The Scrapbook (23 page)

Are you an artist?

He laughed and leaned back in his chair, focused entirely on me. I tried not to scratch at my arm.

No, I do the accounts for a building firm. I paint when I can, but not well. Why do you ask?

I shrugged and wiped my hands on my apron front. I couldn't tell him that each beat of my heart, each spurt of blood through my veins, was taking a part of him, of his creativity, deeper into my body. For a moment I considered asking him the name of the exact shade of blue he used in his painting. Azure? Cerulean? Periwinkle? But he was smiling up at me and waiting for me to respond, those long fingernails stroking his cheek lightly, and I knew that if I spoke I'd start to stammer. So I just shrugged again and smiled back at him until my manager called out an order.

He raised a hand in farewell when he left. One of the other waitresses, face impenetrable beneath rainbow blocks of powder, nudged me with a leer.

You've got yourself an admirer. It's a pity he's married or you'd have to watch out; I'd have a go on him myself.

I ignored him the next time he came into the cafe, tidying the tables around his stare without ever once looking directly at him. But I saw the ring on his finger and wondered why I hadn't noticed it before. My arm throbbed poison, leaking pus into the bandage that bulked out my blouse sleeve. I'd lanced the cut myself with a pin, pricking channels of release into the suppuration and examining the muddy discharge for blue. But what colour would it be now that it was folded into my body's own mix of hue?

My face was stiff with the effort not to meet his eye, flushed with heat. When he left, he looked back at me and raised a hand again but I turned away.

That night I dreamt of my mother. She was drowning in an artist's palette, floundering between the hollows that separated the colours, pulling herself free and then slipping back down. Whenever she opened her mouth to scream, rich, thick purple paint flowed from her mouth and ran down her chin. Her chest was marbled with it.

On my day off, I made an appointment with the doctor but then didn't leave my flat. The tenants above and below me argued in perfect rhythm, vowels thumping and distorted. The dachshund howled a chorus and I wore my earplugs while I soaked the wound and lifted the fierce scab, wiping the exposed pit with disinfectant and then wrapping it in paper towels.

By the following week my elbow was too swollen to fit into the sleeve of my blouse so I wore a loose jumper to work. When my manager saw me she told me to go home and change. I stumbled into tables as I walked away and had to grab at the coat rack by the door to steady myself. For a moment, face pillowed in the damp, cool folds of fabric, I wished I was at home with my mother, but I crushed the thought in my fist and dropped it on the pavement as I hauled myself out onto the street.

He was standing by the kerb as if he'd been waiting there for me. His arms were around me before I could even stretch mine out to him and he held me against his chest as he raised a hand for a taxi.

I remember only fragments of that drive to the hospital but I know I cried as I tried to wriggle out of my jumper to show him the point at which he'd entered my body and claimed a place beneath my skin. I remember he hushed me and pulled my jumper back down while the taxi driver pretended not to watch.

The hospital staff were efficient and unimpressed. They cut and cleaned while I shivered and he held my hand. He didn't contradict them when they assumed he was mine, and he read the little square of instructions on the antibiotics bottle as closely as if he would be by my side through the next week to make sure they were taken correctly. His name in my mouth numbed the tip of my tongue like Novocain.

Dusk had dampened the pavements by the time we emerged. We stood silently together at the hospital entrance to wait for a taxi, his arm around my shoulders. He got out with me when we reached my flat, paid the driver and led the way to the main door.

Inside the murk of the corridor he faltered and I thought he was going to leave then, say something apologetic and hurry back outside, but he was just unsure which floor was mine. I passed him the key and he took my hand as we mounted the stairs.

The flat was chilled from the open windows. He sorted through cupboards while I bathed, heated canned soup and insisted I ate it. I was drowsy and sore, tensed against his eventual departure. I stood up and said something dismissive, something rude, but he laughed and walked ahead of me into the bedroom, turned back the covers on the bed and began to undress. I leant against the doorframe and watched his body rise up from the fallen fabric, sepia skin against the backwash of street lamps. I lay down beside him.

Later, he traced those long nails around my arms, following the vein's twisted path down to my wrists.

Where are they now?

I tapped my chest.

They're in here. If you cut me open you'd find them all speckled inside my heart. A Faberge egg.

After he woke, when the night was starting to break apart at the edges, he said:

It's called Celeste. That shade of blue I use.

*

They're all spread out on the table in front of me. I try to slow my thoughts down before acting, make myself move to switch the kettle on and then spoon coffee into mugs. Rick stands by the door and stares. He doesn't understand much of what's going on but I can tell from the purse of his lips that the little that has sunk in is distasteful. I can't blame him his repulsion. He came to visit me thinking it would be a lovely, loving surprise and now he's stuck in this house with two mad women, the prospect of fatherhood and the legacy of my granny's witchcraft. But this is what it is. This is me.

Memory rustles the hem of a dark skirt across my hand, trails it over my fingers and then flicks it away before I can grab hold. I'm left with the tastes of chocolate and ginger, tear-salted and slightly bitter. I sit and try to empty my mind, let my senses snag it close enough to touch.

And then it's there.
She's
there in the room with me, and I'm four again and crouched at my granny's feet, safe in the stiff drape of her skirts, giving her straggles of my father's hair in exchange for the biscuit tin. Cramming my mouth full as I watch her tie them into a delicate knot and tuck them into a pocket. A magical insurance policy. Just in case they're ever needed. So, mum was right; it really was my fault that my father disappeared. Or at least in part my fault.

I want to rush and tell her, confess my complicity. Where is she anyway? I look past Rick, through the open door. There's nobody in the hallway and when I lean to the side I can see that she's not in her armchair in the living room either. She must surely be in her room, leafing through her scrapbook. Probably furious with me for uncovering her secrets when she'd thought they were so well hidden. Yet another finally exposed to daylight. But I can make this better. I can bring him back. It said so in Granny Ivy's spell book.

I don't pause to allow rationality so much as a raised hand. I stand up and get the scissors from the dresser drawer. Rick moves in front of me to block my return to the table. ‘What the hell are you doing?' he asks.

He's got me by the arms and I flail against him as I try to push past. The scissors slice the air in front of his nose and he grips my wrist to force it down. My breath's starting to form lumps in my chest now, sobs like stones trying to rise up and escape through my mouth, rattling against my teeth. ‘I have to set it free,' I tell him. ‘Do you know what she did? I have to set him free.'

The moment he releases me I'm calm again. He shrugs his helplessness but nods and steps back. I love him so much then, for not telling me to stop being silly, stop being hysterical. Typical pregnant woman, drifting on a wave of hormones into a world of fantasy.

I slide the scissors against the bag and snip at its stitches, one after another. Despite himself, Rick steps forward to watch. As the velvet folds back my fingertips start to numb. There's something repulsive about the wax lump concealed inside and I don't want to touch it. A single hair, thick with tar, bristles into the daylight. Hinged and angular like a spider's leg. Behind me, Rick makes a disgusted noise. Then something shifts deeper inside the pouch and a web of spiders bursts across my imagination, scurrying in their hundreds across the table, up my arms. Even when I throw the tea towel over it I'm sure I can see it move and it's only when I'm in the hallway with the kitchen door slammed shut against it and Rick's arms around me that I can control the urge to scream.

‘Shit, Fern,' he whispers, and I can tell how spooked he is. ‘Don't touch that thing. Let me just put it in the bin, okay?'

I shake my head. ‘It's not my choice to make. It's hers.' I nod my head towards the ceiling. ‘If there's a chance…'

His hand is cold against mine as he leads me into the living room and shuts the door behind us. He pushes me gently into mum's armchair and crouches beside me. ‘Of course there's no chance. This isn't why your dad disappeared. Your grandmother didn't make it happen with magic. For god's sake, Fern, you need to get a grip. It's awful and of course it's upsetting, but your dad walked out on you and your mum. He wasn't torn from you by an evil witch and her spell book. This isn't a fairy tale.'

I try not to spit some automatic defence of Granny Ivy and her magic. ‘Mum needs to know.'

He shakes his head. ‘No, she doesn't. How will she cope with hearing that about her own mother? No matter whether she believes it or not, it's going to hurt her. It would be cruel to tell her.'

I think he's right and I hate that. ‘But it's my fault,' I whisper to him. ‘I gave Granny Ivy his hair when I was little. Without that she wouldn't have been able to do the spell. Mum needs to know that it's my fault.'

He hugs me then. ‘It's not your fault, darling. It's not even real. Your dad left you. Just let me get rid of that thing in the kitchen before your mum comes downstairs.'

I get to my feet. I'm sure I can hear it hissing at me through the walls. ‘No, I'll do it. I need to do it.'

I shudder as I fold the edges of the tea towel around the misshapen bundle, trying not to touch the thing beneath. For a moment, as it's held out in front of me, its weight dragging my wrists down, I want to drop it on the floor and stamp on it. Rip it free from its bindings and smear it across the tiles and leave it there in the sunlight, just to see what will happen.

But I don't.

When the hole's big enough I let the spade fall to the ground. I look up at mum's bedroom window. It's wide open, swinging loose in the breeze, but the curtains are drawn. Rick's standing on the doorstep, watching me.

I drop it in.

The shape hunched at the bottom of the hole looks small and innocuous, even a bit silly in its colourful teacloth wrapping. But then a trickle of earth nudges down onto it and it twitches with the pressure, as if alive. I cover it over as quickly as I can, slapping the spade down when I've finished, holding my hands out stiff in front of me so that they don't touch any part of my body.

It's done.

Rick steers me into the house, rubbing my back and murmuring nonsense words of love. Then he leaves me for a while. To go for a walk, he says, but I know he needs to think, maybe to phone his wife. He kisses me goodbye and promises to be back before dark. I nod. We'll see.

After I've scrubbed my hands at the sink, scrubbed the table and the floor, I stand in the hallway and listen to the house as it releases its day's warmth and settles into its late afternoon rhythms. Then I try to focus past those immediate, comforting sounds and listen for any sign that mum is awake, alive and in the house.

There's no noise from above me, nothing to reassure me that I'm not alone. When I call out there's no answer. She's left me. She knows what I did and she knows what's buried in the garden. No mother could forgive such a betrayal of love, but especially not my mother. Or she's died. She looked out of the window and saw me with my spade and dad's effigy and the shock killed her.

Every stair tread groans beneath the slow plant of my feet as I make my way upstairs. There's dust gathered between each spindle, striped grey where it's worked its way into the crackles of aged gloss. These hidden away places haven't been cleaned since Granny Ivy was alive. How many years? There might even be some residue of her left in the fractured paintwork. Particles of skin and spite left behind. I'll fill a bowl with hot water and bleach later, and clean it all up. Get rid of any trace of her. But I don't mean that, not really. You can forgive so much as an adult if you loved the person when you were young, and I loved her with all my fierce child's heart.

Mum's bedroom door is closed. She must have heard me mount the stairs, if she's still here, but there's no sound at all. I swallow panic and start to run down the landing. I launch myself into her room. She's lying on the bed, propped by pillows, her scrapbook spread across her lap. Her head hangs low on her neck, bobbing over an open page, and she doesn't look up, doesn't move.

When I clamber onto the bed and start shaking her legs, pulling at her dressing gown, she flinches away and one of her slippers jerks from her foot, into my lap. She levers herself up and cradles the book to her chest, looks blankly at me as I cling onto fistfuls of her gown and bend my head to rest it on her shins.