Fall From Grace (7 page)

8

Before dinner, I’d laid some of my work out on the living-room table, so we ate at the kitchen counter instead. Eventually the subject got back to Olivia.

‘How are you finding it?’ I asked.

‘Looking after Liv?’ She rocked her head from side to side. ‘It’s tiring.’

‘Why don’t you ask Emily for help?’

She didn’t look up, turning her beer bottle gently on the counter in front of her. Emily had been one of the keepers of Annabel’s secret – the same secret that had been kept from me – and in the months since the truth had come out, it was clear Annabel was having a hard time looking at her in the same way. Eventually, she just shrugged.

‘It’s okay,’ I said. ‘We don’t have to talk about it.’

‘It’s not that. It’s just …’ She paused, then took a mouthful of beer. ‘I don’t know, I just … I can’t even look at her. All those years she knew the truth about me, and about you – and she never said anything.’

A second later, I clocked movement out of the corner of my eye. Through the kitchen window, I watched my next-door neighbour, Liz, moving through her living room. I couldn’t see much, but I could see enough: she had boxes stacked up against one of the walls, already taped shut; and then there were more beyond that, in a line, these ones all open. As she toured the living room, she was picking things off shelves and placing them into the boxes. She’d been doing it every night for a week.

I looked from her house to her front garden. It was dark outside now, but all the homes in the street were illuminated by Christmas decorations, Santa smiling at me from the other side of the road, a reindeer two houses down blinking red and green. Along the guttering on the front of mine, I’d hung some blue lights, and when I knew Annabel was coming, I’d gone out and got a tree too. But in Liz’s house there was no tree and no lights, only boxes – because at the bottom of her garden was a for sale sign.

I picked at the label of my own beer, attention drifting from the sign, back to Liz’s living room. It was almost empty now, a stark, abandoned reflection of what it once had been. A memory formed in my head of us lying together on her sofa.

‘You okay?’

Annabel’s voice brought me back.

I smiled at her. ‘Yeah, I’m fine.’

But she was smart. She could tell something was up. Her eyes moved to Liz’s living room and then back to me, and it was obvious something had fallen into place.

‘Oh,
right
,’ she said. ‘That’s the neighbour.’

I’d talked to Annabel about Liz. I’d told her how we’d gone out for eight months and been friends for a lot longer, until I’d done what I thought had been best for both of us and removed myself from Liz’s life. I’d wondered every day since whether it had been the right thing to do.

‘Are you the reason she’s moving out?’

‘It would be incredibly arrogant of me to think that.’

‘Is that a yes?’

I sighed. ‘I don’t know. Maybe.’

‘I’m sorry.’

‘I had a meeting today,’ I said, trying to manoeuvre the conversation in a different direction. ‘It was in the diary before I knew you were coming up, and there are a few things I need to take care of off the back of it tomorrow. I should be done by lunch, but I was thinking maybe tomorrow morning might be a good chance for you to do the tourist thing.’

Annabel had only been to London three times, once while she was still in primary school, once in the months before I’d known her, and once in the year since. We’d seen each other fourteen times in a year, and thirteen of those times I’d been the one to make the trip down to Devon. She’d wanted to come up more – specifically she’d wanted to see the city and take in the sights – but she had Olivia to think of now.

‘Sounds good to me,’ she said.

‘Are you sure?’

‘One hundred per cent.’

‘I’ll give you a shout when I’m done.’

‘It’s fine. Honestly. I can’t wait to be a tourist.’

‘Do you like steak?’

She smiled, seemed confused. ‘I love steak.’

‘Great. There’s a fantastic place near Covent Garden that’s always got space. I’ve got to pop down to Wimbledon, but I thought maybe we could meet at the restaurant for a late lunch once you’ve decided you’ve had enough of pounding the pavements.’

‘That sounds fab.’

I smiled at her and, automatically, without thinking, glanced across to Liz’s living room again, just a square of light against the night. Liz emerged briefly, placing some books into a box. She was dressed in tracksuit bottoms and a vest, her chocolate-coloured hair scraped back into a ponytail. I wondered if she’d seen me letting Annabel into the house, and what she must have thought. She didn’t know I had a daughter. Since I’d ended things between us, we’d barely spoken. A hello out on the drive; awkward conversations that led nowhere about things that didn’t matter. I never wanted it to be like this, had clung on to the idea that our time together might be worth something more, a bind that wouldn’t fray, even if our relationship was different.

But, in my life, there would always be the missing.

And that would always be the problem.

The First Goodbye

January 2005
|
Eight Years Ago

The dog died on
7
January. As snow came out of the sky, landing softly on the roof of the house, the animal moaned gently, shuddered on the rug next to the fire and finally became still. She kept her hand pressed to his stomach, felt his belly cease to swell and shrink, but didn’t look down at him. Instead, she sat there – cigarette smoking between the fingers of her other hand – and stared out through the rear windows, across a patchwork of muddy-green squares, to the thin, skeletal trees on the ridge of the hill, their last rust-coloured leaves long since gone. Below them were sludgy farm tracks, criss-crossing the fields as they traced the outline of the woods, but there was no life in any of it. No breeze. No movement. No vehicles
.

No people
.

Just silence
.

She dug a grave next to the old well a few hours later, carved a rectangle of mud out of a fresh blanket of snow, digging down with a shovel. When she’d gone about two feet – muscles tired, joints aching – she paused, arm resting on the handle of the shovel, and looked back at him through the French doors. He was still lying next to the fire where he’d died, covered with an old rug from the bedroom. Her vision blurred. She didn’t cry much any more – she sometimes wondered whether she was even capable of it now – but she cried then: tears ran down her cheeks, tracking the bones and muscles of her face, her eyes taking in the shape of the dog, so small under the rug, lying there like rubbish waiting to be dumped. When she wiped the first wave away, more came; when she wiped them, they were instantly replaced. After a while, she gave up trying and just stood there, shivering in the cold, alone on the edge of the silent fields, one foot sinking into the damp earth. When she finally placed the body into the hole, she found herself muttering a goodbye to him, over and over – ‘Goodbye, my baby; goodbye, my baby’ – her words gradually softening as the tears came again and again, her voice drifting in and out like a radio losing its reception
.

An hour later, when he was finally in the ground, motionless and cold beneath the earth, she retreated into the warmth of the house. A fire crackled in the front room, the stone chimney licked black, the smell of old wood and pine in the air. She thought about making some food, knew she should probably eat, but decided to grab an open bottle of wine instead and returned to the chair in front of the fire. The flames curled and twisted. Wood popped. Black smoke coiled in the throat of the chimney. The wine passed through her body, warming her from the inside, and, as it settled in her stomach, she removed a photograph from the pocket of her trousers and gently unfolded it on her lap
.

Her eyes filled with tears again as she looked at the picture
.

‘Goodbye, my baby.’

She would miss the dog, the companionship, the sensation of weight at her feet, of being able to reach out and touch something. But she knew, even as she’d had one foot in that grave, snow falling around her, that her tears hadn’t really been for the dog
.

She looked across the office at Garrick, his eyes on her, fountain pen hovering above the pad in his lap. He had a covering of grey stubble, but otherwise he was immaculately turned out in a royal-blue suit and red tie, the trousers perfectly pleated, his shoes polished to a shine. Above him, on the wall, was a heater, whining gently; on his right was a desk with a computer and an in-tray
.

‘Why don’t you tell me about what happened that day in July, six years ago?’ He studied her, and when he got no response, he leaned forward, his shaved head catching some of the light coming through the only window in the office. ‘Look,’ he said, ‘I understand that this must be difficult for you.’

‘Do you?’

‘Of course.’ He set the pad and the pen down. ‘You’ve been seeing Dr Poulter for six years, and now he’s retired you have to get used to someone new. I am completely aware of how strange and, perhaps in its own way, frightening that will be. If it helps, I’m a little frightened myself.’ He paused, dropping his voice to a pretend whisper. ‘I’m conscious that, if I want to keep my job, I have to make a good fist of this.’

‘So it’s really about your career?’

‘Actually, it’s about you,’ he said, almost as if he’d expected the comeback. He watched her for a moment and then smiled again. ‘If I don’t do my job properly, if I can’t gain your trust, then I’ve failed, and the people here will replace me with someone else.’

‘Why are you only here two days a week?’

‘I have other patients in other hospitals.’

‘Poulter used to see me three times a week.’

‘Dr Poulter said you were getting better,’ Garrick replied. ‘His recommendation – which I believe he discussed with you – was that, now you’re an outpatient, now you’re getting your life back on track, you only need to be seen six to eight times a month.’

She didn’t offer any reply
.

‘However, if you feel that’s not enough, we can discuss additional sessions. But in order to do that, you need to let me a little way in. How does that sound?’

Again, she didn’t respond
.

Garrick nodded and reached across to the desk. Next to the keyboard were loose sheaths of paper. He brought them to his lap, leafing past five or six pages, all of them marked in highlighter pen. She watched his long fingers moving left to right, trying to find the part he wanted. After about thirty seconds, they stopped; he tapped a finger on a highlighted paragraph halfway down and looked up
.

‘I see you worked at a place just off Oxford Street.’

His eyes moved across her face. This was what Poulter used to do when he was trying to get a response from her: he examined her, tried to use her stillness against her. In the early years, it had worked: she’d hated silence then, been frightened of it, because it reminded her of the days, weeks and months after the death. She’d gone back to the house and all she could hear were its beams, its floorboards, its structure, groaning in the heat of the sun, and then – as time slipped by – moaning in the bitterness of winter. Back then, the silence became too much, too frightening, the walls of her home like a mausoleum – which was why she’d tried to kill herself. She’d tried a second time, and third time, until she eventually ended up in Poulter’s care. Nearly six years on, she’d gone past the idea of killing herself, even if the memories were as painful as they’d always been
.

‘You worked in marketing – is that right?’

She shrugged, those same memories playing out in her head. After a while, she realized she’d drifted. Garrick tilted his head slightly, as if trying to read her thoughts
.

‘My dog died a few weeks ago,’ she said
.

If Garrick was surprised by the change of direction, he didn’t show it. ‘I didn’t realize you had a dog.’

‘A black Labrador.’

‘What was its name?’

‘His name.’

‘What was his name?’

‘Bear.’

He smiled. ‘Was Bear big?’

‘That’s why we called him Bear.’

‘Who’s “we”? You and your ex-husband?’

Her nose wrinkled
.

‘It wasn’t his dog as well?’

‘It was his dog in the sense that Bear lived in the same house as we did – but Robert was never a dog person.’

‘Robert Collinson. That was your ex-husband, right?’

She nodded
.

‘You two divorced five years ago – in
2000?’

She didn’t respond, looking up to the only window in the office, a rectangle high above the desk where sunlight was streaming in. ‘I had to bury him,’ she said quietly
.

‘Bear?’

‘Yes.’

‘How did that feel?’

She frowned. ‘How do you think it felt?’

‘Had you had Bear a long time?’

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Six years.’

Garrick had been busy writing something down, but he stopped immediately, pen paused at the midway point of the pad, and looked up again. ‘So you got him back in
1999?’

She nodded
.

‘When in
1999?’

‘August.’

A pause. ‘So a month after the accident?’

She nodded again
.

‘Which means Bear wasn’t just a dog to you?’

His words passed through the dust-filled sunlight as if there were a weight to them, and she felt a sludgy, pained stirring in her stomach, a dread at having to retrace the path back to her past. She’d been seeing Poulter for six years, other doctors too, sitting in this same chair, in this same building, letting them into her life as she tried to reclaim a sense of who she might once have been. Now she was going to have to do it all over again. Garrick seemed decent, ingenuous, just like they all did, so sometimes she’d guide them back to that day herself, let them wade around in the shallow waters and ask her questions she knew she could deflect. On those days, she liked coming here, even looked forward to it, because, while she recognized they were being paid to treat her, she found the fact that someone was interested in her, faked or not, oddly comforting
.