House of Small Shadows (8 page)

Mike’s face was pale and he hadn’t made an effort with his hair, but she told herself she wouldn’t mention that. He didn’t like being criticized, even in good humour.
Maybe he was thinking about what they’d
lost.
Maybe it was his turn to be sullen and withdrawn. Totally flat, so not a flicker of enthusiasm could be coaxed into life about anything.
Now that she had come back to life, maybe it was his turn to retreat.

‘You OK, babe?’

His eyes found her, then flicked away, back to the surface of his pint which looked inelegant on the table opposite her outfit, which he’d noticed with a sudden intensity when she arrived.
But he had withdrawn his attention just as quickly.

Mike had been waiting for her, uncharacteristically early and smelling of beer. Had started drinking without her. ‘Tired,’ he said, his voice almost a whisper. He breathed out and
his fingers writhed and knotted until he tucked them beneath the table. He’d been ‘tired’ for at least a month now.

She interrogated his face with her eyes. He wouldn’t look at her. Something was up. This was the first time she’d seen him in a week, too. He’d been ‘busy’, but
with what? He didn’t work. She’d only noticed his expression now she’d finished her breathless monologue about the Red House, a narration only interrupted by her frantic mouthfuls
of wine. She was getting giddy and needed to slow down.

His expression was also unfamiliar. Furtive. He kept biting at his bottom lip and it looked red. His eyelids seemed half closed as if to protect her from an unstable intensity behind them. A
realization that she’d not seen Mike like this for a while gave her a little shock. He might have been smoking cannabis all day in his dismal room again, but hadn’t he promised her
he’d stopped to make himself more fertile?

A waitress brought the main courses. Mike didn’t look at his. Catherine was ravenous, but held back. ‘What? What is it?’ She reached over the table to touch his hand that
reappeared to hold his pint glass. He’d been fingering his mobile phone in his lap. He had been sending a text when she arrived, too.
To who?

‘Not easy,’ he said, then swallowed.

‘What?’

‘Nothing.’

‘Black pepper?’ the waitress asked, through an uncomfortable half-smile inspired by her suspicion of a lover’s tiff at the table she served.

But there was no trouble between her and Mike. They were stronger than ever, even after what happened last winter. And they had found each other again after seventeen years apart, as if their
reunion had been destiny. They’d once been a couple of hesitant sixth formers who only managed to speak to each other three months before school ended, and who then loved each other with a
consuming and volatile passion for the following two years as geographic undesirables at their respective universities. Until, way back then, he’d broken up with her and broken her. But they
had been reunited through Facebook two summers back, because a connection like theirs not even time could dim.

I often think about you.
He’d left her a message after finding her, after he came looking for her. They’d exchanged fifty-three messages during that first evening of
reconnecting. She’d fallen in love with him all over again after reading the first message. It was the
often
that did it. Mike had quickly become another reason to leave London, the
clincher.

Catherine shook her head at the offer of the pepper grinder. The smile on her face was tight enough to ache. The waitress withdrew silently on black ballet pumps.

‘There’s something wrong. Is it . . . ?’

He looked at her. Shook his head. ‘No. Not that. Not everything is about that.’ Then Mike looked about himself as if he saw the pub’s restaurant for the first time and was
puzzled as to how he had come to be sitting inside it.

She smarted at his defensive response. They’d both been upset about the miscarriage, though she suspected he’d never been able to articulate his own disappointment so as not to hurt
her feelings. But it had to come out eventually,
because things like that just do.
She was thirty-eight and he wanted to be a dad. Her irritation must have shown on her face.

‘Sorry. That was unkind.’ His tone didn’t convince her the apology was genuine. ‘Look, this is not a good idea. Let’s take off.’

‘But—’

‘Sorry.’ He shook his head. ‘I can’t eat this now. No appetite.’

She wondered whether she would be able to eat ever again,
once he’s said what he has to,
and banished the thought as soon as it flared red inside her head.
Once you refuse to
deal with an enquiry, it becomes a habit. It’s easy really.

‘Then . . .’ But she couldn’t say any more, her throat had constricted. She suddenly felt sick.

‘I haven’t slept all night.’ He smiled without any warmth. ‘I’ve even been bloody crying. I didn’t want . . .’

‘Mmm?

‘Look, can we go? To my place so we can be alone.’

She was following every word out of his mouth as if she could see them in the air. The blood stopped moving inside her body.

But this wasn’t what she thought
it
was. They would go back to his place and he would smoke a joint and then they would end up in bed. He’d go mad for her in the hold-ups
and heels. In the morning he’d be as excited as she was about the Red House.

‘This isn’t the right place.’

‘For what?’ The question was out of her mouth before she could snatch it back. Her declaration was spring-loaded with provocation.
That will just make it easy for him.

And it did. ‘I’ve been thinking. About this. Us. Fuck, this is hard.’ He started to smile as if he needed encouragement and sympathy from her to do what he was about to do.
‘You look gorgeous tonight, but . . . I have to go through with this. Sorry. I’m so, so sorry. The last thing I wanted to do was upset you after . . . you know. But I can’t keep
it up any more. I’m just so fucking miserable. I can’t do it. Us. I’m sorry.’

And then he stood up and quickly walked across the dining room with his head lowered. Briefly, he paused to let someone enter the pub, and then almost fell out of the door in his haste to get
away from her.

While Mike spoke, Catherine was sure the room had fallen silent. But now cutlery chimed and the PA system played something she once recognized but couldn’t identify now.
In the distance someone said, ‘a new till roll’, but their voice seemed too loud around her head.

Catherine sucked in her breath and tried not to be sick into her lap.

‘You’ll be lucky,’ someone else said, but their face was fuzzy and indistinct.

The room lurched like a ship in a gale, then righted, was solid and stable again. But it looked different. It was really bright now, clinically lit. She couldn’t lift her hands, she was
paralysed. And momentarily she thought she was sitting really close to the opposite wall and staring into its white painted surface. Then her vision seemed to retract across the room to her chair.
She could not swallow. Her jaw was so heavy. Her mouth was open.

There was nothing but panic recognizable in the maelstrom inside her, faint but coming fast from the distance towards her conscious mind. Thin white hands were slapping around the walls of her
skull. She heard herself make the sound of a sob and thought she was sliding off her chair.

She held onto the table and into her mind came a memory of her inability to breathe when Mike called her after so many years of silence. And she recalled the ever-expanding light and joy from
her heart that smothered and concealed everything else because the rest of the world no longer mattered when he came down to London to meet her. She saw snapshots of their weekend in Barcelona,
being drunk on the beach in Minehead, dressing up as a pony girl and jockey for a New Year’s Eve party, sex in a borrowed tent in the Lake District, a Latitude festival, the pregnancy test,
them sitting side by side on top of the Worcester Beacon and deciding
to go for it.
All of this flashed through her, life with him as it ended. And she knew that she was more in love with
him at the very instant he left her than she had ever been before. The critical point. He’d walked out at the very peak of her intensity. The damage he had just done could not have been more
severe if they had been together for another ten years before this scene occurred.

Permanent damage.

The waitress was whispering to the youth behind the bar. They were looking at her. Everybody was. She fumbled with fingers made from wood. Tears came off her chin and splashed against the back
of her hands.
Never coming here again.
Idiot thoughts came and went. She still couldn’t swallow. She was stoppered and stuck inside, nothing was moving. There was a cold pain inside
her stomach too now, like a cramp. Incongruously, self-pity filled her with what felt like helium and a brief euphoria.

She ruffled two twenties on to the table.
Thank fuck you’ve got cash.
The thought of a card transaction nearly made her scream with horrible laughter.
You’d have me
operate a machine with these hands?

She knew she wouldn’t get across the room and to the door on her heels. Her humiliation at the table wasn’t sufficient, the universe wanted her down on her hands and knees, sobbing
as strangers grinned.

Why?

Because he’s found someone else.

You are too intense, you are exhausting, you are pessimistic, you are depressing, you are strange, no one actually wants you around once they get to know you.

He’s met someone else. He’s been withdrawn for weeks. Should have trusted your instincts. You suppressed them as an unhealthy paranoia, just like you’ve been shown how
to.

He’s met someone else to have children with.

Because you miscarried.

She walked home, pressed into the cold brick walls of the town that seemed to be a thousand miles long, and she looked at a blurred and watery world but didn’t see much of it at all.

Catherine got to her bedroom with a bottle of lemon vodka and yanked the curtains closed. Outside, a group of laughing men walked under her window.

She freed herself from the skirt that had been a hobble the moment she put it on, a fool’s tapered manacle. She tugged both stockings down her legs and fell upon the bed. Rolled on to her
side and choked as much as cried.

A sudden thought made her snatch at her BlackBerry and she scrolled through menus to delete the folder that contained all of
his
messages. Get them out now so there would be no time
spent trawling through them and imagining clues in the coming months, or even years. But her hands were shaking too much to operate the ridiculous keypad. She let it drop to the floor.

How could he? Why? Is there someone else? Who? It’s not possible, because of . . .
started until her head hurt and she ran out of conspiracies and clues.

She stayed on the bed until it was dark, sipped the vodka. When her phone chimed the arrival of a text message, she scrambled undignified amongst the detritus of her outfit, shoes and underwear
on the floor. It was a message from a company asking her to claim compensation for being mis-sold insurance. She sent the word CUNTS back to them. Then felt the urge to send messages to Mike.

Tell him you’re pregnant again.

Silence and indifference are the greatest weapons.

She deleted the three lines of text she’d composed. Even in her grief, their churlish and pathetic sentiment shocked her into the first assault of self-loathing. And that’s when it
really went wrong. She felt her own gears changing and the engine of her heart revving to reach despair as quickly as possible. Nought to sixty in three seconds.

Put me in a case with the kittens. So I can be safe from the pain. I can wear a pretty dress and have big open eyes and never have to go out again. Because there’s
not enough of me left to take any more pain. I’m done.

She stood up and tried to run for the kitchen and the scissors with the orange plastic handles. But weaved. Her legs felt useless. ‘Fat bitch,’ she said at herself. She’d been
brought back down to size, so it was time to cut herself down to an appropriate stature. At least
he’d
know why she did it.

And in no time at all, she found herself standing on the kitchen lino in bare feet and holding the scissors that had almost leapt out of the rattling utensils drawer beside the sink. She held
the points of the scissors before her belly. Stared at them with horror. She knew she wouldn’t do it again. But at the same time a reckless hateful desire to punish herself made the closed
blades twitch.

Each hand around the handles fought with the other. She imagined the metal going in, deep, and then she would turn it around inside and sever all the relevant tubes and she would put an end to
her useless body. The desire to do this was getting hot and urgent. But the other hand went white-knuckled to keep the scissors out of her flesh. Some curious instinct for survival had made an
unexpected appearance and she was almost impressed with herself.

Some of you is normal.

She threw the scissors and they struck the microwave and bounced back within reach.
That evil force you always knew was there wants you cut.

Patsy Cline. Get Patsy on the stereo. Top yourself to Patsy.

No one’s getting topped, you melodramatic twat. You can’t go yet. The suffering isn’t over and you have to take it, and take it, and keep on taking it, because that’s
what life is, bitch.

She laughed horribly. Then sank to the lino and sobbed so hard she couldn’t breathe.

The clock on the DVD player said 6:49. Saturday morning. She moved from the floor to the sofa and stayed there until Sunday night.

Eventually, slowly, the shock retreated like a briny tide and left mudflats behind. Above them was a grey horizon. The activity in her mind was no longer frenzied, it was dispassionate. It was
as slow and dreary and monotone as sleep-deprived acceptance usually is. It was acknowledgement through exhaustion. And in acknowledgement there was some relief. It got you to the bottom faster. On
the bottom you suddenly saw everything clearly and as it was.