Cuckoo (aka Claire, Darling)

Chapter Thirty-Two

Chapter Thirty-Two

I’m standing outside number 48 St Margaret’s Avenue, shaking like a leaf. I cannot believe what I am about to do. It’s Saturday morning, and while Noah’s car is still outside the house, I also know that every Saturday morning, without fail, he goes out on a run. Not a short run either, Noah is a very fit and healthy individual. No, he will run for at least an hour, usually topping twelve kilometres. I assume that staying over at Lilah’s house hasn’t changed this.

But I’ve obviously timed myself to arrive extra early, watching to make sure I see him leave before I make my move. And sure enough, come 9 a.m. the door swings open and there he is, looking as gorgeous as ever. He’s wearing tracksuit bottoms and an old T-shirt and has his earbuds in. I’ve squatted behind a tree on the opposite side of the road and faked tying a shoelace, watching him as he fiddles with his Fitbit.

But then, instead of kicking off his run, he does something strange. He looks back at the house, as though checking for something, and heads over to his car. He unlocks and opens the boot. From where I’m peering around the tree, I can see him removing an old gym bag and rummaging around in its pockets. Then he pulls out a phone. But it’s not his phone. No, his phone is sitting on his shoulder, strapped there by one of those fancy running belts. This phone is an odd little brick, like the burner kind a drug dealer would use. My heart thuds in my chest as I watch him slide it into his trackie bottoms. While his back is turned as he sorts out the bag and the boot, I hurry away from the house. At the end of the road, I crouch down behind a tree and wait, holding my breath.

Sure enough, a few minutes later Noah appears. He’s frowning at the burner phone then he presses it to his ear, still walking. He’s coming towards me and I worry that if I look up at him, he’ll feel my gaze and spot me, so I keep my head down, tucking myself into the smallest space I can. I hear his voice saying: ‘Hey… Yeah, I know, I’m sorry… I know, I’ll make it up to you… Yeah. I know. Mmm…’

My stomach is in my mouth. Who is he speaking to?

‘ Listen, I need to wrap some stuff up first,’ he’s saying, and I’m crawling along to try and keep up with him without being seen. My stomach is in knots.

‘I know, I know, but I…’ And then he’s too far away, across the street from me, and there’s no way I can follow him any longer without being seen. I let out a huff of frustration, collapsing back onto the ground with my back resting against a wall to compute what I’ve just learned.

Noah has a burner phone, which he is hiding from Lilah, and which he hid from me, too. He is using it to speak to at least one person, though I have no idea who that person is. So there’s Lilah, there’s this new layer to Noah’s double life, and there’s me. None of this is making any sense, none of it is slotting together. How does he have the fucking time ?

I peer back over the wall tentatively and see him in the distance. He must have finished the phone call because his hands are now empty and he’s jogging away confidently until he turns off towards the riverfront and I can no longer see him.

It takes a lot of strength to restrain myself from shouting after him, demanding to know who he was speaking to, begging him to take me back. But no, today isn’t about Noah. It’s about Lilah. I wait five minutes in case he has forgotten something and comes back early, but after that has passed I feel brave enough to head back to her yellow front door. I’ve been standing outside it in a panic for at least three minutes now. I don’t know what I’m most afraid of: whether it’s hearing what she has to say about Noah, finding out why she had my picture in her drawer, or why she was circling maternity rights information. Whatever it is, there’s something gripping me by the throat, stopping me from knocking.

So I close my eyes and take deep breaths.

I had been living alone for seven months when I first started getting the phone calls from Mother. Contrary to what I had promised her, I had not made the slightest effort to visit her since moving out. Initially, guilt had kicked in and I had thrown her a bone in the form of a couple of brief emails, informing her of my safety and asking if she was well. I received pages and pages in response, short novels , all varying in storyline. In some, she was depressed, unable to get out of bed without her darling daughter, her reason for living, beside her at home. In others, she was having the time of her life, she had three new boyfriends and was partying in ways she could never have imagined had I still been living at home with her, because I had always been a block on her true potential. And in some she said she was glad I was gone because she had never truly loved me. I had been a negative presence in her life and she hoped that I realised now just how much I needed her, how much I owed her, because it should be obvious to me that without her I was nothing.

So I’d stopped emailing.

And then, three months later, the call came.

I remember experiencing that same gripping sensation around my throat at the sight of her name on the screen. It restricted my breathing, made me pause with my hand over the accept button. Until finally, curiosity won out.

‘Claire?’ Her voice, sounding very cold and clear.

‘Hi, Mother,’ I replied, trying not to sound as wary as I felt.

‘Well, it’s just a quick call,’ she began, sounding sharp and snappy in comparison to her usual dramatics. ‘I want to let you know I have cancer. Stage 4, incurable, in my lungs. No point even trying chemo and, to be honest, it’s not worth the hassle. If I’m going to die, I’m doing it with a full head of hair, thank you very much. So anyway, now you know,’ she said, breezily. ‘Goodbye, Claire, darling.’ And with that, she hung up.

I stared at the phone in my hands for a long time, unsure what to do. Was this another game? A trick? Mother loved tricks; she loved to do anything that would capture my attention and send me running back to her. I quickly weighed up the pros and cons of calling her back, and decided I had to. A huge part of me believed this was just another lie, another ruse to get me rushing to her bedside with flowers and an apology. But I knew I couldn’t live with myself if that turned out to be wrong.

So I called back, and she let me run through to voicemail. So I left one. And a text message. And I emailed. They were all roughly the same in content: I asked how long she had left, whether I could come and visit, how she was feeling. I told her how sorry I was, as I knew was expected of me. After a week I’d had no reply to any of them, so I sent a huge bouquet of her favourite flowers to the house, still too afraid to visit unannounced. Too wary of what I would find there. I was afraid of seeing her weak and frail, sickly and dying, proof that I had left her alone, sick and helpless. I was equally afraid to find her strong and healthy, playing out another lie so she could mess with my emotions as though I was a puppet with no feelings of my own. I was afraid of being pushed away in my own mother’s dying moments. I was afraid of every other possible scenario when it came to her.

When I received no response to my gestures, I became angry. She was punishing me. This evil, lying woman did not have cancer. I was convinced of it. This was exactly the type of thing Mother would do to command attention, to force me to come back. She had once told the school she had sprained her ankle and kept me home for a week, running around her like a servant, bringing her food and wine in bed and plumping pillows behind her back. I had caught her in the middle of the night going to the bathroom, striding confidently along without so much as a twinge in her ankle, but had pretended not to see anything and continued doting on her for three more days after that.

She was doing the same thing again, but this time a more extreme scenario, because my defying her and leaving home was an extreme measure, so she had to punish me for it in equal measure. Yes, this was all a ruse, I told myself.

Except it wasn’t.