‘How about we have a milkshake to celebrate a fun morning?’ I ask, knowing I’m at the shallow breathing point – very bad, according to all mindfulness Apps – and not caring.
In the milkshake place, I examine the goodies from the Surella bag and feel even more upset.Hot Lips Honeyis not really the correct name for any sort of lip gloss that afourteen-year-old is going to wear, I think primly. Although maybe it is among oursocial-media obsessed youth and I don’t know. But still, I don’t want Lexi going out and trying to copy Elisa and saying: ‘I’m a Hot Lips Honey.’
But Lexi looks so upset when I say that perhaps all the products aren’t suitable for girls her age, that I don’t quite know what to do.
My instincts feel off. Do I hate this stuff just because I hate Elisa? But I don’t really hate her, do I? I just think she’s a bit superficial and desperate. I definitely hate that years ago, she insisted she wanted to stay in touch with Lexi – it was part of the adoption agreement – and then didn’t. Not with any proper routine, anyway.
Lexi has a plan herself for what to do next – planning is a skill allfourteen-year-olds learn effortlessly: ‘I texted Caitlin and can we go by her house so we can pick her up? Her mum says it’s OK. We want to try themake-up – uh, and do our homework ...’
Caitlin Keogh is her best friend from school and her family are like ours: careful with their kids, not the sort to say ‘sure, off you go’ when older daughters head off to discos wearing belts for miniskirts, little skimpy tops and no coats, no matter what the weather. Caitlin is a lot like Lexi: both lovelydark-hairedwould-be ballerinas who practise endlessly and walk with grace.
‘Great plan,’ I say.
In Caitlin’s house, while our daughters scream with excitement at all the products, I manage a ten minute conversation in her kitchen with Kathleen, Caitlin’s mother. Kathleen is the sort of person I’d like to be when I grow up. She knows the whole story about the dreaded Elisa. And when I tell her about the contents of the bag, she raises her eyes to heaven.
‘That’s a tricky one,’ she says, ‘but listen, in my experience, with Sarah and Mairéad, I found that the more I forbade them to use anything, the more determined they were to use it.’ Sarah and Mairéad are seventeen andtwenty-one. ‘Give her a little leeway on this, but how about we tell Caitlin and Lexi they can use the make up in your house but they can’t go out wearing it. Does that sound all right to you?’
‘Yes,’ I say, ‘but will you say it because I’m afraid it will come out wrong if I do. I’m all at sea with this Elisa stuff and I’m terrified Lexi will realise it. I’m torn between wanting to kill Elisa and wanting to tell her to get a real job.’
‘Right,’ says Kathleen in amatter-of-fact voice. ‘I’d feel the same, but keep the lid on it, Freya – always a mistake to let your kids know that you have murder on your mind.’ She laughs loudly. ‘I’ll tell them that there is no way in hell that they are setting foot outside your door looking like they are nineteen and about to go to a nightclub. Simple.’
‘Yes, simple,’ I agree, relieved.
At home, my head aching, I hug Maura for taking care of Liam and Teddy, whisper that I’ll phone later to tell her all, then put my fake smile in place.
‘Pizzas for lunch,’ I say brightly.
I take out the pizza dough I have resting and make pizzas for everyone. Lexi and Caitlin barely touch theirs. They’re dying to get upstairs to try out their goodies and they are already on Instagram looking up Surella ideas.
Kathleen’s talk seems to have worked but I still feel anxious. Elisa coming back into our lives is bad luck. I can feel it.
*
In the middle of the night, I wake in a frenzy of sweat and fear; the sensation that someone is in the room is so powerful and terrifying that I cannot move. This happens a lot: sleep paralysis. It means you are not quite awake but the dream you’re having is so powerful, it literally makes your body unable to move. Fear grasps me, every muscle straining because I want to move but ... And suddenly, I can. Still fearful, I sit up and I look around but there is nothing, nobody. There was someone here – I feel it!
I could wake Dan, but I have to get through this on my own. I leap out of bed and walk around the room, poised, ready to hit someone as hard as I can. I open all the wardrobes, stumble over the few as yet unpacked boxes. I just have to check to make sure there is nobody here. When I have done our room and the bathroom, I race out onto the landing and staring around, hurry into Teddy’s bedroom. Safe. I look under her bed; nothing. In her wardrobe and behind that pile of teddies we still haven’t sorted out.No, nothing. Into Liam’s quickly – it’s all OK. Chaotic, but then any bedroom of Liam’s is always going to be chaotic. I know there is no one here but still I open the wardrobes and I check, look under his bed.OK, nothing. I should have brought my phone so I could see, so I crawl around the other side and look under there too but there is nothing, not even a dust bunny. The woman who owned the house before us had vacuumed the place within an inch of its life before we moved in and the dust hasn’t crept back in yet.
I’m beginning to calm down a bit, but there’s still Lexi. My Lexi. Into her room; I repeat the routine, opening cupboards, wardrobes, checking everywhere. She’s safe, asleep. I look quickly into the main bathroom, dark in itsavocado-ness and still nothing. At the top of the stairs, there is some ugly award that Dan got years ago, which has bewilderingly been left on the top step, probably to hold a door open because it’s heavy and bronze. The perfect weapon. I grab it and creep downstairs quietly.
I am calmer now but still, I’m going to kill whoever it is. Because if any mugger dares come after my family the way he came after me, I will end it all for them.
I race into every room and there is nothing, nobody. Finally, I look out into the dark garden and wonder if it was a good idea to move into the house with thenow-unkempt garden and the walls because now I can’t see anything in the garden. It’s just a black mass of nothingness. A person could be hiding there. I want lamps outside, lamps that light up if anything moves, anything: a bird, a fox, a mouse, a spider, one of those big ones: I don’t care.
I switch off the alarm, go to the back door and open it. I stand there menacingly, wielding my ugly bronze statue like a weapon.
‘Come if you dare’, I hiss into the night but nothing answers. All I can hear are the noises of the cars from the road and the low mumble of the wind. Maybe the wind woke me, but probably not.
The wind isn’t the thing that frightens me or wakes me up. It’s the paralysing fear that I’m in the car park again, a simple underground car park, but with corners where people can hide, jump out and hit women on their own, knock them to the ground, stand over them, laugh, stand on their hands, kick them. My collarbone and contusions took a while to heal, but the rest of it, will it ever heal?
When am I going to be normal?
Normal’s a setting on the dryer, mutters Mildred in my head.
Things must be bad, I think, if even Mildred’s on my side.
It’s half four now, and I can’t even bear thinking of going back to sleep. I’d be afraid I’d go back into the dream again. So instead, I turn on Dan’s blasted coffee machine.
I admit it: I love it too. I never used to. Too much coffee is bad for you, I used to say cheerfully. Drinking herbal tea, determined not to become ahyped-up chef. But now, I drink a lot of coffee: coffee in the middle of the night when I wake up and I know sleep is not coming again. I could take another sleeping tablet but then I’d be like a zombie at seven o’clock in the morning when I have to actually wake up. So I sit and drink my coffee and turn on the TV. Middle of the night TV is not particularly good, but with the curtains drawn and all the lights on in the cosy little den just off the kitchen, I turn on Netflix and find achick-flick, something gorgeous and funny.The Other Womanwith Cameron Diaz, I love her.
