by Eve Chase
Teddy starts to sob again, harder this time.
‘Oh, Teddy. Take the baby. She’ll cheer you up. Whoa … support her neck. Yes, that’s it.’ Teddy holds her warily. ‘Smell the top of her head. It’ll make you feel better. It just will. Promise.’
He sniffs it and lets her worm her finger into his ear.
‘Smells like yoghurt.’ He sniffs again. ‘And Big Rita.’
‘There you go. And you feel a bit better?’
‘Sort of.’ And I can tell he doesn’t, that he’s just trying to please me. I’m not even sure he loves the baby as much as he did. His forehead goes ribbed, serious, like a little old man’s. ‘There’s something else, Hera,’ he whispers.
Inside my head, a whirring, like a mosquito you can hear but can’t see. ‘What?’
‘I heard Don say to Mummy …’ his bottom lip puckers ‘… “Let’s run away together, Jeannie.” That’s what he said.’
‘Well, then, he’s a twerp, isn’t he? Mother would never do that.’ I hug him and the baby. Not wanting to let go. Ever. ‘She’d never leave you, Teddy.’ But would she leave me? What if she doesn’t want to be a mother at all any more, but someone else, like Aunt Edie? The thought is like a hole opening up in the floor.
Under my arm, Teddy’s shoulders start to heave. I hate seeing him this upset. Desperately try to think like Big Rita. What would she do? ‘Wait there, Teddy. Don’t move.’
Carrying down the terrarium from my bedroom, I’m unable to lift my hands and stopper my ears from the piggy grunts sliding out from under Mother’s bedroom door. I carefully rest it on the living-room rug. ‘Ta-dah!’
Teddy’s eyes bug. He plops the baby on the sofa, like a toy he’s tiring of, and kneels down beside the glass case, now sparkling again after the fire, with only a tiny bit of soot in the hinges. He peers into it, his eyes widening, a smile spreading. The baby gurgles happily.
‘Playing doll’s houses, Teddy?’ Don makes us jump. He stands in the doorway, looking like he’s run ten miles, his hair sprouting out at odd angles on his head, two red dots on his cheekbones. The baby kicks on the sofa.
Teddy edges away from the terrarium, pretending he’s not interested. ‘I was waiting for you. To go shooting. Boys’ stuff.’
Don walks over to the drinks trolley and pours himself a whisky, knocking it back in one. ‘Better.’
Above us, I can hear the sound of Mother’s bath taps running.
Teddy jumps up. ‘I’ll go and get ready. Long trousers?’
Don raises his glass. ‘Learning fast.’
I shut the door so Teddy can’t hear, and turn to face him, my arms crossed. ‘You’re trying to get Mother to leave us! Teddy told me.’
‘You, Hera, are a riot.’ He doesn’t even deny it.
‘You can’t tell her what to do!’
‘I assure you no one tells your mother what to do. Apart from that bully your father.’
‘We were happy before you came here.’ My voice quakes. ‘Us and the baby.’
He glances irritably at Baby Forest on the sofa – she’s grumbling and scratching at her cheeks. He looks back at me and his eyes are glinting dangerously, blue as Teddy’s marbles, just as hard. ‘If you were all so happy, why did you lie to your mother, Hera? Hide things from her? Do you want to tell me what you did with my letter?’
My mouth opens and shuts. So Mother was awake that night, as I sat beside her bed in the dark, whispering confidences. The world tips. She must hate me.
He steps closer. ‘And how have you, her fiery disappointment of a daughter, made your mother happy exactly, Hera? Tell me.’ He raises his hand.
I know he’s going to hit me, like he hit Mother. But I refuse to flinch. I ball my fists at my sides, bare my teeth, snarl, ready to fight back. But, to my surprise, he strokes my cheek instead, which is so much worse. ‘Hera, I’ll let you in on a secret.’ He brushes a hank of my growing-out fringe from my face. ‘It was your mother who suggested us running away. Not me.’
The kick is a reflex. I get him in the shin. Then again, between the legs, in the balls. He roars and grabs his crotch. ‘You fat little –’
He barrels towards me with his arms outstretched, like he’s trying to catch a chicken in a yard. But I take refuge behind an armchair. He charges again. I leap behind another. He’s big and slow and clumsy. ‘Call yourself a hunter?’ I tease. The baby gurgles on the sofa, like she’s laughing too.
It happens in slow motion. One second, Don’s panting, hands on his knees, the next he’s swinging at the defenceless target with the full force of his right foot, and all I can hear is the sound of my own voice screaming, ‘No!’
36
Sylvie
‘I’d really like to know what happened next, that’s all,’ Annie says sleepily, as if we’re debating whether to stream the next Netflix episode. ‘Like who died in the woods that day. And why.’
‘Me too.’ I yawn. My jaw pops. The motorway whips past. My eyes are tired, the lights starting to smear. I’m craving the lovely brain blot of an enormous glass of cold white wine. London glows in the distance. Almost home.
‘But I guess it was a long time ago.’ She sighs, with a note of resignation.
‘Very,’ I say firmly, not wanting the forest’s secrets to linger in Annie’s pregnant body, like microscopic fungal spores. I want to nourish her with good things, happy thoughts. So I don’t tell her that a part of me is still walking down Hawkswell’s cobbled damp streets – and the past feels very close indeed. Or that I can smell the forest faintly, every time I move, as if it’s caught in the spirals of my hair, the layers of my skin. Leaf mould. Soil. Resin. Or maybe it’s just that the gutsy little girl who used to climb trees is still in me somewhere, despite me spending a lifetime smothering her in sequins, jumpsuits and Paris-red lipstick. You can’t get much further from a forest than backstage at a fashion show, I realize, with a small smile.
‘Will you go back, Mum?’ Annie asks suddenly. ‘To the forest?’
The direct question takes me by surprise. ‘Well, we’ve got the recording for Granny now,’ I say, not quite answering. I know I will go back. I have to go back. But alone.
I can’t get the woman out of my head. Marge. Something was off about her. ‘She’s the spit …’ she’d said about Annie, and this thought is much more unsettling to me than a corpse in the woods forty-odd years ago.
Whenever I accidentally switch on FaceTime or take a selfie without wearing sunglasses, it’s always a shock, the brutal objective evidence of myself, the older face imprinted on mine, waiting in line for me to look like her. It’s not just that, like most of my fortysomething friends, I balk at any evidence that I’m not thirty-three. (I feel thirty-three!) It’s also the strangers emerging as the years stream past. Generations of unknown women going back through time. The history under my skin. And Annie’s, clearly.
One particular afternoon at middle school. On my knee, a plaster that was so much paler and pinker than my skin, like all plasters were back then. The grainy scoop of the red plastic school chair. And the dreaded approach of the teacher, the one who’d asked the class to draw their family tree. Worse, she leaned over my shoulder, with staffroom coffee breath, and asked who I looked most like. In front of everyone. For a moment my tongue was stuck. There was a roar in my head. And I felt hot and ashamed, like I should confess to something, although I knew I hadn’t done anything wrong. So I said simply, ‘I look like me.’ And I stored the incident – and the teacher’s question – away, unexamined. I never mentioned it to Mum.
But now I kick myself for not asking more questions when I could, rather than hiding behind Mum’s reluctance to talk about a difficult period in her life; and my fear of being hurt, a rejection so fundamental it felt like it might eat me from within, if I gave it too much air time. Our mutual evasion was conspiratorial and extremely effective, I think, as the motorway lane starts to slow, clogging at London’s approach.
‘Listening to woodland sounds will b
e nicer than all those hospital machines beeping anyway,’ Annie says. Her voice sounds weary. I glance across. She’s leaning her head against the window, crushing her thick red hair – whose hair? – against the glass.
I feel a snag of anxiety. Maybe today’s been too much. Was it irresponsible of me to bring her? In my efforts to support Annie – and be more open – have I gone too far? The questions roil in my head. ‘Sleep. Been a long day.’
Annie’s eyes close instantly, and her breathing changes. She looks so young. And I recall how I loved her with such searing intensity when she was asleep as a small child, that fleeting stretch of peace when I could notice the love, let it wrap around me. And I notice it now, just the same.
A minute later, my phone rings. The caller’s mobile number lights up on my dashboard. Not one I recognize. Not the hospital: I live in dread of their bad-news calls. Spam? I won’t answer it. Then it occurs to me it could be Jake. He did ask for my number – I couldn’t think of a good enough reason not to give it to him. Something like that.
I glance at Annie, trying to judge her level of unconsciousness. No. Bad idea. She’d be appalled. I won’t answer it. The man thinks I’m a basket case anyway. ‘Hello?’
‘It’s me. Helen. I’ve got a proposition.’
*
I stand outside Helen’s Chelsea mews house, rallying the courage to press the dashboard of an intercom. Yesterday’s epic drive cranks in my upper vertebrae as I peer up. It’s a doll’s house, smallish – compared to nearby mansions anyway – but perfectly formed with Georgian windows, the sills painted black, the blinds all shut. Three security cameras swivel and blink at me with red eyes. I glance at my watch, self-consciously, feeling observed. Yes, if we’ve got the timing right, Elliot should be arriving at my flat at any moment.
‘I’m going to send him round in a taxi to your apartment for ten,’ Helen instructed, the reason for the call in the car. ‘Perhaps we could sit it out together at mine and discuss future responsibilities.’ This wasn’t a question.
Annie was resistant. ‘He’ll just try to persuade me not to keep the baby, Mum,’ she’d said, crossing her arms across her swollen breasts. I told her to give him a chance. ‘He’s had it already,’ she snapped, tougher than I’ve ever been. How many chances did I give Steve? So many. Too many.
‘It’s me, Sylvie.’ The door opens slowly and Helen’s taut face appears in the gap. Then a small smile. A chain rattles, pulled back. As I step over the threshold, the door slams heavily behind me, and the security locks crunch back into position. ‘Wow,’ I say, peering around goofily. Tardis-like, the petite exterior gives way to a soaring pitched glass roof. ‘Gorgeous house.’
Right thing to say: she looks pleased, and her smile widens, revealing her white teeth. ‘An old artist’s studio. Lucian Freud used to …’ she enthuses, then checks herself, possibly remembering Val’s rather more modest apartment. ‘Well, I like it.’ She eyes my strappy silver sandals approvingly. (I’ve made an effort.) ‘You’ll have a gin and tonic.’ Again, not a question.
I’d had her down as living in a featureless taupe and chrome interior, bland and expensive, like a posh hotel. This is more interesting. She likes modern art. Enormous high-energy abstracts, splashed with red paint, like blood. I wonder if this is what necessitates the high security: panic alarms; CCTV cameras aimed at the glass roof, as if a James Bond baddie might swing down on a rope at any moment.
Although it’s still impossible to imagine Helen slobbing out in front of a box-set in PJs, she’s clearly more relaxed in her own home, wearing a black jumpsuit and kitten heels. On a large velvet ottoman, promisingly, I spot an open bar of dark chocolate. Two squares missing from it. (Who stops at two squares?) I think, I’ll text Mum about that later, then catch myself. It’s just the sort of detail she loves. We’d get a multi-text rally out of it.
‘So I said to Elliot, “Darling, don’t despair. She may yet change her mind,”’ she says companionably, stirring our drinks with a glass cocktail stick. I take the glass obediently, even though it’s far too early in the day for me. It’s the most exquisite cut-crystal goblet I’ve ever seen, like it’s been chipped from stars. I take a tiny polite sip and splutter: it’s one of the strongest gin and tonics I’ve ever tasted.
I smile at her brightly. ‘Ain’t happening. She’s not changing her mind, Helen. Believe me, I know Annie.’
‘Well, she and Elliot will never make it work as a couple. Sadly,’ she says, as an afterthought, not sounding sad at all. She clinks down her glass on a mirrored side table. ‘Elliot can’t be tied down at his age. Nor can Annie. They’ve both got their lives ahead of them.’ She touches my arm. The unexpected contact is like a small electric shock: she’s got such an untouchy-feely aura, a social awkwardness at odds with her privilege. ‘We have to face the facts, Sylvie.’
‘I’m not about to pick my mother-of-the-bride outfit just yet,’ I concede wryly. She fights a smile, the sort that reaches her eyes, which makes me wonder if there’s a warmer, more idiosyncratic Helen beneath the cold, polished surface.
I smile back, heartened. There are worse things than being a teenage single mother, I keep telling myself, when the reality of Annie’s situation makes me bolt upright in bed, as it did this morning, frazzled with panic. There are women who can’t conceive, or who miscarry, as I did, who spend thousands on unsuccessful fertility treatment and would give their right arm to have a new life budding inside them, however off the timing.
‘Well, given that worst-case scenario, we’ll just have to crack on and find a good doula – Chelsea is awash with them – and a nutritionist …’
There’s something almost endearing about Helen’s earnestness. ‘I’ll make sure she doesn’t live off Kettle Chips and blue cheese, don’t worry, Helen.’
Helen frowns. ‘Right. Well, I’ll take control of the baby’s finances then.’
I laugh, disbelieving of her bluntness. But, of course, she can’t help herself. The woman is a control freak. I wonder why I haven’t realized this before. I also feel jealous. I’d love to throw my financial largesse around, not be the grandmother who’s picked apart the family nest at the worst time imaginable. ‘You are, of course, welcome to contribute, Helen, but I will make sure that the baby has everything it needs.’
She looks doubtful, opens her mouth to say something but thinks better of it. She glances at my full drink. ‘Would you prefer a coffee?’
‘If it’s no bother. Sorry, not very good on spirits during the day.’
‘Follow me,’ she says, turning on her heel, a bit put out.
Excited to see more of the house, I follow Helen’s twiggy frame along a narrow hallway, decorated with arty black-and-white photographs. I pause to admire them, and puzzle over what they might be. ‘Palm houses?’
‘Kew! At night!’ She’s unable to hide a passion that suggests I may have stereotyped her – the wealthy walking face-lift – rather too quickly. And something changes between us, ever so slightly, a recalibration of who we both might be.
When we emerge into the kitchen conservatory at the back of the house, the south-facing light is blinding. It takes a moment for my eyes to adjust. I blink. Blink again. And then I see them. Rows of terrariums on a stone plinth, all different shapes and sizes. Dozens of plants held captive, trapped inside glass.
37
Rita
‘Walnut?’ Robbie cracks his fist, shakes away the shell and presses the brain-like nut into Rita’s hand. His gaze locked to hers, he closes her fingers slowly, one by one, each tugging some internal string inside Rita’s body, until she feels tuned to him, like an instrument. ‘More where that came from.’ He nods at the majestic tree hanging over his garden. The firelight streams in his eyes. ‘You won’t starve with me, Miss Rita.’
Rita bites into the walnut, her eyes half closed. Has she ever tasted anything more delicious? Nothing like the stale, bitter nuts she and Nan ate every Christmas, nervously, due to the fragility of Nan’s dentures.
This is a different experience altogether. Eating a walnut in the woods! With a fat gold harvest moon hanging above the trees and a dog at her feet! She’s fallen into a Laura Ingalls Wilder novel, like the ones she read in the local library as a child.
Robbie’s small stone cottage, embraced on all sides by woodland, a fair walk from the road, was once his late parents’, before that his grandparents’, he told her, with simple pride. Inside it’s scruffy but ordered, glossy with age and patina. She could have spent hours poking curiously around in his workshop, a barnlike building that extends into the garden, a treasure trove of planes, lathes, band-saws and grinders, meaty lumps of ash and elm, waiting to be turned into something else, given new life. But it’s one of those perfect summer nights, and the only place to be is in the garden, where they sit on a log next to a spitting fire under an indigo sky, pin-holed with stars. The air is so still that the candles, stuck in empty wine bottles, don’t blow out. Rita’s full of the ham, smoky from being cooked over the fire, tender enough to feather on her fork. And she sloshes with beer when she laughs. Which is often.
‘Are you warm enough?’ Robbie breaks the forest hush, which feels simultaneously intensely private, a silence that only they can inhabit, and excited and alive, like it’s crackling. ‘Here. A blanket.’
‘Thanks.’ Her body absorbs the brush of his fingertips against the back of her neck, the lanolin smell of the wool. She finishes her beer – she’s so pleased he only has beer, not something sweet and fizzy in a silly bottle, as if he knew what she liked – and sneaks a glance at Robbie’s mouth, the cactus stubble on his upper lip. She wishes she could capture just this, exactly as it is, and trap it under glass.
‘Let me.’ Robbie opens a new bottle of beer, chilled from the plastic bucket of ice, and passes it to her, leaning so that she can feel the muscular ridge of his body. His leg meets hers and stays there. Distance closed. She smiles. The dog looks up at them, glancing from one to the other, like a weary chaperone.