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When I woke up on December 28th, I didn’t feel any better, but I did feel able to carry on. Which was both a good thing and my best-case scenario. There was a plan B if I hadn’t managed to feel differently about the future, but I flushed that option away and I’m glad. Christmas used to be my favourite time of year, but now it is something that needs to be got through, not celebrated. And the only way I know how to do that is alone.
Sometimes it feels as though I live just below the surface, and everyone else lives above. When I try to be, and sound, and act like they do for too long, it feels like I can’t breathe. As though even my lungs were made differently, and I’m not able, or good enough to inhale the same air as the people I meet.
I lock the car and look up and down the old familiar street. Nothing much has changed. There is a bungalow that has morphed into a house, and a garden that has become a driveway a little farther down the road, but otherwise, everything looks just like it used to. Like it always has. As though perhaps the last twenty years were a lie, a figment of my tired imagination. The truth is, I feel like I’ve been teetering on the edge of crazy town for a while now, but have yet to fully cross the border.
My feet come to a standstill at the last house on the lane, and it takes me a while to look up, as though I am scared of making eye contact. When I do turn to stare at the old Victorian cottage, it looks exactly the same as it always did. Except for the peeling paint on the window frames and ageing front door. The place looking old is new to me. The garden is what shocks me the most: an overgrown jungle of uncut grass and heather. The two lines of lavender bushes on either side of the path have also been neglected; crooked, woody stems reach out like twisted, arthritic fingers, as though to prevent anyone from going in.
Or getting out.
I stare down at the garden gate and see that it is broken and hanging off its hinges. I lift it to one side and navigate my way to the front door, hesitating before ringing the bell. I needn’t have bothered. It doesn’t work, so I knock instead. Three times, just like she taught me all those years ago, so she would know it was me. For a long time, she wouldn’t let anyone else into the house.
When nobody answers, I stare down at the faded welcome mat and see that it is upside down. It’s as if it isn’t for visitors at all, but there instead to welcome her into the real world, should she ever decide to step outside and rejoin it. I silently scold myself, and try to put the unkind thoughts to bed, tucking them in as tightly as possible. Then I see what I’m looking for: a cracked terracotta flowerpot on the doorstep. I lift it up and am a little surprised that she still keeps a key hidden underneath.
I let myself inside.
Him
Tuesday 10:05
I lost her at the second roundabout – she has always driven faster than she should – but it didn’t matter. I had already guessed by then where she was going. I’ll be honest, I was surprised after all this time. As soon as I see her car on the street confirming my suspicions, I pull over a bit further down, turn off the engine and wait.
I’m good at waiting.
Anna looks different from earlier this morning. Still beautiful, with her shiny brown hair, big green eyes, and little red coat, but smaller. As if this place has the power to physically do that to her. She looks more fragile, easy to break.
My ex never did like coming back here, even before our daughter died, not that she would ever talk about it or explain why. After it happened, she stopped going anywhere except the newsroom. Even shopping was something that she would only do online, so that she rarely left the flat except for work.
She couldn’t even bear to say our little girl’s name, and was furious if I ever did, covering her ears as though the sound of it offended them. There are things that have happened in my life – mistakes I have made, people I have hurt – that I seem to have almost completely deleted from my mind. It’s as though the memories were too painful to hold on to, and needed to be erased. But, despite my guilt, my daughter isn’t one of them. I sometimes still whisper her name inside my head. Unlike Anna, I don’t want to forget. I don’t deserve to.
Charlotte. Charlotte. Charlotte.
She was so small and so perfect. Then she was gone.
When you find out you’re allergic to something, the logical thing to do is to avoid it. And that’s what Anna did with her grief. She kept busy at work in public, and in private spent all of her time hiding at home, trying to protect herself from the rashes of fear that seeing other people inflicted on her. She’s learned to hide her anxiety from others, but I know worry makes her world go round.
My stomach starts to grumble and I realise I still haven’t eaten anything today. I usually have a few sugary snacks in the car. If my dead mother knew, I’m sure she would haunt me with a ghostly toothbrush. I open the glove compartment, but instead of the chocolate bar or forgotten biscuits I’d been hoping to find, I see a pair of black, lacy knickers. I’m guessing they must have belonged to Rachel – women taking their clothes off in my car is not a regular occurrence – though I’ve no idea how they got in there.
I reach inside the glove compartment again and spot some Tic Tacs. They remind me of Anna – she always had little boxes of mints – and while they won’t do much to satisfy my hunger, they’re better than nothing. I shake the small plastic box, then flip open the lid and tip a few out. But the white shapes are not mints. I stare at the thick fingernail clippings on the palm of my hand and think I’m going to be sick.
A car door slams down the street. I throw the underwear and the Tic Tac box back inside the glove compartment, slamming it closed seconds afterwards, like a nervous echo. As though if I can’t see them, they were never really there.
Someone knows I was with Rachel last night, and now they are fucking with me.
I can think of no other explanation, but who?
I stare out of the car window and watch Anna’s every move. She took her time getting out of the car, despite her rush to get here. I can’t help thinking it’s because she is afraid of what she might find behind closed doors. I sympathise with that because she is right to be.
I know what is waiting for her inside that house, because I go there all the time.
I even had my own key cut.
Not that either of them knew.
Her
Tuesday 10:10
I should have known it would be like this.
There is a pile of unopened mail behind the door, making it difficult to open. I close it behind me as soon as I’ve managed to squeeze through the gap, but discover it’s just as cold inside the house as it was out on the street. My eyes try to adjust to the gloom – it is difficult to see – but the thing I notice first, and most, is the smell. It’s as though something has died in here.
‘Hello?’ I call, but there is no answer.
I hear the familiar murmurs of a television at the back of the house, and don’t know whether to feel happy or sad about it. The roman blinds are all down, with just a sliver of winter sun trying to backlight their elderly cotton edges. I remember that they were all homemade, over twenty years ago. I try the light switch but nothing happens, and when I squint up into the darkness, I can see that there is no bulb.
‘Hello?’ I call again.
