I can’t believe he has done this. I can’t believe he has scuttled away from the conversation the other day and come up with this. This nonsense.
Fynn stares at me, challenges me to tell him he’s wrong again.
When I have pushed down my disbelief and shock enough to talk, I say, ‘OK, because I don’t have feelings for you, because I didn’t have to be in love to have sex with you, and doing it with you obviously wasn’t a life-changing experience for me, this is how you get me back, is it?’ As I speak, he slowly folds his arms across his body, tilts his head slightly to one side but says nothing. ‘Because I put a stop to it, and I’m obviously not rushing to do it again, and because it’s never even occurred to me to think about having another child, let alone with you, this is how you hurt me? This is how you put me in my place? By implying I’m a bad mother, by hinting that I’ve got some deep problem that will lead to me killing myself and abandoning my already bereaved and traumatised children?
‘I really can’t believe this. I never thought you’d stoop so low. It was just sex, Fynn. You have one-night stands and flings all the time. Why did it have to be different with me? Why did you have to make it into something it isn’t and so end up with us like this?’
Fynn has pasted a neutral look on his face, aloof, unbothered, nonchalant. But I know he is hurt, that what I’ve said has slashed at a deep part of him. Well good. Because he’s hurt me too. By saying all that to me, by accusing me of … he hurt me too and he hurt me first.
We have the words we’ve spoken to damage each other hanging like a thorn-covered veil between us and for long minutes it seems that neither of us is brave enough to breach the gap, to try to sweep it aside.
‘It’s a good thing we’re not going to see each other any more, don’t you think?’ he eventually says with a sigh and unfolds his arms. ‘Before I go, I have to do this.’ From the pocket of his grey fleece hoodie, he produces a set of three small padlock keys on a flimsy wire ring that someone would probably spend years promising themselves to replace with a proper keyring. He tries to disguise how severely he is shaking when he reaches out, takes my hand then drops the small, shard-like pieces of metal into my upturned palm. ‘These are yours.’
‘What are they?’ I ask, even though it is obvious what they are.
‘The keys to your beach hut. I bought it. I couldn’t let you sell it – not when it meant so much to you and Joel and the kids. I kept waiting for the right time to give it back to you, but then it was Christmas, it was the funeral, it was his birthday, it was a year since he died. There was never the right time because it would have added to the pain, brought it all back when you all seemed to be getting yourselves to a better place. But, since I’m not going to be around any more, it’s time. Here’s your beach hut back. You’ll have to register it with the Seafront Office and with the council, but I’ve already told them you’re the new owner so it’s yours again.’
‘Fynn—’
‘Don’t say anything, Saff. There really is nothing left to say. I’m going to go. I’m … I’m simply going to go.’
‘Please don’t go like this. Please.’ I breathe deeply, to stop the tears, to control the erratic cadence of my heart. ‘Please.’ The air will not fill my lungs, it will not soothe the mercurial stampede in my chest. ‘I’m sorry … I’m … sorry …’ I’m hyperventilating. I need to calm down but I can’t. If I stop long enough to compose myself, he’ll walk away. ‘We … we can’t leave it like this—’
‘Take care of yourself,’ he says, talking over me.
In desperation, I touch him, on his shoulder, to hold him here, keep him in sight until we can talk. He shrugs me off as if my touch has burned him.
‘Take care,’ he gasps with tears in his voice.
He puts his head down and starts off up the road. This is why he wanted to take a stroll in the middle of the night, so he could leave, walk away, without doors or walls to hinder him.
‘Fynn, please,’ I call after him in the fragments between ragged breaths. ‘I’m sorry … Please. I’m sorry … Please. Please. Please. Please.’
I silently begged all the way to the hospital that day. I begged as I stood in the cold mortuary with a sheet covering the face of a body in front of me. I begged as I went home and with my fingers around the hands of both my children I said to them the words I never even imagined I’d have to find. I begged as the words sank into their minds and they both began to disintegrate even though I was trying to gather them up, draw them to me and keep them safe.
I’ve begged every day for eighteen months.
This is what I always beg: Please, please, please don’t let this be happening. Please, please, please don’t let this be real.
VI
XXII
6 months before That Day (April, 2011)
‘Ffrony, I’m going to have to quit Sea Your Plate.’
‘What, why?’ I asked him. I sat up on my knees in bed, watched my husband walk frantically around our bedroom, his body tense, his eyes wild with worry. He sat on the bed, leapt up too agitated to rest, marched over to the brown leather love seat in the bay window, perched on the edge, then jumped up again. He came to the bed, and started the process all over again.
Usually, after a cooking lesson, he fizzed with excitement, would bounce on the bed and take me through the class minute by (sometimes tedious) minute, as he explained the techniques he’d learnt, the flavour combinations he’d experimented with, the people he talked to. Aside from that, he was rarely like this – he was usually rational and clear-minded in how he dealt with problems. I could count in single figures the amount of times he’d been this unnerved.
‘It’s really humiliating,’ he eventually said. He stopped moving and faced me seconds before his embarrassment visibly shuddered through him. ‘There’s this woman. Audra, remember I mentioned her? The one who asked me if I’d work on a cookbook with her?’
I nodded. He’d mentioned her, and it’d sounded from the way he mentioned her that she fancied him. He couldn’t see it, of course. He was way too nice. Blinkered. There was no way I’d ask someone I barely knew, who was potentially a rival, to work on a cookbook idea I’d had if I wasn’t after him. It was a book of quick and easy meals that hadn’t sounded amazing or unique, but Joel had been enthusiastic for her and I’d said nothing about her clearly being after him.
‘Yes.’ I sat back in bed and waited to hear the inevitable.
He experienced another moment of mortification quivering through his body, then stalked back and forth across the room again. ‘Tonight, we finished class a little early so she suggested we go for a drink to talk about her cookbook, discuss where she’s got up to and what I think of what she’s done so far. And …’ He stopped, tensed himself as humiliation trilled through him again. ‘She tried to kiss me.’
‘Oh.’ Inside, of course, I was shouting I knew she fancied you! while simultaneously wondering how I could find out her address to go tell her to keep her lips to herself.
‘I told her, straight out, that I wasn’t interested. That even if I wasn’t married I’d not be interested. I’ve texted the cooking teacher and told him that I can’t work with her any more. But on the way home I thought it all through and realised it’d be easier if I quit altogether. She’s going to be so embarrassed. There’ll be an atmosphere and that’s not good when there’s only ten of us.’
‘She’s going to be embarrassed? What about you? I can’t believe the cheek of her. Didn’t she see your wedding ring?’
‘Yeah. And it’s not like I haven’t talked about you and the kids and showed her pictures.’
He climbed onto the bed, grabbed hold of my hands. ‘I swear to you, Ffrony,’ he said, ‘I didn’t kiss her back or anything. I just got the hell out of there … after I made a total show of her and me.’
‘Why, what did you say to her?’
‘It’s a bit of a blur because I was so panicked. But I said that I wasn’t like that. I was married. I had a fam
ily. I didn’t think of her like that. I liked her but I’d never think of her like that whether I was married or not.’
‘Doesn’t sound too bad. It was honest at least.’
‘That wasn’t the problematic part. We were sitting in a booth and I shot out of there to put some distance between us. I stood about six foot from her in a crowded bar barking all these things. Everyone heard and they were all staring. She ran out and eventually so did I.’
‘Oh.’
‘It’s such a mess. I panicked. I didn’t have a chance to think about what to do properly. I’ve never been in that situation before.’
‘Yes you have.’
‘Not like that. People might say something, and you can flirt a little, but there’s always the boundary. I always shut it down before it gets that far. In this case, there was nothing to shut down because I didn’t think she was interested. And even if you are interested, who tries to kiss a married man?’
‘More people than you’d imagine.’
‘Well not me!’ He was genuinely disgusted by the idea. ‘This doesn’t happen to me.’
‘It does all the time, you simply don’t see it.’
‘I haven’t done anything like that since Lisbon. I swear, Ffrony.’
‘I know. And I know you. I know, for example, that you’re going to feel awful for hurting her feelings, so I think the best thing would be for you to ring her right now. Apologise for saying all those things in the middle of the pub, and then repeat them but for her ears only.’
‘You think I should call her? Are you mad? She’ll think I’m interested in her or something.’
‘Oh, yeah, maybe. Look, tell her your wife’s told you to call and apologise. That it was a misunderstanding and you don’t want it to spoil going to the classes.’
‘You really think so?’
‘Yes. You can’t give up on your classes, you love them. They cost me a fortune and I get three hours of peace every Wednesday night. I’m not giving that up without a fight.’
‘Yeah, you’re probably right. But I’ll look around for other classes, too. See if anything else is as good for all-round stuff. Then I can migrate over to them.’
‘Good plan, Batman. Go on then, get dialling. Better out than in.’
XXIII
‘Mum, Mum,’ Phoebe says frantically. She is shaking me, her fingers gripped around the brow of my shoulder like she is hanging onto the edge of a cliff with a huge drop below.
‘I’m awake, I’m awake,’ I say. I force my eyes open and myself upright at the same time. ‘I’m awake.’ I don’t usually sleep that deeply, so it’s disorientating to have to be shaken awake, rather than to simply wake up. In the light cast from the corridor by the open door, I see her kneeling beside the bed, and I notice immediately that fear is flurrying across her face.
‘What’s the matter?’ To force myself further awake, deeper into consciousness, I blink hard and fast.
‘Someone’s trying to break into our house,’ she whispers.
My body and mind freeze. ‘What?’
‘I heard them below my room, they’re trying to break in through the back door.’
Automatically, I glance at Joel’s side of the bed. What would he do?
When we first moved here we lived in fear of this happening: we’d never had so much space, so many doors and windows and points of entry that we were solely responsible for. We’d go around every night and check everything was locked up, and sleep with one ear cocked in case someone tried to get in. Joel would go around every night and check everything was locked up. We knew we’d probably be able to handle the idea of things being stolen, but not beloved items being damaged, nor someone walking around our home, infecting it with their unwelcome presence.
Over time, we eased off the worry, found other things to think about. We’d never made a formal plan for something like this happening and I have no idea what to do.
Should we alert whoever it is that we are awake by switching on some lights, making a lot of noise and hopefully scare them off? Or do we hide and call the police? Or, do I check that my daughter is right before I set in motion another drama? ‘Show me,’ I say.
With Phoebe behind me, we move quickly and quietly down the blue-carpeted corridor, past the bathroom, past Zane’s room, past the stairs up to the loft, until we arrive at her bedroom at the back of the house, over the kitchen.
I stand by the window and almost immediately hear it: the scritch-scratching of someone at the back door who pauses regularly to try the handle. The distance from the back door to Phoebe’s room doesn’t smother the way the person below is industriously trying to enter our home. They’re obviously not a professional as they would have got in by now, I’d imagine. They’re not reckless amateurs, either, otherwise they would have tried to smash the door in by now. The noise – I cock my head towards it, hoping it will make it clearer – is like the sound of someone trying keys in the deadlock. One after the other, keys are pushed into the lock, then that pause after each go – even though the lock hasn’t been thrown – to turn the handle. They are expecting to get in. It’s only a matter of time.
I can’t look out, see if I can spot them, identify them because the back door is hidden from where I am by the brow of the kitchen extension at the back of the house.
Beside Phoebe’s bed is her mobile phone, a long black wire trailing from its side as it is charged. I gently unplug it, then as quietly as possible, I back out of the room, almost tripping over Phoebe who is waiting on the threshold, her face still a mask of terror.
‘OK, Phoebe, I want you to come with me to wake your brother,’ I whisper. ‘And then, the pair of you are to go upstairs to Aunty Betty’s room and lock yourselves in.’ I hand her the mobile. ‘After you’re all safe together, dial 999. OK?’
Her eyes double in size, leaving her with huge whites of her eyes and tiny melted-mahogany pupils, and she refuses to close her fingers around the phone. She’s scared of talking to the police in case she spontaneously confesses what she knows about Joel’s death that she begged me to keep quiet. ‘I know you’re scared of the police,’ I whisper. ‘But they’re the only ones who can help us in this situation, OK?’ I push the phone into her hand.
Slowly, she accepts it and gives a reluctant nod.
‘When you call them, make sure you say there’s someone coming into your house and there are two children and an old lady. That might make them respond quicker.’
Zane has always been a heavy sleeper – I’ve been known to vacuum in his room while he’s having a nap on his bed and not even cause the slightest stir. It takes an age to wake him and, to stop him shouting at us, I have to push my hand over his mouth while tapping my finger to my lips with my other hand. ‘Go upstairs with Phoebe to Aunty Betty’s room,’ I whisper to him. ‘Try to be very quiet, she’ll explain to you what’s going on up there.’
‘Wait, where are you going, Mum?’ Phoebe asks quietly.
‘I’m going to sneak downstairs and turn the light on, see if that’ll scare them away.’
‘You can’t—’ they both protest.
‘I’ll be fine. Especially once you’ve called the police.’
Both of them are reluctant to leave me, so I stand at the bottom of the carpet-covered stairs to the attic and watch them go up. With Phoebe’s phone as a light, they round the corner and go onto the landing up there. I see the bluey glow from her mobile as it illuminates the landing, and I hear them open the door to Aunty Betty’s room. When it shuts behind them, and then the lock is turned, I go back to my bedroom. Before I grab my phone, I struggle into Joel’s jumper.
The floorboards that creak on the landing and stairs are easy to avoid – I’ve been doing it for at least nine years, unconsciously mapping them out as I’ve avoided waking up my children and husband if I need to go downstairs in the middle of the night. At the bottom of the stairs, an unexpected rage overcomes me. I was scared before, now I am angry. That this is another ‘difficult’ thing coming
into our lives: Joel’s death, my stupid work situation, Phoebe’s pregnancy, the letters. Why us? Why us?
I have an urge to pick up the large umbrella that stands at the foot of the stairs in our umbrella stand and charge into the kitchen, screaming my head off and going straight for the back door. I want to scare the life out of whoever it is that is trying to break in. I want them to know, even for a sliver of a second, the fear they’ve put into us.
‘Your children don’t need to lose another parent,’ Fynn said to me. Those words are stopping me going in there right now. I would love to, but I can’t. I don’t know who they are or what they want, or if they’ve got a weapon. I don’t know what I will be walking into and if it will leave my children orphans.
What I do know is that this burglar thinks they have a key to our house and they have deliberately come here. Our house backs onto other gardens, the only access from the street is from the small walkway on the other side of the house next to us. And that walkway is only to their back garden. Their house is always in darkness, they often come and go so this person, if they were merely on the rob, would have a much easier time of it in that house. Not ours. Ours, the house they think they have a key to.
The way my heart pounds is erratic and volatile: different to the beat from the other night when I was rowing with Fynn, nothing like when I was with Lewis in the kitchen. This beat is violent, forceful, intense, like nothing I have ever felt before.
Deep breath, I tell myself as I wait in my corridor, a few feet away from the living room, staring at my shut kitchen door. Deep breath. Joel always used to complain about me never shutting doors on the way to bed. ‘It could save our lives in a fire,’ he used to say, ‘by helping to contain the flames in a single room.’ I’ve had to remember to do that ever since that day.
Deep breath. I step back towards the umbrella stand, my fingers close around the cold fake wood handle of the large umbrella Joel was given when he worked on the designs of a series of products for a large Brighton company. As quietly as possible, I slide the umbrella out of the brass stand and I move closer to wait by the white, six-panelled kitchen door. Deep breath, deep breath.