Dying for Christmas (17 page)

‘I’ve noticed that your mind is getting flabby, Jessica. You really need to watch that. Don’t take this the wrong way, but a girl like you needs to rely on more than just looks.’

Dominic shackled me to the radiator while he went to fetch the chess set. I heard him take the bunch of keys from his pocket as he went around the wall of the kitchen to the inner hallway, and then the sound of a key in a lock was followed by a hiss, as if someone was sucking in their breath.

When he returned, he was carrying an expensive-looking box. Inside was a folding wooden board and a velvet pouch which contained the chess pieces – dark wood and ivory. Dominic took each one out in turn, lining them up side by side on opposite ends of the board. ‘I’ll let you be white. White always goes first.’

I picked up a pawn from the middle of the board. It was light as air and beautifully carved and so smooth I fought an urge to stroke it against my cheek.

‘Exquisite, isn’t it?’ He was looking on proprietorially.

‘Lovely. I bet this didn’t come from one of your bankrupt clients.’

His smile broadened like it was being stretched out on a rack. ‘There are many different forms of bankruptcy, Jessica. You’d be amazed. And not all of them are to do with money.’

* * *

Seeing Rory and Katy again was like being slapped in the face with happiness. Hard enough to hurt. Already, when she walked into the living room, despite the familiarity of the furniture she’d chosen and the rug she’d helped carry back from the house of a neighbour who was moving abroad, she felt like a visitor. When she noticed the dirty teacups on the coffee table, it no longer occurred to her to take them through to the kitchen.

Instead she sat on the sofa, with Katy and Rory clinging to her as if she might blow away.

‘Have you come back now, Mummy?’ Katy wanted to know. ‘Has your sleepover with Heather finished?’

Kim buried her face in her daughter’s neck so no one could see the tears that suddenly blurred her vision.

‘It’s not a sleepover, silly,’ said Rory. ‘Mummy and Daddy are getting divorced.’

Kim’s head shot up. ‘That’s not true. Who told you that?’

‘Daddy.’

Rory was trying to be very tough, but his voice wobbled on the last word and Kim hugged him to her.

‘Why did you tell him that?’ she demanded when she and Sean were alone in the kitchen.

‘Because whether you like it or not, that’s the next step, Kim. When are you going to realize the consequences of what you’re doing?’

‘I’m not doing anything. It’s you who made me leave. Why don’t we call a truce for tonight – spend New Year’s Eve together?’

Sean acted like he hadn’t heard. ‘Have you pulled out of that promotion application?’

Kim didn’t reply.

‘Thought not. I bet you’ve been using this time apart to work even harder and earn even more Brownie points, instead of finding out where your priorities lie. I still love you, Kim, but we are heading for divorce unless you sort yourself out. And there’s no one to blame but you and your bloody ambition.’

* * *

‘I’ve something very special for you to wear today, Jessica.’

I was chained to the radiator again, while he searched for something in the locked room. Now he reappeared with one of those bags people put over expensive clothes to protect them from the elements. He was wearing a black velvet jacket with a crisp white shirt underneath. For a moment I wondered what the occasion was, then I remembered.

Oh yes. New Year’s Eve.

‘What were you doing this time last year?’ he asked me, laying the bag carefully across the dining table. ‘Can you believe we didn’t even know each other then? I feel like you’ve been in my life for ever.’

‘I was at a party. With my boyfriend.’

Sometimes Dominic didn’t like me to mention Travis at all, going stiff when I said his name. Other times he would go out of his way to get me to talk about him, quizzing me about his likes and dislikes, his quirks and annoying habits.

‘I thought you didn’t like parties, Jessica.’

‘I don’t, but Travis wanted to go. It was given by one of his new friends from the hospital. He was still pretty junior, so he was keen to make a good impression and fit in.’

I didn’t tell Dominic how I’d sulked about going. I didn’t mention all the obstacles I’d raised – the fact that it was right across London (‘but the Tubes run all night, Jessica – and they’re free’), the fact that it would be full of people I didn’t know (‘but this is your opportunity to get to know them’), the fact that I’d misguidedly been persuaded into having layers cut in my hair and it looked awful (‘it does not look anything like a mullet, just forget about it’). Since Travis had started earning a junior doctor’s salary and wasn’t financially dependent on me any more, he’d become less tolerant of my anti-social tendencies. ‘You stay at home if you like,’ he’d snapped in the end. ‘I’ll go on my own.’ I had the distinct impression then that was what he’d wanted all along. But I didn’t relish the thought of being alone for New Year’s Eve. I knew my parents would ask me the next day what I’d done and they’d exchange one of those looks I dreaded if they found out I’d stayed at home.

‘And how was it, this party?’

Dominic’s voice was jocular, gently probing, like we were normal people having a normal conversation.

‘Hideous. Travis chatted all night to people I didn’t know while I stood in a corner of the kitchen and pretended to be reading the postcards and notes stuck on the noticeboard. On the way back we had a big row about me not having made enough of an effort.’

I omitted to mention the woman who’d smirked at me as though I had a big smudge of toothpaste on my cheek and said to him, ‘So this is who you rush off to see when we’re all waiting for you down the pub,’ and how I’d thought that was a bit rich as he hardly ever seemed to be at home any more.

‘How about you?’ I dared putting a question to Dominic, who had sat himself down at the table and was leaning back, quite relaxed, as if he’d forgotten that I was still crouching naked by the radiator.

‘Me? Oh, I was with the missus.’ He jerked his head in the direction of the hideous painting. ‘We were up a mountain in Switzerland if I remember right. On a skiing holiday. The two of us, holed up together in a chalet surrounded by snow and tomato-faced Austrians in fluorescent Puffa jackets. She was up to her usual tricks, of course. Texting all the time like a teenager, sneaking off to make phone calls when she thought I was asleep.’

‘Was that what she was like?’

He wagged a finger in my face. ‘All in good time, sweetheart.’

He turned his attention now to the bag on the table, unzipping it all around to reveal a long white dress. Rather like something one might wear to a wedding.

If one were the bride.

‘As it’s a special night, I thought we would make a special effort,’ he said, holding the dress up.

He unlocked the cuffs and helped me slip the gown over my head. The front gaped unattractively and the hem seemed slightly greying, as if it had got dirty at one time, but Dominic seemed almost touchingly pleased with the results.

‘She wore this one on our wedding day,’ he said, stepping back to take a proper look. ‘We got married on a beach in India. It was very romantic. I’m a big believer in romance. Aren’t you, Jessica? Don’t you believe the right one is out there for us all?’

I didn’t answer as I was trying to reconcile what I knew of Natalie to this image of the barefoot bride getting married with no one but her groom to see her. The Natalie in my imagination would have demanded an audience, a grand entrance.

In honour of New Year’s Eve, Dominic had decided to cook a special meal, rather than just warming something up. For nearly an hour, an unpleasantly pungent, gamey smell had been emanating from the kitchen area, and when he summoned me to sit at the table, I had to press my hand down in my lap to stop it from flying up to cover my nose and mouth.

When Dominic lifted the saucepan lid to stir whatever was simmering there, the stench was unbearable, though it didn’t seem to bother him. He ladled the contents into a large bowl and placed it in the middle of the table.

‘Voilà!’

I gazed down. An obscenely swollen brown globe, its sweating skin stretched so tight as to be almost translucent over the mass of minced flesh it was barely able to contain.

‘The secret with Haggis is not to overcook it,’ he said. ‘Well, go on, Jessica. You do the honours.’

I picked up the metal spoon he was offering me and gingerly prodded the glistening casing that stretched like a latex balloon until it finally burst open, scrambled innards exploding out of the open wound.

‘Eat,’ he said, grabbing hold of the spoon to deposit on my plate a mound of skin and minced meat that glistened with fat where it hit the light. ‘Don’t let it get cold.’

I picked up a forkful, but hesitated before bringing it to my mouth.

‘Eat,’ he said again, and his voice was no longer cajoling.

The casing burst like a blister in my mouth and I’d swallowed a chunk of it before Dominic, laughing, told me you weren’t actually supposed to eat it. ‘Though it’s sheep stomach, so I don’t imagine it will do you much harm.’

He brought a loaded forkful to his mouth and ate it with his too-close-together eyes fixed on me as I chewed.

‘Don’t worry if you find a lump, Jessica. It’s far more likely to be a bit of gristle than a whole kidney or lung or spleen.’

He smiled, revealing a shred of flesh caught between his bottom teeth.

I ate it. Every last bit.

Afterwards I almost enjoyed the heavy feeling in my gut.

‘Why, I do believe you’re getting a taste for flesh, Jessica,’ he said. And I could tell that he wasn’t happy about it.

We sat down in the leather armchairs to watch the scores of party boats on the river gearing up for the festivities.

After a while Dominic got to his feet. I didn’t need to ask him where he was going.

Again he brought me the parcel with a curious, formal ceremony, resting it on the fingers of both hands, and deposited it in my lap.

‘Any guesses?’

I ran my hands over the wrapping, feeling how the top of the object inside was soft and yielding. ‘I don’t know. A cushion of some sort?’

When I opened it, I found the package contained a wooden box, around the length and width of a paperback book and about four inches deep. The lid was padded, and the whole thing was bright pink and decorated with yellow and white fairies and glitter stars. Though I’d tuned out the voice of the child I assumed to be Bella, I could sense her all around me and I dreaded what I might find. But inside there were only shells, the kind children pick up on beaches when they are still shiny and slick and beautiful with the sea, only to get them home and discover they’re dull and ordinary after all.

‘Bella’s collection,’ Dominic explained unecessarily. ‘She spent whole days on our holidays combing the beach for shells. When she was very little, she used to group them into families and have mummy and daddy shells and little baby shells too. You’d have thought she might have had quite enough of families.

‘The last holiday we ever went on was the summer before I was due to start boarding school. We were staying in a villa on the south coast of Spain. One of those that look really good in the brochure but turn out to be in some sort of continental housing estate. Bella loved it, of course, because there were lots of other children around and she soon became part of a little gang. Their parents would take them down to the beach and they’d swim out to the inflatable raft, where all the older kids gathered to take turns going down the twisty slide. There were a few kids my age, but on the whole they were a pretty imbecilic lot and I preferred my own company.

‘Mummy and Daddy were fighting quite a lot by this point. Mostly about me, I think. Mummy still wasn’t keen on me going away to school. Particularly as I’d threatened to top myself if they actually went through with it.’

I could imagine it very clearly. I was sure Dominic would have been very specific in his threats of what he would do and how he would do it.

‘Mind you, Mummy was always drunk by lunchtime so no one really paid much attention to what she said. One day we went to the beach as usual and the red flags were up, meaning swimming was prohibited. They’d been up once before, but people had still been in the water and in the end we’d gone in too, just paddling about near to the shore. “They just put up the flags to cover themselves if they think there’s the slightest current,” the woman next to us had said. “No one takes any notice.” “Jobsworths,” was my father’s verdict.

‘Well, this time too, there were swimmers in the water – mostly fit young men. When I went to test the water, I could see why the flags were up. Though the surface appeared calm enough, underneath there was a vicious undertow if you went out too far and the wind felt like it was picking up.

‘I went back to the sand where Bella was playing bat and ball with her friend and Mummy was lying comatose on a towel like a beached whale. It was mid-afternoon so she was already half-cut. Daddy had made an excuse to stay back at the villa. I knew exactly why. I’d seen the way he looked at the woman in the villa two doors down. Is your father a womanizer, Jessica?’

I almost laughed at the thought of it. ‘No. I’d be surprised if he’d even looked at another woman since he got together with my mum.’

‘You’re lucky then. There’s no sight so pathetic as a middle-aged man in Speedos in thrall to his own desires.

‘I suggested to Bella that she come into the water with me. I told her it was fine. We could swim out to the raft, I suggested. She was dubious – she was only seven and wasn’t at all a confident swimmer – but I pointed out there were a couple of other people there. And anyway, I’d be with her all the way. That decided her – she would have done anything to please me. As we walked down to the water, I heard a shout behind and Mummy appeared, staggering slightly, and blinking as if confused. She’d tied one of those flowery sarongs around her waist to hide her rolls of stomach and she was picking at the knot. “Where are you going?” she wanted to know. I told her we were just going for a dip. “But it’s red,” she said. “You shouldn’t …” But we were already in the water by then. I heard a giant splash as she crashed in after us.