Page 37 of Cuckoo

‘Yes,’ I replied.

‘You are a liar, Claire,’ she said.

‘No, Mother. I swear,’ I started, even though I could hear the lies on my lips and they tasted of poison.

‘Don’t you love me? Don’t you know how muchIloveyou?’

I barely had a chance to process what was happening before she had raised my laptop and lobbed it at me full-force. I took a step back, but not fast enough. It landed against my shinbone with a hard crack, the screen fractured, and my leg gave way beneath me. I scrabbled backwards like a crab to the safety of my bedroom, tears streaming down my face and the cut on my leg leaving droplets of blood on the kitchen floor. She didn’t follow me. I cradled my bruised and bloodied shin and wept quietly, listening to her loud sobs and wails through my bedroom door.

‘So you knew? You knew this whole time that he had started seeing me? What was this, some sort of sick couple’s game? Did he ever love me?’ I sob. I’m openly crying now, but I can’t stop now that I’ve started. ‘Was this some messed-up, twisted game to see how pathetic a woman he could entice? Did you both choose me together? What the fuck is this, Lilah?’

She flinches and glances at her phone, which somehow enrages me even more.

‘No, Claire, please, it wasn’t like that…’ she starts, but I’m too angry to listen anymore. The sound of my name on her lips makes me feel sick.Claire, darling, please,Mother said as I packed my bags to leave her forever.

‘And what about the contract in your office desk?’ I ask.

Lilah pales. ‘What?’

‘Why were you circling the maternity provisions? Are you having a fucking baby with my fiancé?’ I shout.

‘No! No, I’m not pregnant,’ Lilah says hurriedly. She’s reaching for her phone now, one hand on it.

‘So why were you circling maternity entitlement?’

I have stood up from the sofa now, still gripping my drink. She is crying now. She looks like a fucking portrait, an angel shedding tears for her loved ones, her lips trembling daintily. Nothing like me, the furious, red and blotchy beast before her. ‘Why were you circling maternity entitlement?’I roar again.

‘We’re trying! We’re trying for a baby!’ she gasps through her fetching sobs.

And then everything goes hazy as every atom of me blooms into dark, festering wrath.

Chapter Thirty-Five

Before I know what I’m doing, my hand is stretched out and I’ve flung the cup of boiling tea towards Lilah’s face. She shrieks and lurches backwards, but I’ve stepped forward and have pulled her up and out of her chair with surprising ease. She’s small and light.

‘You fucking bitch!’ I scream.

‘God, please, Claire, you don’t understand…’ she starts, whimpering as she tries to wipe the tea from her eyes so she can see me. ‘I can’t explain this situation properly,’ she gasps.

I can’t explain why he left us, darling. Other than it was because of you. Because he didn’t want you,I hear Mother saying in my head, speaking about my father.

‘I would love my baby. I would want and hold and care for my baby,’ I tell her. ‘You already have the world. You don’t deserve to have his baby, too.’

‘Please, Claire,’ she tries again, her voice barely above a whisper. Snot has begun to seep from her nostrils.

I’m disgusted by her, repulsed by this entire ugly situation. I don’t want to touch her, to have her become this strange in-between object that both Noah and I have touched, one with love and the other with hatred. And so I push her away, desperate to leave this house, and am stilled by the sound ofa loud crack. I realise she has hit her head on the edge of the marble mantelpiece.

‘Lilah?’ I whisper.

I look down at her body, crumpled in an awkward heap, dark blood pooling beneath the head. I stare at the glistening burgundy puddle and try to make myself feel something– anything. Relief? Guilt? Regret? Fear? But strangely, and for the first time in a long time, I feel nothing at all. Does this make me a monster or is it how shock works?

Lilah is completely still. I wonder if I should try to stem the bleeding, but even I can tell it’s pointless. Her head is caved in on one side, dented almost, and she’s foaming at the mouth. There is no undoing this.

Oh, God.

I step backwards and stagger, losing my balance. I take in the scene. Tea spilt everywhere, a dead woman, and me, in the middle of it all.

My brain starts going into overdrive. The neighbour across the street definitely saw me coming into the house. Fuck.Fuck.

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