Sometimes I Lie(79)

The final blackmail note I delivered before the Christmas party had Claire’s name on it, so there could be no misunderstandings about who was responsible. Madeline was toast after her epic fail on the lunchtime news, which went far better than planned and exceeded my expectations. The face of Crisis Child said so many awful things live on television, that the small matter of her abandoning her orphaned goddaughter and stealing her inheritance seemed trivial in comparison. But I hadn’t finished with Madeline yet. I’d always thought of blackmail as something ugly, but this was something else, this was beautiful. This was justice. People think that good and bad are opposites but they’re wrong, they’re just a mirror image of one another in broken glass.

I’ve rehearsed my lines for the police. I’ve written a letter from Madeline to Claire where she threatens to deal with her in the same way she dealt with her parents. I’m well practised at writing letters from Madeline as her PA, so I’m confident the handwriting will be a perfect match. Claire never read it, of course, but, when the time comes, I’ll explain how she gave it to me for safe keeping, just in case the unthinkable ever happened. Everyone thought Madeline would lose the plot if she stopped working, that job was all she had. They’ll all think they were right when the police find the empty petrol cans securely locked inside her shed. They’ll find the pen used to write the letter to Claire on the oak desk in her front room. They’ll find everything they need to.

I arrive back home, let myself in quietly and take off my coat. 04.36. I’m slightly earlier than I expected, but I can’t go back to sleep, not now. I feel dirty, contaminated, so I head upstairs to take a shower. I lock the bathroom door and turn to face myself in the mirror. I don’t like what I see, so I close my eyes. I unzip the body of who I used to be and step outside of myself; a newborn Russian doll, a little smaller than I was before, wondering how many other versions of me are still hidden inside. I turn on the shower and step beneath it too quickly. The water is freezing cold but I don’t flinch, I let the temperature rise slowly so that I almost don’t feel the water burn my skin when it gets too hot. I don’t know how long I stand like that, I don’t remember. I don’t remember drying myself or wrapping my robe around my body. I don’t remember leaving the bathroom or coming back downstairs. I only remember being back in the lounge, looking in the big mirror above the fireplace and liking the look of the woman who stared back at me. I pick up Digby and sit with him on my lap, stroking his soft black fur in the dark. All that’s left to do now is wait.

One of the twins starts crying. I pop Digby down on the carpet and rush up the stairs to comfort them. Earlier when I was trying to record the sound of them screaming they were all smiles, but we got there in the end. It’s light in their room now. I pull the curtains back and look out at the new dawn spreading itself over the streets and houses below. Paul is still sleeping, so I take the twins downstairs and make them some breakfast. I sit them in their high chairs and worry about them being too cold in our old house. I have another idea and decide it’s a good one, don’t know why I didn’t think of it before really.

The flames dance in the fireplace, throwing their light and warmth around the room. The twins look on transfixed as though they’ve never seen a fire before and I realise that maybe they haven’t. I pick up the diaries one at a time, looking through a few pages before I throw each one onto the flames. I pause briefly over the final one, run my index finger over the 1992 written on the front, then turn to the last few pages at the back. I can’t read the words at first, they stick in my throat, but I make myself do it. Just one last time I let my eyes translate Claire’s words from that night, the night that changed everything.

Taylor told me to do it.

I tear out the page and screw the paper into a ball before throwing it in the fire. After I have watched it burn to nothing, I throw on the last of Claire’s diaries. The twins and I sit and watch until everything their mother wrote is nothing but smoke and ash.





Later

Spring 2017


I’ve always delighted in the free fall between sleep and wakefulness. Those precious few semi-conscious seconds before you open your eyes, when you catch yourself believing that your dreams might just be your reality. For now, for just a second longer, I’m enjoying the self-medicated delusion that permits me to imagine that I could be anyone, I could be anywhere, I could be loved.

I sense a shadow cast itself over my eyelids and they immediately flick open. The light is so bright that at first I don’t remember where I am. For a moment I think I’m back in the hospital room, but then I hear the sound of the sea, calm waves gently lapping at the edge of the white sand in the distance. I hold my hand up to shelter my eyes from the sun. I find myself staring at the branches of lines etched into my palm and the fingerprints my skin has remembered for all these years. It knows who I am, my skin, no matter how uncomfortable it has been to wear.

I sit up when I hear the children, their infectious laughter dancing inside my ears until a smile spreads itself across my face. It doesn’t matter that I didn’t give birth to them, they are mine now and I know that water can be thicker than blood if you let it. I scold myself for falling asleep when I should have been watching them, but I relax a little once I’ve looked around the beach. Apart from a couple of palm trees, we have the place to ourselves. There is nobody else here. Nobody to be afraid of. I try to relax. I lean back in the chair and knit my hands together, resting them in my lap. When I look down, it’s my mother’s hands that I see. I look back over at my niece and nephew and decide that I will always love these children the same, no matter what they do, no matter how they change, no matter who or what they grow into.