Heartstones (3 page)

‘Are you happy?’

‘Are you?’

‘I’m free. I can do whatever I want, go wherever I want.’

‘Run away wherever, whenever you want,’ said David.

‘I’m not running away.’

‘Then maybe you should try sticking around for once?’

There was a thud from up above, followed by the clatter of Amy coming down the stairs. ‘Auntie Sandra, the twins are fighting again.’

Phoebe and David both looked upwards. They could hear the high-pitched bickering of little girls. There was another thud, then silence followed by a long, loud wail.

‘Behave,’ Sandra bellowed from the kitchen.

Phoebe looked at David.

‘Maybe you’re jealous,’ she said.

‘Jealous? Of what?’

‘Of me travelling, taking off whenever I want.ʼ She paused and gave him a sideways glance. ʻLiving your dream.’

David shrugged. ‘I’m just saying you could stay here and give it a chance. Get a job doing something that really interests you.’

 ‘You sound like a schoolteacher.’

‘I am a schoolteacher.’

They both laughed again. At last Phoebe could see the free-spirited young man sheʼd met at her sisterʼs barbecue. She remembered the tattoo; beneath the suit and shirt it must still be there. Phoebe stopped laughing and turned back to the website she’d been looking at.

David crouched down beside her and looked at the computer screen. ‘Can I just make one more suggestion without being accused of being a
teacher
?’ His hand made a move towards the mouse.

‘OK,’ Phoebe could hear the drone of Sandra’s voice talking to Nola; she tried to block it out and watched David click through Google to a different site.

‘PGCE,’ he said, highlighting the word on the screen. ‘Teacher training. You could be a teacher, a primary school teacher.’

‘Like you?’

‘Yes, though the
comedy tie
is discretionary. Nola says you’ve been working in an orphanage in Bangkok so you must like children and if you’re thinking of teaching English then you can’t think teachers are all bad.’

‘I’m not sure; I really need to get away from here before Nola drives me completely crazy; she still treats me like a badly behaved teenager.’

‘So? Move out, get a flat, get the qualifications, try it for a while. You can always use it to teach somewhere else – Africa, South America. You don’t have to stay in this country if you really can’t bear it.’

‘Where would I do it? Where would I train?’

‘With me.’ He smiled at her. ‘You can do it in my school. There’s a teaching post coming up next term and if you’ve already got a degree you can train on the job, get paid, get a place of your own.’

Phoebe was quiet for a little while. ‘Why should I take your advice?’

‘Didn’t you take it before?’ He took his hand away from the mouse to let Phoebe click on the
how to apply
link. His fingers brushed hers. Phoebe thought of all the years sheʼd spent aching for him, all the boyfriends sheʼd compared to him, all the boyfriends sheʼd found wanting.

‘Here you are! I wondered where you’d got to,’ Sandra stood in the doorway, her arms folded tight across her chest. ‘The girls and I are ready to go now.’

David got up and smiled brightly at his wife. As he followed her out of the room he turned back to Phoebe. ‘Think about it. It could be the start of something really good.’

Three years later, Phoebe lay on her bed looking up at a crack in the ceiling. David had been right; it had been good, so good that life without him seemed really bad. Outside a dusky gloom indicated the evening. Phoebe knew she should put on the light but couldn’t make her arm lift up to click on the switch beside the bed.

Some time later she woke up with a jolt in the dark room. She had been dreaming, dreaming about David. They were in a boat, sailing on clear, turquoise water. David had the blue shirt on that had been Phoebe’s favourite and he was steering, a huge ship’s wheel in his hands, much too big for the little sailing boat. Phoebe sat beside him making tissue paper flowers, twisting the bright sheets together into blousy rainbow rosettes. A gust of wind blew, lifting them from her lap, up into the air and then down over the side. Phoebe watched them drift away leaving streaks of colour as they dissolved into the water. David leant over to kiss her but the rail she had been leaning against seemed to melt away and she was falling, waiting to hit the water. It seemed a long way down the water: much further than she had expected; and then she realised she was flying and David had become a tiny speck beneath her. Was he waving at her? She tried to shout. She woke up.

Scrabbling for the light switch, she sat up. The dream had seemed so real; now the small pale room around her seemed flimsy and imagined. Maybe everything had been a dream – the last three years working with David, secretly loving David, longing for him to turn around and notice her. The last miraculous six months since he had told her that he loved her too; maybe she had made it up.

She looked around her for something to make it real, some piece of proof, some sign of their time together. They had always been so careful, hiding any evidence. No clothes left behind, no extra toothbrush, no razor, the second glass quickly washed up and put away. He was nowhere in the flat, the space was solely hers. Phoebe scrambled from the bed, suddenly desperate. She pulled open drawers and dragged boxes from under cupboards. Letters, photographs, presents; she piled them in the middle of her bedroom floor. It didn’t seem enough.

Slowly she picked each object up: the silver bracelet he had given her for her birthday, a gold and black box that had contained chocolates, a torn-out page from an exercise book (
see you later, will bring Chinese XXX
), the Bugs Bunny tie that David gave her on the day she qualified as a teacher, a champagne cork, a note on headed school notepaper
(Sandra is at her mother’s with the girls. Come to the house after parents’ evening X)
, a dried red rose, a photograph (David and Phoebe, arms around each other, flushed with wine and sun in a restaurant on Jersey – a snatched weekend together, a bogus conference for David, the longest time they ever spent together, two full nights, two mornings, it had been heaven – it seemed so long ago.) There were a few other things: small gifts and trinkets, scrawled notes and a copy of
Jane Eyre
that David had given her after he discovered that she’d never read it – inside the cover he had written
To
my very own little orphan, from Mr Rochester X.
She still hadnʼt got round to reading it
.

Phoebe leant the photograph against the wall and arranged the other objects neatly around it, fanning outwards, like a shrine. She sat back on her heels; chin cupped in her hands and stared at it all as though if she looked at everything long enough there might be an answer, a resolution to her pain.

Outside the sky had turned from night-time black to soft dawn grey. Phoebe tilted her head and realised she had been still for a very long time, crouching, hunched, animal-like. She got up stiffly. The air felt thick, she couldn’t breathe; the misery was suffocating.

She found herself pulling on the jeans and jumper that Nola had folded neatly the previous morning, slipping her feet into socks and then the chunky biker boots that David had always hated. She urgently fumbled with the zip of one boot, cursing as it jammed half way up, left it flapping open, grabbed her parka, and headed for the door.

In less than a minute she was out of the building, into the car, and away down the road with no clear sense of where she was going. She drove until she realised two hours had passed. Thick rivulets of rain-streaked the glass in front of her, making it hard to see. She put on the windscreen wipers and noticed her petrol light glowing an alarming orange on the dashboard. Phoebe found a petrol station in the process of opening up for the day. When the tank was full, she paid, bought a packet of peanuts – the first food she’d bought for days – and drove home through heavy rain.

From the outside her flat still looked asleep; the crooked curtains drawn and sad. The rain had worn itself into a misty drizzle. Phoebe sat in the car, reluctant to go inside, and slowly ate the packet of peanuts. How could she get through another day in there?

She looked back up at the window of her flat. The smooth glass still reflected the shapes of twisted branches but she realised something had changed: the curtains were no longer drawn, the cream lining no longer visible against the panes, only the long thin line of heart stones against a dark interior. The curtains were open; someone had opened them.

Standing on the worn grey landing carpet, Phoebe put her key in the latch. Her hand shook slightly as she tried to convince herself she must be wrong about the curtains. She opened her door. A movement, a noise, she jumped.

‘Hello?’ No answer. Her heart quickened and tentatively she moved forward into the little hallway. Her bedroom door was slightly ajar; she was sure she had left it closed. Her heart thumped; she desperately looked around for an implement, an object to protect herself with. She couldn’t find anything within her reach; if she could make it to the kitchen she could find a knife, even a saucepan. A sudden image of David flashed though her mind and she remembered she had no reason left to care about protecting herself, no reason for self-defence – what was the point? She walked towards the bedroom door and pushed it, expecting a masked and hooded figure to lunge at her.

‘Nola!’

In front of her Nola knelt on the bare wooden boards, her pink mac speckled by rain, her hair glistening with droplets of drizzle; a blue-lidded Tupperware box beside her. As Nola looked up Phoebe realised with horror that she had been staring at the little group of objects against the wall. Then Phoebe saw the photograph in her hand. ‘Nola,’ she said again, quietly this time, barely a whisper. Nola turned and looked at her; Phoebe couldn’t read her face – bewilderment, anger, disappointment?

‘I made chocolate brownies for Sandra’s girls.’ Nola spoke slowly. ‘I thought you might like some as well.’ She nodded towards the Tupperware box. ‘You always used to like them, do you remember? Mum used to make them when we came home from school? I assumed, when you didn’t answer the door that you were still ill. I used my spare key …’ Nola stopped and looked at the picture in her hands. ‘But you were out and then I saw …’ She stopped and gestured to the group of objects and flicked the edge of the photograph with her fingers.

‘I tried to tell you …’ Phoebe began to explain but the words refused to come.

‘To tell me what?’ Nola flashed an angry look up at her sister. ‘To tell me that you’d been having some sordid little affair with my best friend’s husband?’

Phoebe closed her eyes, wishing it was all another dream. She opened them; Nola was still there.

Phoebe took a deep breath. ‘It wasn’t sordid.’

‘Just an affair then? My God, Phoebe, how could you? Sandra is practically family. She’s like another sister to us.’

‘No she’s not,’ Phoebe felt indignation welling up inside her. ʻNot to me anyway.ʼ

‘She’s my oldest friend; you’ve known her since you were born. Sandra is very fond of you. If only she knew what you’d actually been up to.’ Nola heaved herself up from the floor, steadying herself with one hand on the chest of drawers. ‘What was it? Because he gave you a job in his school, because he gave you a chance, an opportunity to earn a proper income for once? You thought you’d just have him as well, as part of the package? Or were you just playing with him, a bit of an extra thrill, did you get a kick out of knowing he belonged to Sandra?’

‘I loved him.’

‘Do know what love is, Phoebe? When have you ever had a meaningful relationship?ʼ

ʻI do know what love is, I know when it feels like youʼre just meant to be with someone no matter what. Thatʼs how it felt with David.ʼ

ʻFor Godʼs sake, Phoebe, get real. Youʼre not in some Mills and Boon novel, you know.ʼ Nola shook her head and stared back down at the picture in her hand. ʻWhere did I go wrong with you? I tried my best and now I don’t know why I wasted so much time trying to bring you up after Mum and Dad died.’

‘Nola!’ Phoebe felt hot tears stinging in her eyes. ‘Please stop.’ But Nola went on.

‘I should have sat my exams and taken that place at medical school. I could have had you put in care you know, that’s what they wanted, all those social workers. They said I’d never cope with bringing up a ten-year-old but I gave up everything to do it.’

‘You didn’t have to give everything up, you didn’t give up Steve. You married Steve.’

Nola sank down onto the bed and bowed her head. Her silence was worse than her angry words. Phoebe moved towards her and touched her shoulder. ‘Don’t!’ Nola flinched away, pulling her mac around her defensively.

After a few seconds Nola turned to look at Phoebe, her face suddenly vicious. ‘How could you have been doing such a horrible, disgusting, deceitful thing? After everything Sandra and her parents did for us after the accident: they took us in, gave us a roof to live under when there was no one else; no rich relatives appeared to adopt us, you know, no fairy god-parents flew in to take us away, we were on our own – proper little orphans. What will Sandra’s parents think now? What would
our
parents think if they were still alive? They’d be so disappointed with you Phoebe, so upset – and Granny would have been too.’

Instantly they all appeared in Phoebe’s head; her mother, pink-cheeked and sensible, always waiting with hot chocolate and flapjacks when they came home from school, eager to hear about their days, proudly pinning Phoebe’s drawings to the cork tiles on the kitchen wall; her father, usually lost in a day dream, his handsome face, sun tanned from working outdoors, hair like Phoebe’s own, wild red curls never quite contained by monthly haircuts from his wife. And lastly her granny; tall and graceful, white hair loosely coiled at her neck, draped in scarves and multi-coloured layers of linen and silk, except for when she was making pots – then she wore a faded smock and a wide-brimmed yellow hat. How Phoebe wished they were all still there. Still alive for her to disappoint. Tears poured down her cheeks and she didn’t bother to wipe them away.