‘Sorry to snap at you.’
‘Dad.’ She feels hot, but her skin is cold. Her pyjamas cling to her. ‘What was her name?’
He hesitates. ‘Mandy.’
Mandy. Isla smells a hot iron against cotton sheets. Eucalyptus.
‘She looked after you a few days a week, before you started school. Back when your mum was working at Hordern & Sons.’
‘She had a washing line strung out across her yard,’ Isla says, remembering as she speaks. ‘I used to hand her the pegs when she hung out her laundry.’
‘Did you?’
Isla can’t recall Mandy’s face but she remembers being in her presence. Being liked by someone she liked. An easiness about her company that made other people seem less than her.
‘Your mother wants to cancel the party for my birthday,’ he continues. ‘She’s been upset since the police called round. She can’t put it out of her mind.’
A door slams in one of the flats upstairs. Raised voices. Isla sits up. She understands now why he called.
‘Does she believe you, Dad?’
‘I don’t think so. No.’
She cradles the phone. New connectors are opening in her brain these past few weeks, fuelled by mineral water and sleep. Unbidden memories startle her on the bus; on the escalator at Bethnal Green; as she sits in traffic on the Essex Road. Her life has an awful clarity now the protective, hungover fug is gone. She sits cross-legged on the carpet, in the middle of her life, in its crisp, central crease. She is thirty-five years old, tall and lean; striking, people say. A body that has been neglected but is still strong, surprisingly resilient. A thick head of hair, cropped short at the back; blonde strands on top that grow up and out, like a dandelion. A woman whose life took a nosedive, who is getting herself together, who needs to be careful. Whose father is silent at the end of the line, asking her wordlessly to come home.
‘I could come back for a couple of weeks,’ she says. It’s the only thing to say. ‘I could help with the party. Get Mum to see sense.’
‘Could you?’
‘I think so. I’m owed some leave.’
‘That would be wonderful, Isla.’ His voice has lifted. ‘What about the apartment? Aren’t you buying a place?’
The apartment. A two-bed on Sinclair Road with high ceilings and a Juliet balcony. It’s beautiful, well-located and well over budget. They exchange in three weeks. She rubs her forehead with the heel of her hand. ‘I can deal with it over the phone,’ she says.
‘Can they spare you at work?’
‘They’ll have to.’
‘Are you sure this is a good time for you?’
No, she is not sure. She doesn’t want to be in Sydney, where there are empty hours to fill and people she hasn’t seen in a decade. She wants to sleep and work and hide.
‘I’m sure,’ she says. ‘It’s about time.’
Rain falls hard over London as the sun comes up. Isla lies on the surface of sleep, refusing the dreams that want her to be four years old again, walking through rooms that are familiar but not home. She starts the day, dresses herself. Her dad’s voice is loud and scared in her head, playing on a loop, acquiring a strain of panic. She makes coffee, tells herself she does not need anything stronger. She is over-thinking this whole thing. He is not lying.
Mandy supposed Steve must always have opened his gifts this way. A ham-fisted rip-and-crunch of the paper; a quick kiss and a ‘thanks darl’, and that was it. No ceremony. No comment on the way she’d lined up the stripes on the gift wrap. He did appreciate the gift itself, mind, so long as it was something practical that he could use or wear, that wasn’t too different from anything he already owned.
Nothing new there, except Mandy found it aggravating this year, and wanted to thump him. She knew she was being unreasonable. Why would he notice the paper? He was the same man she’d been married to for seven years. And it was daft that she’d done that with the stripes. She’d become a woman who was uptight about gift wrap. How had that happened?
She sat beside him on the bed and turned her gift from him around in her hands. A bigger box than she’d expected. She picked at a piece of tape with her thumbnail and peeled it, slowly, free of the gift wrap. She did the same with the tape at the other side of the box.
‘Why don’t you just rip it, Mand? We’ll still be here for New Year’s at this rate.’
She gave him a look. ‘I feel like taking my time.’
Turning the box onto its side, she reached her hand under the wrapping and managed to slide it free, without any tearing of the paper or damage to its hollow structure. Steve picked up the paper, as if to crush it, but thought better of it and put it back where it was.
‘A watch!’ She hadn’t expected that. ‘You got me a watch?’
He sat up straight, arranging the pillows behind him, and smiled. ‘Let’s see it on you.’
She fixed the tiny buckle and turned the watch so its face was centred. It was designed for a woman with bony wrists. A frail, skeletal woman who couldn’t lift the weight of anything bigger. It made her arm look huge and muscular. She hated it.
‘There. Fits nicely. Just snug,’ she said. First lie of the day: ‘I love it.’ Second lie: ‘What a nice surprise.’
Steve shifted onto his side and pulled her down to lie next to him. ‘Merry Christmas,’ he said. He reached around and stretched his hand over the flesh of her backside. ‘I knew you’d like it.’
She moved closer against him so he couldn’t see her face. Her nightdress crackled with static against his pyjamas. ‘You dark horse,’ she said into the warm meat of his neck. ‘I thought you were getting me the necklace I showed you.’
‘What necklace?’ He rolled her away from him and pushed her hair from her face. ‘You didn’t mention a necklace.’
‘It’s all right.’ She brightened her voice. ‘Sorry. It’s a beautiful watch. I didn’t mean –’
His eyes moved side to side, trying to remember. ‘You didn’t say anything about a necklace.’
‘I showed you, is all. In my catalogue. A gold chain with a pendant.’ She held a finger to the base of her neck, where the pendant might have hung. ‘I showed you a while back. It had a small letter A for Amanda. A pendant.’
He shook his head. ‘You have to spell it out, Mand. If you want a necklace, tell me you want a necklace. You can’t expect me to pick up on a hint like that.’
She smiled, and pinched his face until he smiled back. ‘D’you like the jacket?’
‘I love it, darl. Good for the truck when I’m driving at night.’
‘That’s what I thought.’
She turned her back to him and picked up the gift wrap the watch had come in, red with gold bells, still holding its box shape. From this position on the bed she could see one of Steve’s socks beside the wash basket, where he must have thrown it and missed. He’d left his new jacket on the carpet at the foot of the bed, and the striped paper was torn, strewn across the floor. The Christmas cards she’d arranged on the chest of drawers had fallen sideways, and the water needed changing in the glass vase where she’d arranged a few orchids earlier in the week. The rest of the house could do with a once-over.