His & Hers(21)

My stomach starts to grumble and I realize I still haven’t eaten anything today. I usually have a few sugary snacks in the car. If my dead mother knew, I’m sure she would haunt me with a ghostly toothbrush. I open the glove compartment, but instead of the chocolate bar or forgotten biscuits I’d been hoping to find, I see some black, lacy underwear. I’m guessing it must have belonged to Rachel—women taking their clothes off in my car is not a regular occurrence—though I’ve no idea how it got in there.

I reach inside the glove compartment again and spot some Tic Tacs. They remind me of Anna—she always had little boxes of mints—and while they won’t do much to satisfy my hunger, they’re better than nothing. I shake the small plastic box, then flip open the lid and tip a few out. But the white shapes are not mints. I stare at the thick fingernail clippings on the palm of my hand and think I’m going to be sick.

A car door slams down the street. I throw the underwear and the Tic Tac box back inside the glove compartment, slamming it closed seconds afterward, like a nervous echo. As though if I can’t see them, they were never really there.

Someone knows I was with Rachel last night, and now they are fucking with me.

I can think of no other explanation, but who?

I stare out of the window and watch Anna’s every move. She took her time getting out of the car, despite her rush to get here. I can’t help thinking it’s because she is afraid of what she might find behind closed doors. I sympathize with that because she is right to be.

I know what is waiting for her inside that house, because I go there all the time.

I even had my own key cut.

Not that either of them knew.





Her



Tuesday 10:10



I should have known it would be like this.

There is a pile of unopened mail behind the door, making it difficult to open. I close it behind me as soon as I’ve managed to squeeze through the gap, but discover it’s just as cold inside the house as it was out on the street. My eyes try to adjust to the gloom—it is difficult to see—but the thing I notice first, and most, is the smell. It’s as though something has died in here.

“Hello?” I call, but there is no answer.

I hear the familiar murmurs of a television at the back of the house, and don’t know whether to feel happy or sad about it. The roman blinds are all down, with just a sliver of winter sun trying to backlight their elderly cotton edges. I remember that they were all homemade, over twenty years ago. I try the light switch but nothing happens, and when I squint up into the darkness, I can see that there is no bulb.

“Hello?” I call again.

When nobody answers a second time, I pull the cord on the blind to raise it just a little, and am engulfed in a cloud of dust, a million tiny particles dancing in the beam of light that floods the room. I turn to see that what was once a homely living room is now empty, except for cardboard boxes. Lots of them. Some are stacked precariously high and leaning to one side, as though they might topple over at any moment. Each has been labeled with what looks like a thick black felt-tip pen, and my eyes are drawn to the box in the farthest corner that says ANNA’S THINGS.

Coming here always feels wrong, but none of this feels right.

It doesn’t make any sense—my mother would rather die in this house than leave it—it’s something we used to frequently argue about before we stopped talking altogether. My hands start to shake, just the way they did when I lived here. Not that any of that was her fault; she didn’t even know. I was a different version of myself then, one that I doubt many people would like or recognize. Home is not always where the heart is. For people like me, home is where the hurt lives that made us into who we are.

My mother was always fond of boxes, but not all of them were real. When I was a little girl, she taught me how to build them in my head, and hide my worst memories inside. I learned to fill them with the things I most wanted to forget, so that they were locked away and hidden in the darkest corners of my mind, where nobody, including me, would ever look. I tell myself the same thing I always do when I come here:

You are more than the worst thing you’ve ever done.

I feel a familiar pain in the back of my head, which starts to throb in time with my heartbeat. It’s the kind of fast-accelerating agony that can only be cured with alcohol, and the need to do so takes over everything else. I reach inside my bag and find a half-empty blister pack of painkillers. I pop two inside my mouth, then search for a miniature to wash them down with.

They’re not as hard to come by as they used to be—miniatures—and I no longer have to steal them from flights or hotels. I have my favorites: Smirnoff vodka, Bombay Sapphire gin, Bacardi, and, for a special sweet treat, Baileys Irish Cream. But quality scotch tends to be my number one choice, and there are a wide variety of those available in teeny-tiny bottles now—even with next-day delivery online. All small enough to fit discreetly inside any pocket or purse. I twist the lid off the first one I find in my bag and drink it down like medicine; vodka this time. I don’t bother popping a mint afterward. Parents know their children, even the bad ones.

“Mum!” My voice sounds just the same as it did when I was a child when I say her name.

But there is still no answer.

“Plenty big enough for the two of us” was how she described this tiny cottage when I was still here. As though she had forgotten that there used to be three of us living in the house. I can still hear her saying it now inside my head, along with all the other lies she told to try to stop me from leaving.