Rap-rap on the window made my heart leap. Wiping at my misty eyes, I sat up. “KENDIE!” Jaxon shouted, his face grinning at me through the glass. “KENDIE!” Summer echoed.
Kyle pulled them back as I opened the door and then they were in my arms, their warm bodies pressed against me, the smell of their freshly washed skin filling my nostrils, their hair tickling my cheeks, their arms squeezing the life out of me.
“KendieKendieKendieKendieKendie,” they kept repeating. It was only my name, but it was the sweetest thing I'd ever heard.
Ashlyn was standing in front of the big, stone fireplace that had no fire in its belly. She looked as though she'd been pacing, her face a mask of anxiety, her green eyes wide and frightened as she stared at the door. She was thinner than she had been the last time I saw her, but she looked well. Far better than Kyle did. Far better than I did. There were a few dark wisps under her eyes, her hair was pulled back into a sloppy ponytail, her body dressed in unbelted blue jeans and long-sleeved T-shirt, big fluffy slippers on her feet. Four steps over the threshold was all Kyle got before Ashlyn threw herself at him.
She clutched the front of his T-shirt, buried her face in it, as though she might find comfort and absolution in the thick material covering his heart. Burst into noisy tears as she held onto her husband. Kyle's entire body stiffened the moment they made bodily contact and he stared over her head, towards the back of the cottage, towards the doorway that led into the huge kitchen- diner.
I had a twin's hand in each of my hands, small and perfectly formed, warm and beautiful. I had to remind myself not to cling on too tight, had to remind myself letting go wouldn't result in them disappearing again. I guided them towards the cream sofa. Under the sofa lay a huge Oriental rug, its intricate pattern worn in places from the length of time it had been there. The cottage was cozy, homely. The kids must have loved it here. It was the perfect place to spend the school holidays, which is probably what they thought their time away had been. A holiday. Not a slow, winding road through every level of hell that Kyle and I had thought it was.
I sat in the middle of the sofa, and the kids sank down beside me, watching their mother and father. Kyle wasn't engaging with Ashlyn. He hadn't called the police, but that didn't mean he didn't hate her for what she'd done, for dropping him off at the gates of Hades without even a map to help him get to the other side.
Her sobs decreased as she began to talk. “I'm sorry,” she said tearfully into his chest. “I wanted to be with them. I missed them so much. I just wanted to be with them. I'm sorry. I'm sorry.” She kept repeating her sorries into his chest, until slowly, like an ice block in weak sunlight, he melted, relented. He stopped staring over her head, and shaking his head slightly, he looked down at his wife, gently raised his arms and folded them around her. “Shhh,” he hushed as he lowered his head to hers, started to stroke his hand over her hair, soothing her. “Shhh … We'll talk about it later. We'll talk about it later.” His comfort spread throughout the room, his hushing moving gently over all of us.
The kids and I watched them. The amount of affection between the two of them was palpable. Their bodies fit together, he knew how to offer her comfort, their hearts probably beat in time. How Kyle and Ashlyn fit together took me back briefly to the night Will and I spent together, lying on the bed, our bodies so close it was impossible to believe we hadn't always been like that, hadn't always been so close we couldn't function without the other one. What I would do to be back with Will… To have the chance to hold him like that… These two had it. How come they were the only two people in the world who could not see that they were meant to be together?
Summer got up on her knees, put her hand on my cheek and twisted my head towards her. “Are Mumma and Dad friends again?” she asked eagerly. Her bright eyes smiled at me, waiting for me to say yes. I couldn't say it. Of course I couldn't say it. Jaxon got up on his knees as well, and I turned to look at him. The same eyes, waiting for the same answer.
I looked at Kyle and Ashlyn, became lost for a moment in the smooth beautiful lines their bodies made as they stood together—it was impossible to tell where she began and he ended.
I returned my attention to the kids. Looked at Jaxon, then rested my gaze back on Summer because she had asked the question. “I hope so,” I replied. It was the most honest answer I could give them. They may be friends, but not in the way Summer and Jaxon wanted. Because of their inability to talk to each other, to tell each other the truth, they'd probably never be friends like Summer and Jaxon wanted.
CHAPTER 41
I lay on the sofa under the spare duvet with its white and blue cornflower cover, propped up by three soft, squashy pillows, wide awake in the darkness. I hated the darkness. Darkness was suffocating. When my eyes couldn't focus on a shape, couldn't anchor myself to a point, I feared I'd drown in darkness.
It's dark, an endless pitch. The weight crushes my body. Blackness is creeping in at the sides of my sight as the hand around my throat takes away the air and consciousness. I try to fight it. Try to stop it. But the blackness is still coming. “You're special,” the voice whispers. “Stop fighting you're special. Stop fighting and I won't kill you.”
I sat bolt upright. No. Not now. I'm not going there now, I decided. If I did something else it would stop. If I moved, it wouldn't keep a hold. I threw back the covers, got off the sofa. I picked up the small fleece blanket that was draped over the back of sofa. I needed to get outside, to the air. I could breathe out there. Theoretically it was probably safer inside the house than outside, but I knew that danger didn't always come from the outside, from strangers.
If I thought about it rationally, the biggest danger to me was in this house. And she was called Ashlyn. The way she had looked at me earlier … She'd speared me to the spot with her glacial green eyes and had tried to remove me from her life with all the hatred she felt for me focused into one look.
It was nothing personal, I knew that. Ashlyn hated my presence in her life, my role in her family's life. Why don't you just disappear? her look had asked me. Her body language, the slight push with which she'd given me the duvet and pillows, had added: Why don t you just get out of our lives for good?
Yes, in the whole of Cornwall she was the most clear and present danger to me. I crept through the kitchen to the patio doors. I eased open the locks and then softly pulled the doors open before I stepped out into the night. Outside was chilly. The end of August meant cold nights, a bite that brushed over the skin, causing goose bumps to clamber upright and the body to curl a little into itself. I crept over the lawn to the twin swings that stood outside in the large back garden.
From the flaking green paint and rust, it was obvious it had been here for a few years. Maybe that was why Ashlyn had rented it: she saw the double swings, it was only a twenty- minute walk from the seafront, it was perfect for the kids.
I sat on the green swing and, thankfully, despite its age, it didn't creak. Didn't alert anyone in the house that I was awake and walking around. I moved the swing gently back and forth, trailing the tips of my trainers in the cork on the ground beneath the swings.
I closed my eyes, remembering the look on Jaxon's face when he'd come running out the front door. The unsup-pressed delight that came over him as he ran to his dad. I felt the smile take over my face. The smile became a grin as I remembered Summer circling her arms around my neck. A lump formed in my throat. A lump from remembering how desolate my life had been without them. The thought of living without them … The panic rose quickly, fluttering to my throat, forming a lump that I couldn't swallow away. A lump that I could only cry away. I felt the tears coming up behind my eyes. How could I live without them? I needed Summer's constant chatter, Jaxon's oblique observations. I needed the children. At one point I thought they needed me. And maybe they did. But that was only while their mother was gone. Now she was back. I almost doubled over at this new torture. Now she was back she'd take back what was rightfully hers. Yes, they'd probably want to
see me still. But as a friend. Not as the person they came to with a homework problem, not as the woman they drove crazy with their questions, not as their “other mumma.”
I didn't look up when I heard the door open and someone step quietly out of the house. I knew who it was. The only person it could be.
Ashlyn sat down beside me on the swing. A brief glance from the corner of my eye revealed she was dressed as un-sensibly as I was. She had on her calf-length satin nightdress, the T-shirt Kyle had been wearing and a pair of thick, royal blue socks pulled up as far as they would go. I could smell Kyle from her. Sandalwood and citrus, his vaguely sweet masculine scent. That was probably how I smelled— of the man I'd spent nearly six weeks living with. I hoped she smelled of him because they'd got back together. That they'd talked themselves out and made love. It'd be disastrous for me and my relationship with the kids, but it was what this family needed. They needed to be put back together again.
She swung out of time with me, the chains on our individual swings rasping like quietly expiring asthmatics with each movement back and forward. Back and forth we went, moving in uneven time, sounding out an unsynchronised symphony. I wasn't sure if she was expecting me to speak first, but I had nothing to say to her. I wanted their family knitted back together, I wanted them sewn back into a happy patchwork but I was angry. My anger was raging like an undammed river below the surface. I could reach out and claw out a handful of her hair and slap her from left to right, right to left and not break a sweat. I could hurt Ashlyn for the hell she'd put Kyle and me through. I had nothing to say to her. And there was nothing she could say that would make me speak to her.
“I started drinking again.” Her voice was only a fraction above a whisper. So quiet, so devastating I wondered if I'd conjured up those words to further demonize her.
When she stilled her swing by putting her feet down and twisted to face me, I realized she'd said it. And it was the only thing she could say that would make me speak to her.
“I'm listening,” I said to Ashlyn.
“I haven't told anyone else,” she said, her voice barely above a fragile whisper. She spoke carefully, as though she might shatter with every word and not be able to continue. She looked down, away, at her satin- covered lap, her hands still gripping onto the chairs. “Jaxon knows. He found me passed out on the sofa. Summer doesn't know. Or maybe she does—she's started having nightmares, I think because she can smell the alcohol on me and it reminds her… Of this one time. She doesn't sleep through the night anymore …” Ashlyn's voice trailed away. “I stopped going to meetings,” she said. “It was too hard when I… When we first came here, I wasn't sure if he'd called the police, if he'd called my sponsor or if he was out looking for me. I didn't want to associate too much with people in case he found out so it was easier not to go. I had the kids to focus on.
“I'd forgotten how much work they were. All the attention they need. I'd only seen them for a few days at a time here and there over the past six months or so. And before that… I'd been getting sober. Or so I told myself. I can see now that I was just a nondrinking alcoholic. I wasn't trying to stop being an alcoholic. I went to meetings but I wasn't doing the steps. I just stopped drinking and was miserable with it. I wasn't working towards anything, I was just not drinking and wearing it like a badge: ‘Look what a good girl I am, I'm not drinking.’
“I loved having Jaxon and Summer back. It felt as though a part of me had been returned. I didn't realize how numb, how dead inside I'd felt without them. And then my mother came to stay for a week.”
Her mother? The bitch. The lying bitch. She did know where they were and she'd tortured Kyle like that. She had bluffed him with that thing of calling the police. The bitch. I hope I never meet her. Never. I really will hurt her. If not physically, then verbally.
“I could get out of the house, so for something to do, I decided to go to a few meetings,” Ashlyn was saying.
Ashlyn could get out of the house, so for something to do, she decided to go to a few meetings. She hadn't told her mother about her problem; of course she hadn't. Instead she said she was meeting a few friends. Walking into the rooms was worse after the break from the meetings. She hadn't been drinking but it was awful. She said hello to a few people, got herself a cup of coffee and sat at the back in the corner on a fold-out chair. She was self- conscious this time around. Anxious. Probably because she hadn't been for so long. Or maybe because of what happened over the next hour. For the first time it really hit her what this meant.
She was like them. In the past, she'd sat there and listened and thought, I'm not like them. I'm not that bad. Despite what Kyle thinks, I'm not as bad as them. Now she realized that she was. Maybe it was having the kids on her own. Maybe it was knowing that she couldn't talk to anyone else afterwards. But it was sinking in. She'd hurt her family. She'd repeatedly insulted her husband. She'd all but ruined her career.
The worst thing for her, though, was that she realized she could never have another drink.
Not ever. If she was an alcoholic, she could never drink again. Not to celebrate a birthday, not at a party, not to relax at night, not to take the edge off if the world felt prickly and unsafe.
It's not true, she told herself. It couldn't be true. Maybe she was different. Maybe she was the alcoholic who could just control her drinking. She'd stopped for so long and hadn't really been to meetings, which showed that maybe she was different. She could just give it a go. Have one glass and prove to herself, prove to Kyle, prove to the rest of the world that she was better. She was cured of her alcoholism.
When her mother left she decided to give controlled drinking a try. She'd have one glass and that was it. She was better, she wasn't an alcoholic anymore, so she could do that. She'd never been able to have one drink in her life, not ever, but she could do it now. Just to prove a point.
She didn't drink the night she made her decision. She wanted it so badly so she stopped herself. Reminded herself that the craving would pass in a few hours. And it did. This was the reasonable side of her at work, the side that knew she wasn't an alcoholic. She had a problem if she was craving the drink, which would make her experiment fail. She'd wait until the craving passed and then have a drink. That would be how this would work out—she'd only drink when she didn't want it and she'd be able to stop. Who on earth would be able to stop once they gave in to a craving?
Two days later she bought a bottle of wine. Then a second one because she was going to prove that she didn't need it. She could drink one glass and have another bottle in the house and not even touch it. It was part of the experiment. Proving the point she was cured.
That first taste of wine was so clear in her mind, even now, two weeks later. How wonderful it felt in her mouth, sliding down her throat. The second mouthful was almost as delicious, her head swooned and she felt the first wave of that familiar warmth moving gently through her. She hadn't felt that free in what felt like a lifetime. She smiled. A grin that came from doing something she loved. This was what life was about. Not all that stuff, not all that needing to do things and think about things. You needed to relax sometimes, you owed it to yourself. The third taste sent her back to happier times.
She didn't remember the fourth taste. Nor the fifth or sixth. The next thing she did remember was waking up on the sofa. Jaxon was on the floor in front of the television with the sound turned down (because that's what she used to make them do when she had a hangover) and racing his car around one of the two empty wine bottles. She had one arm stuffed into her coat, the rest of her coat hanging off the end of the sofa, and her car keys were in her hand. She felt a thin thread of shame slither down her spine—she'd obviously wanted to get some more wine but had passed out first.
Her experiment hadn't worked. But that was because she hadn't tried hard enough. She bought more wine—four bottles instead of two. If she had more wine she wouldn't be tempted to drink and drive if the experiment failed again.
After a fortnight of tr
ying and failing to prove she was normal, that she was cured, Ashlyn woke up again on the sofa. This time Jaxon was standing over her, desperately shaking her. His face was twisted with worry, his eyes wide and frightened. He'd obviously been trying to wake her for a while. It was pitch black outside; the only light in the room came from the television. “Summer's sick,” Jaxon said. Even through the fuzz of alcohol she could see how scared he was, then she heard Summer's screams from upstairs.
Oh God, oh no. Ashlyn struggled to her feet, but she couldn't remember how her legs worked. They wobbled under her and she collapsed back onto the sofa. Jaxon was moving from one foot to the other, wringing his hands and constantly looking up to where his sister was screaming. Ashlyn pulled herself up again and, walking on legs of rubber and through a dense fug of sleep and wine, she managed to stumble up the stairs after her son.
“Summer was still asleep. She was covered in sweat, and thrashing about in the bed, screaming. I managed to wake her up and she started burbling about the goo. The goo was trying to get her. I couldn't even comfort her properly because I could hardly speak, could hardly hold her. In the end it was Jaxon who got on the bed and told her it'd be OK. ‘Don't worry Summer,’ he said, ‘I won't let it get you. Me and Garvo will protect you.’ And he hugged her. Patted her head. My six-year-old son was being mother to my daughter because I couldn't.
“I sat and watched while Jaxon comforted her. He ended up sleeping in her bed and I went to the other room and passed out again. I called Kyle the next day. I had a moment of clarity and I realized they had to be with Kyle right now. They need stability.”
I was stunned. Ashlyn had done this to her children. For real. Her voice had been full of sorrow as she talked, she had to keep stopping to take deep breaths, to pull herself together. But she had done this to her children. She had done this to herself and to other people.