Page 25 of Cuckoo

I sat twisting my hands in my lap on the journey home. Part of me was relieved that soon I would be home, back in my bedroom alone. The other part of me was terrified about Mother’s neurotic meltdown, that she might feel pinching my thigh wasn’t enough to satisfy her fury. I began skimming through ideas to protect myself. Was hiding the safest option? And if so, where? The garden shed, perhaps? But then if she were to find me hiding from her, surely it would only fuel her anger.

Realisation dawned that I was the child and she was my mother, and I would have to endure whatever punishmentshe doled out to me because there was no escaping it. When we arrived I scrambled straight for my bedroom. To my great surprise she did not follow me, remaining in the kitchen instead. I didn’t dare move in case she heard me and came through to continue her attack, so I sat on my bed, listening. My senses felt heightened, every step she took followed by a quick mental assessment of how far away she was from me, what direction she was moving in. I heard the clanging of pots and pans, the hiss of a boiling kettle as she began to cook dinner. This was shortly followed by the scraping of cutlery on a plate as she ate dinner, alone. I waited for her to call me to join her, but she never did, so I remained where I was, rooted to my mattress. I did not get dinner that night.

The next morning, I tiptoed into the kitchen where she was cleaning up after her breakfast. ‘Good morning, Mother,’ I said quietly. She did not turn, did not react in any way. She simply continued scrubbing her plate as though I hadn’t spoken.

‘May I… may I have some cereal, please?’ I asked, my stomach sore with hunger.

Again, she didn’t respond, though I noticed her fingers tighten on the sponge. She did not want me to exist in that moment.

Very slowly, I began to move around the kitchen, serving myself cereal. When she turned, I flinched, waiting for her to tell me off. She glared at me for a moment, then stormed out of the kitchen and into her bedroom. I ate my cereal quickly, then had a second bowl. I washed it up myself, not wanting to give her any further reason to be upset with me, then retreated back to my lair.

She did not speak to me for ten days.

My punishment was finally over on the eleventh when she began speaking to me again as though nothing had ever happened. Bewildered, and desperate for her affection, I played along as though the last week and a half had never happened. Inside, I was reeling, confused and on edge. One error could send me into that terrible, lonely limbo once more. A ghost in her life. I had learned to feed myself, aged seven, but I never did go to another classmate’s birthday party. In fact, I’m not sure I was ever invited to one. I may not have known what a birthday cake tasted like, but I knew what hunger tasted like, what being ignored for days on end in my own home tasted like.

Poison.

Memories wash over me freely, Mother blurring into Noah. Frustrated, I click back onto Lilah’s page. I scroll up and down and down and up again until I have every photograph memorised. Every outfit detail studied, every important name and date learned by heart. Every image of her with Noah is engraved on my mind. The timeline of just how long they have been together has shocked me, a catalogue of photos chronicling a long record of deception.

The snap of them together in secondary school; Noah in his preppy uniform blazer, tie askew, and Lilah laughing beside him, her checked skirt hitched up shorter so it skims her golden thighs. The shot of them abroad in Toulouse, at a famous wine bar; her in a gorgeous little black dress with matching peep-toe heels, and Noah in shirt and smarttrousers. Her wine glass bears a perfect imprint of her red lips. A picture of them on some sort of country walk, and even without makeup, grinning at the camera as she hoists herself up some rambling hillside, she is perfection. She’s wearing leggings that amplify her pert little backside, a sports bra that shares a sliver of flat midriff, a backpack slung over her shoulders as she grins at the camera, holds a water bottle in her hand. Ahead of her is Noah, who is not looking at the camera but at Lilah, with pride and admiration on his face. I glare at the photo as though I’m there with them. I imagine grabbing Lilah and throwing her all the way down the hill, watching her roll, roll, roll away from Noah and me.

When I’m satisfied that I have drunk in all that Facebook has to offer on Lilah, I switch to LinkedIn, scouring through her connections and network. I quickly source her company name and google the offices. Not too far from mine, in a fancier West London borough. I slot that knowledge away for later. I’m interrupted by my rumbling stomach. I glance at the clock and realise it’s lunchtime and all I have consumed so far today has been half a coffee and that glass of wine. I groan, frustrated to have to pause my investigations. I realise I look a state; I was in such a rush to get to the gym that I left the house in my comfies– an old oversized T-shirt with a band logo on it and some seriously bobbly cotton joggers. But driven by hunger, I throw my coat over the top, shove my feet into the pair of trainers that are beside the door, and head out.

I thought the lack of food would make me wobbly on my feet, but the brief blast of fresh air is taking the achein my head away and I find I feel fine despite the alcohol melding into my bloodstream. I pop into the nearest corner shop, which is about forty steps from my front door. The man behind the till barely looks up at me, and I shuffle to the freezer at the back and grab an oven meal that I can throw in to cook without any effort, along with another bottle of wine.

I pause on my way back to the till and turn abruptly, the tails of my coat flying out behind me dramatically. I return the wine, swapping it for a new jar of coffee, and then choose some milk with the furthest away best-before date. I won’t turn to drink like Mother did to cope. I have to keep a clear head if I want to work out everything with Noah. I don’t want him to come home and find me drunk on the floor, a sorry mess of a woman.

I plonk all my goods down by the till carelessly and the assistant scans them through without interest, without judgement, and without a care in the world. The lucky bastard. He probably sits and scans all day long, so involved in his own boring life that he doesn’t even think to concern himself with his customers, with the bedraggled woman in front of him buying a frozen lasagne on a Thursday afternoon.

‘Cheers,’ I say, as soon as the payment has gone through, not waiting for a bag and hooking the foiled meal in the crook of my arm, wielding the coffee in one hand, the milk in the other as I march out of the shop and back home. As soon as I’m back in my flat I boil the kettle, getting impatient and ending up pouring half-heated water from the kettle into a mug with coffee and milk, before returning to Facebook, this time perusing all of Lilah’s friends’ and family’s pages.

There’s one sister, Olivia, who seems to split her time between London and Stockholm. She lacks much of the shine and sparkle that Lilah has, her page a boring blend of competition reposts and avocado-on-toast snaps. She doesn’t seem to use it much, and certainly does not record any details on Lilah, so I quickly move on.

Lilah’s friends are all similar to her, the sort of women that I would feel self-conscious to be seated next to at a restaurant. They are slim and glamorous, successful andfun. Theyreekof fun. Their profiles are littered with pleasurable trips to get manicures together, amusing inside jokes that nobody else understands, cliquey day-trips to Instagram-hot-spot cafes and nights out at karaoke bars. It’s all so relentlessly jolly.

By the time my meal is sitting congealed on a plate next to me, I’m on Instagram, where Lilah’s mother, Maja, has posted a photo of herself in a beautiful London townhouse, its cream carpets perfectly hoovered behind her, the giveaway lines highlighted by the crystal chandelier that lights up the room she’s in. I don’t know anyone whose mother is on Instagram. I find myself wondering if Mother would have been on it and decide she would have loved it. I can imagine her feed now, filled with selfies and over-exaggerating the edits, perfecting herself and her image to influencer levels. I wonder how much of Maja’s images tell the true story.

In this photo, she is sitting on a cream sofa, ankles neatly crossed like she’s royalty, one arm around Lilah, both of them smiling. For the second time I find myself noticing how closely Lilah resembles her mother, though Maja’s face has a few more lines around the eyes and mouth. Her hairis a shade or two lighter as it whitens with age. She looks so elegant though, even has pearls around her neck.

I think of my own mother as she was in her last days, her yellowed teeth, dyed by decades of Marlboros, the smudged black kohl that always lined her eyes, her tacky high-street heels and forever-laddered tights.

I look back at the photograph of Lilah and Maja. There’s a glass coffee table in front of them with sparkling gold peg legs, a bouquet of peonies in a ceramic vase. I wonder if they are from Noah.

I read the caption. Visiting my beautiful girl in London.

I look at the location. Tagged– Chelsea, London, UK. I can almost hear Sukhi’s voice and what I know she’ll say when I tell her next time we speak:Of course Lilah lives in Chelsea. We should have made a list of the most affluent, pretentious, perfect London boroughs and just guessed.

I save the photo into a file I’ve created on my desktop called ‘The Double Life’ and then continue trawling through Maja’s feed. Eventually I go back far enough that I find one of her with Lilah in the same pearly cream room– but it’s empty, moving boxes scattered everywhere, and Lilah and her mother are holding up glasses of champagne to the camera.

Caption: Moving day! And a gift from her mama… You can take the girl out of Sweden, but you can’t take Sweden out of the girl! ;)

I swipe to the next photograph in the carousel and it’s a book calledA Hygge Home: Tips for Scandinavian Cosiness Wherever You Are in the World.

I roll my eyes and flit back to the photo of them with the boxes and champagne. Behind them is a large, beautiful window, the type with fancy cornicing around its arched frame. I zoom in as far as it will allow me, and I can see the river. They are in Chelsea, somewhere along the riverbank.

I swallow a mouthful of food and it goes down slow as tar. That house must have cost a fortune.

I squint at the photograph, pixelated from where I’ve zoomed in so far to see the river, but I can just about make out a road sign and some of the letters.

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