The House of Memories (29 page)

I
rang Mum back immediately. Lucas had given me the basics, but I needed to hear all the details from her.

She was crying. It took a minute or two to get her to stop. “We didn’t want to tell you, Ella. We didn’t want you to know that she was even in London. But she needed a change of scene so badly. We’ve been worried sick about her, and we thought a new city, a few auditions, might help her, give her something to be excited about. It’s so cutthroat over there, but we thought it might do her some good, even to be away for just a few weeks. She’s a great singer and dancer, she really is, but she needs more experience. We wanted her to try it, so she would feel that she’d achieved something, that she could still do something. It’s been so hard to keep her spirits up. We’ve been so worried about her. She took herself off her medication, and—”

“What medication?”

“She’s been on antidepressants on and off since it happened. And then I got so worried that she might start to hurt herself again. I know she’d stopped doing it but we were so—”

“She’d done what?”

“She was self-harming. Ella, I don’t want to talk about this with you. Not this week. I know what date is coming up—”

“Mum, please.”

She told me everything. Jess had been under psychiatric care for the past twenty months. She’d been on different types of medication. She’d been unable to stop crying for weeks after it happened. Eventually she managed to go back to college for occasional classes, and to do her slot on Mum’s show, but it was often the only thing she could do all week. They’d had to script it to the last word and she’d become so nervy that if she got it wrong, she’d be depressed for days afterward.

“All she seemed to be able to do was write in her diary,” Mum said. “I know I shouldn’t have, but I read it. It was the only way to find out how she really was. And it just made me cry and cry for her. She was pretending to herself that everything was okay, that her career was going well, that she was so happy. But it wasn’t true. She could barely get out of bed some days. And I read about what had been happening at college. Some of the other students were kind to her but the others have been so mean, so cruel, Ella. Walter and I thought she needed time away from there as well. She’d talked about going to London for years—you know that—so we thought, even if she only stays a month, it might build up her confidence, make her feel independent again. Even though we helped her, of course. We paid for her hotel and gave her a credit card. We were even thinking about surprising her with a visit, especially once we knew you were there too, but then she rang and we had an argument and since then—”

“How long has she been here?”

“Ten days. We put her up in a lovely hotel in Covent Garden for a week, and the plan was for her to find a flat after that, perhaps with some other performers, to help her make friends. She never goes out with her old friends here anymore. And of course we were happy to pay her rent until she got a part. But then there was a big misunderstanding about her getting her own TV show. She was told something that wasn’t completely true and we tried to explain, but she wouldn’t listen and that’s the last time we—”

I made Mum slow down and explain it all. It seemed that the cable network had done market research and discovered Jess was very popular with male audiences, young and old. They’d proposed a new weekly show for her, provisionally titled
Mess with Jess
.

“And of course we said no to it, Ella. You should have seen the script. Frankly, it was soft porn. We didn’t bother even telling her about it. We didn’t tell her when we got approached by one of the men’s magazines either. It was the last thing we wanted her to do, pose topless, no matter how tasteful they said the shots would be. And the show would have been the same—not topless, but all about sex. But she didn’t let us explain. She thought it was her own comedy cooking show, a showcase of her singing and dancing. And she got so furious and said we’d let her down. She thought we’d said no because I was jealous of her and she hung up on us. We thought she’d calm down and ring back again but she didn’t. And she hasn’t used Walter’s credit card since and she’s moved out of the hotel and she hasn’t e-mailed or texted us or posted anything on Facebook. There’s just been nothing. We didn’t do anything for a few days. Walter said perhaps what she needed was her freedom, time to think and be on her own without us watching her every move. But she still won’t answer our calls and no one at the hotel knows where she went and she hasn’t got any money.” She gave a shuddering breath. “We’re so worried, Ella. We couldn’t ask you or Lucas to help—we knew that—so Charlie’s on his way to London now. I only rang Lucas to ask if—”

“I’ll meet Charlie at the airport,” I said.

“Ella, we don’t expect you to. We know—”

“I want to. Please.” I asked for the flight details. Charlie was due to land in four hours’ time. “You’ve got my mobile number too, haven’t you?”

“Of course.”

“Mum, don’t worry. She’ll be all right.”

“But what if she isn’t, Ella? What if she isn’t?”

She was still crying as we said good-bye.

Lucas had heard everything. He explained she’d rung him to ask if he could book Charlie into a hotel. “I insisted he stay here with us, of course.”

He told me Mum had also asked him if he would go into Jess’s Covent Garden hotel to speak to the manager and find out what he could before Charlie arrived.

“I’ll come with you,” I said. As Lucas fetched his coat, I thought of Aidan’s letter in my bag. Now wasn’t the time.

We took the Tube, changing lines once, coming up and out of the cramped elevator into the center of Covent Garden. We went straight to Jess’s hotel. It was well-known, Lucas told me, frequented by actors and film stars. It was sleekly designed, darkly lit. All the staff looked like models. We spoke to the receptionist. Five minutes later, we were sitting opposite the manager, a young, elegant woman. She’d already spoken on the phone to Charlie in Boston and to Walter in Melbourne. No, she assured us, of course she didn’t mind talking to us too. She clicked her long-nailed fingers on the notebook computer in front of her. Yes, she could confirm Jess had checked out of the hotel four days earlier. No, she hadn’t left a forwarding address. Yes, there was CCTV footage. If we really did feel it was necessary, yes, of course she could arrange for us to see it.

She was skeptical underneath her businesslike courtesy. Jess was twenty-two, an aspiring performer in London for the first time. If she couldn’t go wild now, when could she?

Lucas seemed to guess her thoughts. Without going into detail, he explained that Jess had had personal difficulties. He used the term “at risk.” The woman’s attitude changed for the better.

“She was here for a week,” I said. “Would there be any staff members she’d have had regular contact with?”

“Our staff are friendly and helpful to all our guests,” she said. “We pride ourselves on that. But I’ll ask around, certainly. Do you have a photo of her I can show them?”

We didn’t. Instead, we brought up her Facebook page on the manager’s computer. There were dozens of photos there.

“She’s beautiful, isn’t she?” the woman said. “I’m sure people will remember her.”

We thanked her and left our phone numbers.

We tried the theaters next. We spoke to three box-office managers before realizing it was pointless without a photo of Jess to leave with them. Even as I described her—small, pretty, lots of hair, an Australian accent—I knew I was describing hundreds of young women in London.

As we walked back into Covent Garden, I thought I saw her, walking across the cobblestones with that confident dancer’s walk. I even called her name. The girl turned, not in response to my voice, but to change direction. It wasn’t Jess.

Lucas and I parted at Paddington Station. While I went to Heathrow to meet Charlie, he was going home to phone the theater companies about their audition schedules. He was going to print off some flyers. He was also going to phone the police.

It wasn’t until I was on the train, halfway to the airport, that I took Aidan’s letter out of my bag. I slit open the envelope. There was only one sheet of paper inside. I unfolded it.

I had to read it three times before the words sank in.

D
ear Diary,

This isn’t a diary entry. I’m writing this so I have a record if I decide to go to the police. I would ring Mum but I don’t even know what her number is. It was in my phone and my phone is gone and so is my money, and worst of all I might even be pregnant or have some STD. I don’t know what to do.

I’m going to write it all down exactly as it happened.

I got back to Ben’s at nine p.m. He’d just got home himself. If I’d had the money I would have bought him a bottle of wine but I couldn’t afford it, so I bought a bottle of cider. It was the cheapest thing I could see in the bottle shop or off-license or whatever it’s called here. But Ben said it didn’t matter and he produced two bottles of champagne, actual champagne, and Zach (he was there too) laughed and said, “You’ve found the key to that magic cave again, I see.” And I said, “What magic cave?” and Zach laughed and said, “A long, long time ago, Jessica, there was a magic land and in it there was a magic cave and in it were the most wondrous things anybody could want or need, from the creamiest soaps to the softest towels, sheets and pillowcases to the most expensive champagne and—”

“Shut up, Zach,” Ben said. “Ask no questions and we’ll tell you no lies, Jess, okay?”

I realized then what he meant, of course. The champagne was stolen from the hotel. And then I remembered his bathroom. All the nice towels. The nice soap. I thought of the biscuits and chocolate in the kitchen. The flat was full of things from the hotel. “But that’s stealing,” I said.

“No, it’s not,” Ben said. “It’s supplementing my below-par wage.”

“But that champagne costs about fifty pounds a bottle.”

“Says the little princess,” Zach said. “Have a bath in it, Jess, did you? When you were still on Daddy’s payroll?”

I didn’t answer him. I’d decided the only way to handle him was to ignore him.

“You can have water, then, Jess,” Ben said. “If the idea of stolen champagne is so appalling.”

I nearly did but then I thought there’s no way I can sit here sober while they get drunk. So I had a glass of it. And it was beautiful, it really was, all tiny fizzy bubbles, and it tasted like honey and flowers and it was just delicious. And it made me feel happier, even for a little while. It made us all get really relaxed, and Zach stopped picking on me and I made a couple of jokes and the two of them laughed, especially Zach, and I started to think, maybe he’s not so bad, maybe it was because I was so tense and upset when I first met him that I didn’t get on with him. And it was all fine, it was even good fun and we put music on and I sang along and they said, “Wow, Jess, you’ve got a really good voice. Do another one,” and they weren’t being sarcastic. So I stood up and sang a proper song and they applauded and it felt so good and I thought, I
can
make it here. I can’t let a few bad auditions put me off. I really do want this to be my career.

Then Zach opened a second bottle of champagne and Ben brought in a basket of food, and it was all stuff from the hotel too, minibar things like chocolates and wasabi-flavored snacks and peanuts, but I was really hungry, so I had a bit of everything even though it was stolen. And we were talking and drinking and it felt great, fun almost, but then I said something about my counselor and it all went funny after that. Zach jumped on the word counselor—“Oh, so Mummy and Daddy sent their little princess off to a psychiatrist, did they? Why? Because you weren’t happy with the pony they bought you for your birthday? Or your tree house was too small? You’d wanted one with ten rooms, not eight—”

I never talk about that time; I don’t. I get too upset, but the champagne and the week I’d had and his mocking face just all got too much and so I said it, in a horrible way. I just said the truth. “No, Zach. I had to see a counselor because I killed my nephew.”

And he shut up and Ben said, “That’s not funny, Jess,” and I should have stopped there. I should have pretended I was making a bad joke and changed the subject but I’d said it and it was the first time I’d said it out loud in such a long time that I just started telling them what had happened and I couldn’t stop.

It was as if all the times I hadn’t been able to speak about it had saved themselves up and were there in my head. It came out in a rush, every detail of what had happened that afternoon in the park. I could see Ben and Zach were shocked, really shocked, but I could also see they were really listening. So I just kept on talking. I told them everything, about Felix walking on the fence, the horrible moment when he fell, about ringing Aidan and the ambulance coming, but all of us knowing that it was too late. And I told them about the funeral, how Ella had started crying as they were taking the coffin out of the church, the saddest noise I have ever heard, like a wail, and how she couldn’t seem to stop herself—she stepped out into the aisle and she kind of put her arms around the coffin, and it was just so sad. I started crying too and then I couldn’t stop. I couldn’t stop for days. I couldn’t sleep. All that kept happening was the picture of Felix falling and me not being able to stop him. It just went round and round in my head and it didn’t matter what anyone said to me—that it was an accident; over and over again Mum and Dad said it to me. Aidan had said it to me too but it didn’t help. How could it help when it still meant Felix was dead, and he was dead because of me?

I told Ben and Zach all of this last night. They just kept staring at me, as if they couldn’t believe what they were hearing me say.

“Why didn’t you tell me this before?” Ben asked, and I said, “Sure, Ben, when we were out having that first drink: ‘By the way, I killed my nephew.’”

“You shouldn’t say that,” Ben said, and he was angry about it. “You didn’t kill him. It was an accident.”

“It was an accident that happened because I was looking after him. I killed him. If it wasn’t for me, he’d be alive now.”

“But you didn’t do it deliberately. You didn’t want to kill him. It was fate.”

They started talking about fate then, about preordained paths in life, saying that perhaps Felix was destined to have a short life. That if it hadn’t happened when I was looking after him that day, then maybe it would have happened another time. He might have been hit by a car, or got sick with leukemia. I know they were drunk, I know they were trying to make me feel better, but I couldn’t bear to hear those things. They were talking about Felix, my little Elix.

I had to stop them somehow and so I stood up and I showed them my tattoo. I had never shown anyone voluntarily before. It was in the smallest letters the tattooist had been able to do, but I had needed to mark Felix’s life somehow, and I had needed to feel pain for Felix. I know that sounds so stupid—as if it would change anything—but it hurt so much when the tattooist was doing it and I was glad it hurt, because I had hurt Felix. I had made him die and I needed to hurt in return.

I got the man to put Felix’s name, in lowercase letters, exactly where Felix came up to on me when we used to play our measuring game. We had this game where whenever I first saw him, if I was up in Canberra visiting him or if Ella and Aidan brought him down to Melbourne, I would always say, “Wow, Elix! You’ve grown so much since I saw you last! Soon you’ll be taller than me!” And I’d lift him up and hold him above my head and he would laugh and laugh. And I’d done it that day in the flat when I first saw him, and then again on the way to the park. He’d been walking beside me, holding my hand, and I’d lifted him up and then put him down again and said, “Let’s measure you again, Elix, because I think you might even have grown since we left home five minutes ago, don’t you?” And so we’d stood side by side again, and I’d measured where his head went up to on me and I said, “You have grown! You’re like the beanstalk in ‘Jack and the Beanstalk’! You go up to here now, look!” And I’d shown him the spot by pointing to a flower on my skirt and I had worn that skirt when I went into the tattoo parlor so the man was able to put Felix’s name in exactly the right spot.

That’s how it started, I think. The hurting. It made me feel better just for a little while when the tattooist was using the needles. Two nights after I’d had the tattoo done, I woke up with the nightmares again and I went out to the kitchen to get some water. I saw Mum’s sewing basket on the shelf, not that she uses it much—she isn’t really the sewing type—but I knew there’d be needles in there. So I took one and I brought it back into my bedroom and sat on the bed in the dark and I started pushing it into my skin, on my waist, where the skin was soft. It hurt so much but I knew it could never hurt as much as I had hurt Felix and Ella and Aidan. So I kept doing it and I could feel the blood but I didn’t stop until I had done it a hundred times. I counted as I did it. In the morning I got a fright because the bed had blood on it and the skin on my side was all bloody and starting to bruise but I just washed my sheets myself the next day and any other time I needed to.

It was the wardrobe lady at work who told Mum about it. She’d been doing a fitting and I’d been in the dressing room in my underwear. I hadn’t done it for a couple of weeks so it wasn’t as raw as usual. I had almost forgotten about it; I really had. But she must have noticed something because that night Mum came into my bedroom and said, “Jess, I need you to show me your side.” And I didn’t want to at first but then I started to cry and so I showed her and she started to cry too and she said, “Why, Jess? Why are you doing it?” And I told her the truth—because it made me feel better, even just for a minute.

That’s when they took me back to the doctor and got me in to a counselor three times a week. And I went to her for the next year. I only told Ben and Zach a bit of what went on in those sessions, even though they asked me heaps of questions. Did I have to lie on a couch? Did she shine a light on me? Those kinds of things. I told them a bit of it but not much, because it was hard and it was horrible and I don’t like remembering it. She wasn’t always kind but she helped me, I think. She taught me how to put other pictures in my head when the bad images came in, and she made me promise to myself and my body that I wouldn’t hurt it anymore. She kept saying to me, “Your body is a precious thing, Jess. You have to love it and look after it. Hurting it won’t bring Felix back. You have to accept that.”

Ben wanted to see the marks. Zach told him off. He was being so kind to me now, but the funny thing was I didn’t mind Ben asking. I had never shown them to anyone but Mum, but I’d had a lot to drink and it felt like it was helping me to talk about it and they were so interested. So I lifted my T-shirt up a bit to show my waist. There are still some scars but most of them have faded by now. It’s two months since I last did it. I’ve wanted to, I’ve even got as far as getting a needle a couple of times, but I’ve learned to stop it by thinking about Felix being upset at my doing it. That was my counselor’s idea. She was right. He would have hated my doing something like that.

After I’d shown them, Ben came over and he kissed the top of my head and it was so sweet I started to cry a bit. And then Zach said, “I’m really sorry, Jess. Is that why your mum and dad sent you here?” And I said yes. And I told them the rest too, that it was especially hard around now, because of the twenty-month anniversary coming up.

It still feels almost unbelievable that it’s only twenty months ago. Sometimes it feels like ten years ago. Sometimes it’s like it only happened a week ago. Time has gone all funny since it happened. But all of us, Mum and Dad and I think Aidan too and Charlie, and I don’t know about Ella, but her too, I’m sure, we’ve all had the twenty-month anniversary in our heads as being a big thing, an important date. I’m not sure why. I think it was a card someone sent or maybe something someone said at the funeral. My memory from that time is all a bit confused. But Mum and I kept kind of saying it to ourselves, that if we managed to make it to the twenty-month anniversary somehow, then we would be okay. But it’s not true; I know that now. It’s only a few days away and I know Ella will never be able to talk to me and Aidan has left Australia and I don’t know if Mum or Dad are in touch with him. If they are, they don’t tell me, but I haven’t talked to him for months. I’ve tried e-mailing him but I was never able to finish writing the message. What could I say? It’s like he left our family too. I heard Dad talking to Charlie on the phone one night and I was sure they were talking about Aidan but Dad never brought up the subject again, so perhaps I was mistaken.

I’m meant to be writing about what happened last night. I’d told Ben and Zach about the anniversary coming up and then Ben’s phone rang and it was a friend of his in London just for the night, and he said, “Do you mind if I head out and meet him for a few drinks, Jess?” I said of course not, even though I didn’t really want to be there with Zach on my own, but he had been so nice and I was a bit drunk and I had also already made up my bed in Ben’s tiny spare room with lovely sheets that he’d stolen from the hotel, so I knew I could go to bed soon anyway. Ben asked Zach if he wanted to go out drinking too but he said no, he had to catch an early train the next day. He’d behave himself and have a quiet night too.

But after Ben left, Zach opened another bottle of champagne and he asked me more about Felix. Not about how he had died, but what he was like. So I told him a few of the stories, especially the one about how obsessed Felix always was with brooms and vacuum cleaners. Felix used to make us laugh so much with the expression he’d get when he was pushing the broom around Ella and Aidan’s flat. He always looked SO determined. I hadn’t thought about that for so long and it all welled up inside me again, how funny he had been and how much we’d all loved to just sit and watch him do ANYTHING. He just had to stand there and we’d all laugh at him.

I started crying again. Some of it was because of the champagne but then I couldn’t stop. I hadn’t cried properly since I got to London and I think it had all built up and once I started I couldn’t stop. Then Zach came over to where I was sitting and put his arms around me and before I knew it we were kissing. I wasn’t that attracted to him—he was good-looking but not my type—but it felt so good to be that close to someone and to be kissing and he was a good kisser. And then he put his hand under my T-shirt and touched the scars and he said, “You shouldn’t have done that to your beautiful body, Jess. You have such a beautiful body,” and he kept saying it and touching me.