Undertow (4 page)

But ghosts haunt you. And I think of Mum downstairs. And I run.

“Mum,” I blurt.

“What?” Mum looks up. But her face is serene. She’s seen nothing.

“I… It doesn’t matter.”

Mum shrugs and lights the gas stove. And I watch her moving around this kitchen, like she’s never been away. Like it’s hers. Yet it’s so clearly not. The surfaces are uncluttered, the painted oak cupboards free of Blu-Tacked photos, the melamine clean, no knife tracking its surface because someone can’t be bothered to find a chopping board. I wonder about the last time she was in here. And I wonder where she’s put the memories. If she’s boxed them away. Or left them behind like so much unwanted furniture.

Finn comes back full of things he’s found, the elephant’s tusk and the stuffed bird, and
can he have the bedroom at the back
? Mum smiles, says he can have anything he wants. And as we sit down to eat she calls it our banquet, a feast fit for a king. And I smile and think, This is OK; this is good. She’s good.

It’s gone eleven when we’re done, plates piled unwashed on the drainer, ketchup trailing a syrupy drip down the glass bottle onto the table, water puddle on the floor where I turned the tap on too far. Already we’re making our mark.

“So, bed,” announces Mum.

“No,” protests Finn. “I want to see the garden.”

Mum laughs. “It’s too dark, and you’re too tired.”

“I’m not,” he insists, predictably. But his eyelids are half closed, his skin pale, ghostlike. More like me now, I think.

“Go on,” she says. “You can leave your teeth tonight. Do them harder in the morning.”

“Yes!” Finn has scored a cup-winning goal and races off, up the stairs to his new bedroom.

“Where shall I sleep?” I ask.

Mum is scraping leftovers onto her plate, doesn’t even look up. “Up the stairs, to the left. Last one along the corridor. My old room,” she adds.

I pause, confused. “Don’t you want it?”

She shakes her head, lets her eyes meet mine. “I’ll sleep in the spare room. It’s bigger.”

“Oh, thanks.” I feign hurt. “Are you coming?”

“I’ll be up in a bit,” she says. “You go. Really.”

She’s going to have a smoke. Keeps the packet behind the radio at home, does it late at night out of the kitchen window when she thinks we’re asleep. But I can smell it on her, tangled in her hair in the morning. Another secret.

“Night, then,” I say, and I lean down to kiss her.

Mum tilts her cheek to my lips, and I feel her breath against my own as she whispers, “Night, Billie.”

And I’m not sure what more to say, so I leave her, sitting at the table she sat at sixteen years ago, her head full of something, or nothing, and I climb the wide galleried staircase. I wonder what I will find at the top: a four-poster with a canopy draping around, a tiny replica pram full of porcelain dolls, a princess’s chamber; or a room full of teenage Mum, posters for bands I’ve seen on
Top of the Pops 2
, a wardrobe packed with ra-ra skirts and batwing tops.

But it’s neither. It’s just yellow wallpaper, clean and bare, not even a drawing-pin hole marking its faint, flowered pattern, and a single wooden bed. The wardrobe and shelves are empty, the windowsill home to nothing more than a scattering of dust.

At first I think I’ve got it wrong. That I took a wrong turn on the landing and this is the spare room. But I check again, and this is it: left at the top of the stairs, last room along. I don’t get it. I saw Will’s room. Like any day he would walk back in the door and it would be ready for him, nothing moved, nothing thrown away. Yet Mum’s has been scoured clean. As if she’s the one who died. The one they needed to forget.

But I’m too tired to think for long. Too tired to dig in my bag for a clean T-shirt. Instead, I peel off my jumper and tights and crawl under the crackling white sheets and wool blankets, ready to curl into sleep. But as I draw my legs up, my knee brushes against something. I gasp, and freeze, scared I’ve found a dead cat. Or a live demon.

But there’s no smell, no sound, no heat. Whatever it is, it’s nothing, I think. It is benign. So, slowly, carefully, I reach down and feel the nap of velvet against my fingers. When I pull it out I see it’s not a demon. But it’s not nothing either. It’s a toy. A rabbit. Mum’s rabbit. And I fall asleep with it clutched to my chest.

ELEANOR

ELEANOR STANDS
in the doorway, her shoulders hanging, a roll of bin-bags in her right hand; the thumb of her left playing with her wedding ring, a thin, pale band of gold, turning it this way and that. This cannot be right, she thinks. A lifetime, nineteen years of Het. All of it to be wrapped in black plastic. Discarded like a cracked teapot
.

Eleanor stiffens. He is behind her now. She can smell the alcohol rub from the day’s surgery, hear the laboured breathing, a soft rasp she once feared, and now hopes, is something more than just middle age
.

“All of it,” he says
.

She hesitates, trying to find an excuse he will accept, knowing that sentiment will be swatted like a lazy bluebottle. “But it’s such a waste,” she protests, finally. “Can’t we at least save it for charity?”

“She’s gone,” he says. “Dead. You bury the dead.”

The following day he drives eight black bin-bags to the refuse site and lays her to rest in a yellow council skip. Her nineteen years worth no more than someone’s shattered mirror and four paint-chipped chairs
.

In Het’s doorway, Eleanor twists her wedding ring. In her right hand she is clutching something else. A soft, velveteen thing, with long ears and a cotton-wool scut. A thing forgotten, or hidden. She hears wheels crunching on gravel, his Jaguar, its soft engine no longer purring a welcome but a warning. Quickly, quietly, Eleanor holds the toy to her face and breathes Het in for the last time, a fusty, child smell. A smell of years of love. Of life. Then she pushes it down beneath the crisp sheets of the single bed, made up now for guests who will never visit. If he finds it, what will she say? That it was a mistake. That she must have missed it in her hurry. That Rose, the housekeeper, must have done it; one of her superstitions
.

But he doesn’t find it. It is another secret, another skeleton. Slipped through a crack for someone to dig up and piece together later
.

BILLIE

I WAKE
to the sound of rain against glass. Groaning inwardly I pull back thick chintz curtains – the old kind, not the shabby-chic ones I’ve seen in Luka’s Sunday supplements – and look down on a town bathed in grey, impossible to see where the granite terraces end and the mist begins. I know the sea is out there somewhere, beyond all this. Can hear its white noise against the harder drum of raindrops and thrum of traffic. But for now I may as well be back in Peckham for all the hot sand, sun-bleached dreams I can touch.

I wonder if it ever stops here, the rain. The house seems steeped in damp: the windowsill ripe with a dark spattering of mould; that earthy smell in the cupboards. It’s cold, too, so that my breath fogs up in a cloud around my face and, when I pee, steam rises from the toilet bowl. I touch the wide, white-painted bathroom radiator. Nothing. The boiler is broken. Or the heating hasn’t clicked on yet. I try to remember last night. Was it like this when we got here? Or were we too distracted with newness to notice? I tread back along the sea-green soft corridor to my room to pull on yesterday’s tights and jumper. Then add a long, moth-eaten cardigan. One of Mum’s cast-offs, Luka’s before that. Cass used to laugh at it. Said it looked like a dead man’s clothes, like something out of the Sally Army shop. Mum agreed. Said I should bin it; it was more hole than cardigan. But I defended it. Claimed it was vintage. And I guess it is, in a way. But that’s not why I love it. I pull it tight around me, wrapping myself in its thick, wool softness, and the smell of him and her. That’s what I’m holding on to. Not the thing. But what it means. What inhabits it.

When I get downstairs Mum and Finn are up and eating breakfast. I watch as Finn bites into a doughnut, sugar coating his lips, grease and jam oozing down his fingers. The sentinel ketchup bottle has been joined by cartons of milk; pots of honey and lemon curd; a half-empty teacup; a pat of butter, its whiteness already plundered by a gouging knife and traces of something that looks like Marmite.

We’re the Railway Children, I think. Finding only empty cupboards, then waking the next day to apple pie that has been missed in the dark of their arrival.

“Where was it?” I ask.

Finn pulls a face. Answers, still chewing, “Duh. Like, in the shop.”

I look at Mum. She is wearing a dress, cut low, flakes of croissant decorating her chest.

“We went out exploring,” she says. “Found Aladdin’s Cave.”

“It’s actually called that,” Finn adds. “But the man doesn’t look like Aladdin, he looks like Fat Al from the corner shop.”

“They’ve got everything,” Mum says. “Croissants. Olives. Can you believe it? I never saw an olive until I moved to London but now they’ve got jars of them.”

I click.

“You should have gone to the supermarket,” I say. “I bet it cost a ton.”

“Oh lighten up, Billie.” Mum holds out a packet of pains au chocolat. “Go on.”

I shrug and sit down, pull open the cellophane. “Since when do we get this stuff for breakfast, anyway? What happened to toast, and porridge?”

Mum smiles. “We’ll have fish and chips later. Candyfloss.”

“Can we?” Finn asks. “Really?”

“Yeah, course,” Mum replies. “We’re on holiday.”

But we’re not, I think to myself. We’re not on holiday. This is it.

But thick dark chocolate coats the roof of my mouth and sugar rushes to my head, dizzying, drowning the thought, trapping it in its stickiness. She’s happy now, I think. Maybe that’s all there is to it. The now. Not what happened all those years ago. Not what will happen tomorrow, in two months, three.

And I bite down again, flooding myself with sweetness and light.

Afterwards, Mum takes Finn to look at the sea. I say it’s too wet out. But really I’m scared of being disappointed. Scared the Atlantic won’t measure up to Cass’s turquoise-water-and-white-sand photographs. Instead I wash up. It was fine at home, leaving dirty dishes for a day or two. But here it feels odd, like we’re abusing someone, something. The house. Or Eleanor. I stack the plates back in the earth-damp cupboards, find a dish for the butter, a bin for the bread and the last of the pastries. Playing mother. I sing as I work, bits of stuff Luka played, CDs of Cass’s; keeping myself company. It’s not until I close the last cupboard door that I give in to the solitude and listen to the house. Its heaving silence, punctuated by the tick-tocking of the clock in the hall. Counting round the minutes in a place where time stands still.

I try to imagine Mum and Will running on this carpet, along these corridors. But I can’t. This isn’t a house for children. It’s a grown-up place. All polished mahogany, watercolours, brass door handles. Proper. So different to London. There we lived in a kind of organized chaos: every wall a different shade of red, every shelf sagging under the weight of books, every sill crowded with clay models and cotton-reel dolls and plectrums. The flat was alive; it breathed with us, laughed with us. The walls here give nothing away. And I wonder if this suffocation that I feel is what Mum felt. And if that’s why we lived as we did. Because she could breathe at last. Do what she wanted. Maybe I’ll be different again. Minimalist or something. Mum says minimalists just have no imagination. But I think I’d like the space. The clean sharpness of corners.

My stomach swirls again; the insects are stretching their wings. Because I’m wondering now if Mr Garroway will repaint. Blot us out with two tins of magnolia. Like we were never there. Wondering if that’s what Luka will find. Then I get this urge to phone home. Not the flat; I’m not that ghoulish, ringing to see if some stranger answers. But London, someone in London. Cass, I guess. Though she’s probably out. Up the high street with Stella, or down Chicago’s with Ash. Still, it’s worth a try. I can leave a message, leave our new number. Then I realize I don’t know our new number. Don’t even know if there’s a phone. I look around the drawing room – that’s what Mum called it; not
living room
, because there’s nothing alive about this place – but I can’t see anything. No silver plastic cordless handset. Not even one of those retro ones with the dials. It’s not in the kitchen either. Maybe there isn’t one at all. Maybe they cut themselves off completely. An island.

The insects flap now, slow beats, but quickening. I breathe harder, looking for something to calm them. And I find it. A flicker of a memory of Luka with wire between his teeth and pliers in his hand. I go to the front door, and find what I’m looking for. Phone cable. Held against the frame in neat plastic keepers. No trailing wires to trip over here. I follow the line down and along the hallway skirting-board, trace its arc around the drawing-room door, then along the skirting again until it reaches its destination. An alcove. So small you might miss it at first. So dark it’s hard to make out the tall circular table, the Yellow Pages and directory on a shelf at knee height. But it’s there, and on the shining surface sits my treasure. A phone. Not cordless. But not old either. I pick up the receiver, half expecting it to be dead. But it isn’t. Mum must have arranged it when she moved her benefits, changed the electricity and gas. Putting Luka down as well. Because even if she doesn’t need his body in her bed, she needs his name for credit. The dialling tone buzzes in my ear like a thousand bees. I’m about to key in Cass’s number when I notice the red light. Flicking on and off, on and off. Messages.