I don’t know how to answer her, though, because I don’t know how to describe how I’m feeling. Am I happy that she’s back or not? Should I be? How can I make this decision? Kill my sister, or lose my family? I rest my head on Nessa’s shoulder as my naked dead sister slides down the slide. She misquotes from Top Gun, asking Goose to talk to her as she smiles, climbing into the pool to join us.
‘I don’t want to lose you again,’ I say.
‘I’m not going anywhere,’ Nessa replies.
Chapter Fifty-Three
Ed
I’m multitasking. It’s not my favourite thing to do. The kids’ dinner is cooking, the front door is wide open so I can hear them, and I’m simultaneously contorting my body into a shape that it shouldn’t be contorted into while I search for Oscar’s snake – Sammy – in the footwell of my car.
‘Fuck!’ My knuckles have just grazed against something sharp beneath the seat.
‘Daaaadddyyyy!!’ Hailey is shouting from the doorway and I pull my body back out of the arch it’s contorted into, registering as I do that the smoke alarm is going off.
Fishfingers. Burnt fishfingers.
I send Hailey up the stairs with a tea towel and instruct her to flap it beneath the alarm, while Oscar is covering his tear-stained face with his hands as I push past him, pulling open the oven door where smoke pours out. I go to retrieve the oven tray with another tea towel but there are none in the drawer.
‘Why are there no tea towels?!’ I shout, as I start pulling dusters and dishcloths out of the drawer. ‘I mean, is it too much to ask? That when you open the drawer that is supposed to have tea towels in, that there are actual tea towels in there?!’ The alarm continues to shriek as I take out the tray with a dishcloth, burning my hand as I do. The tray skitters across the draining board as I curse under my breath. ‘Hailey! Shut that damn thing up!’ I turn the cold tap on full and wince as it hits the angry red welt that is emerging across my palm. I sigh loudly, my shoulders hunching over the sink as I close my eyes and try to control the confusion inside.
I’m not a man prone to mood swings. I’m the man at work that they send to deal with a difficult client: I don’t get rattled; I don’t lose my cool. But right now? My cool is well and truly lost.
The alarm stops and Hailey’s feet pound down the stairs. A hiccupping sound comes from behind me. I turn my head to where Oscar is crying: he turns to Hailey as she comes into the room, wafting the smoke away with her hand; his face seeks reassurance from her, my daughter’s arm wraps around his tiny frame, her eyes meet mine with a look of distrust. It’s a look normally saved for Jen.
‘I’m sorry,’ I say, turning off the tap and kneeling down in front of them, pulling their bodies towards me. ‘I’m sorry I lost my temper.’ I kiss the tops of their heads, Oscar’s body hiccupping from inside his chest. ‘I’m sorry,’ I say again, kissing harder this time. ‘We must have left Sammy at Aunty Nessa’s. Let’s go and get a McDonald’s and then fetch him, OK?’
Oscar sniffs and wipes away his snot with the back of his hand as Hailey watches my face cautiously.
Oscar’s head is lying heavily to the right as we pull up outside Nessa’s, gentle snores escaping his tomato-sauce-stained face.
‘Wait here,’ I say to Hailey. ‘I’ll only be a minute.’ I release the belt buckle and jog up to the front door, checking the car over my shoulder as I do. Hailey waves at me. My hand waves back.
There is no answer.
I walk to the side gate where I can hear the radio playing. Pushing open the gate, I step into the garden, where I see two naked women embracing.
This is going to sound odd, but for a moment, I wonder who the women are. It’s a moment that stretches and snaps into reality in the time it has taken me to take a breath. By the time that breath has exhaled, I have worked out that the naked woman being held by another naked woman is my wife.
Sammy is lying on the bench. I reach for it, hold it tightly and leave the garden.
Oscar is still sleeping; Hailey is playing on her tablet as I start the engine: inside this car, the world is the same as it was a few moments ago.
But the wife that I’m trying to hold on to is slipping further away. Should I carry on holding on, or just let her go?
Chapter Fifty-Four
Jennifer
I wake in my old bedroom. I have a vague memory of Nessa opening us wine, of climbing out of the pool, of a feeling close to drowning as I started to cry. Nessa brought me home: a taxi ride, a conversation with my parents, Nessa murmuring something about me breaking down, a feeling of drowning and of fear . . . I was so scared of losing Kerry again.
My body is slick with sweat. It’s late evening; I can hear birds singing and the rumble of voices beneath me. The panic I felt earlier still sits heavily in my chest.
Kerry is sitting at my old desk, writing in one of her notebooks. ‘Hey sleepy head,’ she says, smiling at me.
‘Hey.’ My voice is hoarse and I reach for the bottle of water beside the bed.
‘How are you feeling?’
‘How am I feeling? I’m talking to myself after having a breakdown after dancing naked to the ‘Macarena’ . . . How do you think I am?’
Mum knocks on the door and closes it quietly behind her, sitting down on the bed next to me. ‘Would you like a drink?’
I shake my head.
‘Something to eat?’
I shake my head again.
She brushes back my hair and cups my face. ‘When I first brought you home, I couldn’t stop looking at you. You had a scratch down your cheek.’ Her finger follows the ghost of the memory, outlining an invisible scar. ‘I couldn’t believe how lucky I was, that I had been given this perfect little person to look after. I wanted to protect you, I wanted to stop the world from ever harming you again.’ She wraps her arm around my shoulders. ‘You have to let her go, Jen, you have to let her go.’
‘How?’
‘I don’t know. But her being here is destroying you.’
‘Have you told Ed about . . . earlier?’
‘We haven’t been able to get hold of him, his phone is off.’
‘Don’t tell him.’
‘Jen, you need to let him help you, he—’
‘OK, but not yet? Please?’ I think of the way he had looked at me at The Nook. I can’t bear for him to look that way at me again. ‘He thinks I’m getting better, Mum, please, he’s got enough to think about looking after the kids.’
‘So what are we going to do with you?’ She rubs the tops of my arms and tries to smile away the catch in her voice.
‘Well, I could start with having a shower and one of your loaded jacket potatoes . . . that might be a start?’
She pulls her body a little straighter, glad to be given a purpose. ‘That, I can do.’ Mum gets up but hesitates with her hand resting on the door. ‘Where is she?’
She turns back to me; I nod towards the desk. Mum takes a step towards it.
‘Now you listen to me, Kerry Hargreaves, you need to stop tormenting your sister, do you hear me? Enough is enough.’
I bite down on my lip as I watch Kerry stick her tongue out at Mum in a way she would only ever have dared to do behind Mum’s back.