No mobile phones are allowed at the centre, contact with the outside world must be controlled, and there’s probably no signal anyway, but David is good at calling regularly. This week, however, he’s been in hospital again for his arm. As she reaches the small office and grabs for the old handset attached to the wall, the watch he can’t wear dangles on her wrist like a thick bracelet. It’s too big and manly for her, but she doesn’t care. Wearing his watch makes it feel like he’s with her.
‘Hi!’ she says, breathless, pushing her wild hair out of her face.
‘Where were you?’ he asks. It’s a bad line and he sounds so distant. ‘I was getting worried that you’d run away or something.’ He’s making it sound like a joke, but there’s concern bubbling underneath. She laughs and hears his quiet breathy surprise at the other end. She hasn’t laughed with him since it happened.
‘Don’t be silly,’ she says. ‘Where would I run to out here? It’s all moors. And we’ve seen American Werewolf in London, remember? I’m not wandering across that endless heath on my own. Anything could be out there. How was the hospital?’ she asks. ‘Are they going to give you a skin graft?’
‘So they say. It doesn’t really hurt anyway. It was worst at the edges, and that’s calmed down a lot. Don’t worry about me. Concentrate on getting better and coming home. I miss you. We can have a fresh start. Away from it all if you want.’
‘And married,’ she says, smiling. ‘Let’s do it as soon as we can.’ As Rob says, why shouldn’t she be happy? Why should she feel so bad about being happy? You can’t get engaged at seventeen, her father had said. You don’t know what you want at seventeen. And he’s too old. What kind of twenty-two-year-old wants to be carrying on with a teenager?
Her dad had been wrong, though. She’d wanted David for as long as she could remember. Everything had been there in his blue eyes from the moment she’d first looked into them. Her mum had never said very much, only commenting that his farm was on the edge of repossession thanks to his drunk father who’d managed to make a pig’s ear of everything and an absent mother, and he wouldn’t have a penny to his name. He came from ‘bad stock’. There were so many ways to say not suitable for our perfect girl without actually saying them. Maybe all of what her mother had said was true, but Adele knows it had nothing to do with who David really was. It never did.
She’d loved him when she’d been a girl of eight playing in the fields and watching him work, and she loves him now. He’s going to be a doctor. He doesn’t need to worry about his student debts any more. He’s going to be her husband, and she’s inherited everything. Her parents’ disapproval no longer matters, and she won’t let herself feel guilty. Her parents are gone, and, as Rob says, wishing herself away with them isn’t going to change that. The only way to move is forward.
‘You sound good. Better.’ He’s quizzical. Slightly wary, as if he doesn’t quite trust this apparent upsurge in mood, and that’s not surprising. She barely spoke at all the last time he called, but that was ten days ago, and a lot has changed for her since then.
‘I am feeling better,’ she says. ‘I think you were right. This place will be good for me. Oh and,’ she adds, almost as if it is an afterthought, ‘I’ve made a friend. His name’s Rob. He’s my age. He’s very funny, he makes me laugh at the people here all the time. I think we’re helping each other.’ She’s gushing, but she can’t help it. She’s also a little bit nervous. As if, after everything that’s happened, Rob is a betrayal of David somehow. Which is stupid, because it’s entirely different. Just because she loves David doesn’t mean she can’t like Rob. ‘You’ll have to meet him some day. I think you’ll really like him too.’
ADELE
I have more energy after his afternoon call. He says he’s going to be home late. He’s meeting two charity organisations apparently, through which he can help with some community recovery patients.
I murmur all the right things in response to his awkward broken sentences, but inside I’m thinking about exactly what those poverty-stricken junkies in shit-filled tower blocks will think when David – the faux middle-class exterior he worked so hard on during his medical training now soaked through his skin like a teak stain – turns up to talk through their problems with him. I can only imagine the laughs they’ll have at his expense when he’s gone. Still, it’s his personal flagellation, and it suits my plans. I have plans now. That realisation makes my stomach fizz.
For a moment I almost feel sorry for him, but then remember that it might not even be true. He could be going to get drunk, or going to meet someone, or anything. It wouldn’t be the first time, fresh starts or not. He’s had his secrets before. I have no time to check up on him. Not today anyway. My mind is too excited, too fixed on other things.
I tell him I’ve picked some colours for the bedroom and that I think he’ll like them. He pretends to care. I tell him I’ve taken my pills to save him having to ask. I think, if he could, he’d come home to watch me swallow them, but instead he has to accept my lie as truth. He wants me pliable. I’ve enjoyed our few days of almost contentment, but it can’t last. Not if I’m to save our love. But for now, I play along. I’m taking care of things. I just need to be brave. I’ve done it before. I can do it again.
Once the call is over, I go back up to the bedroom and paint the lines of colour thicker and longer on the bedroom wall. Sunlight dapples them, and from the other side of the room it looks like all the colours of a forest. Leaves, definitely. I should maybe have got some pale browns too, and yellows, but it’s too late now. The greens will suffice. I look at the wall and think of leaves and trees, and so will he. I think maybe it’s all he thinks about. Can’t see the wood for the trees.
I wash my hands, cleaning away irritating dried drips that cling to my skin, and then go down to the cellar. The movers, under David’s guidance, brought several boxes straight down here. He didn’t ask me where I wanted them, but then he knows that I wouldn’t care. Not really. The past is the past. Why unearth graves all the time? I haven’t looked in these boxes in years.
It’s chilly under the ground, away from the windows and sunlight, and a single yellow bulb shines on me as I peer at the boxes, trying to find the right one. No one cares what cellars look like. The grime and grit of bare walls is in some ways more honest about the soul of a house.
I tread cautiously, not wanting to get dust on my clothes. A paint spot is fine, but dust could be questionable. David knows I don’t like a dirty house. I don’t want him to ask where any dust came from. I don’t want to lie to him any more than I have to. I love him.
I find what I’m looking for against the furthest damp wall where the pale light struggles to reach it. A stack of four cartons, wearier than the brighter brown of others we’ve stored down here – extra books, old files, that sort of thing – with far more age in their creased, sagging sides. These boxes themselves are old, nothing in them ever unpacked, and the cardboard is thicker and more sturdy. Solid boxes for hiding the remnants of lives in. All that was rescued from the burned-out wing of a house.
I move the top one carefully to the ground and peer in. Silver candlesticks I think. Some crockery. A delicate jewellery box. I move on. It takes me a while to find what I’m looking for. It’s hidden amongst the odds and ends of photographs and picture albums, and books that avoided the flames but still smell of charring. They don’t smell of smoke. Smoke is a pleasant smell. These smell of something destroyed; blackened and bitter. I push past the loose photos that flutter through my hands, but in one I catch a glimpse of my face; fuller, glowing with youth, and smiling. Fifteen maybe.