She realised he was still talking. He was still going on in his calm let’s be adult about this voice that she’d so quickly come to despise.
‘… So I’ll come up at the weekend and stay with my mum. Just me, not Lauren – I don’t want to make things harder. But I want to see the kids properly, not just an hour over lunch or something. Okay? And I want to speak to them. Are they there just now?’
Helen pressed the handset closer to her ear. Alys’s laughter was louder now, but not so loud that he’d be able to hear it down the phone line.
‘Mum’s taken them both to the park,’ she lied. ‘You only caught Dad and I because we were finishing the dishes. We’re just going to meet them.’
‘Right.’
‘Yes.’
He sighed. ‘Look, call me later – just let me say goodnight to them at least.’ His voice might have cracked, or it might have been static on the line. She was learning, to her surprise, that Darren could be a good actor. It was bizarre, thinking back to how she’d always been able to read him like a book. Perhaps he’d never had the will to deceive her before, or perhaps it was the distance that had opened up between them making it harder for her to really see him the way she always had before. She ached even more for the man she had married.
‘I don’t want them to get upset,’ she said.
‘For God’s sake, don’t make me beg to speak to my own kids, Helen.’
He didn’t sound to her like a man who was begging. She felt the familiar lump swell in the back of her throat. This was why she couldn’t fight with him: whenever she tried to give voice to her anger, the rage choked her before she could let it out.
‘Tomorrow,’ she managed.
‘First thing.’
She nodded uselessly into the phone, tears running down both cheeks now. Finally she said ‘okay’ just about loud enough for him to hear, and then hung up.
God knew she didn’t want either of the kids to catch her looking like this; they’d seen enough tears. Taking care to be silent, she slipped out of the bedroom and walked down the stairs. She wanted to return the handset to its charger quickly. Whilst she held it, it felt as though she was carrying Darren around, and he would know that she’d lied to him and be able to see her falling apart.
Just thinking about Darren was so painful, yet she couldn’t stop herself. She had no reference point for what was happening to her and that left her completely bewildered. As she and Darren had been together since high school, she’d never had any sort of break-up before. And her parents’ relationship had always been rock solid. Barbara had her quirks – always had – she was often distant with her daughter and could be sharp with her tongue. Occasionally her claws came out and Helen could remember the odd ring of a slap or the twist of an arm when her mother was angry.
But, even though he could be on the receiving end of her sharp tongue too, Neil had adored his wife with a constancy that was unshakeable. Even more remarkably, he’d had love enough for both of them, so Helen had never felt the need to compete, and never questioned the security of their family.
Now, it looked like her own children were going to have none of that, and she veered between righteous rage towards Darren and anxious guilt about what more she could have done to keep her family together.
Helen could hear Barbara’s voice in the kitchen as she came down the stairs. Although the green and inky haze of the dreams had faded, it hadn’t left her completely. It occurred to her that if Barbara knew what the envelope contained before she picked it up from the doormat, then perhaps there had been others. She’d not thought to look for any until now, and her decision to confront her mother had lost impetus through the bittersweet family outings yesterday. The thought of interrogating Barbara about the note in the midst of the turmoil of a cancer diagnosis made her squeamish. Given how emotionally vulnerable she felt herself – her hands were still shaking after the phone call – it didn’t take much to persuade herself to put it off. She was decided; before confronting her mother, she would look for more notes.
In the hall, she replaced the phone on its cradle and pulled out a tissue. She dabbed at her face in the mirror and managed to tidy it a bit. At least she’d learned to avoid wearing mascara these days. Now that she was closer to the kitchen she could hear Barney’s voice too. He was explaining the plot of one of the films he watched endlessly. It seemed unlikely she’d be disturbed by either of them any time soon.
She retraced her steps, stealthily, to the staircase. There was a little hotel safe at the back of Barbara’s wardrobe, hidden by a clutter of shoes. It contained passports and building society books and pension stuff. Much duller stuff than Helen had hoped to find when, aged fifteen or so, she’d idly observed her mother opening it and gone on to crack the code: 2973. She could still remember it. Would Barbara have changed the code over the years?
The little door swung open smoothly, and that small disturbance was enough to shift the stack of mismatched papers. Even through the gloom, a knife-edge sliver of green caught Helen’s eye. Clearly, the note from the other night had not been the first. Again, this envelope simply said ‘Barbara’.
From the bedroom, she heard Alys pause to ask, ‘Where’s Mummy?’ Rather than risk them coming out to look for her, Helen stuffed the envelope into the large pocket on her hoodie to read later. After a few seconds, she felt safe enough to carry on. Riffling through the rest of the papers in the safe, she quickly found two more. Then she replaced everything as accurately as she could and stuck the two new envelopes alongside the first in the front of her hoodie. She’d take them back to the downstairs loo to read, where she could lock the door and not worry about being disturbed. If nothing else, this intrigue might give her something to occupy her brain other than the constant, cycling worries about Darren.
As soon as she got to the bottom of the stairs, though, Barney erupted from the kitchen and threw himself at her, without stopping for breath in his chatter. Helen twirled him around and he dragged her back to the kitchen, where she had to enthuse over the half-done jigsaw on the table. Moments later, Neil appeared in the doorway with Alys, who wanted to show off her princess dress.
While Alys performed curtsies, Helen watched Barbara applaud with no sign of sentiment over the reappearance of her dress. Barney talked all the louder for fear of his little sister getting some attention.
Neil moved across to the window, where Barbara stood by the sink with a tea towel in her hand. She let her husband rest his arm across her shoulders for all of three seconds, before she gently lifted it and twisted away.
‘Shall I get us all some tea?’ Barbara asked, brightly.
*
It was half an hour, in the end, before Helen managed some time alone. The three new notes were not identical to the first, but they were all similar: short and mysterious but written with unmistakable venom.
HELLO BARBARA
THIS IS JENNIFER.
I KNOW WHO YOU ARE.
HELLO BARBARA
I KNOW WHO YOU ARE.
I KNOW WHAT YOU DID.
I’VE COME TO PAY YOU BACK.
JENNIFER
HELLO BARBARA.
DOES NEIL KNOW?
OR WOULD YOU LIKE ME TO TELL HIM?
JENNIFER
There were no dates on any of them, but that was the order that seemed to make most sense, leading up to the cancer one. There was no clue as to how long it had been going on for, nor as to whether ‘Jennifer’ had approached Neil or done anything else.
Helen had been well aware