Chapter 18
The night passes long and uncomfortable on the hard mattress.
I get a cramp that causes me to curl into a ball and howl in the dark like a wounded animal.
The rain is hard little fingers rapping at the window, the ghosts of buried women shaking grave dirt from their hair.
As the day dawns watery and pale, that seed of a plan has germinated overnight into something I can use.
It excites me, the possibility of it. I wake and turn over, noticing with a jolt what I am holding in my hand.
A fistful of long dark hair. I hold it up in front of my face, feeling cold and queasy, disbelieving.
It is not mine. It is too long, must be almost four feet, wiry and greasy to the touch.
The ends are bloodied, follicles still attached as if it has been snatched out by the root.
Using my free hand I awkwardly strip the pillow of its striped casing and bundle the hair inside, desperate not to touch it a second longer.
I twist the top of the pillowcase closed and throw it to one side, almost expecting the hair inside to start moving; writhing and sinuous, almost serpentine.
I need my meds, I remind myself, fumbling with my jeans and crab-walking over to the bucket.
There is a swill of dirty tissues and dark, tarry-colored urine on the inside.
Good. Got to keep hold of that. It’s precious stuff.
Liquid gold. I almost laugh aloud but cut myself off just before it can leave my mouth.
Talking to myself is one thing, but I don’t think I can stand to hear my fragile laugh echo in this empty room.
It’s too close to lunacy for my liking. Once I’ve rinsed my mouth with water, I cross over to the window.
I don’t know what the time is, but I can make a rough guess.
The shadows between the trees are fading to violet, mist hovering over the grass like a creeping wraith.
The birds are already singing: a cheerful, flutelike robin, the high, piping song of the mistle thrush.
During lockdown, Joe had tried to teach me how to recognize the different birdcalls, dragging me out of bed to experience the dawn chorus in the garden in our pajamas.
The chatter and chorale had been uplifting, like hymns.
Like discovering the shape of a miracle.
No. I tell myself sternly, Don’t think about Joe.
But I can’t help myself. It’s there and gone, a flash of memory like a light bulb burning out. Muted paintwork, sealed windows with no chains on the blinds. Joe saying, I can’t do this anymore, Hazel.
He didn’t come back for you. Not once.
I’m touching my scar again. My hand has moved there of its own accord, without my even realizing. The skin is hot and slightly swollen as if an infection has set in. If I press it, I feel something fluttering inside, like a moth held between my fingers.
I’ll bury him. I’ll bury him in the flower beds, under the borage and lavender. Let the bees crawl into the empty shell of his skull.
“You don’t touch him,” I tell the voice. My teeth are gritted together. “Leave Joe alone!”
Ah, Hazel. But the thought is already in the meat of your brain. I’m just working it deeper. You are a terrible person, and you have done terrible things.
Overhead, the sound of quick, running footsteps.
Not Andrew’s deliberate trudge, heavy in his boots; this is fleeting, almost scampering.
If I didn’t know different, I’d think it was a squirrel or a cat, something playful chasing its tail.
But now I do know different, and so I run up the stairs to meet her at the locked door, using my knuckles to knock lightly against it, tap-tap-tap.
“Hazel?”
It’s good to hear her voice. It’s sane. Real.
“Maria? Why are you up so early?”
“Quick pro go,” I hear her say. It takes me a moment to realize what she means.
“Ah, okay. It’s quid pro quo, Maria. You want to give me something?”
“I want more gum.”
That’s it. There’s no good morning or please. No pleasantries of any kind. Just straight to the point, no messing around. It’s refreshing, in a way. Concise.
I reach into my pocket for the pack, leaning close to the door so she can hear me. “You have to give me something in return, remember?”
Something is passed beneath the door. Another photograph, faceup this time. It’s of a smiling little girl sitting on a woman’s lap. She is holding a plastic doll in her hand and looking wide-eyed at a birthday cake topped with three candles. I turn it over. A date has been written there. Nov. 2013.
“Is this you?” I ask.
“Me and my mum. That’s my cake. I was three.”
“Looks like you got a Bratz doll. Man, I loved those dolls. We were never allowed one because my mum said they looked like hookers.”
I peer a little closer at the photo, holding it under the light.
The little girl in the photograph has a corona of white-blond hair, a round cherubic face.
I can just make out a thin line running from her top lip into her nostril.
A cleft lip, like Joe had had as a kid. He’d had surgery as a baby and been left with the same white scar, thin as a thread.
We used to compare our scars, call them His ’n’ Hers. Before things went bad.
“It’s a secret photo. I keep it under my pillow.”
“Well, you know I can’t keep this, Maria. Here. Take the gum. Put it back under your pillow. Hold on to it.”
“I want to try the cherry flavor.”
I peel open the pack and pull out a strip. I wait until she has taken the photo back before saying, “Do you still have my bag out there? It’s an old rucksack.”
“Yuh.” She sniffs. “But it’s upstairs now. He takes what he wants out of it, and the rest he gives to me.”
She’s talking quickly, and I can sense her impatience, the hopping, agitated dance. I know she’s probably had a big sugar hit, and like Teddy said, Wonderland is so full of sugar it’s borderline illegal.
“What do you think your brother will take out of my bag, Maria?”
“Don’t know. Sometimes it’s a small thing like a key or a lipstick. He keeps them in a box and buries them like treasures, only he doesn’t call them that. He’s got a special word for it, that sounds like serving-knees.”
“Serving-knees?”
“Yuh. That’s why I just call them treasures. I always mess the other word up. Can I have my gum now?”
I’m frowning, staring at a knothole in the wood. Serving-knees. When you say it out loud, it almost sounds French.
“Hazel?”
“Souvenirs. That’s what he’s saying, isn’t it? It means ‘keepsakes.’”
“Yes!” Maria must be right up against the keyhole because the volume of her voice startles me.
“They are the things he keeps. Little things. He puts them in a box and he puts the box in the ground and he thinks I don’t see him bury it, but I do because my window looks out over the old greenhouse and I know where he goes. ”
I slide the gum beneath the door and she snatches it up right away.
“Well, now listen. I need something out of my bag. It’s a receipt. You think you can find it for me?”
“A receipt.” She sounds out the word slowly, already chewing down on the gum.
I remember that first taste. The way the flavor hits you, the way your mouth squirts with saliva in anticipation.
“It’s a piece of paper which tells you what you’ve bought. Sometimes it has the name of the shop printed at the top. You think you can find it for me? It’s from Idless Pharmacy. It’s probably shoved right near the bottom.”
Maria considers this in silence. I don’t know when Andrew will be home, but I can’t help but feel a surge of impatience that forces me to bite my knuckles to keep quiet. I can’t hurry her. I need her help.
“Quick pro go.” She says it quietly, and this time I don’t correct her.
“Quick pro go, Maria, that’s right. My receipt for your gum. Go on, then! Quick as you can!”
I wait. The air is cold and clammy, pressing against me like wet clothes sticking to my skin.
The pale dawn glows like twilight. It makes me disoriented.
The birds have been singing awhile now, so is it late morning?
When did I last have something to eat? I’m nauseous with hunger.
I can’t work out how long I’ve been down here altogether.
Three days? Four? I feel like I’m floundering around in pitch-black water, unable to come up for air.
This all hangs on Maria finding me the receipt, and now I’m starting to doubt myself and this whole stupid plan.
The uncertainty spreads like an inkblot, staining everything.
I’m relying on too many things out of my control for this to work, it’s impossible.
What if I threw the receipt into one of the bins in the precinct instead?
What if I tore it up, shredded into pieces in the bottom of my bag?
What if it is too small, too crumpled? God.
I’m starting to sweat. That blackness, flourishing, multiplying.
Doubt like germs on a petri dish. My hand is stroking my scar again, trailing a nail along the seams.
“Is this it?”
Her voice makes me jump. I stare at the door stupidly for a few seconds, blinking.
“Show me.”
She slides it under the door. The receipt is crumpled but not torn.
Although Idless Pharmacy still looks the way it had in the nineties, the till receipt is much more modern, itemizing the things I’d bought and the time and date they were purchased.
There’s even Suzie’s name there at the top.
Good. A good start. I’m excited. I want to get started right away, but I hang back.
There’s something I have to ask her before I go.
“Where does he go, Maria? When he leaves here?”
“He goes to work.”
Work. The word lands on me with weight, hard enough to leave an imprint.
It knocks something into place, something that has been an itch at the back of my brain since I’d first seen Andrew standing there in his stained overalls, fingernails rimed with that clay-colored soil.
Planting hydrangeas, he’d said. The blankets and pillowcases downstairs, the familiarity of them.
Anti-ligature bedding, he’d called it, but I’d already known it, hadn’t I?
That faintly itchy fabric, worn stiff by too many spells in the washing machine.
The detergent used to wash them, floral and somehow clinical.
I know it. Intimately, almost. They’re women like you, Andrew had told me, and now I know what he means by that I’m almost winded by the force of it.
“You won’t tell him, will you, Hazel? That I’ve been down here talking to you?”
“No,” I manage, trying not to sound as if I am being slowly strangled. “Of course not. All of this is our little secret.”
I listen to her footsteps as she moves away with her quick little feet. I’m so tense I’m crushing the receipt in my hands, and for this to work I need it to be legible, so I force myself to relax. Deep breaths. Focus.
Behind me, on those rickety wooden stairs that descend into shadow, I hear a sound like chattering teeth. With it comes an overpowering odor that seems to darken the air around me with filth. The dust motes stir as if agitated.
I do not know how much longer I can wait.