by Rosie Price
But when she opened the door, it was not Kate but her nephew who stood there, backpack slung over one shoulder, listening to his music. He pulled out an earphone as she opened the door.
“Lewis,” Zara said. “William isn’t here.”
“That’s OK,” Lewis said. “I didn’t call ahead, but, I was passing through…”
Zara allowed a moment to pass in case Lewis managed to take the hint and excuse himself, but he did not, so she stepped to one side to welcome him into her home.
Lewis sat at the kitchen table, as he had always done as a child, little legs swinging off the side of the chair while Zara made him hot milk with honey and cinnamon, except that his two big feet were planted firmly on the tiled floor, across which Titus skidded to greet him, and Zara was heating coffee on the stove instead of milk, standing with her back to him. He looked like he’d put on weight.
“I can’t think of you as Dr. Rippon, I’m afraid,” Zara said. “Just makes me think of William. Not to mention how terrifying it is to imagine some poor patient putting their life in your hands. If ever I fall sick, promise me you won’t come near me.”
“They wouldn’t let me anyway, conflict of interest.”
Zara thought that he was being unusually friendly as she sat with him at the table. But then, she had begun her voluntary self-banishment nearly six weeks ago now, so perhaps even a conversation with her monosyllabic nephew was enough to stimulate a bounteous sense of warm fellow feeling.
“I’m sure you’re very good,” she said to Lewis, patting the back of his hand. She’d forgotten how much fun he was to patronize. “Is it near here, your current hospital?”
Lewis nodded, moving his hand away from hers. “St. Mary’s. Paddington.”
“Oh, yes, yes, William trained at St. Mary’s. And I had Nicole there. She was delivered by a doctor called Moses, can you believe it? The Red Sea indeed.”
“Right,” said Lewis, who was not comfortable with such imagery. They talked a little longer about nothing in particular. Zara sensed that there was something he wanted to say to her, but instead of pushing him she waited for him to meet her with it. “No, yeah, there was something I wanted to mention to you, actually, now that I’m here.”
“Oh, yes?” Zara said.
“It’s a bit sensitive,” said Lewis.
“I’m listening.”
“It’s about the house,” Lewis said. “The house in Bisley. I want to ask you about it. I don’t know if you know but my dad wants to sell.”
Zara raised an eyebrow. “Oh, yes?” she said again.
“I think it’s a mistake. I’ve tried to tell him, but he thinks I don’t know anything about property or money or business.”
“And you want me to talk to him?” said Zara.
Lewis shrugged. “If you want,” he said.
“I don’t know what to tell you, Lewis. There isn’t quite as much in the pot as you might think, and that house is a mess. It’s a money pit, rotten roof, crumbling walls. It’s between your father and William, and I wouldn’t be surprised if they have to sell.” In Lewis’s face now Zara saw the sullen boy he had once been: sensitive, easily wounded, burdened by the expectations of a father who had always asked too much but had given too little. She softened. “As it happens, William doesn’t want it going on the market either. Something sentimental, which I’m afraid I can’t quite understand. Perhaps I’m too used to being a nomad,” she said.
“It just stands for so much,” Lewis said, “it’s been in the family for nearly a century. I think it’s ridiculous that he wants to sell. And, you know, it meant such a lot to Bernadette.”
Zara flashed him a glance. It was possible that Lewis didn’t know what his grandmother had done to her will before she died. Either way, it was clear he thought that he could manipulate her by invoking Bernadette’s memory.
“Sentimentality won’t get you very far, I’m afraid, if the house really is in the state they say it’s in,” she said. “I will talk to William, but I won’t promise anything; in fact I happen to agree with your father. But I’ll talk to him.”
Lewis was relieved, nonetheless, by this half promise. “Appreciate that,” he said. He stayed a little longer out of courtesy, and Zara asked him again about the hospital. Lewis told her about the deadweight medical students, about the stress of being expected to keep track of an entire ward at once, and about the thrill he’d had, the first time he’d been in the operating theater. He didn’t ask her whether she was working, and she didn’t volunteer anything about the film. When Lewis finished his coffee he stood up and she walked him to the hallway. At the front door, he glanced up the staircase, like he was checking to see if anybody else was there.
“They’ve all gone,” Zara said, “fled the nest. Just me here now. And Titus, keeping guard.”
Titus growled from the other end of the hallway. Lewis looked back down at his aunt.
“I should come by again,” he said. He was half turned away from her, his hand pressed against the door. “I’m working shifts at the moment, so I don’t always have much on in the day.”
Zara reached past him and twisted the latch. “It’s a devil, this door,” she said. “Always sticks.” She put her hands on his shoulders now and kissed him on both cheeks. “You must come again,” she said and opened the door.
After he left, Zara went back up to the living room and switched off the television, then went upstairs to her office, where she swept her discarded notes into the bin and opened the attic window above her desk. She turned her notes to the scene she’d been stuck on and began to write.
33
When Kate had phoned Zara, she had been on her way to meet Andrew after work. She’d found a regular job on a panel show, which paid the bills but provided little creative stimulation. The work was repetitive: lifting, arranging, tidying, buying coffee for the crew. Occasionally she was tasked with more unusual, last-minute jobs: once driving a van to New Covent Garden Market to collect three fake palm trees and a pineapple plant, and another time negotiating an insurance quote on a hired tortoise. What she liked more than any of this was the building work. She liked to be left alone with the satisfaction of measuring and fitting panels, smoothing joins, the smell of sanded wood and varnish: all of this while knowing that a few days later she would be taking a hammer to whatever it was she had created.
“I like this,” Kate’s new set manager had said before she left that day. He was notoriously cantankerous, and she’d been staying out of his way; this was the first time he’d said more than two words to her. Now, though, he ran his hands over the top of the cabinet she’d been sanding. “You don’t ask too many questions, do you? You just get the fuck on with it. We need to work together more.”
Kate had hidden her smile and shrugged, which she felt was in keeping with her assigned identity as a diligent but quiet worker. She’d left Zara her message, only faltering slightly, just before she got on the Tube, hanging up as she descended the stairs to the ticket hall.
She met Andrew in the foyer of Covent Garden Odeon, where he was already queueing for popcorn: he hated being late. They were here to see a film Andrew had worked on last year, and Kate was excited. But, as the adverts began, she made the mistake of leaning over and whispering in his ear that she would be disappointed if he didn’t get a screen credit. He glanced at her, shook his head, and reached into his backpack and took out a scrap of paper and pen.
“Questions afterward,” he said sternly, smoothing out the paper and passing it to her, then turning back to the screen. As soon as it became clear that he wasn’t joking, Kate made sure she paid careful attention to the film, particularly the scenes she knew he’d been involved in, in case he asked her about any of it.
“Is there going to be a test, as well?” she said, as they left the cinema.
“No,” said Andrew. But she could tell that h
e was thinking about it. She liked the fact that he cared so much; it made him vulnerable, because it meant that he had things to fear, things to lose. This was a person she could trust, and she wanted to earn his trust in return, to give him the best of herself.
* * *
—
In late September, Max insisted on cooking dinner for Kate, and when they’d finished their meal, he told her that he was planning on moving back to Latimer Crescent.
“Obviously you can stay if you like,” he said. “I’m sure Nicole won’t mind. But she’ll definitely understand if you want to leave, too. Definitely.”
His reasoning, he told her, was mostly financial. He was taking his business seriously, and he had to free up money to put behind it.
“Mum’s going to be away filming for the next few months, so somebody needs to look after Titus. And, well, if I want to make a go of it—the business—I’ve got to make some sacrifices, just for a while. I’m throwing money down the drain being here.”
Throughout this conversation, Kate kept glancing to the magnetic strip attached to the wall above the draining board and the new set of Avalon kitchen knives, silver-handled and freshly sharpened. Nicole had bought them recently, announcing that she was going to learn how to cook, before Elias came over and started playing with them, throwing them from a few feet away against the metal strip to see if he could land them blade-flat. Kate knew that they were sharp because Elias was a bad shot, and one or two of the knives had landed, tip first and handle quivering, in the kitchen’s oak floorboards though thrown with only a little force. And she had tested the smallest knife later, pushing her finger against it until it slipped through her skin and a bead of blood appeared on its tip.
“Will you be all right, without me?” Max said. Kate realized he was studying her expression; that she must have appeared vacant.
“I’ll be fine, of course I will. I think it’s good. I think it’s a good idea. Definitely if Titus needs looking after.”
She had intended this last point lightly, but in her ears her voice sounded strained. Max, though, didn’t appear to pick up any tension.
“Poor Titus—he needs all the help he can get,” he said, then: “I’ll miss you.”
“You too,” Kate said. “But you’re not going far.” She was placating him, telling him what he wanted to hear, and she did not listen as Max continued speaking—it wouldn’t be immediate, he told her, a month or so at least—she paid careful attention to the slow progression of panic throughout her body. He was leaving, she would be left here with Nicole, Nicole and one of her friends; perhaps it would be Lewis who decided to move in, or else it could be another man, another threat to negotiate. She knew that she had to leave as soon as possible.
When Max went to bed, she thought about calling Andrew. She got out her phone, looked for a moment at his name in her contacts. He’d told her she should call whenever she needed, but she wanted to deal with this on her own. So she locked her phone and instead walked to the metal strip above the draining board and undid her jeans, slipping them over her hips. She chose her knife and tested it firmly against her finger, and then against the flesh just below her hip, in one of the spaces of white skin that was not already latticed, and she pushed in the tip and drew it quickly across the top of her thigh. In a single straight line the skin went white, a canyon in flesh, before a line of bright red blood rushed to fill the cut she had just created, and as the blood rushed to the surface of her skin she was euphoric, exhaling loudly, triumphant.
The blade was sharper than she had realized, though. A cut like this she would have expected to be stemmed with a single tissue and a carefully applied plaster, but quickly the blood began to gather and to drip into her jeans, and she reached with one hand for the kitchen roll while holding another hand over the gash. The white towel was soon saturated, and then, as the adrenaline ebbed away, came the pain.
After pain, as always, there was again panic: the fear that she had gone too far, that Max would have forgotten something and come back into the kitchen, the fear that the blood would seep uncontrollably from the self-inflicted wound. Usually, this was part of the pleasure; the added adrenaline derived from the power of containment, of concealing something so potentially destructive. She especially liked to cut in places where there was a risk of being discovered; in a quasi-public place, or in a room like this, whose back windows were almost level with the backs of other houses.
Today, though, she had perhaps taken too great a risk: from downstairs came the sound of a key fumbling in the front lock and of Nicole speaking loudly to somebody on the other end of the phone. Quickly, as the landing lights were switched on, Kate shoved the kitchen towel down the front of her jeans and refastened them over it. The pressure sent a dull pain through the top of her thigh to her bone, and she shifted her leg so that the denim was as loose as it could possibly be over it. She had been cheated of the full pleasure of watching her cut open, but she also knew that had Nicole not interrupted her, she would have gone on to repeat her ritual with more force but less satisfaction. She turned to face the sink and started to fill a glass of water.
Nicole came into the kitchen, still talking on the phone, and smiled at Kate when she saw her standing there. She was holding a parcel, which looked like a shoebox, under one arm and a shopping bag under the other. Kate did not listen to what she was saying, but moved away from the sink and away from the incriminating metal strip, and pretended to read something on her phone. Her leg ached as she walked. The depth of the ache told her that this would take a while to heal, that it was inevitable that Andrew would see what she had done, and the thought of his disappointment filled her with sadness. She wished she was not so weak.
Nicole put her parcel on the table and went to the sink, where she picked up the knife, the same knife Kate had just held, and without inspecting it, thrust it blade first into the top of the box, sliding it toward her to slice through the packing. She put the knife in the sink and pulled out the chair at the table, getting herself settled in, and Kate went to her room. She lay there, her hand pressing on the top of her leg, waiting for the sound of Nicole leaving the kitchen so that she could go back up and check the blade of the knife and wash it, put it back where she had taken it from, but she must have fallen asleep because she woke in the morning with the kitchen paper stuck with dried blood to her thigh, and when she went back into the kitchen she saw that the knife had been cleaned and put back in its place.
34
Kate didn’t eat anything that morning. The combination of the pain in her upper thigh and the guilt in her stomach was making her feel sick, so she drank a glass of water and sat on the floor of the shower, peeling the remains of the blood-soaked kitchen towel from the cut. She washed it, swearing as she scalded herself, and then put a plaster over it. The plaster was barely enough to cover the incision which, as well as being deeper, was far longer than she had intended, and when she put her jeans on she could feel her flesh sticking to the fabric. She left early for work, before anybody else had woken up. Taking the bus would only make her feel more nauseous, so she walked. Andrew was still in bed when she phoned him, but she called twice to make sure she woke him up.
“Bad news,” she said, “I’m homeless.”
Andrew, who was not easily fooled by Kate’s false levity, sounded immediately sharper.
“What happened?”
“Max is moving home,” Kate said. “And I don’t want to stay at the flat without him.”
“Shit. I’m sorry.”
“Yeah, me too. He told me last night.” Kate exhaled. She was beginning to feel calm.
“Do you want to stay with me?” Andrew said before adding: “Until you find somewhere, I mean. Shona won’t mind.”
“Oh,” said Kate, “no. It’s fine. I’ll find somewhere.”
She didn’t want him to think that she had called to invite herself to live
with him, even if the thought that he might offer had been somewhere in the back of her mind. But now Andrew had censored himself she was too proud even to accept his invitation to stay temporarily.
“It’s there, if you need it,” Andrew said. Kate could hear his covers moving on the other end of the phone. His wide bed, his warm body, had felt so far away last night. “When are you coming to see me? I miss you.”
“Soon,” Kate said.
When she rang off, she felt foolish for having cut: for having buckled, in that moment of weakness, for having created such a permanent relic of what had only been a temporary state of mind. At lunchtime, she texted Claire. The first message she drafted consisted mostly of platitudes and excuses—they hadn’t spoken properly for more than a month—but she deleted this and instead wrote: I need a new flatmate. Time to move to London? About ten minutes later, Claire phoned. She’d broken up with Alex two weeks earlier, and on the condition that they found a flat without rats, she would love nothing more than to live in any city where he wasn’t.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” Kate said.
“I would have, but I know you’re busy.”
“I’m really sorry,” Kate said: she meant it.
* * *
—
On their last night in the flat together, Max and Kate sat out on the balcony to smoke, with a bottle of wine kept cold by the chill of the air. Max was wearing a Puffa coat and Kate had her hood up, a blanket wrapped around her knees.
“Do you think this is the beginning of the rest of our lives?” Max said now. “And when we’re rich and famous we’ll reminisce about our days living in squalor?”
“I mean, this place is hardly squalid,” Kate said.
“OK. But this is a new beginning.”
“Maybe,” Kate said.
“No? I feel…” Max paused. “I feel like something has shifted, for you. Like you’re beginning to put all that stuff behind you.”