The Grip Lit Collection: The Sisters, Mother, Mother and Dark Rooms. Koren Zailckas
picks up his suitcase and we go into the house. ‘Where’s Bea?’ he asks. ‘How have the two of you been getting on?’ I assure him that Beatrice has been great, that the four of us have muddled along together quite nicely for the last ten days. And even though Cass is still an enigma to me, I’m used to her quiet ways now, her slinking about the house like a cat; the only person she seems comfortable with is Beatrice. As we go into the kitchen, he asks me if I’ve seen much of Niall and I can tell by his faux air of nonchalance that he is trying to quash his feelings of jealousy, that it bothers him to know he’s not the only man in his sister’s life any more.
As I reheat some of Eva’s chicken casserole for his dinner I tell him that Beatrice isn’t home, that she’s gone to some art gallery with Niall. His face falls and I pretend not to notice, disliking the way it makes me feel. I put the plate of food in front of him and go to the larder to retrieve a bottle of wine. ‘Something tells me you need this,’ I say as I pour him a glass of Chablis. He smiles gratefully, his eyes shaded with fatigue. I pull out a chair opposite him and pour myself a glass too. It’s on the tip of my tongue to tell him about the cryptic message on Lucy’s Facebook page, but he looks so tired, so fed-up that I can’t bring myself to worry him.
Later, when we’re in his bedroom, I go to his Bang and Olufsen music system and I’m about to turn it on when Ben shouts at me, causing me to jump.
‘Don’t touch that,’ he snaps, coming to me and pushing my hand away. ‘It’s expensive.’
I experience a stab of hurt but remind myself that he’s had a long journey, a stressful ten days at a job he hated. He’s just tired, frustrated. It’s become obvious that he’s a little pedantic about certain things; he hates me washing or ironing his precious designer shirts, or touching any of his expensive gadgets. And that’s fine. It’s one of his quirks. It doesn’t mean anything. So I step away and get into bed. When he joins me I go to remove his boxer shorts. ‘Not tonight, Abi,’ he says, shuffling his body to the other side of the mattress. ‘My mind is all over the place. I need to sleep.’ He turns over so that I have no choice but to stare at his back, at the mole in the shape of a four-leaf clover on his right shoulder, and his words send a chill through me.
I leave Ben sleeping the next morning and take the bus into town.
It’s a crisp day, the sky a vivid blue that borders on violet, and the clouds float past a little too fast, suggesting rain is on its way. I wrap my chiffon scarf higher up my neck as I get off at Bath Spa bus station and head towards Milsom Street. I’ve seen a pair of ankle boots that I want to try on; now that I’m earning more money, I can afford to buy them. I’m walking with my head down, hands thrust into the pockets of my parka, my mind full of Ben and what could be troubling him, and I don’t see the woman heading towards me until I almost bump into her.
‘Sorry,’ I say, looking up. Jodie is standing in front of me, dressed in a puffa jacket and grey skinny jeans, a smile on her usual sulky mouth. ‘Jodie, how are you?’ She’s carrying a leather rucksack on her back that looks like a large beetle.
She stares at me and I can see that she’s trying to place me, working out where she knows me from, and then her eyes light up as it finally dawns on her who I am. ‘Abi, isn’t it? How’s it going, living with the freaky twins?’
I’m irritated at her disloyalty. ‘They’re not freaky.’
She laughs but it sounds hollow, insincere. A woman tries to step past us on the narrow pavement and tuts. I apologize and move aside, Jodie follows suit. The faint spittle of rain kisses my cheek. Even though I don’t warm to Jodie, I ask her if she’s got time for a quick coffee, that I would like to ask her some questions. She ponders my offer, and I can see her weighing up what to do. I can tell that part of her would love a good gossip about the ‘freaky twins’ as she calls them, but the other part is wary about getting involved, about saying something that could get back to them. In the end she agrees and we head into a coffee shop near the Roman Baths.
We grab the only empty table left upstairs, sinking into the chairs in relief. Jodie removes her backpack and shrugs off her Michelin Man coat. By now the rain is thrashing against the windows in a fury, the café is packed and the shared breath of strangers and steam from hot drinks has caused condensation to smear the windows.
‘It always seems to rain in Bath,’ says Jodie, surveying the downpour. ‘Anyway,’ she takes a sip of her caramel latte, cursing that it’s too hot. ‘What did you want to talk to me about?’
‘Look,’ I say, leaning forward conspiratorially. ‘Do you remember what you said to me? That day in your bedroom? You warned me to “watch my back”.’
She shrugs. ‘Yeah. So what?’
‘What did you mean?’
She narrows her blue eyes. ‘Why do you want to know? Has something happened?’
‘You’re still friends with Cass, right?’
‘Yes,’ she says haltingly. ‘What’s all this about?’
‘But you fell out with Beatrice?’ I ask, ignoring her question.
She sighs and she looks young to me then; she can’t be much more than twenty. ‘When everyone first meets Beatrice they fall under her spell. She’s beautiful, funny, talented, smart.’ She could be talking about Lucy. I nod encouragingly, sensing that there’s more she wants to say. I’m right. ‘But she picks people up and drops them when she’s bored of them. Have you not found that out by now?’ I can sense in her an unspoken hurt at being left out in the cold.
‘I’m not sure,’ I admit. ‘My feelings for Beatrice are complicated.’
‘Are you in love with her?’
I almost spit out my coffee in shock. ‘Of course not. Why do you say that?’
‘Oh, everyone falls in love with Beatrice. Cass is absolutely smitten.’
‘Cass?’
‘She’s gay. Didn’t you know? She’s totally in love with Bea, follows her everywhere, won’t hear a bad word about her.’
Now it all makes sense. How could I have been so blind?
She takes a noisy slurp of her coffee. She’s wearing a baggy black T-shirt of a band I don’t recognize and, as I assess her from across the table, I think that she has a pinched kind of face as if she’s always cross, even when she’s smiling. ‘I fell out with Cass when I left. But we’re friends again now. She can’t help her infatuation, can she?’
‘Do you think Beatrice is that way inclined?’
‘They did have a thing a while back. They thought nobody knew, but I did.’ Something tells me that not much gets past Jodie. I feel a twinge of … what? Excitement at the thought of the two of them together? Regret that it was never me? ‘But Beatrice is messed up. She told Cass that some guy broke her heart when she was at university, that she’s never gotten over it. And the way she is with Ben, so possessive, it’s weird.’
‘What do you mean?’ I’m still reeling about the lesbian revelation.
‘Come on,’ she scoffs. ‘I don’t know exactly what’s going on there, but something isn’t quite right. She has a hold over him, I know that much.’
I sit up straighter, expectantly. I long to tell her what’s been happening since I moved in, how I believe that Beatrice is probably behind it, that it’s all stopped now she’s met Niall – until yesterday. But I keep my mouth shut. I don’t trust that Jodie won’t go blabbing to Cass. ‘What makes you say that?’
And then she tells me.
A couple of weeks before she moved out she overhead them talking – ‘I wasn’t eavesdropping,’ she insists, although I suspect she probably was. She was coming down the stairs when she heard raised voices from the drawing room. Ben was agitated, she could