Cross Her Heart(7)

A different kind of privacy.

The thought worms into my head. It’s the kind of privacy you need when keeping secrets from those closest to you. A wife maybe? Whatever his reasons it’s the kind of privacy that has made me turn off notifications.

We all have secrets.

I’m beginning to realise maybe secrets are great.

I’m trying not to be disappointed when I come downstairs for a drink twenty minutes later. Our chat was brief and all his replies were short. Distracted and not really answering my questions. I don’t want to be upset – at least we had some time – but I guess I’m mainly frustrated. Courtney is all over my WhatsApp now. But I know what he wants. Funny how he’s pissing me off with it a bit. A few weeks ago I’d have been so happy to have him chasing me and making me feel pretty and sexy. Now, he’s simply another irritation.

I’m quiet on the stairs in my socks and when I turn the corner to head to the kitchen, I stop. Mum’s there. She’s standing by the kitchen table, staring at nothing, and there’s a stiffness to her that’s all wrong. The whole thing looks weird and I’m not sure why, but my heart is racing and my stomach churns. After a moment she reaches into her bag for the small bottle of Prosecco Marilyn gave her, twists the lid off and drinks it straight from the bottle.

I freeze where I am, confused and alarmed. Is this my fault? Is this because I’ve been so shitty? I hover in the hallway, unsure of what to do. Do I ask her what’s wrong? I feel small again. I go to take a step forward, but then hesitate. There’s something about the way she’s standing – the stillness – which makes me feel as if I’m watching something private. Something where I don’t belong. Are the cracks in our relationship coming from her side too? Does she have secrets she’s not sharing? I find it hard to believe. She’s an open book, my mum.

It’s unsettling though. Those little bottles only hold one glass or so, but who doesn’t pour wine before drinking? What would make you drain it in basically one swallow? In the end, my stomach in knots, I creep back upstairs. I can live without a cup of tea.





6


LISA It’s pitch-dark outside, no hint of a comforting grainy dawn grey yet, but I sit, wide awake, with my knees up under my chin and stare out at the bleak night, my stomach in terrible knots. It wasn’t Peter Rabbit. I know that. Peter Rabbit is long gone. It would be impossible for it to have been Peter Rabbit, the Peter Rabbit, but I want to run down to the recycle bins at the end of the road and root it out again to be sure. I take a deep breath. It’s not Peter Rabbit. It’s just a coincidence.

When I’d seen the soft toy out there in the rain, slumped dejected against Mrs Goldman’s gate, my heart had almost stopped. It was grubby and sodden, dropped maybe hours before, but the bright blue trousers stood out against the greying white fur. It wasn’t the same bunny, that was clear when I’d picked it up with trembling hands and a scream trapped in my throat, but it was close. So close. I wanted to hold it against my chest and wail, but the front door opened and Mrs Goldman appeared and instead I forced an air of idle curiosity as I asked if she knew whose it was. She didn’t, of course. Why would she? Her hearing isn’t great and her days are spent staring at the TV, not out of the window.

I gave her the bag of shopping and tried to smile and chat but the bunny was heavy and wet in my hand and the soft fur was cold, and all I could think was how the blue dungarees were exactly the same shade and style as those dungarees and those dungarees had been hand-made, and my head started to swim and I felt sick. Once Mrs Goldman had finally gone back inside, I forced a confident walk down the path and then, out of sight of both her house and mine, I finally held the toy close as if it were a dead animal my body heat could somehow bring back to life.

I took several deep breaths, years of therapy having drummed the technique into me as if steady oxygen could make anything better when most of the time I wished I didn’t have to breathe any more at all, and walked swiftly to the big bank of recycling bins at the end of the road and threw it inside. I could still feel the ghost of damp fur against my fingertips though, and I wasn’t sure my legs would carry me home without crumpling.

In the kitchen, for once grateful my daughter was finally becoming the kind of surly teenager who hides in her room, I grabbed the small bottle of Prosecco Marilyn had given me from my handbag and twisted the lid off, drinking it straight from the bottle in two goes. The acid bubbles made my chest burn and my eyes sting but I didn’t care. Anything was better than the awful pain and fear at the core of me, in the place I try hard to pretend is at best empty now, until something like this happens and the scab is ripped away and all the terrible terrible hurt crammed inside is exposed once more and I want to curl up and die.

I gasped and choked as I swallowed the last of the wine, leaning on the breakfast bar and using the physical discomfort as a distraction to calm my thinking. Slowly the buzzing in my ears faded. It was a coincidence, it had to be. Lots of children have toy bunnies. Some poor toddler was probably crying for the one I’d so ruthlessly tossed away at the end of the street. So what if it was wearing blue dungarees? There were probably thousands of soft toys in dungarees. It wasn’t Peter Rabbit.

I repeated that one sentence over and over in my head, glad I’d thrown the bunny away in the communal bins rather than the ones in our garden, too far to keep running to look at it without drawing attention to myself. It wasn’t Peter Rabbit. Yes, it had upset me, but it hadn’t been put there on purpose. It was harder to reconcile myself with the second sentence. It isn’t a statement of fact. It’s highly unlikely it’s been put there on purpose, but I can’t for definite know it in the way my sensible brain knows the toy I found wasn’t Peter Rabbit.