by Vivien Brown
‘Being apart from you is tearing me in two,’ Eve read, as if the words were echoing what was in my head. And there was something there, in her face, in her voice, that told me it was true. My sister had known love and lost it. She had lost it, lost him, to me. She knew the pain of being parted, and of being alone. And suddenly I didn’t really care who Pussy Cat might have been, why he and my mother had been separated or how their story ended. What did it matter, now that Mum was gone? All that mattered was the truth. The truth of what was happening right now. Why Eve had never married, never found a forever man of her own, why Josh had come home smelling of her, why he had lied to me, and just how many times he – they – might have done this before. Made a fool of me behind my back.
And in that moment I hated her. Hated my own sister for trying to take what was mine. Just as, for so many years, she had hated me. But she wasn’t going to have him. I couldn’t let her win. And for as long as she had no idea that I knew, no idea that we were now at war, it was me who held the upper hand.
Chapter 21
EVE
It was the hardest decision I had ever had to make. Running away to uni to escape the memories Arnie had implanted in my mind, leaving home so abruptly after I had caught Josh in bed with my sister, giving up a job I loved at a school where I had felt so settled and comfortable to come back here for Mum, and for Dad, all paled in comparison.
Josh and I were over. We had to be. I couldn’t carry on seeing him, loving him, and still find a way to look my dad, or Sarah, in the eyes, day after day. Being back at home made everything real. Our seemingly impenetrable bubble had finally burst, just as I had always known it one day must. There was to be no happy-ever-after for us. How could there be?
He had booked a hotel room that evening. One of those cheap ones, with just a bed, a TV and a kettle. The sheet had a cigarette burn in it, the window didn’t open properly, there was a faded abstract picture on the wall and a plan of the fire exits on the back of the door. In the tiny bathroom the plain white tiles in the shower were old and tired, a thin crack running diagonally up the wall from taps to ceiling, and as we lay on the bed after what I had already decided would be the last time we would ever make love, both of us staring at the ceiling, that was how I felt too. Plain and old and tired, like the tiles, the cracks in our relationship definitely starting to show. We were set in a pattern, a rut, and nothing ever changed. There was no joy anymore, no sense of wonder, no hope. Only a barely suppressed feeling of panic and fear. This was all too close to home, too … sordid. We had been doing this for too long. It was leading us nowhere. This was no longer the sort of woman I wanted to be.
It wasn’t an easy conversation, and not one I wanted to have naked, so I’d pulled my underwear back on, and my T-shirt, and sat up, cross-legged on the bed while Josh just lay there listening and slowly shaking his head.
‘But why, Eve? After all these years, I thought … well, that we would always be together somehow.’
‘Somehow? What does that even mean? Because we’re not together, are we? Not really. A few hours here and there. A bed, a bottle of wine, a kiss goodbye, and we’re back to our own lives again. Our separate lives.’
‘I thought that suited you. Fitted in. You had your career, your own place, your independence. I thought you understood …’
‘What? That you’re married? That you have a child you can’t bear to hurt, or to leave? Of course I understand all of that. How could I not, when they’re my own family? But can’t you see that things have changed now? I’m not hundreds of miles away anymore, I don’t have a job to keep me occupied, I’ve given up my home, and I don’t even have Simon around to talk to. I’m right here on your doorstep, under your wife’s nose, and that is never going to work. It feels … dangerous. Wrong.’
‘But you’ll get a job, a home, new friends. And I still want you, Eve. I still love you.’
‘I wonder if you do. Really love me, I mean. And, even if you do, it’s not enough. Look at me, Josh. I’m thirty-five. I can’t go on like this. I need a life of my own. A real life. Maybe even kids … before it’s too late.’
He stared at me, as if I was some kind of alien, talking in tongues. ‘Kids? But I can’t give you kids, Eve. How could we ever get away with—’
‘Get away with it?’ I cut in, yelling at him now. ‘That’s exactly my point. I don’t want to have children with someone who’s trying to get away with it! Someone looking for excuses, trying to keep me hidden away like a dirty secret. I want someone I can be seen with, openly, in the streets, someone I can take home to meet Mum and Dad, someone who’s proud to be with me, who wants to have children with me, live with me, bring up a family together, like a real couple. And that someone’s not you, Josh, is it? It can never be you.’
The ring of his mobile from the bedside table stopped me in my tracks. Life outside these walls, intruding again. Couldn’t he have put it on silent as I had with mine? Didn’t I deserve even an hour or two of uninterrupted attention once in a while? Josh reached over and picked it up, glanced at it, then quickly switched it off.
‘Sarah,’ he muttered.
‘She’ll always be there, Josh.’ I felt around on the floor for my jeans and tugged them on. ‘But I won’t be. Not anymore.’
‘Come on. Just lie back down, let me hold you. You’re upset, with your mum being so ill, and everything in your life changing. But this doesn’t have to change. We don’t have to change. Come on, we’ve got the room for the night. I can make some excuse, stay until morning.’ His hand was working its way up under my T-shirt.
‘And lie to Sarah again? What would you say? That you got drunk? Crashed on a mate’s settee? We’re not teenagers anymore, Josh. And I, for one, am going home now. You stay if you like. Make the most of the room. Don’t want to waste it, do you? Not having paid for it.’ I grabbed my bag. ‘Don’t bother getting dressed. I don’t need you to drive me back, or risk being seen. I can call a cab.’
‘Eve, you’re being ridiculous.’ He sat up, running his hand through his messy hair. ‘Come back to bed. Please.’
I had my phone out, ready to look up a cab firm, when I saw it. A missed call. No, three missed calls. All from Dad.
‘Something’s wrong,’ I said, flopping back down on the edge of the bed, my fingers fumbling as I dialled Dad’s number.
Josh watched as I listened, tried to speak, nodded blindly, then crumpled down beside him. Mum was dead. While I had been here, letting her down, doing something I know would have made her so ashamed of me, she had slipped away, with only Dad beside her.
Josh pulled me into him, nuzzled my neck, let me cry. I knew I was shaking, and I think he was too. Then he got dressed quickly, tossed the room key onto the unmade bed and drove me back to the house, dropping me on the corner, away from the streetlights, where we wouldn’t be seen, and drove himself home to Sarah. Neither of us stopped to look back.
***
The funeral had been tough. Keeping away from Josh, sticking to my resolve. But there were other things to think about, and to cry about, that day. I had got through it, holding it all in, trying to support Dad the best I could. But the letters were different. They tore into my heart. Other people’s love, other people’s pain, only served to drag my own back to the forefront of my thoughts. I shouldn’t have read them. If Sarah had just said no, I probably wouldn’t have done. But she didn’t, so I did.
I knew we were stepping into Mum’s secret life, one she had kept stashed away in a box, probably since before we were born, but the letters drew me in. It was a chance to get close to her again, to find out things about her that we didn’t know. They must have been important, for her to have kept them for so long. Had she pulled them out from time to time, re-read them when she was alone? Had she remembered, reminisced, cried? Or had she simply forgotten they were there? We would never know. Yet, private though they were, there was something compelling about them. I should have stopped as soon as I realised what they were, but I didn’t. I couldn’
t. The need to know more drove me on, turning page after page, even if Sarah was keen to get to the crux of the thing and then dump them in the nearest bin.
I suppose it was all tied up in how I was feeling about my own life, my own secrets. How would I feel if someone found them out and started picking over them after I was gone? But the sad thing was that Mum would never know, would she? That we had found them? It couldn’t matter to her anymore what happened to them, who read them. But it did matter to me. I needed to know.
I was reading the third letter aloud when I heard the front door open and the clank of keys.
‘Dad’s back,’ said Sarah, getting to her feet. ‘I’ll go and make him a cup of tea.’
She closed the bedroom door behind her and I got the distinct impression she was glad for an excuse to go. I knew Dad would never come poking about in my room, but I stashed the letters away again anyway, just in case. It was stupid, but somehow Mum’s secret had started to become my secret, something I felt the need to hide just as much as she probably had. At least until I had read them all, and decided what to do with them.
I sat for a while, in the silence. Sarah had said nothing about Josh in days, but then why should she? I had done the right thing in ending it, I was sure of that, yet I longed to hear how he was, what he was doing, thinking, feeling. I needed him to be hurting as I was, if only to convince myself that he had loved me, that he still did. ‘You can never know how much I have missed you these last few days. Not being able to touch you, or hear your voice.’ The words from Mum’s first letter ran through my head. They felt so real, as if they were all about me. My life, my feelings. And they hurt. But, right then, only weeks after her death, we were all hurting. All quiet. All sad. Who was going to notice a little extra sadness amongst so much? In a way I had chosen the perfect time to break my own heart. Everything was masked and so easy to explain away because of my grief. I could cry and no one would question it. And, in my imagination, Josh would be crying too. But I didn’t see him, dared not ask after him, and Sarah gave nothing away.
I went down to join the others. We sat in front of the TV and shared a pot of tea. Sarah was eating again, working her way through a packet of biscuits that no one else had any interest in. I suppose food is one of those things you either turn to for comfort or go off altogether. As in most things, Sarah and I fell into opposite camps. I don’t think I had eaten anything since breakfast, and that had only been a slice of toast.
Dad looked better. The fresh air had done him some good, bringing a little colour back into his face, and the walking had tired him, making it easier for him to forget for a while and sleep. I watched him doze off in his favourite armchair, Smoky the cat curled up on his lap, and wondered what his life would be like from now on. Forty years with one woman, and then losing her, would be hard to recover from. And soon it would be Christmas. None of us would be looking forward to that. The first one without her. The cooking, the forced merriment, her presents not there under the tree. Christmas, the fearful word we had yet to say out loud.
‘I think I’ll be off now.’ Sarah slipped into her coat. There was a paper poppy still pinned to it, a leftover from Remembrance Day a week or so before. ‘Be there when Janey gets home from school.’
‘She walks home by herself these days?’
‘Oh, yes. Quite the Little Miss Independent, she is. And they do encourage it now she’s at the big school. Well, you’ll know that, won’t you? From your teaching days.’
‘You make it sound like I’ve retired! I am still a teacher, just one without a job at the moment.’
‘Better get out there and find one then, hadn’t you?’ There was a chill in her voice that seemed to wipe away any imagined feelings I had of renewed closeness. There was still an invisible wall between us. We weren’t close. Perhaps we never could be, not after so long.
‘I’m trying. But Dad still needs me here.’
‘Does he? I think what Dad needs is to get back to normal. Well, a new kind of normal, but a routine at least. And that’s probably what you need too. Or the pair of you will sit here forever, moping about day after day, and that won’t do anybody any good.’
‘Well, as it happens, I have an interview next week. Not sure you’ll like it though.’
‘Why?’
‘It’s at Janey’s school. English teacher, but deputy head as well.’
‘Oh. I remember, you said there was one. Didn’t realise where though. Janey’s not been there long enough for me to get to know much about the teaching staff. I didn’t even know there was a vacancy. And they’ve actually asked you in for an interview?’
‘Yes, they have. No need to sound so surprised. You don’t mind, do you?’
‘Why should I mind? If it’s good for your career … and it’s not as if you’d actually be teaching Janey, is it? Well, I assume not. I’m sure you can declare an interest and claim diplomatic immunity or whatever they call it. I mean, it’d be like having someone in your own family as your doctor. Imagine having to show Cousin Bill a boil on your bum! And Janey having to call you Miss Peters all the time, and you telling her off or giving her detention. Doesn’t seem quite right. But it’s a nice school, and local enough for you to get to while you’re still living here with Dad. Go for it!’
‘Thanks.’ I held my arms out towards her, thinking we might manage a hug, but she sidestepped it.
Dad slept on after she’d gone, snoring gently. I turned the TV off. The clock ticked in the hall, the last of the tea went cold in the pot, and the light started to fade so I got up and closed the curtains. The room felt different without Mum in it. The whole house did.
When Dad woke up half an hour later, he opened his eyes and smiled at me, as if, just for a moment, he had forgotten she was gone. But then the cloud descended again and the lines sunk back into his face. ‘Sarah gone home, has she?’ His hand ran over the cat’s fur, head to tail, and head to tail again, smoothing it until I could hear the gentle purring from right across the room. The cat had been Mum’s really, and no doubt he missed her too, wondered where his number-one carer had gone. But Dad seemed to have taken over the role. They could be good for each other. Company. Something for Dad to care about, and to bring a bit of comfort.
‘Let’s have some music, Evie,’ Dad said, pointing to the old stacking stereo system that had sat in the corner for as long as I could remember. The cat arched his back, stretched and jumped down. ‘Pick out one of your mum’s favourites.’
Mum and Dad had never really taken to CDs, and certainly not to any kind of new-fangled downloaded stuff as Dad called it. All of their records were just that. Actual vinyl records, the albums bearing outdated photos and psychedelic designs, the singles in small paper cases with a hole in the front to read their names through. 1960s and 70s originals, mostly, bought by one or the other before they had even met and now merged into one extremely diverse collection. Probably worth a fortune now that vinyl was said to be making a comeback. There were a few cassette tapes too, mainly for use in the car, and often recorded themselves from something on the radio or from their own records. Their preferences hadn’t moved with the times either. Dad still liked his Status Quo and his Stones, which nobody would ever suspect from looking at him, and Mum had always been a little in love with Tom Jones and Engelbert, and hankered after bad-boy David Essex in his curly-haired days, having given up on Paul McCartney as soon as he married Linda and stopped eating meat.
I went to the sideboard and opened the double doors at the bottom. The records were lined up inside in cardboard boxes, the most played ones at the front, the ones they never touched but still couldn’t bring themselves to part with tucked away at the back. I picked some out, one by one, and read the labels. All songs I had heard played so many times in this house.
‘Eleanor Rigby’. No, not today. Too sad, especially with all that loneliness and churches where weddings had been.
‘Yesterday’. Too many regrets and too many shadows. Why she had to go … No,
not this time, Sir Paul!
‘Lily the Pink’, by the Scaffold, with Paul’s brother Mike, not quite so famous and not quite so handsome. ‘Let’s drink a drink …’ I started to sing the words in my head, then put it aside as a possible for later, when I knew Dad would get the whisky out before bed.
And then I saw it. Tom Jones. ‘What’s New, Pussy Cat?’ Yes, that had always been a favourite of Mum’s. I could remember her playing it often and pulling Dad up to dance with her around the room, their hips rolling around just like slinky Tom’s as they sang and laughed together.
I slipped the record from its paper cover and polished it gently with my sleeve, the way I had seen Mum do so many times, before placing it on the turntable and clicking the switch that brought the needle over. ‘Pussy cat, pussy cat …’
I saw Dad’s eyes light up with the memory, and then just as quickly mist over again. No, it couldn’t be, could it? Yes! That was it. It was where they had got the nickname from. Suddenly it all came clear and I wondered why I hadn’t seen it straightaway. Even some of the words he’d written had been lifted from the song. I looked up at the ceiling, towards the pile of old letters under my bed, towards Mum, somewhere up there in Heaven and hopefully looking back down. Everything was all right. She had led me to this cupboard, shown me a sign. Put my mind, and her own reputation, at rest. Dad – my serious, seemingly unromantic dad – really was the mysterious Pussy Cat after all!
And I liked that. That there had been a real love story between them, a secret past that neither Sarah nor I knew anything about. I must find the right time to ask Dad about it, I thought. To find out why they had been forced apart, and how they had resolved things and ended up back together again. A happy ever after, till death did them part. And I knew then that I wasn’t going to read the rest of their private letters. I would slip them back in their box at the back of Mum’s wardrobe and one day, when he was ready to face up to sorting through what was left of her things, he would find them, and hopefully they would make him smile. Or maybe cry, but either was good.