The Things We Do to Our Friends(29)
In that disorderly room, a lump rose in my throat, and I thought that if I spoke, I might cry. What were we doing? What was I doing in such a strange house with people I’d only known for a few months, in France of all places? It felt almost a peculiar betrayal of Ava not to warn me, to tell me what it was going to be like and what I was walking into, so I would know what to expect and how to react. But the two of them seemed happy enough, Imogen and Ava. They offered Minta big kisses on the cheek, plying her with cashmere socks and gin. Tabitha gave her mother a small hug, enclosing her gently as if she might break.
“Ma, this is Clare.” She gestured for me to come forward. “Remember, I’ve told you all about her.”
“Yes, yes. Clare. Lovely to meet you, darling.” She placed a hand on my arm; a light touch. “Welcome. It’s so good to have you this year—these reprobates are desperate for some new blood. How was the journey?”
“Fine,” Tabitha replied.
“Well, I’m sure you can sort yourself out. I’ll be in my bedroom if you need anything, but please do keep it down and don’t disturb the boys, Tabitha.”
She said Tabitha’s name pointedly as she waved a hand in the direction of the cats, which made me wonder how she had disturbed them in the past. One of them stared at Tabitha malevolently and started to thump its tail on the floor in an erratic beat. Tabitha gave the animal a haughty glance, her mother an eye-roll, and then turned to me.
“The cats are affronted by the mess; it puts them in a bad mood and who can blame them. Come on, Clare. You’re up here.” It was the only time during the trip she would reference the state of the place. She took my hand and led me up to a small, hot room, high in the eaves of the house.
“Good night,” she said, even though it was early. Her lips touched my cheek, and she gave me a swift hug to end the evening.
In my room, far away from where the rest of them were staying, I decided I needed some ammunition to sleep, so I tiptoed down the stairs to the bathroom, where I opened the cabinet to see some English medicines. Diazepam, some kind of beta blocker, and amitriptyline. A treasure chest of drugs that sat alongside various old-fashioned tonic bottles and remedies with cryptic names and instructions like Cat’s sage and For deep sleep—take only on full moon, written in handwriting very similar to Tabitha’s.
I remembered Tabitha’s description of her mother’s pains and hesitated for a second over the sleeping tablet for the full moon. Internally, I congratulated myself for resisting checking if there was a full moon outside before I swallowed. It tasted of cinnamon and bark. I pocketed two diazepam as a backup and headed back to bed.
The bedroom I was staying in appeared to be poised on the brink of crumbling to the floor. Dark damp started from the skirting boards and rose in an ombre haze that looked like a faddish paint effect. It had covered the bottom third of one wall. There was a window to the side of the room which would have looked out over the garden but appeared to have been hastily boarded up. I pulled back the sheets, which were almost slimy to the touch.
The mold. It has always had an effect on me ever since I was a child. I remember it in my mother’s room, seeping up the walls, and whenever she scrubbed it away it came back, or at least she claimed it did. That dank smell like stale water and mushrooms and earth. She told me it filled her lungs and consumed her thoughts.
That night it was like she was with me. With each breath, I imagined inhaling the spores.
Would the crumbling walls collapse to the floor if I stopped watching? At that point, the combination of sickness and sweatiness and a thickening fatigue from the day made it almost impossible to stay awake. Despite the strange feeling that everything might fall down—the room, my life, every story or lie I’d ever told—despite it all, my eyelids felt heavy and, in the end, sleep came.
22
Back in Edinburgh, whenever I wasn’t with them, when I was at work or in my flat, I imagined them together laughing, with their shared—potentially invented—stories and histories, in a circle that maybe I would never be fully part of. The first two terms had been a lot of work, and I saw it as my probation. I didn’t speak much because my phrasing always seemed off. I didn’t want to say anything that would open me up to questions, and I was careful not to be too loud. I lived on the edges for a while, and they let me stay there. They never asked me much, and they let me exist without pushing me. I knew not to try too hard—not to challenge things. It would be unwise to let them see how I could be in certain situations. I hadn’t become angry at anyone for a while, hadn’t experienced that change I used to feel as blackness took over. My moods had settled.
I was self-conscious all the time back then. That hot embarrassment and that certainty they are all waiting for you to mess up? It’s only with age that you see it’s mostly in your head, and that you’re not that special—the thudding epiphany that most people are far too preoccupied with their own lives to care about yours.
But on that holiday, it wasn’t paranoia. I was not imagining the intense focus on me. I felt it strongly. Felt everyone clawing at me. I wasn’t an outsider anymore; instead, I was the center of the whole thing, and they were all orbiting around me in a way I’d never experienced before.
It began from that first morning, when I got up, and I could see in the thin morning light that the house looked out onto a vast and glorious garden. Wild and untamed, it stretched far past the main buildings, dotted with trees and long grass filled with wildflowers. The garden seemed to flaunt its lack of maintenance with ease in a way that worked—the same showy, unapologetic nature that Tabitha applied to everything she did. The house, however, was as bleak as the night before, even on a bright spring day. A selection of bedrooms peeled off at unplanned intervals like roots, and I wasn’t sure where the others slept, but I got the sense they had their usual rooms, decided long ago in previous visits. So much stuff: rubbish and trinkets and chairs and bin bags of old clothes. In one room, a jumble of musical instruments including a cello, which looked to have been set up for practice one day, with sheet music open on a stand, and then abandoned for years. A sad vignette of better times.