While My Eyes Were Closed (29 page)

‘Why, what is it?’ I ask. ‘What’s the matter?’

He turns and hurls it at the fireplace. It shatters on the tiles. Melody jumps in the air and yowls as she runs from the room.

‘Matthew. What on earth has got into you?’

‘I am not Matthew!’ he shouts. ‘I am Ella.’

‘Don’t be so silly. Go to your room at once.’

‘It’s not my room!’ he shrieks. ‘It’s Matthew’s. Matthew doesn’t live here any more. He growed up and moved out like—’

‘Upstairs,’ I hiss, barely able to speak. ‘Go upstairs right this minute and don’t let me hear another word out of you.’ He runs, his little feet stamping up the stairs, his bedroom door slamming shut.

It is happening again. He is turning against me. Somehow she has infiltrated my house. Whispering into his ear. Dripping poison.

*

In the park Matthew starts singing. That loud sort of singing people do when they don’t want to hear what is going on. ‘La la la, la la la.’ He is covering his ears with his hands too. He doesn’t like it. Never did like it when people cry, when they get cross.

*

There is no sound from Matthew’s bedroom. It has been quiet for a long time now. I wonder if the child has cried herself out and fallen asleep. I’m aware that she hasn’t eaten since breakfast. I check the clock. Six thirty. She would normally have had her tea by now. I would too. I’m a great believer in meals taken at the same time by all those in the household. I always used to insist on it with Malcolm and Matthew, and afterwards with Matthew. Not that I am at all hungry. My stomach has started to churn. Muscle is memory and I am sure it is remembering. Bubbling and turning over, aware of the rough ride to come. Every part of my body remembers. My palms are sweating. It is not something I ever suffered from, either before or since. But clearly they are
remembering too. It is as if it is a disease, one which will reoccur every year, lying dormant in between. Shingles is like that. It lies dormant at the base of your spine after you have chicken pox as a child. Waiting in silence, ready to pounce when you are at your weakest. It preys on loss, on trauma. It really is the lowest of the low. If it was a criminal, the judge would lock it up and throw away the key. It doesn’t really matter to the shingles though. It has done what it needed to do. It has got under your skin.

It took ages for mine to clear. A wretched itching and prickling in my lower back. The doctor warned it might prevent me sleeping. Which was almost laughable in the circumstances.

It went in the end, slunk away in the dead of night. Although I actually thought I felt a tingle in my lower back when I finally came face-to-face with her months afterwards. As if she was capable of bringing it back from the dead. They always say it’s the quiet ones you have to watch out for. I never believed them – I mean Matthew was always very quiet. I should have, though, because then I could have drummed it into Matthew and he would have known to stay away from her. Once she had her claws into him it was too late. She poisoned him from the inside. The female of the species can be deadly like that.

I start to climb the stairs. My limbs feel heavy. They don’t want to go there. They are remembering too. I
wonder if my whole body might seize up on the stroke of midnight. Rendered incapable of functioning by the memory of past events. It is a powerful thing, memory. There have been times in the past year when I forgot where I put my keys and seriously hoped it might be the onset of something. Dementia would be a friend to me if it came visiting, one I would welcome in and tell to make itself at home.

I pause at the top of the stairs. Matthew is there on the landing. He is always there. Smiling at me from beneath a fringe which is a little too short, pleading with me not to make him wear that itchy jumper again, sitting awkwardly in his first school tie and blazer.

I keep him on the landing and in the hall because those are the areas I am always passing through, so I can glimpse him on my travels, wave to him as I pass, feel he is close by. I understand that he cannot be here all the time, though.

The rest of the time he is busy playing in the park. He never did like to stray too far from home. It is good that he is close by, where I can visit. Some people’s children move a long way away. I would not have liked that. It is a comfort to know that he did not want to leave me either. Not really, he didn’t.

As I round the corner, my hand on the balustrade, I see the child’s photo. It jars now, whereas just a few days ago it seemed the right thing to do. I took her in, I made her my own. But she is not mine and she never will be. I
reach up and take the photo frame down from the wall, push back the metal pins, remove the backing and take out her photograph. Matthew smiles back at me from underneath. I stroke his face. I was so wrong to think I was being sent another Matthew. Matthew was kind enough to send her to me in the hope that she would help, but he knows now. Knows that I do not need another Matthew. I just need the old one back.

I toss the child’s photo onto the floor and turn to face Matthew’s door. I have never shut it since. Always left it slightly ajar. But the child slammed it shut so I must prise it open, even if it means I avert my eyes as I do so.

I touch the door with the back of my hand. The fire brigade tell you to do that before entering a room. If the back of your hand feels the heat you will pull it away instinctively. Whereas if you touch it with your fingertips they will stick to the heat, melt with it, perhaps. I used to stroke Matthew’s head with my fingertips when he was a baby. I was never afraid, you see, of the love I felt. If the heat melted me, then so be it.

I grasp the door handle and open it a fraction. There is no noise from within and it is that which causes the tightening in my stomach. The clenching of my fists. The prickling sensation along my spine.

I open my eyes little by little. Like a blind being rolled up slowly by someone anxious not to let too much light in. My brain sees the shadow but knows instantly that it is just a memory. The room is empty. I am relieved and
I stay that way for several seconds until it dawns on me that it should not be empty. There should be a child in here. The child I am looking after. My first thought is that my mind must be playing tricks on me. Perhaps I am indeed ceasing to function, unable to see what is in front of me. I pull back the sheets on the bed in case she has somehow slithered down inside. The bed is empty. She must have fallen out. I walk around to the other side of the bed and bend down to peer underneath but she is not there. And then it dawns on me. She must have heard me coming up the stairs. She will be playing hide-and-seek. She will be waiting for me to find her.

‘You win. I give up,’ I call out. ‘Come out now, wherever you are.’

Nothing. I swallow and go to the window, check that she hasn’t opened it. The catch on the sash window is firmly in place. I let out the lungful of breath I hadn’t realised I was holding and turn back to the room, trying to think logically, rationally. There is only one possible hiding place, even for a child of her size. I go to the wardrobe and open the door. It is her eyes I see first, peering sleepily at me through the gloom at the bottom of the wardrobe.

‘What on earth do you think you’re doing in here?’

‘I went to sleep. I made a bed and went to sleep.’ I look down and see a pile of cardigans and sweaters at the bottom of the wardrobe.

‘Well you’ve got a perfectly good bed out here – what’s wrong with that?’

‘I don’t want to be in Matthew’s bed, I want my own bed.’

I open the door wide, grab hold of her hand and pull her up and out of the wardrobe.

‘I’ve never heard anything so ridiculous.’ I stop as I notice the book she is clutching in her hand.

‘What’s that?’

‘I found it in wardrobe.’

‘What is it?’

She shrugs. ‘It’s got lots of writing in it.’

I snatch the book from her grasp. It is A5 size, black with a hard cover. I think I smell him first. It has the unmistakable scent of Matthew. There is nothing on the front. I open it and flick through a couple of pages. Matthew’s small, sloping handwriting stares back at me. The ink has long dried but I see his pen flowing across the pages, his fingers gripping tightly. I always told him he needed to relax his hand more when he wrote. He never seemed to find it an easy process though, certainly not as easy as playing the piano.

There are dates written in it in Matthew’s hand. It is not an actual diary but he clearly used it as such. I carry on flicking through until I get to August. My hand slows then as I turn the pages one by one. The last entry is on Thursday, 4 September. One year ago today.

‘Where did you get this?’ I ask again.

‘In wardrobe.’

‘Show me where.’ I can’t believe it has been there all this time and I have never seen it. She opens the door and crawls in, pointing at the part where the two panels meet at the back.

‘In there. I saw the gold bit glittering. I pulled it out to look at it and then I fell asleep on my bed.’

I stare at her, struggling to take it all in. But I do not see her; I see an older girl standing there avoiding eye contact with me. Her lies buffeting my ears. Her voice getting louder all the time. And me sitting there shaking my head. Mouthing, ‘You’re lying,’ over and over again.

‘Get out,’ I scream at her. The child clambers out of the wardrobe, her eyes bulging.

‘You have no right to be in here. No right at all.’

Tears stream down the child’s face. She doesn’t understand what she has done.

‘Get out. Get out of Matthew’s room. Now.’

She runs to the door, pulling it shut behind her. A few seconds later I hear her feet running downstairs. Immediately I put the diary down on the bed and go to the other side to drag the bedside cabinet across in front of the door. It is a heavy one, made of solid wood. None of this MDF rubbish. She will not be able to move it. I turn back to the bed. To the diary lying on top of it. I shouldn’t read it, I know that. Diaries are private things. But I am his mother; there should be no secrets between a son
and his mother. I move slowly around the bed, my eyes fixed on the diary, as if deciding which angle is best to approach my prey. I perch on one side of the bed, pick up one corner and drag it towards me. I stroke the cover with my fingertips. He won’t mind. I know he won’t. I can hear him humming. He wouldn’t be humming if he minded, I am sure of it. I turn to the last entry. His handwriting is not as neat as normal. Perhaps his hands were shaking as he wrote it. Or maybe it is just my hands shaking now as I read it that makes the letters appear so uneven.

The first words drip into me like antiseptic. They sting, yes, because the wounds are still raw, but I accept this because I know they are healing me, soothing the pain of her lies. But as I read on his words sharpen and pick at the wounds, pick until they are opened up, exposed. At which point the hurt pours in, searing into me, its jagged edges tearing me apart, contaminating the wound. His boots stamp over me, as if trying to extinguish a fire. He doesn’t stop until every last spark has been put out and only the glowing embers remain. And then the words which smother even that: ‘she’s suffocating me’. They are her words, I am sure of it. But they come from his lips, or from his pen at least.

I sit, winded and wounded on the bed, for a moment before I am able to summon the strength to move. When I do so, it is to lift the diary, pick it up and hurl it across the room.

‘No!’ I cry. ‘No, no, no, no no.’

I collapse onto the bed, my body shaking, my tears unable to replenish themselves quickly enough. I want to take it back, the moment when I decided to read the diary. Actually, I want to rewind further – to when the child found it, the moment I decided to bring her home to tend her wounds. Further and further still, rewinding through history until when Matthew is a child. A little boy oblivious to everything apart from the daisy chain he is making. Humming to himself in the park while I watch over him.

‘Piano lady, did you fall over?’

I hadn’t even heard her footsteps on the stairs. Or if I did, I thought I was imagining them.

‘I heard a big thump. Did you fall over? Is that why you’re crying?’

I don’t reply. I am not capable of speech.

‘Piano lady, I’m hungry.’

My tears come faster, scouring their way down my cheeks. I hear her try to open the door.

‘I can’t open it,’ she calls out. ‘Why can’t I open it?’

I clench my body tighter into a ball, like a hedgehog. I am aware of the oncoming traffic but can do little about it. It will have to avoid me. I am wounded. This is as much protection as I can muster.

She tries for some time to open the door before I finally hear her footsteps going downstairs. I am relieved. I want to be left in peace. Outwardly, at least. Inner peace is not
possible. Has not been for some time. I tell myself that he didn’t mean it – the words he said, the arrows he slung. She had poisoned his mind, as I had always expected. We do not speak rationally when we have been poisoned. We spew words out in an effort to cleanse ourselves. That is what he was doing. Cleansing himself of her bile. He meant no harm. No malice was intended. I tell myself this time and time again as I lie, curled in a foetal position on the bed. He does not hate you. He hated only the situation he found himself in. And yet there must be a tiny chink in my armour. The armour which has protected me for so long. Because one of his arrows has got through. Has pierced my skin and in doing so allowed the doubt in. Doubt is my enemy. I know and understand its power. And yet once it is in, it is very hard to get rid of.

I lie rocking and sobbing on the bed. My skin feels dry, my hair coarse, as I wrap my arms around myself. I sucked the life out of him. And in doing so I drained myself as well. Withered and died inside, became dry and brittle on the outside. The humming has stopped. Matthew doesn’t hum any more. He hasn’t hummed for a long time. I am aware of the light starting to fade outside. He will be cold. He will need to do up his cardigan. I feel the need to be near him, to hold him close to me. Slowly I uncurl, one aching limb after another. I raise my head. I can see the diary on the floor in the corner. I need to smell it again. To stroke the pages which Matthew touched.