Close to Me Read online

  ‘He hasn’t died, Jo,’ Rob says, finding me there. He’s carrying a suitcase, now lightened of its load, just a few hours ago filled with the shirts and jeans I’d ironed.

  ‘That was Sash’s line,’ I say, sitting up. ‘You two are so alike.’

  Rob lays a hand on my shoulder, the fingers reaching my collar bone, gently pressing in. I stand and hold him for a moment, his long arms wrapping around me, his head resting on top of mine. ‘Come on,’ he says. ‘We’re both tired.’

  We make love, the day edging away as we comfort one another. Afterwards, Rob rolls away from me and I know he will fall asleep immediately, so I nudge his back. He turns over to face me, but I can see little of his expression; the bedroom is almost entirely devoid of light, just the green glow of the numbers on his alarm clock telling me it’s almost midnight. ‘What is it?’ he asks.

  ‘Do you remember how we used to play that silly word game, before the kids were born?’

  ‘What game?’ he replies, his words slurred with impending sleep.

  ‘If you had a superpower, what would it be?’ I say through the darkness. ‘Or if you were going to kill me, how would you do it?’

  ‘And you’ve thought about this already?’ he asks, the moonlight seeping around the corners of the blind to pick out his creased eyes, a faint smile.

  I tell him my superpower would be time travel and he says he has no idea what his would be, although he’s clearly enjoying the game.

  ‘And you’ve decided how you’re going to kill me?’ he asks, his interest piqued.

  ‘I’d stab you.’ I laugh, reaching out to him, laying my hand on his bare chest. ‘With a kitchen knife.’

  ‘Yes, that’s good.’ He laughs too and squeezes my stabbing hand. ‘Hopefully death would be instantaneous, and we already have a knife block, so no preparation required.’

  ‘How would you kill me?’ I ask, leaning up on one elbow to wait for his response.

  He hesitates, then says, ‘I guess I’d strangle you with my bare hands.’ Then he grabs me and pulls me to him, both of us laughing.

  3

  The Day After The Fall

  The first thing I notice when we arrive home from the hospital is the head-shaped hole at the bottom of the stairs. The plasterboard to the right of the tread is caved in, a hollow bowl-shaped impression, presumably made by my skull, which took the brunt of the impact. Rob sees it too and, although I try not to, I flinch when he reaches out to comfort me, my hands instinctively covering my bruised scalp. I look up and imagine the drop, maybe eight or nine stairs missed as I fell. If I fell. I pause, the thought shocking. I glance across at Rob, watching as he pokes the toe of his brogue into the crumbling plaster.

  ‘The whole staircase will have to be repainted. And some plastering I guess.’

  I tell him not yet; I don’t want the mess or the noise.

  ‘No, of course not yet,’ he says, taking his jacket, slung across my shoulders as he’d helped me from the car. He drapes the soft tweed over the bannister and tells me to go up, he’ll stick the kettle on.

  I tackle the stairs slowly, framed portraits accompanying my climb, a mixture of school photos of the kids and snaps of family holidays. They’re all familiar, but I look at them with fresh eyes, searching each one as I pass, perhaps afraid there will be one I don’t know. I’m relieved to find there isn’t. Sash was always so blonde, with a mane of almost-white hair against olive skin. She tans at the merest hint of sun, her skin colouring just like Rob’s. But her hair was always mine, the sleekness of it. Fin is the image of the grandfather he was named after and can now barely remember, the shock of dark hair and pale gentle features so reminiscent of my father’s. I stop to touch the children’s faces through the glass, but the sharp pain returns, my injured hand reaching up to cradle the side of my head. I sink down to the stair beneath me, my head now in both my hands, my eyes closed. With the pain comes a memory, indistinct and hazy, but persistent, and despite the waves of agony I concentrate, in the hope it will form more clearly. There are flashes of two people, Rob and me. There’s a struggle, at the very top of the stairs. We were definitely arguing, but more than that, Rob was holding on to me. I open my eyes to see Rob, his hand outstretched to me as he runs up the stairs. ‘Jo? What’s wrong?’

  The pain intensifies, stabbing behind my eyes so I’m forced to close them again. The image is still there; Rob holding on to me.

  I open my eyes to ask him what happened between us before I fell, but something holds me back. He’s two stairs below me, looking up, and in his eyes I see a note of caution.

  ‘Take my hand,’ he says, reaching out.

  ‘I can manage,’ I tell him, standing and walking up the stairs, then past three empty bedrooms until I reach our room.

  The bed’s unmade, a wet towel on the floor of the ensuite. Rob apologises for the mess, rushing past me to pick up the towel. He then pulls back the duvet and straightens the sheet, gesturing me towards the bed, a hand cupping the back of my head to guide me down towards the pillows.

  ‘How’s that feel?’ he asks, casting me entirely in shadow so I can’t see anything but him.

  ‘Better,’ I reply, lifting myself up so I’m seated, the pillows at my back.

  ‘Good.’ He walks out and returns with my overnight bag, placing it beside me. ‘I’ll be back with a cup of tea.’

  I hear him run downstairs and go into the kitchen as I unzip my bag in search of the painkillers, calling down to Rob that I’ll need a glass of water too, although I can’t find the prescription as I rummage amongst yesterday’s clothes. I check the side pocket and see my passport is in there; I toss it on to the bed and then watch it slide to the floor as I get up. Staggering to the bathroom I splash my face with water, studying the bruises on my face then peeling away my clothes to inspect my body. I hold up my right hand first and look at the compression bandage, noticing how swollen my wrist is and shocked again by the dark purple stain creeping out from under the bandage, but also by something else I hadn’t spotted at the hospital. On my inner wrist, nestling amongst the bruises, there is a curious set of tiny cuts, semicircles, which look to be healing over now, as though they are an older injury. I rub at them, then look up at my face again in the mirror, running my fingers over the swollen and puffy skin, two black eyes to complete the picture, the right one much worse than the left. Finally, I look down at my naked body; the lost year’s wear and tear is not particularly evident, although I think I am thinner and I also have a rainbow of bruises on my knees and thighs.

  Rob knocks on the door. ‘You okay in there? I’ve got your tea.’

  I take my robe from the hook and open the door. ‘Inspecting the damage,’ I tell him, and he looks away as I cover myself.

  ‘Must have been quite a fall,’ I say, climbing into the bed again.

  Rob leans over me to tuck me under the duvet, my tea placed at my side on the bedside cabinet, the painkillers next to them, which he tells me we left in the car.

  ‘You forgot my water. And my handbag,’ I tell him, trying to find a comfortable position for my right arm.

  Rob bends down to pick up my passport from the floor. ‘Why’s this out?’ he asks, holding it up.

  I shrug, tell him it was in the overnight bag which he’s now unpacking for me. He looks unsure, as if he’s working something out, then he says, ‘Must be from when we went away last October.’ He looks over and asks if I remember much about the trip. I shake my head, immediately wishing I hadn’t and wondering how many more times he’s going to ask me if I remember things and I’ll have to say, No, I don’t. ‘Anything else you need?’ he asks.

  I tell him just my handbag, thinking my phone will be in there. He runs downstairs and I hear him taking the stairs back up, two at a time. He holds out a handbag to me I don’t recognise, a beautiful soft leather, my favourite designer label, telling me it was my birthday present. I take it with my left hand, searching around inside for the reassuring solidity of my phone. Fru
strated, I tip the contents out on to the bed, but it’s clear it isn’t there. Rob watches me, asking what I’m looking for, then commenting that I don’t need to text the kids, he’s spoken to them; they’re coming over later. ‘Fin’s on his way home from uni?’ I ask.

  ‘I told you, he’ll be here later,’ Rob says, turning away. ‘So try to relax now. You don’t need to—’

  ‘That’s not the point!’ I shout, holding the side of my head, as if that will steady the rocking inside.

  Rob looks startled at my outburst, as am I, but he says nothing.

  ‘I need my phone, Rob. I need it.’ I’m crying, although I’m angry with him, not upset.

  He sits on the bed and tells me to calm down, returning the tipped-out contents to the opened bag. I stare at him, daring him to ignore me when I’m so weak, so battered. ‘Where’s my phone?’ I ask again. ‘I need it.’

  He sighs, ‘I told you, Jo.’

  ‘Told me what?’

  ‘Jesus! That your phone broke when you fell. You dropped it and it smashed on the hall tiles. I’ll order you a new one today.’

  I don’t recall that conversation, but everything’s so confused and my head hurts so much. I demand to know where my phone is, my belligerence surprising us both it would seem, but I need my phone, it’s important to me, not just to text the kids, but to reconnect to my old self, the one before the fall.

  ‘If I order it now, it should be here tomorrow, Monday at the latest,’ he says, creasing his forehead as he folds my clean nightclothes into my bedside drawer. ‘I’m guessing you want the same one as before.’

  ‘No, not the new one!’ I shout, the pain exploding inside my head with each syllable. ‘My broken phone, where is that?’

  Rob takes a deep breath, as though I’m the one being unreasonable, and tells me it’s in the dustbin, he threw it away this morning, then he corrects himself and says actually, it’s gone, the bins were emptied while we were at the hospital. He sits on the bed again and tries to manoeuvre me back on to the pillows, but I resist, arguing that if he’d removed the SIM card we might have an old handset it could go in. But of course he didn’t, commenting that ‘strangely enough’ he was thinking about me at the time, not a broken phone.

  ‘But you found time to throw it away and to take the dustbin out?’ I ask him, not quite ready to give up the fight.

  ‘I was tidying up. What is wrong with you, Jo? This isn’t like you at all. Do you need the doctor; shall I call Mr Agrawal?’

  ‘I need my phone,’ I say, sinking back into the pillows. ‘Why won’t you let me have it?’

  Rob sighs and walks out. I hear him downstairs and then the sound of a laptop starting up, followed by the soft repetitive tones of emails downloading and his fingers tapping the keys. The familiarity is soporific, as if life were normal: Rob seated at the kitchen island catching up on work as I potter around the house, Fin on his computer or playing his guitar. He will have been at university for a whole year now, his life there established. But it’s not just Fin’s absence that’s bothering me, I want my phone, and not having it makes it seem all the more important. I live by my phone, my umbilical cord to the kids, the outside world, a life beyond the stone walls of our converted barn; the elements battering us at the top of the hill, miles from our nearest neighbour.

  I try to calm myself with the thought that I’ll sit at my laptop later, check on my emails. Maybe that will provide me with some connection to the missing months, bring back some memories. I close my eyes and succumb to the exhaustion, but with sleep comes a different connection to the past, loose and undefined, but still insistent and demanding. The images tumble back and forth, twisting and changing, some clear, some not. My body writhes, the duvet kicked off, my skin prickling with heat, then damp with sweat.

  His face is turned from me; in shadow. I reach out to touch him, recall him to me, he feels so far away. I’m desperate to find him, but then Rob’s face appears and I’m screaming at him to let me go.

  It’s dark when I wake, the duvet tucked around me again, presumably by Rob. The blind is still open, but there’s only blackness beyond. It reminds me of the first night we were here, how Fin had needed a night light and Sash had pretended she’d fallen asleep whilst reading so she could leave on her bedside lamp. We’d stood outside, Rob and I, the kids finally asleep, a glass of wine in hand, looking up. ‘It’s perfect,’ Rob had said, admiring our new home, the dark curve of the sky above us and only the brightness of the stars to punctuate the inky canvas. ‘No light pollution,’ he’d said. ‘And no one but us up here.’ I’d taken more convincing, as had the kids. Fin was eventually bribed with the promise of a telescope, but Sash never really settled.

  I walk to the bedroom window and look out at the black hills in the distance and then down to the gravel drive and the lane beyond. Someone is driving up the hill, the hedges illuminated by a car’s headlights. The familiar bubble-shaped car takes the sharp right turn into our drive and parks next to my Mini. The passenger door opens and Fin emerges, accompanied by a burst of loud music, then Sash gets out and slams the driver-side door. They both look up at the barn, but with no lights on in the bedroom they mustn’t see me as they don’t return my wave, their bodies bent against the wind and rain as they walk towards the front door.

  I pull on my cardigan over my robe, an extra layer over the flimsy silk, shivering now I’m out of bed. Then I carefully take the stairs one at a time, my left palm to the bannister for support. I follow their voices into the kitchen, a low urgent thread of conversation, Fin, then Rob, now Sash, my name mentioned, then a shush from Rob as I join them.

  ‘Talking about me?’ I ask.

  ‘Of course,’ Rob answers. ‘How are you feeling?’

  ‘I still have a headache, but maybe a bit better.’

  ‘You gave us such a fright, Mum,’ Sash says, moving towards me, her arms outstretched, but the shock of her appearance is too much, as if it were a stranger reaching out to me, not my own child. Her hallmark long hair is all but gone, shorn into a severe cut that ends at her chin, and her make-up is harsh, smoky eyes and stained lips, her clothes shapeless and unfeminine. She asks if I’m okay, how am I feeling? I say nothing and return her embrace as best I can, but I notice that she is also restrained.

  ‘I couldn’t believe it when Dad rang and said you’d fallen,’ she says, stepping back to take in my injuries. ‘You look like Dad beat you up!’

  ‘And you look so different,’ I say to her. ‘It takes a bit of getting used to.’

  ‘I guess you’ll need time to adjust to a lot of things,’ she says, looking at her father.

  ‘Have you told them about the memory loss?’ I ask Rob, and he nods.

  I’d been trying to be brave for the children, but my composure leaves me now, Sash looking around for a tissue, Fin standing awkwardly by the kitchen door as though he’d rather not be here. Rob is protective, his arm around my shoulders. I fight the urge to shake him off, not wanting to cause a scene in front of the kids, and rationalising that my defensiveness is my body’s way of healing, an armour to cushion me from further harm, but it doesn’t feel like that. It’s almost as if—

  ‘Jo!’ I jump at Rob’s imperative tone. ‘I said let’s get you into the sitting room.’

  He guides me across the hallway and down on to the sofa. Sash sits next to me, her hand reaching for mine. Her fingers are covered in chunky rings embellished with skulls and serpents, the wide bands cutting into the fleshy pads between each knuckle so I’m afraid to squeeze them too hard; they don’t even look like Sash’s hands. I look up at her face and search for familiarity behind the thickly kohled eyes. ‘You look well,’ I say. ‘When did you have your hair cut?’

  ‘Months ago.’ Her hand moves from mine to her bare neck, where she pats the blunt edges of the longest layers and tilts her head to bend the thick cleat of hair in her palm. ‘I’m not sure you liked it at the time. It’s so strange you don’t remember. You sure there’s nothing coming
back to you since Fin went to uni?’ She glances across to Rob and Fin. ‘Not my birthday, or your holiday? Christmas?’ She stops herself, her eyes darting towards Rob again.

  ‘Even stranger for me,’ I tell her. ‘Like waking up after a year’s worth of sleep.’ I look across at Fin and Rob, seated on the other sofa, their long legs stretched out in front of them to reach the rug, neither of them looking at the other. ‘Did we have a nice Christmas?’ I ask Fin.

  He smiles at me. ‘You had three trees.’

  ‘Oh my, sounds like me.’ I smile at him. ‘I bet I loved having you home, but you needn’t have rushed back to see me now. I’m fine.’

  Fin smiles back, his appearance relatively unchanged, although he’s lost weight and he wears the last year heavily, his narrow shoulders more drooped, his eyes darting from me to his lap as though he can’t bear to look at me and also can’t look away. ‘I wanted to see you, see how you are. It must be really weird, losing your memory.’

  ‘There are bits I remember,’ I say. ‘Just fragments, more a feeling.’

  ‘What kind of feeling?’ Rob asks, leaning forward.

  ‘A feeling that things have changed, I suppose,’ I reply. ‘As though I’m missing something, which I suppose I am. Lots of things.’ I stare at Rob until he looks away, then I smile at Fin. ‘You don’t have to worry, darling. I’m sure it will all come back. You can get back to university and by the time you next come home I’ll be right as rain.’

  Rob stands up. ‘Did you say you’d brought something for dinner, Sash?’

  ‘Oh my goodness, a lot has changed!’ I say, as brightly as I can.

  Sash unpacks the contents of a cool-bag on to the kitchen island. Despite Rob’s objections I’ve insisted I’ll be fine perched on one of the high stools watching her preparations. ‘I didn’t even know you could cook,’ I say. ‘And you have a cool-bag, you’re very grown-up.’