When I Was Invisible (6 page)

My gaze goes to the man who has smoked three cigarettes in quick succession during his time outside the car and has brought the sweet nicotine fog of them with him as he approaches us. He couldn't care less if I fall off the face of the world. I return my attention to DS Brennan. He gives nothing away, just stares at me with hard eyes and a fixed, stern mouth. ‘Yes, officer,' I mumble, then fumble through my pockets for my key to the outer front door. My fingers locate the piece of brass-coloured metal – bare and alone with no keyring fob to give away anything about me – in my right pocket.

I walk away from the two men and know this: whatever that police officer's motivation, he has catapulted me towards this road. The road where the next major stop is the one where I end my life as Grace Carter and become Veronika ‘Nika' Harper all over again.

It is loudest at night, when the Great Silence begins.

We are as silent as we can be during the day, and at Divine Office, the official prayers of the Church, I push out as much of the noise inside, coating every word I utter in the sound of chaos that lives inside me. I do this to prepare for the Great Silence, the hours between last prayers and morning prayers where there is no speaking, no noise, absolutely no unnecessary sound.

When the Great Silence begins, the noise in my head becomes unbearable. The voices, the memories, the music, the words, the flashes of my life ill-lived are there, screaming to be heard, shouting to be let out. I often have to push my hands over my ears, trying to drown out the racket inside.

It wasn't always like this. When I came here, the first time and now this second time, it wasn't like this. I used to be able to hook into the silence, I had peace in my head, tranquillity in my heart, and I was free for a time. My community accepted me for who I was
at that moment in time
, they didn't care about the me who walked in through those gates, covered in shame and guilt. They only saw the person they renamed Grace because what I had been, what I had done was a lifetime ago, another person ago. I became this person and I could revel in the near silence that brought to my mind.

Now, the Great Silence is when I am most scared. When there is silence all around me, the noise inside starts as a hush, slowly building, swelling and growing until I cannot hear, I cannot think, I cannot even entertain sleep.

Tomorrow night it will be different. I will be in a different bed, in a different city. I will be in a different life. And I will no longer have the Great Silence to worry about.

The fear flutters up inside again.
Is this what you want?
I ask myself again.
Truly, is this what you want to do?

It isn't what I want to do, it is what I have to do. I can't become a part of the Great Silence any longer – the quietness here scares rather than energises me. I cannot live with this inner life of noise and chaos any longer, not when I know what I can do about it.

The other ones who have left in recent years, who have stepped outside the convent walls to never return, wanted a husband, children, a life lived within their control. There's none of that for me. I have to leave because I have finally admitted that I
am
like Judas. I have done a terrible thing and I have to put it right.

Tomorrow, I am going to stop being Sister Grace and I will become Veronica ‘Roni' Harper again.

Father, forgive me
, is the only prayer I can manage tonight. The noise in my head is too much to think anything else except:
Father, forgive me.

The house seems so small. It isn't, and I never felt like it was when I lived here, either. When I was little, this house seemed large,
was
large,
is
large. But I suppose it's like trying to put on clothes from your childhood – they don't fit any more because you have outgrown them. Not that I'm saying I've outgrown my parents' house. I would never be so rude.

‘Your bedroom isn't quite how you left it,' Mum says. She's still all smiles and nerves, never quite looking at me enough to meet my eye. This is how she used to act when the priest came over for tea, how she would act, I suspect, if the Queen were to drop over for a cuppa. I want to reach out, rest my hands on her shoulders and tell her to relax a bit, to remember it's just me.

Every step through the house, on the stairs, peels back a layer of time, changes the wallpaper, the carpet, the furnishings, the very atmosphere, I suspect, and I can almost see how it used to be, I can feel the house become what it once was when I lived here, when it was what I called my home.

‘It's not really my room any more, though,' I say gently.

‘Well, no, but I was simply warning you in case you were expecting everything to be the same as it was. It isn't.'

‘Thank you for letting me know,' I eventually say. It's good of them to take me in, especially at such short notice, so I don't want to upset her equilibrium within minutes of walking through the door.

The stairs still creak just before and just after the turn, the carpet – a deep, soft royal blue – is different, not surprising since it was virtually threadbare the last time I came down these stairs to be driven to the station. I look at all the doors at the top of the first-floor landing, all painted a glossy white, all with brass, push-down handles, all closed, as if determined to keep their secrets hidden from the merest glimpse from the most casual of prying eyes.

My bedroom was at the end of the hall, next to the bathroom. I am eleven again, suddenly. My body is small, flat-chested, my stomach a smooth round closing bracket in shape. My legs are thick and strong, my toes are gnarled and ugly out of ballet shoes, my arms want to constantly reach up – into position, into a gesture of wanting someone to lift me out of the life I am living.

‘We redecorated,' my mother says.

I used to have so much crammed in here: furniture and clothes, shoes and books, make-up and jewellery, notepads and pens. Stuff; I used to have so much stuff. I place my suitcase – the same red one I left with – on the floor beside me and stand in the middle of the room that was once mine and turn slowly. The bed was there, by the wall, my pillow against the wooden footboard so I could stare out of the window at the houses over the back, instead of watching and waiting to see who would come into my room with or without knocking first. My dark-wood wardrobe with its brass flower-shaped handles was there, by the door. My rickety white desk with its uncomfortable white chair was there, by the window, beneath the huge poster of Mikhail Baryshnikov and Gregory Hines in
White Nights
. At the window, I can see the full-length blue velvet curtain drawn to one side, while the white net curtain, strung halfway up the window, hooked on each side of the frame by a white-covered wire on nails, moves gently from the breeze of the not-quite-airtight window. The top part of the window is bare so full daylight enters the room. I turn back to my bed from all those years ago: my pink duvet cover with darker pink spots, and don't forget the matching pillows. Above the bed, my nearly life-size poster of Sylvie Guillem, pressed into place first with Blu-tack, then taped over each corner and the exact middle of each side to make sure it stayed in place, where I could see it from every part of the room. A smile moves up my face as I look at that poster, gone, of course, but forever there to me. I was going to
be
Sylvie. She had started at the Paris Opera Ballet at age eleven – so three years after I had started dancing – but she was everything I wanted to be. Her poise, her body, the almost perfect straight line she managed to achieve
en pointe
.

I was going to dance in
Swan Lake
, and I was going to be famous, so famous Sylvie would come and see me dance. She would come to me after the performance, would open her arms to me, tears in her eyes—

‘Do you like it?' Mum asks and inadvertently shakes me out of my eleven-year-old self.
Silly girl that I am, silly girl that I was
.
Fantasy and silliness
, that was what I was all about.

‘It's lovely,' I tell my mother about her rose-pink walls with their tiny rose band around the room's middle and cream Roman-blind-covered window, pale beige carpet, circular pink rug, and chest of drawers in the corner where the wardrobe used to be. There is a metal-framed fold-out bed (possibly borrowed, possibly reclaimed from the attic), and the duvet is too big for its tiny metal frame. ‘You've obviously spent so much care and attention making it a calming space to be.'

‘We weren't sure how long you would be staying with us,' she says. ‘If it's more than a couple of weeks we'll maybe think about getting you a proper bed instead of this one. Although it's perfectly good to sleep on. Not one person who has slept on it has complained.'

‘I'm sure it's wonderful,' I say with a smile.

My mother returns what is probably a mirror image of my smile without actually looking at me. She's very good at that still: directing attention at me without making any kind of eye contact. ‘I'll give you a few minutes to settle in. Dinner is at six-thirty. If that is all right for you?'

‘It's perfect.'

A cross between a smile and a frown flitters repeatedly across Mum's face as she hovers uncertainly by the door for a few seconds, her right hand moving between the handle and her left hand, not sure what to do with itself – whether to open the door, or clasp itself with its mirror twin.

Ask her, just ask her
, she's probably telling herself.
Just ask her how long she's staying. It's
your
house
, your
home
, your
sewing room that she's moved into, ask her how long you'll have to be on your best behaviour and mind everything you say. Ask her, just ask her.

She opens her mouth and I prepare myself. ‘It's nice to see you,' she says.

‘You too,' I say, and I mean it. It is nice to see her after all these years. The last time I physically saw her was when I had special dispensation to attend my eldest brother's wedding about five years ago.

She nods, fixes the smile on her face and leaves, shutting the door firmly behind her.

The tension escapes my body in one heavy sigh as she exits and I fall heavily on the bed. It creaks menacingly under my weight, promising me a night of torture I can't even begin to imagine, but I'm glad to have something semi solid under me.

I should have known she wouldn't ask. That could result in a fuss being made, and that would never do. If she had broken with tradition and asked,
‘Veronica, why did you leave your convent and decide to stop being a nun?'

‘
At this moment in time, I don't know, Mum, I honestly do not know
,' I would have had to say. I wouldn't have added:
‘I think it had something to do with finding and making things right with the other Veronika Harper.'

The whole way down here, in between attempts to sleep on the overnight coach with my rucksack as a pillow and my coat as a cover, I have been turning over what the policeman said to me while he tried to get me to leave. Not the stuff about me testifying being dangerous to everyone I knew, the other things he said: the other stuff about the life I was meant to live. That is what has been swirling through my mind since I hastily packed my rucksack, small cloth bag I'd got free at a book festival, and my battered black guitar case. Have I lived the life I was meant to? The path to how I got to this part of my life is clear, I can look back and see every turn, every step, every decision that has led to here. What has been strung across my mind like intricate worry beads are these thoughts about whether this was the path I was meant to have taken. Was there another option for me? And am I too far along this path to make a change, and relive my life?

I know there are photographers somewhere in this restaurant
, I think for the umpteenth time.

I couldn't completely relax because of it: out there somewhere, there was someone behind a lens waiting for me to mess up so they could press the button, capture my slip with one treacherous click. They'd stopped following us as much now that I refused to go out to clubs and very often I didn't leave the flat unless necessary. With nothing new to take photos of, I was literally yesterday's news story. Other people were taking over the front covers, other people were having more public rows, break-ups and reunions.

There were still photographers out there, though. I could feel them.

Todd still went out, but never touched anything more illicit than booze in public. At home, every couple of weeks, when he wanted to properly chill out, he would invite only a trusted handful of his friends over. (They were trusted because they had as much to lose as he did if anyone found out what they got up to.) They would spend their time alternating between downing shots of expensive whisky, drawing deep on real Cuban cigars, sniffing up white line after white line after white line. Sometimes they'd throw speed into the mix, and would become wild-eyed, talkative and dangerous – dangling off the edge of the balcony, trying knife tricks, arm-wrestling and often full wrestling if they lost. Then they'd collapse on to the sofas in the small hours to skin up and then smoke copious amounts of skunk to calm themselves down. By the end of the night the flat would be heavy with the smell of skunk, booze and sweat; when I left the bedroom in the morning, everything would smell stale and rancid, all of them would be sullen, pale and rude.

I hated those parties. Apart from the drugs and the out-of-control drinking, the disrespect shown by his friends to me … it constantly made my stomach churn. Todd would think it funny when one of his friends would run his hand over my bum, or another would tweak my breast, or would ‘beg' me to get down on my knees to ‘
sort me out, real quick
'. He thought it was hilarious – and a compliment – that his friends treated me like a sex object because it meant they thought I was hot.