The Ice Cream Girls (2 page)

‘Babe
?’ Evan says, in a way that suggests he has called me a few times.

‘Sorry,’ I say, ‘miles away.’
Another life away.

‘I’m getting a cold knee and a little nervous,’ he says.

‘Nervous? Why?’

‘You haven’t actually said yes.’

‘Haven’t I?’ I ask.

‘No, you haven’t.’

‘Oh.’

He grins that grin of his. ‘Do you want me to ask you again?’

I nod eagerly. Just one more time, especially now I know there’s a ring involved.

‘OK,’ he says with a slight, mock-exasperated shake of his head. ‘Serena Gorringe . . .’ He pauses to slip the ring halfway up my finger, and I hold my breath, trying to remember every detail because I will recreate it for the kids, for my sisters, for my parents, for anyone who cares to listen. ‘Will you make me the happiest man on earth by marrying me and becoming Mrs Gillmare all over again?’ He pushes the ring into place beside my wedding band.

I almost forget to breathe as I examine the two rings. They slot together almost seamlessly, and they look like they were made for each other. Like nothing will ever tear them apart.

‘Of course I will,’ I say and leap up as he struggles to his feet. ‘Of course I’ll marry you again.’ I throw my arms around his neck and he grins at me before he scoops me into his arms and then dips me backwards for a deep, show-stopping, movie-style kiss. Another unicorn-on-Brighton-seafront-type gesture. He is full of them tonight.

I immerse myself in it all. In the kiss, the proposal, the man. I’m only vaguely aware that we’ve had an audience and now the air around us is full of the sound of people clapping.

I’m going to hang on to this moment. I have to. I know how easily everything can be taken away. Everything is fragile, when you’re like me. Very few things are permanent. I live on a precipice of falling into my past, of people finding out what I have been accused of, how I was publicly branded, and being judged all over again on that. I live with the constant fear that someone or something is going to tip me over the edge.

But not tonight, eh? Not right now. Right now, I am the woman who Dr Evan Gillmare wants to spend the rest of his life with.

Right now, I am the happiest woman on earth and nothing bad could possibly happen to me.

serena

I’m walking around my kitchen, opening cupboards and appliances, looking for the knives.

The dinner knives are safe but the sharp ones, the ones that can do serious damage, seem to be missing in action. Admittedly, that’s my fault: I hid them last night, and I can’t quite remember where. It wouldn’t be a problem if the house wasn’t minutes away from becoming a chaos of breakfast and day-organising and the usual family pandemonium. It wouldn’t even be a problem if Evan hadn’t made me promise not to do this again.

My fingers reach for the oven door for a third time and I yank it open really quickly, hoping that the knives will have materialised in there, the original hiding place, the favourite hiding place.

Every night, before bed, I used to collect all the sharp knives and put them on a baking tray and put them in the oven – just in case someone broke in while we were asleep and decided to use our own cutlery against us. Then I started doing it before we settled down to watch TV in the evening, in case someone broke in the back door while we were lounging in the front room. And then it was just after washing up because it was easier. After a while, I realised that hiding the knives in the same place every night, night after night, might not be a good idea if we were being watched, so I started hiding them in all sorts of ingenious places, places that a burglar with ill intentions would never think to look. Turns out, I wouldn’t think to look there either because I’m constantly doing this: looking for the knives.

Evan, Verity and Conrad used to be very nice about it, accepted it as one of my little quirks, even though they had to hack away at cheese and tear bread some days because Mum couldn’t find the knives. Then, Evan discovered them in his gym bag – at the gym – and had a total understanding meltdown. He came storming through the kitchen door, and started shouting at me in front of the kids.
‘I could have been arrested for carrying multiple dangerous weapons, Sez!’
he’d screamed. ‘
And what do I tell them, I’ve got a crazy wife who hides the knives and then forgets where she’s put them
?’ I’d been so tempted to say, ‘Yes, because that’s the truth’, but decided not to push it. I had to leave him alone for his temper to subside and then tell him I was sorry. After that, he made me promise that if I insisted on hiding the knives, I’d write down where they were so it wouldn’t happen again.

Obviously I’d crossed my fingers behind my back when I agreed because,
come on
, that would defeat the whole point, wouldn’t it? I’ve been pretty good since then at remembering. But after last night, and the champagne and the celebration at home, my head is fuzzy, my senses are blunted and I can’t remember much, least of all where I stashed the sharp stuff. Could’ve sworn it was the oven, would have put money on it.

I snatch the stainless-steel door open, for a fourth time, just in case. No. Nada. Nothing.
Damn it!

Something being shoved loudly through the letterbox makes me jump. ‘
Shhh
,’ I hiss at the door as I leap over the creaky floorboards, mapped out like uncracked paving stones in my mind, to collect the morning paper. ‘
Do you want to get me in trouble?
’ I suspect Evan will take back the proposal, change his mind about wanting to marry me again, if he finds out that I can’t locate the knives again. It’s one of my many little foibles that niggle him.

At five minutes past 11 a.m. on the seventh of November, a tall, muscular man with a shaved back-and-sides Afro threw a pint of orange juice in my face.

I had been curled up, as usual on non-lecture days, in the big squashy armchair at the back of the college bar, beside the floor-to-ceiling windows that looked out over the college playing fields. I would sit in there, comforted by the smell of stale smoke, spilt alcohol and musty carpet, and read.

Until that moment, I thought I was safe, I thought no one knew where I was or who I was. I thought my shame had been buried and I could cautiously, carefully, start again, two hundred miles from the scene of my alleged crime.

But the splash of liquid on my face, hair and books told me otherwise. Told me to run before things got worse. People had spat at me in the street before, had written me hate mail, had crossed the road to avoid me, had threatened me with violence . . . and now it was starting up again. I leapt out of the chair and grabbed my belongings – my textbooks, room keys and purse – spread like a pack of splayed cards on the table, and ran. Not before I said, ‘Sorry. Thank you. I’m sorry.’ Not before I let him know that I wasn’t enjoying myself, I hadn’t forgotten, I hadn’t really left it all behind.

‘Wait!’ I heard him call as I crossed the threshold. But I did not wait. I did not want to make it easy for him to finish off what he started.

Down the corridor, around the corner, out into the wide, paved courtyard, I ran. ‘Please! Miss! Wait!’ he called again but I sprinted on, heading for the safety of my room. I could hear his footsteps behind me, gaining on me, and I pushed myself harder, desperate to get to my room, desperate to shut and lock the door, to climb into bed and hide under the covers until he got bored and left me alone.

At the door to my halls, I worked as fast as I could to type in the five-digit code but as I hit the last number, his hand came down on my forearm, stopping me from turning the handle.

I tried to scream, but it was swollen and bloated from my run and stuck in my throat; then became firmly lodged into place by the fear of what was about to come.

‘My God you can run,’ he said, his chest heaving. ‘Are you OK?’ He pointed over his shoulder. ‘I’m so sorry about back there.’ He paused to catch his breath a little more. ‘Whoa! Mad run! I thought . . . I’m sorry. I was coming over to see if you wanted a drink. I think of you as my reading partner because I always see you in there reading like I do. Thought I’d make contact. Turned into the wrong kind of contact, if you know what I mean.’

‘You didn’t do it on purpose?’ I replied.

‘Why would I do it on purpose?’ he asked. ‘What sort of sick person would do that on purpose?’

‘You don’t know who I am?’ I searched his face for an answer that might be different from the one coming out of his mouth.

‘Should I?’ he asked with raised eyebrows.

‘You don’t know who I am,’ I stated. I relaxed into that sentence, enjoying exactly what it meant: safety, anonymity.

‘Tell me who you are, then, if I should know.’

‘I’m nobody,’ I said.

‘Ri-ght,’ he said carefully. ‘So, are we cool? You’re OK?’

I nodded at him. ‘I’m OK.’

‘Good. I can go back to my reading and not worry that I’ve traumatised you, yeah?’

I nodded again. ‘Yeah.’

‘Good. That’s good.’ He took a couple of steps away then said, ‘What’s your name?’

‘Oh, um, well . . . um . . .’

‘You don’t know your own name?’

‘I was just trying to work out if I should tell you my real name.’

‘Fair enough.’

‘It’s Serena.’

‘OK, Serena, I’ll see you then.’

‘Yeah, I’ll see you.’

He’d walked a little distance away when he called over his shoulder: ‘Oh, by the way, I’m Evan.’

‘Bye, Evan,’ I called. Under my breath I added, ‘And thank you. Thank you so, so much.’

I tug the paper out of the door, knowing I should be grateful that the paperboy managed to get it
into
the door this time, mostly he stands at the gate and chucks it in the general direction of the door.

I go back to the kitchen, flicking through the paper even though Evan hates it when I do that. He likes to come to it afresh, without the pages mussed up by my fingers. On some level, that’s probably why I do it: he tells me not to do something – asks, really –
asks
me not to do something and my brain tells me it wants to do nothing else but that thing. I can’t help it. It’s the same reason I’ve never been any good at diets – tell me I can’t have a food and I want nothing but that food.

I’m halfway through the paper, flicking through the pages, when my eyes are dragged to the headline of the small pictureless square at the bottom of page five: SWEET TASTE OF F
REEDOM
F
OR
T
HE
I
CE
C
REAM
G
IRL
. I lift the paper closer to my nose to be sure, to double-check I am really reading those words.

I stop in my tracks as ice-cold fingers with razorblade fingernails begin clawing at my heart, lungs and stomach. This is what it feels like when the past crops up unawares, when it will not stay dead and buried as it should be.

I read the words that go with the headline, and the tearing and ripping at my insides intensifies. This is what a heart attack feels like: what happens when your heart is overwhelmed by the secrets it carries and wants to let them out, hurting you in the process.

I read those words again and again and again. Life is all about scales, checks and balances, I sometimes think: every time something good happens, something awful will come along to even it out, to stop me being completely and blithely happy. I finally got my yearned-for proposal, so now she is back to haunt me.

Creak!
of the top step sounds through the house, signalling the imminent arrival of someone I love and who does not know.

I can’t be caught reading this. Even though there’s no picture, there are two words that connect me to this, that would give me away and would unleash hell upon our small, ordinary lives.

I scrunch the paper in my hands and then run to the bin, hit the pedal and shove it in, down where it will not do any damage, down, down out of sight. I’ll have to tell Evan the paperboy didn’t deliver it or something; I’ll have to go back on my promise to never lie – not to others, not to myself. But if it’s a choice between a small white lie or the end of everything, I
have
to lie. Show me a person who wouldn’t and I’ll show you someone who has never lived through hell.

The weight of the tread of the footsteps tells me it’s Evan. I pick up the stainless steel kettle, dash to the sink, and manage to turn on the tap before he wanders into the kitchen.

‘Morning, wife-to-be-again,’ he says. I’m sure he’s smiling but I cannot turn to check, I cannot face him until I have composed myself, rearranged my expression so he can’t tell something is wrong.

‘Morning, you,’ I say, bright and breezy. There is an extra forced note of happiness in my voice, but if he notices, he doesn’t mention it. ‘Ready for another day at the coalface?’

He sucks in his breath. ‘Ooooh, not quite. Coffee, toast, smoothie. Then I might consider it.’ I hear him rub the slight paunch that appears whenever he sits down or slouches. ‘Actually, I could murder cheese on toast.’

Murder
. The word echoes and pulsates in my mind and in the deepest recesses of my chest.
Murder, murder, murder.

‘Really thin slices of cheese. Dash of Worcester sauce.’

‘You know where toaster is,’ I say, playing for time. Knives. Where are the knives?
Where?

‘Sez?’

‘Yes?’ I reply.

‘Look at me, please.’

I take an extra deep breath and turn to face my husband. He is a year older than me, on his way to forty, but with very few wrinkles to show for it, because, I often tell him, he’s lived an easy life. His eyes are fringed by long black eyelashes, while his mouth is almost always ready with a smile. He has smooth, dark brown skin and has been through more hairstyles than me until settling on a close-cut shave all over. Once, Conrad convinced him to get an ‘E’ shaved into the back of his head. Our son, seven at the time, had thought it pretty cool, while I’d been amazed he’d done it. He was actually going to keep it until I reminded him that most people don’t expect their GPs to be walking adverts for dance drugs. The pair of them had looked at me as if I had named the drug ecstasy just to stop Evan being really cool and ‘down with the kids’.