The Grip Lit Collection: The Sisters, Mother, Mother and Dark Rooms. Koren Zailckas
I say this to Ben one Sunday as we walk around Prior Park Landscape Gardens. The sun is high, the sky a pale blue. Ben tucks my arm in his as we wander along the Palladian Bridge, showing me the names and dates and messages from lovers and friends that have been scratched into its Bath stone columns, marvelling at the inscriptions from over a hundred years ago.
‘I’m glad,’ he says. ‘It’s important to me that my two best girls get on.’ And I feel it, a trace of jealousy. I know I can’t have him all to myself; after all, who better than I to understand their bond? But sometimes their relationship reminds me even more of what I’ve lost. We walk along in silence, both deep in thought, our shadows stretched out in front of us, elongated versions of ourselves, and I’m curious as to what’s going on in his mind, because every now and again he’s like a television that has abruptly been switched off so that I’m no longer able to see what he’s thinking.
As we move off the bridge towards the lake he says, ‘My contract has come to an end, but another company has offered me a job, in Scotland. The money’s good, I can’t turn it down.’
In front of us a mother is grappling with a screaming toddler, trying to hoist him over her shoulder towards the café with the promise of cake. I smile at her sympathetically. ‘How long for?’
‘It’s a week contract, possibly two.’ I can’t bear the thought of being away from him for that long; he’s the anchor to my boat and I worry that I will float out to sea, directionless, without him.
‘Do you need to take the contract?’ I say. ‘What with the trust fund …’
He stiffens. I’ve offended him, wounded his male pride.
‘I’m from a working-class background. It doesn’t seem right not to earn my own money,’ he snaps.
I remember Eva telling me about his rich grandparents, their rambling house on the outskirts of Edinburgh. It doesn’t sound as if it was a very working-class background to me. But I bite my tongue because I can understand how he would want to earn a living and not rely on family inheritance. Since I’ve been working, I’ve been giving money to Beatrice for rent, in spite of her protestations. It doesn’t seem right not to pay my way. I know how Ben feels.
By now we’ve reached the café – or rather a hut with wooden tables set out in front of it, overlooking the lake. The tables are mostly taken up with young families; children run about with ice creams, making the most of the last remnants of summer. We manage to find a small table semi-hidden by an over-enthusiastic bush, with a view of the lake. I take a seat while Ben goes to the hut to buy us coffee.
He returns clutching two takeaway cups with plastic lids and hands one to me as he manoeuvres his long legs over the bench seat opposite. Over his shoulder I watch as a flock of seagulls descend on the lake, foraging for a snack and scaring away a couple of ducks.
‘Will you be okay? In the house with Beatrice and the others? Without me?’ he asks. I’m pleased that he’s worried about me.
‘Everything seems to have settled down, and I’m getting on OK with Beatrice again. It makes life a lot easier.’ He nods and takes a sip of his coffee. ‘All that weird stuff that happened, Ben. It was awful, it was as though I was losing my grip on reality.’
‘I can imagine.’
I shake my head, trying to chase the unwanted memories away. It’s all in the past, I remind myself, I need to forget it.
Ben has been in Scotland for the past ten days, leaving me wafting around the house, unsettled, like a spirit with nobody to haunt. I miss him the most at night, so I sleep in his bed, inhaling the smell of him that lingers on the sheets, imagining him here with me.
On the Friday that Ben is due home I’m sitting at the kitchen table with my laptop. Pam is at the sink washing out brushes; her hair has gone from tarmac black to a blood orange – a home dye job that went wrong apparently, although it has now ‘grown on her’. She’s wearing baggy paint-splattered overalls and is chattering away, totally oblivious to the fact that I’m trying to write an article I promised Miranda. I log on to Facebook, distracted by Pam’s incessant chatter, knowing I won’t get any work done while she’s in the room. As I do every week or so, I go on to Lucy’s Facebook page that I’ve still kept running, not quite able to contact them to disable it, taking comfort from the past posts on her timeline, the photographs she uploaded before she died, the funny messages on her wall that we sent to one another. Her profile photograph is of the two of us, taken at some party; grinning inanely, hair damp with sweat, a crowd of people dancing behind us, slightly out of focus. I smile at the memory, remembering when Nia took the photo at the opening of a new club in Covent Garden. With beads of perspiration on our foreheads, our hair pushed back from our eyes, our lips bare, even I have to scrutinize the photograph to remember which of the smiling, fun-loving girls is me.
The letters in the box upstairs are the only private things I have left of her. Yes, I can access her Facebook page, click on the videos that I have of her, but it’s the letters that mean the most, because in them she poured out her thoughts and feelings. When I read them, I can hear her voice, I can imagine that she’s talking to me. Letter-writing was something we shared, something personal, between the two of us and not for her three hundred Facebook friends. And when I think that three of those precious letters have been taken by Beatrice and hidden God knows where, a flicker of anger burns inside me so intense it takes me a while to calm down and regain my composure. I’m biding my time, but I will get those letters back.
Pam is still chattering away but her words wash over my head. There is something new on Lucy’s timeline, her status has changed. My heart starts to race and I rapidly blink to make sure I’ve read it correctly. But there is no mistake. The three words float in front of my vision so that I’m dizzy.
I’ve been replaced.
My fingers tremble as they hover over the keyboard. I can see by the date that it was written yesterday. My mouth goes dry. Has her account been hacked? Maybe it’s some idiot mucking about, but why write such a thing? What does it mean?
‘Are you okay, love?’ says Pam, noticing my shocked expression.
I can’t bring myself to tell her because, as much as I’m fond of Pam, admire her reassuring presence, her confidence, not even minding that she’s slightly self-obsessed, I doubt she would understand. When I received those flowers on my birthday she had appeared nonplussed, almost dismissive, assuring me there was probably a logical explanation. As if there could be.
So I plaster a tight smile on my face and tell her I’m fine, and she seems to believe it as she gathers up her paintbrushes, humming as she trots up the stairs to the next floor.
Why would you write that, Lucy? I think, before checking myself, tears stinging my eyes as it sinks in that, of course, Lucy didn’t write it. How could she? She’s dead. She’s fucking dead! I take deep breaths, try to concentrate on my breathing. I slam the lid of my MacBook, telling myself that it’s a mistake, that it doesn’t mean anything. That it’s not at all weird, eerie, sick that a message has appeared on my sister’s wall nearly two years after she died.
When I check again later, the message has disappeared, leaving me doubting whether it was ever there in the first place.
It’s dark when Ben’s little Fiat finally turns into the street. I watch from my bedroom window as he pulls up outside the house. I run downstairs, throwing open the front door as he’s stepping on to the pavement. He’s dressed in a moss green corduroy jacket that I haven’t seen before, and a woolly beanie hat pulled down over his head, hiding his hair. Although it’s only the end of August the weather has taken a turn for the worse so it seems more autumnal. I’ve missed him so much. I rush towards him but something about his demeanour makes me hesitate by the wrought-iron gate. He looks tired, the tan he acquired over the summer has faded and his shoulders are slumped. I call out to him and he glances up; his smile, when he realizes it’s me, transforms his face. I open the gate and fall into his arms and he drops his suitcase on to the pavement