Verity had mostly left home for college so pretended not to notice anything that didn’t turn out quite right, Conrad just side-eyed me whenever I asked his opinion on my creations and Evan . . . my darling Evan, put up with so much until he declared that he couldn’t stand to be surrounded by my half-finished ‘projects’ any longer and either I took it outside or I stopped.
We erected a smaller bike store for their bikes and accessories and I emptied out as much as I could get away with from the weatherboard brown shed that stood at the end of our long, narrow garden, and it became my workshop for when I worked on my projects.
I would have loved all new tools and benches and paint palettes, but instead my ‘place’ was a collection of the tools and paints and varnishes and DIY debris people accumulate over the course of their lives. I had very few specialist tools, most of them were old and had seen better days but still worked, so I still used them.
This morning, after we have all risen and avoided each other by grabbing toast and retreating to our rooms for breakfast, I escape to the shed, having mumbled to Evan something about working on the book stool.
I’d found a load of books dumped in a skip recently. They looked so forlorn and unloved sitting there, and at the same time the air was burgeoning with rain and I knew these books, these pages and pages of knowledge, needed me to rescue them. They weren’t suitable for my house – most of them were damaged and repairing them would be impossible – so I’d prevailed upon my son to help gather them up, put them in my car and take them home to the safety of my shed. Once there, the piles had taken up a huge amount of floor space and I didn’t really know what to do with them.
I’d finally settled on making a stool out of them. This meant, of course, faffing around trying to find the right combination. Finding books to slot in next to each other that would create a solid, tightly packed structure. It was a puzzle that I needed right now, to try to take my mind off the last few hours.
I shouldn’t have had that party, I realise as I unlock and then enter the honey-wood structure. I usually leave the door open, but today I push it shut behind me. I heft over a couple of large paint tins and push them behind the door to make sure no one can creep up on me. I need to think and I need people to announce their presence, because this type of thinking won’t take kindly to being interrupted.
I unfold a badly rusted outside chair that I’m determined to clean and restore at some point and sit myself down. I’m wearing my upcycling clothes of jeans, top and jumper with my hair hidden under a blue-and-red scarf.
What is unravelling around me is a nightmare I never even dreamed possible. I’ve often wondered, sure, if I should tell the children about what happened, about my history, but there seemed no point. It was a long time ago and things had resolved themselves after Poppy reappeared in our lives and I was forced to tell Evan everything.
I ended up with a more solid, honest marriage as a result of that time and in return, rather than being vigilant and protective of my family and my marriage, I got complacent, I got lazy, I got arrogant. I thought all the bad things were over. I thought that part of the past had been finally laid to rest and I could, for even a moment, let alone the rest of my life, forget about it.
I want to take care of you for ever. His voice echoes in my ears. I want to take care of you for ever.
I cover my mouth with my hands.
Remember, this is our little secret.
Lower my head.
Just relax, I’ll show you what to do.
Close my eyes.
You’re special to me, I hope you realise that. This was very special to me.
Good girl. Good, good girl.
My hand goes to my cheek as the echo of a pain remembered reverberates.
Don’t ever tell me you don’t want to do something again, OK?
Air leaves my body in a gush.
I only went with Poppy because she’s a virgin and you weren’t, the first time . . . a complete virgin? No one had ever kissed you or anything like that? Real or not, a kiss is a kiss is a kiss, baby. And Poppy had never been kissed before. She isn’t damaged goods.
More air leaves my body.
Poppy, she’s nothing. I can’t get rid of her just yet – me being her first means she’s really attached to me.
My chest burns with emptiness, with the vacuum of airlessness.
God, Serena, you know I love you. Why do you make me do these things?
I drag air into my lungs.
You shouldn’t have worn her dress. And you shouldn’t have got ice cream on it.
That small amount of oxygen is knocked out of me almost immediately.
It’s over now, baby, OK? Let’s make up.
I press my hands over my chest.
You can make it up to me.
Try to hold in air.
You can show me how much you love me.
Try to breathe through this pain.
Stop saying no, you owe it to me, Serena.
Curl forward.
You owe me. You owe me this.
Try to breathe.
Please stop crying, baby, we’re only making up.
Breathe. Breathe. Breathe.
I can’t breathe. It’s too much. The memories are too much, too violent and too fast. It’s too much. I can’t process them. I can’t stop them knocking air out of me. I can’t stop them consuming me.
I can’t breathe. I can’t cope and I can’t breathe.
I don’t want this to be in my life again.
My knees thud loudly as they hit the floor and I push my hands harder against my chest. I’m having a panic attack. I usually know what to do, how to get through them, but I can’t stop this. My heart is bolting, galloping, the sound uncontrolled and loud in my ears.
I rock forward. Breathe, breathe, breathe, brea—
Bam! Bam! On the door.
It shocks my body out of its panic, brings me back to the here and now.
‘Mum?’ Conrad calls.
‘Yes?’ I manage, despite the burning in my chest, despite the shaking of every part of my body.
‘The . . . the police are here. They want to talk to Verity and search the house for anything related to what happened to that guy.’
poppy
Now
Carolyn’s house is very Sunday when we arrive.
The smell of a Full Carolyn breakfast lingers in the air as we make our way to the kitchen at the back of the house. A Full Carolyn is basically what people call a full English but with mushrooms, pancakes, black pudding, melon, mango, pineapple, and homemade smoothies. Every Sunday she does this. And every Sunday she has a virtually open house so the friends of her kids who stay over are welcome to join them, as are their friends, like us.
We walk through her large, circular hallway, from which all the rooms and stairs lead off. This house is just divine. It sits at the top end of one of the roads that leads down to the sea. From some of the upper rooms you can get an oblique view of the sea.
I love her kitchen, which runs the full width of the back of her house and has glass doors all along the back that look out onto the garden. We’ve spent many a night sitting here, drinking, talking, putting the world to rights. She is so not the sort of person I would meet in everyday life, except, I suppose, as a cleaner, which is why it makes sense that she was actually a friend of Alain’s originally.
He used to work in London on the newspapers and through that he met a designer called Sam Bailey. He and Sam and her husband, Matt, had been thick as thieves, apparently, so when Alain said he might move to Brighton, she’d said he should look up her old friend Carolyn. She set up a blind friendship date and the pair instantly fell in love. I often teased him that they had literally swapped Sam and Matt and their two children, Dot and Seth, for Carolyn and her husband, Phil, and their children, Maia and Megan. ‘It’s literally like for like,’ I used to joke. Alain used to protest then tried to defend himself by saying things like, ‘Sam’s got brown hair and Carolyn’s blonde.’ Then he just accepted what I was saying because it was bloody true.