‘Do you mind if I draw the curtains?’ says Hester quietly.
Melissa shakes her head on the pillow. There’s a swooshing sound and blissful darkness enfolds the room. At least there are proper blackout curtains here. Melissa closes her aching eyes.
Hester gives a little sigh and mutters to the dog, which is no doubt in the bed already. There’s a creak as the other woman lies down.
Even though exhaustion presses down on her, pinning her body to the bed, Melissa’s mind is clearly not going to allow her the rest she craves. Instead, it presents her with an HDTV-quality flicker book of images she doesn’t want to see: Jamie’s lifeless eyes staring up at her; the heft of his body as he slumped sideways on the trolley. The jammy mess in his hair and the crump of his face hitting the tiled floor. Jamie standing on her front doorstep; Jamie gently flirting with Tilly.
Tilly.
Scrabbling to a sitting position, Melissa fumbles to the side of the bed for her handbag and the phone inside.
She hadn’t even thought about her daughter for hours. What kind of mother is she? Her iPhone comes to life and shows that she has five messages:
Tilly, 11 p.m.: ‘Going 2 beach with Stacey and co in morning. C U pm’.
Mark: ‘Hold-ups with filming. Sorry. Home early Weds. Mx’.
And then three from Saskia:
‘How U feeling hon? Sxxxxx’;
‘Making most of Nate doghouse. Currently weeding garden LOL!’;
‘Hope sleep sorted you out. Call me? Sxxx’.
Weak with relief that there hadn’t been an emergency, Melissa taps out quick messages to all three and then flops backwards on the bed.
‘Everything okay?’ Hester sounds sleepy and hoarse.
Melissa is suddenly overcome with a wash of pure loss.
She doesn’t deserve any of them anymore.
Staring up at the ceiling in the gloomy light, she hears the distant hum of the motorway and the rustling of Hester in the other bed. The dog gives a sleepy little woof in its dreams.
‘I don’t know, Hester,’ she whispers finally. ‘I’m not sure any of it will ever be right again.’
There’s further movement and she turns over to see Hester is now facing her. The dim lighting highlights the lines on her face. The other woman looks old and exhausted. A fresh stab of guilt assails Melissa. She should just have called the police and tried to make the self-defence story work. At least then Hester wouldn’t be an accessory to a crime.
‘Oh God, what have I done?’ she says, turning to let the tears soak into her pillow. The bed compresses next to her; she feels the gentle touch of the other woman’s hand on her shoulder, gently patting, and then stroking her hair. It helps. Comforting her like the hand of the mother she never had.
She didn’t think she had more tears to spare but Melissa sobs, her shoulders shaking.
Hester says, ‘there, there, darling, there, there,’ over and over again, so softly it’s only just possible to hear her.
After a while, Melissa turns the other way and grabs some tissues from the box on the side. Blowing her nose with a damp honk, she gestures to Hester to make room for her to get up. Hester moves back to the other bed and they sit, knee to knee.
Melissa toys with the damp tissue, twisting it round her fingers. It quickly starts to break up, sending dandruffy flakes to the rough carpet.
‘I’d do anything to turn the clock back,’ she murmurs, meeting Hester’s eyes at last. ‘Really. Anything at all. I never meant to kill him.’
Hester gives another vague ‘shhh’ and pats Melissa’s knee.
‘God, I’m a murderer, Hester,’ she says and more tears come. She buries her face in her hands again. It is intolerable. The guilt will drown her, she feels. ‘I killed a person!’
‘No, no, no,’ says Hester in a soothing tone. ‘You’re not. No.’
Melissa knows she is making meaningless sounds to comfort her.
‘But I did though! I hit him!’
No one would ever understand that she hadn’t really meant it. It had been one white-hot second of rage. How could such a small implement do so much damage?
‘You just don’t understand,’ she whispers. ‘You don’t know what really happened.’
Exhaustion, guilt, and fear seem to mix and expand inside her like bread dough. They fill her stomach and her throat. She can’t breathe.
Melissa stands up, gasping, crying, and begins to slap at her own head.
‘Melissa!’ Hester’s voice comes from far away. ‘Stop it now, you’re frightening me! Try to take slow breaths!’
And then Hester is right there. Her eyes catch the small streak of light filtering into the room through the curtains like tiny candle flames. She grips Melissa’s wrists in her small, dry hands.
‘No, you don’t understand, my darling girl!’ Her voice is clear now but too loud.
‘You are not alone,’ she says. ‘I keep telling you that. You never have to feel alone again. I’m here for you, Melissa.’ Melissa is aware of quickened breath, which comes hot against her cheeks. ‘I helped you … I …’
Melissa nods and mumbles ‘thank you’ because she can’t think of what else to do or say and manages to peel her wrists from Hester’s grip. She wants to curl into a ball and disappear. She sinks onto the bed and curls into a foetal position, her back to Hester. She feels the light touch of the other woman’s hand as she begins to stroke her hair again.
PART THREE
HESTER
Sitting back on the bed I let out a small sigh of satisfaction at a job well done. I regard the three piles of clothes on the bedroom floor and think I should have done this years ago.
The three bundles are: keep, bin, charity shop. The throwaway pile is by far the largest; a teetering mountain of fabric in various faded hues. I will struggle to fit it all into two bin bags.
I have been going at it all morning and I am sorely in need of a cup of tea. This has been hard work. And not just of the physical variety.
Seeing particular garments again has been so poignant. I reach out to finger the tartan skirt that my mother used to wear to parties, the material now limp with age. I used to bury my face in the soft billowing flare of it when I was small and it was so wide and swishy I couldn’t get my arms all the way round.
I wish there was some residue of her perfume here but, like her, it is long gone. With regret, the empty bottle of Rive Gauche has been added to the dustbin pile.
There was a time, after I lost them both, that I would dab that perfume to my wrist, just as she did. I would wonder how my pulse could still throb with life when hers had simply … stopped. Crushed in a tangle of metal at the side of a road.
I hoped the pipe smoke aroma might have lingered in Dad’s suits too, but there is no trace now. What’s more, the moths have had rather a field day. I hold a mustard tank top I don’t remember to my nose and take a sniff, but only breathe the musty, sweetish smell of neglect.
Yes, this morning’s work has been a little melancholy but perhaps it has been therapeutic too. Terry used to grumble about the wardrobe in the spare room being taken up with all these old clothes, claiming he could find a use for the space. I stood my ground and he eventually realized that I wasn’t going to budge. But now I am the one deciding that my house needs to ‘get with the times’. It’s time I ‘moved on’ as they say.
Terry’s things went long ago, of course. I have already had one clean sweep, in a manner of speaking.
Time for that cup of tea.
I have one more look around at the fruits of my industry, picturing what the room will look like when I’ve had it decorated. I can’t remember the exact colour of the walls in Melissa’s spare room, having not been in a fit state to appreciate it when I slept there, but I did like that shade. It was so calming. I will have a look next time I am around. I have already invested in some cushions to put on the bed and I think this room is going to be quite transformed.