The Story of You (9 page)
‘I haven’t got one,’ he said.
‘It’s okay,’ I said, pulling his shoulders back. ‘It’s okay. It’s fine, honestly.’ I sat up and kissed him on the neck. ‘Just come here,
please
… For God’s sake.’
‘Robyn …’
‘Come
on
!’
I took my knickers off and flung them to the side; we were both giggling now and shivering, half with cold, half with desire.
I lay back down and then Joe was inside me, the length of his whole, warm, strong body against mine. I wanted to cry, I was so happy, and I cried out again. When I flung my head to the side, I saw that a chicken had wandered into the barn. I could make out its fat, black body silhouetted; its shadow was long on the straw floor, and in the moonlight its lidless eye was blinking at me.
‘Right, how do you like your eggs, Robyn?’
The atmosphere at the breakfast table at Dad’s the next day was frosty, to say the least. Denise was the martyred waitress, wafting dramatically in and out of the beaded curtain separating the dining room from the kitchen (I swear she only had it fitted so Dad could actually
hear
her go in and out of there). Dad was doing what he always did when there was an atmosphere: hiding behind his newspaper.
I watched him, reading the sports pages, picking his nose, unable to even believe myself, that I could possibly feel this bad. I’m not a big drinker, normally. I don’t like the feeling of being out of control. This wasn’t always the case. At university, I was
that
girl with traffic cones in my room, that girl to get in any old minicab. I once held up the traffic on Blackfriars Bridge when drunk (and spent a night in a police cell for the privilege). But there’s only so long you can carry on like that before you realize it’s not fair to have everyone worry constantly about you, even if you’re not worrying about yourself. Now, I never drink so much I’m out of control. Last night, I did. Maybe I felt safe? Still, I wasn’t going to let Denise have the satisfaction of knowing that.
I sat motionless at the dining table, my throbbing head slowly catching up with the pleasant dull ache between my thighs. If I sort of pursed my lips and closed my eyes, I could still smell Joe on my top lip: his muskiness, Jack Daniel’s. When Denise came marching back from the kitchen, I felt like she’d caught me in the act.
She plonked a cup of tea down in front of me.
‘You look like you need that,’ she said. The slogan on it said:
DO YOU TAKE ME FOR A MUG?
I chose not to take this personally. Then she rattled through the beaded curtain, to make my poached eggs. I might have helped, but feared that, if I moved, I’d most definitely be sick.
From behind his newspaper, Dad tutted. ‘How come madam here gets to choose what type of eggs she gets? It’s not a bloody hotel, you know …’
‘Really?’ said Denise from the kitchen. ‘You could have fooled me.’
I apologized for waking people up; it’s much easier that way. Apparently, I’d come in at after 3 a.m., then set the smoke alarm off by making a bacon sandwich. Denise said my dress was left in a heap by the toilet, still in the shape that I’d stepped out of it (and I could go and pick it up when I was ready, too).
‘Did you get back to sleep, Denny, love?’ Dad said.
‘No, but it’s fine,’ she said. (Fine, fine,
fine
.) ‘I’ll have a nap later, if I get the chance.’
Denise was huffing and puffing and clattering in the kitchen. I was taking slow, tentative slurps of tea, looking through the French doors at the dull grey sky and the grey concrete. When Mum was alive, that garden was a mass of wild flowers and colour; six months after Denise moved in (which was only two after Mum died, Christmas ’96, just to add insult to injury), she had it paved over – apparently because she had a ‘bad back and found it hard to garden’. Maybe it was this which angered me – this feeling I can’t seem to shake, that Dad has let Denise pave over him, us. Maybe it was the thought that if Mum could see those grey slabs, she’d be so disappointed, or that last night had ignited something in me, set some kind of change in motion. Whatever it was, I felt daring. I was not leaving this house without the ashes.
‘Right, so,’ I announced suddenly, pressing my palms on the table for extra emphasis. From behind his newspaper, I saw Dad’s eyelids flicker with alarm. ‘Where are Mum’s ashes? ’Cause I’m not going home without them.’
Dad coughed and put his paper down. Denise came out, carrying my eggs, a miasma of Elnett and frying fat, the tops of her jeans swish-swishing. She stopped when she got to the table, holding the plate in her hands.
‘Well, Bruce, have you told her?’ She’d overdrawn one of her brows with eye pencil, so it went too far towards her temple. It made her look even more mad than usual.
‘Told me what?’
‘He can’t find them, Robyn,’ she said, putting my plate down.
I felt my throat constrict with panic.
‘What do you mean, you can’t find them?’ I said, my voice wobbling. ‘Dad, are you saying that you have actually
lost
Mum?’
‘Don’t be bloody ridiculous,’ he said.
‘Well, where are they, then? Denise, any ideas?’
I didn’t hate Denise but I didn’t trust her either. Mum was a hard act to follow and she knew it. I always got the sense with her that she’d never got over one vital fact: Dad had never wanted to end it with Mum; it ended because she died. It would have been easier for Denise if it had been divorce.
‘Because I don’t mean to be rude, and please don’t take this the wrong way, but I know you’ve sometimes found it difficult, looking at …’ Dad was boring holes into me with his eyes. I stopped just in time. ‘Just, maybe you moved them, that’s all?’
The realization that, yes, I
was
accusing her of hiding my mother’s ashes, made Denise’s throat flush red – was that anger, or guilt? ‘Don’t look at me,’ she said. ‘I have polished that urn every single day. I do it at the same time as I do my cats and trophies.’
That was nice, I thought, ranking all that remained of my mother with her badminton trophies and ceramic cats. And, anyway, I didn’t believe her.
‘Also, if you three girls can’t look after your mother’s ashes yourselves, well …’ She flounced off in the direction of the kitchen again. ‘I’ve done my bit.’
‘Denise, excuse me!’
Dad slammed his newspaper shut. It made me jump. ‘That is enough, Robyn, thank you. Stop talking about the ashes in front of Denise. It’s bad manners.’
Bad manners? My mum’s memory was now a bad manner?
‘And in front of your dad,’ added Denise. ‘It only upsets him.’
This was unbelievable.
‘Look, I’m not saying anyone’s put them anywhere,’ I said, finally, even though this was exactly what I was saying. ‘I just … I need them.’ And, as soon as I started talking, I became more resolute that this was absolutely what had to happen. ‘By August, by the time you move out.’ Dad was still glaring at me, petrified about what I might say next. ‘Mum wouldn’t want to be in any other house but this one; so, if she can’t be here, I want her with me.’
Dear Lily
I’ve so many emotions flying around, I don’t know what to do with myself. I’m telling myself, I’m always like this when I’ve been back to Kilterdale, and this time was so much more poignant – for obvious reasons – but I’m sitting here, writing this on the train, crying my eyes out. God knows what the other passengers think of me.
It was so good to see your dad! It was wonderful. I felt like how I used to feel, before I lost Mum, and we lost you and I somehow lost
myself
. I felt like I was THAT girl I used to be, who I never thought I’d find again, and this horrible emptiness, which I realized is always with me, wasn’t there any more.
And yet, I was so reckless, Lily. I can’t believe how reckless I was. What was I thinking of?! What if I am pregnant? My God. I would never ever forgive myself.
*
As soon as I reached civilization at Euston Station the next day, I went to Boots and got the morning-after pill. I couldn’t believe what I’d done. It was like I’d been under a spell, lawless for a moment. I decided to put down what happened to anxiety at being back in Kilterdale and total excitement at seeing Joe again, and resolved to get on with normal life as best I could.
I was still anxious about the ashes, however. Despite Dad searching high and low, he hadn’t been able to find them, and I could tell he’d begun to panic himself. Denise was making a good show of acting concerned but I wasn’t buying it. She was acting shifty, if you ask me, staring out of the kitchen window as Dad and I ransacked the place, as if she knew something we didn’t.
It made me feel a bittersweet camaraderie with Leah, who would definitely hold Denise up as prime suspect. Sweet because I treasured any chance to feel bonded with my eldest sister these days, I suppose, and bitter because it took losing our mother’s ashes and suspecting our stepmother had taken them, to do it.
Growing up, Leah and I had the classic big sister/little sister relationship: we hated and loved one another with equal fury. We knew one another better than anyone else. Then Mum got diagnosed with cancer in January 1995 and died in October 1996 and it felt like I lost not just Mum, but my big sister too. Not only did Leah behave outrageously at the funeral (turning up, just as they’d closed the curtain on the coffin, with her boyfriend at the time, who’d never even met our mother, and was wearing a back-to-front baseball cap – small detail, but I’ve never forgotten it), but she then proceeded to get off her head at the wake, shout at Denise and then leave to go back to university two days later, leaving me and Niamh to pick up the pieces. Our relationship has never really recovered from that. Sometimes, I wonder if I’d even see her much at all if it wasn’t for her kids, who I adore. I feel like sometimes she uses them as a barricade; an excuse for not being able to do anything. She seems so angry all the time and, yet, I don’t know what about. But I keep making the effort because, essentially, I miss her.
I call her as I’m walking home from the Tube. I’m thinking, perhaps the whereabouts of the ashes is something we can bond over, at least.
She picks up after two rings,
‘So, can you believe it, Lee, they’ve lost our mother’s ashes?’ I said. ‘They’re still not on the mantelpiece. I reckon Denise is behind it.’
‘Oh, really?’ She was driving, and on the hands-free, but still, she sounded distracted, unfussed. ‘Could we chat about this later? I’m trying to get home at the mo, kids going mad in the back …’
I couldn’t hear any kids, which was odd. Also, it wasn’t like Leah not to be outraged with Denise, which is her default setting at the best of times. ‘I’m seeing you soon, aren’t I? We can talk about it then.’ Then she said she had to go.
Nobody talks about how Leah had a massive go at Denise in front of everyone at the funeral. It made no sense at all. Denise and mum were friends from the badminton club, so she had every right to be there. Nothing was going on between her and Dad at that point, and yet Leah just laid into her, shouting, ‘
Jump in your own grave so fast, would you?
’ God, it was like a scene from Eastenders and Leah and Dad have never really talked since, and us three girls don’t talk about Mum much either, because of what happened, which I find really sad.
I arrived home, having made Leah, before she hung up, promise on her life that we’d discuss the ashes when I next went round. Then I made myself some soup and settled down to watch re-runs of some seventies sitcom … I felt calmer now the hangover had subsided and I was back in my own space. I felt like what had happened in Kilterdale was a dream; that it had happened to somebody else, in another life.
Then, the next day, Joe sent me an email: distinctly flirtatious and with a photo of me that made me actually gasp. I knew I couldn’t do this with Joe. I had to nip it in the bud.
4 April 2013
From: [email protected]
Dear Joe, thanks for your email. I particularly enjoyed the picture of me wielding the bottle of JD and Miss No Knickers – just how one should behave at a funeral.
I’ve been thinking of you often. I found those days following my mum’s funeral really tough, so I hope you’re taking it easy and being extra nice to yourself. Did you manage to watch a good horror? I recommend it. I found it to be a bit of escapism, if any escapism is possible at the moment.
Joe, I want to apologize. As wonderful as it was to see you, I shouldn’t have got so carried away and
drunk.
(
It was your mother’s funeral, for God’s sake!
)
You’ve no doubt got all sorts of emotions going on at the moment and me just unleashing myself on you like that can’t have helped. So, I’m sorry. I hope you can forgive me. We can never talk of this again, and be friends. It’s so great to be back in touch. Call me any time. R xxx
‘Right, Kingy, do you want to come in?’
Just as I often thank the lord for London and its ability to swallow me up and allow me to disappear, so I am thankful for my job. After my eventful weekend, I didn’t have a chance to stew in a pit of self-loathing, because immediately I got to work, Jeremy called me into his office.
He wanted to talk to me about Grace Bird, a forty-one-year-old woman about to be discharged from hospital, who had specifically requested me as her CPN. I felt rather special, especially since, apparently, she’d based her decision on watching me with other patients at Kingfisher House Psychiatric Unit, where she’d spent the last two months. I also knew this irked Jeremy, because Jeremy is the sort of man who can even make providing mental-health services a competition.
He gestured to the only spare seat in his office, one of those low chairs, the colour of Dijon mustard, with wooden arm rests mental-health services are full of them – and shut the door. ‘So, shall we talk Grace Bird?’ he said. The office smelt of a mixture of the egg sandwich he was eating and TCP. He gargled with it every morning, with his door wide open. ‘How are we feeling about meeting her?’
I felt like Clarice Starling in
The Silence of the Lambs
, being prepped before meeting Hannibal Lecter, the way he was going on. This wasn’t the first time he’d had a word with me about the infamous Grace.