Chapter 9 December 9th
My legs work like pistons as I run through the park, the cold, gusting wind coming at me making me work harder.
Don’t get close.
Easier said than done when what you’re trying to avoid is the positive to your negative. The most powerful magnet. Except he walked away after kissing me. Will he call?
Don’t get close.
I growl under my breath, pumping my legs harder, faster, wanting to pound the conflict away. I don’t stop sprinting at the end of the park pathway. Not even when I approach Pret. Or when I make it back to Camden.
I keep running until I make it to my apartment, my lungs burning, my body dripping.
“Camryn, are you trying to run yourself to death?” Mr. Percival asks as I hang on to the railings that flank the path to our building, my breathing loud and strained. “My God, girl, you’re as red as a beetroot.”
I can’t even talk, unable to draw in air to get any words out. So I flap a hand, reassuring him I’m fine. That’s debatable. My heart’s booming in my ears, blood whooshing, making my hearing crackle.
My hands squeezing the icy, black iron spear tips of the bars, my arms braced, I lift my head, my face hot with the blood in my cheeks. “Morning,” I puff, my chest tight. Christ, am I going to have a heart attack? “I’m okay.”
He shakes his head, the wiry hair of both his eyebrows meeting in the middle when they pinch together.
“You young folk,” he mutters, hobbling along with the help of his walking frame.
“Obsessing about the extra pounds you’re going to put on over the holidays with all the mince pies and eggnog. We didn’t worry about that in my day.”
“Mr. Percival, please be careful.” I’m not operating on full steam at the moment, so there will be no dramatic dive to catch him if he tips over.
“Steady as a rock, me, dear.” He stops and lifts his walking frame off the ground, performing what I think are supposed to be chest presses.
“Except when you’re put on your arse by a Christmas tree.”
“Mitigating circumstances.” Slapping his gloved hands together, he rubs them and blows into them at the same time. “It’s chilly today.”
“Freezing.” I turn and lean against the railings, my legs like jelly, and reach up to pull my hair tie out. “Where are you off to?”
“To order the turkey. Ahead of the game, me, dear. You can’t be too careful.
Last year, I was laid up with the flu and couldn’t get to the butchers until December sixteenth.
I had to make do with a crown. There were no turkey sandwiches on Boxing Day, turkey curry on the twenty-seventh, or stew on the twenty-eighth for me, dear. I’m not making that mistake again.”
“That’s a lot of turkey. Who are you having over for Christmas, Mr. Percival?”
“Maureen,” he declares. “It’s her favourite.”
“Right,” I muse, still not sure who Maureen is. There’s no wife, no family. “Have a good day, Mr. Percival.”
His gloved hand comes up in goodbye, he slips his flat cap on, and I trudge up to the door, swinging it open, hearing the tree pines crunching under my trainers as I walk down the corridor, slowing when I spot something on the floor outside my door.
A round cake tin. I crouch and pick it up, removing the lid, and a waft of something rich and indulgent hits my nose.
Brandy and fruit. “Christmas cake.” I take in the uneven icing encasing it as I push through my legs to rise again.
“Jesus,” I groan, my muscles screaming, each one feeling like it’s being stretched to capacity and could ping at any moment.
I’d have a bath, soak in some Radox.
If I had a bath.
Throwing my keys on the side, I go to the kitchen and slide my cake onto the counter, drilling holes into it.
There aren’t many suspects. Only one, in fact.
Sighing, I get a blunt dinner knife, not a sharp chef’s knife—don’t have one of those—and push it into the icing with some weight behind me, cutting a small slice.
My conscience is the only thing making me try a piece—and the fact I could do with a sugar hit.
I wrap my lips around it and lower to the chair.
The fruit drenched in brandy hits my taste buds like a torpedo, exploding in my mouth.
“Wow,” I mumble around my chews. Mr. Percival knows how to make good Christmas cake.
Five bites are all it takes to finish the slice, and I want more.
So I cut another piece, catching a crumb on the edge of my lip and sucking it off the tip of my finger.
My chewing slows when my phone beeps. Not a message, not a call, not an email.
A weather warning. I stare down at that one fatal word.
Snow.
“No,” I whisper, opening BBC News, scanning the report detailing the impending cold snap moving in later, the snow, the ice, the disruption.
No transport.
No running.
No work?
I jump up and go to the window, looking up to the sky, as if that might tell me the weather reporter is wrong. A white, dense blanket greets me. “Shit,” I sigh, slipping the last of my second slice into my mouth and chewing as I go back to the kitchen.
I put the cake in the fridge.
It’s a splash of colour in the pallid space.
Grit lorries are out in force when I leave a couple of hours later, chugging up and down the main roads spitting out stones. And the temperature feels like it’s dropped even more, making the walk to see Mum feel so much longer.
My fingers are like freeze pops by the time I arrive, my nose certainly glowing, my lips blue. I need a hat. Some gloves. I wouldn’t know which box to search for those, and I wouldn’t want to even if I did. I’ll grab some from a shop when I’m passing.
I nod my hello to the lady on the desk as I sign in, the urge to ask how Mum is nearly getting the better of me. Her health isn’t a marker on whether she’ll recognise me today.
The double doors click as I’m approaching, allowing me through, and one of Mum’s nurses, Deirdre, spots me and makes her way over, falling into side beside me. “How’s your cheek, Camryn?”
“It’s nothing.”
“Did you have it checked out?”
My hand instinctively reaches for it as snapshots of Thursday evening parade through my mind—all Dec.
His worry when I opened the door. His hand on my cheek.
How his presence provided unexplainable healing powers.
And then, inevitably, the kiss we shared last night.
I lay awake for hours agonising over what happens next, and the fact I simply do not know only makes the voice in my head louder.
The voice that’s telling me to protect what’s left of my devastated heart at all costs.
“Yes,” I say. Why hasn’t he been in touch?
A text, a call. Anything. After that kiss, I feel like I need something from him.
No, you don’t.
Yes, you do.
“About the carols service.”
“What about it?” I ask, reaching up and rubbing my achy head.
“It’s December twenty-first, in case you’re not working.”
“I am.”
I hear Deirdre sigh. I’m not sure if I was meant to. “She’s been better today.”
Again, better doesn’t mean she’ll recognise me. “That’s good to hear.” I reach Mum’s door and push my way in, completely taken aback when I find my brother’s wife, Mindy, by Mum’s bed. I haven’t seen her for months.
“Camryn,” she says, almost embarrassed, standing.
“Camryn?” Mum says, her wishy-washy eyes turning my way. “Who’s Camryn?”
Mindy visibly flinches as I stand here, broken again, wondering if Mum recognises Mindy. I have a feeling she must, judging by the fact she’s calm and Mindy is close by the bed. Plus, my sister-in-law’s reaction. “This is Camryn,” Mindy virtually shouts. “You know Camryn.”
“She’s not deaf, Mindy, she’s senile.” I unzip my coat and wriggle out of it, popping it on the radiator to warm it up for when I leave.
“So where’s my dear brother?” Mindy and I have always got along.
She’s been around for as long as I remember, which makes the fact that she’s been absent all the more painful too.
“Working.”
“A lot to catch up after your three-week holiday, I suppose.” I can hear myself, sounding twisted and full of resentment.
How is it fair Mum recognises my brother’s wife and not her own daughter?
Mindy’s here as a token gesture, a way to appease me, the whiny sister who sees nothing but injustice in the world.
How is it fair Dad passed away when I needed him the most?
How is it fair Mum fell ill and forgot who I was?
How is it fair my marriage failed? How is it fair I lost my friends and my family? How is it fair . . .?
I quickly pull myself into line before I spiral into a full-blown meltdown in the care home.
Mindy lowers to the chair, shrinking. “How have you been?” she asks and immediately flinches.
I look out the corner of my eye at her as I take Mum’s water jug and rinse it in the sink in the corner. “Dandy.”
“Right.” She sighs, going back to my mother, giving up on me.
Like everyone else in my world. I can hardly blame them, given I gave up on myself long ago.
Water gushes from the tap into the jug, muffling whatever Mindy is saying to Mum, and I proceed to faff around the bed, making myself useful while they have a conversation—something I so desperately want with my mother.
See me!
I miss her wise words. I miss her reason and the way she could clutch at my hand and tell me I’ve got this.
It doesn’t matter that now, if she were to do that, tell me I’ve got this, it would be a lie.
Just her belief in me, her way of being strong for me when I couldn’t be strong myself, is what I need.
What I miss. And her hugs. The best hugs.
Hugs that made even the worst times feel like they could be okay. I need my mum.
I place her vase back on the cabinet, letting my eyes find her on the bed. Mindy’s holding her hand. The hand that struck me.
“Where’s Noah?” Mum asks out of the blue, jarring me.
“He’s not coming, Mum,” I say, my voice brittle, the weight of Mindy’s gaze heavy on me. I turn my welling eyes onto her. “He’s never coming.” I dip and kiss Mum’s cheek before grabbing my coat from the radiator and leaving, resentment and hurt twisting my stomach to the point I might vomit.
“Camryn, wait,” Mindy calls, coming after me as I swing on my coat, my strides purposeful, the predictable suffocation sneaking up on me. “Camryn, please.”
I stop abruptly, staring at the doors ahead.
“I can’t pretend to understand what you’ve been through,” she says, her words like sandpaper across my skin. What I’ve been through? It’s what I’m still going through. “I mean, your entire world imploded.”
I face her, my expression detached and cold.
“No, you couldn’t pretend to understand because your life is fucking perfect, Mindy.
Your marriage is perfect. Your home is perfect.
Your kids are fucking perfect. And I’m just here picking up the pieces, trying to figure out what my purpose is now.
Send my brother my love.” I stuff my hands in my pockets and walk away from her, choking on the lump in my throat I’m desperately trying to swallow down.
“He stopped round yesterday,” she calls, freezing me at the doors, my hand hovering over the button to call reception. Of course, they’re still chummy. How can my brother and Mindy even tolerate being around him? How is that fair? “He said you’re refusing to sign the papers.”
“You know why. He wants me to accept that I’ve behaved unreasonably.”
“What does it matter, Cam? All this is just delaying things. The sale of the house, the settlement, everything. You both need the money, and you’ve got to get out of that poky flat, find yourself a new place, and make a new start.”
To what end? I’ve lost every fucking thing that counts as good in my life. And he wants money so he can keep moving on.
Fuck.
Him.
And he now has my sister-in-law doing his grovelling?
Fuck that hurts.
I hit the button and wait for the sound of the click that’ll free me, then turn to Mindy.
I hate how perfectly together she is, her bags always matching her shoes and her lipstick, her blowout as perfect in the evening as it is in the morning, freshly washed and styled.
Always perfect. “You think money and a new home makes everything better?”
Her mouth opens and closes like a fish for a few awkward moments. Awkward for her, not me. “Your house is empty,” she says. “You should be there. He left so you didn’t have to.”
“How honourable of him.” The door clicks, and I leave. I could never be there, surrounded by the memories of my previous life. Everything that I lost. Everything that he stole from me. Fuck him. Fuck everything.
If it’s possible, it’s even colder when I make it outside, the white sky so low I’m sure I could reach up and touch the snow waiting to fall. I lower to the top step by a potted tree, needing to take the weight off my feet for a few moments. How I wish I could take the weight off my shoulders too.
I sigh and reach for a branch, pulling a closed bud off but faltering when something glistens at me, catching the low winter sun and making me blink back the sharp flash of light.
A spear of ice.
It’s cascading from a branch, a perfect white feather fossilised inside. Crystal clear. Beautiful. I trail my fingertip down, studying it, strangely rapt.
Trapped.
Like me.