Later, when Mum is in the playroom watching TV with the girls, I take the spare key and let myself into Apple Tree. Mum has made the beds and pulled back the curtains. Ruby’s wheelchair has been folded up and propped next to the dressing-table. Her leg braces lie on top of it, discarded, like the broken body parts of a doll. Everything is neat and tidy. I wouldn’t expect anything less of my mother. I’m in here because I remembered seeing Selena’s suede jacket hanging up in the wardrobe, and it suddenly occurred to me while I was wiping worktops in the kitchen, that I should have checked the pockets. I’d forgotten to tell the police about it, although I only saw her wearing it once, the day before she died. It’s a long shot, but there might be some clue as to who she was meeting.
I pull open the wardrobe door, relieved when I see it there. I’d half wondered if Mum might have removed it. I pull it from the hanger and bury my face in the soft fabric. It smells of Selena’s perfume and I close my eyes. It’s like she’s back in the room with me. I rummage in the pockets. They’re deep, filled with bits of crap. Which was so like Selena. She never emptied her pockets – when she was a kid, they were stuffed with sweet wrappers, bits of tissue and other junk. I empty the contents on to the bed and I’m surprised when something hard falls out with a thud. It’s a mobile phone, the one I gave her the night Ruby was taken into hospital. I’d forgotten about it. I’m not really expecting to see anything so I’m surprised when a conversation thread pops up from an unrecognizable number. I scroll through it. It looks as though she messaged this person the day Ruby was admitted to hospital.
Selena: Don’t try to find me.
She’s my daughter.
Selena: You know she’s not.
I need to see you.
Selena: It’s over. Leave me alone.
I’m worried about what you’re doing to her.
Selena: I’m protecting her.
I still love you. I don’t understand why you left me. Is it because of the letter?
There’s no reply and no more messages. She must have forgotten to delete them. Or she was planning to before she gave the phone back to me. I slip it into my pocket and sift through the rest of the rubbish, smiling to myself when I see a lollipop stick, the end still sticky and red, a piece of used chewing gum wrapped in a tissue, a few copper coins, a crumpled receipt. I pick up the receipt, expecting it to hold some clue as to where Selena went that morning but it’s dated six months ago. I’m about to give up and throw the whole lot into the bin when I see something scribbled on the back of a small piece of card. I pick it up. It looks like it’s been torn from a cigarette packet, and someone has etched a mobile number on to it in blue biro.
I stare at it, my heart racing. I’m good with numbers. I only have to look at them a few times to commit them to memory. And I recognize this one straight away.
Because it’s Nathan’s.
29
Nathan is alone in the back garden. I can see him through the kitchen window. He’s toeing the hard ground with his boot. He has his back to me but I can tell he’s having a sneaky fag because every now and then a plume of smoke trails over his head and dissipates in the cold damp air. He’s wearing a ribbed navy jumper with jeans. He must be freezing.
This is the ideal opportunity to speak to him alone. I finger the card in the back pocket of my jeans.
I grab my coat and take him out a cup of tea. ‘Julia will have your bollocks if she sees you’re out here smoking,’ I joke, handing him the mug.
He starts. ‘Christ, Kirsty, you nearly gave me a heart attack! I thought you were Julia,’ but he takes the mug of tea gratefully. He’s like me with tea and coffee: we can consume ten cups a day easily. We get it from Mum.
He flicks the cigarette to the ground and grinds it into the mud with his foot. We stand in silence as we sip our tea. There is so much I want to say to him. I long to confide in him about Selena, about Mum and Uncle Owen, but I can’t. It would be selfish, offloading on to him. He’d be buried under it all. And he’s got enough on his plate with his recent marriage troubles. We used to be close. Only two school years apart, we’d spend hours playing together, me with my dolls and him with his Action Man (until he’d ruin the game with his Action Man trying to ‘kill’ one of my Barbies). Even at university we kept in touch – he visited me in Durham, and when he started at Manchester, I’d spend the weekend with him. It’s only in the last few years that we’ve grown apart, not helped by our own private conflicts: Adrian’s breakdown and Julia’s miscarriages. I miss the easy way we used to have with each other.
He’d asked me once about Selena. We were both living in London, me in a flatshare and on the first rung of the marketing ladder, and him briefly while he worked dead-end jobs and tried to figure out what he wanted to do with his life. We’d met up for a drink in our favourite bar – more of an old men’s pub, really, but it was near to where I was living in Whitechapel. He’d graduated from university the year before so it must have been about thirteen years ago.
‘Why don’t you keep in touch with Selena?’ he’d asked over a pint.
As much as I loved Nathan he was quite self-involved so I was surprised he’d noticed that Selena and I were estranged. I had shrugged it off, tried to make light of it. ‘You know how it is,’ I said, toying with my pint glass. ‘Keeping in touch with friends back home is hard work.’
He’d frowned then. ‘But you’re not friends. You’re cousins. She’s family.’
‘I know that. But she’s changed. We’ve … Well, we’ve just grown apart. Have you seen her? Has she said something?’
‘Not exactly. I mean, yes, I’ve seen her. I bumped into her in Manchester the other weekend.’
‘Manchester?’
‘She’s living there now. I was visiting some uni mates. We grabbed a quick drink. She told me Uncle Owen’s left and Aunt Bess still goes on benders. She wanted a new start away from Cardiff.’
‘And did she mention me?’ I was worried she’d have told him about our fight, her accusation, my reaction.
‘Only to ask after you. She said she hadn’t seen you since you left for uni.’
I’d made regretful noises and vague promises to get in touch with her that I had no intention of keeping, and Nathan left it at that.
