Authors: Rachel Abbott
5
The snow was getting thicker now and starting to drift in the wind. As Maggie looked out of the bedroom window she could see the thick flakes swirling in the amber glow of the streetlights lining the deserted cul-de-sac. The room behind her was in darkness. She felt as if she had been standing there for hours – waiting, hoping,
praying
to see Duncan return in his pristine white van. It was only three hours since she had arrived home, but it felt like days.
She ached to hear his voice – hear him tell her that he was on his way home and whatever had happened was a mistake; hear him say that he loved her. Had he left her? Really? Without a word of explanation? She racked her brain trying to think of a single reason why he would do that.
His phone still appeared to be dead, although she had called it every ten minutes, and she was trying hard not to let the children realise that something was wrong. Lily was oblivious to it all, but Josh knew that his daddy shouldn’t have left him alone in the house to look after his young sister. He was a sensitive child, and Maggie knew he would be going over everything in his head. He had looked at her as if she held the answer, but she was no nearer to understanding what was happening than Josh.
Suzy had sent her a text asking for an update, and Maggie was ashamed of the fact that she had lied to her sister. Or avoided the truth. She had just put ‘All ok now. Speak tomorrow.’ She hadn’t wanted to get involved in a long discussion. She didn’t have any answers.
Maggie had been through Duncan’s wardrobe to see what was missing, but she wasn’t capable of working out if her husband taken enough for a night, for a week, or maybe for good. She stifled a sob at the thought.
A sharp gust of wind outside blew snow across the road and against the wall of the house. Whether Duncan was here or not, it seemed unlikely Maggie would be able to get the
car out of the drive first thing in the morning, and for a moment she was relieved. The sick bastard she had been asked to defend would have to be passed on to somebody else. She could stay at home with the children, and wait for her husband to return.
Where are you, Duncan? I miss you
.
Maggie’s limbs were tight with cold and lack of movement. She backed stiffly up to the bed, sitting down and wrapping the duvet round her shoulders. Her whole body started shaking, and she didn’t know if it was fear or the frigid air of her bedroom that was causing it. She didn’t want to leave her vigil at the window, though. She bit her bottom lip, trying to stop it from trembling. Crying wasn’t going to help. She had to think.
The cupboard in the garage was niggling her. What had he needed to take out of that cupboard, and why? It wasn’t his work tools. She knew that.
Ever since they moved in together, Duncan had kept the green cupboard locked. Initially Maggie had decided not to make an issue of it. He was entitled to his own space, and if she was honest there were things in her past she would rather he knew nothing about – such as her appalling choice of partner before Duncan. A married man with three children. She shuddered at the thought. She hadn’t lied about that terrible period in her life, but she hadn’t volunteered the information either.
After she and Duncan had been together for a while she had asked him for the key to the cupboard – she was clearing away some clutter – but he had refused to give it to her, saying he would do it himself. She hadn’t pushed it. She had always thought the cupboard might contain something to do with his mother because he had nothing of hers around the house – no photos or mementos – and yet she knew how much Duncan’s mother had meant to him. He had given up his studies at Leeds University to look after her when she was ill with cancer, and had nursed her while simultaneously training to be a plumber, a job he thought he might be able to combine with being her carer. Sadly she had died a couple of years before Maggie had met him.
Maggie heard a noise and turned her head.
Josh was standing at the door in his pyjamas.
‘Are you okay, sweetheart?’ she asked. Grasping the duvet in her hand, she held out her arm so that her son could snuggle in under it against her.
‘Why are you sitting in the dark, Mum?’
‘Just thinking.’ She tried to smile at him.
‘About Dad?’
Maggie didn’t want to lie to her son. ‘I’m wondering when he’s going to be home, Josh. That’s all. But don’t worry. I’m sure he’ll be back by the time you wake up in the morning.’
‘Is it my fault?’ Josh’s voice was as quiet as a whisper, as if he was afraid to say the words. Maggie pulled him tightly against her.
‘Of course not, sweetheart. Why on earth should it be your fault?’
‘Because of the message.’
‘
What
message? You never mentioned a message before.’ Maggie could hear the desperation in her voice and tried hard to soften it. Josh looked up at her, his little face a picture of confusion.
‘I’m sorry if I did something wrong, Mummy.’
‘I’m sure you’ve done nothing wrong, Josh, but you need to tell me properly what you mean.’
‘Dad’s phone was in the sitting room. I heard it beep, so I knew it was a message. I took the phone to him in the kitchen.’
‘Joshy,’ Maggie began, trying to choose her words carefully, ‘I know we’ve said it’s rude to read other people’s messages, but did you by any chance catch a glimpse of what it said?’
Josh looked at the floor for a moment, and when he looked up his cheeks were pink.
‘I didn’t read the words, Mummy. Honestly.’
Maggie knew there was a ‘but’ in there, and that she was going to have to wait for it. She smiled her encouragement.
‘When Daddy opened it, I was standing right next to him. There was a picture. I only looked at it because I thought it was you.’
A picture? Of me?
Josh couldn’t mean that. He must have got it wrong.
‘It’s okay, sweetheart. I’m not cross with you. Tell me what you saw when you looked at the screen.’ She relaxed her hold slightly, certain that Josh would be able to feel the thumping of her heart, and turned to look at him.
‘A photo of a lady with red lipstick and long dark hair – spread out like yours sometimes is on the pillow.’
It sounded as if the woman, whoever she was, had to have been lying down.
Why would Duncan get a picture of a woman lying down – a woman that looks like me? Is he having an affair? Has he left me for this woman?
She felt a solid ball of despair settle deep inside her.
‘I thought you’d sent a selfie to dad,’ Josh said, ‘but I kind of knew it wasn’t you.’
‘What made you change your mind?’ she said, stroking his hair gently in an attempt to calm his anxiety.
‘They weren’t your eyes. The lady in the picture had eyes like that doll of Lily’s – the one Auntie Ceecee bought her.’
Maggie felt a chill. He didn’t need to say any more. Her aunt had bought a Victorian doll for Lily when she was three – a strange choice because Ceecee said the doll was too expensive to play with. So the doll, named Maud by Lily, had sat on a shelf in her bedroom, to be looked at but never touched. Then Lily had started to have nightmares.
‘What were you dreaming about, baby?’ Maggie had asked after she had brought a terrified Lily into bed with her and Duncan.
‘It’s Maud. She watches me.’
‘What do you mean, Lil?’ Duncan had asked. ‘She’s just a doll.’
‘Does that mean she’s dead, Daddy?’
‘No, sweetheart. Somebody made her, like we sometimes make things out of Play-Doh. She’s never been alive.’
‘Is that what people’s eyes look like if they’ve never been alive?’
The doll now lived in a cupboard, but Maggie knew exactly what Josh meant about the eyes.
6
12 years ago – May 7
th
Sonia Beecham almost didn’t recognise the eyes staring back at her in the mirror. They were still pale blue, of course, but the pupils were slightly dilated with excitement, and the eyelashes were tinted with grey mascara – an unusual indulgence, but she wanted to look her best because today was special. In fact Sonia thought it was her best day since starting at Manchester University six months previously. She had always found it difficult to make friends and the eagerness on her parents’ faces when she came home each night was painful to watch as they waited to hear whether she had met new people. She knew it was out of love for her, but they didn’t understand the pressure it put her under
.
She was shy. Painfully, embarrassingly shy. If anybody spoke to her, she blushed bright red. It was an instant reaction, and one that made her turn away. Never in her wildest dreams could she imagine starting a conversation with anybody. She would rather stick her head in a vat of boiling oil, if the truth were known
.
She had heard her parents talking once, a few years ago. They wanted to know what they had done wrong – why their daughter had grown up the way she had. So now she had that guilt to bear as well. If only she could make some friends so they would know they had done nothing – nothing, that is, except love her and shelter her from anything and everything that would be considered by most people to be a normal experience
.
Now, though, things were changing. Her mum had been so concerned that she’d persuaded Sonia’s father to stump up for some counselling. Sonia had been horrified. The idea of sitting in a chair telling a complete stranger how embarrassed she was to open her mouth in company made her legs go weak. She had resisted for months, but after Christmas not only had her mum arranged the counselling sessions, she had insisted on going with Sonia for the first few meetings to be sure that Sonia was over her initial embarrassment and was happy to carry on alone
.
Sonia had hated it to start with, but gradually her counsellor had given her some tools to help build her confidence. The best of these was the name of a website designed for people like her. She had
heard of chat rooms but never been in one. Within a month she had realised that she had plenty to say as long as she could keep it anonymous and nobody could see her face. The best of it was, people wanted to listen. She didn’t have her own computer to access the site, but there were plenty she could use at the university, and that was better because nobody would know what she was doing. If she had had a personal computer at home her mother would forever have been looking over her shoulder
.
What she hadn’t told a soul – because he had asked her not to – was that she had met somebody online who was as crippled with shyness as she was. He had told her he was surprised he could even type without stuttering, and that had made her laugh. That was his issue, the burden he had to bear. He couldn’t get a whole sentence out without this dreadful stammer halting him in his tracks. They had been talking online now for a couple of weeks, and he said that he thought he might possibly be able to speak to her. They had agreed that if she went red, or if he stuttered, it wouldn’t matter. They were both in the same boat. And tonight she was meeting him for the first time
.
She had lied to her parents. She had never done that before, but Sonia had known what her mum would say: ‘Bring him home, first, love. Let me and your dad meet him – do it properly.’ Her mother didn’t seem to have any concept of how things were done now. Not that Sonia wanted to behave like some of the girls on campus but having to be vetted before he could even go for a drink with her was a sure way to frighten a man off – especially one as shy as Sam
.
Sam was a good name. Solid-sounding, reassuring. He had said it wasn’t a good idea to meet anywhere too public. Having other people around was sure to make them clam up and not be natural with each other. So she was going to meet him in a little park just off the Bridgewater Canal towpath. He said it would be okay there, because there would be people on the other side of the canal at the cafés and bars, but nobody would be able to hear if they made complete fools of themselves
.
Sam had even told her which tram to get and where to get off. She had followed his instructions to the letter. The walk along the canal was fine to start with. It was quite pretty, and she thought it was wonderful the way places like this were being brought back to life. But as she walked further on it all changed. There was a lot of redevelopment of old mills, their blank windows facing onto the canal. There were no cafés and bars. And no people
.
Sonia hurried along the towpath, ducking to walk through a long, low tunnel. She was nearly at the meeting place. As she neared the end of the tunnel, a tall figure stepped out onto the path and for a moment Sonia felt a jolt of fear, but he gave her a little wave so she carried on walking. She knew who he was. He was taller than she expected, and as she got closer, she could see him smiling at her
.
‘Hi, Sonia,’ he said. ‘I’m Sam.’
He didn’t stutter once
.
7
Tom usually enjoyed the experience of going back to somewhere he was once familiar with. The streets, the houses, the places that had once been important to him evoked distant memories that rushed at him, jumbled and incomplete but soothing in their ordinariness.
Driving to Leo’s didn’t give him the pleasurable buzz of a flashback to another time, though. Perhaps it was too soon. All he could remember now was his final visit this time last year – when he had told Leo that they had no future. He hadn’t been sure he could go through with it, and had hoped that somehow he would see a gentler side of her.
‘You must do what you must do, Tom,’ was all she had said, even though he could see how hurt she was. He had started towards her, wanting to pull her to him, but she had held her arms out in front of her, palms facing him.
‘No, we don’t need to touch. It was always going to end this way. I told you at the start.’
He had been so exasperated with her that he had turned on his heel and left. It shouldn’t have had to end that way. All she’d had to do was trust him.
Now here he was, pulling into the all-too-familiar visitors’ parking space of her apartment building and looking around. Nothing had changed. Not that he could see much. The heavy clouds that had been threatening snow all day were obscuring both moon and stars, and the white lights that lit the pathways around the old warehouse in which Leo’s apartment was situated didn’t shed much light above knee height.