by S. E. Lynes
‘Ah, Christ.’
There is water and a wallet of painkillers on the bedside table. Ava must have put them there. He wonders what that means, if he dares put any hope in it.
He takes two painkillers and drinks the water before, groaning and grunting like an old man, dragging himself into the shower. He lifts his face, lets the water pummel him. Afterwards, towelling himself dry, he catches sight of his reflection in the mirror. His ribs protrude like the bars of a glockenspiel; his eyes are red; his hair needs a cut and his chin is unshaven. He looks terrible, like a mangy, starving wolf.
He pulls on last night’s black jeans and a fresh T-shirt and cleans his teeth twice before going downstairs to find Ava. She is not there, and when he sees that it is after eleven, a wash of guilt floods him. She has gone for a walk, alone. He knows all too well what that will have cost her. But as he prepares a pot of coffee, he hears the front door.
He has no idea what to say. Doesn’t know if they are still together. Last night felt final, but perhaps…
‘Hey,’ he settles on, keen for her to know that he’s up, that he’s in the kitchen. He will take a shift with Fred this afternoon while she rests, he thinks. Make it up to her. They will talk.
She is at the kitchen door. She doesn’t look cross, he thinks. But she is not looking at him.
‘Where’s Fred?’
‘Asleep in the pram.’
‘Coffee?’ he tries. ‘Decaf?’
‘Actually no, I’ll have a normal one for a change.’
Curt but civil. It is better than he deserves. He puts the pot and two mugs on the breakfast bar. Is about to put the milk out too when he decides to pour it into a jug.
‘Very civilised,’ Ava says.
He tries to ignore the feeling of discomfort this provokes in him. She always had a sarcastic streak, but it was a streak, not her default setting as it is now, and it was witty rather than bitter. He can’t decide which this last was.
‘Toast?’
‘Sure.’
The mix of fear and uncertainty persists. He hates it, hates that he notices it, knows that you shouldn’t feel like this in a relationship, knows that he never used to. And more. Knows that it is his fault. He has thrown both of them into confusion.
‘Listen, I’m sorry,’ he says, putting a plate of toast between them to share.
‘We used to know how to have fun, didn’t we? Once? That’s how we started.’ She sounds wistful, as if their early years together are now only a melancholy memory, part of a past she has had to put behind her. Is that what she has done?
For the moment unable to reply, he takes a bite of toast, another. He has no idea what she means. He had hoped last night would not follow them into this morning, or rather, he knew that it would but hoped it would have lessened somehow, that they would be able carefully to start building their marriage once again. He dares not speak, knows he must find words but can’t, and now her face is clouding over, has darkened.
‘Ava?’ is what he finds to say. ‘We can get through this, you know. We can get help.’
‘I don’t think we can,’ she says, meeting his gaze briefly. She has the loveliest eyes. Soulful, intelligent, perceptive, and glazed now with unfathomable sadness. ‘How on earth can we do that?’
He feels his guts plummet. ‘Ava, come on. Please. I’m more sorry than I can say. I will never forgive myself.’
‘I know you’re sorry.’ Her eyes brim, overflow. Tears run thinly down her cheeks. She dips her head and shields her face with her hand. ‘I’m sorry too. I’m sorry and I’m sad and I know you’ll never forgive yourself, but the trouble is, I’ll never forgive you either.’
‘Ava.’ He rounds the breakfast bar and puts his arm around her. Miraculously, she lets him. ‘Don’t cry. Let’s have this coffee, eh? I know we’ve got a lot to talk about, a lot to work through, but let’s just sit together for a few minutes without crucifying ourselves.’
‘You always wanted to move on,’ she sobs. ‘But that’s because you couldn’t stand your own guilt. I can’t move on if I don’t know what happened to her and I can’t possibly be with you knowing that you lied about something so important, beyond important, and that you’ve reinforced that lie every day since, when at any moment you could have told me the truth.’
His throat aches. He fears he might burst into tears. He takes his arms from around her, returns slowly to his stool. ‘I don’t know what else I can say. Don’t do this.’
‘Do what? I haven’t done anything. It isn’t me that’s broken our marriage.’ She wipes her nose with the back of her hand. ‘I’ve been walking all morning, trying to make sense of it all – us, the party.’
‘The party? What’s that got to do with us?’ Despite the painkillers, his head pounds; his mouth tastes stale and grim.
‘It’s all tied up, isn’t it? Abi, Neil, Bella. The Lovegoods. I saw them earlier. On their driveway.’ She sighs, shaking her head. ‘There are things that don’t add up, Matt.’
‘Like what?’
She is silent. The silence presses on his chest.
‘Nothing,’ she says eventually.
‘Tell me,’ he replies.
‘Like Jasmine recognising Mr Sloth and then asking for pockets. Pockets is her name for Neil, yes? It’s what she calls him.’
‘What?’ He can feel he has screwed up his face at her. But he doesn’t know what the hell she’s talking about and it scares him. ‘You say our marriage is over and now you want to talk about Abi’s cuddly toy and somehow pin something on my best friend? Really? You want to do this now?’
With a loud sniff, she raises her head. ‘The trouble is, you want me to talk to you but then you don’t listen. After everything you’ve done, I would’ve thought you’d have the grace to take me seriously, but no. Maybe this is why we can’t talk to each other. Talking to each other is not who we are to one another anymore, is it? I shouldn’t have even tried and, besides, you don’t have the right to sit and talk to me over coffee like this. I’m not yours to talk to.’
From the hallway, Fred begins his cough-like cry.
‘Ava, please. I can look after you. We can get better together.’
‘No, we can’t. How can we? You’re no longer someone I trust. I want to trust you but I don’t. I’m sorry about that, more than I can say.’ Her eyes are so wounded he has to look away. He was right: last night was not an argument. It was final. Don’t do this, he wants to say, over and over until she relents, but he doesn’t.
‘You need to pack your things,’ she adds, no longer looking at him.
‘Look,’ he tries. ‘I’ll go in the morning, all right? I’ll take Fred out this afternoon and you can sleep. I’m hung-over and I need to get myself sorted. I can’t possibly—’
Her hand flies up. ‘All right. All right. One more night. But if you’re thinking I’ll have changed my mind by then, I won’t have. You have one more night to sort something out, but tomorrow, either book a Travelodge or sleep on someone’s sofa, I don’t care. I’m serious. I’ll change the locks if I have to. And for the rest of the day, please just stay away from me.’
Twenty-Seven
Ava
It’s midnight. I stand at the door of the spare room and watch my husband sleep. I have no idea why I’m doing this. I am strange, I think. I have become strange.
Matt sleeps noiselessly these days. He used to snore; now it’s like there isn’t enough of him to produce that amount of noise – this rhythmic hushed breathing is all this skinny man can manage. Looking at him without being able to hold him makes me feel lonelier than if he weren’t here at all. But I cannot touch him. We are no longer us. I always hated us falling out. Apart from Fred, he was all I had. Now I don’t have him. Today we have hovered around each other like ghosts. Fred is all that’s left.
I creep downstairs, fix myself a cold glass of milk and drink it standing at the front window of the living room. Opposite, Pete and Shirley’s magnolia tree snakes its branches towards the never-quite-
black sky. Not a soul about. On such lonely indoor night prowls as this, I am always struck by how desolate nocturnal suburban streets are. It is as if no one lives here, no one at all.
All day I have tried to turn over what Matt said to me earlier: that he can make amends, that somehow, together, we can heal. But if I can’t talk to my own husband about why that bothers me, what chance is there? I have been stripped bare. Grief has unbuttoned me; betrayal has thrown away my clothes, and now there is no one to hold me, no one to throw a blanket around me and save me from the cold.
And despite all of this, despite the loneliness I have consciously chosen, still a nagging voice calls to me from deeper down. I feel it, bodily, as I feel music; hear the wrong note in the fiendishly difficult, un-spannable chord.
When struck with a fork, a glass with even a hairline crack does not chime.
I know we can all read things different ways; I’m not a fool. And I know I have been battered about, am hormonal, sleep-deprived. But I’m not paranoid. If I were paranoid, I would have suspected Neil that day. But I didn’t. As late as last night, I saw in Neil only someone who loved us, loved our child, someone who would have moved heaven and earth to find her. God knows, I’m not even sure that I suspect him now, only that I can’t for the life of me explain why Jasmine Lovegood would recognise Abi’s toy. Something, something is off.
The loop of that morning has been replaced by the loop of Matt, of Bella, of Neil. Is that mad? Am I mad? Am I seeing things that aren’t there? Neil loved Abi; I know that. And I know that my breakdown is probably why we’ve not seen him and Bella. But why would he follow me out of the party after barely speaking to me for a year? It’s like he had to talk to me, like the party itself had brought his feelings to a head.
And Bella. Bella was so devoted to Abi; it seems so odd now that she hasn’t doted on Fred in the same way. And like Neil, after almost a year of silence, the painful small talk at the salon, then, by contrast, at the party, it was as if she was trying to tell me something. She had the same urgency Neil had, wouldn’t stop talking about how gutted he was, how it had changed him. Perhaps it was just the drink, but she wanted me to know he loved Abi no matter what. No matter what suggests something happened. It’s another way of saying despite everything. This, and all the rest, is what I can no longer chew over with my husband. Because he is not my husband anymore, not really, and no matter what arguments and counter-arguments fall after one another, it is Jasmine’s recognition of Abi’s toy that is the crack in the glass, the wrong note in the chord. But it seems that I alone can hear it, me, me, Abi’s mother, my bones, my flesh, my heart entwined forever with hers.
Idly I wander back to the kitchen. A year ago, my phone would have been here on the bar, charging, already filling up with notifications: Facebook, Instagram, the Come-and-Play mums’ WhatsApp group that drove me to distraction with its endless reply-all messages: X can’t do that date because he has Monkey Music; Y has a party that day, any chance of another day? The endless loading-up of information I didn’t need, the sheer administration required just to maintain some semblance of a social life. My phone drove me bonkers, if I’m honest. It sucked my life away, made living in the moment almost impossible. But at other times, it was all that connected me in my maternal loneliness to the world. At night, in those dark and silent hours feeding Abi, I would play patience on the screen, and later, when I woke up like this, to drink milk or eat a midnight snack, my body catching up with its own hunger once Abi’s needs had been met, I would sit for ten minutes with the glow of Facebook, laugh at the funnies, quip on someone’s thread, reply with reassurance to someone in doubt, and yes, in those moments, I felt like I was sharing something meaningful.
Now, I cannot see how my life could ever be accommodated in a post or a comment thread. Posting on a comment thread was, in all likelihood, what I was doing when I lost my daughter. Now I have a basic mobile, a real gangster’s burner. I don’t look at it very often. It’s in the kitchen somewhere… ah, here it is in the messy drawer beside a tin of picture hooks, a book of stamps, some gingham ribbon I must have saved from a gift.
I switch it on and search his name before I’m aware of what I’m doing. When I find it, I realise that this is why I was looking for my phone.
Hi, I thumb. R u awake?
The silence thickens. I wash my glass and place it upside down on the draining board. I’m about to give up and go back to bed when my phone buzzes.
Everything OK? N
No, everything is not OK. My thumb hovers. I am so tired, but I know I won’t sleep until I’ve spoken to Neil, and I have to do that face to face so I can watch him, watch him react. And so, I text.
Can you meet me? Now?
I wait. The clock in the kitchen ticks. Twenty past twelve. The fridge hums. My phone buzzes.
OK. Where?
Outside – 5 mins?
OK.
Neil marches towards me, head down, hands pushed deep into his coat pockets. His white legs are bare but for a fringe of gingham pyjama short around the bottom of his jacket. On his feet are white Nike sliders.
‘Hey.’ He stops and shivers. ‘You OK?’
I meet his blue eyes. I have no idea how to start. What I have to say might ruin our friendship forever. It is a betrayal of all of us, really, but what I have to know is bigger than friendship, bigger than marriage, bigger than any other thing in my life.
‘Can we walk?’ I suggest.
He shrugs. ‘Sure.’
We pass the Lovegoods’ and head towards the end of the road.
‘I haven’t slept since the party,’ I begin. ‘I mean, I didn’t sleep last night and I couldn’t get to sleep tonight.’
‘How come?’
We turn left, into Thameside Lane. We have reached the tennis courts before I realise he is waiting for me to speak.
‘Matt and I are separating,’ I say.
‘Oh, mate.’ He stops. ‘No way! Mate, I’m sure you feel like that now, but—’
I hold up my hand. ‘I know what you’re going to say and I know you mean well, but this is between me and Matt. I can’t be with someone I don’t trust, not after everything we’ve been through. I need someone solid or no one at all.’ I continue walking, forcing him to walk too. ‘I’m thinking of moving up north. I haven’t spoken to my mum yet, but I imagine I’ll move in with her in the short term. I can’t stay here.’
‘I suppose you know best what you have to do,’ he says after a moment, though I don’t think for one second he’s accepted what I’ve said, more that he’s realised it’s pointless arguing with me in my current state, which is infuriating and depressing in equal measure. ‘Is that what you wanted to talk about?’
We cross the road by the leisure centre.
‘I’ve been thinking about that day.’ I begin again. ‘The day Abi… To be honest, I never think about anything else. It just goes round and round and round, you know? I don’t know what I’m expecting. Maybe that if I go round enough times, I’ll get a different outcome. Abi won’t go missing, or she’ll be found by a neighbour, or she won’t reach the river, I don’t know.’ I am aware of myself gabbling. But he shows no sign of impatience.
We reach the Fisherman’s Arms. The river is around the corner, an invisible force pulling us towards it. I wonder if he is aware of it too. If he is, he says nothing.
‘I’m sorry to wake you up like this,’ I say eventually. Something I should have said at the start.
‘That’s OK. I don’t sleep well either, to be honest.’
He says it naturally. He has no idea how I might interpret his sleeplessness, with its undertones of a guilty conscience.
‘I just need you to answer a couple of questions.’
We round the corner. The chandlery comes into shadowy view, the dip at the end of the lane where Abi purportedly wandered towards the ducks and to her death. At the dip, we sit on the little wall next to the footpath and stare at the shallows.
This is where my daug
hter died, I think.
‘Come on,’ he prompts. ‘You can ask me anything – you know that.’
I take a deep breath. ‘That morning. You were at home when I came to your house. How come?’
‘What do you mean, how come? How come I was home?’
‘Yes.’ Shame burns in my cheeks. I cannot look at him. The enormity of what I’m asking dawns, but it is too late to go back.
‘I’d been to the builders’ merchants to get some stuff, why?’
‘I suppose… I suppose finding out Matt lied to me has turned me inside out. I worry my memory might be playing tricks on me, that’s all, and I thought maybe you could shed some light on things I probably had an explanation for at the time but have since forgotten what that explanation was, do you know what I mean?’ I am gabbling, I know I am, but I press on. ‘It’s just… I’ve not seen you to talk it through, have I? Not till last night. It’s just that at the party, Johnnie mentioned that you always got in early. Every day, he said, you got in before they left for work, and so I’m obviously wondering why you didn’t that day, of all days.’ I pause. I don’t dare say any more.
Neil says nothing, so I dig myself further in.
‘It’s just that if Abi went missing after they left for work,’ my voice shakes, ‘and you were always there before they left… I don’t know, I…’
‘You’re wondering why I wasn’t there? I see. Well, now you know. I went to the builders’ merchants at Apex Corner.’ His tone is flat. ‘Do you want me to find the receipt?’
Oh God.
‘I’m not accusing you of anything, Neil. I’m just trying to piece it together in the light of my own husband…’ I steel myself, determined not to let my emotions make me say something I’ll regret more than I already regret coming here. ‘Why did you say you didn’t know the Lovegoods’ kids?’
‘Did I?’
‘You did. Just before we went to the party.’
His mouth turns downwards, as if he hasn’t a clue what I’m talking about.
‘I can’t remember saying that, to be honest,’ he says. ‘But I didn’t know them, not really. They were out all day, and by the time they got back with the nanny, I was pretty much on the way out. I teased the older one a few times…’