Forget Her Name(6)
I find his outbursts entertaining, but keep my amusement to myself.
As a nurse practitioner in a casualty department, he sees an even sharper side to social injustice than I do at the food bank, and I know it’s real experiences that drive him, like the old lady’s death today.
Protest marches, campaigning, political activism. Dominic has made no attempt to encourage me to take part in such activities. But I often join him anyway, making slogan banners long into the evening on Friday nights and sometimes carrying them, too, marching beside him and his activist friends at weekends.
The job at the food bank was his idea, initially. Though only after I’d expressed a need to do something worthwhile, rather than continue working in an exclusive Knightsbridge boutique, as I was doing when he met me.
Mum and Dad were astonished when I told them about the food bank. Dad even tried to stop me, saying he would find me ‘something better’ if I didn’t like boutique work anymore. But Mum backed me up for once. ‘Let the girl do what she feels is right, Robert,’ she told him, and smiled at me.
A minor victory. Something to put on my mental shelf, along with other trophies, like my parents’ acceptance of Dominic, and their grudging support when I chose to move out and rent a flat like most other people of my age that I knew. I still need their help with the rent, of course. But I won’t be doing volunteer work forever, and my time at the food bank will help to build up my CV.
‘I’m not a child,’ I told my dad when he complained that our flat was too insecure, the area run-down and dangerous. ‘I’m twenty-three, for God’s sake.’
Dad said nothing. But his disapproval was palpable.
‘You can’t blame your parents, babe,’ Dominic told me later, reassuring me that I was making the right choice. ‘They live in a different world to us. People like that don’t see why food banks are needed, just like they don’t feel the need to protest. They think the answer is as simple as someone getting a job instead of a handout. Their lives are too comfortable for reality to ever intrude. They live in this soft, champagne-coloured bubble of money, and can’t see anyone outside it.’
I couldn’t argue with that.
Dad works at the Foreign Office, and is almost never at home. And Mum is a housewife, the Roedean-educated daughter of a diplomat herself. She doesn’t work; in fact, I don’t think she has ever had a job. Her obsessions include her looks, the large and immaculate London town house where I grew up, and hosting dinner parties for their circle of wealthy, influential friends. I can’t imagine either of my parents having experienced hardship, let alone poverty and starvation. So how can they possibly understand my need to give something back to the society I can see falling apart around me? To do something altruistic with my life?
The news programme finishes just before midnight, and I glance at Dominic, lying curled up against me.
He’s asleep, breathing deeply, his mouth slightly open.
‘Poor tired baby,’ I whisper.
He doesn’t react.
As gently as possible, I extricate myself from his arms. I leave him sleeping on the sofa and creep into the bedroom without putting on the light. I don’t want to wake him. Not yet, anyway. Listening for sounds of movement from the living room, I drag the parcel out from under the bed, then remove the snow globe in the semi-darkness.
It’s cold, round and heavy in my hands. Like a marble head.
Ugh.
I carry it on tiptoe into the bathroom, then shut the door. As an afterthought, I turn the key in the lock.
I turn the globe upside down. The black plinth is easy to remove. Just a few twists and a click.
I hid a screwdriver in the cupboard under the sink earlier while Dominic was preoccupied with the pasta. I take it out now and slip it inside the rubber seal of the snow globe, wiggling it about. It’s harder to dislodge than I thought it would be. After a few minutes of pointless fumbling and swearing, I’m tempted to give up. To throw the bloody thing away and forget it ever arrived.
But I need to be sure. So I persevere, and eventually the rubber cap shifts, water pouring down my arm in a sickly, glittery shower.
‘Shit,’ I say, inadvertently loudly.
Loud enough to wake Dominic? I listen at the door, suddenly tense, but there’s no sound from outside the bathroom.
I don’t want to involve Dominic in this. Can’t involve him. How could I possibly explain a horror like this without sitting down to tell him the whole sorry tale of my sister Rachel? I can’t bear to admit to any of that. After we’re married, perhaps. But not before.
I know it’s a form of dishonesty. But it’s just too scary a thought. Rachel is the skeleton in our family closet. And what if it’s hereditary?
Once I’m convinced Dominic is still asleep, I hold the globe over the sink and slowly let the rest of the water drain out, glitter and white snowflakes clogging up the plughole.
Then nothing is left inside.
Except the eyeball.
Gagging, I push a hand inside the narrow opening and grope about with my fingertips until I meet something soft.
I drop the eyeball twice while trying to retrieve it, my whole being repulsed by the cold, squidgy feel of it. Eventually I drag it out through the opening of the globe and hold it up to the flickering strip light above the sink; a fat iris with a whitish surround, staring dully back at me. Definitely organic, the flesh around the eyeball is a pale, yellowing pink, flecked with glitter. And it smells pretty awful, too.