement, a thrill. Something deeper and more profound, something that moved her.
While she waits for a sign from Anton, watching his house carefully, she thinks of all the things that have happened on this street under her surveillance. From this very window, she had borne witness to events that both shocked and moved her. Like the day the police came and took Anton away.
She remembers the morning it happened.
They came for him early, before anyone on the street was awake. Barely forty-eight hours had passed since the discovery of Charlotte’s body.
It was summer, so there was a tinge of light through the slats in the blinds even though it wasn’t yet six a.m. Hilary doesn’t know what it was that woke her. There was no siren blaring. She cannot recall any blue flashing lights. Intuition, perhaps. A deep knowledge of something catastrophic about to happen. At first, she had felt confusion – the unfamiliarity of the room around her, the foreign smell of new carpets and fresh paint. Then she heard the bang of a car door, followed by another, and by the time she was out of bed, struggling into her dressing-gown, he was already coming out of the front door of his house, flanked on either side by uniformed officers. How clearly she can remember the way the guard shielded Anton’s head as he ducked in through the car door, and the pang it caused deep in her chest, remembering how she had run her own hands through his hair, how she had felt the hard mass of his skull beneath her fingertips when she had kissed him. And yet there she was, staring at the back of his head through the window of a patrol car, watching helplessly as they sped away with him.
‘Where do you think they’ve taken him?’ she had asked Greg, over breakfast, a couple of hours later. A Monday morning, Greg dressed for summer school. She’d tried to keep her tone casual, as if she didn’t really care one way or the other. As if it wasn’t eating her up inside.
‘I imagine he’s being interviewed in the local station,’ he’d said, scooping out a piece of melon and eating it at the counter.
She tried to imagine the scene – Anton at a table in a windowless room, two slab-faced interrogators opposite, a mirror on the wall screening off the others who were watching.
‘Are you really going to work?’ she asked, as Greg wiped his face with a napkin, and reached for his briefcase on the table. It exasperated her, the knowledge that he could just carry on as normal while Anton was being interrogated by the police.
‘Why wouldn’t I?’
‘What if the police want to speak to you?’
‘Then give them the school’s number. Although I can’t think what else they’d want from me.’
They had both given statements the day before. Everyone who’d been at the party – all the neighbours – had been questioned.
‘I wish y
ou’d stay at home,’ she pleaded. ‘I just feel so nervous. What if they call around here again? What should I tell them?’
‘Tell them the truth,’ he’d said simply, then kissed her cheek and left her to stew in her own tormented thoughts.
That same morning, she’d watched from the upstairs window as the little children were taken away. A woman she didn’t recognize came and put the boy and the little girl into the back seat of a Toyota Corolla. The policewoman who had been minding the children slammed the car boot closed on the suitcases and bags that had been crammed inside. The little girl was crying. Hilary heard the shrillness of her screaming, the hard, accusatory pitch of it, and for the first time in the forty-eight hours since Charlotte’s death she’d felt a cold pang of fear.
What have we done? she thought, her hand held to her mouth.
The police did not return that day, and when she sat down to dinner opposite Greg that evening, she asked him: ‘What do you think will happen to those children?’
He was cutting into the lamb chop on his plate, sawing it up into neat little triangles. ‘I expect some relative will take care of them.’
‘I saw a woman come and take them away. A woman in a red car.’
‘Charlotte’s sister, I expect.’
Hilary hadn’t known Charlotte had a sister. Was briefly surprised to find that Greg did.
‘She lives in Cork, I believe,’ he added, and this brought a new plunge of guilt, of quavering doubt.
‘But that’s miles away.’
He didn’t answer, just kept pushing meat into his mouth.
It wasn’t right – those children being dragged all the way to the other side of the country. What about Anton? Didn’t he have a right to have them near? ‘You don’t suppose,’ she began tentatively, ‘that we could offer to take them?’
His eyes shot up to meet hers. It made her nervous. Shakily, she went on: ‘I mean, just until things are sorted out. Just until he’s released.’
It was then that Greg put down his knife and fork and stared hard at her. ‘What are you talking about? The man has murdered his wife. By the time the state allows him to take care of his children again, they’ll be fully grown.’
She had gone to pieces then. She couldn’t help it. Days of sobbing, or thrashing around on her bed in despair, until finally Greg had taken some leave, booked a break at a B-and-B in Wexford and swept her away. Three days’ walking on the beach at Curracloe, turning the facts over in her head, trying to tease out every possibility, attempting to make a plan. By the time they returned, she was calm and Anton was in custody. A fact she was forced to accept. A fact she had to try to live with.
Once, when they were together, she had told Anton in a moment of candour: ‘I feel like I’ve waited my whole life for you.’
He had laughed, twirling a lock of her hair around his index finger and thumb. ‘Your whole life,’ he had said mockingly. ‘All twenty-nine years of it.’
She had poked him in the ribs, and he had barked with laughter, then pushed himself on top of her, flattening her against the bed.
‘Good things come to those who wait,’ he had said. ‘Remember that,’ he added, smiling into her face before he kissed her, long and deep, calling to life again the desire inside her.
Remember that. The way he had said it had seemed meaningful at the time, although she had no idea what he’d meant. Only later did it start to dawn on her. A message there. An unspoken pact.
And she did remember. When she went to the courthouse almost a whole year later, and sat in the public gallery listening to all the evidence built up against him, those words of his ran in a loop through her brain, keeping her steady and still. Even when sentence was passed and she felt the crushing weight of it – all those years! – it was the one thing that kept her sane. He had looked up at her, briefly, before they led him away. To anyone watching, it would have appeared to be a fleeting glance, but to Hilary it was pointed and personal and weighted with meaning. Remember, he seemed to be saying to her. Remember to wait.
I am your Penelope, she had written in one of her letters to him. One of the many she had sent to the prison. Their correspondence had commenced shortly after the sentencing. A correspondence that was, by necessity, carefully coded. And one-sided. That part had surprised and hurt her. But then she thought about how low he must be feeling, how difficult he must be finding it to adjust, and she redoubled her efforts. So what if he didn’t reply? He would eventually. And until then she refused to let her devotion waver. It was a test, and she would pass with flying colours.
And then one day he did reply. Her heart crowding her throat as she opened the envelope and took out a single sheet of notepaper. One simple instruction printed on it: Hilary, please stop.
Her initial reaction was pain. A wounding rejection when all she had wanted was to reach out and show him she cared. That she loved him. Why on earth would he hurt her like this? But then, once she had taken time to think it through properly, to analyse what it meant, she realized why he had done this. It was painful for him. Of course it was! After all, she was on the outside while he was locked up, paying the ultimate price for their love. And what did it matter if they didn’t write to each other? It meant she would have so much more to tell him once he got out and they were together. She would store it all up – her thoughts, her feelings, the little things she knew would move him. She would save them. They would have the rest of their lives to tell each other these things, share all their different experiences, however hard or painful. She would wait.
It has been weeks, and still there has been no word from him. No sign. No indication. It keeps returning to her – that image of Leah in the window, wearing Charlotte’s dress. And every time she relives it in memory, she feels the same sucking in of breath, the same tension in her forehead. The way Anton had stood behind that woman, his hand reaching out for her hair. It meant nothing, Hilary tells herself, steeling her thoughts against her own anxiety. Once more she draws on her reserves of patience, feeling, as she does, that those reserves can’t last for ever. Very soon, they will run dry.
Now, Hilary looks out on the street, sees the lean figure of their neighbour, Jake, walking up from the tennis courts, a shopping bag in each hand. There’s something slumped about the young man’s posture. ‘Straighten up,’ she says quietly, as if he could possibly hear her. His glasses catch the light briefly as he looks up, then turns his gaze to the pavement once more.
Quickly, she slips on her shoes and hurries downstairs. She is across the road, affecting surprise to see him, by the time he reaches his gate.
‘Out doing some shopping?’ she asks brightly, and he glances up, transferring one of his shopping bags to his other arm and, with his free hand, puts a finger to his eye, presses behind the glasses.
Good God, has he been crying? Hilary wonders.
‘Hi, Hilary. Yes. Just getting a few bits and pieces.’
‘How is Leah? I haven’t seen her around much lately,’ she asks lightly, with a smile.
She notes the hesitation in his manner, the uncertainty in his air.
‘Actually, she hasn’t been very well,’ he says. Her attention sharpens. With an air of apology, of sorrow, he adds: ‘She lost a baby recently, you see.’
Despite the complicated and negative feelings she’s been harbouring towards the young woman, Hilary feels an automatic wash of empathy. She knows that sorrow. She knows that horrible emptiness. ‘Oh, no,’ she says now, surprised by the genuine feeling in her voice.
‘She’s okay, but, you know …’ His voice trails off.
‘I do know,’ Hilary replies, the force of her tone making him look up. ‘I know exactly what it’s like, believe me.’
‘You’ve been through it?’
‘Many times, I’m afraid.’
‘Oh.’ He’s staring at her now as if making private reassessments of his opinion of her. ‘Look, would it be too much to ask … Would you think about talking to her? I’ve tried, but I jus
t feel like I’m getting nowhere. It might be good for her to talk to someone who’s been through it already. What do you think?’
‘Of course I will,’ she says, smiling, the opportunity presenting itself so easily, a little glow of triumph inside her. ‘I’d be happy to.’
She takes flowers with her when she visits the next day – a verdant bunch of hydrangea floribunda, the stems wrapped tightly in paper kitchen towels.
‘These are lovely,’ Leah says, then leaves them by the sink, instantly forgetting them as she drifts out into the garden.
They sit on hard chairs in the shade of the house, a rickety table between them. The sun burns high in the sky but it doesn’t reach them there. From inside the house come playful shouts from the little boy. She hasn’t seen him around much lately. He is engaged in some kind of board game with Jake involving hippos and frogs. The noise is distracting, intrusive. Hilary feels needled with annoyance. Can’t that young man see how unwell Leah is? Doesn’t he realize the yelping and play-acting are painful to her?
And yet Leah doesn’t seem pained. Her customary appearance of being slightly distracted has changed somewhat. The hazy, dreamy expression has hardened into preoccupation. It’s as if she has forgotten something, and the faraway look in her eyes reflects a quiet desperation inside to remember.
‘You’re very pale, my dear,’ Hilary states, drawing the gaze back to her.
‘Am I? Yes. I suppose I have been indoors a lot lately.’
‘Why don’t we sit in the sun?’ Hilary suggests, getting to her feet.
‘Oh, no, I –’
‘Come on, I insist.’ She puts her hand under Leah’s elbow to draw her up, is surprised by the thinness of the arm. How slight and delicate the girl is. It’s like picking up a loose bag of sticks. The resistance she puts up is feeble enough, and meekly she follows Hilary up into the grass, the older woman carrying their chairs and placing them firmly in a spot that’s in the sun.