*
While I wait for the taxi, I stand at the gates of the cemetery, too exhausted, too drained to be scared or spooked out. What is there to be spooked about, anyway, when Joel is in there? He’d wanted to be cremated, to have his ashes scattered in the sea outside our beach hut. But we were robbed of that, too. As a homicide victim whose killing hadn’t been solved, we weren’t able to do that. That was one of the conditions of being allowed the body back within four months of his death – we agreed they could exhume it whenever they wanted to carry out more tests. We had to agree to let him rest in peace in a way deemed acceptable by someone else.
He’s a little further in, up the winding, uphill path. A bit of a walk, then around the bend and towards the pond. Near a tree, not far from the water, the best I could do because I couldn’t scatter his ashes.
I don’t come here often enough.
It’s too much. Whenever I come here, I’m overwhelmed. Unlike the usual potholes in time I live with, thoughts of him crowd into my head, my body, my heart in an immediate rush. I am filled with him in a sudden, gluttonous binge of remembering. I can’t separate them, experience or even contemplate enjoying them. It is a homogeneous mass that takes over. I usually stand at the graveside, unable to do anything but allow the binge to take over.
And when I leave, the memories are ripped away; abruptly and viciously snatched from me so I go home empty. Not the emptiness I feel after a purge, not the emptiness I felt after the sex I had with Fynn, it is a total, petrifying barrenness of a hole at my core that nothing can fill because what has been gouged out can never be replaced.
Coming here is too much for me, so I avoid it as much as I can.
XLV
Usually, I reach for the brass, lion-shaped knocker because I can modulate the level of sound I create inside the house and not disturb anyone, but right now, I do not care who is unsettled by my visit: I press the doorbell hard and create a loud ring that trills through the house.
Imogen’s concerned face, a blonde-topped oval, peers around the door. ‘Saffy?’ she says, surprised. ‘Is everything OK?’
‘Erm … not really, can we talk inside for a few minutes?’
‘Yes, sure,’ she says. It doesn’t occur to her that I know what she did to my daughter. If it does dawn on her, she’s being very blasé about what my reaction would be. But Imogen doesn’t know me. I am the person she wants to see, the widow she talks over and dismisses so I will do what she thinks is best. Maybe she’s so deluded about who I am that she thinks I’ve come to apologise for walking away from her in the supermarket the other day.
‘Come into the kitchen! I was making up Ernest’s sandwiches for the morning! Everyone else is upstairs in various rooms, on various electronic devices!’ she chatters. I haven’t noticed before how much she chatters, as if silence is too much for her to tolerate, so she always has to be filling it with words and exclamatory sentences. She gesticulates in an exaggerated manner, her body swaying in time with the movement of her hands.
Bright light assaults me when I enter the kitchen from the darkness of the corridor, momentarily stopping me before I follow her into the room with its maple-wood units, black granite worktops, a large rectangular table at the centre where they eat breakfast. Many times I have picked up Zane after a sleepover and he’s been sitting in this room, perfectly slotted into the Norbet family, welcomed into the fold like one of their own. That’s what is the biggest betrayal in what she has done. She knows my family: she’s not one of those faceless people on the internet who can say whatever they want from the brave and ignorant distance that being behind a computer gives them; she’s not one of those people who stands up and makes impassioned speeches about something without knowing the individual stories. She knows my daughter. She knows what my daughter has been through and she is capable of using my child’s trauma to try to control her.
‘What was it I could do for you?’ Imogen asks. She has returned to her place at the worktop area nearest the sink. The detritus of making ham sandwiches is on the wooden chopping board in front of her: the cellophane-covered organic ham packet is peeled back, two slices of it resting on one medium-cut slice of the organic 50-50 bread. The top part of the sandwich sits beside it, ready to be lowered into place. The organic pre-washed lettuce waits in an unopened bag, while the small plum tomatoes are on the chopping board, sliced and ready to be dropped onto the ham. It’s this that launches me off into the deep end, like a champion diver leaping from the highest perch. Before I came here I could probably have talked calmly and rationally to her, I could have had a row with her about what she did, but seeing this normality, that she has simply gone back to life as though she did nothing different today is too much. My life will probably never be normal again, and that is not fine, but it is something I am coming to terms with – Imogen has no such worries. She can hurt people and because she believes she is right, she can come home, eat dinner with her boys and then make sandwiches.
How blithely she has all but destroyed my daughter triggers something inside and my eyes start to search a little manically for something in her kitchen. I know where it is in mine, but in the familiar strangeness of hers, it’s a full minute before my gaze finally settles on the sleek, black landline handset, resting in its discreet silver cradle. My fingers close around the handset, causing a bleep as I lift it clear then toss it underarm to Imogen. Baffled, she dips her body slightly to catch it in the crook of her arms.
‘Call the police,’ I tell her calmly.
She does not speak, she does not do as I have asked, instead, her slender body draws back, and she frowns a little at me. Slowly her lips bunch together in confusion.
‘I mean it. Call the police and tell them that there’s a woman about to smash up your house.’
She smirks, a bewildered response to what I’ve said.
‘I fucking mean it.’ I force the words through my gritted teeth. Rarely do I swear, rarely do I react like this to anything. My anger is usually internal. Even when it should be directed outwards at specific people, it’s usually fired at me, it dwells inside, eating at me, gnawing at me until I have to silence it in the only way I know how. ‘You don’t come into my house, my family, and start smashing things up without thinking I’m going to do the same to you.’
‘I haven’t smashed anything up,’ she says, disgusted as well as perplexed.
‘It didn’t occur to you that the little chat you had with my daughter might wreck her head, smash up her mind?’ I say loudly. ‘Maybe make her suicidal?’
Imogen darts to shut the kitchen door to prevent her family from hearing what she’s done today in between breakfast and dinner.
‘She was so distressed after talking to you that she was thinking of walking in front of a bus to solve the problem.’
‘What? No, not because of anything I said to her.’
‘My child was thinking about killing herself so she wouldn’t continue to let her dad down and she wouldn’t make him even more ashamed of her.’
‘She took it the wrong way, she obviously didn’t understand what I meant.’
It’s Imogen who doesn’t understand, who thinks that she can sidle out of this with a mealy mouthed explanation that blames her victim. She can get away with a lot, but this trying to blame a child for her adult actions unleashes a tornado of rage inside me. ‘CALL THE FUCKING POLICE!’ I scream. ‘CALL THEM NOW!’
Imogen begins to shake as the realisation of what she did, what she almost pushed someone to do, sinks in. She flattens herself against the door, her hand over her mouth. ‘Is she all right?’ she asks through her fingers. ‘Tell me she didn’t hurt herself, please.’
I take a step backwards, those questions, the worry behind them, are a cure for my hurricane of rage. Another step back and I am in front of a chair. It makes sense to sit down, to calm myself. ‘She hasn’t hurt herself, but that’s no thanks to you.’
‘Oh, God, I didn’t mean …’ Imogen says. She drags her feet he
avily and crosses the room to drop into the wooden chair at the diagonal opposite end of the table to me. The blinds are drawn and the shiny red cherries on a white background add a forced cheeriness to the room. That’s what’s so odd about Imogen, this house and everything she does – it is forced, as if nothing comes naturally, it’s all about appearances and that appearance has to be happy, bright, positive. All the time.
I inhale deeply and exhale at length. My head is buzzing with what has happened in the last few hours; buzzing constantly with what has happened in the last few days, weeks, months, years. My brain cannot relax – ever. ‘What were you thinking?’ I say to her. She’s a nebulous outline, slumped in a chair on the very periphery of my line of sight. If I look at her, if I see her properly, I’ll probably imagine her mouth moving as it torments Phoebe and I will lose it again.
‘Saffron,’ she says heavily, patronisingly, obviously unaware how close she is to unleashing my rage again, ‘I wish you would understand – what she was going to do was wrong. Someone had to explain that to her. I had to explain that to her because no one else would. I didn’t think it would upset her so much and for that I’m sorry, but I needed her to think about it. Really think about it. She has no idea how it’ll scar her for life.’
‘Scarred or not, at least she’d still be alive. And how many times do I have to tell you: nothing’s been decided. Even if it had, it’s got nothing to do with you.’
She witnessed how every day after Joel’s death we couldn’t think straight, couldn’t eat, could barely sleep. She saw how broken Phoebe was and is. She has seen Zane’s personality being stripped away, hidden behind layers of fear and silence and uncertainty. She’s seen this, she’s been there, and she can still do this to Phoebe.
‘It has got something to do with me. Abortion is wrong. It shouldn’t even be an option. She will never be the same again afterwards. Your little girl will be gone for ever and I want to save her – and you – from that.’
‘You don’t know how she’ll be after an abortion or how she’ll be if she has a baby. None of us know.’
‘Yes, I do!’ she insists.
‘How do you know? Do you have some kind of crystal ball that tells you everything everyone’s going to feel after every little thing they do?’
‘No!’ she snaps.
‘Then spare me. If you don’t have incontrovertible foresight, then stop it.’
‘I know because I had one. All right? I had one and there’s not a day goes by when I don’t feel horrible about it.’
I scrutinise the cherries on the blinds again, then I move on to the brightly coloured mugs hanging from the metal hooks screwed into the underside of the wall cupboards beside the kettle, then I take in the multicoloured chopping boards lined up against the counter to the right. To avoid facing her, and this confession I’m sure she never intended to make, I scan the room, ingesting the imposed joviality that seems to drip from every visible element of their lives. You really believe that abortion is wrong, Imogen? … Well don’t have one then, I hear myself say. I had no idea.
‘I fell pregnant very quickly after Damien,’ Imogen is saying. ‘I couldn’t believe it, I was breastfeeding and I thought we’d been careful, but six months after Damien I was pregnant again. My husband, my first husband, he made all the right noises in the beginning, said he was pleased but I could tell he wasn’t. I knew he was worried about how we’d cope moneywise because it would mean I couldn’t go back to work for a bit longer than we planned.
‘I didn’t care about all that, but the more we talked about it, the more I could see he was right. We really couldn’t cope with another … I didn’t want to do it, but it was the only way to keep my husband. If I didn’t I knew he’d leave me and I couldn’t handle being a single mother. Children need two parents. Damien deserved the best and I couldn’t give him that if it was just me.’
She pauses to draw breath and I still can’t bring myself to look at her, instead I continue to examine the cherries on the blinds.
‘So I went through with it, and I … I cried for a week afterwards. I was so broken by it. I felt like I’d let Damien down. Nothing ever felt right after that and I never forgave my husband for making me do it.’ She sniffs, and I sense her wiping her nose, trying to mop up her tears with her fingertips. ‘The worst part is he left me anyway. Had a grubby little affair with some young tart who threw herself at him, and then left. I should never have done it for him.’ More sniffing, more tear-wiping. ‘You see? I do know what I’m talking about, I do have some idea of what it’ll do to her.’
‘No, you don’t,’ I reply quietly. I feel awful for her, but what she has done to Phoebe is still bubbling away in my chest. ‘I am so so sorry for what you went through, Imogen. It sounds horrific, but all you know is how you were affected by it. Just because you felt like that doesn’t mean everyone else will.’
‘How can they not?’ she says. Her tears have evaporated and she is back in the position of ‘right about everything’.
‘Oh come on, Imogen, everyone’s different, how they react to things is different. You know that. You are not Phoebe. You can’t know what she’ll feel whether she goes ahead with the pregnancy or not.’
‘I think I—’
‘If you were fourteen when you had your abortion, that might take you a step closer to understanding her,’ I interrupt. ‘If your father was killed when you were twelve and they still hadn’t caught the killer, then that might take you a step closer. If you had a mother who has been on the edge of a nervous breakdown since your father died, that might take you closer. If some bastard lying to you to get into your knickers resulted in a pregnancy you never wanted, that might take you fractionally nearer. But you are and were none of those things so you have no idea how she’ll react. None of us have any idea about anything that hasn’t happened, not even Phoebe, so please, let’s drop this.’
‘Saffron—’
‘Unless you are about to say, “Saffron, I’m really sorry for being so unutterably vile to your daughter, I’m going to apologise unreservedly to her and tell her I was wrong” then please do not finish that sentence.’
‘I hope someone can talk some sense into you before you let—’
The rage boils my veins, blisters my muscles and scorches my chest as it erupts through my mouth: ‘STAY AWAY FROM MY DAUGHTER! STAY AWAY FROM ME! NEXT TIME, I WILL NOT GIVE YOU THE OPTION OF CALLING THE POLICE FIRST!’ My bellow is a sound I’ve never made before. It doesn’t matter who hears me, it’s not important who is frightened by my words, all that matters is that Imogen understands. I don’t care what she believes, I don’t care if she expects the whole world to do as she says and not as she does, I simply need her to believe that if I ever again have to listen to my daughter talk about killing herself, permanently removing herself from me because of something Imogen has said, it will be the end of Imogen. ‘DO I MAKE MYSELF CLEAR?’
Although most of Imogen’s body is rigid, her large, hazel-green eyes are fixed on me as she nods.
These are the things I know about her: Imogen wears make-up every day, she has her hair professionally washed and styled every week, she started to go to church to get her son into St Caroline’s because of its outstanding Ofsted report and her house being technically out of the catchment area, she runs her home with military precision.
These are the things she doesn’t know about me: I have done some unthinkable things to protect my daughter; I’d do virtually anything to protect my daughter and my son; if it came to a choice between hurting Imogen and allowing my children to be damaged, there’d be no choice at all.
*
‘I was about to come out and look for you. I was worried.’ He doesn’t want to be around me any longer, he doesn’t want to speak to me, but Fynn has waited here for hours for me to come home. My heart aches at the thought of that, at the thought of him.
‘Thank you,’ I say. ‘For the lift to get Phoebe, for bringing her home, and for staying here to wait for me
. And for being worried.’
He won’t look at me, he stares straight ahead as I speak.
The walk home hasn’t cleared my head, it has simply made it swim, made me feel as if I am on a piece of driftwood in the ocean, bumped around, taken here and there on the will of the tide, the whim of someone else. I need to cook something. Or eat something. I need something that is going to make all of this everythingness go away. A talk to my best friend might do it.
‘Fynn—’
His navy blue eyes look sharply at me, then. Cold, unflinching; warning me not to do it, not to go there. It was done with and we all had to get on with it.
‘Nothing. I’ll see you.’
‘Take care of yourself,’ he replies, his line of sight back on the windscreen. He pulls away from the kerb without looking in my direction again.
Entering my house seems too much effort right now. I sit on the fourth stone step, my bag on my lap, the cold of the night air seeping into my skin. I know she’s probably out here, watching me from wherever she is. But if I go inside I will not be able to stop myself from bingeing. I will need to stuff away all these feelings, all this hurt, and I don’t want to. I need to, but I don’t want to. I can’t fight it for much longer, but being out here will delay it a while.
I hear the car before I see it. It has a familiar growl, it is a striking British racing green colour, it has a driver with navy blue eyes who looks in my direction and meets my gaze. He throws a regretful but affectionate half-smile at me before accelerating away.
Come back, I think at him. I want to do it again.
Monday, 13 May