Chapter 19

Chapter Nineteen

A year earlier

I t was always odd, walking past the house she’d been living in until so very recently. It felt both familiar and alien. Kiera noticed an elaborate wind chime had now been hung in the front window, complete with fairies, butterflies, stars and moons. She hadn’t realised she had stopped to stare at it until she found herself eye to eye with Chrissie, looking out of the window directly at her. Chrissie smiled and Kiera smiled back. It was an automatic reaction, like saying “excuse me” after sneezing. She dropped the smile when Chrissie vanished, only to open the front door and appear in the garden.

“Hi, Kiera, how are you?”

“Er, yeah, ok I guess,” said Kiera, wondering whether there was a more honest response. Perhaps “Really terrible, as I’ve lost my wife and my home and now you’re spending all your time with a hippy called Athena as part of a cult that seems to have transplanted any original thought you ever had with flat earth nonsense” would be more accurate? But she didn’t say any of that. She just thought it, very intensely, suddenly realising she hadn’t actually heard a word of the last sentence Chrissie had said. “Sorry, what did you say?”

“Just that I’m going travelling.”

“Travelling? Where to?” asked Kiera, reeling from yet another bombshell delivered by a woman who bore no resemblance to the one she’d fallen in love with.

“Not sure. Me and Athena and a few others are going on a discovery retreat, taking each day as it comes, accepting what life brings us.” She seemed to glow with the excitement of her plan, and once again Kiera found herself wondering if Chrissie had any roots whatsoever.

“What about the house?”

“Not sure yet,” she said.

“Well, we should talk it all through – we both own it still,” said Kiera, happy to find a practical issue she could get a grip on. Chrissie herself seemed so flighty she might actually float away.

“We do,” said Chrissie. She sighed, and then they both heard a voice from inside. “Oh, that will be Athena, ready with the ear candles. I’ll call you.”

Before Kiera could even ask what the hell ear candles were, Chrissie was gone. She might as well have vanished into a puff of smoke.

Chrissie didn’t call. A week later, Kiera called her. There was no answer. After another week of nothing, Kiera decided to go and see if Chrissie was in, and try to have an adult conversation with her. The incompleteness of everything, the smudged set of issues they were left with, was pressing down on her.

She walked to the front door, noticing the wind chime had gone. She smiled to herself – it was ridiculously garish after all. Maybe even Athena had put her foot down at that. She pressed the doorbell, and heard it echo through the front room. After a minute or two, she rang it again. They might be in the garden. Still nothing. She picked up her phone and called Chrissie again. This time, however, the number didn’t ring. A mechanical voice in her ear said: “I’m sorry, this number is no longer in service.” Kiera frowned.

Odd.

She double checked she had rung the right person. She had. A strange sensation, cold and hot at the same time, began to radiate out through her body, starting at her stomach. She stepped back so she could see into the large bay window.

She gasped and hugged her arms to herself.

It wasn’t just the wind chime. The room was empty. There wasn’t a single thing in sight – no furniture, nothing. She stood absolutely still for a few minutes, taking in the sight and trying to work out what was going on.

She took another step back and, just to be sure, checked she had the right house. She did. Chrissie and Athena were gone, without a word. Chrissie had cut off her phone. She’d said they were going travelling. Apparently, they’d left already.

Kiera picked up her phone and texted Lou to tell her she was coming round. Two words came back: “kettle on x”. Kiera thought she might need more than a cuppa.

Kiera arrived in the middle of bath time for Lou’s children. She was quickly ushered inside by a flushed Lou and deposited in the kitchen, where a cup of tea and a plate of pink wafer biscuits were waiting for her. Lou apologised and returned to the fray upstairs.

Children. She remembered her and Chrissie talking about children. They had discussed whether they might adopt, or perhaps one of them might get pregnant through some means or other. They had laughed about turkey basters and ‘donations’. That all felt a long time ago now. She looked down at the wafers, trying to remember the last time she’d eaten them. She had a sudden intense memory of her grandfather presenting her with three pink wafers every morning, when she was a child staying with her grandparents in Cornwall. He would wake her every day with a tray of orange squash made far too strong and a plate full of sugary biscuits for her to eat in bed before she got up. This never happened at home, and that made it all the more special. The mattress she’d slept on had been her father’s when he was a child, and sank into a pit in the middle. Sleeping in that bed, complete with blankets and sheets, as duvets appeared not to have reached the southwest yet, felt like being in another world. She would be tucked in so tight she could hardly move, and it made her feel safe.

Kiera picked up a pink wafer and closed her eyes as she slowly brought it to her mouth. She stilled her thoughts and tried to imagine herself back in that old fifties bed, tried to conjure the smell of her grandfather, reminiscent of ink pens and ham sandwiches. She took a bite of the biscuit. She didn’t really have a sweet tooth anymore, but at that moment, the papery wafer and the sugary filling felt wonderful. It transported her to a place where she had no responsibilities, where there were no bills to pay, no jobs to do, the only decision which book to read that day. Of course, she hadn’t realised how lucky she was at the time.

This was probably where it came from, that phrase that had so annoyed her as a child. “Youth is wasted on the young,” her elders would say, and she’d shake her head at them in confusion. What could it mean? She was sure she'd never know.

She knew now.

God, she felt old. Forty-one and soon to be divorced. This wasn’t the plan. Had she wasted her life on someone who wasn’t worth it? Would she ever get another chance at happiness? She took a second bite of the wafer, her eyes still closed, and tried to think about what her granddad might have said. He had died more than twenty years earlier, so it was hard to imagine him relating to her as a middle-aged woman. Perhaps he would have told her to keep her chin up, or perhaps he would have been weary and uncharitable about her ex – he used to do a good line in sweary grumpiness at times, much to her parents’ annoyance.

“I see you’re enjoying Ferny’s favourite biscuits,” said Lou, rousing Kiera from her thoughts.

“They took me back to my childhood,” replied Kiera with a small smile.

“What’s happened?” asked Lou, as she started making herself a cup of tea.

Kiera explained. “Wow,” said Lou, “well that must have been a total shocker.” Kiera could hear running feet upstairs. “I don’t know what to say. How bizarre.”

“I just don’t know where to go with this. I mean, I knew she was going travelling, but not like this, with no warning. What about the house? Can I just sell it?”

“Oh heavens, Kier, I don’t know. I mean, it’s still your house. You could live in it, I suppose,” said Lou.

“But I’ve just rented the flat and sorted it all out. Besides, I’m not sure I could ever live in that house again. How does she manage to skip off into the blue without any issues or baggage? It’s like she doesn’t live in the real world. ”

“She’s an arsehole,” said Lou. “A solid gold, class A arsehole.”

Kiera nodded and started on her second biscuit, conjuring up images of a large, golden rear end. The tea and sugar were helping, but she still felt a bit like a wrung-out rag.

“Can I even sell it without her here? It’s in both our names.”

“Don’t ask me, hun, you’d need to speak to a solicitor about that.”

“I guess so. God, being a grown-up is hard. And really bureaucratic. I’ll email her and see what comes back. I would hope she’d respond to that at least.”

“What does it mean for your divorce?” asked Lou.

“Well, I filed a couple of weeks ago, and she has responded, I think. I’m using the online process, which means that so far I’ve avoided having to involve a solicitor, thank goodness. I don’t think she’ll contest, given she’s living with someone else and has now done a moonlight flit.”

“That sounds very costume drama, doesn’t it?” said Lou, going to the fridge and emerging with a half-full bottle of white wine. “Do you want some?”

“Without any hesitation, yes,” said Kiera. “Medicinal, of course.”

“Naturally.”

They talked until Kiera began to yawn. She made her excuses and headed home to her flat, wondering what the next day would hold. At times she felt like she had slipped into a parallel universe.