When Mum came home with the baked beans I didn’t tell her what had happened. The phone rang and she answered it in the kitchen, so I couldn’t hear very much or tell who she was talking to. She called me downstairs a little bit later and said that Roger had called. She told me to sit down on the sofa and I thought I was in trouble. But then she sat down next to me and when I looked at her I saw that she was wearing her sad face, not her angry one. She told me that someone who came to look at the house first thing this morning had bought it and we’d have to move out very soon. I cried, I couldn’t help it, then she cried a bit too. She went to hug me, but I pushed her away and ran up to my room.
A little later she came upstairs. She knocked on my door, but I ignored her. I knew she wouldn’t come in without me saying it was OK, not after what happened last time. She stayed there for ages before eventually just whispering ‘Good night’ like a ghost and walking away. I replied too late, I don’t think she heard me, it was a rhyme she taught me herself:
Night-night.
Sleep tight.
Don’t let the bed bugs bite.
And if they do, squash them.
I rolled over and put my pillow over my head. I held my breath for as long as I could but eventually it pushed its way out of my mouth and I didn’t die.
Now
New Year’s Eve, 2016
‘How you doing?’
I open my eyes to see Jo sitting at the end of my hospital bed and I’m so happy to see her, even if she hasn’t come alone.
‘If you didn’t want to come back to work after Christmas, you could have just said so, you didn’t need to crash a car into a tree and put yourself in a coma you know.’ She smiles and holds my hand. She looks so young. I wish time had been as kind to me as it has been to her. I can see my room and it’s so much nicer than I imagined, so bright and colourful. The window is wide open, framing a clear blue sky as birds provide us with a little background music.
‘Do you remember what happened yet?’ she asks. I shake my head. ‘You do know it wasn’t Paul, don’t you? He’d never hurt you. Not like this.’ I nod because I know now that she’s right. The truth has got a little tangled and twisted while I’ve been lying here, but the strands are starting to unravel and straighten out.
‘It wasn’t an accident, was it?’ I ask. It feels strange to hear the sound of my own voice out loud again.
‘No.’
I nod again. The pieces of the puzzle are starting to show themselves, but still don’t fit together.
‘Why did you do it?’ asks Jo. She’s no longer talking about the crash.
It’s so good to see her, she’s the only one I can be completely honest with, no secrets, no lies. I try to sieve the truth from my memories.
‘You know why,’ I reply.
‘I don’t know why you resigned, you didn’t need to.’
‘I only took the job to get to Madeline, you know that.’
‘I also know having that job was good for you, something of your own.’
‘It was a shit job.’
‘Being a presenter on a top radio programme, listened to by millions, is not a shit job.’
‘No, but I wasn’t really the presenter, was I? We just made that up for fun,’ I say.
Jo frowns. ‘Did we?’
‘Yes. I was just Madeline’s PA.’
‘Were you?’
‘Yes, Jo, you know this.’
‘Maybe I do. I think I forgot. Things get muddled in my head sometimes.’
‘No, that’s me – things get muddled in my head,’ I say and she lets go of my hand.
The air rapidly darkens and it starts to rain outside. The sound of birds has been replaced by an impatient wind, blowing the curtains and bed sheets about the place. The room seems to have faded, like I’m watching a remastered colour version of an old black and white film, I can tell something is not quite right. The scene no longer seems authentic and it reminds me that I’m lost. I sit up and reach for Jo.
‘Please find me, I want to be found.’
But the little girl in the pink dressing gown stands up and takes Jo’s hand before I can reach it. She pulls her towards the door. The room starts to fall apart, huge jigsaw-shaped pieces of it falling down into the darkness below. I have to hold on. I so badly want to knit the pieces of my life back together, but I don’t know how.
‘Do you have to go?’ I ask.
‘I think so, don’t you?’ Jo says and they leave my room together, closing the door behind them.
Then
Christmas Eve 2016 – Morning
There is never a good time to lose someone you love, but the death of a loved one at Christmas is a truly terrible thing. Both our parents died at Christmas time and it was never the same after that. It’s something we’ll always have in common no matter how far we drift apart. Spending Christmas Eve together was Claire’s idea, not mine, but I couldn’t say no, it has become a morbid tradition of ours. She said we should try to remember what we’ve got, not what we’ve lost. I’m trying. I know she sees them in me. Sometimes it feels like she’s trying to extract any last fragments of our parents from my DNA just by staring at me. I have the same eyes as our mother. I sometimes see her too, looking back at me in the mirror, always disappointed by what she sees.
Kingston High Street was my choice; it’s always busy. The twins are a welcome distraction from the day ahead, a pair of terrible twos. Claire pushes them around in the biggest double buggy I’ve ever seen. They both grip onto their own toys in their tiny fists; they never have to share. A boy and a girl, she has her own perfect little family now, it really should be enough. She loves the twins more than she loves me, more than she loved any of us, which is how it should be. I’m going to tell her today, not all of it, just what she needs to know when the time is right.
‘That’s far too small for them now, silly,’ says Claire.
‘I know, just thought it looked pretty.’ I put the 0–6-months dress back on the rail. I did the pregnancy test this morning while Paul was still sleeping. It was positive. I think I already knew that it would be. I don’t know how I am pregnant now after so long trying. I think it’s a sign, it must be. It’s time for me to move on and start living my life with Paul. Just Paul. A family of our own that nobody can take away from us. I want to tell him first before I share the news with anyone else. I’ve rehearsed the scene in my head, he’s going to be so happy. I’ll tell him tonight.
I buy the twins some clothes that Claire picks out, may as well get them something she likes, they won’t even remember this Christmas let alone what they were wearing. I wonder if they’d remember me if I were to disappear from their lives sometime soon. I looked it up the other day, the term ‘godmother’: ‘A female arranged to be the legal guardian of a child if untimely demise is met by the parents.’ Untimely demise – I can’t get that phrase out of my head. Being their aunt and a godmother hasn’t really meant an awful lot yet, but it will. I plan on doing a lot more for them when they’re older. They won’t remember what happens this Christmas, it won’t count.
The number of last-minute shoppers bustling and hurrying along makes it almost impossible to progress from one shop to the next. I find it strange that the people we pass, saddled with bags and debt, all look so happy. Sometimes I feel like everyone is happier than I am, as though they’re all in on a secret I’m not privy to. The wide smiles on their faces are too loud. I find myself hating them, hating everything. The Christmas lights, songs, fake snow, all the things I used to enjoy, leave me cold. Claire isn’t enjoying the experience either. We’re more alike than I care to admit and I can see her already sinking down into a bad mood or worse. It’s probably better to share my news sooner rather than later if I’m to prevent her from going somewhere too dark for me to follow.
I steer our little herd towards a small Christmas market, Claire likes this sort of thing. She stops by a stall selling scented candles. She lifts each one in turn, holding them up to her face and breathing them in. Each has a different name. Love. Joy. Hope. I wonder what hope smells like.
‘That friend from university you said you bumped into . . .’ she says, still looking at the candles. I freeze to the spot I am stood on and the busy Christmas market seems to quieten.
‘He’s not a friend, he’s an ex,’ I manage to say.
‘Whatever.’ She picks up a diffuser, its sticks spiking outwards like a stretched hedgehog. ‘I remember him now, it came back to me last night.’
Last night when I woke up in his bed.