Hold My Hand (6 page)

Chapter Eleven

“Hello?”

“Hi. It’s me.”

“There you are! I was beginning to worry.”

“Sorry. Sorry.” She checks her watch. It’s gone ten. “Sorry,” she says again. “It just… time got away from us.”

“No problem,” Says Carol, and Bridget hears her light a cigarette.  “ I just worry, that’s all. You know what I’m like.”

“Yes, I know. And I’m grateful.”

“So: what’s it like, then? Are you all settled in? Little one asleep?”

“Only just. And I think it’s more passed out from exhaustion than actual sleep. It’s taken forever.”

“Well… New place and everything…”

“Yes. That and…” Bridget giggles, partly from amusement and partly from the sheer tiredness. “Oh, God, Carol: it just hadn't occurred to me.”

“What?”

“Well… She’s never slept by herself before. Not in a room she doesn’t know.”

Carol is drinking something with ice in it. Bridget hears the chink as she raises it to her mouth. “Oh my God. So what did you do? Surely she’s used to going to
sleep
by herself?”

“Well, yes… but not in a strange bed in a strange house.  She’s always just tucked up in my bed in our room, since Kieran left. You’ve never heard so much shrieking.”

“I live in Streatham,” says Carol. “I hear it every night.”

“It doesn’t help that it’s colder than a witch’s tit. He’s obviously had the heating off since the day I came down for the interview.  We’re going to have to go and buy some new bedclothes first thing tomorrow.  As it is, I’ve got her sleeping under a couple of coats, and I’ve taken down the living room curtains to put on my own bed. He’s bloody lucky the pipes haven’t frozen.”

“Surely it’s warming up now?”

“I’m sure it would be if I could only find the boiler. It’s obviously not on the same system as the house, but I’m damned if I can work out where it is. I’m too tired, to be honest. The lights were out when we got here and it took me half an hour of fumbling around in the dark with a cigarette lighter before I found the trip switch.”

“Oh, honey, how horrible. Were you scared?”

Bridget laughs.  “Naah.  What would I be scared for, wandering about a huge strange house in the dark? And Yasmin was hanging on to my trousers every step of the way, howling. Actually, I had too much on my hands to think about being scared.  It’s pissing it down here. Started raining at Launceston, and I wouldn’t be surprised if that wind wasn’t gale force.  It practically took me off the road a couple of times when we were crossing Bodmin moor. I was more worried that we were going to get hit by a flying roof slate than anything else.”

“Have you eaten?”

“Heinz Tomato Soup and cheese on toast. We weren’t very hungry. And she’d been eating crisps fairly solidly since junction 5.”

“And she’s asleep now?”

Bridget sighs. “Yes. Though I’ve had to leave her bedroom door open and all the lights on. I don’t suppose I’m going to be much longer myself.”

“Get yourself a drink and get in the bath,” Carol advises.

A lovely idea, thinks Bridget. A long hot bath is just what I need. And I’d have one if we had any hot water.  And if the bath wasn’t an inch deep in spiders.  “Yeah, you're right. That
is
what I need.”

“By the way, I tucked a present for you into Madam's left wellington.  Half a bottle of vodka. Thought you might need it.”

“Oh, Carol. You shouldn’t have.”

“It’s only Asda,” says Carol, “nothing posh or anything. I just thought… well, I knew you wouldn’t have thought of anything like that yourself and I know what it’s like trying to get to sleep somewhere new. Even if you aren’t six years old.”

“You’re a true friend. You know that?”

“Sure am. Still, I’ll get my reward now I've got free summer hols for the rest of my life.”

“You know you can come, any time.” Bridget suddenly feels lonely. The summer holidays are six months away. “You know you’re welcome,” she continues in a small voice. “Can’t you come sooner?”

“No,” says Carol, and Bridget's stomach lurches. “You’re not to get maudlin on me,” she continues. “I’ll be down as soon as we can both manage. You know I will.”

“Yes.” Bridget holds back a sniff, swipes the back of her hand across her eyes.

“It’ll be fine. In the morning. Once you’ve got everything unpacked and started finding your way around. You’re doing the right thing, you know you are.”

“Has he been round?” she asks, suddenly unable to stop herself thinking of Kieran.

“You’ve only been gone half a day. He’s hardly had time. And anyway, the pub’s not let out yet, has it?”

“He’s going to be so –”

“Yeah, well,” Carol cuts her off, “it’s nothing more than he deserves. And nothing I can’t handle, either. Just stop it with that. That’s
tired
thinking. Go and run that bath.”

“Of course I will.” No point in telling her just how grim things are looking right now. It’ll be better in a couple of days.

“Pour yourself a nice big drink and take it in there with you. I guarantee you’ll get off to sleep in no time, however cold it is.”

“Okay,” she says.

“I’ll call you tomorrow. At least we know your phone works down there, eh?”

“It’s not Siberia,” says Bridget. “It's only Cornwall.”

A buffet of wind slaps into the side of the building, rattles the casements. There's no way she's going back out across that yard tonight to find Yasmin's wellies buried somewhere in the boot of the car.

“Sleep well,” says Carol.

“Thanks. You too.”

“That bloody car alarm’s going off again,” she says. “I doubt it. Just be grateful you’re where you are. Honestly, Bridge. It won’t be long before I’m envying you.”

In the middle of nowhere. With a wind that sounds like someone’s scrabbling to get in through the roof. Oh, God, have I made a terrible mistake?

“Night night,” says Carol.

“Night,” she replies. Hangs up and sits, elbows on the tiny kitchen table and face in hands, while she allows a couple of fat self-pitying tears to roll over her fingers. She can’t cry in front of Yasmin: has made a pact with herself that she will try not to. But that doesn’t mean she doesn’t want to, most minutes of most days. How did I end up so lonely? I was pretty, once, and popular, and now I’m the kind of person nobody notices when I walk by in the street. I don’t even get noticed by builders any more: they fall quiet as I pass.

Not surprising, she thinks. The self-pity emanating from you would be enough to put anyone in their right mind off. Amazing, though. How short a time it takes. Ten years ago I would have dreaded passing building sites because of the attention I attracted. Now I feel the same way for exactly the opposite reason. Life with Kieran was the drip, drip, drip of water on stone: you never notice the effects by watching them, but a decade of it was enough to wear my confident veneer through to the dull grey clay beneath. He was like a vampire: sucking my self-esteem out to replenish his own.

She feels, in the cabin-like kitchen, like a sailor lost at sea. It’s warm enough in here, for she’s turned the oven on full whack and left the door open, but she knows that stepping out into the corridor will be a different matter. The wind, stepping up a gear, howls against the walls like a wild animal. She’s always been a city child: lived with her mum and dad in Peckham until she was grown up, would probably have gone back there if she'd had the option. She’s never been alone somewhere where the orange glow of streetlights and the occasional sound of passing footsteps couldn't give at least the illusion that someone was at hand. Out here, miles from anywhere… anything could happen and no-one would know.

Abruptly, she pushes her chair back. That’s the tiredness talking, like Carol said. You’re not to go down this road. You’re still healthy, your daughter is beautiful and bright and loving and life is going to get better. It has to. Tomorrow we’ll buy double-thick duvets and a couple of fan heaters and hot water bottles, and I’ll get the kettle and the clothes and the TV from the car and we can start to make a little home here, at last. But tonight you must sleep.

Something clatters out in the yard, makes her jump. Don’t be silly, she thinks. There’s a wind. It’s probably a branch or something, blown loose and bowling down the hill. And now there’s rain rattling off the window like gravel thrown by a teenage lover. It doesn’t mean anything. He’s not followed you. He will have been at the office when you left. It’s just nature, and you’re in the middle of it.

She considers for a moment leaving the oven on overnight; turns it, reluctantly, off. No point in testing the fuse box; it obviously doesn’t take much to make it trip.

Entering her bedroom is like stepping into a fridge: a month standing empty in early winter has left the whole house shivering with neglect. Pulling the curtains, she feels a blast of cold air from the window, creeping round the ancient casement. She remembers her father, one winter of her childhood before they could afford vinyl replacements, going round the house with Clingfilm and Sellotape, sealing out the cold air. I’ll get some tomorrow, she thinks, when we go to the supermarket. The list gets longer and longer.

Kicking her shoes off, she gets under the duvet, thick brocade curtains piled on top like an old-fashioned coverlet, fully dressed. Waits for the bedclothes to warm up, then struggles out of her jeans under the covers.

Normally, she can’t go to sleep unless she has at least brushed her teeth, but the prospect of facing the icy water in those taps is worse than the prospect of waking with a mouthful of fur. She stretches out on the mattress – it’s not far off new, she notices, and comfortable. Her mattress in Streatham was so far gone – dimpled and stained from years of use – that she didn't even try to offer it to the second-hand man. Just left it to be the building society’s problem.

We’re going to be okay, she repeats to herself again. If you get a good night’s sleep it will all look better. She switches off the light.

Darkness. Real, deep, velvet darkness of a sort she’s never known. The bedroom curtains are thin, but nothing – no sign, even, that there is a village over the hill – penetrates the room. There’s someone, she thinks. In the house, there’s someone, I can feel it. They’re hiding somewhere and I can only hear them when the lights are off.

Kieran used to do that: hide in the dark. He’d do it when they lived together, ambushing her from under the hall stairs, getting up in the night and following her, silently, when she went to pee or get a glass of water, jumping out and grabbing her from behind, hand over her mouth to stifle her scream. He thought it was funny, in the beginning. Hindsight's a powerful tool isn't it? Allows her to kick herself for not noticing that his "jokes" were the early signs of a bully’s mentality. He thought that a lot of what he used to do was funny. That was the excuse: you don't have a sense of humour. I can’t help it if you can't take a joke. Christ, you wind me up. How can I live with someone who doesn't have a sense of humour? That’s the thing with the abuser. If they did it from the off, there would barely be a woman in the land who would let them stay. But it’s the slow creep, the escalations so insidious that you don’t see them, that get you, and trap you.  Cause he’d hold me, after, when I was shaking from the shock of it: he’d comfort me and soothe me and at the same time he’d laugh at me for being a baby.

And he’d never apologise.

What if it’s him? What if he’s here?

A sough of wind and a clatter and she's sitting up in bed, light on, heart pumping.

Don’t be stupid. Don’t be
stupid
. He can’t get you here. He doesn’t know where you are.