7
BloodRed
Now
Sunlight on my cheek, a breeze across my shoulders. I blink at the clock on the bedside table – 07:43. I’m struggling to make out why everything feels so wrong – the time, the clock, the towel round myself. Realisation is a knife sliding between my ribs. I’ve been woken by the weather, not the patter of feet across the floorboards, the warm, wriggly body that pushes its way up through the covers and says, ‘Cuddle, Mummy.’
I almost walk out. It’s unbearable, I can’t do this, I’ll find my phone, call Kit, he’ll drive up immediately, park on the double-yellow lines and then my girl will be in my arms. She will hug me so tightly, nothing will hurt anymore, I will hold her hand in the car, I’ll go home, back to my room at the top of The Wedge, and then I remember what I’ve been doing since I lost Faye, the futon in the greenhouse damp and unchanged beneath me, the crying that went on for so long, it didn’t as much occur in intervals but was instead one single cry. Only a few days ago,Millie came into the bathroom while I lay curled up on the floor of the shower, the heat turned up to the max.
‘What you doing, Mama?’
Through the glass, her features were blurred in condensation and then suddenly sharp as she squashed her nose against the screen. ‘Taking long time.’
She put her hands on the glass. I saw the three lines on her palms – life, head, heart.
‘Why are you lying down, Mama? Are you sleeping?’
I can’t go on like that.
I put down my phone.This is fine, I tell myself, looking around the room,you need to do this.I get slowly out of bed. It’s still uncomfortable, although nowhere near as painful as it was three weeks ago, when I could only use my arms and legs to slide to the edge of the bed. Kit would wait patiently for my snail-crawl arrival, lifting my legs slowly to the floor to take the weight from my non-existent abs, and then, I am breathless with how much I miss my husband, how he insists on kissing me goodbye, how he always charges my toothbrush, how, after I lost Faye, he stocked the fridge with all my favourite foods: giant olives stuffed with chillies; lasagnes; a cheeseboard like it was Christmas. He must be going mad. I have driven him mad. I press my hand against my mouth. I cannot think of him now.
I tie the hotel dressing gown round myself and start unpacking. The desk is the perfect place to set up, a good, clear surface, away from the light. I wipe it down and then set out the contents of my old make-up bag, dropping tweezers and paintbrushes into water glasses, lining the back with test tubes and specimen jars, the blender, which, last minute, I pulled out from the kitchen cabinet.I lay out the small, Ziploc plastic wallets, my little miniature library. I don’t need to label them, I know them by sight – wolfsbane; giant hogweed; ragwort; cuckoo pints; bromelia – roots, leaves, prickles all dried, preserved, ground down to the smallest possible usable size. Then, I turn to the angel’s trumpets. Gently, I remove the bag.
She’s survived. The leaves, the woody stem are fine – no scratches or bruising. The flowers are intact too, that brilliant blood-red shade.
I turn each head of the flower towards me, peer inside. The tight buds of anthers are deep down the neck – it’s fertilised by hummingbirds in the Andes foothills, all those long, slim beaks – but I can see them, they look good, the pollen bright and fluffy on the filaments. I tape up the petals. I don’t want to lose a single grain.
After that, I get myself ready. I swallow some painkillers, pull on a fresh T-shirt, ease myself into my maternity jeans. Clothed, I brave the mirror. Before him, I used to hate how I looked, my hair and eyes most of all because they identified me as indefinable – not quite white, not quite Chinese. Beside the sleek dark of Mama, my smoky-brown hair, my swampy eyes looked rinsed, the right colour bleached out. But he made me see myself differently. He loved my eyes, so I loved them. Should I be grateful for this now?
I ring my eyes with black kohl, redden my lips.
I am an exaggerated version of myself.
The opposite of who he wants.
From: Kit McDermott
05:02
I’m lying on the floor next to Millie. By the time I came back, she’d fallen asleep in front ofPeppa Pig. I put her in bed but she kept waking up, calling for you – three, four times, I’ve lost count. So now, I’m beside her.
I know how devastated you are about Faye, I’m devastated too. But Millie doesn’t. All she knows is that her mother isn’t there. How could you do this to her?
8
Rat
Now
There was a study I once read about rats. A rat that witnesses the killing of another will return to the crime scene and scream for the equivalent of a human month. I think about that as the lifts open at Queensway Station, as I adjust to the light, the distant sound of drilling, the familiarity of the street. I am a rat. Returning to the place I was killed. If I stay here long enough, scream long enough, grief might become a location. A place I can finally leave.
Queensway is both the same as I remember and different. At the top end of the road, the buildings are being remodelled into luxury apartments with views over Kensington Gardens, at the other end, the old Whiteleys mall is being converted into unaffordable flats, a Six Senses Spa. Between these points of construction, the area remains a Middle-Eastern and Asian enclave. Shisha lounges and souvlaki grills are sandwiched between souvenir and bubble tea shops and, unbelievably, the old Chinese restaurants are still standing – Mandarin Kitchen, Four Seasons,rows of headless ducks hanging in the windows, their skins browned and crisp.
Even Oriental Supermarket is still here, although it is smaller than in my memory. The heated display in the window is the same, dripping with condensation from the BBQ roast pork buns and, outside, there are boxes of white onions and tomatoes mixed in with trays of Indian mangoes, bright globes of Japanese pears. I pick one up: £4.20. They were always ridiculously expensive. Mama would buy one to celebrate small victories, cut it into thin slices, arrange them artfully round a saucer for me. I peer through the doorway. I want to go in, grip the edge of the counter, say,It’s me, do you remember? I lived above here,though the shop assistant isn’t the kind, elderly Cantonese woman of my memory but a nineteen-year-old watching make-up tutorials. I study her, try to trace the lineage of her features until she senses my presence, glares. I step away.
Our old flat is above the shop, on the first floor. My eyes trail up slowly, but then my hand flies over my mouth, I don’t want to see it, I don’t want to be here, I want to see Millie. I turn on my phone. I know I’m scared, I know I’m stalling, but I can’t help it. I open the Nanny app. Millie’s bedroom is empty, Kit and Millie aren’t there, they’re probably downstairs, having breakfast. Still, I can tell what they’ve been doing. There’s a pile of books to the side of her cot bed: they’ve had ‘a snuggy read’, when one of us gets in beside her and reads the books she brings over. I started it, I used to read to her for hours on Fridays when there’s no rush to get to nursery, and on the weekends, when I woke up beside her. Even after I lost Faye, I’d drag myself out of the greenhouse to read to her. It was the one thing I could manage.
A bald man shuffles out of the building with a trolley bag – I should take this chance; I might not get another. I slip through. The stairwell reeks of weed, I press my elbow to my nose like I never did when I lived here. Over the wall, I see my old balcony. Mama gave it over to me for my plants. Salvager, interior design master, make-do extraordinaire, she picked up plastic crates tossed out by Oriental Supermarket, drilled holes in them for flower beds so I could plant the seedlings I’d liberated from Kensington Gardens into equally liberated soil. This balcony once bloomed with camellias, delphiniums, rose bushes. Now, it’s empty. No evidence we were ever there.
