television with his father, I took a sheet of A4 paper from the printer and a pen from the jar by the kitchen window and wrote down what I wanted to say. I folded the paper, found an envelope, and left it on the kitchen table, addressed to his mother.
When I left for the evening, Will and his father were talking. Actually, Will was laughing. I paused in the hallway, my bag over my shoulder, listening. Why would he laugh? What could possibly provoke mirth given that he had just a matter of weeks before he took his own life?
‘I’m off,’ I called through the doorway, and started walking.
‘Hey, Clark –’ he began, but I had already closed the door behind me.
I spent the short bus ride trying to work out what I was going to tell my parents. They would be furious that I had left what they would see as a perfectly suitable and well-paid job. After her initial shock my mother would look pained and defend me, suggesting that it had all been too much. My father would probably ask why I couldn’t be more like my sister. He often did, even though I was not the one who ruined her life by getting pregnant and having to rely on the rest of the family for financial support and babysitting. You weren’t allowed to say anything like that in our house because, according to my mother, it was like implying that Thomas wasn’t a blessing. And all babies were God’s blessing, even those who said bugger quite a lot, and whose presence meant that half the potential wage earners in our family couldn’t actually go and get a decent job.
I would not be able to tell them the truth. I knew I owed Will and his family nothing, but I wouldn’t inflict the curious gaze of the neighbourhood on him.
All these thoughts tumbled around my head as I got off the bus and walked down the hill. And then I got to the corner of our road and heard the shouting, felt the slight vibration in the air, and it was all briefly forgotten.
A small crowd had gathered around our house. I picked up my pace, afraid that something had happened, but then I saw my parents on the porch, peering up, and realized it wasn’t our house at all. It was just the latest in a long series of small wars that characterized our neighbours’ marriage.
That Richard Grisham was not the most faithful of husbands was hardly news in our street. But judging by the scene in his front garden, it might have been to his wife.
‘You must have thought I was bloody stupid. She was wearing your T-shirt! The one I had made for you for your birthday!’
‘Baby … Dympna … it’s not what you think.’
‘I went in for your bloody Scotch eggs! And there she was, wearing it! Bold as brass! And I don’t even like Scotch eggs!’
I slowed my pace, pushing my way through the small crowd until I was able to get to our gate, watching as Richard ducked to avoid a DVD player. Next came a pair of shoes.
‘How long have they been at it?’
My mother, her apron tucked neatly around her waist, unfolded her arms and glanced down at her watch. ‘It’s a good three-quarters of an hour. Bernard, would you say it’s a good three-quarters of an hour?’
‘Depends if you time it from when she threw the clothes out or when he came back and found them.’
‘I’d say when he came home.’
Dad considered this. ‘Then it’s really closer to half an hour. She got a good lot out of the window in the first fifteen minutes, though.’
‘Your dad says if she really does kick him out this time he’s going to put in a bid for Richard’s Black and Decker.’
The crowd had grown, and Dympna Grisham showed no sign of letting up. If anything, she seemed encouraged by the increasing size of her audience.
‘You can take her your filthy books,’ she yelled, hurling a shower of magazines out of the window.
These prompted a small cheer among the crowd.
‘See if she likes you sitting in the loo with those for half of Sunday afternoon, eh?’ She disappeared inside, and then reappeared at the window, hauling the contents of a laundry basket down on to what remained of the lawn. ‘And your filthy undercrackers. See if she thinks you’re such a – what was it? – hot stud when she’s washing those for you every day!’
Richard was vainly scooping up armfuls of his stuff as it landed on the grass. He was yelling something up at the window, but against the general noise and catcalls it was hard to make it out. As if briefly admitting defeat, he pushed his way through the crowd, unlocked his car, hauled an armful of his belongings on to the rear seat, and shoved the car door shut. Oddly, whereas his CD collection and video games had been quite popular, no one made a move on his dirty laundry.
Crash. There was a brief hush as his stereo met the path.
He looked up in disbelief. ‘You crazy bitch!’
‘You’re shagging that disease-ridden cross-eyed troll from the garage, and I’m the crazy bitch?’
My mother turned to my father. ‘Would you like a cup of tea, Bernard? I think it’s turning a little chilly.’
My dad didn’t take his eyes off next door. ‘That would be great, love. Thank you.’
It was as my mother went indoors that I noticed the car. It was so unexpected that at first I didn’t recognize it – Mrs Traynor’s Mercedes, navy blue, low-slung and discreet. She pulled up, peering out at the scene on the pavement, and hesitated a moment before she climbed out. She stood, staring at the various houses, perhaps checking the numbers. And then she saw me.
I slid out from the porch and was down the path before Dad could ask where I was going. Mrs Traynor stood to the side of the crowd, gazing at the chaos like Marie Antoinette viewing a load of rioting peasants.
‘Domestic dispute,’ I said.
She looked away, as if almost embarrassed to have been caught looking. ‘I see.’
‘It’s a fairly constructive one by their standards. They’ve been going to marriage guidance.’
Her elegant wool suit, pearls and expensive hair were enough to mark her out in our street, among the sweatpants and cheap fabrics in bright, chain-store colours. She appeared rigid, worse than the morning she had come home to find me sleeping in Will’s room. I registered in some distant part of my mind that I was not going to miss Camilla Traynor.
‘I was wondering if you and I could have a little talk.’ She had to lift her voice to be heard over the cheering.
Mrs Grisham was now throwing out Richard’s fine wines. Every exploding bottle was greeted with squeals of delight and another heartfelt outburst of pleading from Mr Grisham. A river of red wine ran through the feet of the crowd and into the gutter.
I glanced over at the crowd and then behind me at the house. I could not imagine bringing Mrs Traynor into our front room, with its litter of toy trains, Granddad snoring mutely in front of the television, Mum spraying air-freshener around to hide the smell of Dad’s socks, and Thomas popping by to murmur bugger at the new guest.
‘Um … it’s not a great time.’
‘Perhaps we could talk in my car? Look, just five minutes, Louisa. Surely you owe us that.’
A couple of my neighbours glanced in my direction as I climbed into the car. I was lucky that the Grishams were the hot news of the evening, or I might have been the topic of conversation. In our street, if you climbed into an expensive car it meant you had either pulled a footballer or were being arrested by plain-clothes police.
The doors closed with an expensive, muted clunk and suddenly there was silence. The car smelt of leather, and there was nothing in it apart from me and Mrs Traynor. No sweet wrappers, mud, lost toys or perfumed dangly things to disguise the smell of the carton of milk that had been dropped in there three months earlier.
‘I thought you and Will got on well.’ She spoke as if addressing someone straight ahead of her. When I didn’t speak, she said, ‘Is there a problem with the money?’
‘No.’
‘Do you need a longer lunch break? I am conscious that it’s rather short. I could ask Nathan if he would –’
‘It’s not the hours. Or the money.’
‘Then –’
‘I don’t really want to –’
‘Look, you cannot hand in your notice with immediate effect and expect me not even to ask what on earth’s the matter.’
I took a deep breath. ‘I overheard you. You and your daughter. Last night. And I don’t want to … I don’t want to be part of it.’
‘Ah.’
We sat in silence. Mr Grisham was now trying to bash his way in through the front door, and Mrs Grisham was busy hurling anything she could locate through the window down on to his head. The choice of projectile missiles – loo roll, tampon boxes, toilet brush, shampoo bottles – suggested she was now in the bathroom.
‘Please, don’t leave,’ Mrs Traynor said, quietly. ‘Will is comfortable with you. More so than he’s been for some time. I … it would be very hard for us to replicate that with someone else.’
‘But you’re … you’re going to take him to that place where people commit suicide. Dignitas.’
‘No. I am going to do everything I can to ensure he doesn’t do that.’
‘Like what – praying?’
She gave me what my mother would have termed an ‘old-fashioned’ look. ‘You must know by now that if Will decides to make himself unreachable, there is little anybody can do about it.’
‘I worked it all out,’ I said. ‘I’m basically there just to make sure he doesn’t cheat and do it before his six months are up. That’s it, isn’t it?’
‘No. That’s not it.’
‘Which is why you didn’t care about my qualifications.’
‘I thought you were bright and cheerful and different. You didn’t look like a nurse. You didn’t behave … like any of the others. I thought … I thought you might cheer him up. And you do – you do cheer him up, Louisa. Seeing him without that awful beard yesterday … you seem to be one of the few people who are able to get through to him.’
The bedding came out of the window. It came down in a ball, the sheets extending themselves briefly and gracefully before they hit the ground. Two children picked one up and began running around the little garden with it over their heads.
‘Don’t you think it would have been fair to mention that I was basically on suicide watch?’
The sigh Camilla Traynor gave was the sound of someone forced to explain something politely to an imbecile. I wondered if she knew that everything she said made the other person feel like an idiot. I wondered if it was something she’d actually cultivated deliberately. I didn’t think I could ever manage to make someone feel inferior.
‘That might have been the case when we first met you … but I’m confident Will is going to stick to his word. He has promised me six months, and that’s what I’ll get. We need this time, Louisa. We need this time to give him the idea of there being some possibility. I was hoping it might plant the idea that there is a life he could enjoy, even if it wasn’t the life he had planned.’
‘But it’s all lies. You’ve lied to me and you’re all lying to each other.’
She didn’t seem to hear me. She turned to face me, pulling a chequebook from her handbag, a pen ready in her hand.
‘Look, what do you want? I will double your money. Tell me how much you want.’
‘I don’t want your money.’
‘A car. Some benefits. Bonuses –’
‘No –’
‘Then … what can I do that might change your mind?’
‘I’m sorry. I just don’t –’
I made to get out of the car. Her hand shot out. It sat there on my arm, strange and radioactive. We both stared at it.
‘You signed a contract, Miss Clark,’ she said. ‘You signed a contract where you promised to work for us for six months. By my calculations you have only done two. I am simply requiring you to fulfil your contractual obligations.’
Her voice had become brittle. I looked down at Mrs Traynor’s hand and saw that it was trembling.
She swallowed. ‘Please.’
My parents were watching from the porch. I could see them, mugs poised in their hands, the only two people facing away from the theatre next door. They turned away awkwardly when they saw that I had noticed them. Dad, I realized, was wearing the tartan slippers with the paint splodges.
I pushed the handle of the door. ‘Mrs Traynor, I really can’t sit by and watch … it’s too weird. I don’t want to be part of this.’
‘Just think about it. Tomorrow is Good Friday – I’ll tell Will you have a family commitment if you really just need some time. Take the Bank Holiday weekend to think about it. But please. Come back. Come back and help him.’
I walked back into the house without looking back. I sat in the living room, staring at the television while my parents followed me in, exchanged glances and pretended not to be watching me.
It was almost eleven minutes before I finally heard Mrs Traynor’s car start up and drive away.
My sister confronted me within five minutes of arriving home, thundering up the stairs and throwing open the door of my room.
‘Yes, do come in,’ I said. I was lying on the bed, my legs stretched up the wall, staring at the ceiling. I was wearing tights and blue sequinned shorts, which now looped unattractively around the tops of my legs.
Katrina stood in the doorway. ‘Is it true?’
‘That Dympna Grisham has finally thrown out her cheating no-good philandering husband and –’
‘Don’t be smart. About your job.’
I traced the pattern of the wallpaper with my big toe. ‘Yes, I handed in my notice. Yes, I know Mum and Dad are not too happy about it. Yes, yes, yes to whatever it is you’re going to throw at me.’
She closed the door carefully behind her, then sat down heavily on the end of my bed and swore lustily. ‘I don’t bloody believe you.’
She shoved my legs so that I slid down the wall, ending up almost lying on the bed. I pushed myself upright. ‘Ow.’
Her face was puce. ‘I don’t believe you. Mum’s in bits downstairs. Dad’s pretending not to be, but he is too. What are they supposed to do about money? You know Dad’s already panicking about work. Why the hell would you throw away a perfectly good job?’
‘Don’t lecture me, Treen.’
‘Well, someone’s got to! You’re never going to get anything like that money anywhere else. And how’s it going to look on your CV?’
‘Oh, don’t pretend this is about anything other than you and what you want.’
‘What?’
‘You don’t care what I do, as long as you can still go and resurrect your high-flying career. You just need me there propping up the family funds and providing the bloody childcare. Sod everyone else.’ I knew I sounded mean and nasty but I couldn’t help myself. It was my sister’s plight that had got us into this mess, after all. Years of resentment began to ooze out of me. ‘We’ve all got to stick at jobs we hate just so that little Katrina can fulfil her bloody ambitions.’
‘It is not about me.’
‘No?’
‘No, it’s about you not being able to stick at the one decent job you’ve been offered in months.’
‘You know nothing about my job, okay?’
‘I know it paid well above the minimum wage. Which is all I need to know about it.’
‘Not everything in life is about the money, you know.’
‘Yes? You go downstairs and tell Mum and Dad that.’
‘Don’t you dare bloody lecture me about money when you haven’t paid a sodding thing towards this house for years.’
‘You know I can’t afford much because of Thomas.’
I began to shove my sister out of the door. I can’t remember the last time I actually laid a hand on her, but right then I wanted to punch someone quite badly and I was afraid of what I would do if she stayed there in front of me. ‘Just piss off, Treen. Okay? Just piss off and leave me alone.’
I slammed the door in my sister’s face. And when I finally heard her walking slowly back down the stairs, I chose not to think about what she would say to my parents, about the way they would all treat this as further evidence of my catastrophic inability to do anything of any worth. I chose not to think about Syed at the Job Centre and how I would explain my reasons for leaving this most well paid of menial jobs. I chose not to think about the chicken factory and how somewhere, deep within its bowels, there was probably a set of plastic overalls, and a hygiene cap with my name still on it.
I lay back and I thought about Will. I thought about his anger and his sadness. I thought about what his mother had said – that I was one of the only people able to get through to him. I thought about him trying not to laugh at the ‘Molahonkey Song’ on a night when the snow drifted gold past the window. I thought about the warm skin and soft hair and hands of someone living, someone who was far cleverer and funnier than I would ever be and who still couldn’t see a better future than to obliterate himself. And finally, my head pressed into the pillow, I cried, because my life suddenly seemed so much darker and more complicated than I could ever have imagined, and I wished I could go back, back to when my biggest worry was whether Frank and I had ordered in enough Chelsea buns.
There was a knock on the door.
I blew my nose. ‘Piss off, Katrina.’
‘I’m sorry.’
I stared at the door.
Her voice was muffled, as if her lips were close up to the keyhole. ‘I’ve got wine. Look, let me in for God’s sake, or Mum will hear me. I’ve got two Bob the Builder mugs stuck up my jumper, and you know how she gets about us drinking upstairs.’
I climbed off the bed and opened the door.
She glanced up at my tear-stained face, and swiftly closed the bedroom door behind her. ‘Okay,’ she said, wrenching off the screw top and pouring me a mug of wine, ‘what really happened?’
I looked at my sister hard. ‘You mustn’t tell anyone what I’m about to tell you. Not Dad. Especially not Mum.’
Then I told her.
I had to tell someone
There were many ways in which I disliked my sister. A few years ago I could have shown you whole scribbled lists I had written on that very topic. I hated her for the fact that she got thick, straight hair, while mine breaks off if it grows beyond my shoulders. I hated her for the fact that you can never tell her anything that she doesn’t already know. I hated the fact that for my whole school career teachers insisted on telling me in hushed tones how bright she was, as if her brilliance wouldn’t mean that by default I lived in a permanent shadow. I hated her for the fact that at the age of twenty-six I lived in a box room in a semi-detached house just so she could have her illegitimate son in with her in the bigger bedroom. But every now and then I was very glad indeed that she was my sister.
Because Katrina didn’t shriek in horror. She didn’t look shocked, or insist that I tell Mum and Dad. She didn’t once tell me I’d done the wrong thing by walking away.
She took a huge swig of her drink. ‘Jeez.’
‘Exactly.’
‘It’s legal as well. It’s not as if they can stop him.’
‘I know.’
‘Fuck. I can’t even get my head around it.’
We had downed two glasses just in the telling of it, and I could feel the heat rising in my cheeks. ‘I hate the thought of leaving him. But I can’t be part of this, Treen. I can’t.’
‘Mmm.’ She was thinking. My sister actually has a ‘thinking face’. It makes people wait before speaking to her. Dad says my thinking face makes it look like I want to go to the loo.
‘I don’t know what to do,’ I said.
She looked up at me, her face suddenly brightening. ‘It’s simple.’
‘Simple.’
She poured us another glass each. ‘Oops. We seem to have finished this already. Yes. Simple. They’ve got money, right?’
‘I don’t want their money. She offered me a raise. It’s not the point.’
‘Shut up. Not for you, idiot girl. They’ll have their own money. And he’s probably got a shedload of insurance from the accident. Well, you tell them that