She’s gone. Just like that, snuffed from the world as though she barely existed at all. She didn’t exist, though. Not really. Marcie’s death, Dad’s departure. They ruined her. Ruined her for me. She still had one living, breathing child, but she chose to mourn the one she always lovedmore. And it’s not so much sadness that settles in me, but a gaping emptiness. My one final, true tie to family gone forever.
Jack helps me through the front door. He runs a bath, helps me into it. I’m not self-conscious about my nakedness and he doesn’t seem to care. He washes my hair, then finds the lime, basil, and mandarin bath oil and pours a liberal amount into the water until it turns cloudy.
Another death to take responsibility for. If I hadn’t lied about the divorce, would she still be here? I don’t know. I picture it. The moment of the fall. I imagine her drunk—drunker than she’s ever been before—stumbling against the railing on the landing, mistiming her step. The tumble down the stairs. Her decomposing at the bottom. The smell that must have hit Dad when he entered the house. She was stingy about the heating, so I suppose—with the cool weather we’ve been having—it probably wasn’t as bad as it could have been. A sad, banal way to end a sad, banal life.
—
Jack wraps atowel round me, steers me through to the bedroom, where he has laid another outfit on the bed. A thin, lacy camisole, which he dresses me in. He pulls back the covers, helps me into bed.
All I can see is Mum’s face as she screamed those accusations at me. She took her suspicions to the grave. And then—in among that yawning absence—a distant weight lifts from my shoulders.
It doesn’t feel like I expected it to. Over the coming days, I don’t wail my pain, because there is none. There’s only quiet. My head—for the first time in years—is quiet.
Through it all—the waves of shock and dawning comprehension—Jack is there. Like a solid, steady heartbeat. Just as he was before. He asks few questions. Sometimes, after my bath, he puts his nose to my neck and inhales the scent of the bath oil. I rarely wear the same thing twice, but whatever he pulls down over my head always bears that faint,distinct smell of tuberose. I imagine our skin cells—mine and Alice’s—binding together on the material and wonder if my transformation is finally complete.
I’m aware of Martha, too. Like a silent ghost in the corner of rooms: dusting, tidying around me. Sometimes, I catch her throwing an anxious glance in my direction, and I wonder if she is still worried that I will tell Jack what she revealed to me. I won’t. Somewhere, vaguely, like a distant reverberation, I remember that what she told me was important.
I have never been entirely reliant on another human being before. I’m not sure I like it. It goes against every instinct I have. I feel horribly vulnerable at Jack’s hands, and, though he is nothing but the sweet, solicitous man I first fell in love with, the memory of those tempestuous moods means I can’t settle under his care. He insists I stay in bed, recover. And, when I insist on leaving the bedroom, that I stay confined to the living room, lying on the sofa. He insists on dressing me, bringing me meals—all healthy, of course. Green salads, legumes, grains, rice cakes.
Sometimes he will bring me a whisky and pull me into him, so that I’m resting against his shoulder. It’s too hot when he does this, but he tightens his hand whenever I try to move away. He insists my phone is bad for my recovery—“You don’t need to be inundated with all those updates when you’re feeling like this”—and takes it away with him, “to charge.” When I ask for it, he watches carefully over my shoulder, and—unable to use any of my other accounts under his observation—I tire of it quickly. I swipe the missed calls from unknown numbers away, the memory of Brian and the news he imparted still horribly sharp.
For the first two weeks, Jack works from home. He “takes care” of every tiny aspect of my life. And then, the Monday after a stiflingly boring weekend in which we complete an entire series on Netflix and I stare unseeingly just to the right of the screen, he announces he’s going to have to go into work. I try not to show my delight.
“Are you going to be all right today?” he asks, hovering by the wardrobe. “Remember, I’m just at the end of the phone. Anything you need…You’ve had some really bad luck, Iris, but don’t blame yourself. What happened to your mother was a terrible, terrible accident.”
I wonder when I mentioned the accident to him: I don’t remember doing so, but the whole day was a blur.
“If you’re going, I need my phone. To call you, in case I need you,” I say blankly.
“Ah, yes. Sorry, I was charging it.” He hesitates before returning with my phone. It feels like freedom when he hands it over, though I work to keep my face impassive, neutral. I sense he wouldn’t take kindly to how pleased I am that he is finally leaving me alone to my thoughts.
Before he goes, he lays out another set of clothes on the bed. A cashmere jumper. The same pair of jeans I wore that first day. Then he kisses me on the forehead and leaves. Even his sympathy, the sympathy I loved so much at the beginning, has begun to lose its luster.
The moment I hear the door close, I rise. It’s the first time in weeks that my time is entirely my own, and I shower rather than bathe. Jack insisted on depositing me in the bath every morning, even when I protested. He didn’t seem to understand that I hated the idea that I was sitting in my own dirt. Not in the mood to conform to his whims, I choose something different from among Alice’s clothing.
After I’ve dressed, I go downstairs. I think about going out, but when I look for the secret key that Catherine gave me, which I’d hidden in my bag, it’s gone. I barely have the energy to care. I go through to the kitchen instead. I haven’t eaten proper food since Jack took charge of my “recovery.” There’s barely anything in the fridge that isn’t horribly healthy, but in the freezer I find an old pizza that I scorch in the oven and then eat, hot grease dripping down my hand.
Jack messages to check how I am—his third this morning already—but I ignore him, log in to my social media profiles, and scroll through updates, finally feeling as though I can breathe again.
There’s a message from Tilly.
You’ll never guess what’s happened. The ex is dead! She fell down the stairs drunk. It’s actually quite sad—Rich found her. He said it was horrible. She was at this weird angle, and her neck was clearly broken. After everything that happened, he went over to talk to her. I think he wanted to try and make things all right, now so many years have passed, and I think—between you and me—he’s feeling a bit guilty about his daughter. Not speaking to her for all these years, etc.
In another message directly under this one, she continues:
ANYWAY, get this. Apparently, it’s not quite as cut-and-dried as they thought. Something to do with the angle she fell at. I’m sure they’ll get to the bottom of it though, and I guess they’ve just got to cover all bases. Hope you’re well. xx
I’ve come to expect this sort of wanton flippancy from Tilly, but it still irks me that she is speaking about my mother with so little respect. Like she’s nothing more than an anecdote to entertain her online friend.
I fight the urge to send a snappy reply. She really is an incontestably awful woman, but she’s my only link to Dad. My one and only tether to my past. And, as such, I need her. Particularly if Dad wants to put right all he did wrong.
Yes, I can see myself as a daddy’s girl. He always made me feel so special. I could play up to it, become overly reliant to the point of idiocy, desperate to please. Without Mum there to pour poison into hisear, and the many years that have passed since Marcie died, I’ve little doubt I could worm my way back in. Just in case things with Jack don’t turn out the way I hope. A blasphemous thought, but it’s good to have a backup plan.
I’m unsettled by the way he’s been acting recently. It is not just the over-solicitousness. It’s the sense that, when he looks at me now, it is not really me that he sees. And I have my own qualities that should be recognized. That I will make him recognize.
I tap out a reply to Tilly.
Sorry for the slow reply—things have been manic recently. That’s awful! I know you didn’t like her, but that’s a horrible way to go. Hope you’re all holding up OK. Perhaps speaking to the daughter would be a good idea. She must be upset if her mother has died. I know that’s what I’d do.
