Chapter 29
Twenty-nine
ON THE NIGHT BEFORE I went back to Yorkshire, Victoria arrived at my front door.
‘Happy pre-Christmas!’ she said, thrusting a gift bag of corner-shop chocolates and wine at me. ‘I thought we could go over some Jane Eyre stuff before you head home.’
‘V,’ I said, barely hiding my alarm as she bundled herself inside.
I was meant to have the house to myself that evening. Jolly and our other housemates had left that morning, and Obi would be arriving soon. I’d shaved my legs. I’d shaved everything.
‘Have you got any clean glasses?’ she called from the kitchen.
‘Yeah, sure, just a second,’ I replied, frantically trying to bring up Obi’s last message on my phone and abort our date.
But it was too late. The doorbell went just as Victoria was scratching the sticky orange label from the bottle of Blossom Hill.
‘Expecting company, Ms Bell?’ she asked slyly, her eyebrow raised.
‘No – maybe – wait,’ I said, scampering down the hallway. ‘Let me just see who it is.’
I opened the door. Obi leaned in to kiss me, but I backed away. ‘She’s here,’ I hissed.
‘Who’s here?’ he whispered playfully, trying to peer over my shoulder.
‘Victoria.’ His face fell. ‘She just turned up. You need to go. I’ll say you left a package for next door or something.’
‘Wait, what? I’ve been on the train for an hour, Shannon. I’m not just going to leave.’
‘Please, I don’t want a whole scene, or for her to find out about us, or for you to—’
‘Shannon—’ Victoria said, appearing round the door. ‘Oh.’ She stared at Obi. ‘This is a surprise. I didn’t know you two had plans.’
‘It’s fine, we don’t really,’ I said, tittering nervously. ‘We were just going to go over our showcase scene before I head up North. Isn’t that right, Obi?’
He nodded slowly, his expression unreadable.
‘Oh, well . . .’ She trailed off. ‘I didn’t know.’
No one said anything
‘Shannon’s helping me prepare for an audition,’ Victoria continued, addressing the night sky above Obi’s head. She slouched her weight onto her hip. ‘I won’t need her for long, if you’re willing to wait a short while.’
‘How long will you be?’ he replied evenly.
I glanced down and noticed a prettily wrapped present in the Tesco carrier bag at his feet. I said a silent prayer to myself that Victoria hadn’t seen it.
‘An hour, maybe.’ She slid her arm around my waist. ‘No more than two.’
Obi’s eyes flicked from Victoria’s to mine, then back again. ‘No, you’re OK. Don’t worry.’ He gave me a tight smile. ‘I suppose we’ll catch up again in the New Year, yeah Shan?’
I nodded, trying to appear casual while also telepathically conveying my immense gratitude towards him. ‘Yeah. Of course. We’ve got loads of time until showcase.’
‘Sorry you came all this way,’ Victoria said airily, reaching for the door handle and bringing the conversation to a close. ‘Have a safe journey back, Obi. Oh, and merry Christmas, I guess.’
WE STAYED UP UNTIL midnight unpicking the threads of my accent – butter, cut, slut – and going over the novel’s themes.
Victoria had barely touched the thing and seemed vague on major plot points.
When I suggested it might be a good idea for her to actually read the book and glean her own interpretation, she reminded me she was dyslexic.
After nearly three years spent chasing her shadow, this was news to me.
Once she’d gone, I collapsed on the sofa, exhausted.
I could feel it: a change, a gradual poisoning of my feelings towards her.
When had it begun – Rome? Godwin? Or perhaps it was since Obi and I had started seeing one another.
Maybe it was the warmth of his affection, shining a harsh light on the few crumbs of endearment she’d ever deigned to throw me.
Of course, I still dreamed about her – her soft snuffling snores as she slept against my chest, her smooth, coltish legs twined with mine.
Of course, I still pushed thoughts of her from my brain when I was alone with Obi.
But now, finally, I could also see a way out, to a life without Victoria, without her lies, without her bullshit, free from her lazy, unending pretending.
And so it was a relief to leave London the next day, even though the pall of death still hung over my parents.
Mum had taken to weeping and saying my grandmother’s – and occasionally my sister’s – name as she loaded the dishwasher, and at other quiet domestic moments when she thought no one would notice.
Dad mostly kept to himself, and if he heard Mum coming, he found a task that needed doing.
The tap needs fixing. That bloody light bulb’s gone again.
He said he had plans to turn my bedroom into a gym.
I wasn’t bothered. I knew it would be a nice project for him, one where he could easily lose himself tinkering, shut away from the unpredictable strains of my mother’s grief.
That Christmas, I volunteered to help get Grandma’s house fixed up.
Mum and Dad wanted it on the market by spring, but there was still lots to do.
Damp had ripped through the wallpaper in the back bedroom, and the bathroom was a mess of black mould.
The kitchen surfaces were sticky with mouse urine, and green spores wreathed the windowsills.
In the days leading up to Christmas, I asked Dad to drop me off before he drove to work.
It was exhausting, but I soon found I was able to get quite a bit done.
I did a room at a time, first clearing and vacuuming the floor, then bleaching the walls and surfaces.
Anything I couldn’t fix I made a note of, listing materials we might need to make the house new again, reborn, a blank slate for some wholesome starter-family or retirees looking for a downsizer to make their mark on.
Those days in the house were quiet, the only sounds the creaking floorboards and plaintive winter winds howling down the chimney.
Often, I’d simply stop what I was doing and stare out of the window, watching my breath fog up the moorland beyond the glass.
Sometimes, in those moments, a chill would run through me and I’d suddenly feel like I was being watched, like there was another version of myself, a perfect imitation from moments before, creeping silently from room to room.
But the feeling wouldn’t last. If I ever became too scared of the hushed spectre in the hallway, I simply twisted the dial on the paint-splattered radio until my fears were banished by noise.
At 6 p.m., I’d hear Dad’s car trundling up the lane and run downstairs to fetch my things.
In the evenings, we’d sit with trays on our laps in front of the TV.
Eating my toad in the hole with the curtains drawn, the tree lights twinkling and the pipes belching warm liquid around the house, I’d pretend, for a moment, that I was a teenager again, that the last three years had never happened, that I was still the same person I’d once been, that my brain wasn’t saturated with Frida’s pointed praise and devastating criticisms, with Stefano’s heat and violence, with Jolly’s whooping laughter, our stir-fries and hangovers, with Obi’s closeness, his distance, his smile, his fingers stroking the length of my arm; and with Victoria, my dazzling friend Victoria – her eyes, her face, her body, her lips, her tongue, her laugh, her words. Her cruel, unflinching words.
ON BOXING DAY, MUM took the tree down. She said she was sick of pretending to feel merry and bright and she’d be just fine, thank you very much, if she never had to see another effing twinkly star or glittery angel for the rest of her days.
Then she burst into tears, sobbing against the arm of the sofa.
I didn’t know what to say. Neither did Dad.
He sighed and rocked on his feet before slowly opening the door and retreating upstairs.
I sat in the armchair opposite and picked at the skin around my fingernails until Mum’s sobs softened to a whimper.
Then, in silence, we set about removing each tin ornament, placing each glass cherub within its nest of tissue paper, unhooking each threadbare limb and bending the rods of unruly green wire back into the box until next year.
We spent the next week, the liminal period between Christmas and January, in a stupor of food and misery, sitting silently in front of the telly, not wanting to speak and upset the saw-toothed quiet my mother had cloaked herself in.
On New Year’s Eve, I returned to the moor.