Something You Are (15 page)

‘Why did you send me that video?' I asked, feeling
light-headed
.

‘I wanted…' She still didn't turn around but I saw her rub her eyes. ‘I wanted to tell you the worst thing about myself.'

‘I… I don't understand.'

‘Who said I expect you to understand?'

She took a step towards the back door, locked her gaze on something and twirled, whipping her head around with her lips parted. I didn't find it hard to believe that she wasn't aware of the kitchen any more, or of me.

I took a cautious step towards her, where she was turning in circles on a clear patch of floor, and wanted to put a hand on her shoulder. When she danced it was as if she left this world. I had this idea that if I tried to touch her I would fall through her, like an apparition.

‘
Don't
.'

I stopped, but I didn't want to.

She turned her head and stared me down, unblinking. ‘Don't you
dare
touch me.'

Maybe, on some level, it was what I had been planning all along. I pulled her forwards, more roughly than I meant to, and kissed her. She jerked away for a second, surprisingly strong, and dragged us both sideways, her nails raking into my forearms.

She slapped me across the face, kissed me back and it felt like what I had been waiting for. For a moment, that was all that existed in my world. I gripped the tops of her arms, leaving marks over the ones that were there already, until I realized the insanity of what I was doing and let her go.

The music had stopped.

I expected her to hit me again, but there was a faraway look in her eyes and her lips were swollen red.

‘I'm… fuck, I'm sorry,' I said.

She burst into tears.

‘I didn't really know what to do with them all, so I put them in here.'

I hovered for as long as I could before sitting down beside her on the sofa, linking my fingers to stop them twitching. It was strange, seeing a person's life reduced to nothing more than a shoebox on someone's knees. The evidence of my life probably wouldn't fill one.

‘These ones are really old. She was only about eight.'

In the first two Emma was with her father, smiling a
gap-toothed
smile. Pat looked younger, much younger and less jaded. It made me wonder if he had always been like he was now, or whether being too long surrounded by the ugliness of people had turned him so hard.

‘This was her on her sixth birthday, with my mum.'

I nodded, trying to ignore the way my leg was just touching hers and the brush of her fingers every time she gave me a photo. Her skin was warmer than I had expected it to be.

‘I think she was about four in these ones. God, it seems so long ago now.'

I looked at the tiny dark-haired child and felt an uncomfortable lump in my throat. The girl playing in the garden had no idea it was possible to end up a dead young woman on a mortuary slab and I envied her that kind of blissful ignorance.

Clare handed me another. Her eyes were still red and puffy
from the half-hour she had spent crying in my arms on the kitchen floor. She looked too fragile to withstand this level of grief; I thought the sobbing was going to break her.

‘This one was in France last year, and this one was her last birthday.'

I thought that she looked a lot older than a teenager, an unsettling thing for any parent. Trouble was written all over her, in the come-hither eyes and the self-assurance with which she held herself.

‘She looks… happy,' I said.

I didn't think my real thoughts would have been appropriate.

‘She was. I—' She halted mid-sentence.

I tensed.

‘I'm sorry.' She shook her head. ‘I'm sorry, I… I'm not sure I've done that before.'

‘Done what?'

‘Talked about her like that, in past tense.' Her laugh wasn't quite right. ‘Silly, I suppose, all this time talking about her like she's on holiday or something.'

‘My brother died the other day.' I put the photos down on my knees, and for the first time since it had happened it stopped feeling like something I had watched happen to someone else. ‘He'd been in Afghanistan for so long it doesn't actually feel like anything's changed. It's pretty weird.'

‘Wow, I'm really sorry.' For once, she sounded genuine. ‘I'm surprised, you know, that you have a brother.'

‘Sister too, and parents, like normal people.'

‘Are they OK?'

‘I…' I still hadn't called back. ‘I don't know, to be honest.'

‘Were you close, you and your brother?'

‘No. Though that was my fault, really. Me and Harri, my
sister, we fucked up a lot. I mean
a lot
, you have no idea how much…' I kept talking, letting the words find their own way out. ‘So it wasn't his fault, he just made us feel… bad, I suppose.'

She nodded, rubbing at the bruise on her forehead. I was almost overcome by the urge to touch her.

‘I don't get it,' I said. ‘Why do you…? How can you keep making these fucking excuses for him?'

A weary expression came over her face and she sighed. ‘It's not his fault, I… Sometimes it's better to just feel something, I guess. Or something… different, at least.'

‘I don't get it.'

‘You might… Maybe.'

I wanted to kiss her again.

Across the room another mobile started ringing and she stood up. She looked at it for a moment, and when she chose to answer I could hear Pat's voice without even being on speakerphone.

Clare held the phone a few inches away from her ear as he started shouting. I made out the words ‘fucking', ‘liar' and ‘bitch'. I had a fleeting vision of punching him in the face, over and over and over again…

‘Save the phone call for your lawyer,
darling
,' she said.

Pat started to say something else, but she cut him off and put the phone down.

There was a sardonic glint in her eye.

She looked at me. ‘You have to go. I have some… things to do.'

‘What sort of things?'

She ignored me. It was always her conversation; never mine. ‘If I call you, will you come back?'

I hesitated, but not for long enough to be convincing.
Asking her about what had just happened would be pointless, I could tell.

‘Yes,' I said.

She smiled, but I wasn't sure if it was at me. ‘OK.'

I stood up and held out the photos.

She took them, curling her fingers around mine for a moment. It was as if a mist had descended around her face; she wasn't there any more. I left without saying anything else, feeling as though something poisonous was crawling across my skin.

I shut the front door and stood on the driveway, taking deep breaths before walking back towards the road. I resisted looking back at the house; I felt as though she might have been watching.

My mobile started ringing as I reached the pavement, and when I was sure I was out of sight I answered it.

It was Pat.

‘Nic,' he said, sounding as though he was breathing through his teeth. ‘I need a favour, a personal one. I'll pay you more if need be.'

‘I—' I cut myself off, remembering to act oblivious to whatever had happened on the phone with Clare. ‘Yeah, sure. What sort of favour?'

‘Had some visitors to my office… I think I'm going to be charged with assault. Possibly ABH, I don't know, God knows what she's made up. Nic…' He paused. ‘Nic, this is serious, I need you to watch her.'

‘Clare?'

‘I need you to watch her. Even if I get out on bail I won't be able to go home.'

I slipped on a patch of ice. ‘Um, sorry, I'm not getting you. I mean, I understand but… what are you—?'

‘You don't know her, Nic. You don't know what she's… what she's capable of. I know you think you've got it all worked out and you're probably feeling very fucking superior, but she's losing the plot. She's losing the fucking plot and she's not safe. I
need
you to keep an eye on her and tell me what's going on.'

There were normal behaviour patterns in abusive relationships; scripts and clichés that were always followed. I had seen them in enough jobs. This wasn't normal. No matter how I ran through the scenarios in my head, I couldn't grasp what was going on. One moment they were both playing the roles I expected of them, then one or both of them turned everything back on its head.

It dawned on me what Emma must have felt like; being between two people who had spent almost two decades of marriage learning how to fuck each other up.

‘How much?' I asked.

‘Depends what you tell me. I'm serious. You have no fucking idea what she's like and you
have
to tell me what's happening.'

He didn't sound angry any more, I realized. He didn't sound unhinged, or jealous, or possessive. He sounded worried.

Part of me wanted to throw it back in his face, tell him how glad I was that he was finally getting some comeuppance, that not even an hour ago his wife had left scratch marks on my forearms as she had kissed me. But I didn't. There was a creeping feeling, a tiny fragment of doubt, which kept telling me I might be wrong.

I wasn't wrong, almost certainly wasn't, but I still had to get the laptop.

‘OK,' I said slowly. ‘OK, I'll do it.'

‘Thanks. I'll send you my lawyer's number, just in case, but I've got to go.'

He hung up.

I stood still in the cold for a while, unsure of where to start, where this was even going any more. This evening, I thought, checking my watch, I was going to start with calling my parents back.

Mark was watching
Question Time
in the living room, so there was a comforting level of noise in the background as I paced in the kitchen for a while with the cordless phone. After about ten minutes I pressed the Call button, hoping that being forced into speaking would calm me down.

I leant against the kitchen worktop, my heart pounding. I still hadn't remembered to change my fucking watch. As I looked at it I felt uneasy, but couldn't pinpoint why. It made me think of Matt.

Harriet answered my parents' landline.

‘Hello?'

In the living room I heard Mark laugh and shout something at the TV. There had been a bottle of brandy on the coffee table.

‘Hi, Harri, it's me.'

She made a disbelieving noise down the line. ‘So much for coming back, huh?'

‘I'm sorry.'

‘Do you want to speak to Mum?'

‘No, I mean it. I'm really…' I swallowed. ‘I'm really sorry and… I really miss him.'

She didn't say anything and I started absently picking up kitchen utensils and putting them down again.

‘Is that what you called to say?' she said.

‘You know… You know what really gets me?' I said, choking.

‘What?'

‘Neither of us… We didn't turn up for the… er…' I stabbed a fork into the granite as a few tears worked their way down my cheeks. ‘When he got his wings… We didn't, neither of us… It's so… fucking…'

‘I know what you mean.' Her voice was thick.

‘I don't even… remember what the fucking excuse… was,' I said, sniffing.

‘I was high, I suppose.' There was a pause, where she sounded as though she had walked into another room and shut the door. ‘He wasn't a saint, Nic, he just… thought he was.
They
just think that.'

‘Oh, come on,' I said, wiping my eyes. ‘What the fuck's the point in being bitter about it now? We both… we both fucked it up.'

‘Oh, shut up.'

‘No, listen!' I snapped, managing to fight back the tears long enough to construct a sentence. ‘It's not his fault he made us look like shit, he was just—'

‘
Perfect
,' she spat.

‘Why the fuck are you being like this?'

‘Why the fuck are you trying to apologize to him? He's
dead
, Nic, a gravestone's not going to hear your fucking
apology
, so just deal with it. You think I haven't had to listen to
them
, going on and on about how they didn't fucking do enough for him? Well, maybe if they'd done less for him they wouldn't have left us to the shit!'

I stared across the kitchen at my reflection in the oven door. I couldn't think of anything to say. There was nothing I could say, not even in contradiction.

There was a long silence.

Harriet sniffed, and I was shocked to realize she had probably been crying.

‘So I don't… I don't want to hear it,' she said. ‘And I hope… I hope you're coming to the funeral because…'

‘Of course I'll come, I just—'

‘… we have to say something and if there's not one other person there who's fucking
sane
about this I—'

‘Harri, don't cry…'

‘I might fucking throw up.' She sniffed. ‘Nic… I'll call you… back.'

‘No, come on—'

The line went dead. I realized there were still tears running down my cheeks and I brushed them away. As I put the phone down on the side I noticed the brief silence before the TV kicked in again. Mark had probably muted it for the duration of the call.

I dashed some cold water on my face from the sink, and when I took the phone back out into the living room Mark was acting oblivious. I watched
Question Time
for a while from the back of the room, until he turned the sound down a little.

‘Want to talk about it?' he said, without turning around.

I laughed, but everything still hurt. ‘Na… Maybe later.'

‘I'm sorry.'

Sighing heavily, I came around the sofa and slouched down next to him. ‘It's all right. Well, you know… It's… one of those things.'

Mark reached over and gave the side of my neck an affectionate scratch, before turning the sound up again.

‘Look at this dick on the panel,' he said, his lip curling at the TV screen. ‘I don't know how the audience do it, how they
don't just stand up and shout, You're a cunt! You're a racist cunt!'

I poured myself a glass of brandy and put the phone down on the coffee table, just in case. I didn't expect her to call back; she was too much like me. Fuck her, I thought. Fuck all of them.