Who Did You Tell (ARC) Read online

  a second and before I know what’s happening it’s too late. The

  grief is never far from the surface. It only takes a tiny trigger

  and down it comes like an avalanche, collecting all the other

  debris in its path.

  Josh pulls me towards him and I bury my face in his chest. We

  stay like this for ages. Until his sweatshirt is damp through.

  Until he strokes my head and kisses my left earlobe. Then we

  start walking again, except this time we’re holding hands.

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  Look at her. Crying on another man’s shoulders. Starting all over again with someone else.

  My fingers find the envelope in my pocket and curl around its stiff edges. I work one of the corners under my thumbnail and push it in till it hurts. I do that all the time now. I like the little V‑ shape it makes at the top of the nailbed. I like the pain – the way it throbs.

  She thinks she can reinvent herself just by moving away and cut‑

  ting her hair. She thinks she’s leaving the past behind her. Getting better.

  She needs to think again.

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  10

  Somehow or other, we resurface at Josh’s dad’s house. The table

  in the kitchen has been cleared and scrubbed. Josh opens

  the giant fridge and brings out lettuce with dirt still clinging to

  the leaves, big beef tomatoes and a small, curved, dusty- looking

  cucumber, like the type you find in French supermarkets. He

  blasts the lettuce under the cold tap, then dunks it in a bowl of

  water before tearing the leaves off one by one and shaking

  them out with concentrated force over the quarry- tiled floor.

  Now he’s boiling two eggs in a pan and I’ve been presented

  with a glass chopping board, two tomatoes and a razor- sharp

  knife. There’s something comforting in this silent communica-

  tion, the wordless allocation of tasks. I like the way the knife

  drops through the firm red flesh of the tomatoes and lets me

  slice them really thinly.

  I feel like an invalid who’s only just been allowed up. Someone

  who still has to be looked after but is now well enough to do a

  few basic chores for herself, as long as she is sitting quietly, within sight of the restorative water, gleaming like grey silk cloth beyond the window. Perhaps this is how I’ll heal, being here with Josh, in

  this beautiful house. Perhaps this is where my future begins.

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  LESLEY K AR A

  I see it then, on top of the microwave. A half- empty bottle of

  red. My throat dissolves. They didn’t even finish it off. One bot-

  tle between two grown men and there’s still a couple of glasses

  left. How is that even possible? Unless, of course, it’s another

  bottle. It must be, surely.

  Josh disappears for a few minutes. My hands tremble. There’s a

  roaring sound at the back of my head. The knife slips through my

  fingers and clatters on to the glass board. I pop the ends of the

  tomatoes into my mouth and suck the juice out of them, forcing

  my eyes away from the bottle and towards the tap sticking out of

  the wall, but its image is burnt into my retinas. If I’m going to tell him, it has to be now. The longer I leave it, the worse it will be.

  But when Josh returns, his dad’s with him.

  ‘Hi there, Astrid,’ Richard says. ‘How are the sketches com-

  ing on?’

  ‘Bloody hell, Dad! Give her a chance.’

  My laugh comes easily. More out of relief than amusement.

  ‘I should have something to show you in a few days.’

  A few weeks, I should have said. A few weeks. Why am I putting myself under pressure like this? I haven’t even started

  them yet. Too scared I’ll have forgotten how.

  Richard grins. ‘Fantastic.’

  His eyes take in our food preparations. ‘Right, I’m nipping

  out to the yacht club for a quick pint and a sandwich. I’ve got

  to wait for the plaster in the bathroom to dry out.’ He taps the

  side of his nose. ‘That’s my excuse, anyway.’

  When he’s gone and it’s just Josh and me, alone in the kitchen,

  my heart starts to thud because I know what I have to do. And

  I have to do it now, before my resolve wavers. I have to tell him

  why I’m really here in Flinstead. Why I’m back home with my

  mum again after all these years.

  ‘I’m glad Dad bought this house,’ Josh says. ‘It’s given him a

  new lease of life. He looks happier than he has in years.’

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  WHO DID YOU TELL?

  I focus on cutting my hard- boiled egg in half. The bottle of

  red wine is still making its presence felt from behind my head. I

  really like Josh. I mean, really like him. I like his dad too, and I know he’ll ask me to paint the trompe l’œil for him, just like I know I’ll say yes. I can’t wait to get stuck into something creative again, to prove to myself that I’m not completely washed

  up. The thing is, if I tell him the truth, then everything will be

  spoiled before it’s even begun.

  ‘It’s funny,’ Josh says, ‘but everyone always thinks he’s such

  a positive, energetic kind of man – and he is, he really is – it’s just that they don’t see what’s behind all that energy, what’s

  driving it.’ He rests his fork on the side of his plate. This clearly isn’t the time to talk about me and my drinking. I should have

  spoken up sooner.

  ‘My mum’s name was Lindsay,’ he says. His eyes are some-

  where else now, some place in the past. ‘She was a dance teacher.’

  He looks down at his plate and pushes the salad around with

  his fork. ‘She died the year I started uni.’

  I don’t ask him how she died. Maybe you have to have lost a

  parent to know what is, and isn’t, the right thing to say. Maybe

  that’s why Simon and I clicked so easily, because we’d both lost

  our dads. Josh will tell me if he wants to, when the time is right.

  ‘I was twenty- six when my dad died.’ My throat has closed

  up and my voice sounds weird, as if it belongs to someone else.

  Josh reaches across the table and traces a little pattern on the

  top of my hand with his finger. We finish our lunch in silence,

  but there’s nothing awkward or uncomfortable about it. That

  one simple gesture is all the communication we need and I

  wonder whether we’ll go upstairs later and make love on that

  soft, white duvet. I hope so.

  Afterwards, I wash the bowls and cutlery in a washing- up

  bowl on the table with hot water from the kettle and Fairy Liq-

  uid. Then Josh rinses everything under the cold tap over a bucket

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  LESLEY K AR A

  and hands me each item, one at a time, for me to dry with a

  stripy linen tea- towel that has a clean, pressed look about it, and though part of me is disappointed that he isn’t leading me

  upstairs to make the most of his father’s absence, another part

  thinks how wonderful it is not to rush things
, to take care over

  the preparation of a simple salad, to clean up afterwards, quietly,

  methodically, the skin of our elbows brushing up against each

  other, the anticipation of more, much more, thrumming gently

  between us. Why have I never known this before?

  That night I have a dream. A nightmare. I’m kneeling before the

  assembled residents of Flinstead and Mistden in the commu-

  nity hall. Josh’s dad is reading a list of my transgressions, every

  last sordid one, in that weird monotonous voice poets some-

  times use. Every so often, he looks straight at me with those

  intense blue eyes and I shrink before his gaze.

  There are gasps and tuts from the audience. My mum and my

  nan are both there and so are all the people from AA. Rosie and

  Jeremy and Helen, and all the rest of them. Josh is there too,

  sitting at the back in his wetsuit with his head between his

  hands, water dripping from the ends of his hair onto the dusty,

  parquet floor.

  I’m not aware of Simon at first, but then my skin begins to

  prickle and I sense his presence on the stage, glowering at me.

  And then at Josh. The hall is now a theatre and he’s an actor in

  a play. He’s standing over a small heap of clothes on the floor.

  But then the clothes begin to move and it’s a young woman,

  struggling to get up, her finger pointing straight at me. And all

  the while a child screams. My stomach turns over on itself.

  ‘Haven’t you forgotten something?’ she says, her voice ring-

  ing out in the hall. Angry and accusing.

  But when I wake up, instead of relief, I feel dread. Cold,

  creeping dread that runs in my veins like a bad drug.

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  11

  Mum’s already up and moving about downstairs when the

  clanging of church bells penetrates my sleeping brain. I didn’t

  think I’d ever get off again after that nightmare, but here I am,

  rubbing the sleep from my eyes and yawning. I should have

  kept my window shut.

  There’s a knock on my bedroom door. ‘Astrid? Are you

  awake?’ She says it in such a way that, if I weren’t already awake,

  then I would be now.

  I pull the duvet over my head and don’t answer. I know what

  she’s going to say because she says the same thing every Sunday

  morning. She’s going to ask me if I want to go to the meeting

  house with her and do whatever it is Quakers do. Sit around in

  silence communing with God. Holding things ‘in the light’.

  ‘Will you come with me today?’ she says.

  Why does she persist with this? Surely she must have got the

  message by now.

  ‘I’ll take a rain cheque, Mum, if you don’t mind.’

  Her silence thrums on the other side of the door. I want to shout,

  Isn’t it enough that I’m going to AA? but I press my lips together and wait for her to leave. I’ve nothing against Quakers – as far as 63

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  LESLEY K AR A

  religions go, it’s the least offensive and I know it’s helped Mum

  cope with losing Dad. She probably wouldn’t have embraced it so

  readily if it weren’t for that – but it’s not for me and I wish she’d accept that.

  ‘Well, if you change your mind, I’m not leaving for another

  half- hour.’

  ‘I won’t change my mind. I need to get on with those sketches.’

  I hear her steps move away from the door, then stop. ‘There’s

  some tea in the pot if you want some.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  She waits for a few seconds, then goes into her bedroom and

  shuts the door. How does she do that? How does she always

  manage to make me feel like such a shit? As soon as she opens

  her mouth, I’m catapulted back into bolshie- teenager mode.

  Jesus Christ, those bells are annoying!

  When Mum’s gone, I get up and go downstairs. It might be a

  sunny day, but the back of the house is dark and chilly on

  account of it facing north, so I take my sketch pad and pencils

  and sit outside on the front step, where it’s warm and bright,

  and where the pressure to create something good won’t be as

  strong because I can kid myself I’m a little girl again, doodling

  to pass the time.

  Even so, my hand is unsteady and the marks on the paper

  are clumsy and child- like. I rip the first sheet up and crumple it into a ball. It should be like riding a bike, shouldn’t it? A skill I already possess. I just have to start doing it again and trick my

  brain into remembering how.

  It isn’t till I’ve covered the second page with squiggles and

  squirls and random, interlocking shapes that I start to relax

  into it. I’d forgotten how good it feels to get lost in the moment,

  to feel the pencil moving almost of its own accord, to forget my

  own mind and its incessant babble. I’m out of practice, for sure,

  but if I spend this morning getting a feel for it again, maybe I’ll

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  WHO DID YOU TELL?

  go down to the yacht club later and try sketching some of the

  boats.

  A young mother with a pushchair walks past the house. I don’t

  think she’s the one who tutted at me the other day, although she

  could be. She stops for a moment to comfort the toddler, who is

  whingeing loudly and trying to undo the harness.

  The grating sound of the child’s cry and the sight of its back

  arching stiffly away from the seat of the pushchair makes me

  remember my dream from last night, and the back of my neck

  feels cold and clammy. Somewhere in the distance, another set

  of church bells starts up and when finally she settles the child

  and sets off again I turn over a fresh page in my sketch pad and

  exhale slowly. But any confidence I thought I’d regained has

  evaporated and my fingers are too sweaty to grip the pencil.

  Monday morning. I stoop down and gather the post into my

  hands. Still nothing from the DWP. I open the front door, won-

  dering if it might have slipped through the postman’s fingers

  and be lying on the porch mat.

  Shock roots me to the spot. Shock and fear. There’s no mis-

  taking it: the distinctive aroma of Joint by Roccobarocco

  trapped in the stuffy porch. He’s been here. Simon has been to

  the cottage, stood where I’m standing now. I’m not going mad.

  This is really happening.

  All of a sudden, lightness floods through me. My head falls

  back and I slump against the door frame, laughing at my own

  stupidity. It’s the postman I’ve been catching whiffs of all this

  time. A postman who likes to smell nice, drawn to a scent that’s

  a little bit different, that as far as I know you can only get

  online. This isn’t Simon’s smell after all. The scent in my nos-

  trils is mixed with the chemicals in another man’s skin, a

  swarthy, thickset man in standard- issue Royal Mail T- shirt and grey trousers. It explains why I’ve smelled it out and about too.

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  I must have seen him loads of times, trundling his red trolley

  along the streets.

  I open the porch door to release it and take a lungful of fresh

  air. What a fool I’ve been.

  Mum’s finishing off her breakfast and doing a crossword in

  the dining room. I put the pile of post next to her plate.

  ‘Still nothing about my benefits.’

  ‘Never mind. You’ll hear from them soon, I’m sure you will.’

  Her voice is light, friendly. We’re both making a supreme effort

  to be nice to one another.

  ‘I hope so. I hate not being able to give you any money.’

  She nods and takes a sip of her tea. ‘I meant to ask you about

  Saturday. You were out a long while.’

  ‘We went for a walk on the beach. Then he made me lunch.’

  ‘That’s nice.’

  She wants to say more, I know she does. She wants to give

  me another warning about not getting too involved, but she

  focuses on her crossword instead. I can see that it’s a huge

  struggle for her, not saying what’s on her mind. I lay my hand

  on her shoulder and give it a squeeze. She tilts her head to the

  side so that her cheek rests briefly on the top of my hand.

  In the kitchen she’s laid a tea towel over the counter so that

  half of it is hanging off. This is what she does to let them dry

  out. It’s one of those hard cotton ones with pictures of herbs

  and their names on it. It must once have been white but now it’s

  dull and grey. It’s perfectly clean, but there are old tea stains on it. I think of the soft linen one in Josh’s dad’s house, how even

  though they’re in the middle of a major refurbishment and the

  kitchen is a shell, they still have lovely things. Well- sharpened, good- quality knives, pretty crockery and pristine tea- towels.

  ‘By the way,’ Mum calls out, ‘don’t be surprised if someone

  pops round in the next day or so to have a look at the house.’

  ‘Why? You’re not thinking of selling up already, are you?’

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  WHO DID YOU TELL?

  She comes into the kitchen and gives me an incredulous

  look. ‘Why would I want to do that? No, it’s someone who used

  to live here when she was a child. A young woman. I’ve seen her

  standing across the road looking at the house a couple of times