Chapter Twenty-Six
Twenty-six
Jack’s first message comes at the perfect time. How was the rest of your shift? Just went to my first meeting. Feeling better. Thanks again, Iris. Xx
I’ve worked myself into a bit of a state by the point it arrives, Mum’s words reverberating around my brain like a noxious echo, so the message calms me.
It proves she was wrong. I want to shove the phone in her face and show her those two kisses.
I’d do just that if she was here, but she left the house an hour ago, slamming the door behind her.
She doesn’t understand the intricacies of my relationship with Jack.
What she sees as a drawback—the dead wife, the lingering sentiment—I view as an opportunity.
I reread the message. Thanks again, Iris. I love gratitude. That indefinable contract that places him firmly in my debt. It calms me enough to focus on the matter at hand.
I sit in front of the mirror at our small desk and pull out my phone.
I’ve saved a few looks that I want to try out with my hair.
I googled “librarian,” because that’s what springs to mind whenever I think of Alice.
It fits with the cardigan vibe, that slightly sanctimonious air that I associate with primary school teachers and other people who might fall under the excruciating category of “do-gooders.” Unfortunately, it turns out that the prevailing hairstyle for librarians is a bob, and I’m just not willing to stoop to that level yet.
So I saved some images of librarians with long hair, and now I try a French plait, which only highlights my too-large forehead; a low ponytail that doesn’t look quite as sleek on me as it does on the woman in the photo; and keeping it loose, one side pulled slightly over my face.
That one, I can just about cope with, but it doesn’t give off the desired levels of attractiveness.
Perhaps I’m barking up the wrong tree with hairstyles.
My phone buzzes with a message. It’s Tilly, Sally’s closest friend—strictly online, of course.
Likely whining to Sally about some domestic issue or other, but I’m at a bit of a loose end, so I pick it up anyway.
Occasionally—when I’m in a bad mood—I like to fuel discord in her relationship with her husband, just because I can.
Are you there?
Short. To the point. Very unlike her usual rambling messages. I frown and type back Yes.
Something awful has happened.
I wait, but there’s no follow-up message.
If she’s attempting to build suspense, she’s succeeding at nothing but making me irritated.
After five minutes or so, I turn back to the mirror.
My smile needs a bit of tweaking: It’s too wide, which adds an unfortunate hint of madness to the whole look.
I tone it down, then check my phone again. Nothing.
Downstairs, the door slams. Mum’s home. She must still be in a mood; the house shakes with the impact.
She should really learn to get her emotions under control.
It’s not an attractive look. Still, I’m keen to prove that her words earlier didn’t affect me, so I skip down the stairs and find her at the kitchen table, cigarette clasped between her fingers.
“Tea? Something stronger?”
She doesn’t reply, but I put the kettle on anyway.
I bustle around and make an excellent show of just how fine I am.
I take two mugs from the cupboard, sniff the milk.
She doesn’t speak, which is not altogether unusual, but there is something about her silence that feels off.
Something about the rigidity of her spine, the way the cigarette burns and burns and burns and she doesn’t lift it to her lips.
I strain the tea bags and chuck them in the compost bin.
Never let it be said that I don’t care for the environment.
It’s only when I turn to face her again, mugs in hand, that I realize something is seriously wrong.
She’s got to her feet—silently rising behind me like some hideous monster at the climax of a horror film.
My heart stutters. I barely looked at her earlier—better to avoid eye contact if you can help it—but I see now that she’s sodden.
It must be raining outside. Her hair hangs in limp strands, dripping onto the linoleum. Mascara bleeds down her face.
“What’s happened?” I ask.
She’s shaking, and at first I think it’s with cold, but then I see her eyes. They stop me in my tracks. Black with fury. Sinister, deranged.
Maybe her new man called things off. History would suggest she doesn’t take well to rejection. Like mother, like daughter. I start toward her, intending to rub the sympathetic circles on her back that worked so well with Hannah, but she rears away from me.
“Don’t you dare touch me,” she says, and it occurs to me that perhaps her anger is not directed at a man at all, but at me. Her face certainly suggests that’s the case. “Were you ever going to tell me?”
“Tell you what?” I’m on the back foot here and I don’t like it.
“Do you know where I’ve been, Iris?”
“No?”
“I went to visit your father.”
Up until this point, I’d been sure that—whatever transgression I had inadvertently committed—I would be able to talk my way out of it. Soothe her with news of Dad and his wife’s delinquency, tales of their horrible daughters. That’s not an option now. There is no talking my way out of this one.
She plunges on, voice vibrating with fury. “I thought it might have changed. You and your scheming. Do you know, I have absolutely no idea who you are? I’m your mother. I’m supposed to know something about the person I birthed, but you—it’s like this blank space.”
Bit unfair. At least I’ve got a good sense of humor. I hold my hands out toward her and arrange my face so I look like I might be about to cry. “Please calm down, Mum. It’s not that big a deal.”
It’s critical to defuse this situation as quickly as possible, make it out to be less serious than it is, and I go toward her again, but she raises her hand as though she is going to hit me, backing away as though I am something toxic.
“I know everything, Iris. I know you haven’t spoken to him.”
“Who?” A last-ditch attempt at ignorance. But my acts have never worked with her.
“Don’t. Don’t play the innocent. You know I’m talking about your father. You’ve been lying to me for years. He told me he hasn’t heard from you since he moved out. Yet you seem to know an awful lot about his life.”
She’s got me there. She’s right: I haven’t spoken to him in years.
Why would I? What use is he to me when he betrayed me to Marcie all those years ago, and again when he left me here with a woman who could barely hide her contempt for me?
That’s not to say I don’t keep up with his news, though.
I like to base my lies in truth, after all. It’s how Sally was born.
Five years ago, a woman called Sally, using her newly established Facebook account, sent a friend request accompanied by a message.
Hey, Tilly, I hope you’re well. I see you’re also on my local Stitch and Bitch group!
I’ve just moved to the area, and I’m looking to make new friends.
Don’t suppose you fancy meeting up at some point?
And for some reason—perhaps loneliness driven by the significant age gap between her and her husband—Tilly responded.
What followed was a gradual getting to know each other, a thoughtful message exchange that revealed little bits of personal information until the pair progressed from strangers to firm friends.
They’ve become very close, though whenever Tilly suggests a meet-up Sally is sadly either visiting her ailing mother in Scotland or whisking herself away for a spa weekend in Europe.
Which is probably for the best, because Tilly has her own busy life to contend with.
She has two daughters, an ugly house in suburbia, and an old, incontinent dog called Florence.
In a moment of wine-fueled candor, Tilly opened up to Sally about her husband.
The utter tragedy of his life. How he had twin girls, but one—the favorite—had a tragic accident.
The remaining daughter still exists somewhere, though Tilly’s never met her.
She’d once said, Does it make me a bad person to say I’m quite glad she’s not in my life? It’s hard enough raising my own girls. I don’t want to take on someone else’s. She has her mum, though that’s not saying much. Total nutcase.
Fury rising, I’d replied, Not at all. Understandable.
Later that night, I’d scheduled my next coffee with Mum.
We met the week after. “She’s got hemorrhoids,” I told her.
“Really bad ones. Dad told me normal treatment isn’t working.
She’s about to have them ligated. You know, where they tie a rubber band around the lumps, and they drop off. Like a lamb’s tail.”
Mum’s eyes had gleamed.
Tilly had messaged soon after that, It’s really weird. We got a package the other day that contained adult nappies and loads of toilet paper. There was no note!!!
Over the years, Tilly has proved to be a well of information.
It’s not, obviously, enjoyable for me to hear about my father’s disgusting habits in the bedroom, but I accept the chaff in exchange for the wheat of the other insights she provides.
The arrangement suits me well. It provides me with currency to use with Mum.
She would never have allowed me back into the house without it.
Now Mum looks unhinged. Crazed with confusion, with anger.
It’s all falling into place: the makeup, the sudden interest in personal hygiene, the hair. She wasn’t seeing someone else at all, but still kindling a flame for my father. And when I mentioned the divorce…She’s not so unlike me after all. She saw her opportunity and she took it.
“Do you know what a fool you’ve made of me?
When I turned up at the door, believing they were separating?
I’ve been watching the house, trying to find the right time to talk to him.
I thought I could offer some support, and tonight I finally plucked up the courage.
God, when he answered…I couldn’t breathe, Iris. And then she appeared behind him.”
She: Tilly. Hard for Mum to experience that, I’m sure. I could barely stomach it, when I first saw Tilly in person, peeking through the window of their ugly house. She looked so young, so fresh-faced, juxtaposed with Mum’s grief-lined features.
“That bitch had the audacity to look scared. Can you believe it? Threatened to call the police on the spot,” she continues.
“And he just stared at me, shaking his head. I’ve never been more embarrassed in my life.
And when I asked him about the divorce, when I told him it was what you’d told me, he said that you hadn’t spoken in years.
He feels bad about it—of course he does, he’s a good man.
But you were always so odd. So strange, and jealous, and angry. ”
She closes her eyes, takes a breath as though preparing herself for something. “You’re the reason he left, you know?” she says, and the words find their mark. They hit me right in the chest.
“Is that what you’ve been telling yourself?” I spit. There’s no pretense now. The words are hot, spewed with fury.
“I don’t need to tell myself anything. It’s the truth.
” Her eyes flash. “Do you think we don’t know?
Do you think it hasn’t played on our minds from the moment it happened?
She’s dead because of you. If she wasn’t so upset…
if you hadn’t upset her so much, arguing over nothing, she might still be here.
She was everything to me, and you took that away.
” Her lip curls now, and I see—for the first time—the depth of her disgust for me.
“Always so self-pitying and strange,” she sneers.
“And we just had to bring you home with us. We had to pretend to be this normal family when you’re the reason she’s gone, Iris.
Your father knew it, too. Hardly surprising he bolted at the first possible opportunity. ”
I feel myself take a step away from her, as though my body is trying to put distance between me and her hateful words, even as they lodge themselves firmly at my core.
All this time…I’d known she thought me strange and rigid and impenetrable.
I had not guessed at just how deep her fury—her disgust—for me ran.
But she isn’t finished. She lifts her eyes to mine, and there is something black there—something that sends a shiver scuttling up my spine.
“Sometimes, I even wonder…”
She tails off, as though she cannot bring herself to speak the words into existence. But I think I know what she was going to say.