Chapter 27
TWENTY-SEVEN
I didn’t speak to Beatrice for the rest of the day after our encounter in Orla’s bedroom, and on Sunday, I went round to Emily’s place and had a barbecue with her and her housemates, returning late in the evening. As usual, Beatrice had already left for work when I got up on the Monday morning.
But although our paths didn’t cross, the sense of her presence in the house filled me with anxiety. The sound of her voice singing ‘Don’t Cry for Me Argentina’ as she put on her make-up in the mornings woke me more reliably than my alarm clock. Only when I heard the front door click closed behind her at seven o’clock sharp could I feel myself breathe easily again.
I didn’t know what to do. I’d felt that the house on Damask Square was a safe place, a refuge created by Orla’s laughter, Luke’s smile and even the patter of Maud’s paws. Now, I didn’t feel safe any longer. I felt the same hyper alertness, almost fear, that I’d felt back when I was living with Samantha and Amanda, and it was a sensation I’d believed I had left behind forever – left behind the day I’d closed the door of my parents’ house to set off for university.
I’d been wrong then, and it seemed I was wrong again.
When I approached the house on Monday evening after work, I didn’t feel the lift of my spirits, the eagerness to walk into a place where I was secure and welcome, which I’d always felt before. I felt tense, on edge, unwilling to discover what would be waiting for me when I opened the front door.
But as it turned out, I didn’t need to open the door on that particular Monday – it was already open, held back against the wall by a brick, and Luke was emerging. He was shirtless, wearing a bright yellow safety helmet, his usual battered shorts and steel-capped work boots, carrying a sack of rubble in his arms.
The sight of him took my breath away, the longing to touch him sweeping over me.
His face lit up when he saw me. ‘Evening, Liv.’
‘Look at you,’ I said. ‘You look like the entertainment on a hen night. Sexy builder-o-gram.’
He laughed, tossing the sack into the skip as easily as if it was filled with feathers. ‘Not so sexy if you could smell me.’
I moved in to hug him, but he stepped back, shaking his head. ‘Seriously, Liv. I’m properly rancid.’
‘Do you think I care?’ But I only leaned in, kissing him gingerly without letting our bodies touch. I could taste the salt of his sweat on my lips, and to me he smelled delicious.
‘I’m just about done here. The sparks knocked off at four – they’ve got another week, they reckon, and then the electrics will be sorted.’
‘So we won’t have to worry about Orla electrocuting herself every time she switches the cooker on?’
‘Don’t know about that. Wiring or no wiring, that thing’s on its last legs. I’m going to grab a shower – want to sit out in the garden for a bit after?’
I hesitated. The thought of relaxing outside with him, the door to the kitchen standing open so I could wander in and out, helping Orla with dinner and chatting to her about my day, would normally have got my instant approval. But this evening I felt different. I wouldn’t be able to relax around Orla, knowing I was hiding something from her. I’d be constantly alert to the sound of Beatrice’s key in the door, the tap of her trainers on the floor, the rattle of the metal hardware on her handbag when she hung it up.
The silence that often followed before she entered the kitchen, when I knew she was waiting in the hallway, listening.
‘Let’s not go in just yet,’ I suggested. ‘Let’s go for a walk.’
Luke opened his mouth as if to protest, then said, ‘Okay. Guess I’d better put a shirt on.’
‘No need to bother on my account,’ I teased. ‘Anyway, you look like you’re wearing one already.’
He grinned, glancing at his bare arm, his bicep flexing in a way that made me long to touch it. ‘Farmer’s tan. Thought I’d get rid of it by stripping off today, but it’s not shifting, is it?’
I shook my head, my heart fluttering with desire, and treated myself to a long look at his back view as he disappeared into the house.
Seconds later he emerged again, pulling his T-shirt over his head. ‘I’m good to go. So long as you weren’t suggesting we go to a fancy restaurant.’
‘Just a walk. I wanted to talk to you.’
I led him around to the far side of the square, used my key to open the gate in the iron railings and guided him over to one of the metal benches that stood at intervals around its perimeter. The sun was beginning to sink, the heat of the day giving way to evening. The chestnut trees in the centre of the square cast long, cool shadows over us. Behind us was a long bed of roses, which had been tended carefully all summer by a volunteer from the preservation society. Their blooms were all shades from ivory to crimson, petals scattered on the path like fragments of a sunset.
Forgetting his alleged sweatiness, Luke laid his arm along the back of the bench and I leaned back against it. We were alone in the garden and the noise of the city was muffled, the only distinct sound the trill of a robin somewhere in the branches.
‘How was Emily?’ he asked.
‘Good. We had fun. She’s excited to meet you sometime.’
I didn’t tell him that Emily had said I was welcome to bring him to the barbecue, and I’d found myself saying it was too soon. It wasn’t that I thought Luke wouldn’t like Emily or Emily wouldn’t like him – it was a kind of instinctive need to keep my life at Damask Square separate from my life outside of it, as if I was living in two distinct worlds.
‘I’d like to meet her too,’ Luke said. ‘I’m sure I will soon. And your mate at work, the one with the cocker spaniel puppy…?’
‘Kelly. Is it her you want to meet, really, or the puppy?’
He laughed. ‘You got me. It’s both – and neither, I guess. It’s all the little bits of your life I want to get to know. Like, you hardly ever talk about your parents.’
‘No,’ I said slowly. ‘I don’t.’
‘Do you want to? It’s okay if you don’t,’ he said.
‘It’s nothing.’ I looked down at Luke’s hand, still grubby from working, resting on the leg of his jeans, and took it in mine. ‘Nothing big, not like what happened with your dad. It’s just… not right.’
‘Not right how?’ he asked gently.
‘When I was little,’ I said, ‘I used to get invited round to friends’ houses for playdates and birthday parties and stuff, like you do. I noticed their houses were different from ours but I didn’t think anything of it because – you know – I was a kid and you don’t notice stuff like that and anyway everyone’s house is a bit different from everyone else’s. But when I asked Mum if I could invite friends back to ours, she said no. Just a flat no, like that, every single time.’
‘Blimey. Why not?’
‘It took me a while to realise. By then, the other kids had stopped inviting me and I didn’t have proper friends outside of school. I’d talk to people at lunch and stuff, and I was on the netball team. It’s not like I was some kind of pariah. But after school and at weekends I’d go home and not see anyone except Mum and Dad.’
Luke put the arm that had been along the top of the bench around my shoulders and pulled me closer, a silent urging to continue.
‘I was in the doctor’s waiting room when I realised. I was fourteen and was sat waiting to be seen, reading Eve magazine, and I saw this story.’
‘What was it about?’
I took a breath. I’d never told anyone except Emily this before.
‘It was about hoarders. You know, living rooms so full of stuff you can’t see the TV, the stairs a tripping hazard, the kitchen full of takeaway cartons that have been there for years. That.’
‘I’ve seen stuff about that,’ Luke said. ‘It’s some kind of – like a mental illness, right?’
‘Right. So I read the article and I was like, that’s Mum and Dad. That’s our house. That’s what’s wrong.’
‘How did it feel, when you realised?’
‘Weird. I went from thinking the way we lived was just a bit different from other people to feeling ashamed, because now it had a name. I imagined our house being on TV one day and everyone thinking how disgusting it was.’
‘What did you do?’ he asked, his arm tightening around me.
‘I tried to talk to them. I said, “Look, I know this is a thing now, let me help.” But they didn’t want to change. And besides, it was way more than one teenage girl could sort out, even if I’d worked every day for months and months.’
‘I can imagine that.’
‘So I gave up. I just focused on school and getting the best marks I could until I could leave and go to uni. And then I did.’
‘I’m so sorry.’
His words sent me over the edge. I turned, burying my head in his bare chest, neither of us caring now what he smelled like, and I sobbed.
‘I didn’t go back to stay after that,’ I managed to say. ‘I took everything I cared about back to uni with me and now when I go back – which I don’t often – I stay in a hotel. I hate it there. I hate… I don’t hate them, not really. But I kind of do.’
Luke held me while I cried. After a while, he pulled a bit of blue paper towel from his pocket, checked it wasn’t too dusty and wiped my eyes with it.
‘Thanks for telling me,’ he said. ‘That must’ve been hard.’
I blew my nose. ‘I bet when I said let’s go for a walk, you weren’t expecting that.’
‘I’ve got to admit…’ He grinned, and I half-laughed. ‘But you did want to talk about something else. What’s up?’
‘There’s something going on with Beatrice. Her and Orla. Something weird.’
Hesitantly, I spilled out the story of what had happened when I’d discovered Beatrice in Orla’s bedroom going through her things. It had been impossible to tell him at the time, with Beatrice’s open bedroom window overlooking the garden – she’d have heard everything. Besides, I’d been blindsided by guilt at my own unwitting complicity in what she’d done.
‘So I felt like I couldn’t say anything to her,’ I finished. ‘If I tell Orla, I’d be a snitch and also… I don’t want to worry her. And I don’t… I mean, what if there’s some totally reasonable explanation?’
‘Like what? She dropped an earring and it fell into a suitcase under the bed in a room that’s not hers?’
‘Okay, so there isn’t a reasonable explanation,’ I agreed. ‘But what do I do? What if I tell her and she asks Beatrice to leave? Or I tell her and she doesn’t ask her to leave, but Beatrice knows I grassed her up and hates me more than she already does?’
‘She doesn’t hate you. Come on, Liv, don’t be overdramatic.’
‘Sometimes,’ I said tentatively, only realising the truth of what I was saying as the words came out, ‘I feel like she hates all of us. But mostly Orla.’
‘You know what I think?’ Luke said slowly, as if he too was only just beginning to realise it himself, ‘I think they’re too similar, and that’s why they get on each other’s nerves.’
‘Too what?’ I asked, startled. Two people less similar than cool, steely Orla and spoiled, tempestuous Beatrice I could barely imagine.
‘Yeah, I know. But there’s things about them. They both like things their own way. They’re both stubborn as hell. They’ve both got this way of holding their heads – I drew a thing yesterday, just a sketch, of Orla and I realised it could have been Beatrice, until I filled in the features. And there’s another thing too.’
‘What’s that?’
‘They’re both hiding something,’ he said. ‘It’s like that house is full of secrets and I sometimes wonder when I’ll be clearing stuff out for the skip and I’ll discover them.’
We sat in silence for a moment.
Then Luke said, ‘And I can’t say I’m looking forward to that happening.’