The Stopped Heart (42 page)

He shook his head.

“What are you trying to say?”

“The fact will always be there, that I left them. I left them and I walked away and while I was gone, he took them.”

He took them. There, she'd said it. Three words that she could hardly bear to utter. Words that took her straight to a place of stinging black terror.

Quickly, as it always did, it played over again in her head. The moment in court. The careful adjusting of the shirtsleeves. Making himself comfortable. We will never be comfortable again,
she'd thought. Even if we both live to be a hundred, proper, ordinary human comfort is something we will never know again.

She saw that Graham did not know how to answer her. Good, she thought, I've finally shut him up. She waited.

He came up and put his arm around her.

“Why be so hard on yourself?” he said at last. “After all this time. I don't honestly see what it's going to achieve.”

This was so far off the mark that she couldn't help it—she laughed.

T
WO OR MAYBE THREE DAYS AFTER THEY
'
D LOST THEM, WHEN
they were still stuck in that hellish place of un-life, waiting for news, any news, one of the family liaison officers had happened to ask Graham where he thought they were.

“What, the girls?”

“Yes. The girls.”

Even at the time it had seemed an odd question. The only question, perhaps, but unaskable all the same.

She'd watched with a cold kind of interest as Graham touched his face, running his fingers over his sleepless, three-day beard.

He shut his eyes and he sighed.

“They're dead, Mike,” he'd said at last. “I think they are probably both dead.”

She had never in her life hated anyone more than she hated him at that moment.

M
ARY ASSUMES THAT
L
ISA WILL NOT BE COMING.
B
UT WHEN
she returns from walking the dog, she sees Graham standing in the lane with Ruby. Holding his car keys. He lifts a hand to stop her speaking.

“Ruby and I have had a long talk,” he says. “It's all sorted. I'll fill you in later.”

She stares at him.

“What, you mean she's coming? You can't be serious? You're saying you've given in? You've said that Lisa can come?”

Graham looks at Ruby.

“They're going to keep right out of our way. And you needn't worry about supper by the way. I'm sending them down the road for fish and chips.”

T
HIS TIME, POSSIBLY FOR THE FIRST TIME, SHE
'
S THE ONE WHO
calls him. He picks up so fast that for a second or two it throws her.

“Look,” she says, “I wanted to say I'm sorry. About the other day.”

“The other day?”

“You were right. I was sulking. And I shouldn't have been. It was silly. I overreacted. About the girls. I'm sorry.”

She hears him suck in his breath.

“You hung up on me.”

“I know,” she says. “I shouldn't have done that. I'm sorry.”

“And I called you, you know. After we found the—after the awful thing with the apple shed. I was quite worried about you. Yesterday and the day before. I called you several times.”

“I know.”

“I only wanted to see how you were. You could at least have answered your phone.”

“I'm sorry,” she says again.

“Why didn't you?”

“Answer my phone?” She hesitates, searching for something truthful. “I don't know. I just didn't feel I could speak to you.”

“But why not?”

“I don't know. I think—maybe I was afraid to.”

She hears him laugh.

“Afraid? You're afraid of me?”

Mary takes a breath.

“Not of you. Of what might happen. Of what we might say to each other.”

She hears him hesitate.

“You mean of what I might say or what you might say?”

“I don't know. Both.”

“You're afraid of us?”

“Maybe.”

“And now?”

“What?”

“What about now? Aren't you afraid of what might happen now?”

Mary thinks about this. She looks out the window—looks right down to the garden, at the place where the police tape had been, the place where until this morning the bones were. A hundred years or more.

“Mary?” he says. “Are you still there?”

She says that she is, but at the same time she wonders if she really is. A hundred years, she thinks. And there's her whole long empty life, hours and hours of it and years and years of it, stretching out ahead of her.

Eddie is silent for a moment.

“Why did you call me?” he says at last.

“I told you. I wanted to apologize.”

“Only for that?”

“I think so.”

“There's something else, though, isn't there?”

“I don't know,” she says.

“You do know.”

“All right,” she says. “I'm going for a walk. To my bench.”

“Right now?”

“Yes. Right now.”

He hesitates.

“And you want me to come?”

“Only if you want to.”

“If I want to? You know I want to.”

“Well, then.”

She hears his surprise.

“You want to see me now? You really do? After all this?”

“Yes,” she says. “I think so. Yes, I do.”

W
ALKING UP THE LANE,
I
WAS INTENDING TO GO INTO THE
house and up to my room but as I went past the kitchen door I heard such a commotion, what with the baby crying and Jazzy talking and everyone generally yapping at one another that I knew I could not face it. So I took myself around the back and down through the orchard instead.

I did not know where I was going; in fact, I had no plan at all. But it did not surprise me when I found myself in our old familiar place behind the apple shed. And there I lay down on that piece of ground that used to be so full of excitement and sweetness and I couldn't help it, I put my two hands on my chest, my knees, my thighs, trying to remember how it felt to be touched by him. And before I knew it I had slid my underclothes down and, licking my fingers, I put my hands where I knew that he would have put them and tried to do the exact same thing that he would have done to me.

Oh, it had been such a very long time. Hundreds and hundreds of years, it seemed. I wanted him so very badly.

I tried it fast and frantic and I tried it slow. I tried not to think about what I was doing and then I did, I let myself think of it. In the end, I couldn't help it, as my cheeks grew hot, I let my mind
go wandering away from my own body and off, over every particular part of him—all the parts I'd been trying for so long to stop myself thinking about.

I thought about his face. His eyes. Those hands. His chest, his shoulders, and his wrists. The strength of him and the vigor and the push. The body that was always hard and ready for me. The sweet, sky-high feeling of him reaching out for me—

But it was no use. None of it worked. My body was just my plain old girl's body, the one I had before I knew him—the one that did not feel or know anything much and certainly did not care what happened to it.

So I stopped my work. I let my stupid fingers drop to the ground. And then, as if it wanted to make its point, the fluttering started up in me again. Not a butterfly at all this time, but a tiny, trapped bird attempting to stretch its wings.

I knew it was all over then. I kept myself exactly where I was and I pressed my face against that warm dry earth. There was no reason anymore not to weep, so I let the tears come.

I cried until there were no more tears left in my face or my body or anywhere else in my whole sorry existence. And after that, I did nothing. I carried on lying there on the ground, my clothes still torn half off me, and I heard the rough, unlikely sound of my own heart beneath my bodice and I couldn't help listening for the other smaller one that must be beating in there too and something about the act of listening for it seemed to still and soothe me, and calm me down.

Minutes passed. I don't know what it was that made me lift my head and open my eyes, but something did. And that's when I saw it. Not the grass or the patch of hot blue sky that soared above or even the black shadows of the hedge or the greenish mildewed wood that was the apple shed, but something much worse.

A
FEW MONTHS AFTER IT WAS ALL OVER, A TEACHER FROM THE
school called at the house, bringing with her some of their exercise books and artwork. Barely into her twenties—round, pale face, heavy bosom, and big, blue-framed glasses. Miss Savage. It had always seemed the wrong name for a primary school teacher.

“I didn't know what to do,” she said, obviously distressed as she handed over a couple of grocery bags filled with sugar paper and painted cardboard, glitter already spilling out of them onto her hands. “It didn't seem right to bring it, but it didn't seem right not to either.”

Mary was very proud of herself. She was calm, welcoming. They sat at the kitchen table. She made Miss Savage a cup of tea, even offering her a piece of cake, which she refused, batting it away with glitter-covered hands. Mary kept on noticing how young she was. How she put her big, young, unmarried fingers around the mug and clung to it with something like gratitude.

“You needn't look at them now,” Miss Savage kept on saying. “I just couldn't bring myself to throw them away, that's all.”

But Mary did. She did need to look at them and right now was the only possible moment. She pulled something green out of the bag, something stiff and curling from its heavy dollops of paint and glue. Egg cartons stuck on, poster paint yellow. Green paper leaves. Some wool for grass. Dancing daffodils. She recognized Ella's writing, orange felt-tip, turned to brown on the green of the paper.

Her hands trembling. Moving her eyes away. Wanting to put it straight back in the bag but also to crush it in her arms. Greedy to be alone with it. Suddenly resenting the teacher's presence, yet
disliking herself for resenting it. Understanding the risk she had taken.

“It's very kind of you,” she said. “You are very kind. You did the right thing. We would always have wanted to have them.”

She looked up and saw that the teacher was pulling tissues out of her pocket. Taking her glasses off. Crying.

“It was terrible,” she said. “Taking the labels off their hooks. It took us a while to get around to it. I don't know why I'm telling you that. I'm so sorry. But it just was. It was the worst thing I've ever had to do in my life.”

L
ATER, WHEN THE TEACHER HAD GONE,
M
ARY STARED AT HERSELF
in the mirror. She stared at herself till the shapes were blurred and all the lines had changed and it looked like something not quite human was standing there.

What kind of a life could she live now? What was left for her? What kind of a person could she possibly be?

Her skin crawled. She itched all over.

She tried changing her clothes, but the new ones were just as bad, so she changed back again. She put on a sweater, but it hid nothing. She put on earrings, tore them off. It was her face, that was it. She thought of the honest kindness of the young woman's face—upset, plain, open. It made her want to weep.

She tied her hair back and began to scrub herself clean. All her makeup off, everything. But she found she could not bear herself like that either. In fact, if anything, that was worse. Because, when she looked at herself in the mirror, stripped and cleaned of everything that she had once used to disguise herself, she no longer saw herself at all, but them, just them, her two girls staring back at her.

I
SAT UP.
T
HE THING IN FRONT OF ME WAS THE THING THAT WE
had put in the ditch at Yarrow's field. It was covered in blood and
muck and worms and was lying there in the weeds and grass and staring back at me with dead, accusing eyes.

No. It was not possible. I shut my eyes. I opened them again. It was still there. One of the hands had opened and come away from the body. It was outstretched, the bone coming through the skin, its sharp white fingers reaching for me.

I gasped, pulling myself away across the grass as fast as I could. But as I moved, it seemed to follow, the whole body moving now in small jerks and starts. I knew it would not be long before I felt the bone-cold hardness of those fingers on me.

I began to scream and I did not stop until my father came running from the house to find me.

Get it away from me! I cried.

My father's face was stiff and white and appalled. He stood there watching as I sobbed and beat my two fists on the ground.

Get what? he said. What, Eliza? Whatever do you mean? Get what?

I looked back at where it had been. There was nothing. Just a patch of scrub and dandelions, a bee hovering in the mild air above them.

My father took a step closer. He was staring at me.

Eliza, he said. Whatever has happened to you?

I felt him looking at my bare legs, my bare thighs and whatever else he could or could not see. I tried to pull my skirts down, but I was crying so much I could not speak or move my hands. I knew I could not explain why I was lying there sobbing and crying with my clothes half off, so I did not try.

I said nothing. I gave a little moan. He continued to stare at me. I could see his thoughts forming and still I could not speak.

Who did this to you? he said. I need to know. Tell me now, Eliza, who did this terrible thing to you.

I said nothing. I did nothing. I did not need to. I realized then that it was very simple. All I had to do was let him look.

H
E IS ALREADY SITTING ON THE BENCH WHEN
M
ARY GETS
there. He pats the space next to him and she sits down. Feeling him looking at her.

“I like your dress.”

She glances down at what she's wearing. An old denim dungaree-skirt thing with pockets, grass-stained around the bottom.