Close to Me Read online

‘You never stay the night, but it would still be your room whenever you wanted it,’ I tell her. ‘You know that.’

  Sash prods at the melting marshmallows with her spoon, scooping them into her mouth as she ignores me. I offer to help with her flat, give it a spruce-up at the same time, suggesting I could even get our decorators to take a look, see what they can do with the place, but she tells me there’s no point, she probably won’t be there that long. For a moment it sparks a hope that she’s finally seen sense and, far from redecorating her room, we may soon be moving her back into it, but she says she’s looking for somewhere else, maybe to share; a disappointment to me, but anywhere would be an improvement on her bedsit, or as Sash likes to refer to it, her ‘studio apartment’. It’s the kind of hovel I’d thought no longer existed; acrid damp spores stick to my clothes long after I’ve been there, not that we’re often invited. The two visits we’ve made since she moved in have both been fraught occasions; Rob clock-watching, concerned about the dodgy neighbours who might take a fancy to his expensive car, and me trying to find something positive to comment on, but failing miserably. I tell Sash I’m pleased she’s moving on, and if she needs a bit of a loan from us she’s only to ask. She rolls her eyes again, but doesn’t refuse outright.

  The waitress arrives with our order: one tuna, one cheese. We split the sandwiches between us, and Sash says, ‘Ooh, I know what I was going to say to you: voluntary work.’

  I listen, although resistant to the idea. Not a laudable reaction, but I’ve never really fancied the coal-face of charity work, preferring to ease my conscience with a generous direct debit. But Sash manages to capture my attention with her personal account of helping at a drop-in centre next to her office. ‘Don’t look so surprised,’ she says. ‘I’ve only been once, but hopefully I’ll go back. There’s a food bank and an advice centre. I just handed out leaflets and washed up, but it was good fun.’ She glances up at me. ‘Met some nice people.’

  ‘What does it involve, this drop-in centre?’ I ask, trying to imagine Sash in such an unlikely scenario.

  ‘You have to get a background check, make sure you’re not a raving paedo. Work sponsored mine, but I’m sure the centre would help you with that. Then it’s just a case of turning up and pitching in with anything you can do to help.’ She bites her sandwich. ‘I feel a bit guilty that I haven’t been back after they went to all that trouble.’

  ‘What sort of people go to this drop-in centre?’ I ask, pushing away my plate.

  ‘Anyone who’s vulnerable and needs help.’ Sash picks up my uneaten crusts and nibbles them.

  I imagine drug users and homeless people, and scratch at my scalp. ‘I don’t like the sound of this, Sash. Who’s in charge? How are you safeguarded?’

  ‘Safeguarded? These people are all around us, Mum. All the time. That’s our society.’

  I look around us at the café clientele; mostly silver-haired apart from us and the ladies-who-lunch seated by the door, boutique shopping bags propped up at the sides of their chairs. Sash sighs and concedes that okay, maybe they don’t pop in here for their three-quid latte, but they’re part of society and they need our help. I resist the temptation to point out she’s drinking a three-quid hot chocolate and most likely I will be the one paying for it. Her principles are perhaps no better than mine, the badges on her jacket about as committed as she’d become at university, the realities of charity work as unappealing to her back then as they are to me now; which makes her stance all the more surprising.

  ‘Think about it, Mum. Helping others would give you a purpose.’

  ‘So now you’ve moved out and Fin is at university, I have no purpose. Is that what you’re saying?’

  ‘You actually said that yourself.’

  ‘I was joking!’

  ‘You know what I mean.’ Sash drops a crust back on my plate. ‘You need something new to focus on, or you’ll end up depressed. Something just for you.’

  I laugh at her dramatics, chiding her for suggesting my main aim in life was to tidy up after her and her brother. ‘I do things,’ I tell her, struggling to come up with anything that doesn’t involve the home or her father. ‘I have purpose.’

  ‘I need to get back to work,’ she tells me, picking up her rucksack. ‘How much do I owe you?’

  ‘No, nothing. My treat.’ I stand up to kiss her goodbye, then watch as she leaves, her white-blonde hair catching the breeze as she walks away, back to her work, a purposeful occupation, even if she doesn’t see it that way.

  I’m paying the waitress when Sash’s text arrives.

  It’s fine with me if you want to change my room. Thanks for lunch. S xxx PS Think about what I said. Love you!

  4

  Two Days After The Fall

  His face is turned from me; in shadow. I reach out to touch him, recall him to me, he feels so far away. His body is naked, the skin smooth, contours highlighted by the weak light. My fingers run over his back, encircling him. His body is warm against mine. He touches me and I cry out, the desire palpable. I need to see his face; to know who he is. And even with my husband sleeping beside me, I don’t want to leave this man, to open my eyes and be apart from him. He’s touching me now, pulling me to him, and I can feel the tension between us. This is illicit, forbidden even, and dangerous. This is not my husband. What was this? An affair, a fantasy? What am I remembering?

  ‘Jo, are you awake?’ Rob’s face is close to mine. ‘Do you need your tablets?’

  ‘No, it’s fine,’ I tell him. ‘Go back to sleep.’

  I lift myself up on to the pillows, forgetting the sprain in my right wrist until it’s too late. I take a deep breath, holding in the moan that threatens. Rob has shifted on to his side, right arm above him, his eyes closed. I look across at him, his head a dark oval on the white pillow, full of things I have lost. I wish I could cleave it open like a coconut, scrape out the bits I need and discard the rest. The revolting idea both appals and fascinates me. I wonder at my own thoughts; so twisted, so random, and I wonder at the images, what they mean. I’m a wife, a mother, faithful, monogamous; aren’t I? I leave our bed, Rob asleep again now, and close the door gently behind me.

  The landing is dark, a sliver of moonlight illuminating my way, delivered to me from the window at the far end; the only one we decided shouldn’t have a blind because of the unobstructed view down the valley, green slopes and black hills beyond, as though we were the last people on earth. The thought of our splendid isolation feels bleaker at this unearthly hour; but everything does when you’re the only person awake. I walk past the smallest bedroom, then with a hand to the wall to guide myself I switch on the light and walk into the room which I still think of as my daughter’s. Sash’s double bed is now in the middle of the wall facing me, not pushed into the corner as I remember it, and the floral bedding has been replaced with a muted green, topped with a throw and scatter cushions in the same grey as the freshly painted walls. Her desk is gone, as are the posters and photos, and there’s a new light fitting. I open the wardrobe and find it empty, the winter clothes she’d left behind in the heat of summer now gone.

  The night after we’d dropped Fin at university I’d woken early too, or maybe it was not long after I’d fallen asleep. I remember going into Fin’s room in the darkness. Rob was exhausted, he’d worked hard packing up the car and driving us there and back. He’d slept soundly after we’d made love. The thought of the closeness we’d shared, maybe even taken for granted, is a shock to me, as though we were never capable of such tender moments. I push aside that feeling and go back to that night, recalling how I’d stared at the angular digits picked out on Rob’s clock radio, sleep eluding me. Fin was on my mind, a dip in my stomach each time I’d thought of him alone. He’d messaged me just one letter in response to my numerous texts: K. Despite the melancholy of that time I smile at the memory, or perhaps at the fact I’ve recalled something new, even if it is only a few hours reclaimed from a whole year of loss. I switch off the light as I leav
e, the insistent pounding in my head reminding me I need more painkillers.

  Downstairs, the kitchen echoes with the loneliness of the hour. I open the blind to retrieve my tablets from the sill. The window fills with nothing but blackness, but then, as my eyes adjust, I can make out the silhouetted trees which edge the drive. They’ve stilled. The wind must have dropped a little, and the rain has gone, allowing a glimmer of dawn beyond the hills, etching their outline.

  I flick on the lights, the glare from the recessed down-lighters above the kitchen island causing me to screw my eyes tight for a moment, then I push a glass against the dispenser on the front of the fridge, swallowing down two painkillers and refilling my glass with ice-cold water. My thirst is hard to slake, the dehydration of the hospital clinging to me like the antiseptic smell on my skin. I sip the second glass more slowly, my eyes drawn to the familiar ephemera attached to the fridge: photos and cards trapped by an eclectic collection of magnets. I began collecting them when we first moved to the barn. The huge bulk of the American-style fridge freezer needed softening, I felt; the colourful souvenirs relaxed its harsh lines. Maybe it wasn’t just the fridge. Every line in the barn is angular, with huge open spaces to be filled, but the fridge was my focus, its brooding presence somehow symbolic. It had been a big move for all of us: leaving behind the estate house where we’d returned with our newborns to come up here, to the top of the hill, distancing ourselves from the other families with whom we’d shared the children’s formative years. Rob had wanted clean lines to match the newly converted barn; minimalistic. It hadn’t felt compatible with family life, the Italian leather sofas and smoked-glass tables, the charcoal-grey blinds instead of curtains, but Rob had convinced me, as he always did, his clarity of thought overriding my half-formed objections. It wasn’t as though I minded, at least not much. But the gaudy fridge magnets became my battle ground, and I won. Everywhere we went I would buy another one, cheap mementos of trips we took, places we’d visited. I run my fingers over them now: an apple from New York, a dolphin emblazoned with a glittery ‘Florida’ sign, the leaning Tower of Pisa picked out in technicolour. Their familiarity is comforting to me, each card and photo they secure well known. The children are so much younger, their expressions open and without guile, their home-made birthday messages and Mother’s Day cards written in the spidery hand of many years ago. I’m not remembering anything new, but familiarity is good, and there have been flashes, snippets coming back.

  ‘Jo? You okay?’ Rob has placed his hand on my back, finding the square of exposed flesh between the straps of my nightdress. I turn to face him, the heat of his palm on my skin startling me. He’s naked except for a pair of boxer shorts, his face slack with tiredness.

  ‘You frightened me,’ I tell him. ‘I told you to go back to sleep.’ I push past him to lean against the kitchen island for support, the exhaustion and my headache returning and redoubling their onslaught.

  ‘Do you remember all these?’ he asks, looking at the magnets. ‘The holidays, I mean.’ He touches the dolphin and it twists in his large hand, the bond broken by his clumsiness. The magnet falls, his quick reflexes only just saving it from the hard floor.

  I take it from him as he stands up, his touch feeling strange to me so I pull back and almost drop the magnet again. I replace it on the side of the fridge, finding it awkward with my left hand, but refusing Rob’s offer of help.

  ‘Of course I remember them,’ I tell him, my fingers tracing each one again: Florida, Italy, New York; then my hand hovers over the only one I don’t recognise. ‘Except this one.’

  The magnet is of a white sand beach, blue ocean and palm trees. Rob points to the messy lettering, tiny at the bottom of the magnet, his broad shoulder touching mine as he leans forward. I look more closely, struggling to read the small writing without my glasses, but also so I can disconnect myself from him. ‘Dominican Republic?’ I ask, having no recollection of going there. ‘I’m guessing that’s the holiday you mentioned.’

  ‘You don’t remember?’ he says, his chin digging into my shoulder now.

  ‘That hurts,’ I say, shrugging him off. ‘And, no, I don’t remember, Rob. How many times are you going to ask me that question?’

  I push past him to pull out a stool at the kitchen island, unsteady on my feet, my hands trembling as I try to hoist myself up on to it. Rob rushes to my side, helping me up, and I allow him to because there is no way I can manage by myself. Then I rest my head on the cold granite surface and allow myself to cry, the tears falling freely until Rob begs me to stop.

  ‘I can’t stop! I’m frightened! Don’t you get it?’ I say, looking up at him, his expression not angry, as I’d imagined, but crumpled with pity.

  ‘You don’t have to be frightened. I can tell you whatever you want to know,’ he says, his hand hovering next to mine, then withdrawn. ‘I can’t bear to see you like this.’

  I watch as he walks to the other end of the open-plan kitchen, past the dining table, retrieving a photo frame from the windowsill behind. ‘Maybe this will help,’ he says, propping it up in front of me on the granite.

  The silver frame has two apertures, both landscape, one above the other. The top photo is of a similar view to the one depicted on the magnet: sand, sea, palms. Below it is a picture of Rob and me. We’re close to the lens, the picture taken with a camera phone I presume, a selfie as Sash and Fin would say. Our heads are touching, an orange-and-pink sunset behind us, and we’re smiling.

  ‘That was taken on the terrace after dinner, we’d had a great night,’ Rob says, smiling now. ‘You don’t—’ He stops himself and apologises.

  I wipe my eyes and look again, then shake my head. We do look happy, but so does every smiling face placed in a frame. Maybe we were, but it could just as easily be a lie, a moment of ‘making the best of it’. Again I wonder at my train of thought since the fall, why Rob’s attentiveness and our previous happiness leaves me cold.

  Rob picks up the frame and looks at it. ‘It was such a good holiday,’ he says. ‘Like a second honeymoon.’

  ‘Was it?’ I ask, the words sounding harsher than I’d expected.

  ‘Is that so hard to believe?’ Rob returns the frame then looks at me for some kind of reaction as he walks back, shrugging his shoulders to reinforce his point. His hair is sticking up from his forehead where he’s grown hot in his sleep, his naked torso causing me to look away, a vulnerability to it that’s at odds with my defensiveness in his company.

  ‘You were lost without Fin and Sash,’ he says, yawning. ‘I booked it as a surprise, to cheer you up.’ He smiles at me.

  ‘I wasn’t sure,’ I say, the words formed as if by someone else, although once I’ve spoken them I know they make sense and that bolsters my resolve. ‘I’m right, aren’t I? I wasn’t sure about going, because of Fin.’

  ‘Come on, let’s try to get some more sleep,’ Rob says. ‘You need your rest.’

  He helps me down from the high stool and through to the hall and I’m so exhausted I lean on him and allow him to take my hand. It’s when he turns to help me up the stairs, his other hand outstretched, that an image returns.

  He’d reached out to me at the top of the stairs, but I was trying to do something, quickly, before he could stop me.

  ‘Jo!’ Rob has stopped two stairs up. ‘You coming?’ He takes a step down. ‘You’re exhausted, Jo. Let’s go to bed.’

  ‘I’ll manage on my own,’ I reply, batting away his hand.

  October – Last Year

  ‘And you didn’t think to ask me first?’ I say, switching the phone to speaker and propping it up against an emptied jar of passata.

  ‘I thought you’d be pleased,’ Rob says, the click of an indicator switched on and then off accompanying his words. ‘It’s five star, Jo. On a private island off the coast of the Dominican Republic. Cocktail hour all day; just the two of us. Come on, we barely celebrated my birthday last month and it won’t be long until it’s yours. Let’s call this a joint splurge
for the two of us.’

  I stir the bubbling vat of Bolognese sauce, a displacement activity whilst I process what he’s just told me. It’s not so much that he’s booked a holiday without consulting me which peeves, more the lack of empathy it displays. He’s adjusted to our childlessness, embraced it in fact, and therefore I must too. But I’m not ready to travel thousands of miles away from the kids, especially Fin. Not yet.

  ‘I’m not sure, Rob,’ I reply, estimating I have enough pasta sauce to freeze at least two portions for later use, my habit of cooking for twice as many people also hard to shake off. ‘Can we talk about this later?’

  ‘There’s not much to talk about as I’ve already booked it,’ Rob says, the loud sound of his car horn taking over. ‘Why can’t people learn to drive their bloody cars?’

  ‘You can’t cancel?’ I ask, moving the phone further away as I add salt and a touch of sugar to the tomato sauce.

  ‘Pick a bloody lane!’ He curses under his breath. ‘No, I don’t think so. Anyway, I don’t want to. Jo? You still there?’

  ‘Yes, sorry. It’s just a surprise, that’s all. So we’re away for my birthday?’

  ‘No, back before then. We leave on the fourteenth, so we need to get some jabs, organise malaria tablets. Can you give the surgery a ring tomorrow, see if we can go in over the weekend?’

  I put the wooden spoon down and tap a button to switch the sound back to the handset as I tell Rob it’s a lovely thought, and I really appreciate the gesture, but—

  ‘But what?’

  ‘You could have asked me.’

  ‘It was a surprise! You said we should make more of this time, travel together. Have some fun!’

  He’s technically correct, but it was spoken as a theoretical ambition, a glass of wine in my hand and from the comfort of our sofa, and I hadn’t meant for us to go so soon. I pick up the spoon and taste the sauce with the tip of my tongue, almost dropping the phone into the pan as I juggle the two implements; my heart beating a little faster at the near-miss.