‘Damien? He’s fine.’
‘Has he managed to get a job yet or is he still under your feet all day?’
‘It’s so hard out there for graduates,’ she says. ‘I’ve applied for a few jobs for him and I’m sure he’ll get something soon.’
‘I expect he spends a lot of time with his girlfriend when he’s not applying for jobs? I saw him upstairs last night and he got all embarrassed when I mentioned it. Bless him, he looked so cute. Like he was a teenager all over again.’
‘You know that boy, always has an army of girls after him. I remember Phoebe had a crush on him once upon a time.’
‘Yes, I think she did,’ I say. I needed her to confirm that I am remembering it right. That it may well be him that is involved in this, not Curtis.
‘We should all get together soon, you can invite Lewis.’
‘I may just do that,’ I say. It’d be great to spend some time with Damien, it really would.
As I ring off the phone, all the things I need to think about crowd in on me. If I knew what Phoebe wanted to do, I could talk to her about talking to the police. Until she decides, I can’t put anything else on her. I have to put up with the stalking, with the judgement from Imogen, with the hurt I’ve caused Fynn, with the feeling I’m betraying Joel by even thinking about Lewis.
Until Phoebe knows what she’s doing, nothing else can happen. I am stuck as I am, out of control in my own life, waiting on someone else.
XXXI
‘What do you think I should do, Aunty Betty?’ Phoebe asks.
They obviously do not know I am in here. Why would I be? Why would anyone be in the small toilet beside the kitchen unless they’d recently stuffed themselves with as much food as they could, pushing it in by the handful, filling themselves as much as they could, forcing down every single feeling they had, hiding away every unpleasant thought with every swallow, and then had purged until their throat was raw, their eyes were running and they were shaking with the pain in their chest from heaving? Why would anyone have collapsed onto the floor and stayed there, unable to move from the exhaustion and horror and disgust at what they’d done? Trembling because their heart felt like it might give up at any second.
As silently as I could, I shifted my still-quivering body until my back was resting against the white door.
‘No one can tell you that, Child,’ Aunty Betty replies. I wonder what they’re doing up at this time. I thought it was just me who couldn’t sleep. ‘You are a child, but in this situation you need to make big woman decisions.’
‘Mum always tells me what to do, I thought she’d tell me what to do now.’
‘Your mum can’t do that about this. It’s your life and your body, your mum can’t make those choices for you.’
‘But I don’t know which choice is the best one.’
‘No choice is easy,’ Aunty Betty says. ‘There are three main choices, yes?’
‘Yes.’
‘Keep the baby, have the baby adopted, abortion.’
‘Yes.’
‘Which one is the one that you instinctively think might be right for you when I say it like that?’
Phoebe says nothing for a while. ‘I don’t know. Every time I think about one, another one seems better.’
‘Child, you are fourteen. No choice is better than the other at your age. Every option will weigh heavy on your mind and heart. The only thing we can do in this sort of situation is choose whatever it is we think would be easiest to live with.’
‘I don’t know what that is and I don’t know what to do,’ Phoebe says. My instinct is to run out to her, throw my arms around her, tell her that it’ll be all right, we’ll work out the best thing to do together.
‘I will tell you the secret that all of us grown-ups have, Sweetness – we don’t know what to do. We never know what to do. We pretend we do until something works.’
‘My dad always knew what to do,’ she says.
‘If you believe that, truly believe that, you’re the biggest fool I’ve ever met.’ Aunty Betty smirks, I imagine she shakes her head. ‘Your dad always knew what to do. Ha ha! I’ve never heard such nonsense in my life. No one always knows what to do. No one.’ I can imagine her shaking her head some more. ‘Apart from me. I always know what to do. All the time.’
I hear the scrape of wood on tile. ‘Are you going to help me upstairs?’ Aunty Betty asks.
Phoebe also scrapes her chair as she pushes it back. How many times do I have to ask them not to do that? ‘Lots,’ younger Phoebe would have said in reply to that question. ‘Lots and lots and lots of times.’
‘Child, you don’t know how lucky you are,’ Aunty Betty says as they make their way to the door. ‘I know girls whose parents threw them out the second they found out they were expecting. Knowing your mother, I bet she hasn’t even shouted at you. You are lucky, lucky, lucky.’
‘But she hasn’t—’ Their voices disappear into the house, away from where I can hear what they are saying, cutting me off from knowing what it is I haven’t done that has left my daughter hating me so.
After some time has passed, I pull myself up, the trembling recedes as I become upright and is taken over by a wooziness from all the blood rushing away from my head.
Upstairs, I ignore the multicoloured ‘Keep Out’ stickers that are plastered all over the door to Zane’s room and carefully open it. Cautiously, I cross the room to his bed. My little boy, who told me on the day of the funeral that he knew he was now the man of the house, is splayed out in bed. His arms spread wide, the bottom of his blue pyjama top pushed halfway up his torso, his summer duvet spilling onto the carpet like water over the edge of a waterfall.
He looks like his father. He has his cheeks, his long eyelashes, the shape of his plump lips. It’s good to see him sleeping like that, open, free. After Joel … Afterwards, he would sleep curled up, a tight, closed-off little ball, desperate to keep the world out while he slept; terrified that the dangers of the world would somehow find their way into his life all over again. I’m glad after the attempted break-in and my tyres being slashed he’s OK enough to be this free in his sleep.
I wanted to see him. To look in on him and wonder how I’m going to let him down, too.
VIII
XXXII
What I’d love to do right now is go for a walk on the beach.
I’d love to switch off my computer, push out my chair, gather up my coat, my bag, my laptop, my piles of papers, and walk straight out of here, wave to security, walk down the road, turn at the corner, navigate through the throngs of people and make my way down and down and down the hill, always with the wet, bluey horizon in sight, until I was there. I’d cross the road, find a way down onto the front and at the bottom of the steps I would stop and struggle my feet out of my shoes. And then … My whole body would thrill with the sensation of cool smoothness on the soles of my feet; would contract with slight shock then would relax with pleasure. I would make my way to the water’s edge, each step a new shock-and-relax routine with the different textures and temperatures of the pebbles, until I could stand on the dark, damp sandy part of the beach and wait for the sea to come gushing towards me to claim my feet and ankles as its own. That’s the whole point of living by the sea: you can drop by any time to let it tease and play with your feet and ankles, your shins and thighs, your bum and waist, your chest and neck, your entire head.
Like a lot of things since that day, going to the beach is not an option for me any more.
6 months after That Day (April, 2012)
The soles of my feet, a covering of rough, uncared-for skin, began to disappear into the wet, sandy part of the beach, and little ripples of seawater rushed in periodically to cover the tops of my feet in cold, foamy puddles. If I stood here long enough, the proportions would change, the sea would continue to come in and out, staying in a little longer each time until it gradually filled up this part of the beach; covering it and revealing it, covering it and revealing it, until it stopped
revealing it and I was completely covered.
If I stood here long enough, I could disappear just like Joel had. I wondered again, as I did each time I did this, which one would be more painful – the way he went or the way I would. I took a step forwards, then another, then another, vanishing away the tops of my feet, then my ankles, then my shins. I had my laptop bag, stuffed not only with a computer, but also with a report I had to write, pages of other documents to read, other things to edit. The bag, barely shut with all the work I had to do that night. Slung across my body was my handbag, another full item, stuffed and heavy with the essential detritus of my everyday life. On the pebbles behind me were my shoes. All she left behind were her shoes, they’d say. Everything else she took with her.
I didn’t want to wait for the sea to claim me, to replace the air around me with water, I wanted to be proactive, to walk forwards, to keep moving forwards until I began to float. I wouldn’t float, though, because I was heavy, weighted down by my new, complicated life. I wouldn’t swim either, wouldn’t be able to move my arms and fight to stay alive because even if I let go of the things I carried, I could barely swim. And I wouldn’t bother trying. I would let the sea do what it wanted.
My feet surged forwards again. Ready to do it, willing to walk into the sea and disappear.
Phoebe’s face, a small, gaunt, innocent oval, shimmered into view. Zane’s face, smaller, rounder, just as innocent, appeared beside his sister’s. Joel’s face materialised, too.
As if. As if I could do this to them.
Find something else, I told myself in an uncharacteristic moment of gentleness. I was so used to hearing my thoughts berating me, scorning me, reminding me I wasn’t good enough, telling me off – I was taken aback by the kindness of that thought. It was almost as if I was talking to someone else. Don’t come to the beach any more, don’t do this any more. Find something else to do. Don’t do this to yourself any more.
The inner voice, this almost loving version of who I was to myself, was right. I wouldn’t leave my children, but the urge itself was destructive, it was stripping off little pieces of my soul, wearing it away like the sea wore away the rough edges of pebbles and soon, I’d probably lose the will to live. I’d want to die but I wouldn’t be suicidal, I wanted to be with Joel but not enough to do anything about it. If I didn’t find something else, I’d become someone counting down the days until I was allowed to leave, missing the point of having the gift of life. That was no way to be in this world.
My foot slipped a little on the saturated sand as I took a step backwards, and my arms flew upwards to protect the laptop from the sea if I fell, but I righted myself. Carefully, I turned on my heels, enjoying the sensation of them sinking into the sand, having fragments of shell dig into my feet, and began my way up the beach. I had to find another way to cope, another way to connect with the world.
Two days later I kissed Fynn.
*
Sometimes I wish I could go away and be with Joel, even for a little while, and not have to deal with all of the stuff here. It was being unable to go to the beach that forced me to try to look for him in other places. Finishing Joel’s cookbook seemed the only way to connect to him, to find that perfect blend of flavours that would remind me of what he was like, what being with him was all about. I haven’t even had a chance to think up something new, try out something new since I was called to the school sixteen days ago. My search for him has been stalled by the realities of everyday life, by the fact his killer is stalking me.
*
Imogen is standing outside my building. She’s looking at the front of it as if she’s about to enter, or maybe she’s waiting for someone. When she tucks her bag determinedly onto her shoulder I realise she’s been waiting for me.
‘I’m sorry,’ she says before I’ve worked out what to do with my face or whether to say ‘hello’ or ‘hi’ or ‘are you waiting for me?’
‘Sometimes I’m a big-mouthed, over-opinionated cow,’ she continues. ‘I’m so sorry. I shouldn’t have said all those things. It’s no wonder you don’t tell me things when I don’t engage my brain before I run my mouth off.’ Rather dramatically, I decide, her hazel-green eyes fill with tears. ‘I think you do an amazing job with those children and I can’t believe I implied that you didn’t. I think you’re an amazing parent and I know you’re going to be an amazing grandmother.’
‘Pardon?’ I reply.
Again with the drama, she looks around, takes a step closer to me and lowers her voice. ‘Damien told me about Phoebe being …’ her tone drops to barely a whisper, ‘pregnant.’
‘Damien told you? Damien told you? Why would Damien tell you that?’
‘Please don’t be angry,’ she prefaces her reply. The children do that when they know I’m going to hear something that will mean a nuclear response can be the only option. ‘After Saturday, I asked him to call her because they used to be quite close. I said to him that it’d be nice for him to find out how she’s getting on and, if in the course of the conversation he happens to ask her how she feels about the possibility of you dating her teacher, then that’d be great. I’m sorry, I know I shouldn’t have got involved, but I was so interferingly desperate for you to meet someone nice. I can see how lonely you get sometimes and Lewis seems so perfect.’
‘During the course of this one conversation Phoebe just came out and said she was pregnant?’ Given it took me a trip to the school and someone else saying the words to find out, given that she burst into tears when she thought I’d told Aunty Betty, given that I’ve been too frightened of the trauma it’d cause her if she knew I’d told Fynn, given that she barely speaks to me at all, she’s managed to tell a relative stranger this news? As well as giving him and Imogen the implication that she’s decided she’s going ahead with the pregnancy. ‘Why would she do that?’
‘They are close.’
Or he is the father.
‘That whole conversation we had the other day, I understand so much more now. I feel horrible about it. I shouldn’t have said those things, I don’t even believe them. I suppose I wanted you to see that a lot of your loneliness could go away if you took a chance on Lewis. I shouldn’t have questioned your parenting. I’d have taken anyone’s head off who did that to me.’
‘Thanks, Imogen, for the apology. But right now, I need to go and have a few words with my daughter.’
I don’t even wait for a reply before I step around her and hurry up the road towards the car park.
I’ve been so stupid. Giving her space, allowing her time to think about what she wants rather than imposing my will upon her or forcing her to talk to me. All along she’s been plotting and planning, scheming behind my back, just like before. She has no respect for me. She knows that I am so scared of losing her love, she’s probably unconsciously aware that I don’t want her to feel about me the way I feel about my mother, that I’ll almost literally let her get away with murder.
XXXIII
‘Phone!’ I say to Phoebe when I enter the house.
I don’t bother to take my coat off, I hurl my laptop and bag onto the sofa and stand in front of my daughter with my hand outstretched.
Zane stops staring at the television screen and turns to me. Horrified, I’d imagine, at the fury broiling in my voice. I never speak like that, even before I started trying to be more like Joel, to keep him alive for them by trying to respond to them like he did, I never showed this much anger.
Aunty Betty, resplendent in her bobbed burgundy wig and matching lipstick, lowers her e-cigarette and does big eyes at me too. Phoebe looks up at me from the screen in her hand, trying to gauge how to react to my demand.
‘PHONE!’ I roar.
She meekly places it in my hand, not even bothering to try the battery trick.
‘Get upstairs. We need to have a proper talk.’
Her widened, melted-wood eyes fly first to Zane, then to Aunty Betty, wondering if either of them is going to help her by stepping in. Neither of them is,
of course. Zane has on a violent movie, Aunty Betty has an e-cigarette in her hand – they’ve both got problems of their own.
‘DID YOU NOT HEAR ME?’ I scream at her and she is out of her seat and taking the stairs two at a time. I revolve slowly to the other two piss-takers in the house.
‘You.’ I point at Zane. ‘No more TV for two weeks. I’ve told you I don’t want you watching anything over a twelve registration, but you can’t listen to that, so no more TV for two weeks. And that includes no playing any games on it.’ I spin on the spot. ‘And as for you …’ I march over to Aunty Betty. ‘I’ve told you about this. There’s no smoking in this house.’ I go to snatch the cigarette off her and she refuses to relinquish it, struggling with me, clinging onto her black and chrome holder like life-support. Her sixty-six-year-old hands, although bony and wrinkled, like darkened, aged parchment, are strong and won’t easily give up. I eventually wrench it free from her grasp. She gives me Phoebe-big eyes, unable to believe I’ve done that.
‘Child, you can’t expect me to go outside every time I need a little top-up. And it’s cold out there. You really expect a woman my age to go out into the cold?’
‘You really, really want to be able to smoke inside?’ I ask.
‘Yes, Child, yes.’
‘Well then you shouldn’t have got thrown out of the one place where you could do whatever you wanted, whenever you wanted, should you?’
She sits back, looking me up and down as if she is wounded by my words. Wounded, I doubt. Surprised, absolutely.
‘Zane,’ I say, normalising my tone.
‘Yes, Mum?’ he says, now on his feet.
‘Please go and get ready, you and your Aunty Betty are going to get some chips for dinner tonight.’
‘Yes, Mum,’ he says and pegs it out of the room.
‘You got a problem with that?’ I say to Aunty Betty.
‘No, no,’ she says quickly. ‘I’ll pay for dinner,’ she adds.