Chapter 4 #4
‘But . . . but we are people, and we need help, and I am asking you for that help, and he is a cat! A cat!’ She hadn’t meant to raise her voice.
The old woman pushed the door until she was speaking through a small crack. ‘You can’t come here in the dead of night and shout at me!’
‘I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to shout at you,’ Nina stammered. She chose not to point out that it was only teatime.
‘And the fact is, Mr Busby is my cat and this is his home.’ With that, she closed the door and the light disappeared from inside the hallway.
Nina retreated into the dark, walking along the lane with her heart hammering in her chest. Grinding her teeth, she felt the stirring of anger, even hatred, towards the man she grieved for.
He had placed them in this situation and she had been swept along like flotsam on the tide.
‘What the fuck am I supposed to do now, Finn?’ she shouted into the night air.
She whipped her head around to check no one was within hearing distance.
Back in the kitchen she grabbed two fat steaks from the fridge and then got to work on the onion rings and fresh garden peas. Preparing the food helped block out all the upsetting and intrusive thoughts that rattled around inside her skull. After supper she would start to pack.
She called to the boys to come and eat. Eventually both boys loped into the kitchen and took up their regular seats at the table. She hovered, sipping a glass of water. The boys ate quickly, eager to get back to their rooms where they too could drop the act and do as they pleased.
‘I need my kit for the holiday training, Mum.’ Connor swallowed a chunk of steak. ‘Coach says he wants me to bulk up a bit, so more protein, and I’m going to start lifting some weights.’
She gave a small nod. ‘Have you ever thought about joining another rugby club outside of school?’ She hoped she sounded nonchalant.
Both Connor and Declan let out loud bursts of laughter, as if she had told the funniest joke in the world.
‘Another rugby club?’ Connor stared at her.
‘There is no better place to play rugby. We have produced more England players than any other school. We are at the top of the school league for the fifth year in a row. We have pitches that professional teams come and practise on. The squad is trained by an ex-international coach. What other club could top that?’
‘I just thought it might be nice to meet other people, broaden your horizons a bit.’ Nina busied herself at the sink.
Connor returned to his supper, as if her suggestion were so crazy it didn’t even warrant a reply. When his plate was clean, he scooted his chair back from the table. ‘Thanks,’ he called as he raced up the stairs.
Declan laid his knife and fork on his plate. ‘Mum?’
‘Yes, darling?’ She looked up. ‘Oh, Dec, don’t cry.’ She rushed to him and held him close in a hug.
‘When I start laughing, I start to cry. It’s like my eyes won’t let me feel happy. They remind me that Dad died.’ He pulled away so he could see her face. ‘And today was horrible. Something keeps . . . keeps happening to me,’ he stammered.
‘What keeps happening?’
‘I was chatting to Harri and I forgot, Mum. I forgot. I forgot about Dad. And I was looking forward to telling him about my Chemistry project and was going to ask him if he had any more ideas about the holidays, and then I remembered he wasn’t here any more and I couldn’t breathe and I got a pain here’ – he touched his fingers to his breastbone – ‘and Harri got me a glass of water and told Mrs Dupré.’
‘That was kind of Harri.’ She smoothed his thick, dark hair.
‘One thing I do know is that Daddy wouldn’t want you to be sad when you thought about him.
He always wanted to make us happy.’ She was aware of the slight rush to her words; the phrases felt slightly sour in her mouth.
She saw Mrs Appleton closing the front door on her, pictured Mr Monroe as he shifted uncomfortably in his chair, saying, ‘Things are not good . . .’ She was unsure of what his dad would say or want, unsure of the man she had been married to for all these years, the man who had consigned them all to live in a downward spiral over which she had no control.
It was awful to feel the cracks appear in the love she had for him, knowing there was no chance of seeing him, of making it right.
‘I can’t feel happy, Mum. I miss him so much.’
Her son’s tears fell anew and it was all she could do not to sink to her knees and cry with him.
After the boys were tucked up in their beds, Nina crept into Finn’s study and switched on the desk lamp and the computer.
She let her fingers trail the bookshelves and wondered where to start, unsure of what she was looking for.
The computer blinked at her, requesting a password.
She went through all of their names, and then tried the places they had visited and loved, all to no avail; Finn had clearly gone for something less obvious.
She then entered the same all over again, but added their ages or the dates they had made the trips, anything she could think of, hoping to get lucky.
She didn’t.
‘You bloody fool, Nina!’
Frustration made her slap the desktop, which only served to sting her palm.
She flexed and splayed her fingers, trying to ease the sharp pain.
She pulled open the deep bottom drawer of the desk and found a black leather folder.
It was empty, but inside the metal rings had pressed into the soft contours of the calf leather, suggesting that it had once been full of weighty documents.
‘Why would you empty your folders? How long were you hiding things from me?’ she whispered, running her hands through her hair and feeling the anger grow in her gut. ‘How could you do this to me, Finn?’
In the middle drawer under a stack of boating magazines was a bundle of letters, only about half of which had been opened, from a company called Mackintosh and Vooght.
They had all been addressed to the business premises in Bradford-on-Avon, and each one was branded with ugly red letters ‘URGENT’ and ‘DO NOT IGNORE’.
She could only imagine how it must have felt to receive these daily, and again pictured the mask he wore, his jovial tone, kidding her that all was well, letting her pore over swatches of fabric for the new curtains in the spare room – and all the while he was edging backwards, each step taking him closer to the cliff edge .
. . His subterfuge hit her again and filled her with rage.
‘Pay now in full or we will have no choice but to commence proceedings to recover,’ she read aloud.
‘Each missed payment is incurring an added penalty of five per cent over and above your original debt . . .’ Nina couldn’t bear to look at any more.
She returned them to the drawer and closed it.
As she moved the keyboard of the computer, the desk jotter shifted and she saw something underneath.
She picked up the keyboard and found a white envelope underneath.
‘Nina,’ she read in her husband’s instantly recognisable hand.
Her heart jumped. He had written to her?
Her fingers shook as she balanced the slim envelope on her palm and brought it to her nose, inhaling the faintest scent of his smoky cologne.
Slowly, carefully, she turned it over in the lamplight, finding it was open.
The letter inside was just three lines long.
She knew her husband’s script well and could tell instantly that it had been written hurriedly.
Her heart felt like it might leap from her chest as she scanned the words.
My Nina,
Things are hard for me – I feel like I am living in a world made of glass she was in the mood for a fight.
Suddenly there she was: on the top ridge in Alexandra Park.
She parked under a large tree and cut the engine. She balled her fists and punched the steering wheel as hard as she could, over and over, thumping her head back on the headrest repeatedly.
‘What have you done? What have you done to us, Finn? Eight million pounds! Eight million pounds!’ she screamed.
‘How did you manage that? You have destroyed us! Destroyed our lives and now it seems there is the chance that you took yourself out of the bloody equation, just jumped and left us to cope without you . . . How could you do that to me, to the kids? How could you? Did you do that? Did you leave me on purpose?’ Tears of anger, frustration and sadness choked her.
She jumped out of the car and paced back and forth, before kicking the wheel with all her might.
‘How could you? You bastard!’ she screamed at the top of her voice.
An owl hooted its response. Under any other circumstances this might have made her laugh, but not tonight.
‘Sod off!’ she shouted at the poor creature as it fled.
She slunk back to the car and climbed inside, where she laid her head on the steering wheel, feeling all of her energy seep out of her. She stared over the hills and down the ridge towards the city she loved, then closed her eyes for a moment.
When she tried to open them, they were stuck together with a thick paste of mascara and tears.
‘The thing is, if you left me by choice, then I didn’t know you, and if you felt you couldn’t tell me about our situation, then you didn’t know me. And if that is the case then what did we have, Finn? I feel like I have been living a lie and I don’t know how much more I can take.’
She stared at the twinkling lights of the city, muted in the haze of rain; they looked like amber-coloured stars.
She had come up here with Finn when they first met, both intent on getting the kissing business out of the way, both nervous, shy.
In his newly acquired flashy car, they had sat awkwardly until she suggested they best go home.
‘My dad’ll be waiting for me . . .’ she had offered, knowing that even the confident Finn wouldn’t want to upset Big Joe.
She felt her face collapse, thinking of everyone she loved who had gone: her mamma, dad, gran, grandad, aunts, uncles and her Finn.
She looked up through the window and wondered how many of them were trying to offer comfort and support from a place so out of reach.
She pressed her head to the glass and whispered, hoping her words would rise up and reach them, ‘You need to try harder. I need more help. I feel like I am falling apart and I don’t know how much longer I can hang on. ’
Slowly she drove up to the house and cut the engine.
Every sound seemed magnified. Once safely inside, she peeped in on the boys; both slept soundly.
Padding across the landing, Nina walked straight to the bedroom, where she teetered past her dressing room and bathroom, shunning her usual bedtime routine of make-up removal and teeth cleaning.
She threw herself down onto the bed, where she buried her face in her husband’s sweatshirt and cried until she ran out of tears.
She hated that her memory of him was changing, distorting the last solid foundation on which her life was built.
She looked around the bedroom. It made her sad and reflective to be placing her marriage under a microscope in a way that she knew she never would have done had Finn not been killed.
This only confused her even more. She felt bereft and lonely and despite her muddle of thoughts would have given anything to feel his arms around her.
Eventually she sat up and held the covered pillow to her chest. She rested against the headboard of their wide bed.
A fresh wave of tears found their way to the surface; Nina scooted them away with her sleeve and wished they would stop, beyond exhausted by her sadness.
She stared into the darkness of the night.
The only light came from the walkway to the terrace where muted beams illuminated the path to the house.
She had not changed the bed linen since his death, unable to think that the essence of him would be laundered away, preferring to sleep with his scent on the softened sheets and the feel of him around her, cocooning her in the night, soothing away the nightmares.
Only this wasn’t a nightmare, it was her real, waking life and she didn’t know how she was going to survive it.