Scissors, Paper, Stone (27 page)

She had ended up at home even though it was the last place she wanted to be. Perhaps, she thought miserably, there would never be anywhere else to go. There would be no escape from Charles and Anne and the weird tangle of their lives together.

She bent over, resting her hands just below her knees, letting the breaths come in scratchy bursts. She noticed that dark wet droplets were landing irregularly on the grey slabs of the pavement and she wondered whether it was raining but then she realised it was coming from her and that she was crying. Charlotte pulled the sleeve of her school jumper over her hand and wiped the tears and snot off her face, leaving a slimy trail on the misshapen navy-blue wool.

But oddly, although she was crying, she did not feel especially sad. Somewhere inside, she was inexplicably calm. It was as if the worst had happened and, because of this, she had nothing left to fear. She felt strangely adult for the first time in her life. She decided then that she would not let this upset her because she did not want them to see how much they had hurt her. By masking it, by dealing with it on her own terms, Charlotte could be in control.

After a while, her breathing became more regular and she noticed that the tears had stopped. Her mind felt curiously anaesthetised and the sensation was not altogether unpleasant. For so long, her head had been so crowded with incomprehensible thoughts that it was a relief to have had the balloon of it punctured, the pressurised air released from within.

She walked the last few yards to the front door of her house and she registered the brass knocker and the letterbox slot, its metal dulled by years of weather, and she noticed the roots of the horse chestnut tree pressing up through the patio stones, warping them out of shape like scales along a dinosaur spine. She checked it all off a mental inventory so that the house seemed at once familiar and yet simultaneously detached from her sense of self.

She knew that what she had to do was to take the spare key from underneath the doormat, put it in the lock and open the door. She knew she had to walk back inside and carry on. She would not weep like a child, she would not cry like someone who needed comfort: she would become inviolable. She would take a deep breath and she would protect herself and she would grow into someone who was better than them both. In that moment, she convinced herself that she did not need them. She would be their daughter, still, but they would never know her, not really. They would never understand the deep, dark hole inside. The hatred hidden beneath the folds of her heart would give her the strength she needed. The darkened varnish would obscure the truth of what lay beneath.

She did not know then that this would prove so difficult, that in spite of it all, she would continue to crave her parents’ love, to court their admiration, to live her whole life in the hope of seeing them smile. She was still only a child.

Charlotte turned the key in the door and found it was already unlocked. She walked in and saw her mother sitting at the kitchen table at the end of the hallway, her head in her hands, and in that second, she knew that Anne had seen everything and that she, Charlotte, could not forgive her.

Anne’s head jerked up at the sound of the door shutting. ‘Charlotte?’ she called, her voice clear and level and impenetrably normal.

‘I’m going upstairs,’ said Charlotte tonelessly. She went straight to the bathroom and locked the door behind her and she put a plug in the bath and turned on the taps and watched the water steam up the mirrored cabinet above the basin. She held her hand underneath the fluid heat until it was almost too much to bear and her skin started to scald. It did not hurt as much as she thought it would and she felt powerful because of it.

Years later, she would ask herself why he had done it in such a public place. After months of careful discretion, of deliberately not going too far, of touching with quick fingers and watching in stolen glimpses, why had he risked it? Did he think he was too powerful to be caught? Or was it that he had been unable to stop himself, that his customary control had abandoned him? Did he want to be found out, to push Anne to a point of no return? Or was it, in the end, that he did not believe what he was doing was so very wrong after all? Was it, sickeningly, his form of love?

For a week, Charles disappeared. His absence was never alluded to. Charlotte and Anne carried on their daily routine with such punctilious precision that both of them began to feel cushioned by the appearance of normality. It was a strangely peaceful time. The threat of Charles – the constant cloud of slight unease and tense anticipation – had been lifted and Anne was so grateful not to have to speak about what had happened that Charlotte found she was allowed to do whatever she wanted. She could stay up late watching unsuitable television and decide not to go to school the next day and she could eat too many salt-and-vinegar crisps before supper and Anne would let her, would be too nervous around her to refuse. It felt good to have her mother being so atypically indulgent and it gave Charlotte a sense of achievement, a fragile belief that she had dealt with everything in a sufficiently dispassionate, grown-up fashion. Part of her hoped that Anne was impressed by her daughter’s maturity. Another part of her knew that, without even trying, Charlotte was now the dominant partner in the mother–daughter relationship. It was a knowledge that simultaneously scared and thrilled her: she liked the feeling of power it gave her but she also wanted to be looked after. She wanted her mother to say something, to be the one who spoke about it first.

Yet Anne never confronted what had happened. She never once spoke of it. The closest she came to it was when, a few days after the incident, she walked into Charlotte’s bedroom to say goodnight. Sitting at the edge of the bed, Anne seemed jittery and uncertain of whether to touch her daughter or not.

‘Do you want to know what I do when something bad happens?’ she whispered into the darkness.

Charlotte nodded, her eyes closed as if she were trying to sleep.

‘I think about it in my head and then, in my mind, I take a big rubber and rub it all out. And then I get a paintbrush and I paint over it in red so that I don’t have to look at it any more.’

There was a pause.

‘Are you all right, darling?’ asked Anne, tentatively reaching out to stroke a tendril of hair off Charlotte’s cheek. She nodded, wordlessly.

‘You know you can always . . .’ Anne broke off. ‘You can always talk to someone if you want to. I mean, someone not to do with the family. A stranger. A counsellor or something. If you think you’d like to.’

Charlotte turned away from her to face the wall. After a few seconds, Anne stood up and walked out, shutting the bedroom door softly behind her.

For years afterwards, Charlotte would wonder why Anne had chosen not to confront the truth. Was it that she loved Charles too much to believe it of him or was it that she knew the depth of his brutal power but did not want to acknowledge it? Was it that Anne had been so shocked by her own behaviour that she needed to convince herself it had never happened? Or did she genuinely think that she was doing what was best; that by not talking, the nastiness of it would somehow dissolve in Charlotte’s mind and be forgotten?

Perhaps it was simply easier for Anne to rub it all out and paint over it in red brushstrokes.

Easier to turn away and never mention it again in all the weeks and months and years that followed except in the most oblique terms.

Easier to carry on pretending. Because, after all, isn’t that what they were all doing already?

When Charles came back, the shared deceit continued. He appeared without warning while they were having supper one evening. He was tanned and his hair was more blond than usual and he was wearing a white linen suit and had a rucksack on his back.

Charlotte did not look up from her plate of spaghetti. She waited, alert to the slightest alteration in atmosphere, to see how her parents would behave before committing herself to a reaction.

‘You’re back,’ said Anne with unnatural brightness.

So that’s what we’re going to do, thought Charlotte, we’re going to carry on as if nothing has happened, and although she was contemptuous of her mother’s weakness, she also felt she could breathe more easily for knowing it.

‘Yes,’ said Charles and he slid the rucksack straps off his shoulders and unzipped it, removing a badly wrapped package from inside. He put it on the table next to Charlotte’s plate without explanation.

‘I’m going to have a shower and then some supper would be nice.’ He smiled an uneven smile. Anne nodded her head quickly. ‘Yes, there’s some pasta left over.’

‘Good. A home-cooked meal is just what I need.’

He walked out of the kitchen and the sound of his heavy footsteps taking the stairs two at the time thudded through the ceiling. Neither of them spoke until they could hear the shower being turned on and then Charlotte realised she had been holding her breath. She exhaled gently, hoping not to draw attention to herself.

‘Well, aren’t you going to open it?’ said Anne, motioning towards the package in front of her.

Charlotte put down a forkful of spaghetti and swallowed, feeling a lump of something uncertain squeeze down her throat. Her mouth was dry. She pulled the present towards her and saw that it had been hastily wrapped in old newspaper pages. The writing was in a language she did not understand but she thought it might be Spanish or Italian.

Although she was usually careful about opening gifts, wishing to savour every delectable second of surprise, this time Charlotte tore open the loose folds, ripping off the Sellotape so that her fingertips became dusted with black. She was surprised how excited she felt and then she wondered whether it was anger that was making her heart pump so ferociously against her rib cage. The last sheet of newspaper fell away and lay crumpled on the table.

Inside was a straw donkey, with a red sombrero perched jauntily on top of its ears. The donkey stared at Charlotte with baleful glass-buttoned eyes. She looked at it for a few seconds and then she stood up, cleared away her plate, and walked wordlessly out of the kitchen.

Later, when she went to her room, she noticed that someone had moved the donkey and put it on the low bookshelf that faced her bed. The donkey stood there looking at her from beneath its red hat and she saw that its polished eyes mirrored her every movement. She felt uneasy lying beneath the duvet, aware of her own reflection shining out of the two blank spheres of the donkey’s expressionless gaze.

Anne

The hotel was a nondescript building in West Kensington, its peeling white walls pockmarked with exhaust fume soot. There were tiled steps leading up to the front door and a blue-and-white-striped awning over the porch. The bay window had a laminated ‘Rooms Available’ sign propped up against the glass.

Anne checked the number against the folded piece of paper in her hand. Reassured that this was indeed the correct address, she walked inside. The hallway carpet was a swirling mass of red and gold. There was no one at reception so Anne had to press the bell. She waited for several seconds, her fingers playing nervously with the strap of her handbag. After a while, she heard the shuffling of footsteps and a large grey-haired man wearing slippers and an unbuttoned white shirt appeared from behind a set of frosted windows. He looked Anne up and down with a perceptible leer on his face. His mouth was open just wide enough that she could make out his swollen red tongue and a row of yellowed teeth sticking out irregularly from his lower gum.

‘Yes?’ he said, his voice choked with phlegm. He cleared his throat. ‘Can I help you?’

‘Yes, the name’s Cockburn.’

The man took a pair of half-moon spectacles out of his shirt pocket and laboriously started to check each page of the guest register, running a dirty finger down the handwritten columns.

‘Mr Cockburn?’ He smirked. Anne felt her face flush.

‘Yes, that’s right.’

‘He’s up there already.’ The man slid the key across the counter but did not remove his hand, so that Anne was forced to graze against him as she reached to pick it up. His flesh was puckered and clammy to the touch. ‘Two flights of stairs,’ he said, looking her steadily up and down. ‘First on your right.’

‘Thank you,’ said Anne, her voice shaky. She started towards the stairs before she could change her mind.

The assignation with Marcus Cockburn had been quite deliberately arranged a few days after Charles had returned from his mysterious sojourn, bringing back that ridiculous straw donkey for Charlotte. She had bumped into Marcus while doing the weekly supermarket shop in Richmond, finding comfort in the undemanding blandness of routine after the hideously surreal tinge of the preceding weeks. He was carrying a basket in one hand that had been overloaded with contents and looked too heavy to be easily manageable, so that he was walking with a half-limping gait and appeared even more pathetic than normal. She had hoped to scurry past him without alerting his attention, but he spotted her by the bread shelves and half-walked, half-jogged to her side like a man desperate to catch a bus and yet too embarrassed to sprint.

‘Anne,’ he said, and then she had to turn and smile politely. ‘Fancy meeting you here.’

‘Yes,’ she replied, ‘fancy.’

‘I’ve just popped in for a few things. Antonia’s having some of her tennis club round for dinner.’

‘How is Antonia?’ asked Anne, and she noticed that the casualness of the question caused Marcus to wince.