He Said/She Said(70)

‘Fuck the pair of you,’ said Beth, and she was gone, bag jangling and hair flying.

After the front door slammed, Kit and I were left blinking at each other in stunned confusion and, in my case, a reprieve that could only be short-lived. I needed to go after her. To beg her to keep biting her tongue for my sake. Kit was the first to move, leaning over the balcony.

‘Where’s she gone?’ I asked him.

‘On to the common, through the trees.’

I flew down the stairs and across the grass to the bus stop, only realising on my way that I didn’t know whether she was heading to Crystal Palace or back up to Nottinghamshire. I checked the bus stops on both sides of the road but I’d missed her. I circled the common twice before giving up.

When I got back, much later, there were three empty bottles already lined up in the recycling. Kit got up to fetch another beer from the fridge, opened it, and gave it to me before getting his next one. Now that Mac was drying out, Kit seemed to be drinking for two.

‘What the bloody hell happened there?’ he said.

‘I’ve clearly hit a nerve,’ I said. ‘She’s hiding something, Kit.’

‘She might not be. Self-preservation is an amazing thing. And you said yourself, people react weirdly to trauma; there’s no such thing as normal.’

‘Mmm. I should talk to her tonight, smooth it out. I’ve really upset her.’ My eyes were dry from staring across polluted streets; I balled my fists into the sockets. ‘It’s just as well we can’t afford a car, isn’t it?’ He didn’t get the reference. ‘I mean, she might have a go at the tyres . . .’ My joke fell flat.

‘Well, I hope she meant it, about backing off till the appeal,’ said Kit. I leaned into his chest; my ear found his heartbeat. His arm was heavy on my shoulder. ‘It’ll be good for her. She’s too dependent on you. You can’t carry her forever. And . . .’ Kit pulled out of our hug, took a huge gulp of air, then blew it out for twice the count, like a yoga exercise. ‘I need you. I can’t . . . Mac . . . I . . . he looks like he’s going to die. I didn’t know what to say to him. I’m out of my depth.’ He inhaled the next sentence. ‘I’m fucking – all this shit . . . I’m drowning, Laura.’ It was the first time I’d seen him cry since Lachlan died, and entirely different. Grief had drawn from Kit a slow, steady sobbing but this was a series of explosions, each wordless shout more powerful than the last; his tears were heavy and copious. I tried to put my arms around him but he swatted me away, although when I put a hand on his back he let it stay. He dropped his head down into his chest, his body a tight curl, making me aware of an almost prim straightness to my own back. I kept my palm flat against his ribs, feeling his lungs punch against them, until he had cried himself out.



The next day was a Saturday; we lay in for hours, the slats of shade a crawling sundial on our skin. Confident that Jamie wouldn’t write today, I held back from checking the doormat; I didn’t want Kit to notice that I was always rushing down to fetch the post. It was lunchtime when at last he got round to it.

The scream that ricocheted up the stairwell was as high and girlish as last night’s tears had been masculine. I only thought for a tenth of a second it was one of Jamie’s letters; the noise was too primal.

I met Kit on the third-floor landing, a bloodied shard of glass in his left hand. He’d gone pale; freckles I hadn’t noticed in years stood out on the bridge of his nose.

‘It looks worse than it is,’ he said, unconvincingly. ‘Some bloody Friday night pisshead thinking it’s funny to push this through the door. We’re getting one of those wire baskets for the letterbox.’

The timer on the light went out and for a moment we were in pitch darkness. I felt my way to the top of the landing and hit the switch. Kit had shifted, his left foot upturned to display a three-inch gash along his sole.

‘When did you last have a tetanus booster?’ I asked.

‘Last year,’ he said.

‘Let me have a look, see if we need to take you to hospital.’ He hopped his way to the futon. I laid his foot across my lap and trained the anglepoise on his sole while I checked him for splinters. The cut was long but shallow, and already beginning to clot. There was one more sliver embedded inside his arch. ‘I think your footballing career is over,’ I said, as I homed in on it with my tweezers. ‘There.’

‘Wheurgh,’ he said. When I squinted to examine the glass, I saw and smelt the evidence at the same time. A smear on the fragment of palest pink wax; the trace scent of Blood Roses. My eyes travelled to the mantelpiece. The middle candle, the one I’d started to burn, was missing. I remembered the way she’d swept all her stuff into the bag. Had the candle been caught up or deliberately stolen? I pictured her, hanging around until our light went off before feeding broken glass through our letterbox, and reached for the support of the armrest. Was this vicious act the flipside of the adoration she’d shown so far? And why? Because we had challenged her story? Or was she just lashing out because of the stress of the appeal being dragged out for so long?

‘This is my candle,’ I said to Kit. I held the glass out in my hand. Not we, I realised with horror. Me. She knew I was always the first one downstairs. Me. ‘Someone’s smashed up the candle and then posted the bits through the letterbox.’