The Girl I Used to Be(83)
Tonight I took the same route that the taxi driver had taken then. Unlike that night, there was no music playing, no excitement, and no breeze rushing through my hair. I wasn’t with my friend, looking forward to the night ahead. Where last time I felt free, as though my life was beginning, tonight I was dreading going into the house again.
I slowed down as I approached Rachel’s house. It was so much easier to think of it as her house, rather than Alex’s. The front garden was surrounded by high hedges and I started to shake as I approached them. I’d intended to park on her driveway but my palms were sweating and at the last moment I overshot the entrance to the driveway and parked farther down the road, just after the bend. There was a little shop there with a car park for clients and I pulled into an empty space. I was feeling dizzy with tension just at the thought of going into their house.
My phone beeped on the dashboard. It was Rachel.
Just saw you drive past. I’m here now.
I thought of her there in her mother’s house, a house that had seen nothing but sadness in all those years. She seemed friendless, lonely, and it was only the pity I had for her that made me go there that night.
I climbed out of the car, then took my phone and left my bag in the locked boot. It would just be in the way if I had to carry boxes of papers. I slid my phone into the pocket of my jeans and put my key fob into the other pocket, pushing it right down.
I had to gather all my courage to walk toward Rachel’s house. Her car was parked on the gravel driveway and she was waiting for me by the front door. As I approached her she waved and turned the key in the front door. She pushed it wide open.
“Hi, come on in,” she said, and all I could think was that was exactly what Alex had said, the night we arrived at the party.
SIXTY-FOUR
GEMMA
IN THE HALLWAY I tried to keep a lid on the panic that rose in me. I hadn’t been here since that night, fifteen years ago, but I remembered it well. Then, though, it looked well tended and loved. The oak floor had been polished and glossy; the Persian rug in the center of the large hallway had been thick and expensive, its colors rich and vivid. I remember when Lauren and I had first arrived we’d looked around and she’d whispered, “This is exactly what I thought Alex’s house would be like.”
Now, though it was exactly the same inside, everything was dull, untended. There were marks on the rug, scratches on the floor. It was clear nobody had redecorated since I was last here. The curtains lay heavy and dusty and lifeless, and I saw cobwebs draped over the chandelier that hung unlit from the ceiling. Everything was drab and I knew then that when Alex had died, the light had gone out of their lives.
I shuddered.
I saw Rachel watching me and my face flamed. This was her house, after all.
“It must be hard for you, being here,” she said. “Thanks for coming.”
“It’s okay.” I felt far from okay, though. My stomach was tight with nerves and I couldn’t stop thinking how stupid I was to come here. Rachel looked so expectant, though, so trusting and so young that I smiled at her to reassure her. “Where are the documents?”
“They’re in my mum’s room,” she said. “Can you give me a hand?”
I hesitated.
“What?” she asked.
“I don’t want to go upstairs.”
“I won’t be able to carry them on my own,” she said. “It’ll just be one trip if we both do it.”
I took a deep breath. “Okay.”
She took my arm and we walked upstairs. I clung on to the banister, wishing I hadn’t come, wishing I were at home with Joe. Why hadn’t I told him? He could have come with me, helped us do this.
My heart thumped as we reached the top of the stairs. The bathroom was ahead, just as I remembered. Its door stood open and I recognized the black-and-white tiles in a diamond pattern on the floor. Though I hadn’t thought of it in all those years, in that one glance I remembered kicking a towel that was on the floor that night, knowing I was so drunk that if I bent to pick it up I would have fallen and hurt myself. I wished now I’d picked it up. Wished I’d hurt myself and called for help and gone home. None of this would have happened.
We paused at the top of the stairs. I glanced to the right. The door to Alex’s room stood ajar. Immediately I averted my eyes.
“Mum’s room is here,” said Rachel. She led me past Alex’s door and to a room at the front of the house. There were windows overlooking the front garden and the room was lined with photos of Alex. You wouldn’t know she had another child. At the foot of her bed she had a large flat-screen television on a stand, with a DVD player underneath it. It seemed to jar with the rest of the room, which was old-fashioned and dreary.
“She had all our old family videos put onto DVD,” explained Rachel. She wouldn’t meet my eyes and I wondered whether she was embarrassed or ashamed. “She would play them all the time.” She winced. “Constantly. Wherever I was in the house, I’d hear them. And she’d fast-forward through the bits I was on, or my dad. She’d replay the parts with Alex on again and again. All his old rugby matches. Every time he won a prize. Every party and every holiday.”
I thought of her living there with that running commentary of her dead brother’s life playing on and on while she gave up the chance of her own life to care for their mother. She must have experienced such mixed emotions when her mother died.