‘I’ll need to go to America for a bit. Part of the deal includes doing some promotion and, if the film happens, I might need to spend some time in LA. I know it’s something we should have talked through first, but . . . I said . . . yes.’
‘That’s it? That’s what you were worried about telling me?’
‘I’m not sure how long I’ll be gone for, it could be a couple of months, and I know things haven’t been great recently. I have to do this. I know you’ve always said you can’t be too far from your family and I know you can’t just give up your job, but you could come out to visit and I’ll fly back when I can. I just know we can make it work if we both want it to.’
I nod quietly and take a moment to let it all sink in.
‘And I know you get scared when I’m away.’ I give him a look. ‘OK, not scared, just anxious, like when you thought there was someone in the back garden in the middle of the night last week. I’ve been thinking about that too and I want you to feel safe while I’m away. I’ve seen these mini security cameras you can get now, activated by movement, no wires, no fuss. I’m going to order them and put them up at the back of the house. You’ll be able to stream the footage to your phone if you want and see for yourself that there’s nobody there.’
‘I quit today.’
‘What?’
‘I handed in my notice. I told Matthew before I left the Christmas party.’
‘Why?’
‘I had the most awful week at work. It’s a long story. It was time to go. So if you really do want me to come with you, then I will.’
‘Of course I do, I love you!’ He means the words, they’re real and the tears they inflict on me are real too. We’re not acting, we’re just us and it feels so much lighter. A smile so wide I think it might swallow him takes over his face. I want to smile back but a thought pushes its way in and spoils things. I think about where I woke up. The dull pain between my legs, the still unopened pregnancy test kit in my handbag. I think about Claire. So much of my own news that I cannot and will not share. I need to shower. I need to wash whatever happened away. He sees my face change.
‘What is it? What’s wrong?’
‘We can’t tell anyone about this, not yet.’
‘We’ll have to tell some people.’
‘Not yet, please. Not even family.’
‘Why?’
‘Just promise me?’
‘OK, I promise.’
Before
Friday, 18th December 1992
Dear Diary,
It’s been a whole week since I’ve seen Taylor and I’ve got so much to tell her. I wrote a lot of it inside her Christmas card, but I couldn’t fit it all in, even though I did really small writing. I know she’s got it, I hand-delivered it myself because Dad forgot to get stamps. I knocked on her front door but nobody answered so I pushed it through the letterbox. I’m hoping she’ll call later because I really do need to talk to her.
Strangers have been coming to our house and I don’t like it. A tall, thin man, with no hair at all on his head, came to talk to Mum and Dad. He said his name was Roger and he had a white smile that wasn’t real. Roger is an estate agent and he wears suits that are shiny. He said he thought it would be best if none of us were home when he showed people the house. He didn’t say why, but I expect it’s because of Mum being such a mess now, he probably thought she’d scare people away.
Dad told me he didn’t think anyone would want to buy Nana’s house so close to Christmas, but he was wrong. People came first thing this morning, before I was even dressed, for a viewing, that’s what Roger calls it. Sometimes he knocks on the door, but sometimes he just lets himself in because he has his own key. He talks about Nana’s home as though he lives here, but he’s never lived here and he keeps getting it all wrong.
I didn’t mean to lose my temper. Dad had a job interview this afternoon, he’s decided to get a new one. Mum had popped to the corner shop to get a can of baked beans, so I was here on my own when Roger let himself in. I crept out of my room and could see the top of his shiny head through the banisters. He was talking very loudly, like an actor on stage in one of the plays Nana used to take me to see. Actors do that so that the people in the cheapest seats right at the back of the theatre can still hear. Roger was shouting at a fat couple even though they were standing right next to him. I wondered if they were hard of hearing like Grandad was. They waddled around the hall like ducks who’ve been fed too much stale bread and I didn’t like the look of them.
Roger was talking so loudly that I picked up the robin doorstop and quietly closed my bedroom door, but I could still hear them. I tried to read my book, but I couldn’t concentrate knowing they were poking around down there where they shouldn’t. They came up the stairs, which creaked even more than usual, and then spent ages looking at the bathroom. It’s not a particularly big bathroom, has all the normal things in it, so I’m not sure what took so long. It was like listening to burglars walking around our home, the only difference was that Mum and Dad had invited them in.
They went into what used to be Mum and Dad’s room. They were right on the other side of my bedroom wall and I listened as the fat man talked about our house being a ‘fixer-upper’, wondering what that meant. Only Mum sleeps in that room now and I hate her, but I still didn’t like the idea of them being in there and touching her things. The fat woman started to speak, she hadn’t said much before that and it was her, not Roger or the other man, that made me really angry.
The three things she said that made me lose my temper were:
1. ‘Nobody in their right mind would want to live here.’
2. ‘It needs knocking down really.’
3. ‘It’s such an ugly little house.’
I felt my breathing get faster and things inside my head got really loud, the way they do when I’m very upset. I couldn’t believe that anyone could be so rude and stupid. I didn’t know what I was going to do, I didn’t plan it, but I had to do something. I didn’t want the horrid fat couple to buy Nana’s house. I didn’t mean to do something bad, I think I just wanted them to get out.
It all happened very quickly. I heard them leave Mum’s room and walk along the landing, then Roger opened my bedroom door and I just screamed as loud as I could for a really long time. The fat woman looked terrified and Roger looked a bit scared too, the fat man was already bright red in the face from walking up the stairs and I thought he might have a heart attack.
‘Calm down, little girl,’ said Roger. That made me even more cross, I’m not a little girl. Then he said that they hadn’t meant to scare me, which was stupid. They hadn’t scared me, I’d scared them. I wanted them to leave then, so I said what Mum said to Taylor’s mum when she wanted her to get out. I shouted, ‘Get out of my house, you fucking bitch!’ really loudly over and over again. Even when they got to the bottom of the stairs, I stood on the landing still screaming at them. Then I threw the iron doorstop at Roger’s head but it missed, hit the wall instead and landed on the carpet. I was glad when they were gone. I was scared I had broken the robin, but it was exactly the same, not even a scratch, unlike the wall which had a beak-shaped dent. Funny how something so small can do so much damage and still look exactly the same.