Chapter 16
Poppy isn’t sure what to do next. She’s watched the video, and called this man Lewis, who sent her straight to voicemail, and also phoned around various hospitals until she could confirm that it is all true. Unfortunately, it is.
She needs to do something, and decides to take a shower.
She ends up sitting on the floor, the too-hot water sluicing over her head and shoulders, burning her skin bright red, steam cocooning her in a smeared glass box.
She stays in there until her fingertips are so wrinkled and puckered up they look as if they belong to a witch, and her bottom is numb on the tiles.
When she finally climbs out, the whole bathroom is filled with steam, as though she’s in a Turkish sauna. She uses a fresh towel to wipe the mirror clean, and stares at herself.
Mascara is smudged beneath her eyes, and her hair is plastered to her skull, and her body is slightly too thin.
Her collarbones are prominent, and the skin around her neck is just too taut to be attractive.
There are lines around her mouth from years of smoking, and her long legs are so toned they’re almost hideous.
She hates what she sees, even though she has worked hard for it.
She hates it because that face, that body, belong to the kind of woman she never wanted to become. The kind of woman who lives alone and works in marketing and has meaningless friendships and is a complete bitch to everyone who works for her.
The kind of woman who could drown in her own shower and not be found for weeks on end, or until the flat below flooded. The kind of woman nobody really cares about, because the only person who did has abandoned her and selfishly died.
The kind of woman who could break her own mother’s heart, and not even notice she was doing it.
She picks up an aerosol can of shaving cream, and takes off the lid. She holds it in front of the mirror, and sprays it all over the glass, until everything is obscured and all she can see is the cream, slowly falling down in white dollops and plopping into the marble sink.
Satisfied at her minor act of vandalism, she puts on a black satin kimono, and goes back into the living room, where she briefly considers getting out her tobacco tin again.
She can still picture it in its original home on the polished shelf in Mum’s glass display cabinet.
It sat alongside her other accumulated nick-nacks and almost-antique oddities: a giant conch shell she bought from a gift shop in Dorset; her own father’s pocket watch and chain; a beer mat autographed by John Lennon when she met him in a pub in Soho in the Seventies; a tiny dragon carved out of jade.
Her memories of that display cabinet are vivid, and it sums up their cottage – eclectic, unpredictable, full of clutter; every item laden with some significance.
There will be a lot to do, she thinks, as she sits down at her desk.
A lot to sort through. Things to package up.
Things to send to the charity shop, or keep for themselves.
They might need to hire a skip for the junk, and call in an antiques expert to appraise the valuables, and it might not always be easy to tell the difference between the two.
She takes a pen, and starts to jot down a few points. Practical stuff. Things that she thinks are keeping her calm, until she realises that she is crying so hard her whole body is shaking in huge spasms, and her handwriting is unreadable.
Her hair is still soggy, and the kimono is getting soaked through as it drips over her shoulders and back, and it feels a bit like she is drowning in snot.
She snatches a tissue from the box on her desk, and angrily wipes her eyes and nose and face clear. She screws the tissue up, and throws it on the floor, to be dealt with later.
She’s been making the wrong list, she knows. This isn’t what her mother asked her to do in that awful video, looking so neat and tidy and thin.
Poppy picks up the pen again, and turns to a fresh page in her leather-bound notepad. She takes a deep breath, and starts. She’s going to be totally honest, just like her mother asked. She puts pen to paper, and it doesn’t take long at all.
There is only one item on Poppy’s guilt list:
EVERYTHING.
Job done, she slams the notepad shut, and wrings her soggy hair out in a damp ponytail. A small puddle of water builds up on the hardwood floor, and she dips her toe into it, for no good reason other than it’s there.
She’s made her list, and she’s had a shower, and she’s cried, and now her whole mood feels as empty as her grumbling stomach.
She doesn’t want to do the other thing that her mother asked her to do. She doesn’t want to think about it. She doesn’t want to even let Rose back into her mind, let alone her life. It’s too hard, too nasty, too brutal. She might not survive.
For years now, she’s closed that part of her life off. Walled it up, like a mad woman in a Gothic novel – left it to starve to death in the hope that it would rot and crumble like an ancient skeleton, and eventually be nothing but a pile of dust on the ground.
It’s allowed her to function. To have a life.
To have a career. To have fake friends. But she knows that old crone is still walled up in there: wailing, insane, still so, so hungry.
If she lets her out, she’ll be devoured.
If she lets herself think about it, like her mother has asked, she will think of nothing else – and her whole life will fall to pieces, crumpled up like the soggy tissue on the floor.
It’s too much, and she can’t do it. She won’t do it – not right now.