Elly #2
A cool trickling underneath her skin. “You want me to talk about Ethan?”
Theo frowns. “Who’s Ethan?”
“My husband.”
Something flickers across his features, fleeting and unreadable. “Right. Well, yes. Let’s talk about Ethan.”
Elly lets a breath pass through her, turning to the side so that she can look out of one of the refectory windows and into the garden.
The rose bushes and oak trees are nothing more than shapes in the gloom.
She’s thought often about the day she and Ethan met, especially in the run-up to the wedding.
In the last moments before falling asleep, she’d fantasise about what she might have done differently to change the outcome of that first day, the day that determined everything that came after.
Perhaps there were words she could have said that wouldn’t have appealed to him, a colour she could have worn that he wouldn’t have liked so much.
Sometimes she likes to pretend she took her lunch half an hour earlier and so didn’t see him at all, or perhaps only glimpsed his retreating form on the street as he walked away from the bakery.
Instead, she starts to tell Theo what did happen, the truth, the finely tuned sequence of events that led her to now, to this room.
Four years ago, December, a colder one than anyone could remember.
In the village, icicles clung to the drainpipes, impending skewers above everyone’s heads.
Snow edged the pavements. A thick coating of glistening grit ran down the centre of the high street, which was quieter than usual, except for the odd person bundled up in a coat, barely looking up.
Elly was working with Suzanne, and the warmth of the bakery was a sanctuary from outside.
Customers lingered longer over the scones and upside-down pineapple cakes, buying more than they usually would.
When a stocky man with reddish hair dusted with snow entered the bakery, ‘Last Christmas’ by Wham!
was playing. Elly will always remember that.
What did she think of him, at first? Not much.
She remembers that he smelled nice, that he brought the expensive smell of aftershave into the bakery with him, the scent of elsewhere.
She remembers that he was wearing a tailored coat and a striped cashmere scarf.
He had a taste for the finer things – she’d learn that later.
He had a certain set of standards. She’d smiled at him, asked him what he wanted.
She might even have said something like, Isn’t it so cold out there, just to be polite.
Maybe he could see it, even then: her inbuilt need to please people, to break herself down into tiny pieces so that others might find her easier to consume.
Ethan had looked at the cakes and tarts behind the glass as if he had no idea what any of them were.
Later, he would tell her that he’d glimpsed her in the window (You looked so sweet, that red jumper against your blonde hair), and decided to come inside without even knowing that it was a bakery.
In the end, he ordered three strawberry tarts, two scones and a seeded loaf.
The way he was unsure as he said, Maybe that, and, Add two of those, please, was endearing.
She’d thought then that he was the kind of man who found it easy to be vulnerable.
They chatted a little bit – she told him she’d lived in the village all her life, he told her he was down from Edinburgh for the weekend to walk the hills, get some headspace, you know.
He didn’t ask for her number until everything was bagged up and paid for.
Elly could feel Suzanne watching them from the back room, barely repressing a snigger.
He asked politely and with a smile so warm she didn’t feel like she could say no.
When he left the bakery laden with things he didn’t need (and, she would find out later, didn’t even eat), he’d been blushing, and Suzanne had said something like, Well he’s a bit wonderful, isn’t he, and Elly had let herself think that yes, maybe he was.
She didn’t see any other side to him for months, maybe half a year.
And when it did emerge, it was a creature skulking out from the shadows, testing to see if it could survive the light.
When had she first felt that tipping feeling in her belly, like everything was sliding out of alignment?
Maybe the first times were too subtle for her to remember, but the one that comes to her now, the one she tells Theo about, is the first time she met his brother, Martin.
They went to a steak restaurant in Edinburgh.
It had white tablecloths and a wine list bigger than the menu.
Some of the steaks cost the same as the wage Elly made in a day.
Elly and Ethan arrived first, and Ethan was fractious as they waited for Martin at the table.
He kept suggesting they had a drink at the bar instead, not seeming to like the idea that his brother would know he’d kept them waiting.
The next minute, he’d change his mind and fiddle furiously with the napkin, barely talking to Elly.
She couldn’t understand his anxiety, but when Martin arrived soon after, things began to shift into focus.
Martin was the elder of the two, the more classically good-looking, tall with dark hair and broad shoulders.
He worked for a bank in London, a bigger and more well-known bank than the one where Ethan worked, and was only up in Edinburgh to wine and dine clients.
“Bit of a shoddy wine list, isn’t it?” he said to Elly, before holding his hand out for her to shake.
He was pleasant enough. He asked Elly whether she’d eaten here before and what her favourite cut of steak was.
But Ethan was quiet and surly from the off, giving the dinner an edgy atmosphere.
When Martin asked Elly what she did for work, Ethan said quickly, “She’s a chef.
” The kind of look he gave her made Elly feel like prey pinned down by an animal’s paw.
“Well,” she said, looking from him to Martin, wondering if she was missing anything, “I wouldn’t say chef, exactly. I just work in a bakery.”
Elly can still see it now: the way Ethan’s face seemed to drain of life, his grip tightening so hard around his fork that it turned his knuckles white. There was a long, awkward moment before Martin started to laugh. It wasn’t mean, not exactly, but it was very close.
“Fuck’s sake, Ethan.” He laughed, jabbing his brother in the side with his elbow. “Do Mum and Dad know that? They’ll never let you hear the end of it. A bakery, Jesus Christ.” He shook his head, then seemed to remember Elly was there. “No offence, Elly.”
“None taken.” She’d wanted to sink as far down as she could in her seat. “I love it there.”
“Well, good,” Martin said. “That’s good.”
For the rest of the meal, Ethan wouldn’t speak to her, would barely look at her.
Every bite of steak seemed to take forever to grind down to nothing.
Luckily, Martin had enough to say for all three of them, launching into lengthy speeches about Formula One, Bitcoin, the Bauhaus movement.
Over dessert, he asked Elly whether she’d ever been to the Guggenheim.
“Don’t bother,” Ethan said, sticking a fork into the centre of his chocolate fondue and letting the sauce come spilling out, “she won’t even know what that is.”
Elly stared at him, waiting for a joking smile or wink that never came. Martin looked between them with a wry smile, but even he’d started to look uncomfortable. “Actually, I went when I was a teenager,” she said eventually. “My dad was a sculptor.” To Ethan, she added quietly, “You know that.”
It wasn’t until they’d said goodbye to Martin at the station and climbed into a taxi that Ethan finally turned to her.
At first, Elly thought he was going to apologise for his brother being so rude, or for his own odd mood all evening, say something like, I’m so sorry, I get a bit weird around my brother, you can probably see why.
Instead, in a voice as cold and precise as a scalpel, he said, “You’re going to stop working at the bakery, and you’re going to get a proper fucking job.”
When Elly says this, Theo looks away from the viewfinder and straight at her.
It shakes her a little, brings her back into the room.
“Jesus,” he whispers quietly. He leans all the way forward in his seat, as if he wants to reach out and touch her.
She half-wishes he would – finds herself wondering whether his hands would be calloused or smooth, how they’d feel against her skin.
It sends little jolts through her. It’s an effort to remember she’d been talking about her husband.
She knows how it makes Ethan look, the story she’s just told, but the guilt she expects never arrives.
There is so much more she could say, so much more that she wants to say: how his chides had turned to barely veiled insults about her job, her appearance, the food she made; how he’d sometimes go silent for days at a time, until she found herself apologising for anything she could think of that might have provoked him.
The way he’d pull her close then gut her with his words, so she was never sure of the ground she walked on. You’re just lucky I’m so patient, Elly.
But Elly’s muscles are heavy now, her throat scratchy. She doesn’t know how long she’s been talking. “Can we stop there? I’m tired.”
“Sure.” Theo coughs, sitting back and clicking a button on the camera. The red light above the lens turns black.
* * *
She’s just dozed off into a light sleep when Margot shakes her awake. Her eyes are pale moons in the dark lake of the night. “Wakey wakey, Little Mouse. It’s your turn to watch Lakshmi.”
Elly rises reluctantly out of bed, the vestiges of her dreams clinging to her like leeches.
Ethan in the bakery, snow in his hair. It all feels too close now, after talking about him with Theo.
She pulls on a loose hoodie over her pyjamas, slow and stumbling, sensing the other bodies in the beds watching her.
As she pads downstairs barefoot, Elly realises that this is as quiet as she’s ever heard the house: in the absence of voices, of music, of doors opening and closing, there’s only the occasional bird call and the creaking of the foundations, the house murmuring in its sleep.
In the parlour, Lakshmi lies still under a tartan blanket.
Her lumpen form looks so small and insubstantial, as if she might fade away at any moment.
The room is low-lit by table lamps, the French doors open a crack to let in a breath of air from the garden.
Elly kneels beside Lakshmi and watches her chest rising and falling slowly, wondering how it is that she’s still alive.
Her face is wan and drawn, sheathed in a thin sweat that glistens in the cleft above her upper lip, sweat curling the hair at her temples and forehead.
Her right cheekbone is swollen, bruised, and there are bandages across her visible chest. Elly guesses that there are many, many more beneath the blanket.
Lakshmi groans and Elly takes one of her hands. The skin is cool, clammy.
“You’re going to be okay,” she finds herself whispering. “I promise.”
Lakshmi’s lips tremble and part. They’re chapped, on the brink of bleeding. She whispers something and Elly can smell her stale breath.
On the table beside the sofa, there is a glass of water with a straw, a flannel and some spare bandages.
Elly dips the flannel into the water to wet it and then squeezes a drop or two onto Lakshmi’s lips.
She imagines the drops snaking their way deep down into her body, seeking out the broken places.
“I’m sorry,” she says, although she isn’t quite sure what she’s sorry for. That Lakshmi fell? That she can’t leave the house now? That whatever happened to her meant she had to come to Hex House in the first place?
When Elly looks up, Lakshmi is smiling at her.
She reaches out a hand to touch Elly’s cheek, brushing away a tear she hadn’t known had fallen.
“No sadness,” Lakshmi whispers. “I was flying, didn’t you see?
” She squeezes her eyes shut, wincing. “I wish he could have seen me. I wish he could have seen what I can do.”
Elly nods. She can’t stop the tears now. She doesn’t know who Lakshmi’s talking about, knows it isn’t her place to ask, so she says nothing. When Lakshmi opens her eyes again, they’re filmy, dull, devoid of lucidity.
“Is my dad here?” she whispers. “I want my dad here.”
“He’s coming,” she offers, hoping it’s the right thing to say. “He’ll be here soon.”
That seems to calm her. Lakshmi settles back into the cushions, closing her eyes again. Elly lays her head on the sofa arm, keeping Lakshmi’s hand in hers. She doesn’t realise she’s fallen asleep until Lakshmi squeezes her gently. When Elly looks at her, there’s a little more colour in her cheeks.
“You can go now, Elly,” she says. Her voice creaks like an old floorboard. She beams. “Haina’s here.”
Haina is standing in the doorway. She is as tall and serene as always. Her dark hair is unplaited and loose over her shoulders, and she wears a nightgown of orange silk. She isn’t smiling.
“I can stay with her,” Elly whispers. “I don’t mind.”
Haina crosses the parlour towards them. She stands behind the sofa so that she can reach down and cup one hand around Lakshmi’s chin. She addresses Elly without looking at her. “Go to bed.”
Something feels different in the room now; there is a heaviness, a tightness.
Elly does as she’s told, knees aching as she gets to her feet.
Before she leaves the parlour, she turns to look back at Haina and Lakshmi.
Haina is still standing over the sofa, peering down.
Her eyes are dark. Lakshmi looks up at her, smiling softly, a child ready to submit to the comforting arms of a mother.