by Lia Louis
‘Look, I don’t mean this coldly,’ Ed had carried on, ‘but maybe you need to let this camera go.’ I’d stiffened then, because of how dismissive, how Ed he was, but also because something passed over his face. Pity. Worry. Something. Or maybe I’m paranoid, because why would he lie? Why would he even want some old camera?
‘It’s just photos, Nell,’ he’d said.
‘Her photos,’ I’d added, and ‘one of us,’ I’d thought but didn’t say. One she took of Ed and me, Ed’s arm around me, the flood-lit college field behind me. ‘My future’s in that photo,’ I’d thought as Daisy’s thumb had wound back the film. ‘I know it. I just know it. And I’ll prove it, when we eventually come back here and take it out of the ground. Together.’
‘Frank?’ I call again from the doorway.
Frank doesn’t look up, his eyes on the TV, his lips parted, his eyes slits as if it’s an effort to keep them open. Sam must look like his mum. I see not a single likeness between Frank and Sam. Perhaps, the nose, but at a push. The straight line of the bridge of their noses are the same. But everything else – they’re chalk and cheese. Polar opposites. In looks and in nature and as far as I can see, absolutely everything. I wonder how they met, Frank and Sam’s mum. Sam’s dad is nine years older than Sam’s mum, I know that much, but I wonder if she wore lipstick, in case she bumped into him. I wonder if he made excuses to brush past her, to be close, and if she analysed it afterwards, the looks, the touches. I can’t imagine it. I can’t imagine him even smiling, let alone touching anything (well, besides souls with a cold stare).
‘Cup of tea before I go?’ I try again.
‘No,’ he says, in more of a grunt than a word and I nod pointlessly as the washing machine ironically sings a happy, tinkly tune behind me to signal that its wash load has finished. ‘I’ll just uh, hang this out on the balcony then, shall I?’
No response.
‘OK, brilliant,’ I say, ‘I’ll do that. It’s lovely and sunny so shouldn’t take too long. Gloria can fetch it in. Or Sam. Is Sam coming today?’ And I know I shouldn’t, but I really hope he is. Sam and I haven’t spoken since that day on the concrete, outside. Well. Besides one text. ‘I’ll be there Tuesday before nine,’ I’d sent and he’d texted back, ‘Great’ with a smiley face. Not even Charlie and I could pick apart and analyse that bland, boring exchange.
The balcony is seven floors up, and although I’m not exactly afraid of heights, my knees wobble, as if on a rickety bridge, as I start hanging laundry on a clothes airer. It’s not natural to be this high up, really, is it? I was never afraid of flying, though. I love flying. Mum loved it too. We’d go on holiday once a year up until I was about sixteen. Spain. Crete. Cyprus. Portugal. She’d save and save, her whole year revolving around that one week she could whisk Dilly and me away. I remember the little rucksacks she’d pack us for the plane – puzzle books and sweets and a packet of pencils – and how she’d lift them out of the boot in the dark, blurry-eyed but excited for our little adventure. It wasn’t always like this. Mum was sun-kissed and zesty and hungry for the world once. And then the stroke – and slow and fast, all at once, she retreated. Little sparks inside of her slowly going out. It can happen to any of us. Turn back the clock about seven years, and that person was me. The version of Noelle Butterby Doctor Henry was enquiring after. The one who lost herself, for a bit, when everyone else went off to university, started their lives.
‘Stay tuned for a fantastic competition …’ a distant TV chatters from a nearby flat. ‘… and later, we will be showing you how to cook not one, but two perfect summer dishes …’
You can see for miles up here. Stretches of houses and buildings, but just on the horizon, hills and lush green trees and blue sky. There’s a particular specific smell up here. The smell of other people’s houses; evidence of other people’s lives. Freshly cut grass of someone’s garden, the smell of frying onions from another flat. I grip the balcony rail and close my eyes. Daisy and I used to do this on her balcony, or at night at a sleepover, the night silent through the open window except for the distant whoosh of motorway traffic far in the distance.
‘Where are you, Elle?’ she’d ask sleepily, and I’d always make her go first, because she had the best ideas – the best imagination. It’s why she took art. It’s why she wrote the best short stories and poems, in English Lit.
‘Oh, I’m in Italy with you,’ she’d say, closing her eyes. ‘We’re celebrating. I just sold this movie script and they’re saying I’m the new Nora Ephron, so I have a shitload of money to spend. We’ll pick up some hot, tortured poets at some dive bar tonight. They’ll romance us.’ She would always giggle, as if with glee at the glory of her own little stories. ‘Come on, Elle, close your eyes. Use your imagination. What do you see?’
Her happy, lively voice swirls through my mind now, girlish and giggly. I hate that Daisy is stuck in time. I hate that she will forever be eighteen. That she’ll never know twenty-two, thirty-two, seventy-two. That she’ll never fall in love, or see New York, or Amsterdam. Amsterdam. The first place we promised we’d go when we left college and saved up. ‘Jump on a cheapo flight,’ Daisy would say, and I’d feel almost sick to my stomach with longing.
‘Where are you, Elle?’ her voice asks me now.
And I think. Hands gripping the balcony, I think, and I try. Where would I go, if I could go anywhere? But nothing comes. Nothing at all. And I wonder for just a moment, if I’m stuck too.
‘Hey.’
My eyes snap open and I turn round. Sam stands at the balcony door, tall, handsome, his lips a soft smile.
‘Taking in the view?’ he says, easily.
‘A bit.’ I clear my throat, straighten. ‘My legs are having a bit of a barn-dance though.’
‘Barn-dance,’ he says. ‘Interesting.’ He comes to stand beside me, then leans, resting his tanned forearms on the bar of the balcony and looks ahead, like me. He smells amazing. Of showers and sun cream and that cedary aftershave. Something flutters in my chest, madly, like a trapped moth.
‘See, you’ve got to trick your brain,’ he says. ‘As long as you have something under your feet, you’ve just gotta convince yourself that you’re on the ground.’
‘Right,’ I say. ‘Sort of hard to do when you know, the cars down there look like Hot Wheels toys and you’re closer to birds than people.’
Sam laughs. ‘Takes practice,’ he says. ‘Is that why your eyes were closed?’
‘Ah. Not quite. It was something I used to do. With my friend, when we were kids. She had a balcony just like this and we’d … close our eyes, pretend we were somewhere else. Somewhere we wanted to be someday. Say what we could see. I know, it’s silly …’
‘No, it’s not,’ says Sam. Then he leans closer and says quietly, as if asking me something secret, ‘And what did you see?’ And I feel it. Despite myself, there’s an electrical churn in my stomach. Like I just started a downward plummet on a rollercoaster.
I clear my throat. ‘Um. A-a pasty,’ I lie. ‘A um, huge, golden pasty.’ Sam’s eyebrows knit together a fraction, as if shocked by the sudden change of tone, but he laughs.
‘You sure it wasn’t oysters?’ he says.
Chapter Nineteen
Two Wednesdays ago, as I arranged giant yellow sunflowers in the window of Charlie and Theo’s living room, Theo sidled up to me and asked me quietly if I’d look in on Charlie on Saturday.
‘I’m not going to be here,’ he said worriedly. ‘My brother Andreas and I are going to meet some new suppliers, in Normandy. And Charlie’ll be on her own from Friday to Sunday. She hasn’t been alone with the baby overnight and – well, I’m a bit worried. I wondered if you could …’
‘Go and see her?’
‘Would you? She stresses, I think, when she’s alone with her. I don’t want to arrange a babysitter for her, but perhaps you could just be passing …’
I nodded. ‘Got it,’ I’d told him, but there was a small part of me that was reluctant. Of course I
’d do it. I’d do anything for Theo, and anything for Charlie. (Well. Besides go on a date with Jet with the torso from the reiki retreat.) But I feel reluctant because I don’t want her to feel I’m checking in on her. I’d texted her after I’d seen she wasn’t in her tattoo studio and she’d seemed quite taken aback. ‘I was probably out for lunch?’ she’d replied, and when I’d asked if she was OK, she’d said, ‘fine’ and I’d felt like I’d over-stepped somehow, said too much. That she felt I didn’t trust her.
‘I can text you, when I’ve spoken to her and I know they’re awake,’ Theo had said, and he did, half an hour ago. But Charlie isn’t answering the door. And I know she must be inside, because I can see the wheel of the pushchair through the sliver of glass next to the front door. I can’t imagine she’d go anywhere without it. Plus, the windows upstairs are open. But there’s no answer – no movement. I know the code to the little secure spare key safe. But that’s overstepping, isn’t it, letting myself in? Ed’s voice chimes in my brain, as if whispering into my ear. ‘Stop fretting over other people’s lives and worry about yours, Nell.’ I shake it away.
I knock again.
Nothing. But I keep hearing a mewing – a baby crying? It is. That’s Petal, her distant wails sailing through the open windows.
‘Charlie?’ I call pointlessly. ‘Charlie?’
I take out my phone, hover a thumb over Charlie’s name. She’s probably in the shower. Yes, that makes sense. Or maybe she can’t hear the phone over the crying. Petal does have one powerful set of pipes on her, for such a small, doughy little person. I go to press call, but the screen changes in my hand, and Mum’s name bursts onto the screen. Argh. I cancel it, and call Charlie instead. It rings off as Mum texts me. ‘Could you get shower gel?’ the first message says. Then ‘What time will you be home?’ and then ‘Roughly?’
I knock frantically. ‘Charlie? Charlie?’
The crying continues.
Sticky July heat zips up my back beneath my jacket which I only wore because rain was forecast, but it’s so warm. My cold hands sweat, my heart gets faster and faster. Mum texting. The sound of Petal wailing. No sign of Charlie. The relentless hot sun on the back of my head. It’s too much all of a sudden, and as my heart bangs and bangs, my hand, as if it has a mind of its own dives into my bag and pulls out my keys. I hold the square keyring in my hand, close my eyes, run a finger along one of its hard resin sides and breathe in as I do. I trace a finger along the next side and hold my breath, and running my finger on the next, I exhale. In, hold, out. It’s just a baby crying, just text messages. Nothing awful is happening. Nothing awful is going to happen. I’m here. Feet on ground. Heart beating.
After a moment, I open my eyes, but keep the keys in my hand, which shakes. It was stupid I’d thought, when a nurse taught me that breathing technique. I was twenty-two and shaking like a leaf. ‘Whenever you feel the panic coming on, find a square,’ she’d said. ‘A window, a poster, even a wall. Inhale as you trace your eyes along one side, hold your breath along the next, then exhale tracing the next side, and just keep going around that square, in, hold, out. No matter where you are, you can usually always find a square.’ The keyring has always been my square. I’d found it on the ground in town when I was seventeen – a sprig of heather set in clear resin. It was a day or two before the time capsule was buried and I remember because I contemplated having it as ‘my item’. It’s been years since I’ve had to pull it out to calm myself, and of course, now the worry creeps in, like fog. Why now? Am I going backwards? No. No. Charlie. I need to get hold of Charlie.
I knock on the door again now, knuckles stinging with how hard, and my tired heart slows.
‘Charlie?’ I curl my hand into a crescent on the frosted glass sliver, rest my forehead against it to see inside. Is that – is that a leg? No. No, it can’t be. It is. It is.
I glance at the key-box. I punch in the code Theo told me ages ago, in case of emergencies (Charlie’s birthday with an extra nine) and release the key. I turn it in the door and push it open. Immediately I’m hit with the sound of Petal’s hysterical screams.
Charlie looks up at me from the floor. Her skinny pink knees up to her chin, her face tear-streaked and grey. ‘Oh my God, Charlie, what’s happened?’
She looks at me, wide-eyed, her lips quivering.
I crouch to the ground, my shoes squeaking on the polished wooden floor. ‘Charlie? Charlie, talk to me.’
‘I can’t,’ she says, her voice wobbling.
‘Take some deep breaths––’
‘I can’t do it, Noelle,’ she says. ‘I can’t. I don’t think I can do this. I don’t love her. I don’t love my baby.’
Charlie looks at me over her black-rimmed glasses, the rings under her eyes the colour of bruises, the whites of her eyes a map of pink veins. Petal is still on my chest, a warm weight, and I lean down to smell her spiky tuft of hair. Petal always smells like soft towels and vanilla beans. Babies just do, don’t they, without even trying? I look up at Charlie from the floor, cross-legged. She’s in a ball, in the corner of her sofa, a blanket up to her chin, odd socks poking out of the bottom. She looks frail and small and totally defeated.
‘I don’t know what to do, Noelle,’ she says thickly. ‘I dread coming home to her.’ Charlie puts the tips of her fingers under her glasses and rubs at her swollen eyes. ‘God, what a fucking terrible thing to say.’
‘It’s not.’
‘All day, I feel like I’m fighting this battle. I get up in the morning and my first thought is “I can do this, of course I can, I’m a parent, I’m her mum.” And then she cries and instantly I think I can’t. I can’t do this. And I lie there sometimes, just listening to her, waiting for Theo because he’s always so good with her and – I just seem to make her worse––’
‘Oh, Charlie, you don’t make her worse.’
‘It feels like that, Elle.’
Petal snuffles on my chest. The flat is a mess, the coffee table strewn with muslin cloths and bottles and colic drops and pacifiers. An iPad still plays, quietly, with the sound of white noise. An artistic representation of a parent who’s tried everything.
‘Charlie, you’re exhausted. Tiredness is torture, it’s enough to make anyone feel like this––’
‘But what about everyone else, Noelle?’ Charlie cuts in, her large, tired eyes wide behind her glasses. ‘I see them. Every day, I see them pushing their strollers along and they look – fine. Like, totally fine. And they just cope. They just get on with it. They post beaming selfies of them and their kids on Instagram and they look so fucking happy.’
I reach out and put a hand on her cold, bony knee. ‘Charlie, nobody ever broadcasts the bad bits of their lives. You don’t ever sign onto Facebook or Instagram and see a photo of – I don’t know, someone shouting at their husband because he’s been a tosser. You just see the flowers he bought her as an apology and some sickly bloody hashtag––’
‘I spoke to this woman in the supermarket,’ Charlie barges in again, ‘and I said I was tired and finding it hard, and she said, “Ah, you wouldn’t change it though, would you?” and I had to of course say no. But I wanted to say yes. I wanted to say, actually, Brenda, I would. I want to go back sometimes. And I do, Noelle. I don’t want to be Charlie of right now. I want to be Charlie of then.’ Charlie bursts into sobs.
‘Oh, Char.’ I shift forward, put my arm on her back as she hides behind a tissue, hiccupping with tears. I stay like that for a while, one hand on Petal, her tiny strawberry-sized heart beating beneath my fingertips, and one hand on Charlie, shuddering beneath my hand.
‘I’m so sorry, Noelle,’ says Charlie.
‘No, don’t be sorry. Please don’t be sorry.’
Charlie looks at me then, doe-eyed, like someone about to confess to something. ‘Noelle, I can’t stop thinking about Daisy. About what you said, about what you think she’d have expected of me––’
‘Oh don’t listen to me––’
‘But what h
ave I even done?’ She shrugs, looks around the messy flat, a thick stripe of sunlight streaming through a crack in the heavy drapes like a stage spotlight, lighting up the three of us. ‘My life has started. I’m in it. It’s not something I’m waiting for any more. I’m here. And whatever I wanted for my life, was it this? I doubt it, Noelle, I really do …’
‘Charlie, you’ve had a baby––’
‘Who hates me. And all I do all day is – oh, God, it’s so dull. I just … clock watch. Until I can go to work. Until Theo can take her. And everything in my mind is taken up by her and I’m not even with her all day. How awful is that? I change nappies and I’m worried. I hold her, and I’m worried. Has she had enough milk, is she going to be sick in her sleep and choke or, has she taken a fucking shit. All I talk and think about is shit sometimes. Shit shit shit.’
Petal wriggles, and I stand, start to sway like I see Theo do behind Buff’s counter. ‘Have you spoken to Theo?’
‘No,’ she says. ‘No, I can’t. How can I? I’ve started seeing someone.’ My heart stops. ‘A counsellor,’ she adds, and it starts beating again, relieved. Of course. Of course she wouldn’t have a bloody affair. ‘Once a week. I go during work time so Theo doesn’t know.’ So, that’s where she’s been going, that’s probably why she wasn’t in the shop, and where she was driving to the other day. ‘But he’ll want me to go to the GP and I’m – I’m worried they’ll put me on meds and the meds will numb me. And I already feel so numb, Noelle. And I’m scared. Of being that mother who needs pills to get through what’s supposed to be one of the best things that ever happened to her. I’m a shit mother.’