The Stepmother (15 page)

M
atthew is
in a foul mood when he arrives home after a late meeting in the City.

‘I missed the bloody parents’ evening.’ He throws his
Financial Times
down on the counter. For someone who doesn’t like swearing, he’s been doing a lot of it recently. ‘Kaye says the school rang to remind me a few weeks ago. Why didn’t you tell me?’

‘I’m sure I did.’ I feel a stab of guilt. ‘I wrote it on the pad by the phone.’

But the work surface is immaculate – and empty. No pad at all. I can’t blame Agata; she’s long gone. And actually I don’t remember telling Matthew. But usually
he
checks his messages on the pad. All the phone calls in the house are for him generally, and I’ve never forgotten anything before.

But I haven’t told him Kaye rang either – and that is through choice. I feel really awkward about that conversation; I don’t want him to think we were in cahoots or something like that. I do think I need to mention the cutting thing to Matthew – but I have no proof, only a suspicion. I’ve looked at Scarlett’s arms every time she’s been here, but they are usually covered up.

‘What pad?’ Matthew looks at me like I’m mad. ‘We finished it didn’t we, doing shopping lists for New Year’s Eve? I keep meaning to remind you to get a new one.’

I remember that awful evening a fortnight ago, the way Luke got sauce all over everything, screaming and screaming, and I wonder – did I chuck it in the bin amidst all the drama?

‘Kaye’s having a fucking field day,’ he says before I can answer. ‘I can’t afford to give her ammunition. Not whilst we’re still waiting for custody and alimony meetings. I’m going upstairs.’

‘Sorry,’ I call after him, but he’s already on the phone to his accountant. I was going to tell him about the job, but it’s not the right time.

I seem to be digging myself in deeper without even meaning to. What a mess. My skin flames.

F
rankie’s
out when Scarlett arrives; I’m upstairs, cleaning the bathroom. We’re not expecting her, as far as I know, and I wonder with trepidation if she’s looking for Frankie again.

‘Hi! Finish school early?’ I say as she sticks her head round the door. ‘Good day?’

She doesn’t speak but stamps down the landing, calling for her dad like a much younger child. ‘Dad, where are you? Dad-
dy
?’

Oh God, I think. Now what?

Matthew is in his study, working from home, as is becoming more usual.

The door clicks shut; they’re ensconced in there for a while. I finish the bath and go downstairs to surf the web, looking for new jobs. There’s something at the local adult institute I might apply for…

About half an hour later I’m just debating making them some tea when they clatter down the stairs – and leave. I assume Matthew’s taking her back to her mother’s.

When Matthew returns, twenty minutes later, he’s monosyllabic as he looks for something in the drawer.

‘Are you ready to go?’ I try for jolly. I don’t ask what might have been up with Scarlett. I kind of can’t bear to know.

‘Where?’ He stares at me like I’ve got two heads.

‘I booked tickets for the new Judi Dench film, remember?’ I try to smile at him, but I sense something is really wrong. ‘The one about living in India? I thought we could grab some noodles at—’

‘Cancel it.’ He bangs out of the room. Then he comes back. ‘Or take someone else, if you want.’

But who would I take, my dear Matthew? I’ve made no friends here yet.

I follow him out into the hall. ‘Sorry – what’s wrong?’

‘Oh come on!’ He stares at me like he doesn’t know me. Well he doesn’t really. We don’t really know each other at all. It’s becoming more obvious by the minute.

‘Please…’ I say feebly.

‘Oh, Jeanie.’ His voice is quiet; he’s calmer. We gaze at each other, and then he puts a hand out and strokes my face.

It
must
be going to be okay.

‘I’m not sure how much longer I can do this,’ he says, in that same soft voice.

Pain flares. ‘What do you mean?’ I ask stupidly. ‘Do
what
?’

‘It’s not meant to be this hard, is it, love?’ He sounds so sad, it’s heartbreaking – and it makes me think of my dad, how he left and how sad I was and how I felt it was my fault. Is it all about to happen again? My fingernails drive into my palm. ‘Maybe we’ve been foolish.’

‘No, we haven’t,’ I say, trying to hold onto his hand, so desperate for warmth from him, for his touch – but he drops it, turns away.

‘I’m going to take the twins away for a few days at the weekend.’

‘Great.’ I follow him. ‘We could go to the coast? Some sea air would do us all—’

‘Just me and them, Jeanie.’ He turns back. ‘We need to spend some time together. Me and my kids, I mean.’

‘Oh.’ It’s like a mighty slap. ‘Did I – have I done something wrong?’

Jeanie, Jeanie, Jeanie
, I hear Marlena reprove.
You sound like a lost child.

‘Yes well maybe I do – but then where the fuck
are
you, Marlena?’ I say.

I look up to see Matthew staring at me oddly.

‘Who are you talking to?’ he says.

‘No one.’ I shake my head. ‘Myself, I suppose.’

‘You didn’t do anything wrong. Not really. I’ll take them away, and you can see Frank. Get your heads straight.’

Frank’s back – didn’t he even notice?

‘
Our
heads?’ He makes Frank and I sound like some kind of mad gorgon. And what’s the intimation anyway? That my son and I are mutually and tangentially messed up?

‘Look, Scarlett found out about you,’ Matthew sounds weary. ‘She saw something online. She’s refusing to come in the house if you’re here.’

‘Oh God,’ I say. I feel sick.

‘And you can see that might be a problem.’ He walks away. ‘For me.’

The bottom is dropping out of everything.

And still he won’t tell me who sent that email.

M
atthew
and the twins have gone to Brussels for a long weekend. First class on the Eurostar, rooms at a five-star hotel, puppets at the
Théâtre Royal de Toone
, whatever that might be.

I think the twins might have preferred Disneyland Paris, or just a weekend shopping and eating in London – but still.

I have fought and fought not to mind.

Marlena’s promised to come up, but I’ll believe it when I see it.

Taking matters into my own hands, I’ve got another interview, this time at the Oaklands College in St Albans. I’ve spent a day out with Frank looking at local sights, like the Hellfire Caves near High Wycombe. Tentatively I mention the Grey Lady as we drive home and Scarlett’s prank – and he just laughs. ‘Typical teenager,’ he says, and I resist saying, ‘Takes one to know one.’ I don’t bother saying she denied being responsible for my first ‘sighting’.

Now I’ve decided to look for a local friend. I used to have lots of friends, once upon a time. Lots. I need at least one here too.

I ring Sylvia Jones, the woman who fancied Nordic walking, and ask her for coffee.

‘I’m pretty busy this week. I’ve taken up pottery and I’m hooked,’ she breezes. ‘Hoping to meet my own Patrick Swayze! Next week maybe?’

‘Great.’ I feel pathetically desolate. ‘Yes, please.’

I debate ringing Anne from number 52, but she’s got such a downturned mouth and deep frown lines to match, I can’t bear to.

I ring Marlena’s voicemail. ‘I’m coming to London tomorrow,’ I say. ‘Call me back please.’

I wander round the house, feeling redundant, and then I hear the mail drop onto the doormat.

I pick it up and flick through. Nothing of any interest here – just brown envelopes for Matthew and a final reminder from the gas board.

Then I look again. There’s a letter from the dentist – addressed to someone I don’t know.

Someone called Lisa Bedford.

I
t wasn’t
that I didn’t want you to come down and see me, Jeanie, okay? Honestly, you were always bloody welcome, you know that really – don’t you?

I was just so immersed in my own crap at the time. And you know why; I know you do. You of all people realised just how badly I’d damaged my reputation, how much I had to repay.

It was so bloody important that I helped that girl Nasreen. She’d been so sweet when I did my talk at the college – and maybe, I thought later, maybe she reminded me a bit of you, Jean – her trusting brown eyes, her warm face.

So I was still looking for Nasreen, and I felt like I was getting closer.

After I met Jeanie on that freezing February day, the imam in Luton had greeted me politely, inviting me into his tiny office. He offered me tea in front of the glowing three-bar heater, which I accepted, despite already jangling with too much black coffee.

The imam seemed like a good bloke: straight-up and concerned. My instinct for liars is pretty good – like a radar after all these years.

He said he’d helped many kids wavering near the path to being radicalised. He was, by all accounts, dead set against this ‘wickedness’, as he called it.

‘The truth is we can find no trace of this girl at all through our network in the Middle East.’ He looked sorrowful. ‘We always have our ear to the ground. But no one has seen or heard of Nasreen that we know of. I’m sorry.’

I left, not feeling much soothed. If there was no sign of her in either Turkey or Syria, why did her family and her English boyfriend seem so convinced that she’d gone that way?

I realised later – too late – I’d gotten a little obsessed. Again.

Yes, I was distracted – I admit it.

But you’ve always been so strong, Jeanie. When our fucking useless mother vanished to a commune in Morocco to ‘cleanse her soul’ just after your eleventh birthday – inspired present as usual, thanks Mum – leaving you in charge of both of us, you did such a good job, the social never even got a whiff of it.

You got me to school, and then you got yourself there too – and you got us home again. You made a few cans of baked beans, some spaghetti hoops and one loaf of thin-slice Mother’s Pride (oh the irony) last for a week. The bag of sugar, that lasted too – that was our treat.

When we ran out of tins, you ‘borrowed’ some money from Mrs Wilmers downstairs. You said it was for the raffle at school, and she could win a hamper or a holiday to Butlins. You said it like it was Barbados – well it was to us – and she gave you three pounds.

You eked it out till our feckless mother returned, suntanned and hungover, not cleansed, with a bag of vodka, two hundred duty-free fags and a worse habit than she’d left with. She brought us nothing.

What a surprise.

But you never even grassed her up to Nan, and you made me swear not to either (though you’d have been doing us a favour if you had). Still, your sense of loyalty was too strong.

I
stare
at the letter to this stranger: it’s from Hillfield Dental Practice.

Lisa Bedford.

Who is she, and why is she getting letters here?

I’m being jumpy again. It’s nothing. No doubt she’s just someone who lived here before the Kings, an ex-resident of Malum House. And who is there to ask anyway?

I walk back upstairs, past the locked door, and I peer into Matthew’s study. It feels so empty in the house without him here.
I
feel empty without him here. Without his approval and without the love I felt so tangibly until only a few weeks ago.

His shiny silver laptop stares at me from his desk.

If I just checked through his emails, I might get some answers about the person who ‘shopped’ me.

I remember the devil’s idea of control: reading everything that came into the house. I remember the results.

I’m
not
going to stoop to his depths.

But then I pass beneath the attic hatch. I’ve resisted it for too long now.

I move the Queen Anne chair from the corner of the landing and stand on it to reach up and pull the attic stairs down.

As I clamber up into the darkness, emerging into the dim light, dust motes swirling in the weak beams of sun that fall from one tiny skylight, I remember Judy’s drunken ramblings, back in November, and I think:
She was right
.
There
is
a mad woman in the attic…

Only the mad woman is me.

I nearly laugh aloud – except it would only prove my own fear: ‘the gambols of a demon’ as Mr Rochester noted of his first wife.

Now I’m up here, I can see it’s pointless – there’s nothing in the attic. A few racks of old clothes, boxes of books and some photograph albums I can’t bear to look at.

I run my hand across the clothes, wondering who they belonged to – and something whirls up from the corner.

I spring back, emitting a higher-pitched scream than I ever thought I could make.

It’s a bird, I realise shakily; a bird is in the attic with me – flapping furiously against the roof slats, making an unearthly sound – and oh God I want to get out too…

Running back to the ladder, I stumble against a stack of paintings and the top one falls: a cracked old print of the nursery rhyme ‘Sing a Song of Sixpence’.

I climb down again, sweaty palms sliding on the ladder rails.

The walls haven’t whispered for a while; they might be silent today – but the house is definitely haunted. I think of the Grey Lady who died here. I think of Scarlett’s projection. I think of my terror.

Is that just me too?

On the landing, I perch on the Queen Anne chair and try to calm my breathing. The bird will have to stay there until either Frank or Matthew get home. Sorry, bird, but I’m not feeling brave any more.

I stare down at the spring garden. It’s starting to burst with life – unlike me.

How has my life turned into this… uselessness? There’s no point to me; I’m like some odd 1950s housewife, like someone out of
Mad Men
. I just need a pristine apron, a gold cigarette case and a vodka-martini habit and I’ll be set…

Outside Matthew’s study I turn my back on the laptop burning into my retinas and force myself downstairs. Today the sun has actually shown its face, and I need fresh air before I suffocate.

I’ll tackle the deadwood in the huge garden, I decide. It’s a beautiful space, a bit dark at the end maybe, and I’ve not really explored out since I’ve been here.

In the garage I root around for gardening equipment. The gardener has left the mower and the big spades and forks very neatly in the wooden rack, but I need the smaller stuff. There’s a long, thin cabinet that’s locked, but I can’t find any keys to it.

Eventually I
do
find a box of gardening stuff. Choosing the sharpest-looking secateurs and some thick gloves, I walk through the garage and down to the back of the garden, past the jolly daffodils, towards the big trees at the end where primroses cluster shyly at the foot of their trunks.

I’ll start here and work my way up towards the house.

Savagely I cut back brambles and old rose vines until my skin above the gloves is scratched and bleeding. I’m out of breath but enjoying it – feeling alive for the first time in days. Weeks.

I stop at months.

Standing beneath the two great trees, I pull and I pull at rogue tendrils snaking around each other, up the trees, over the old brick wall until I’m panting with exertion, until I can taste the salt on my lip, until I stumble and overbalance, smashing my knee on something in the undergrowth…

Bending, I see it’s a headstone, some kind of grave; covered in moss, but properly engraved.

I step closer, and the toe of my boot meets something else with a bang.

A whole
group
of small graves – at least four or five. More, maybe, under the spreading ivy.

Heart thudding, I crouch down and scratch off the moss on the first headstone. The sun’s gone in, and it suddenly feels very dark and gloomy out here.

The headstone reads:

Relief makes me laugh out loud. Animal graves! They must all be. But there are so many – too many really for a house that no longer has pets.
Only two pets,
I distinctly remember Matthew saying.

I think of poor little Justin, the Pomeranian puppy.

I stand again, and as I move to have a look at the next one, to see if a dog called Daisy is buried here, I knock against something else. Something that wobbles before toppling heavily.

I’m too slow. I don’t move fast enough, and it falls straight onto my left foot.

‘Ouch! Oh God…’

Behind me a twig cracks underfoot, and I try to kick the slab away, but I can’t. I’m wedged – and it
really
bloody hurts.

The hairs on my neck go up as I sense someone behind me. But this garden is walled, secure – how can someone have got in unless it’s through the house?

I crane round quickly, wrenching my neck painfully.

A dark-skinned man stands on the path, halfway between the house and me. He’s holding something in his hands – some kind of bag, I think.

‘Hello?’ My voice comes out as a creak. ‘What do you want?’

He doesn’t speak but walks a bit nearer.

It’s not the gardener, who, from my short-sighted peering out of windows, I think is fair haired.

‘Can I help you?’ I croak – and I’m praying,
Please, stop
,
don’t come any nearer
. I crane round a bit more, so I can at least see half of his face. His brow is knitted in thought as he stares at me. ‘Please…’

‘I thought you were a gardener.’ He grins. ‘But you must be the wicked stepmother instead.’

Again a sort of relief floods through me – but I’m still worried. ‘Who are you?’ I don’t want to show my fear. ‘How did you get in?’

‘I’m Yassine.’ He moves nearer. ‘Kaye’s other half. Worst half.’ He laughs at his own joke. ‘I came through the garage.’

Like a fool, I must have left it open.

‘I brought Luke’s football boots.’ He has a pleasant-enough face and a wiry physique – and I don’t recognise him from Adam.

‘But he’s not here.’ I’m confused. ‘They’re in Belgium.’

‘Yeah – I know. But he’s got a match tomorrow evening when they get back, so he’s gotta go straight to the club. Or so I’m told by madame anyway.’ He grins again. ‘I just do what I’m told.’

I desperately want to move, but my foot is well and truly wedged, and I can’t lift the stone from this angle.

I’m trapped.

‘You okay?’ he asks politely.

‘Yeah. No, actually. I’m… sort of stuck…’

‘Wait a sec.’ He walks to me, putting the bag down. ‘Lean on me, yeah?’ He crouches – and I realise I have no choice. I put my hand on his shoulder, and he levers the stone away, using the weight of his whole body – but as he pushes it, summoning some gargantuan effort, he slips. He can’t regain his footing, and he falls into the ivy – and the mud.

‘Shit!’ he swears loudly. When he stands again, he’s covered from head to foot in dark brown mud, all down his right side, his face, his dark curly hair – the other side still pristine.

I try not to laugh, but it is quite funny – and then we’re both laughing, despite my sore foot and my arms that are now aching from all the hacking earlier.

‘You’d better come and clean up,’ I say.

I
nside
, he takes his muddy shoes off by the French windows.

‘I can use the downstairs bathroom,’ he says, and I’m about to direct him when I realise he already knows where it is. He has a slight accent, freckles that stand out very clearly against his tawny skin; he looks like a decent man. A young man.

He must be much younger than Kaye.

I change quickly in the utility room off the kitchen, pulling on leggings and a hoodie of Matthew’s, still not entirely comfortable that we’re alone in the house together.

The top of my foot feels really bruised, but at least, thank God, my boots were thick. The damage could have been much worse.

In the kitchen I wash my hands and put the kettle on, wondering about the sheer proliferation of animal graves. Yassine appears – cleaner but dripping wet where he’s sluiced himself down. He’s got no top on and rubs his hair vigorously with a hand towel. I’m about to offer him a T-shirt of Matt’s when a face looms at the window.

‘Oh my God!’ I hear myself exclaim.

‘What?’ He turns.

It’s a woman with elegant silver hair, tapping lightly on the pane, and for a moment, I can’t quite place her…

Of course! Sylvia Jones from the cul-de-sac. She must have changed her mind about coffee.

‘Hi!’ I wave. ‘Hang on a sec – I’ll open the front door.’

An expression I don’t understand crosses her face.

When I open the front door, she’s gone. I stare down the front drive, but the only sign of her is the garden gate slowly swinging back into place.

‘I’ll put these on outside.’ Yassine makes me jump again as he comes up silently behind me, his own shoes in hand. ‘Don’t want any more mess.’

‘Can I offer you anything?’ I just want him to go. ‘A cup of tea in gratitude?’

‘Thanks, but I’d better do one,’ he says. ‘Got a client at four.’

‘Okay. Well – thanks, again.’

‘No worries. See you around.’ He winks, and he’s gone.

God knows what he sees in Kaye – though of course that’s disingenuous. I can well imagine what he sees in her. Legs, hair, boobs, big car. Sparkling intellect maybe? Or sparkling diamonds maybe; I’m sure I saw one or two on her skinny fingers…

And then I think nothing more of him until later in the weekend.