Maisie smiles, kicking off her shoes and dashing to the bathroom to change out of her uniform. She flicks on the television, planting herself between the cushions on the sofa, nestling her feet into the Laura Ashley rug she and Ben had saved for. She glances at her watch. Ben will be back any minute. Even though they are both taking all the hours they can get – her at the ICU and Ben at the café – they refuse to budge on their Saturday evenings together. She prods the buttons on the remote, navigating her way through the soap operas neither of them has a taste for to the movies. She pauses the screen and drops the remote by her side. Lord of the Rings. Their favourite movie. Or rather movies – it is a trilogy, after all.
Their small flat isn’t a fancy affair. Open-plan living area with three doors leading off to the two bedrooms and bathroom. Four walls with a few windows. A box, fish tank, crate, as her mother says. But it was all they could afford at the time. Since moving in together, they’ve decorated the flat with anything they can find to give it character, trying to gather together the essence of themselves and inject it into the atmosphere. And it’s worked. Pictures and artwork bought from charity shops and car-boot sales adorn the walls, along with a bounty of other knick-knacks splashed across the units. The wooden furniture has been sprayed with woodworm killer. Maisie had said at the time that she hated the thought of all those tiny dead bodies inside her furniture, but if they wanted somewhere for their things to go, it was that or nothing. They’ve become experts at saving money. Better than that chap on telly, Martin Something, Ben once joked. They’d both laughed; that chap’s advice had enabled them to save (what was to them) a small fortune.
Maisie looks at the frames lining the wall. Most were taken by professional photographers, but the rest are ones she and Ben snapped in Cornwall two years ago. It was a holiday for him but for her it was simply going home. A welcome break from the rush of traffic and noise and overbearing life in Oxford. Her eyes travel across the pictures and, like a child trying and failing to avoid the dark space beneath the bed, inevitably find the door to the spare bedroom. Most of the time she can block it from her thoughts, stop the tears and hide from the memories that reside in the corners of the walls and the cracks in the floors. When she is alone in the flat, like now, she finds it harder. Because her eyes are drawn to it and her thoughts back in time to a portion of her past she forced herself to abandon. A hope that was alive and bright and pulsing with fervour, only to be quashed and forgotten. But regardless of her best efforts, she can’t stop it.
Shaking her head, Maisie pulls her knees to her chest and cups her hands over her face. When Ben opens the door, she is still sitting in that position, the tears dried onto her skin.
Miller
Thursday 10 July, 1986
They tell me she is special. They stare in wide-eyed wonder at her face and coo and giggle when she mumbles. They look at me, then instantly, with a rising of the shoulders and a small, almost imperceptible shake of the head, look away, wishing they hadn’t looked in the first place. They wonder why I’m with her, wonder how someone like me could be the brother of someone like her. And if they are in the mood, they lean forward and whisper, as if whispering to someone who won’t understand, ‘You have a very special sister. Aren’t you lucky?’
If she cries, a hundred hands fall to comfort her. If she laughs, they stop and turn, row upon row of strangers, expressions flickering from surprise, to joy, to envy. If she smiles at someone, that someone will look as if they have just been gifted with a miracle.
If someone is sad, she will waddle up to them on her chubby legs and pat their hand like a friend, not the toddler she is. And they will look at her in wonder, touched, mesmerised, wanting nothing more than to take her in their arms, to be as close as close can be. If someone laughs, she laughs with them and they stand a little taller, smile a little wider.
She possesses something nobody truly understands but everybody wants to share. A kindness, a gentleness, a lightness they’re all fighting and tumbling and burning for in what is a bleak world. I think they sense it, you know. I think they feel how good she is. How pure. The honeyed, sweet, tempting child they all wish was theirs. Mother and Father lap it up, sucking in the attention and love for their daughter, revelling in the atmosphere she creates.
You’re like her. You snatch people’s attention, their ability to walk away, their minds, their love. There aren’t many people like the two of you. I wonder if a part of you knows this? No, you probably don’t. You are not arrogant. You are honest. I remember the time you used your mother’s expensive hand lotion, sneaking into her room and quietly depositing a glob of the mango-scented stuff on your hand. I saw you. I watched from the window. You rubbed it into your skin, a smile turning up the corners of your mouth, nose grazing your hands. Later, when your mother asked if she could smell it, your face blazed with embarrassment and you scuffed your feet on the floor and stared down as you nodded and offered her your hands. But how could she be irritated? How could anyone ever be angry with you?
So honest. So sweet. So perfect.
They took her to the hairdresser yesterday, you know, probably so I can’t pull her curls anymore. They stood back and watched as a gaggle of middle-aged women with rolled hair poked her stomach and squeezed her cheeks, eliciting moans of agony. Mother held her hands to her chin, proud of her sweet, rosy-cheeked daughter. Father stood by her side, nodding when a goose exercised her beak and asked if she liked mints. Yes, yes, she does, he said. The goose chuckled and popped one into her mouth. Because she couldn’t do it herself, could she?
Mother saw me glaring and glared back. While Mary was having her hair cut, the women dispersed to their own chairs. I watched the snap of the scissors, wishing they would inch just a little further to the left. Snag the skin of her earlobe. Mary would cry and scream, and the geese would see how troublesome she could be.
I brushed away Mother’s warning hand and shuffled to the chair. The hairdresser smiled at me, but I saw it was a false one, unlike the smile she sent Mary through the mirror every few seconds. I bent down and pushed my hand through the curls of blonde hair, smearing them across the floor. Then I stood back up, making sure I jolted the hairdresser’s arm as I went.
‘Oh!’
I turned and went back to my seat as Mary began to scream and the hairdresser cried, ‘OH MY GOD! SOMEBODY GET THE FIRST-AID KIT! GET THE FIRST-AID KIT! GET IT!’
Mother and Father jumped up and rushed to her side, words soothing, fingers mollifying. I watched the scene play out, letting rip a torrent of apologies and false tears.
‘I’m sorreeeee! I… I didn’t mean it! It… it was an accident! I’m really sorry! Is… is she OK? Mummy, Daddy?’
I expected the geese to turn and throw dirty looks, angered by the disruption, but they didn’t. They flocked to Mary like geese to a family throwing pieces of bread. They told her she ‘must be brave’ and ‘oh, it’s just a little cut’. They fondled her cheeks and kissed her forehead. And I thought, if those stupid women were geese, I would throw them shards of glass inside balled-up bread.
Mother said I meant to do it. I meant to jostle Christine, the hairdresser. I told her I didn’t, of course, but nevertheless she made me clean the dirty dishes and sweep the floor. Then, when she ran out of ideas for punishment, she sent me away to my room.
Mary had a plaster on her ear. Mother