She said she thought you were in love with me and it would destroy you.
There you are, she was prepared to destroy me, never mind some of my sophomoric doodlings.
Before I can change my mind, I place Rog to one side, bolt upstairs and grab the box. Once back downstairs, holding it, I realise incinerating the contents presents a problem. People only have metal bins – trash cans – for burning things outdoors, in American films. Our plastic pedal versions aren’t fit for this purpose.
Wait, instead of fire, what about water? I have a deep trough of Bristol sink that cost me an arm and a leg. My mum observed its installation with the words: ‘Isn’t it odd how we end up fetishising the ordinary things our grandparents had? That said, I never wanted their outdoor loo.’
I upend the box into the basin, grateful the cursed letter is on top, and will therefore be at the bottom. Now I’m looking at the jumble of envelopes, like a tombola, what I’m doing becomes real. Susie’s words, her thoughts: about to be lost forever. I twinge, I wonder if I should sit here, read and commit their contents to memory.
Then when Finlay has me tied to a chair in a garage, holding a petrol can, I can spit out a mouthful of blood and say: if you kill me you’ll never know.
The diaries present a different problem, with their protective spongy covers. I have to open them and brutally rip the pages out from the glue of the spine, so I can’t avoid seeing the sloping script of Susie’s girlish handwriting in blue Biro, catching stray words even though my brain doesn’t want to. Mostly excitable, context-free adverbs and ‘chicken nuggets for tea!’ (supporting Justin’s theory, and Susie’s claim, that there’s no creative loss to the world here). I pause, only for a moment, when a shredded piece bears the word ‘FINLAY!!’ in capital letters, underlined, with a face.
Not my business. Not his business – Susie would’ve writhed at the thought of him picking through this.
It has to be done. Temptation needs removing, privacy needs protecting. Is that really why you’re doing this? a voice asks. Or is it revenge, Evelyn Harris?
I turn the tap on and watch the water gush out onto paper, ink melting and blurring, the paper becoming transparent, fragmenting, making a dun-coloured soup. When I turn the tap off, the remains can be squidged into a strange soggy snowscape.
I pick up handfuls of now unintelligible correspondence, and chuck it into the bin with a damp thud.
Roger wanders in and lets go a pealing mew of confusion, which I interpret as: but what are the legal ramifications of destroying the hotly contested artefacts?
‘Dunno,’ I say to him, thick with wine, triumph and defeat.
A stray memory – a few birthdays ago, Susie got me some nostalgic joke gift extras, some Vogue Superslim Menthols, a bottle of Dolly Girl perfume, and a bag of mini Dime bars. Kitschy ‘what were we like!’ talismans of times gone by, insights only old friends have.
I find them in a hat box in my bedroom, scooping them up before the memory can hit me – recalling her expectant face as I unwrapped them in a Greek restaurant, in that giddy past, where we didn’t know we were born, and that she was going to die.
I come back downstairs, dump the haul on the counter and spray the perfume at my collarbones, open a Dime and gnaw on it. God, that’s face-twistingly sweet. Susie and I used to eat bowls of vanilla ice cream using the Dimes as scoops. It’s a wonder we have any teeth left.
That I have any teeth left. If you identify people who died in fires by their dental records, what do crematoriums do with teeth?
I unwrap the fag packet and light a cigarette with kitchen matches, dragging, inhaling, exhaling, and coughing. Oof, this is horrible, did I really used to do this?
Badly, I hear Susie say.
The rain’s abated, so I open the back door and sit hunched on the soaked concrete step in my tiny yard, water seeping through the seat of my dress, blowing plumes of smoke into the damp air.
I feel like a cowgirl for a moment, like a tableau in a film.
Without knowing I’d started crying, I feel a tear drip from my chin.
24
I could’ve waited my standard, if arbitrarily imposed, week to visit Mr Hart again, but I’ve got an expensive brand of Florentines in a cardboard box that I think he’ll love.
So four days later, I walk up the street to the Hart home, listening to a true crime podcast about an unsolved murder that changed one small mid-American town forever. This isn’t only about being the Good Samaritan, though I’m glad to do it. Seeing Mr Hart makes me feel connected to Susie, it helps me fill this time that I suddenly have so much of, and so little use for.
I pause my podcast and ring the bell. My stomach does a revolution as moments pass, and the interior door is wrenched open by Mr Hart. Junior. Oh shit. I should’ve anticipated Finlay might be here – his texts, the ones I’d left unreplied to, said: ‘Next week.’ Here we are in next week, and unfortunately, here he is. The letters. My rash move. My stomach now feels like a cake’s being mixed inside it.
He has the hollow-eyed, stubble-shadowed and slightly swollen look of the jet-lagged, and yet has the kind of bone structure where dishevelment only enhances him. The way a fresh haircut looks better when riffled by wind. The t-shirt and hooded zip-up top say: ‘came straight from the plane.’
‘That’s odd, I’ve just this minute been trying and failing to phone you,’ Fin says, without a hello. His expression: sardonic j’accuse.
‘Oh,’ I say, taking my AirPods out like I’m removing clip-on earrings with a flourish in Dynasty, ‘I didn’t hear, I had these on, sorry.’
I feel guiltily grateful this is evidently true, even if absolutely nothing’s going to get better for me from here on in. I don’t have the letters, shit. I don’t HAVE them … I remember how angry he was I was simply holding them back.
I hear Justin saying: it’s not for us to play judge and jury. I played judge, jury and executioner.
I hard swallow.
‘Come in,’ Fin says, standing back: ‘My dad’s not here.’
‘Oh, I’ll not bother you then …’ I says.
‘We have things to discuss,’ Fin says.
I expect he’s going to round on me about the letters and start wielding frightening NYC law firm names. Unless you want to hear from Carver, Cutthroat & Strank.
What do I say? Do I come clean? Do I spin him along, until a moment I’m not in front of him?
Instead Finlay heads off to the kitchen and comes back with a piece of paper. He holds it out to me, mouth a straight hard line. I take it, and read:
Ann, Sorry not to see you this week, but I’m on a jolly, as we used to say.
That nice friend of Susie’s with the black hair – name escapes me – suggested I visit my brother Don in the motherland, and I thought, why not! Reckon I’ll do the tourist spots first and see the old family pile, then call in on him. Here’s the cash and don’t worry about the ironing in the spare room, nothing that can’t wait. See you next week.
Iain
‘Oh, no …’ I say, limply.
‘You encouraged my dad to travel to another country? Can I ask why?’ Fin says. He’s not out-of-control angry but he’s on a war footing, in his black Converse boots.