Chapter Eighteen
Eighteen
Step one is establishing his whereabouts. As soon as the group is over, I’m out of my seat, and even Matt—in his weakened state—looks surprised that my tears have dried so fast. That my heartbreak over Freddie’s infidelity has evaporated so quickly.
It’s nice to work toward something again.
This last week, when I haven’t been at work, I’ve rattled around the house, avoiding Mum, and have felt more alone than ever.
I barely have the energy to speak at work, and even Mick is getting frustrated with me, though he tries to hide it.
Now I’m charged with a new sense of vigor.
Who knew Fiona’s words would be just what I needed?
Jack’s house looks the same, bar one crucial difference. For the first time, the curtains are drawn across the window. Inconvenient, but not the end of the world.
I spend some time snooping around outside, looking for some sign that Jack is still in residence. I find it in the bins. A banana skin, still a gaudy yellow color, stuffed right at the top of one of the bags.
I don’t hang around after that. There doesn’t seem much point with the curtains closed, and I’ve got what I came for. Evidence that Jack is still very much at home, and very much ignoring me. Ghosting is such a pedestrian punishment. I’m almost disappointed in him.
My phone pings with a notification on the walk home.
My body has stopped reacting to the buzz of my phone—that thrill that used to come whenever a message from Jack arrived—but I pull it out anyway.
It’s just a Google alert for a new search result with the name Alice Reynolds attached.
I check it, but I’m not expecting much since she is—obviously—dead.
Perfect, but dead. Unsurprisingly, it’s not her, or anyone who I imagine looks like her, so I put it away again.
Mum’s house feels different when I step through the door.
Some shift in the air that marks a change.
An absence. Even from the hallway, I can tell she’s not here.
There’s no creak overhead as she shifts across the floorboards.
No bilious rattle of her breath. Just the lingering smell of cigarette smoke on the air, like her ghost still hovers, watching me.
I’m unsettled by it. Mum’s world is even smaller than mine: She lost her job after Dad left and her dependence on alcohol began in earnest, and never bothered to get another one.
She did well out of the divorce—though this was more, I suspect, due to lingering guilt from Dad than any particular skill from her layabout lawyer.
She hasn’t had to work since, and she’s stingy, with no perfect daughter to buy presents for.
She receives one Sainsbury’s delivery a week of canned goods, ice cream, oranges, vodka, and cigarettes, and for anything else she pops to the local Tesco.
The cashiers and I are the only people who know she exists.
She has no friends. So her absence feels significant.
I call up the stairs for her—just in case—but there’s no response. My voice reverberates around the empty walls. Maybe she’s died.
It’s not beyond the realm of possibility that she’s lying bloated and blue just beyond her door.
Vodka and cigarettes are a famously unfortunate coupling.
I doubt it, though. She’s too noxious to go in such a banal way, without some final retribution aimed at reminding me what a disappointment I’ve been.
Still, I can’t deny the sympathy would be nice.
I’d have a new story for group next week; it would be an entirely original performance.
Plus, if Mum had died, Jack would have to talk to me.
It doesn’t take long to conduct my search.
I try every room in the house before I find myself standing outside her bedroom door.
Even now, I’m not immune to the memories that come flooding forth.
Memories of me hovering in this very spot, listening to the sounds of her breaking heart.
When she decided, in no uncertain terms, that I simply couldn’t replace the daughter she’d lost. It was a tough pill to swallow.
Before that—before my relationship with Marcie went sour—we used to pile in here on a Sunday and read the comic strips that came in the papers.
I push the door open and wrinkle my nose.
Her scent is everywhere. That nasty, slightly sweet smell of old, unwashed sheets.
I reach into my back pocket for the sanitizer and edge farther into the room.
If my room is a shrine to Marcie, then this one is a shrine to Dad.
All these years, and a pair of his slippers is still tucked neatly beneath his side of the bed, his pj’s folded on his pillow, a tray of his trinkets atop the dresser.
So much respect for a man who didn’t have the decency to even attempt to help her through her grief. I did. Or, at least, I tried.
Marcie’s here, too. In the corner of the room is a cluster of photographs.
Mum and Dad on their wedding day, looking adoring and entirely unsuspecting of the way their marriage would break down.
There’s a family photograph taken the year before Marcie died.
I’m standing slightly apart from the rest of the family, who are clustered around the Christmas tree, smiling so widely they look like they might break with happiness.
It’s the only one of me here. There are two more of Marcie.
A generic school photograph with a grayed-out background.
She spent hours at the mirror that morning, applying liberal amounts of eyeliner.
She looks sensational. I don’t know what happened to mine.
The other is a shot of her and Mum, arms flung round each other, beaming.
They were so close. So happy in each other’s company.
I’m reminded, once again, of exactly where I stand in the pecking order of our little family unit.
I see it as I turn to leave. A glint of silver on Mum’s bedside table.
My pulse spikes. I thought I’d lost it. I haven’t seen it in years.
After Marcie died, I was sure I’d hidden it between my mattress and the bedframe, but, when I went back to check before I moved out years ago, it had gone.
I looked for it, tore the room apart, but it was nowhere to be found.
Mum’s had it all along. I move to the bedside table, slip it into my pocket.
It’s mine now. Mum has no business with it.