by Lucy Dawson
‘“Ooooh, sorry!” giggled Izzie. Tim’s mum looked like she wanted to jump in and slap her.
‘“What’s going on?” Tim’s dad appeared on the patio.
‘“What does it look like?” Mrs Vaughan swung round on him accusatively. “They’re all several sheets to the wind. They could have drowned! You weren’t aware of any of this?”
‘Mr Vaughan eyed the empty wine bottle on the grass and the beer bottles lolling next to it. “I was in my study, working. For God’s sake, Timothy!” He looked furious. “Have a little common sense.”
‘I don’t know if he meant not to leave the evidence lying around, or perhaps he only expected us to have one bottle of beer each, but before Tim could answer, Isobel swam over to the steps and attempted to get out; placing a foot, unsteadily, on the first rung. She managed it and hauled herself out of the water, only to slip forward, banging her head on the metal handrail and falling back into the water with a splash. Mrs Vaughan gasped and we lunged towards her but Mr Vaughan was already there, calmly kneeling down on the wet paving, offering her his hand as she re-emerged, coughing and spluttering. She shrank back from him and started crying.
‘“It’s all right,” he said kindly, “we’ve all been tipsy and embarrassed at least once in our lives. Take my hand and get out of the pool or I’ll have to jump in and haul you out myself, which really will be mortifying. Come on!”
‘She gave in and he practically landed her on the side like a lifeless fish; her silver swimsuit glittering in the sun against her white skin. He had to pick her up in his arms, getting soaking wet himself, because she’d gone all floppy and was still sobbing and holding her head. He laid her down on a lounger. “You let her drink that whole thing?” he asked Tim, pointing at the wine bottle. “You silly idiot!”
‘“When I asked you to take her out, Timothy, I did not mean get her dangerously intoxicated in our swimming pool. Oh my God!” Mrs Vaughan wrinkled her nose in disgust as Izzie, who had sat up, started to be sick on the grass.
‘“You don’t have anything you want to add to this, Dad?” Tim said, standing ramrod straight like a private on parade. I thought that was brave of him, challenging his dad to admit that he had given us the drink in the first place.
‘“Only that I’m very disappointed,” his father said. “Not the actions of gentlemen, I’m afraid chaps.” He looked at us both regretfully. “Poor show. Very poor show indeed.”
‘Tim stood up a little straighter, a hot flush of humiliation spreading around his neck and jaw. I looked at my feet.
‘“I’ll take her home now,” his father sighed. “Explain to Eve how she’s wound up in this state.” He began to walk towards Izzie.
‘“No, thank you,” Mrs Vaughan said quickly. “I’ll do it.”
‘“It’s no problem, Susie. You’ve just got home.” He patted his pockets for his car keys.
‘“I said I’ll take her back – and Timothy, you can jolly well come with me and explain yourself.”
‘“That’s no problem. Mrs Parkes will understand. She knows I’m not like that. She won’t mind and she won’t become all hysterical either.” Tim glared at his mum. “She’s cool.”
‘“Really?” Mrs Vaughan’s voice became icy-cold. “Well if she’s that marvellous, you won’t want to come home here tonight, will you? She can worry about you all, take you off my hands. Go on,” she jerked her head in the direction of the house, “pack a bag.”
‘“You’re chucking me out?” Tim was incredulous.
‘Mrs Vaughan was so angry she was shaking. “I wouldn’t dream of making you suffer me a moment longer, so yes, you should absolutely feel free to leave.”’
I can practically hear Susannah voicing hurt words really intended for Tony rather than her son. I also understand that because he obviously sees Eve as a surrogate mother figure, Adam is probably far from Tony’s number one fan either – I expect he knows exactly what happened and why it all ended, too. Nonetheless, I’d feel disloyal overtly acknowledging their affair with him, so I don’t say a thing and an uncomfortable silence follows.
‘Anyway,’ Adam says eventually, ‘all water under the bridge now.’ He picks up the box again. ‘Good night, Claire.’
‘You’ve done very well indeed,’ says Susannah, as we all sit around the kitchen table eating fish and chips. ‘Congratulations on your first meal in your new house!’ She raises a plastic beaker – I haven’t unpacked glasses yet – and we all lift ours too. I even cheer with an enthusiasm I wish I really felt.
‘Obviously I’ll keep it oblique and not go into detail – but I’m so pleased that Father Mathew helped earlier.’ Susannah delicately cuts her fish. ‘Isn’t he a nice man?’
‘He mentioned he was a former Anglican,’ Tim says.
‘Which means he’s joined the Pope franchise because he doesn’t want women bishops.’ Tony forks up a chip.
‘Nobody’s perfect, Antony,’ Susannah smiles, and Tony sits back and shakes his head in disbelief.
I’m pretty stunned to hear that too. Susannah is a fierce advocate for women’s rights. If that’s true, how is she OK with that?
‘The point is, you are all finally in your new home,’ she says firmly. ‘What do you think of your new bedroom, Rosie?’
‘It says my name on the wall,’ Rosie announces proudly. ‘I really like it, but Mummy,’ she turns to me, ‘can you stay with me in there tonight? I just feel a bit… funny.’
I reach out to her and she slips from the table and into my arms. ‘It’s just because it’s a new house.’ I kiss her head. ‘It’ll take a bit of getting used to, but of course I’ll stay with you. New rooms can make you feel a bit strange, but it’s nothing to worry about, I promise. I’ll get the airbed out though, because your bed definitely isn’t big enough for both of us.’ I wink at her, and she smiles with relief.
‘You’re really tired though,’ Tim says quickly. ‘I’ll do it so you can get some kip. Rosie won’t mind if it’s me instead, will you, Ro?’
Does he just not want to sleep on his own? I watch him carefully as he smiles at me. Perhaps he’s just being nice though. He does seem much more relaxed.
In the event, it’s much later than her usual bedtime once she’s finally tucked up, sleepy and on the verge of drifting off. I stroke her head and whisper the words I always say.
‘Go to sleep, sweetheart. Mummy’s here. You’re safe and I’m not going to let anything happen to you.’
I wait until her body softens and her breathing slows and deepens, then creep back out onto the landing. Tim is already upstairs in our bedroom, in bed and reading a book.
‘You’re not going to watch some TV?’ I ask, surprised.
He shakes his head. ‘Too tired. Thought I’d just come up.’ His smile is a little nervous now.
‘Me too. I’m absolutely knackered.’ I peel off my socks and chuck them in the corner of the room by the door. ‘Are you all right?’
‘Fine, thanks,’ he says brightly, watching me unhook my bra and put it away in the drawer, before reaching for a T-shirt to sleep in. ‘Did you manage to catch Adam to thank him?’
‘Yes, I did.’ To my irritation, I feel myself blush as the T-shirt slips over my head.
I watch him notice, before he returns to his book. ‘Do you want to start off with Rosie and come and find me to swap over later, or shall I just go in there now?’ He doesn’t look up from the pages.
‘I’ll start off there and, unless I wake up, I won’t disturb you.’ I walk over and kiss him good night. ‘But you know where I am if you need me, OK?’
As I walk out of the room I glance back to see he’s turned onto one side and is huddled in the foetal position, gripping the pages of his book tightly, like a little boy in a dorm all over again, too afraid to turn the light off.
Twenty
Eve
‘I need you to give me the scarf and the clip!’ Isobel shouts, her hands clenched into small, tight fists, as she sits up in bed in her
nightie, the duvet tucked round her middle.
‘Darling, that’s enough,’ I say in my best calm voice. ‘These weren’t yours to take in the first place and you know that. They belong to Claire and Rosie, don’t they?’
She hesitates, then nods.
‘Did you take them from the house last night, while I was getting cross with Claire? After I fell over?’
She folds her arms and refuses to answer me.
‘I found them in Adam’s bag when we got home and thought he’d stolen them. He’s now very angry with me and I don’t blame him. He explained he actually took them away from you, didn’t he?’
Still, she says nothing, just thumps back onto the mattress and pillow crossly, so she’s lying down and looking up out of the dark skylight at the thick cloud – there are no stars tonight.
I sigh deeply. ‘What is it that you want to do with them? And tell me the truth.’ She says nothing and I shrug. ‘Fine. You’re not having them until I get an answer.’
She glares at me silently. I can see her getting angrier and angrier until eventually she shrieks aloud in frustration, kicks the duvet away, leaps up and snatching a teddy from the shelves, flings it violently across the room in temper. The hard glass nose scratches down the en-suite door, and I inwardly count to ten. She could be a toddler again right now, although when she actually was, I don’t ever remember her behaving this appallingly. She could always be distracted or cajoled; Michael was particularly good at both. He understood her far better than I often feel I do. She glowers, waiting for a reaction, and when none is forthcoming, stamps her foot so hard with frustration that the room shakes.
‘I said that’s enough!’ I repeat sharply, aware that we now have neighbours the other side of the paper-thin, new-build walls who can probably hear everything. ‘I will simply throw them away if you behave like this.’
‘You don’t understand!’ she wails, by turns a teenager despairing of her aged, out-of-touch parent not allowing make-up to be worn to school. I only wish this situation were that uncomplicated. ‘I can’t tell you – you won’t get it!’
‘Try me,’ I insist.
She throws her hands up and flings herself face down on the bed this time, so that her voice is muffled. ‘You say this, Mum, but you won’t. You get frightened and you just overreact.’
‘I will keep an open mind, I promise.’
‘OK, then yes – I want to make two dolls using them.’ She rolls onto her side suddenly and points at the scarf and the clip in my hands, then looks at me, waiting for my reaction. ‘You see? I TOLD you! You’re immediately thinking this is a bad thing. You’re worried already.’
‘I’m not, actually,’ I lie, ‘it’s half past ten on Friday night and I’d just quite like to go to bed too.’
‘Then GO!’ she says through gritted teeth. ‘No one is stopping you.’
‘I’d like you to get some rest as well,’ I say pointedly. ‘Rather than making all of this fuss and then sitting up making horrid little dolls.’
Her eyebrows flicker. ‘Horrid little dolls?’ She repeats instantly and sits up again. ‘Why are they horrid?’
‘Oh come on, Izzie!’ I’m starting to lose my own patience now. ‘Everyone knows what a voodoo doll is!’
‘I’m talking about poppets – they make good things happen – and sometimes they prevent harm. Did you ever stop to think I might be going to use them to help keep Rosie and Claire safe?’
‘How!’ I practically shout. ‘How is making an effigy of someone from one of their stolen belongings keeping them safe? It’s all a load of complete… rubbish!’ I’m trying so very hard not to swear, not to lose control. I can feel myself failing. I’d like to throw something now. Instead, I sink down, exhausted, into the faded old armchair in the corner of her room; one of the first items of furniture I proudly bought after Michael and I married. I should throw it out really, the springs are finally going and I can see Izzie has been picking at the loose threads on the arm that I asked her to leave alone. She’s made an un-mendable hole out of which the horsehair is now escaping, but replace it with what? Furniture these days isn’t built to last. ‘You are wasting your life on completely made-up twaddle!’ I tell Izzie as calmly as I can manage.
‘Well then if it’s made up, not real and not going to do anything, why can’t you just give me the scarf and the clip anyway?’ she reasons triumphantly. ‘You can’t have it both ways, Mum.’
‘Tell me what you would do, if you were me,’ I say suddenly. ‘I’ve just come upstairs to find you standing in my bedroom, in the dark, watching Tim, Claire and Rosie moving around in our old house. That makes me feel so sad, Isobel. I can’t even tell you.’
She was lurking by the curtains when I discovered her; an oversized Victorian child looking longingly out of the nursery window at the big children playing, wearing only her long nightdress but incongruously holding binoculars. I could see the lenses were trained on the lit-up rooms of Fox Cottage, and as I glanced across the hard, icy fields, through the hedges and spindly bare branches of the trees on the boundary of our old garden, I had to concede the house looked almost cosy. It reminded me of the Brambly Hedge illustrations in Isobel’s favourite: Winter Story. She has always liked the bit where the snow starts to fall and all of the mice must rush back to their tree trunk homes, little lights flickering along the hedgerow.
‘It’s not a normal thing to do, Isobel – to spy on people like that,’ I remind her. ‘Where did you even get those binoculars from?’
‘A friend,’ she says sulkily. ‘I just borrowed them, that’s all. I’ll give them back.’
I decide to let that one go. ‘Why were you watching the Vaughans? What were you hoping to see?’
‘I wanted to know who was in the house. If they were all there.’
‘But why?’ My confusion starts to give way to worry. ‘Isobel – you’re to stay away from Fox Cottage – do you hear me? You are not to go there again. Whatever it is you’re up to – it’s to stop.’
She hesitates, and then she repeats what she said to Timothy on our doorstep last night. ‘That house is dangerous. They need protecting. Why don’t you trust me, Mummy?’
‘Don’t,’ I say warningly. ‘Don’t “Mummy” me when it suits you.’
‘I’m not,’ she insists. ‘I know I made a mistake bringing Tim back here, but—’
‘You do not have any control over anybody, Isobel!’ I slap my hand down on the tired old chair arm hard enough for a small puff of dust to cloud into the air, close enough to my face to make me cough and splutter. ‘For the last time, you did not bring him back here!’
‘OK, so I didn’t.’ She gestures helplessly. ‘If that’s what you believe, that’s up to you, but all I’m trying to do now, is put it right again. I thought Tim understood, but I can see he doesn’t, so now this is something I need to do. They have to leave that house. Please, give me the scarf and the clip.’ She holds out her small hand. ‘I need to make the dolls.’
‘No – you need to stay away from that family!’ I finally lose my temper. ‘You know what? Have them then, if you won’t listen to me!’ I fling the clip and scarf meanly at her. ‘In fact—’ I jump up, clatter downstairs into my bedroom, yank open my knicker drawer and pull out the red doll, before puffing back up to her room and shoving it in her face. ‘Have this too!’
She gasps. ‘I knew you had it! What’s happened to him?’ She puts the scarf and clip down on the duvet next to her and puts her hand over her mouth as she looks at the doll and then up at me incredulously. ‘Did you do this?’ she points at the hole in the stitching and the doll’s collapsed face. ‘No wonder Tim doesn’t understand me. He must be in such pain!’
‘Oh sweet Jesus,’ I whisper, looking in total despair at the ceiling, ‘it’s a bloody doll, Isobel!’
‘Mummy, what have you done?’ She doesn’t hear me. Her expression is one of dismay and deep disappointment. I half expect her to say the words I’ve used myself in a million classes
over the years: you’ve let me down… but most of all – you’ve let yourself down.
I can’t bear it any more. I rush out, and once back in my own bedroom, throw myself down on the bed and thump the pillow in frustration, at an absolute loss as to what I do next. I wish Michael were here.
But it’s just me.
I stare up at the ceiling and try to think. I know from experience that an out-of-hours intervention involves calling the crisis team. Unless Isobel poses immediate harm to others or herself – which I can’t prove – they won’t action anything. What exactly are you supposed to do when your child is talking about unsafe houses, making voodoo dolls and watching every move of her former lover and his family – but is otherwise lucid and calm? Although somehow, that makes it all the more frightening.
I reach into my pocket for my phone and call Adam. I know he was angry yesterday and he’s stayed away all today too, but surely by now he will have forgiven my mistake?
I wait as the phone rings and rings. For the first time in as long as I remember, he doesn’t answer.
I hang up and realise there is no one to help me. I won’t be able to convince her to be locked in tonight – she’s already too animated for that. I listen to the agitated, busy footsteps as she paces around above my head. It’s already begun. She’s gearing up for something, there’s no doubt about it – why does she need to know who is in Fox Cottage right now? What is she intending to do? And how do I stop her? I swallow, now dreading the night ahead.
Another sound begins to carry down through the thin floor to me. She’s singing. I crane to catch the words, but it’s the tune that I identify as she repeats it over and over again.
‘Ring-a ring o’ Roses