Chapter 7 #2
“Right,” Chloe says at last. “So that’s what you want: character, detached, at least two bedrooms, your own bathroom—ten years in America, that is—a manageable garden, bit of privacy, big kitchen and a wood burner? Same as everyone else. Plus a dead room. Same as no one else ever.”
“It’s an industry term, Chloe,” I tell her for the hundredth time.
“Which just leaves the numbers,” she says, ignoring me. She’s looking down so as not to appear overly interested. She’s always loved money and she’s good with it. She told me once, if she can’t retire at fifty she’ll have failed.
“Seven hundred,” I tell her.
“Seven hundred grand?” She lifts her head from her phone screen. “Seven hundred thousand pounds?”
“All in. That’s got to cover the conversion of the boxroom or whatever.”
“I had no idea audio work was such a goldmine,” Chloe says. “That’s live sex-chat money.”
“It’s mostly insurance,” I tell her, feeling mean but needing to shut this down before she steps in it by literally congratulating me. Even Shelley has come to the living room door with a half-ironed school shirt in her hands.
“Oh,” Chloe says. “Right. Of course. Sorry. Look . . .” I wait. “Are you actually up for this?”
“Yeah, you didn’t give Lindsay much chance to say no there,” Shelley chips in.
I stand up and go round the table, leaning over to hook my chin over Chloe’s shoulder and wrap her in my arms. She smells of ten different kinds of household cleaner and a trace of nice soap from this morning’s shower.
Shelley goes back to her ironing board, but she’s fiddling with her phone, the forgotten shirt crumpled under her arm,
“Because I know I can be a lot,” Chloe says, mumbling into the forearm that’s crossing her body just under her chin. I can feel her warm breath on my skin.
“Who told you that?” I ask her, kissing the top of her head.
I’ve told her that more times than I can remember.
The last occasion was when I came home to find her laying shirt-and-tie combos on top of Kai’s blankets, trying to help him decide what he should be cremated in.
If he hadn’t been laughing, I would have punched her.
She licks my arm and blows a wet raspberry, sending me springing back. “I’ll be in touch,” she says. She shouts through to the living room, “Thanks for the weird soup, Shel!” And she’s gone.
I make my escape too, and try to avoid both of them—all of them once the boys are home—for the rest of the day.
There’s nothing wrong with my ears, I tell myself near bedtime.
I am an experienced and talented audio artist and this is the perfect moment to take a step back towards my business again.
I wait for the thought to overwhelm me, for the very idea to give me the cold chills.
When that doesn’t happen, I check my inbox for requests and find someone self-publishing a “vintage” recipe book I suspect is probably her granny’s.
She’s offering a share of royalties rather than an upfront, so I send her my standard regretful pass.
A company I’ve worked with before in London wants to re-record a new edition of a textbook and I reply asking for dates.
I check the Jenny Colgan school stories like I started doing this time last year.
She’s had three different narrators for four books.
That’s like a shark smelling blood in the water, and I know I should throw my hat in the ring for any forthcoming book five but I’m not keen if it’s as sad as the last one.
There’s a line between emotional delivery and snot bubbles.
Plus I would need to explain what happened last time, since the producer is someone I know and she’d remember me enquiring then not following it up.
I was nursing Kai and then grieving for him, but I can’t tell people that.
Anything that hints at unreliability is a strict no-no in this game.
Anyway, it’s not time for jobs yet. I click onto the sound-pod website I’ve bookmarked, declining the cookies because I don’t want to find out how much they cost in case it’s outrageous.
Or in case they’re dead cheap and I end up buying one.
Kai didn’t rate them, so I’d feel like I was letting him go all over again.
I click away from the site before the products load, the way I always have whenever I don’t want to admit what I’m doing.
New job, new home, I say to myself in the mirror while I’m brushing my teeth. The sleepy tea is only herbs and water, so I won’t have to get up and rinse with mouthwash.
New job, new home, I repeat, settling into bed to read.
There should be another thing, of course, because change, like witches and monkeys, comes in threes.
New friends takes me back to Peggy and the nursing home and Now shave and not knowing what’s wrong with me.
There is another potential third new thing rumbling around somewhere inside.
But how can I even be thinking about that already?
Sleeping Murder doesn’t help. When it’s not the heroine all alone in that unsettling house, hearing things and imagining things and concluding that she’s going nuts, it’s the pair of them, so young and so in love.
So maybe it’s the book’s fault, not mine, when I dream that I’m with someone—like with someone—who definitely isn’t Kai.
Bright side, it gives me a break from the true nightmares, but I wake up weeping with shame.
“I’m sorry,” I tell him. I leap out of bed and open the curtains, clutching the windowsill to steady myself.
Now I want the world to flatten and flutter.
I want to hear things wrong, forget and remember where I shouldn’t and should—I’d take any proof that I’m not myself and it wasn’t really me who dreamed about a stranger in bed with me instead of Kai back again.
But all I see is two pinpricks of light away down at the end close to Shelley’s veg patch—John out on a tour of the yard.
Maybe this is his therapy. Maybe this is how he keeps the demons at bay.
One of the lights is a torch beam bobbling around and there’s a steadier but much dimmer glow a little higher up, coming from a phone.
Maybe he listens to soothing music to help him breathe his way through it.
“Oh, John,” I whisper to him, putting my hand flat on the glass.
We’re both surviving in our own broken way.