by Tammy Cohen
I was surprised at the relief I felt on seeing Frances again. Conviction returned, settling around my shoulders like a warm coat. I was in the right here. My daughter had been damaged by that man. The young woman sitting on the sofa in the soft green sweater dress was proof of that.
Emma was looking flushed and happy and I found myself both grateful to Frances that she had managed to cheer her up, and disappointed with myself that it wasn’t me who’d been able to make her laugh again.
Stupid, I reprimanded myself. To mind, when Em needs all the friends she can get.
‘Any chance of some fresh tea, Em?’ I said, eyeing the teapot with distrust. ‘As opposed to so stewed the spoon stands up on its own.’
I didn’t really want tea, but I needed to speak to Frances alone. Em made a face but, to my relief, she got up and took the teapot back into the kitchen, giving me a chance to update Frances on the events of the afternoon.
‘I can’t believe you did that. Just turned up at his house!’
Frances was leaning towards me, her eyes wide and her whole body rigid.
‘I know. I’m an idiot. You don’t need to tell me. But I wanted to have it out with him. I wanted to look into his eyes when I confronted him about Dotty.’
‘You’re very brave and—’
‘Yeah, I know. Stupid.’
‘I wasn’t going to say that. I actually think it’s amazing what you’re doing for Em. The lengths you’re going to. To protect her. I wish my own mother …’
Her voice tailed off and I instinctively moved over to sit down next to her on the sofa, putting my hand on her knee.
‘It must be very hard, having to be the carer to your own parent. When sometimes you must be desperate for a little bit of looking after yourself.’
Frances’s lovely eyes filled with tears then and she dabbed at them clumsily.
‘She was such a perfect mum before she got ill. Just really warm and supportive of everything I did. I know there are some women who should never be mothers, and that makes me feel so lucky.’
Some women who should never be mothers. For a wild, terrible moment, I thought Frances was referring to me.
Em came in then with a fresh pot of tea and I took my hand off Frances’s knee and made some inane comment about how she’d used the best china. I had snatched at the first thing to say to change the subject and distract attention from Frances’s pink-rimmed eyes, but I could see from the way Em’s face coloured that I’d embarrassed her. I seemed to do that without trying these days.
Frances stayed longer than I’d expected and, though it was a comfort to have her there, it meant I couldn’t get Em on her own to apologize for joking about the china. Then when Frances did finally go home, Em disappeared up to her room to work before I could think of what to say.
I took the cups into the kitchen and washed them by hand, trying not to think about the confrontation with the old lady earlier on. Already, there was a sour taste in my mouth and I realized it had been a mistake.
Back at the table, I took out my phone to watch my parents on webcam, knowing that would make me feel calmer. Instead, I noticed there was an icon flashing to show I’d missed a call.
My heart stopped as I saw the name.
Rosie.
19
I spent the rest of the evening trying to call Rosie back, but she didn’t pick up. In the end, I rang Phil, who sounded irritable. He and Joy were binge-watching a series on Netflix, he told me. It was ‘insanely gripping’.
Insanely gripping. When did the man I was married to for over two decades start sounding like a tabloid film reviewer?
I asked him if he’d heard from Rosie and was surprised when he said she was out.
‘So she’s still at your house? How come she’s not back at uni?’
Phil said she’d gone back to Manchester for a bit after reading week but then returned saying she had an important paper to write and she couldn’t work in her student digs, which she described as ‘party central’. Plus, he thought there might be a new boyfriend on the scene bringing her back here, though she wasn’t admitting to anything.
‘So she’s all right?’ I wanted to be absolutely sure. ‘Because she rang me.’
I couldn’t keep the excitement out of my voice and Phil must have heard because he replied in a warmer tone, ‘That’s great, Tessa. I’m really pleased for you.’
That night I woke as usual in the early hours with the events of the day churning around in my head like a washing machine I couldn’t turn off. The old lady, Frances, Em, Rosie. Not for the first time, I wished I could reach into my head, take out my brain and stash it in the bedside cupboard like I did with loudly ticking alarm clocks. I threw off the duvet, feeling I would spontaneously combust from the heat if I had it on a second longer. But within minutes my feet were freezing cold.
It was so exhausting, all of it. The endless flip-flopping between extremes.
The next morning I tried again to call Rosie. And again.
Eventually, my phone pinged with a text.
Sorry, Mum. Not quite ready for an actual conversation just yet but wanted you to know I’m really sorry about Dotty. I hadn’t even finished reading the first when another pinged in: PS No one blames you.
I sat and stared at my screen for ages, tracing the text with my fingertip. Happiness inflated inside me like a balloon. Rosie didn’t blame me for what had happened to Dotty. And though of course I was disappointed she didn’t want to speak to me, it was a start. The window that had been locked tight for the last six months had just opened up a crack.
I actually managed to work that day, my broken night all but forgotten. I put the finishing touches to the feature about middle-aged women being the new activists. I’d really enjoyed writing it and I was sure it showed. Next, I started putting together a list of articles to pitch to a features editor I’d worked with a few years back and who’d just been appointed to a weekend supplement I’d been trying to get commissioned by without success.
A quick perusal of the papers online sparked some interesting trains of thought and soon I had five strong ideas. I also received an email offering me a week’s holiday cover on Silk, a glossy monthly magazine I’d all but given up hope of working on ever again.
Then I wrote a detailed list of instructions for the new care assistant who’d just joined the agency team that looked after my parents. Even though I knew the others would talk her through what needed doing, it was always as well to have things written out, so there could be no excuses if things didn’t get done. I told her how my mother didn’t like spicy food, and where my dad kept his diabetes medication. I wrote down the practical details of their day in brisk bullet points, and all my contact details, conscious the whole time of what I wasn’t writing: Please be kind to them.
Satisfied with my morning’s work, I spent the afternoon creating a Missing Dog poster. Though I was secretly convinced something terrible had happened to Dotty, it felt important for Em to know we were doing everything we could to find her.
Going through the photos was heartbreaking. We’d taken so many of her as a puppy and it was hard to look at pictures of her sleeping on Phil’s chest as he lay on the sofa watching TV or being rocked in Rosie’s arms like a baby without feeling as if all that was part of some halcyon era that would never come again. There was a video where a small, soft-bellied Dotty ran alongside Em in the park, tripping over her too-big paws, and I had to stop it before the end because I was crying too hard to see the screen. Not just crying for Dotty, but for all of us. That young, hopeful family with everything in front of them.
I bought some clear plastic sleeves to put the posters in from the mini-post office around the corner then walked around the streets between our house and Tesco, attaching them to trees and lampposts with strong tape.
Some time later Em came in, clutching one that she’d found lying face down in the street, having already come loose.
‘These are great, Mum,’ she said, throwing he
r arms around me in a rare spontaneous show of affection. ‘You know, I’m sure she’s around here somewhere. Someone must have untied her as a joke, or else she broke free and somehow she’s got shut up inside someone’s shed, or else someone took her in, thinking she was a stray. We’ll find her, won’t we?’
I nodded, glad that my face was buried in my daughter’s hair so she couldn’t see my expression.
‘Why don’t we watch a film this evening?’ I suggested, wanting to do something to take our minds off everything else that was going on. ‘We could make it a movie night.’
It’s something we used to do a lot when Rosie and Phil were still at home, but we’d let the tradition slide now it was just the two of us. To my quiet joy, Em readily agreed and we assembled all the required elements – a pack of popcorn that had been mouldering in the back of the cupboard for the past year or so, duvets to snuggle under – and settled in on the sofa.
‘I wish …’ said Em, eyeing the space in the middle of us where Dotty would usually have insisted on going.
‘I know.’
I scooted up so that there was no longer any space between us and put my arm around her. She rested her head on my shoulder and I stroked her head, glad to feel that the bumps which had come up like boiled eggs under her scalp after the attack had now smoothed away to nothing and there was a soft fuzz growing in the patches where her hair had fallen out. We watched a thriller. We both agreed within the first ten minutes that it was pretty terrible, but we carried on watching anyway, scooping up handfuls of popcorn from the huge mixing bowl on the coffee table and absently feeding the individual kernels into our mouths one by one.
I’d left my phone in the kitchen and was conscious of it bleeping to show incoming texts, but I didn’t want to disturb this rare, easy interlude. My experience of being a parent was that there was so much drudgery, so much painstaking negotiation and accommodation, so much conflict and onerous resolution, that these moments of closeness, of completely peaceful coexistence, were like tiny lumps of hard-won gold glinting amid the dirt. Each one to be treasured.
As the movie was coming towards its predictable conclusion, there was a long ring on the doorbell which made both of us jump.
My immediate thought was Stephens. My own feelings of guilt had made me try to wipe the encounter with the old lady from my mind, but I knew someone like him would never let that go. I’d gone into his territory, exposing him to his family. Sooner or later I would find out what the punishment would be.
The photograph flashed into my mind of the front of my house. PEEKABOO
Another ring, this time more prolonged. My nerves, already on high alert, now crackled as if electrically charged.
‘Aren’t you going to answer it?’
I nodded at Em and attempted a reassuring smile, which tightened into a grimace.
There was a dark shape silhouetted behind the opaque glass panels of the door. I stepped on to the doormat and hesitated.
‘Yes? Who is it?’
My voice was small and squeaky.
‘It’s Phil. For fuck’s sake, Tess, I’ve been calling you all night. Can you just let me in, please?’
I opened the door to find him glaring at me, as if it were my fault he was on my doorstep at half past ten on a Friday evening. He was wearing the sweat pants he used to change into when he came home from work. ‘Just getting into my lee-zure-wear,’ he’d drawl in a cod-American accent. I felt a pang of regret for the me who’d rolled my eyes behind his back, secure enough in my marriage to be utterly dismissive of his tired old jokes.
Phil seemed surprised to see Em there on the sofa, snuggled under her duvet, surrounded by the evidence of a movie night, and I couldn’t help a rush of satisfaction at the cosy domestic scene he’d just interrupted. Let him see what he was missing.
But my satisfaction was short-lived.
‘Can I have a quick word in the kitchen?’
I locked eyes with Em, saw her eyebrows rise.
‘Sure.’
‘Don’t worry about me,’ said Em, standing up to gather her things. ‘I’ve got to work anyway. So you two can have your quick word in peace.’
After she’d gone Phil reached into his jacket pocket (a jacket I’d bought him several years back, I couldn’t help noticing) and withdrew an envelope on which his name and studio address appeared neatly typed.
‘This arrived this morning. No postmark. Read it.’
‘What does it say?’
‘Just read it.’
The letter was typed and unsigned.
Mr Hopwood. You need to know that your ex-wife is an unfit mother. She made your daughter an easy target by letting her come home alone and then she left your dog outside a shop for anyone to take. Are you going to risk something worse happening???
‘That’s ridiculous.’
Fear squeezed my voice out of me in lumps like old toothpaste.
‘There’s more.’
Phil reached again into his jacket pocket and withdrew a photograph, which he handed to me in stern-faced silence.
At first I couldn’t work out what relevance this picture of an urban street had to me, then I recognized the outside of the pub on Bounds Green Road, and finally I saw myself. In the window of the pub, drinking on my own, with two empty glasses and two small bottles of tonic in front of me. There was a time printed on the side of the photograph: 16.45. And yesterday’s date next to it.
‘I thought you’d learned,’ said Phil. ‘After what happened with Rosie.’
‘I have. That photo doesn’t show anything. I was having a sparkling water. That’s all. While I was waiting for Nita.’ The lie came out before I’d even thought about it. ‘Those empty glasses are from the woman who was sitting there before.’
‘Oh, come off it. Do you think I’m stupid? You’re getting pissed on your own in the middle of the day while our daughter is at school. Are you really going to tell me that’s acceptable?’
The combination of the sanctimoniousness of that ‘acceptable’ and my frustration over not being believed, plus my need to shut him down before he brought up the whole Rosie thing again made me react with fury.
‘So that’s it? You’re going to take the word of some anonymous busybody over the woman you were married to for twenty-five years?’
‘Twenty-two, actually. And I’m not taking anyone’s word. That’s why I came round here. So you could have a chance to put your own side of things. But frankly, Tess, I’m worried. First Em gets attacked and she can’t even wake you up, then you lose the dog. Now this. You know, I really hoped we were all getting back to normal. Putting the past bad feeling behind us. Rosie has mentioned you two building bridges. But now I’m really not so sure. Who would have sent this?’
‘I don’t know. Someone with an axe to grind. Someone who wants to turn my children against me. Have you asked your precious Joy if she knows anything about it?’
It was a low blow and undeserved. Of course, I had a very good idea who’d really sent that letter, but my own abject terror at the thought of losing Emma made me lash out.
The effect on Phil was instant. His face closed up like a fist.
‘You know, Tessa, all I want is for our family to heal and move on in a healthy way. Believe it or not, I carry a lot of guilt for what I did. I want to believe the best of you. But make no mistake, if I believe you’re acting in a way that undermines our daughters’ interests, I will take action.’
‘Dick!’ I said as he walked away, louder than I’d intended.
After Phil had gone I sat at the kitchen table, shaking. Only one person hated me enough to do something so vindictive. I’d known Stephens would retaliate for what I’d said to his grandmother. But this?
She must have telephoned him as soon as I’d left his house. Perhaps he’d already been on his way home, or maybe he was just working nearby. I imagined him following me as I made my way along Bounds Green Road. Then standing outside watching me through the pub window. Taking the photo
then going home to work out how to inflict maximum damage.
Stephens had already discovered my identity on Facebook. Though my posts and photographs were set to private, my relationship status was visible to everyone, so he’d have seen I was divorced. He’d also have been able to go through my friends list, also public, and Emma’s and Rosie’s, which meant he could easily have worked out that Phil Hopwood was my ex.
I got out my phone and clicked on Phil’s profile. He’d always been so scathing of social media when we were together, adopting Facebook only to keep in touch with scattered uni friends while still roundly decrying its sinister qualities, but since he’d been with Joy all that had changed. Now there were almost daily updates that pinpointed his exact location on a map and arty photographs of sunsets and footprints in the snow.
My heart sank as I clicked on the ‘about’ section of his profile and saw that he’d dutifully listed his occupation as sound editor under ‘current career’. ‘So much for your sodding principles,’ I muttered under my breath.
My fingers were unsteady as I typed ‘Phil Hopwood sound editor’ into Google, and I had to input the last word twice to get the right spelling. The very first result was from Companies House, giving the address of his studio. The studio through whose letterbox that vile letter had dropped earlier that day.
I’d considered myself a private sort of person. But now it transpired that every detail of my life was laid bare for the picking.
20
Leave my family alone or you’ll be sorry. You’re a monster.
When I fought my way out of a fitful sleep the next morning I didn’t remember writing the message at first. Then, when the memory came to me, it had a nebulous quality, as if it might have been part of a dream.
So when I checked Stephens’s Facebook DJ page, I wasn’t completely sure I’d find anything. But there it was. To be honest, I was surprised the post was still up but, after the initial jolt of shock, I found I didn’t regret writing that message. Sure, it was part-fuelled by fury with Phil for his high-handed reaction, and with myself for everything I’d so carelessly given away online. But he was a monster. I wasn’t proud of upsetting his grandmother, but it was his actions, his attempt to drag my daughter down a dark street simply because he felt he was entitled, without any thought for what it might do to her, and then his ruthless efforts to scare me off, that had driven me to it. He’d proved himself a danger to everyone around him.