Page 51 of The Trouble With Love

Okay. Now I really don’t understand. If you aren’t a selfish bitch who thought a baby would just inconvenience her, hold her back, drag her down while she was so keen on climbing whatever corporate ladder she found herself on — then was it me? Something you saw in me, or saw in the man who fathered me, some kind of hovering vice, circling around and waiting to manifest? Were you ashamed? Did you think that I was going to turn out a bastard, a user; some carefree prick who thought of women as his own personal playground and fuck the consequences? Or was there something else . . . ?

Because my daughter . . . your granddaughter . . . she made a mistake, got pregnant by some fly-by-night dickhead whose attitude to parenthood was pretty much as a hit and run. But she had something you didn’t. Courage. And now she’s lying there with her babies in her arms and the best fucking future that I can give her, to make up for what you did to me.

Y’know how I said I could see when she was born how much giving birth must have cost you? Well, I saw in her face today how much it would cost to give up those babies. Could hardly even get them off her for a cuddle, she was hanging in there as though I was going to commit murder . . . And I come back to it. Either you didn’t care, pushed me out and left me to whatever fate came along, or you cared and gave me away anyway . . . And what could make any mother do that? What happened to you?

I’ve done well, all these years, on my own. Never needing anyone. Because that’s my control. If they don’t know who I really am, they can’t hurt me, y’see. All they can do is drag their nails down the outside of that wooden statue that they think is the real me, that hollow man with no heart to touch, no soul to steal. And all the while the real me is . . . where? Hiding, untouched where they can’t see. And now I’ve met someone. Someone like me, who’s built herself a shell to keep the world from hurting her. Oh, she thinks it’s just words but . . . I know how it goes. I understand. And I wanted to be there for her, to help her to see that the way she chose to live her life has damaged her, made her into someone hard, someone who thinks they shouldn’t care. And I wanted to be there when she finds out who she really is, underneath it all, when she finds her heart and soul, when she stops hiding. I thought . . . I really thought it was something good, something to build on. A new base to create a new life on, something solid and real. But she pulled, bailed on me. Guess she saw through to the far side, to the man that I am deep, deep within, the monster that I’m afraid is the real me now. And maybe it’s better that way.

And now, what? What’s in it for me, digging it all up, all those things I’ve buried good and deep, all the thumpings and the dark cupboards, the taunting and the nights spent with the Bible weighing me down so I couldn’t sleep to try to force the Devil out of me . . . when what they should have asked was — if they forced the Devil out, what did they force in instead?

Chapter Twenty

Aiden was waiting when I eventually reached home. He was sitting, perched with one buttock on the sofa arm, and he looked nervous. The washing machine was going and the handcuffs were lying on the table, as though he had dissociated himself from any bedroom goings-on.

‘Holly . . .’

‘Yes, I know, and I’m really sorry about having to send a total stranger to let you out but . . . I didn’t know when I’d get back.’

‘No, it’s okay. It’s me who’s sorry.’ He shifted about a bit. He was wearing ordinary clothes, I noticed, not his usual ‘strip me, whip me’ gear but a plain white shirt and slightly baggy jeans. ‘This is never gonna work, babe.’

Then I saw his holdall, packed at his feet. ‘What isn’t?’ And for the world I couldn’t tell you if my heart lifted or sank. ‘Aid?’

‘It’s weird, like something kinda shifted, almost like I was in some dream or something, y’know? When you went, and I was here, waiting, all stoked and ready for action and then . . .’ he shook his head, almost dazed. ‘I fell asleep for a couple of hours and when I woke up my head just cleared, and I thought, “what the fuck am I doing here?”’

Right at the time I was with Kai. Realising that maybe, just maybe he and I might be more to one another than either of us had expected . . .

‘I realise now that I can’t stay here with you, I need to be free to take whatever work interests me — being based with you would be restrictive, tie down my creativity.’ And he picked up the bag. ‘Sorry, babe. If you’re ever up my way, come and see me, but I’m afraid’ — he stood up, swung the bag casually up onto his shoulder — ‘a permanent relationship is not what I’m after.’ A quick kiss grazed my cheek and, with the air of a man newly released from prison, he sauntered out onto the chilly pavement.

I closed the door behind him and started to giggle, although a lot of the laughter was a bit shocked. Wow. It felt as though I’d gone through all the stages of a relationship and its breakdown in a kind of time-lapse photography way. And then I stopped laughing. Wasn’t that how it always went for me? And a tiny chill crept up my spine and whispered into my ear that all this had happened since we’d done the spell, Aiden being overcome with desire for me, a desire which had vanished as fast as it arose when I realised that Kai was . . . was . . .

Was the man I wanted.

I opened all the windows, despite the chilly air, trying to get the breeze to drive all traces of Aiden out of the house. The living room still smelled of Chinese takeaway and burned-down candles, there was a foil dish smooshed into a flying-saucer shape and dumped on top of the TV and a forgotten single sock behind the sofa. I dropped it all into the kitchen bin, fetched clean laundry from the cupboard in the hall — Aiden had put all the bedding on a hot wash cycle — and remade the bed. The place felt like mine again. Quiet, yes, after the frantic activities of today, no tiny babies crying, no heavy footsteps thumping up and down the stairs, no shouts for tea from the kitchen. But mine. The way I liked it. Silent. Empty.

Lonely.

I did some work on my laptop for a while. The local weather had put anyone off wanting any location work from me lately, so I just had paperwork to catch up on and a company in Bath wanting a large ‘typically Northern’ house for some grim drama they were casting. I found myself staring at the screen without registering the words I’d typed on it. Seeing, behind the Word document, a kind of glowing after-image of Kai’s face, that yellow-eyed focussed intensity that he’d had when he’d asked me to stay. The serious, slow way he looked at me, as though he was waiting for me to come to some realisation, his questions and observations about my life and friendships . . . About Nick.

What did he see when he looked at Nick and I? Devoted sister, caring for her brother? Or something else, something darker — something I wouldn’t even let myself think, except sometimes, when it snuck through and had to be excised from my brain like a bad idea?

I could see my own face now, words shining through my cheeks and eyes and highlighting my skin. Was he right? Did he know how I really felt, underneath it all? Why I kept everyone at arms’ length? Not because I couldn’t make room for them in my heart, but because I was afraid that they would see through my caring and into the guilt that lay inside, that they might ask the question I was terrified even to think to myself — why, exactly, did I do it?

I stared out of the window as my mind cantered round and round the realisations. Outside, in the late dark, the snow had turned to rain and the thaw was in progress, accompanied by the meltwater drip from gutters and the slushy swish of tyres on the road.

There was a tap on my front door. ‘Holly?’

I hesitated for a second as my thoughts overlapped with reality, but then realised that I couldn’t make my brother suffer for my introspection. ‘Hi Nicky.’ I let him in. ‘You don’t often get all the way down here.’ Nicholas’s flat was at the top of town in a dingy area where they didn’t mind his rent money being provided by the Benefits agency.

‘I wanted to talk to you.’ He looked around. ‘And have you got any food?’

‘Dual-purpose visit then.’ I ransacked the freezer and put two pizzas in the oven. ‘What did you want to talk about?’

‘They were right, you know.’

‘Who were? Not the voices again, I’ve told you, voices in your head very rarely have good ideas.’

‘Cerys and Kai. They were right about me getting dependent on you, not looking after myself because I knew you’d sort me out.’

‘Okay.’ I said slowly. To give my hands something to do, I laid the table.

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