The Dead Ex(5)

‘The roses?’

‘Your visit to your “consultant”.’ His voice is tight, as if he thinks I’m taking the mickey. I’m not. I’m still livid about those roses. ‘Peace’, they were called. A beautiful creamy petal with a to-die-for smell.

I reach for my address book and scribble down a name and number. ‘There. Ring that.’

‘We will.’

‘The lounge is through here,’ I say, anxious in case they make too close an inspection of another room.

We go into the small lounge with its duck-egg blue throw on the sofa (just like my studio).

‘No television?’ the woman remarks, looking around.

‘No.’

She raises an eyebrow and then hands me a card. I want to turn it down, as she had done earlier to me.

‘If you do hear from your ex-husband, please get in touch immediately.’

I nod. Vine shakes my hand. They go. I double lock the door. Put the safety chain up. Run to my bedroom.

Then I pick up the phone and dial the number, which is firmly engraved in my head.

‘This is David. You know what to do.’

My ex-husband’s voice is deep. Dark. Comforting, despite everything, in its familiarity.

‘Please answer,’ I choke. ‘It’s me.’





2



Scarlet

8 March 2007


What a clever, grown-up girl! That’s what Mum was always saying. They didn’t need anyone else. Just the two of them. They were a team. Especially when it came to the game.

There were three types: the swing, the see-saw, and hide and seek. Out of the three, Scarlet preferred the last.

‘Sometimes, love, we have to do the others too,’ Mum would tell her in that sing-song voice that came from a place called Whales.

‘Why?’

‘You’re too young to understand.’

‘But I look older, don’t I? Cos I’m tall like my dad was.’

‘Yes,’ Mum would murmur. Then she’d kneel down and hold her tight. Sometimes she’d put her dark hair into neat little braids. That was Scarlet’s favourite thing. She would breathe her mother in. She always smelled the same. Pat Chew Lee. That’s what the bottle of her mum’s perfume said. P–A–T–C–H–O–U–L–I.

Scarlet was good at English. Her average reading age was eleven instead of eight. Her teacher said so. ‘We’ve got loads of books at home,’ she’d told him proudly. He’d looked surprised. ‘My favourite is Alice in Wonderland,’ she’d added. ‘Mum had it when she was little. She reads it to me every night.’

Something stopped her from saying that the reading thing only happened when Mum had smoked the magic cigarette and was being all funny.

Back to the swing game. So scary! You never knew who was going to come up behind and push. Mum was nearby. That’s what she always told Scarlet. But they mustn’t actually see each other, because that might give the game away. All Scarlet had to do was sit on the seat and pretend that the pusher was someone she knew.

Even though she didn’t.

Then she had to say, ‘Please can I have something to eat?’ It was really important that she spoke loudly in case anyone else was listening.

The reply was always the same. ‘Again?’

That’s when she’d turn round and see the person behind her.

It might be a woman. Or it might be a man. Sometimes they smelled of beer or pee or the wardrobe which she and Mum shared. But they always did the same thing.

They’d hand her some crisps. Not the kind you got in a packet but the ones in a tube with a plastic lid. Then she’d stop the swing for a bit so she could take off the lid and eat the crisp on top before putting the lid back on again. Snap, it would go in her mouth. Unless it was stale.

‘Give us the old one, then,’ they’d say. So she’d hand them the empty crisp tube in her little pink shoulder bag, which Mum had bought her specially for the game because she was so good at it.

After that, they pushed the swing a few more times. When she turned round to see why they’d stopped, there was no one there.

That was when she had to walk to the park entrance, and Mum would be waiting. ‘Where have you been? I’ve been worried.’

Scarlet knew exactly what to say. ‘I wanted a swing. This nice person pushed me.’

‘What have I told you? Don’t talk to strangers.’

But Scarlet wasn’t upset because this was all part of the make-believe, just like the tales in her story books. Mum wasn’t really cross. She was only pretending to be!

When they got back to the flat, Mum would snatch the tube, which didn’t have any crisps. Instead, there were lots of tenners.

After that, they’d share a packet of fish and chips for tea as a treat. The vinegar made her mouth sting. Then Mum would light up a fag and open a bottle of wine.

‘Have a sip,’ she’d say. ‘It will help you sleep.’

Yuk! But she took it anyway, just to be a good girl.

Sometimes they used empty cans of drink instead of crisp tubes. It was good, Mum said, to have a change every now and then. But you didn’t need either for the see-saw game, which was her second-best. The nice part was that you got to see the other person. So it wasn’t quite so frightening. The girl or boy on the other side would start to go up and down very fast. It made Scarlet’s head all dizzy. She’d have to hang on very tight so that the little parcel that was tucked into her jeans pocket stayed exactly where it was meant to.