Chapter 1
TESSA
Aweight is bearing down, compressing my chest. Struggling for air, my head throbs. I’m slipping. Panic drags me back. My arms thrash around. The duvet slides onto the floor.
The man lying next to me jolts awake and swings into the routine he’s perfected.
“Stay calm, Tess. We’ll breathe together. I’ll count. In for one—two—three—four. Hold for seven. Slowly out through your mouth.” His eyes connect with mine, reassuring me. “Good. Keep it going. Better now?”
I nod. I should be over the racing heart and breathing struggles. Today I was planning to pick up the strands of my threadbare life.
Adam, my husband, unplugs his phone from the charger, checks the time, and curses. His feet thud on the floor. Moments later, the shower hisses into life.
Clicking on the bedside lamp, I sit up. Before he leaves I must talk to him. Tell him my plan. He won’t like it.
Adam’s dark hair is damp and curling from the shower. He’s stopped bothering with hair gel. He hands me a couple of tablets with a glass of water. “Here you go—better now?” His fingers move rapidly, buttoning his blue-striped shirt, leaving it open at the neck.
“Thanks, darling. I’ll be fine. Listen—I’ve set up a Zoom call with Ed at two-thirty.”
He stiffens. “About what?”
I paste on a smile. “About going back to work after Christmas.”
“It’s too soon, Tessa. Cancel. We’ll discuss it tonight.”
His eyes look bloodshot, his cheekbones more pronounced. This is my fault, causing him so much stress this past year. He leaves the room without saying goodbye. Once he’s out of the house, he’ll forget it. I doubt he worries about me while he’s at work. Adam’s the most focussed man I know.
Not long ago, I was focussed too. Adam and I used to power-walk to the station, our FitBits counting steps and calculating calories.
On our short commute from Wandsworth Common into central London, where I was head of HR for a tech start-up company, we’d glance at news headlines on our tablets, then settle down to work.
Back then, I could shoehorn vast amounts of activity into every day: exercise classes and swimming, work and socialising, volunteering at the food bank, studying part-time for a Masters in Psychology.
I believed I could bend time to my will.
All that self-improvement—using my brain, being productive, staying fit—turned out to be a poor investment.
I was one of those young, healthy people struck down with long Covid.
For months I struggled through a joyless pattern of work, eat, sleep, rinse and repeat.
At weekends I stayed in bed. Desperate not to go off sick, I used up my annual leave to rest, imagining I could fix myself with more sleep …
My doctor explained the virus had attacked my heart, and insisted on signing me off sick anyway.
If I don’t return to work soon, I’ll be dismissed.
I know this for sure because I wrote the company’s policy on ill health.
Luckily I made the terms generous, but if you can’t show up to do your job, it’s only a matter of time.
I’ve set up today’s Zoom with Ed, my boss, to negotiate a phased return. Before facing him, I need more sleep. Setting my phone alarm for ten-thirty, I lean back and my heavy eyelids close.
Rat-tat-tat. Someone is hammering on my front door.
Soon it will be Christmas, not that we’ll be celebrating this year, but if a delivery driver thinks I’m going to run downstairs to answer his knock, he can forget it.
I lie rigid, waiting for him to push off.
Footsteps retreat down the path. Not the flat-footed tramp of our postman—a lighter tread.
A car door slams. Whoever it was, they’re leaving.
Minutes later a shrill ringing makes me jump.
It’s as if someone has glued their finger to the doorbell and won’t give up.
Miraculously, the cottonwool fog that lives inside my head has cleared as I stumble to the window, lift a corner of the curtain and peer out.
Our porch has a decorative lead canopy so I can’t see who’s on the step, but an unfamiliar blue car is parked outside, its passenger door open.
I push up the sash window to tell them to get lost but the infernal ringing continues.
In the bathroom, I splash my face with water and tug a brush through my hair.
My natural colour is dark blonde and I used to lighten it, but now it’s brassy with six inches of darker roots.
Yesterday’s underwear is balled-up inside a pair of jogging bottoms where I lobbed them last night, aiming for the laundry basket.
I’ll wear them again with the t-shirt I’ve been sleeping in.
Pulling on an Aran sweater, I head downstairs.
I stomp along the hall and yank the door open. “What the …?”
Through a chill December mist, a young woman with kohl-rimmed eyes, blonde hair and a pale face, stares at me. She’s wearing a thin pink cardigan over a faded black t-shirt and ripped jeans. As her hand drops from the bell, I notice it’s trembling.
“Maddie?” I reach out and touch her, checking she’s real and won’t disappear again.
She nods, tight-lipped.
“Well, come in.”
Turning, she points at the blue car with its wide-open door. “I must fetch Leon.”
“Who’s Leon?” Another deadbeat boyfriend? The last one, Brett, was so deep into addiction that I’d be amazed if he were still around.
“My son.” She lifts her chin, challenging me. I’m speechless. She’ll be twenty-eight now, but she’s almost a stranger. My sister has a son.
The image I keep inside my head is of a smiling teenaged Maddie, but the last time I saw her, three years ago at Mum’s funeral, she was scowling and angry.
The wake was at our house with a few neighbours and people from Mum’s church.
Maddie’s partner Brett was staggering around our kitchen, drunk, while she wrapped salmon and cucumber sandwiches in napkins and stuffed them into her backpack.
Then Brett told the vicar to piss off. Adam stepped forward, lips curling with contempt, and ordered Maddie to get the fuck out of our house and take her lowlife bloke with her.
He was acting to protect me, but it was an emotional day. Maddie and I had become orphans with no other close relatives. I wasn’t expecting my sister to walk out of my life and break off communication.
Watching her fluid stride as she walks to her car and leans inside, my love for her comes flooding back. She unbuckles a strap, lifts out a child’s car seat and carries it carefully up the path. The baby’s wrapped in a snowsuit and woollen hat with a white blanket tucked around him.
As I close the door, a sharp wind catches the vase of white roses Adam brought me last weekend and scatters petals on the floor.
I stoop to gather them in my hand, hoping Maddie doesn’t notice me gasping for breath as I get to my feet.
She’s walked ahead into the kitchen, which we’ve extended since she was last here.
New bi-fold doors frame a view of the garden, which we had landscaped, doing away with the lawn.
The Japanese acer has shed its scarlet leaves, and in winter we stare out on rills of water trickling over black slate.
It looks bleak and feels like a waste of money. Maddie doesn’t even notice.
Dropping the rose petals into the bin, I point to a corner sofa, upholstered in child-unfriendly yellow velvet. “Put his seat on there and prop some cushions round it.”
“Thanks, but he’s safer on the floor.”
I’m dying to have a proper look at this child—my nephew—a new relative in my depleted family.
Feeling warm inside, I wait while she settles him and boil the kettle to make her a coffee.
She was never keen on tea. But perhaps she’s changed.
Who knows what Maddie’s been doing these past three years?
If Adam and I had moved house, we might never have seen each other again.
Maddie doesn’t use social media and moved from the flat in Southsea, where she and Brett were living, without giving me her new address.
When I phoned, her number was unrecognised.
Her absence has lodged like a dull ache under my ribcage.
“Here you go.” I hand her the mug. She’s cross-legged on the floor, gazing at her son with that rapt expression you see in Madonna-and-Child paintings.
I squat down to peer at him. A woollen hat is pulled down so I can’t see his hair colour or if he has any.
Dark eyelashes, closed eyelids and pinkish lips that quiver as he breathes.
I can tell he’s some way on from being a newborn.
As we sip our drinks, Maddie briefly glances at the glass-fronted units and central island with its soft task lighting and gleaming quartz surfaces.
“It’s lovely to see you. Lucky I was at home so you didn’t have a wasted journey.” I’m always at home, but now isn’t the time to mention my illness.
She shrugs. “I figured you’d be here. Working from home and on Zoom or whatever. Isn’t that what bosses like you do these days? It’s only worker bees who still have to commute into offices.” Her eyes narrow, and not in a friendly way.
I glance down at my casual clothes and Aran sweater. Is this how I’d dress for working from home and dialling into videoconferences? During lockdowns we used to joke that no one cared what you wore from the waist down. “How far have you come?” I ask, refusing to be offended.
“Not far enough.” Maddie unfolds her limbs from her cross-legged position and stands. “We need your help, Tessa.” Her lower lip trembles as if she’s on the edge of tears.
I gape at her. As if misconstruing my silence, she lashes out. “If you’re not too busy with work and your effing perfect life.” As she lifts her right arm her sleeve rolls back, and I notice a scar and recent bruising on her wrist.
“What happened to you?” I touch her arm, but she shakes my hand off roughly.
“Nothing. That scar is an old one. Tell me—yes or no. Can Leon and I stay here for a while?”
“Yes, I suppose … I mean, I’ll have to talk to Adam …”
Her face crumples, as if she can’t keep up the bravado she’s been faking. “We’re in real danger, Tessa. Please say you’ll help us. I’ve no one else to turn to.”