When I Was Invisible (11 page)

‘There is nothing rational about what you've done. No matter how long we talk about it, it will never be rational.'

‘Come on, Nikky, I just need to be able to trust you. Surely you understand that. It'll be better when we're married. I'll feel more secure. Once you're properly mine, we'll be all right.'

Todd thought he owned me. Or rather, he thought that he partially owned me – when I married him the process of ownership would be complete and I would be stamped across the forehead as ‘sold'.

‘I am not marrying you,' I replied. ‘There is no way on Earth I'm marrying you.'

His anger, which was always there, simmering and brooding just below his calm, charming surface, exploded and he swiped away the plates, the glasses and cutlery in front of him. ‘YOU FUCKING WILL!' he roared at me. ‘
It's all planned, the guests have all replied, there are important people coming to it! You will do as you're told!
'

This moment, his final explosion, had an odd effect on me. Instead of being scared, or desperately trying to work out how to appease him while scrabbling around for excuses to make myself believe he didn't mean it, I stayed calm. I
was
calm. I stared at the fiery form of my fiancé and felt nothing but a certainty about what to do next. I slowly twisted the diamond ring off my finger, placed it on the table between us.

All his rage and fury fled, and he stared at the ring in shock. He didn't expect this, truly he didn't. ‘Nikky—' he began.

‘My name's Nika or Veronika. I am not called Nikky.'

‘Nikky suits you better.'

‘But it's not my name. Why can't you understand that? Why can't you use it? I told Frank my name
once
and he used it. I'm sure if I told anyone my name they'd use it. Why can't you?'

‘Is that what this is all about? Frank? If he means so much to you, I'll get him his job back. But he'd better be grateful.'

‘Grateful for getting back a job he never should have lost in the first place?' I ran my hands over my head, smoothing over the curls that had been put in three days ago. ‘Can you not see how crazy that sounds?'

‘Look, look, we can get over this. We can go back to working on our relationship, trying a bit harder.'

‘No,' I said. ‘I don't want to. Not any more. It's over, Todd.'

He smiled, then chuckled to himself, then laughed out loud. Disbelief, of course. ‘It's not over. It can't be. I won't let it be. We can't break up.'

I said nothing. I was sure that it only took one person to break up a relationship, but Todd wouldn't accept that. He would argue and argue with anything I said, would try to engage me in justifying why I wanted to split up. And I knew, from all the times he'd done it to me about other things – mainly about sex – nothing I said would convince him I had the right to make my own decisions, including the right to end this.

‘You, you're nothing without me. You do realise that, don't you?' he said. ‘The clothes you wear, the shoes on your feet, the jewellery, make-up, hairstyle, all of it is from me. You were nothing and I made you who you are. And more than that, your phone, your computer, the money in your bank account, the credit cards are all mine.
All mine.
Without me, you're nothing.'

‘I know,' I replied. ‘You're right.'
‘And that's why I have to leave. Maybe without you I'll be me again, not this Nikky person you created,'
I added silently.

‘You'll be back,' he said as I walked towards the door. ‘When you realise what life is like out there in the real world, you'll be back.'

‘
I won't, you know
,' I said in my head. And I wouldn't. I knew no matter what happened, I would not be back.

‘I was only joking earlier,' Uncle Warren informs me. He made a big deal of coming into my parents' kitchen from the dining room and helping me to wash up. He stands across the kitchen, arms across his chest, leaning against the fridge. This was his favourite room in the house at one point. He was often dragging me in here to show me something or other.

‘I know,' I say. The pan my mother has used to cook the rice is proving tricky to clean. I should probably soak it, but I remember how much Mum hated seeing things soaking in the sink:
‘It makes the place look like a junk yard,'
she would say. I have to clean it now.

‘If you knew, why didn't you laugh then?' Uncle Warren asks.

‘Did you need me to laugh?' I ask.

‘Come on now, Roni, it was only a little banter.'

‘I see.'

‘You're really getting on my nerves with that holier-than-thou attitude,' he snarls. His voice is low so my parents can't hear, even though they are in the living room at the front of the house, and he is suddenly, I'm aware, a lot closer to me.

‘I'm sorry to hear that.'

‘If someone makes a joke, you laugh. That's the polite thing to do. I'd have thought you of all people would know that.'

‘Me?'

‘Yeah, a nun.'

The rubber gloves go right up to my elbows and I'm sure they're hindering rather than helping the process of removing seemingly welded-on pieces of rice from the bottom of Mum's pan. The rice is rock hard and web-like. I drop the sponge and instead pick at it, although the rubber gloves make that much more difficult. ‘I'm not a nun any more.' I take off one glove and go at the piece of rice again. I concentrate on it until I hear him leave the room.

Once I am alone, I stop the frantic cleaning. ‘I'm not an adoring seven-year-old any more, either,' I add under my breath.

‘Sorry for all the cloak-and-dagger stuff,' Sasha says. She's aged in the eighteen years or so since I last saw her. Her face has filled out a little, but her eyes – large, brown and beautiful – are underscored by lines of sleep deprivation. Her forehead is pretty unlined, and her skin is dewy soft and blemish-free thanks to the make-up she has expertly applied, but she looks like she has lived every single second of her years the hard way. She looks younger than me, though, I'd imagine, because she hasn't lived as eventful a life as I have.

‘Mummy and Daddy still think I'm the demon child, then?' My laugh gags me as it should. If they won't have me to stay for even the briefest of whiles, no one will, because it's impossible to do anything without ID today. Much as I didn't have much ID as Grace, I have even less as Veronika.

‘No, no, not at all. It's your ex,' Sasha explains.

‘My ex?'
Vinnie?
I haven't had anything to do with Vinnie in over five years and even then he only knew me as Grace or ‘Ace'. Then I remember: the other ex, the one who started all this. ‘You mean Todd?'

‘Yeah, him. Mr Big I Am.'

‘What's he got to do with anything?'

‘He comes over here sometimes. In fact, he's due a visit any day now.'

‘What?' I ask in despair. ‘We finished over ten years ago. And he's still hanging around?'
I knew he wouldn't let me go. I knew it.

‘No, no, not exactly like that. It's complicated. A couple of months after they said in the papers that you'd split up and you'd just disappeared, he showed up at Mum and Dad's house. Caused a huge stir on our street in his posh car and everything. People were coming out to get his autograph and everything. Mummy called me and I went over with Ralph and he was there, with your stuff, saying you'd run away and he was so upset because he didn't understand why. How he'd always wanted to meet them but you'd done your best to keep them apart. All he'd ever tried to do was help you, especially with your drug problem. Mummy and Daddy were lapping it up like it was chocolate milk. Me and Ralph were like, “Yeah, right, Nika, drugs, don't think so.” But you know what they're like, they listen to the person who sounds the most plausible, especially after all that stuff in the papers. Anyway, he said to them to call him if they saw you so he could come and talk some sense into you.'

‘Yeah, but that was ten years ago.'

‘Yeah, it began ten years ago, but for a while he started coming over once a month for Sunday lunch and Ralph told me a couple of months later that he was sure he saw him hanging about across the road from Mum and Dad's, just watching the house. Now we've moved back in, every now and then I'm sure I'll catch a glimpse of him. Different car, but I'm sure it's him. Then sure enough, a few days later, he'll drop by with an expensive bottle of something for Daddy, a bunch of flowers for Mummy, some line about just seeing how they're doing and feeling like they should have been his parents instead of his own.' My sister shakes her head, her onyx-black hair glistening in the light. ‘Seriously, at one point I thought he'd murdered you and was trying to find out how much we knew cos he was trying so hard to be Mr Nice
all the time.
And when I never heard from you about where to send your post on to … I kept thinking … The worst, basically.'

I run my hands over my head, agitated, annoyed, highly irritated that after all this time he still hasn't let me go. ‘I really thought he'd have given up by now. Especially since he's been married twice and is engaged again.' Is it because I was the one who ran away? With all the others he has had very public break-ups, copious amounts of mud-slinging on each side, some of it sticking in unpleasant clumps. He never had the chance to do that with me, so maybe that's why he can't let it go. Todd hated to lose more than anything: if you gave him the choice between winning something or being eternally happy, he wouldn't have to think carefully about it, he would choose winning any day of the week.

‘You know all that about him?' she asks.

‘Yes, I always try to make sure I know where he is.'

‘Where've
you
been all this time?' she asks.

I stare at my older sister and suddenly I feel antiquated compared to her. I feel like an ancient being who has much knowledge and wisdom to impart to an unwilling pupil. She doesn't really want to know – she wants to hear a neat, nice story about what I've been doing and where I have been living. ‘Birmingham, mainly,' I say. ‘How come you moved in with Mummy and Daddy, then? Is one of them sick?'

‘No, no … Ralph lost his job a while back. We tried to struggle on, but in the end we had to give up the house or declare bankruptcy. So about a year ago, all of us moved in with Mummy and Daddy. It's really generous that they've let us stay this long, really. We've nearly got enough saved so we can move out again soon.'

‘That sounds like it was really hard. I'm really sorry to hear that.'

‘It was hard; Ralph was so depressed, I almost lost him … But, you know, onwards and upwards.'

‘What do you mean, all of us moved back in? Has Marlon come back, too?'

‘No, I mean … Oh my God!' Sasha sits upright in her seat, claps her hands. ‘You don't know, do you? I've got a daughter! You're an aunt!'

The world seems to slow right down, the people, the air,
everything
is barely moving. I'm an aunt. I've missed out on being an aunt. ‘That's amazing!' I shriek and throw my arms around her like she's only just told me she is pregnant. I suppose she has only just told me – that she's pregnant, had a baby and has had a certain number of years with her. These are several bits of fantastic news all bundled together and delivered in one go – that deserves a shriek. ‘How old is she?'

‘She's six and she's called Tracy-Dee. And she's the light of my life.'

‘Where is she?' I ask.

‘Mummy's taken her out to some family day thing up at the library. You know what Mummy's like – loves a baby and a toddler, can't really deal with anyone above eight though. She dotes on Tracy-Dee.'

From the pocket of her jacket, Sasha produces her mobile phone and, after pressing a few buttons, hands it to me with a photo of the most gorgeous little girl I have ever seen filling the screen: her hair is in three neat sections, each plaited and tied at its base with yellow ribbons that have huge, bunny-ear loops. She smiles at her camera, with a glint of mischief in her eyes. ‘She's beautiful, adorable,' I say. ‘I love her and I haven't even met her.'

‘You don't have any …?' Sasha asks gently.

‘Me? God, no, no.'

After a beat of silence, after watching me look at her daughter, she speaks again. Quietly determined this time, she asks again: ‘Where've you been, Nika?'

‘I told you, Birmingham.' I turn my attention to the box she brought with her. It is not big, but it is awkward to carry. The brown lid is folded together to form a cross that provides a flimsy security. ‘What's in the box?'

‘Your letters and some of the things your ex brought back. Your passport's in there, your birth certificate, National Insurance card, I think. Some of your old payslips. I hope you don't mind but even before we moved in I've been destroying all the really old bank statements and stuff because they were really piling up and Mummy and Daddy wouldn't do anything with them. You can always get new statements from the bank. And I think you got a new bank card recently, which should be in there, and the pin number, I think.'

A bank card, a pin number. That would mean I could get money from my old bank account. Yes, Todd was probably keeping an eye on it, but if I took all the money out in London, I could close it down, open up a new account wherever I moved to. Yes, I had planned to stay here, but if Todd is still around, it's probably best if I stay well away. But this is a lifeline: I have ID. Yes, it's in the form of an out-of-date passport, but I have cards and people rarely question cards. I have money and I have no need to beg my parents for forgiveness nor consider the ‘sleeping rough' option.