Chapter 16

CHAPTER 16

It’s been thirty minutes, but the painkillers haven’t kicked in. My head still hurts, and my stomach is unsteady. I check my smashed phone, but there are no new messages. Outside, the mist has risen, and, lit up in white lights, the jagged tip of the Shard is a constellation. But if I shift focus, my reflection appears, ghostlike on the London skyline. It looks like I’m not really here. Perhaps I’m still staring at the plastic bag on the welcome mat? But if that’s true, then I am also still standing on the tube platform last night, looking at the white threads in his jacket, wondering what to do. If universes sprout from moments of indecision, then I have created hundreds. Amy once told me that I need to learn how to end a story: Babe, no offense, but I’m just not confident you’ll get us where we need to go.

I T WAS W EDNESDAY NIGHT . The day had bled from the room, but I hadn’t turned the lights on. It was just after eight. Mum and Paul would be a bottle in. Cheese board littered with rinds, terra-cotta pot soaking in the sink, two glasses, one with a lipstick print around the rim. I had eaten a scotch egg and taken two painkillers with a glass of supermarket wine.

He was coming over at ten. He said he was at work, which meant that he was either at the bar or writing. He just said “work,” and I didn’t want to ask which work in case he accused me of being passive-aggressive.

Just before nine, the phone rang, and I let it vibrate three times before answering, like I was playing chicken.

Enola, is that you?

I… What? Mum, you called me.

Yes, she said tartly, but I’m calling you from a different number. I told her that if that were the case, she would still know who I was. She sighed and then spoke as if she were the bigger person.

How are you, Enola?

Okay. It’s Amy’s wedding this weekend.

Are you going?

Yes. How are you?

Oh, you know.

I did know. She grew vegetables. She painted. Paul’s children visited with their children. But she got a weekly phone call with the daughter she never wanted. The detour she took on the way to France. The role she was miscast in: motherhood.

When Mum moved to France, she told me that I could come up during the holidays, and I stayed for a whole summer once before my A levels. I wanted to stay with Ruth in London, but my grandparents put me on a plane. I cycled down country lanes. Walked through fields. Everything existed in subtext, in the dark corners of the vineyard that Mum was painting in the corner of the living room where the light was best.

That’s good, I replied, as if she had actually answered the question.

And how is work?

She wouldn’t say “writing,” because she didn’t view that as work. She wasn’t wrong. No one was paying me to do it. After Amy’s book launch, I had considered telling her about Diana, but I had imagined how that conversation would go: You have a book deal? No, Mum, an agent isn’t a book deal. But you have an agent? No, Mum, an agent just wants to read my book. And how much money will you get for that? So I replied that work was fine and asked her about her garden. Mum liked to talk about her garden.

Well, the roses aren’t looking great but they’re so tricky and we’ve had bizarre weather. The green around the arch is looking good, though, and we just dug up a lovely lot of potatoes, she said.

I walked to the bedroom and took another painkiller.

I asked her to remind me what she grew, and she said: The usual. I paused, expecting her to clarify, but she didn’t, so I suggested carrots. She repeated the word like it was offensive, so I chose another vegetable: Cabbages? She said yes; she grew cabbages and lettuce and some leeks. She also had a load of gooseberries and was going to make rhubarb crumble.

With gooseberries?

No, Enola. With rhubarb.

I checked the time. It had only been two minutes. I thought about him. If he was coming from the bar he would smell like muddled strawberries and whiskey and I would run him a shower. If he had been writing then he would be excitable or stressed and I would stroke his hair.

I went back to the living room and turned on the side lights.

How is Milton, Mum?

Milton? She repeated his name as if she had never heard it before.

Yes, Mum… Milton.

Milton died, Enola.

What? I exclaimed. When?

She made a noise and said: Oh, I don’t know. A few weeks ago? I squeezed a sofa cushion and the sequins dug into my palm. Mum was always offended when I didn’t have the information that she hadn’t provided. I said that she had never told me about Milton. She told me to calm down: You never even met Milton, Enola. I returned that I had met Milton.

Well, now he’s dead. Turtles don’t live very long, Enola.

They do, Mum.

Mum never sugarcoated things. It’s how she dealt with everything, like she was just finishing up paperwork. I heard a deep voice in the background: something about pears? Mum shouted to put the kettle on. Grey. Yes. Earl Grey . No, not that one. It’s in the tub at the top of the cupboard. Yes, that’s it, the one with the badger on it!

Mum?

Enola?

I wished she would stop saying my name like she was trying to remember it.

No , the badger , the others are gluten-free.

Mum?

She snapped that she was trying to do a million things at once, so I told her to hang up then. She made a long “ooooh” sound and suggested that I go for a jog. I replied that I hated jogging, and she told me to pick a different activity. Milton was just a turtle, Enola. There was a click as the phone was put down, then it was picked back up and Mum said that they were going to watch a film and she would speak to me next Wednesday.

I hated how she said that casually, like it was an arrangement that I had co-orchestrated. And fuck her for telling me to choose an activity. I couldn’t grow vegetables in a high-rise. Before I could stop them, the words flew from my mouth: You never asked me where I went on holiday.

You went on another holiday?

No, the one back in March.

She asked me why I was bringing it up now. It’s June, Enola. Was I supposed to have asked you? I told her that it would have been a logical thing to ask. Fine, she said. Where did you go on holiday?

Kenya.

She went very quiet and then said: You’re an adult, Enola, you can go on holiday wherever you want. Then she hung up and left me with all the same questions: Why do you hate me? And why did you leave me? Although presumably the first question answered the second.

A FTER I PUT THE phone down, I waited for him. The doorbell went around eleven, and he was holding a bunch of pink tulips with a yellow reduced sticker. Since the fight he had been making more effort: putting kisses at the end of more frequent messages; asking about my book; suggesting plans rather than responding to them. But he would have hated it if I made a fuss, so I thanked him like it was an everyday occurrence that he bought me flowers. He walked to the kitchen and turned on the strip light. I asked him how work was, and he said that he had written a new chapter. So, he was writing this evening.

That’s great. How is it?

He shrugged, but I could tell that he was happy, which meant that we wouldn’t argue. As he showered, I put the flowers in the vase on the kitchen table. If I had asked him earlier “which work,” then he might not have bought me flowers. Did that mean that I was finally getting to know him or making the wrong compromises? Either way, the flowers were beautiful.

When he got into bed, I clung to his arm like I was going into space. He didn’t try to have sex with me. He never wanted to have sex anymore. He had seen my ugly pieces: the mess, the tears, the violence. But he kissed the back of my neck, and I held my pain as if it were a balloon that might pop. His breathing changed, and I was left alone in the dark with my balloon. I just had to keep him happy. He would stay with me as long as I made him happy.