Just Like the Other Girls(43)

19





Kathryn

Kathryn pulls the duvet over her head and groans. She’s been tossing and turning for hours and she knows why. She’s been waiting for Una to get home. She pulls back the covers and gets out of bed. It’s no use. She won’t sleep until Una’s in the house and she’s gone down to check the front door. It doesn’t matter how many times she tells her mother’s latest companion to double-lock the fucking front door, she never does it. She stands in the middle of the room and takes a deep breath. In and out. Just like the therapist told her. It’s not Una’s fault. How can Una know that Kathryn lives with the crippling fear – especially when she’s ensconced in her 1930s house with Ed and the kids – that one day there will be that knock at the door?

She’s coming back from the loo when she hears the creak of the front gate and low voices. She checks her Fitbit, which she wears at night because she likes to track her sleep. It’s nearly 1 a.m. Where has Una been all this time? She watched her go out earlier. She’d left the house at seven twenty-five dressed in tight black jeans with so many rips that Kathryn wondered what was the point in wearing them at all. She must have been freezing.

Before she has time to think about it, Kathryn finds herself in the spare room – Viola’s old room – that looks out onto the front garden. The curtains are already open: nobody comes in here to close them. Every trace of Viola was wiped from the room many years ago. Now there’s just a double bed with a new, crisp duvet that is never used and different furniture, heavy mahogany instead of white. It’s like Kathryn and her mother have this unspoken rule. Despite the stripping of Viola’s personality, it will always be her room, and even though it’s been thirty years since her older ‘sister’ left, Kathryn can still sense Viola’s presence here. She can almost smell her White Musk perfume from the Body Shop.

The sound of Una giggling brings Kathryn back to the present and she rushes to the window. Una and Lewis are standing by the gate. He has his arms around her tiny waist and hers are slung around his neck. She’s looking up at him, and as he bends to kiss her, Kathryn feels a bolt of jealousy rip right through her that’s so intense it makes her feel sick. She can’t remember the last time she kissed Ed. Not properly. Not like the abandon she’s witnessing before her. It feels so long ago that she was Una’s age, when someone as handsome and sexy as Lewis was interested in her. She can’t bear it. She turns away. And in that moment she feels pure hatred for Una, for how easily she swans through life with her doe eyes and her long blonde hair and her pert tits, getting whatever she wants, whoever she wants. How unfair that life was never like that for Kathryn. She had to work so hard and put so much effort into achieving the life she’s got now. Years of being the perfect daughter, the perfect wife, the perfect mother. And for what? For girls like Una to snatch it all from her by charming their way into someone’s affections?

She goes back to bed and lies there, her whole body tense, feeling frumpy and unattractive in her flannel pyjamas. She wonders what Una wears to bed. Something sexy, no doubt. She strains her ears, listening for the front door, and eventually she hears the tell-tale creaks, bangs and muffled swearing of Una letting herself in.

Kathryn gets out of bed and drags her dressing-gown around herself as she pads out onto the landing. A slice of moonlight from the side window casts shadows on the walls and she clutches the banister to steady herself. As she descends the stairs, she sees Una sitting in the middle of the huge hallway trying to take off her boots. She’s giggling to herself.

‘Have you double-locked the front door?’

Una looks up in surprise to see Kathryn standing there. She puts her hand to her heart. ‘Oh – you scared me.’

Kathryn doesn’t say anything. She continues down the stairs and, ignoring Una, waltzes past her. She tries the door. Just as she thought, it hasn’t been bolted. ‘What is wrong with you?’ Kathryn hisses, all the resentment and fear building up and spilling out of her. ‘How many times have I told you to double-lock the door, for fuck’s sake?’

Una stands up, her boots in one hand. Even in the dark Kathryn can see that the younger girl looks mortified. ‘I’m sorry, I didn’t think …’

‘You have to be responsible,’ continues Kathryn, in the same angry whisper. ‘My mother doesn’t want a bloody burglar alarm but surely even you can see this house is a target.’

‘I … yes … I suppose –’

‘If you forget to do it again I’ll have no choice but to give you a disciplinary warning.’ The words are out before Kathryn has thought about them. What is she even saying? Her mother has the last word on her staff – but there can’t be any harm in scaring the girl a little.

Una hangs her head, her long hair falling in front of her face. She’s so small and she looks so vulnerable standing there in her socks, with a hole in the big toe of one, and her coat that is a little large for her. Kathryn knows she’s being a bitch but she can’t help it.

‘I don’t want to have to keep waiting up for you just to make sure you’ve done it,’ she says, aware that she sounds like a nag.

‘It won’t happen again, I promise.’ Una tucks her hair behind her ears.

Kathryn strides past her. ‘Good. See you in the morning.’ She stops at the bottom of the stairs and turns to Una. ‘And, really, one o’clock on a work night is a little late to be coming home.’