Читать книгу The Rise and Fall of the Queen of Suburbia: A Black-Hearted Soap Opera - Sarah May - Страница 13

8

Above the sound of Pink Floyd, Linda heard the flush of the downstairs loo and stood watching herself in the mirror as she held her breath and waited to see if Joe was going to turn off the music and come upstairs to bed. She’d already been down to see him once and she didn’t want to have to go down again. The music carried on. She watched herself exhale then pick up a cleansing pad from the pack by the sink and start to wipe off her make-up, rubbing at her cheeks, eyes and mouth much harder than she needed to.

She spent a long time doing everything in the bathroom – even giving her nails a brush and polish before going through to the bedroom. Then she sat on the end of the bed and listened to Pink Floyd coming up through fitted carpet. Forty minutes must have passed since she’d been downstairs and asked Joe if he was coming up and he’d mouthed the words ‘five minutes’ at her.

She got up from the bed and went downstairs.

Joe was on the sofa, watching TV with the sound off. He didn’t look up.

‘What are you watching?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘How can you hear it?’

‘Subtitles.’

‘What?’ She moved closer to the TV.

He pointed to the screen where there was a band of black with words across it. ‘Subtitles.’

‘The people look Japanese. In the film. They look like Japs, Joe.’

‘Yeah.’

The fact that they were Japanese made her feel like she had a case – that and the fact that it was past midnight.

‘So – you’re coming to bed soon?’

‘Yeah.’

‘You are?’

‘No – I mean, I don’t know.’

‘Right.’ She stood there staring at the screen for another minute. ‘I’ll be upstairs.’ She stopped again by the lounge door, picking up the ends of her dressing-gown belt and letting them slip through her fingers. ‘I thought it went well tonight.’

‘Tonight?’ he said, thinking about this. Then, ‘Oh, tonight. Yeah.’

Back upstairs, she stood at the end of the bed, breathing hard, then took off her dressing gown and put a T-shirt on instead. She climbed onto the exercise bike and after a couple of minutes flicked straight to gradient. At some point the music went off and she thought she heard Joe climbing the stairs, but he didn’t come into the bedroom. She was so angry that she’d been cycling uphill for five minutes now without realising it, and her heart was starting to let out a strange metallic click.

Joe knocked three times then went in. At first he thought Jessica was asleep, but after a while she opened her eyes and took off the headphones.

‘I was nearly asleep.’

‘You should be. It’s one a.m.’

She leant over and turned off the stereo, trying not to disturb Ferdinand, who had his head on her stomach. ‘How was the film?’

‘I don’t know. Everyone died, apart from this one man at the end who was crawling around in the grass. Then he died too.’ He sighed and went over to pull the curtains shut.

‘They’re already shut, Dad.’

‘There was a gap.’

‘Does it matter? There’s nothing out there but fields and trees.’

‘Well, they’re shut now.’ He looked down at the desk. ‘Homework?’

‘No – just something I’m working on.’

‘Looks complicated.’

‘Not really.’

Joe switched the desk light on.

‘Dad, you don’t have to – you’re not interested.’

Joe looked more closely. ‘What is this, Jess?’ He read out, ‘“Botulism poisoning is very rare, but an ounce could kill close on forty-three million people. There is no immunity to it and no effective treatment.”’

Jessica rolled onto her side. ‘It’s part of a chapter on biological hazards.’

‘A chapter? What – you’re writing a book?’

‘On how to survive a nuclear attack.’

‘Since when?’

‘The summer holidays.’

Joe didn’t know what to say. He looked down and read again silently to himself the line he’d just read out loud. Then, glancing up at Jessica’s pinboard, he saw her aged four, sitting on top of his shoulders, and could almost feel the weight of her again. The castle in the photograph was Arundel. They’d walked – his parents and him and Jessica – along the river from Amberley to Arundel. That must have been before his dad got ill. Linda hadn’t come that day; he couldn’t remember why.

‘It’s more of a manual than a book, really.’ Jessica paused. ‘I’m writing it with Mr Browne – well, I’m doing the research anyway.’

‘And who’s Mr Browne?’

‘He lives at number fourteen – the end of the Close.’

‘The end of the Close? Our Close? What does he do?’

‘He was in the army.’

‘And why isn’t he in the army any more?’

‘He retired.’

‘How old is he?’

‘Thirty-seven, I think.’

‘He retired at thirty-seven?’

‘Or left, or something. I don’t know. It’s to do with his leg. Sometimes he uses a walking stick.’

‘How did you meet him?’

‘Youth CND – he came to give a talk.’

Joe sat down on the end of the bed, looking at the blue seashells on the duvet cover.

Jessica sat up on her elbow. ‘What?’

‘Nothing.’

He felt for her legs under the duvet and gave her ankle a squeeze.

‘This book’s really important, Dad. It talks about how not to die. How to survive.’

‘And what if this bomb of yours never goes off, Jess, and you have to do more than just survive?’

Jessica fell back onto the pillow. ‘You’re drunk.’

Joe stood up, trying to hide his disappointment. ‘Probably.’ He turned the desk light off and heard her turn over in bed. ‘How’s Ferdinand?’

She didn’t say anything.

‘We can take him to the vet tomorrow, if you like.’ What did he want? He wanted to tell her about meeting a hairdresser called Lenny today. What was wrong with him? Jessica was the one person he wanted to tell and he couldn’t, because she was his daughter. ‘Night, Jess.’ He stood there waiting for her to say something.

Then, at last, ‘Night, Dad.’

He left the room, shutting the door behind him, and crossed the hallway.

In the master bedroom, Linda was going full tilt up a virtual hill thinking about the muddy footprints Paul Nieman had left in the hallway when he came in with the beer, and how much she’d wanted to clean the carpet. Then she pictured the scene again with herself naked, scrubbing at the mud in a pair of black marigolds, and Paul standing over her, angry.

‘Shit, Joe,’ she said, catching sight of him in the vanity-unit mirror. ‘What are you creeping up on me for?’

He shrugged and watched as she flicked the dials on the handlebars until it looked like a cartoonist was running her in slow motion.

‘Jessica’s writing a book.’

‘Seven miles. I just did seven miles,’ she said, breathless and preoccupied.

‘On how not to die – with a Mr Browne – Jessica says he lives at the end of the Close, but I’ve never seen him. Who is he?’

‘I don’t know, Joe, and I didn’t know she was writing a book.’ Linda got off the bike and picked up the dressing gown from the bed. ‘Mr Browne?’

‘She said she met him at Youth CND.’

‘I think I met him once.’

‘He was giving a talk.’

‘He seemed okay.’ Linda paused. ‘And anyway, she needs to be around other people more.’

‘She’s fifteen years old, Linda!’

‘That’s what I’m talking about – she never goes out.’ Linda threw the dressing gown back down on the bed. ‘Did you see her tonight, Joe? She doesn’t speak – she doesn’t eat… the way she talked to me in front of everybody.’

Joe ignored this. ‘She’s got things she needs to work through.’

‘Like what – the end of the world?’

‘Well, that’s one of them.’

‘Jessica never leaves her room – she needs professional help, Joe.’

‘For what?’

‘For just about fucking everything.’

‘What – like the time she had to see that educational psychologist – what was her name?’

‘Penelope – but she told us to call her Penny.’

‘She spent eight sessions with Jessica – alone – filling her mind with fuck knows what, only to tell us Jessica had a fear of dolls.’

‘I don’t want to start talking about Penny again – you refused the further counselling she recommended.’ The nausea she’d experienced earlier while stood over the mandarin cheesecake rose up again.

‘For fuck’s sake, Linda, this is our daughter we’re talking about … where are you going?’ he said, watching her. The T-shirt she was wearing had dark sweat patches on it.

‘The bathroom.’

‘It’s nearly one thirty in the morning.’

The door slammed shut, and a minute later he heard retching sounds. ‘Linda?’

‘It’s okay.’

‘Are you sick?’

‘It’s the solids.’

‘The what?’

‘The solids – dinner tonight. I’m not used to it.’

He listened at the door, but didn’t hear any other sounds, and after a while he went back into the hallway towards the other bathroom, stopping by the window like he used to when they first moved in. That was two years ago, and everything had been so new then that the contractors hadn’t even got round to putting tarmac on the roads and pavements. It was a new world they hadn’t finished building yet, and he would stand at the hall window in the early hours of the morning, half expecting to see virgin forest carpeting the horizon.

Now all he could see was the glow of Gatwick and, in the distance, beyond the Surrey Hills, the monochrome aurora borealis that hung over London. How had he ever felt himself capable of imagining that the world – his world – was still unfinished?

He went into the bathroom, looked into the macramé basket hanging from the ceiling and failed to work out what he was doing there, then went back to the bedroom and undressed in the semi-dark because Linda was already in bed, and the light on her side was off.

He took off everything apart from his vest, then got into bed and lay looking up at the ceiling where it had been pricked by Artex.

‘Your mum was having her hair cut today,’ he said, turning his head to face Linda, who had her eyes closed.

‘I don’t want to talk about my mother,’ she said, her breath smelling faintly of vomit. Then, after a while, ‘And I don’t know why she has that hairdresser – she can’t afford her.’

‘Well, it’s difficult for her to get out and about.’

The chains on the blinds started to rattle as the extractor fan in the en suite cut out, blowing a draught through the bedroom. Joe felt himself drifting off. ‘The soup you made tonight was good.’

‘Gazpacho, it was gazpacho,’ she said, ‘and before you say anything, it was meant to be cold.’

‘Why’s that, then?’

She didn’t answer, and Joe was almost asleep when Linda said, ‘She used to be in the army.’

‘You never said.’

‘Not my mother – the hairdresser. She was in the Falklands or something.’

He didn’t say anything, and after a while leant over to switch off the light on his side of the bed.

When he woke up it was still dark, and he didn’t know what time it was because the alarm clock was on the other side of the bed. Linda was lying on her back with her head turned away from him and her left hand curled into a fist.

He drifted off to sleep again.