Authors: Samantha Hayes
I park and march up to the door. I still know the code and, as usual, no one has bothered to turn the main lock so I’m straight inside the building. Kim’s bike is propped against the wall. Has she not gone to work today? The hall table is strewn with mail, most of it junk by the look of it, and there’s a bag of bottles ready to take to the recycling. It’s been there for ages.
None of this had to happen
, I think sadly. She could have got help, done things differently, listened to me.
It’s still not too late
, I try to convince myself, while also blaming myself for being too weak. Over the years, she’s forced me to do things I would never have dreamt of. It’s always been the way between us – her unfathomable need fuelling my time-starved guilt. It’s some consolation, I think, as I tramp up the creaky stairs, to know that it’s not entirely my fault. Away from her clutches, I see things more clearly. Cecelia is a powerful, persuasive woman; she always has been – a desperate woman with magic powers that work only on me. That was why I tried –
tried!
– to get away from her, but she and I both know that’s not as easy as it sounds. She preys on my weakness for her, knowing I’ll do anything she asks.
I head up another flight of stairs towards the top-floor flat. I knock on the door. I press my ear to the wood but I can’t hear anything. Usually when she’s working she has the radio on and sings along to any old rubbish. It used to drive me mad. Mad in a good way; a madness that made me love her all the more. She knew I’d do anything for her.
‘Heather!’ she says, shocked to see me. She’s wearing a floaty kaftan. She made it herself from an old sari. If Cecelia isn’t creating something, she isn’t being Cecelia. ‘What are you doing here?’
‘I kind of live here,’ I tell her.
‘No you don’t,’ she says immediately. ‘You left. You left me and this flat. And you left most of your stuff here. Is that why you’ve come? To collect it?’ She’s twitching and shaking beneath the fabric. Her hair is cast around her shoulders in glorious bonfire waves.
‘No. Actually I’ve come to see you.’
‘Oh.’ She sounds disappointed, even though I know this is Cecelia’s way of being pleased to see me. ‘I was going to make tea.’ She leaves the door wide open and retreats.
Cecelia and tea is a love affair in itself. No teabag thrown into a mug for her. Instead, she sets the dining table (an oval gate-leg table we bought for thirty quid at an auction when we first moved in) as if she’s serving a three-course meal. She begins by putting the kettle on. Then she clatters a huge dented teapot that I swear is made from aluminium and has been doing us no good at all down from a high shelf and onto the messy work surface. When the slow old kettle’s boiled, she warms the pot, but in the meantime she’s been laying out bone-handled cake forks, chipped and mismatched floral tea plates, cups and saucers, and the cake stand she bought from Harrods last January sale. ‘Every kitchen should have something from Harrods in it,’ she once said, unwrapping the delicate floral structure from its tissue paper. It just made me love her more.
Or perhaps I just felt sorry for her.
‘Baked fresh this morning,’ she says, spreading out an array of bright purple and orange iced cupcakes on the bottom layer of the stand. On the top tier she piles French fancies with edible silver baubles pressed into the fondant icing that I know she will also have made. They are all slightly misshapen, each one carefully crafted to be different from the others. Cecelia sees baking the same as her jewellery making. It should be lavish yet somehow quaint, demure but still tantalising, and, most importantly, apart from being handmade, no two pieces should ever be the same. She roared herself pink when she told me this.
Cecelia.
‘Help me cut off the crusts.’ She passes me the bread knife and a stack of brown bread. I know exactly how she likes them. The ritual is strangely comforting, a far cry from what I am faced with in my job. The job Cecelia knows nothing about, the job that keeps me from tumbling into the same place where she now resides – an insane landscape I’ve only dared to glimpse. It’s all for her own good.
‘Prawns?’ I ask. It’s what she usually has.
‘Smoked salmon today,’ she says, popping a strip of the fish between her lips and giving me a guilty grin over her shoulder as if I’ve never known her.
I press the salmon between the slices of bread after adding a bunch of clipped cress. I cut the sandwiches into diagonal quarters and line them up on the middle tier of the cake stand. I place the whole lot on the table. Cecelia spoons Lapsang Souchong tea leaves into the pot and re-boils the kettle. Soon we are sitting opposite each other, me hunched over my violet- and forget-me-not-rimmed plate and Cecelia with the sun flaring through her hair as light streams into the flat. It only lasts for about twenty minutes at this time of year but goes on for nearly an hour in the summer.
‘This is more lunch than afternoon tea,’ Cecelia confesses. ‘You know what I’m like when I’m immersed in work. Days go by without me thinking about food.’
That’s not entirely true. Cecelia is obsessed with the stuff but still manages to be pencil thin.
‘Eat up,’ she says, noting my empty plate. ‘If you were pregnant, you’d be ravenous.’
She might as well have slapped me in the face. ‘I’m sorry to be such a failure.’ I take a sandwich and bite into it. It tastes of nothing and goes some way towards quelling the tears.
I stare at Cecelia. She is still there but somehow changed. I’ve done everything I can for her, everything I promised, but it’s as if we’re on different sides of a very tall mountain. I don’t see a way around.
‘You’re not a failure.’ She slides her hand past the cake stand and takes hold of mine. Her strong fingers knead deep against my knuckles. She’s hurting me. ‘As such. We’ll just have to think of another plan.’
I nod. If I was watching this scene in a movie, I’d be screaming, ‘Get out! Run!’ I wouldn’t foretell a happy ending. Why, I ask myself as my fingers mesh into a net with hers, do I always let her do this to me? If I’m honest, I know the answer to that but I’m just too stupid to face up to it.
‘It wasn’t meant to be this time,’ I tell her, as if I’m ready to try again, as if all my resolve is a blown-away dandelion head. I wipe my mouth on a napkin. ‘I’m working on a plan.’
Her eyebrows raise into two curious peaks. She makes me sigh. ‘And just what are you proposing?’ she asks. ‘An immaculate conception?’ She giggles and takes a cupcake from the stand. She places it on her china plate and licks her finger and thumb. She pours more tea, watching me from beneath the frizz of her hair. Her eyes are bright green, sparkling provocatively like forgotten emeralds from within the charity-shop décor of the flat. I’m certain she’s accumulated a ton more stuff since I left.
‘I can’t really say,’ I tell her, knowing immediately it’s like pouring petrol on a fire. ‘You’ll just have to trust me.’
‘You know I don’t,’ she says, biting into the cake while reading me with heavy eyes.
‘It’s complicated. But there will be a baby.’
If I analysed rationally what I was saying, what I was planning
again
, and so soon after last time, then I might as well have myself locked up now.
What am I thinking?
But then I look at Cecelia and remember how happy we once were, and if there’s a slim chance we could get that back then I’m willing to take the risk, however it might end. It’s only right.
‘How’s your
job
,’ she asks. I feel the bitterness as she chucks out the word.
‘I . . .’
‘Oh yes. Silly me. I forgot that you don’t like discussing it.’
I bow my head. Telling her about Claudia and James, involving her in the twins’ lives . . . she wouldn’t understand.
Couldn’t
understand. It would begin with mild curiosity, a gentle interest, until she boiled with furious jealousy and rage. With everything that’s going on, it’s imperative she knows nothing about them. It would be too cruel. ‘Yes, you know I don’t want to talk about that,’ I tell her, as I always do. There’s a lump forming in my throat and it’s got nothing to do with the sandwich I’m cramming in to stifle what I really want to say. I’m adept at biting my tongue.
‘Oh la-di-dah to your precious jobs,’ Cecelia sings rudely. ‘Truth is, you can’t hold one down long enough to have anything interesting to tell me. How many have you had in the last year alone? Five, six? I reckon it’s more.’ She’s right. I have had many jobs. And she’s right, too, that none of them has gone particularly well.
She stands up and picks up her empty plate, turning it round and round in her hands. ‘I think you’ve had dozens of stupid jobs and you’ve been fired from them all.’ She raises the plate above her head. ‘Tell me what I should do with you, Heather. You won’t give me a baby and you have no career.’ The plate spins across the room in slow motion, smashing against the wall above her work table. The shards shower around her latest piece.
I try to swallow the sandwich but it won’t go down so I let it drop out of my mouth onto the table. I stand up. My legs are shaking. ‘You know I want you to be happy, Cecelia,’ I whisper, crumbs falling from my lips. I grip her narrow shoulders and she flinches. ‘It’s just that . . .’
The look on her face halts me – that look of trust, of need, of hope.
Don’t let me down
, her expression implores.
‘You will have a baby,’ I say, and I leave, feeling sick with the thought of what I must do.
I’VE GOT THE
heating turned up full blast now that the boiler’s fixed. It’s wonderful, walking around the house with bare feet and a huge baggy T-shirt over my tracksuit pants. Last night’s frost has lasted right through into the afternoon, highlighting our street silver. I called work after antenatal class and told them I wouldn’t be in. I’m too tired. There’s stuff I can do from home and I’m much more comfortable working here. Zoe has gone out, perhaps to run some errands, and I’m enjoying the peace. But as soon as I’ve settled down with a pile of folders and a list of phone calls to make, the doorbell rings. I heave myself from the sofa and waddle to the door. A man and a woman are standing there looking so serious I swear my heart stops for a second.
It’s the moment every military wife dreads.
‘Is it about James?’ I ask in a panic. They look just as I’ve always imagined. The woman is wearing a dark trouser suit and has sunglasses forked on her head and the man is standing stiffly in a long black coat. ‘Oh God, tell me he’s OK.’ Whether James is working in a war zone or not, his job is often dangerous. He told me once what would happen, that they come in pairs, that the boys and I would receive support. My mouth is dry and I think my heart has raced so far ahead of itself it’s given up completely.
‘I’m Detective Inspector Scott and this is DI Fisher,’ the man says, as if he’s said it thousands of times in his life.
‘Who’s James, love? Your husband?’ the woman asks with a pleasant smile. I nod. ‘Don’t worry, it’s not him we’re here about. Are you Claudia Morgan-Brown?’
I nod again, and take a deep breath. ‘How can I help you?’
‘I called round earlier. I spoke to your nanny,’ she says.
I feel instinctively guilty, as if they think I’ve done something wrong. ‘Oh, I see. She didn’t tell me.’
‘Can we come in?’ the woman says.
‘Yes, of course,’ I reply, stepping aside. ‘Come on through to the sitting room. I’m working from home today.’ I gather up the files and move them onto the coffee table to make room. ‘Please, sit down.’ I lower myself into the space beside the woman. The man sits opposite.
I wish James was here.
‘We’re here about your work, as it happens,’ the man says. ‘We won’t keep you long.’
I let out the breath I hadn’t realised I’d been holding. ‘I’ll help however I can,’ I say. We deal with the police all the time in the department but only once have I ever encountered detectives. It’s not unheard of though. I begin to relax.
‘You probably saw in the news that there’s been another attack on a pregnant woman,’ DI Fisher begins. She glances at my tummy and I know what she’s thinking, that she shouldn’t really mention it for fear of upsetting me. ‘Miraculously, the lass survived,’ she adds sympathetically.
‘Her baby wasn’t so lucky, though.’ The male detective’s concern is more businesslike. ‘So we’re dealing with another murder case.’
‘Oh, that’s just so terrible.’ I don’t know what to say.
‘We hope this won’t upset you . . .’ The woman takes another quick glance at my bump.
‘I see bad things happen to children all the time in my work,’ I tell them honestly. ‘I wouldn’t say you get hardened to it, but my personal life is separate.’ I want them to understand. ‘Social workers wouldn’t ever have children if they couldn’t draw a line between the two.’ I try to make a joke of it but it falls flat. The detectives remain serious.
‘The latest attack was on someone you’ve been dealing with, I’m afraid. We’re sorry to be the bearers of bad news.’ There’s a pause, and I brace myself. ‘The pregnant woman was Carla Davis. We’re so sorry.’
And instantly my resolve to keep work out of my home life is broken to pieces. It’s almost as if Carla is in my sitting room, yelling at me for letting her down, for allowing such a thing to happen to her. How could I have done things differently?
I bury my face in my hands and stifle a sob. For Carla’s sake, I can’t let myself go. I have to stay strong and help them. ‘Oh good grief,’ I say. ‘I had no idea. I heard about the story briefly but didn’t realise it was Carla. I don’t believe it.’ Even sitting down, I feel faint and dizzy. This is terrible news.
‘I’m so sorry,’ DI Fisher says. ‘It was a shock for your colleagues too.’
‘We work so closely with these people,’ I say quietly, hardly able to take it all in. ‘We get to know them, become part of their lives, monitoring them and checking their progress, trying to give their children a better start in life. I know I said I don’t become emotionally involved, but it’s so hard.’
‘I understand that, love.’ She sounds as if she means it. ‘Unfortunately, Carla’s baby has just been denied that right to life. We need to ask you some questions about her. She’s in hospital and so far hasn’t been able to tell us much.’