Melissa takes a very long time upstairs.
When an hour has passed, I think about going to find her. To check she is all right, of course, but also …
Well …
She’s in such a state that my imagination is playing all sorts of tricks on me. I’m picturing her opening a window, shinning down a drainpipe and leaving me with all this. But then I hear her moving around and am surprised by the sensation of relief I experience.
While I wait for her to come down, I walk around her kitchen, letting my fingers trail over the surfaces. I wonder what it would be like to live here? I used to spend a fair bit of time in this kitchen, holding Tilly for her while she bustled about doing whatever it was that she had to do.
An unwanted memory forces its way into my mind. I wish I could bat it away, like an insect, but it lodges itself there.
***
Tilly had been teething and fractious all night. Melissa was pale and tired and I offered to sit and look after the baby while she had a nap.
I had a knack for calming Tilly. Babies always responded well to me, which was one of the reasons I was so good at my job at the nursery.
I’d heard one of the parents there talking about a new shop that had opened up, which sold baby clothes. The bonnet I’d picked out, in the palest primrose yellow with tiny sprigs of cherries, was one of the prettiest things I’d ever seen.
I couldn’t wait to see what it looked like on Tilly’s little curly head. So when Melissa was upstairs, I got it out of the bag and slipped it onto her. Melissa had some strange ideas about how to dress her and I sometimes wished she would favour more classic baby clothes.
Tilly looked up at me with her beautiful round eyes, her thumb embedded in her rosebud mouth, sucking noisily. The bonnet framed her face perfectly and she seemed to like it. Or at least, she certainly didn’t complain.
I bent down and kissed her downy forehead and breathed in her sweet, biscuit smell. And then I looked up to find Melissa standing in the doorway.
A guilty feeling flooded through me, even though I had done nothing wrong. Melissa’s expression was stony.
‘What have you put on her head?’ she asked in a cold tone of voice.
‘It’s just a bonnet I thought would suit her!’ I said, smiling and trying to keep the tone light.
But Melissa had taken the baby from my arms and snatched it off her head.
‘I don’t like hats on babies,’ she’d said, bafflingly. She’d been strange with me for the rest of that afternoon, even though I’d offered to stay and cook dinner for all three of them. Melissa does have her funny ways.
I find myself lifting the glass she drank from almost unconsciously now. I can see an intimate smudge where her lips touched the rim. Flustered, I hurriedly place the glass in the sink.
Nerves begin to flutter inside me again.
I am having to gear myself up psychologically to the idea of driving. I’m not even confident that the vehicle will start after being shut up in the garage for several years. Terry always said it was ‘a great little runner’, but it would be just like my luck for it to refuse to start.
We will simply have to hope for the best. Melissa’s Land Rover would be no good for this task, huge though that vehicle is. I am not prepared to let her drive the van, either. I don’t think she is in a fit state. She’s been drinking. Plus, her mood is all over the place, veering between zombie-like calm and sudden bursts of temper.
I am insured for the van, of course. I once had to transport something when Terry had inconveniently broken a wrist, and even though I never use it, I find myself renewing both the tax and the insurance when I get the reminders. I am aware this may seem like an extravagance but you never know when you might need a vehicle, as today has demonstrated.
When Melissa finally emerges, I am as calm as I will ever be at the prospect of a motorway drive. At least it will be quiet at this time of the night.
I notice straight away that she is carrying some sort of bag.
‘What’s that?’
‘It’s nothing. Just his bag. Jamie’s,’ she says. She seems even more nervy than before she went up there. Her eyes keep bobbing around the room as though looking for somewhere to rest.
‘Melissa?’ I say hesitantly. ‘Are you okay?’ I force myself to say something that almost makes me feel sick. ‘If you’re having second thoughts, it’s still not too late to—’
‘NO!’ she says. Almost shouts, in fact.
I give her a weak smile of relief.
What on earth would I have done if she’d said yes? She would like to call the police now?
She sits down at the opposite end of the kitchen table and begins to fiddle with her phone, barely looking at me. It’s clear she is in no mood to communicate.
So we just sit there, in silence, waiting for the evening to move on. It’s actually quite pleasant in a strange way.
We stay like this for half an hour or more and then she seems to erupt from the table like an explosion, announcing, ‘That’s it, we’re going. I can’t do this any longer.’
‘Fine,’ I say with a sigh. ‘Let’s go.’
Of course then we have a tedious row about which of us is going to drive.
‘You don’t know this van,’ I say. As if I drive it all the time.
‘How bloody hard can it be?!’ she snaps, but I will not be budged. We go back and forth for a few minutes until she gives in.
It is a lovely evening, quite balmy, after yesterday’s rain. No other neighbours are about as we get into the van, which is a relief. Now all I have to do is drive.
I glance at Melissa in the passenger seat. She has a mutinous look plastered on her face that quite spoils her looks. I think she is still sulking.
When the engine turns over first time I give a silent prayer of thanks. But the journey gets off to a bad start nonetheless. Backing out of the drive, there is a thump as I accidentally reverse into the gatepost. There’s a nasty grinding sound of metal against metal and the wheels spin in an alarming way for a moment. Melissa cries out and Bertie begins to bark in earnest from the footwell.
‘Be quiet, Bertie!’ I snap.
With a whine, he turns in a circle and snuggles down next to Melissa’s feet. I don’t think she likes dogs very much because she keeps moving her legs to the side. She made rather a fuss about him lying there, in fact, but when I pointed out that the alternative was to have him on her lap, she backed down. However, I have noticed her shifting her legs whenever the poor dog looks for comfort by trying to lie close. Honestly. How can she object to Bertie when he is lying there so sweetly? Some people are very strange.
Neither of us speaks as I pull out onto the road, accidentally crunching the gears from one through to three until I get the hang of things. Come on, Hester. You can do this, I tell myself.
I hope I haven’t caused any damage to the gatepost. I don’t much care about the van, as long as it can get us from A to B. But it will be inconvenient to have to mend the fence between our houses.
We have agreed the route in advance and so head out through the quiet streets of North London towards the M25. The quicker way is via the North Circular, but that feels so much more conspicuous.
I’m still having trouble with the gears and there are a few unpleasant noises before I get the hang of things again. Melissa melodramatically winces every time this happens, which is really rather unnecessary, not to mention off-putting.
I glance at her. Her face looks gaunt in the wash of the street lights, her eyes hollowed out, as though she has aged in just twenty-four hours. It’s strange, but I feel quite the opposite.
The air heater seems to be fixed so warm air blasts into our faces. Melissa fiddles with the controls for some time to no avail before sighing and turning her face to the window. There is a residual smell of paint in the van and the atmosphere could become quite unpleasant in time. Still, we have bigger concerns on that front. Let’s just hope those ice packs do the business.
We’re coming through the quiet country roads of Hadley Wood when she finally speaks in a tightly wound tone.
‘Hester,’ she says, ‘I sincerely hope you aren’t going to drive at 30 miles per hour the whole way. We won’t get to Dorset until tomorrow afternoon at this rate.’
It’s only then that I realize I’m gripping the steering wheel so hard my knuckles bleach white. The nervous driving is something Terry used to like to tease me about and it was very unfair, not to mention unfunny. He would say things like ‘Oh look, a hearse is about to overtake us’, or ‘Here comes a toddler on a tricycle’ when we were on the motorway.
I didn’t rise to the bait but what he didn’t know was that I would picture his face, quite clearly, slamming against the dashboard. I could see his nose splintering like plywood and the plum-coloured black eyes. It all helped stop me from shouting at him and losing control of myself. Yes, that’s a little extreme perhaps, but there was no need for unkind teasing.
I breathe slowly in through my nose and out through my mouth now before I reply.
‘There are speed cameras around here, actually. I think the very last thing we want is to be noticed, don’t you? Under the circumstances?’
She huffs a bit and then says, ‘Yeah, but if you drive like this you’ll attract just as much attention anyway.’
‘I assure you,’ I say, through gritted teeth, ‘that I will drive at the acceptable speed on the motorway.’
We lapse into silence then.
It’s extraordinary, how easy it is to forget about the cargo we are carrying back there. I could almost convince myself we are going on a girls-only camping trip somewhere, if it weren’t for the fact that it was night-time. Maybe when all this is over we really can do something of that nature?
Tilly could come along too. We could spend the evening talking and toasting marshmallows over a campfire. I’ve always wanted to do that. It would be such a lot of fun.
‘Hester.’
‘Yes?’ It’s hard to keep the smile out of my voice; the fantasy was so delicious.
‘You’re making a weird noise!’
Am I? I’m horrified by this. Terry picked up on that too. I think I make a sort of humming sound sometimes when I’m lost in my thoughts. I must try very hard not to do that. ‘I do apologize,’ I say stiffly.
There’s a very loaded pause before she speaks again.
‘Really, if you’re feeling very tired and not up to this, I am completely okay to drive.’
I’m slapping my hand onto the steering wheel before I even know I’m going to do it. It stings and the sound rings out, disproportionately loud. I think we are both a little shocked by the sudden violence of this.
‘Please stop undermining me, Melissa. I am fine. Everything is fine.’ I try to catch my breath, which has become shallow, as though I have been running. ‘Why don’t you try and have a little sleep?’ I say a little more gently.
She lets out a strange sound that is somewhere between a gasp and a laugh then but doesn’t say anything else. To calm myself, I glance down at Bertie, who is now fast asleep by Melissa’s feet. I’m glad because the poor dog must have been wondering what on earth is going on.
He’s not the only one.
Before too long I’m indicating for the westbound M25. I push myself back in the seat and grip the steering wheel as we come down the slip road and it seems to help my nerves a little.
It’s quite busy, despite the late hour, but this is a good thing because before long we have run out of overhead lighting. I am nervous about driving in the dark as it is, particularly at these speeds. But I find that I can stay close to other cars and follow their lights.
We drive in silence for some time then and, to my surprise, I begin to relax and a rather comforting feeling settles over me. Here we are, hurtling through the darkness in this metal container, linked by what we have been through together in a way that, hopefully, cannot now be undone. It’s just me and Melissa against the world.
Nothing can change what happened earlier. There are only two people, well, three, I suppose, who were party to the events in Melissa’s kitchen. Saskia, Tilly, and Mark may as well all be on another planet now. I am the one helping Melissa.
Only me.
It’s hard to stop the smile in my heart from spreading to my face.
Every now and then I glance to my left to check Melissa is all right. It’s hard to tell though, because she just looks straight ahead, her face as impassive as a sphinx. Her hands are tightly wound together and resting between her knees. She doesn’t even seem to mind the fact that Bertie is lying on her feet in their Ugg boots. I privately call them Uggly boots and can’t understand why so many women wear them. Still, perhaps Bertie feels they are comforting, as Melissa presumably does. And heaven knows we all need a little comfort today.
To be perfectly honest, as unpleasant as this all is, I’m enjoying having something to do at last. Life used to be so busy, but the days do drag now.
***
I had planned a life that would follow certain lines, you see. Bringing up children would fill my days. I would be just like those women you see in the advertisements. You know, the ones who look so happy and busy, settling down to a dinner table with the family, while everyone competes good-naturedly to share details of their days. I’d be dishing out mashed potato to one child while gently chiding another to eat their broccoli. It’s all so clear in my mind that I could almost write the script.
And then, when it became clear this life was not the one meant for me, I threw myself into my work.
I try not to dwell on it but, on some days, I still miss my job so much it gives me actual pains.
It wasn’t as though I needed the money, even with Terry’s poor career choices. Mum and Dad had left me the house and a tidy nest egg. Terry was always on at me to spend it and ‘splash out’ on this and that, but what point was there in the two of us going away on cruises or staying in hotels? I couldn’t think of anything worse. It wasn’t about the income. It was all I ever wanted, to have a family of my own. Working in the office at Butterflies Nursery was a poor substitute but the next best thing, I suppose.
They’d had fifteen years of my life at that nursery. Fifteen years of caring for those children and being the most organized Office Manager they could have wished for. I ran that office like the CEO of a successful business.
But then the company was bought by a successful chain and the regime changed entirely. The officious, ferret-faced Manager, a young woman called Irena, told me that there was no longer any need for an Office Manager under the ‘new model’.
I put up a fight, of course I did.
But as Irena continued to speak her Judas words, it transpired that there had been complaints about me. Parents who didn’t approve of their toddler coming home from school with a fuzzy lolly stick in their pocket, or were disgruntled when I told them their child could do with a scarf on a cold day.
And yes, I did reprimand the odd child and make them sit on a naughty chair if they were rude or unkind at playtime. You don’t need a degree in Education to know how to do that. No one had ever complained under the old regime, as far as I was aware. The previous owners had never minded and, apart from the occasional snippy comment from some of the younger guard of nursery nurses, I had never felt that I was anything other than an integral part of that place.
I couldn’t count the number of scraped knees I’d swabbed and bandaged, the number of toddler squabbles that were solved simply by lending a sympathetic, fair ear. And yes, there were cuddles and sometimes the odd illicit lollypop, too; but what kind of world are we living in where comforting an unhappy child is seen as aberrant behaviour? For some of those children, it was the only affection they ever got. But it turned out I had no choice in the matter. I was being asked to retire. So, come the end of the year, I was forced out to pasture.
I tried to fill my time with work in the local charity shop after that, but it wasn’t for me. The other women there weren’t my sort of people.
But I must try not to think about this now. I have to be here for Melissa. And for Tilly. I have a job to do and I must not let them down. I am the strong one in this whole equation.
A gentle rain begins to dot the windscreen. I switch on the wipers, which drag and sweep across the glass with a thumping beat that could become hypnotic. I sit up straighter in the seat, the cushion under my bottom sliding uncomfortably.
My eyes are starting to feel grainy and, despite all my protestations, I’m wondering if I am going to be able to drive the whole way after all. The dashboard clock tells me it is close to eleven o’clock. It is hours until dawn breaks and I am still very concerned about finding this place in the dark. We should stop at a service station and kill some time. I don’t think Melissa is thinking straight. It’s up to me to be the mature, sensible one.
I’m just gathering the courage to broach this suggestion to Melissa when the van starts to judder and shake and smoke begins to pour from the bonnet.