Dying for Christmas (8 page)

Like all the gifts under the tree, this was beautifully wrapped. First there was a gossamer ribbon, so sheer that when I undid the bow, it slid open like it was made from air. Then there was a white-silk ribbon threaded through with gold. I had to pick at the knot for a while before it would untie, my fingers stiff with tension.

Finally the ribbon fell away to reveal the paper – thick and white and encrusted with silver glitter in the shape of snowflakes. I rubbed my finger over the raised granules, wanting to delay opening the present.

But Dominic was like an impatient little boy. ‘Come on,’ he urged. ‘Get it open!’

I slid a finger under the tape and opened up the paper. Inside was a small round silver box, about three inches in diameter, with on the lid a fairy made from what looked like solid silver. It was satisfyingly heavy and quite attractive in its own way. There was a name engraved on the side and a date:
Dominic Lacey 29/7/77
.

I looked up at him and smiled, suddenly giddy with relief that it wasn’t anything more awful. ‘It’s beautiful.’

‘It
is
nice, isn’t it?’

I basked in the beam of his approval.

‘Open it! Open the lid!’

Gently, I raised up the silver fairy by the tips of her silver wings. Inside, the little box was lined with purple velvet.

And nestled on the velvet were five tiny teeth.

Dominic’s eyes scanned my face, but the truth was I didn’t know how to react. The silver box had clearly been a christening gift of some kind. And as soon as I saw the teeth, I realized the significance of the fairy on the lid. There was nothing untoward about it. The grown man, keeping his baby teeth all these years.

‘Are these yours?’ I asked, because he was waiting for me to say something.

‘Of course they’re mine, Jessica,’ he snapped. ‘Why would I keep a box full of someone else’s teeth? Do you think I’m some kind of weirdo?’

I fell silent.

‘Pick them up,’ he said.

I picked out the tiny nuggets of enamel and held them in the palm of my left hand where they formed a kind of circle like a mini Stonehenge. In the split second before I slammed down the shutters in my head, I heard a baby crying.

‘It was a christening gift.’ He indicated the box. He sat back against the cushions of the huge sofa. ‘I don’t know who it was from. Maybe my aunt, may she rest in peace. My mother is the one who would have kept the box, and collected each tooth when it fell out.’

I allowed myself a smile. It’s the kind of thing my mother might have done. ‘I bet she’s also got a lock of your hair somewhere.’

He nodded, gazing into the far distance as if lost in nostalgia. ‘And my foreskin.’

I wasn’t sure I’d properly heard.

‘My foreskin. After I was circumcised Mummy kept that too. Much later I found a box labelled
Dominic’s foreskin
although there was nothing in there, just a hard, yellow gnarly thing. Same with the umbilical cord stump. That was stored in a Ziploc bag in a wooden box. It was just a black nub by then, like a raisin.’

I felt sickened, although it occurs to me now that, as an archivist, I should have appreciated Dominic’s mother’s actions. ‘She must have loved you very much.’

Dominic laughed as if I’d said something very funny. ‘Oh, she did. Yes, she really did. Only it’s a weird thing, isn’t it?’

‘What’s weird?’

‘Love.’

‘Is it?’

‘When I was little, I slept in Mummy’s bed.’

‘Well, that’s not weird, I …’

‘And when I got older, she slept in mine.’

I looked away then, not wanting to see his expression. My stomach was pulling and twisting inside me and making a noise, and I felt stodgy and bloated from all the food. Dominic leaned forward and I had a horrible lurching feeling that he was going to kiss me, but instead he took the silver box from my hands. He held it on his palm and stroked a finger around the rim of the lid.

‘One time I woke up,’ he said, as I watched his finger going around, ‘and she was lying on top of me, pressing every part of her body into mine – arms against arms, legs against legs, cheek against cheek. “I love you so much,” she told me. She didn’t seem to notice that she was crushing me half to death – she was what you’d call a larger lady, my mother. “I want you to wear me all over you, like skin.”’

That’s when it all came rushing to the surface. Before I knew it, my mouth was full of lumps of undigested turkey. Jumping to my feet, I ran for the bathroom. I made it just in time.

* * *

As soon as she turned her key in the lock, she knew they’d gone. There was no muted sound of the television coming from the living room, no buzz of tension in the air of the hallway, that exquisite sense of breath being held for fear of waking sleeping children. Just emptiness.

Kim crept up the stairs anyway, out of sheer force of habit. The first door on the right had a big red heart on it made out of crushed tissue paper and a ceramic plaque with
Katy
spelled out in flowery letters. Kim felt a jolt of hope when she saw it was ajar – Katy always insisted it was kept ajar at night and the landing light left on. She liked to hear other people in the house. But when Kim nudged it open, the flowery curtains were apart, the white princess bed with its netted canopy, empty. There were a few items of clothing strewn over the carpet as if someone had packed in a hurry. Kim’s heart turned over at the sight of a flowery T-shirt, heartbreakingly small. No sign of any of this morning’s Christmas presents or the old battered panda Katy had had since birth.

Kim picked up the T-shirt from the floor and sat on the edge of the bed with it pressed to her nose. Was this how Jessica Gold’s mother felt? she wondered. This chasm opening up inside you where your organs should be? At least she knew where Katy was. That was something.

Wasn’t it?

Chapter Thirteen

The sun streamed in through the bank of windows, and even without being able to see the river itself I could sense it through the ripples of light reflecting on the walls, like LED lights on the ceilings of the clubs I’d occasionally let myself be dragged to at university, only to spend the hours bobbing awkwardly on the edge of the dance floor, nursing a lukewarm drink in a plastic cup, my cheeks aching from the effort of trying to smile. From my stool by the kitchen island, I fought back a wild impulse to hurl myself across the room on to the sun-splashed floorboards. After almost two days here I craved light.

Dominic glanced up from slathering butter on to a pile of warm croissants and saw me looking.

‘Maybe we can go outside today.’

My spirits leapt. ‘Where would we go?’ I tried to keep my voice neutral, not wanting to betray the extent of my longing.

The dimple appeared again. Funny how quickly I’d come to dread seeing it.

‘
Silly
Jessica Gold, you didn’t think I meant out of the building, did you? And spoil this lovely intimacy we’re building up? No, I just meant out on to the balcony. To get some sunlight on your skin. You’re looking a bit pale, sweetheart. But first, brekkie.’

He put the plate of croissants down in front of me and I pulled one apart. Its insides were translucent in places with grease. I counted the croissants. Five.

I started eating.

I continued eating, even when he handcuffed my left wrist to the retro school-style radiator near to the dining table while he went to the bathroom. Dominic’s desire to be fully known did not extend to matters of his own personal hygiene. So while it was OK for him to watch me on the toilet, when it came to his own calls of nature he would excuse himself with a coy prudishness.

I wanted to go outside so intensely it hurt. So I ate my way right through the wall of revulsion that rose up to greet those croissants and didn’t stop until all that was left on the plate was a smear of grease and a few claggy crumbs.

Dominic seemed pleased.

‘Greedy guts! You’re going to be a tubby little thing by the time this is all over.’

A flare of hope. So at some point, it would be over?

He withdrew from his pocket his bunch of keys. He was wearing different clothes today. Black, slim-fitting moleskin trousers and a black cashmere jumper. I wondered when he’d transferred the keys from yesterday’s jeans.

The key that opened the doors to the balcony had a pink fob. When the heavy metal frame swung open the gust of cold air blowing in was shocking after all those hours cooped up in the heat of that flat. I followed Dominic outside where there was a glass-topped table on a wrought-iron stand and two matching chairs. The river, sparkling in the sunlight, was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen.

There were cars, small as toys, proceeding over Tower Bridge in the distance, the moving speck of a pedestrian on the opposite bank, evidence of life going on. There were boats dotted all over the surface of the water. I wondered what would happen if I shouted for help down to the motorboat that passed almost underneath us, its five occupants huddled in their high-visibility jackets. But deep inside I knew the wind would just blow my own voice back in my face.

‘Usually there’s a lot more to look at.’ Dominic was feeling expansive that morning. ‘Over there’ – he indicated the low converted warehouses on the opposite bank of the river, with the cranes behind them – ‘is normally a hive of activity, but I guess everyone’s holed up at home, it being Boxing Day. You know, I still can’t get over us being here together, like this. Bank holidays can be so lonely without the right person to share them with. Aren’t we lucky to have found each other?’

I nodded, not able to speak.

Turning my head away from the bridge in the other direction, I remembered what he’d said before about Execution Dock and, of course, as soon as I’d let that memory back in, the voices were there, but the wind was blowing against them, and they struggled to be heard.

What if I jumped?

The thought blew into my mind with the wind and once it was in there, it refused to leave. I pictured myself taking that deep breath, gathering momentum, letting go. I allowed myself to imagine the freedom of falling, dropping further and further away from Dominic and this flat. I could feel the warmth of the sun on my face as I fell.

‘You’re cold.’

I heard the strangest thing then, a child’s voice almost echoing his. ‘I’m cold,’ it said. I looked around but there was no one else there. Dominic took my hand and rubbed it between both of his as if trying to start a fire. His fingers disappeared up the sleeve of my jumper, the skin of my arm turning icy where he touched it.

‘Goose-bumps Jessica.’ He was so close to me, his breath was warm and damp in my ear. ‘We must get you into a hot bath.’

He turned to open the door, and as he did so a pleasure cruiser passed underneath us. Without thinking, I raised my arm in a desperate sweep. A child in a yellow anorak was standing between two adults leaning against the rail and looking right up at me. I could almost see the colour of his eyes and the stripes on his gloves. He lifted his arm at the elbow and waved solemnly as the boat disappeared from view.

I expected to go into the main bathroom where there is a large free-standing bath, but instead Dominic led the way through to the ensuite in the bedroom, where there is only a large walk-in shower – more of a wet room really, with mosaic-tiled walls and floor and several shower nozzles at different heights. The controls are at one end, which is where Dominic stood. His expression, I noticed now, was hard and set.

‘Take off your clothes,’ he ordered.

Immediately I froze. By that stage I’d been sleeping in my clothes for two nights and they were rank, particularly bearing in mind the quantities of rich food I’d been consuming. The smell, whenever I lifted my arm, was of overripe fruit. Curiously, I wasn’t so scared of what he’d do to me – from what I’d learned about Dominic so far, he was more interested in the power than the flesh, but being stripped bare in front of him still seemed obscene.

‘Chop-chop, Jessica. We haven’t got all day.’

I didn’t point out that technically that’s exactly what we did have.

Slowly, I pulled my jumper over my head, and rolled down my jeans. Dominic’s expression didn’t change. I was wearing a pair of black featureless knickers.

‘And the rest.’

He sounded almost bored.

I swallowed a lump the size of Brazil and slowly unclipped my T-shirt bra, then, with one hand covering my chest, I attempted to wriggle out of my knickers.

‘What the fuck is that?’

Dominic was pointing to my stomach. For a moment I was flushed through with embarrassment until I looked down and saw a large patch of pink raised skin, about the size of a side-plate. He appeared quite disgusted by the rash.

‘In the shower,’ he said.

I stepped in and he slid the glass doors together, leaving himself just enough room to operate the controls.

‘Arms by your side. Your skin will never get back to normal if you keep it covered up.’

The freezing water hit my body like a car smashing into a wall. I screamed as powerful jets blasted my head, shoulders, arms, thighs, calves – but the glass doors allowed no escape.

‘I was going to let you have a nice hot bath,’ Dominic shouted over the noise of the shower. ‘And then you had to spoil things. What were you thinking, waving to that boat? Did you really think I wouldn’t notice?’

He twisted the knob that regulated the shower pressure so the jets slowed to a trickle before coming back on bruisingly hard.

‘You’re just throwing my love back in my face.’

* * *

Afterwards, when I sat shivering on the bathroom floor with my arms wrapped around my knees and my hair dripping freezing water down my back, he brought a fluffy white towel and wrapped it around me as gently as if I was a baby bird that had fallen too early from the nest.

‘What are we going to do with you, sweetheart?’ he purred in my ear as he patted me dry. ‘
Silly
Jessica Gold.’