The Last Night Page 12

  ‘I wonder whether I would suit going darker,’ Connie mused, patting at her own brown hair, faint hints of blonde running through it.

  ‘I love your hair,’ Abigail said. ‘I prayed and prayed for lighter hair when I was little, but Jesus never gave in. Mary and I covered bits with lemon juice, which was utterly hopeless. I’m amazed none of it fell out.’

  Connie tilted her chin, her mouth turned up. ‘We’ll pin it to the side in waves – that will really suit you, you have the loveliest-shaped face and a long neck.’

  Abigail felt herself glow within at the compliment. She was already feeling more glamorous, sitting on the velvet stool surrounded by glass bottles full of expensive scents, a powdery, rich smell hovering like a sweet cloud over the dressing table.

  Connie took an age on her hair, asking her questions, her forehead puckering as she bent down to pat, spray and smooth, the concentration setting them both off into laughter on more than one occasion. Eyeliner was wielded, flicked on in the neatest line of rich brown; eye shadow brushed on so that when Abigail turned it shimmered in the light; mascara built up in layers.

  ‘Right, let’s finish by giving you gorgeous scarlet lips,’ she said, picking up a silver lipstick case and taking off the lid. Abigail eyed it warily and Connie spotted her expression. ‘Trust me,’ she giggled, leaning down so that Abigail was forced to look anywhere but at her sister’s cleavage.

  She stared at the ceiling as she followed Connie’s instructions. ‘Press your lips together, hold still.’ She thought briefly that this was what it might have been like if Connie hadn’t gone away and they had grown up together. How desperately she had craved her older sister when she was in her teens, wanting to ask questions, things she was too embarrassed to say to her mum, eager to share secrets and crushes. She felt the emotion build behind her eyes and worried she might make her mascara run. ‘Finished!’ came the announcement.

  Abigail paused briefly, neck still craned back, blinking once before lowering her head and staring into the mirror in front of her. What she saw caused her to take a stifled breath. She didn’t recognize the woman in the glass opposite, the woman whose face frowned as this thought moved through Abi’s mind. Her lips were full and bold, her teeth the whitest they’d been, her nose and forehead matt and smooth, her hazel eyes popping out of the perfectly applied lines and lashes. She looked capable, desirable, sophisticated. This was a woman who didn’t feel insecure or envious, didn’t worry about the little things; she exuded confidence, would know French, could run a household, could play the piano. She hadn’t been brought down by years of war and worries. The light in her eyes suggested playful thoughts, a carefree life. Abigail could not believe this woman was her.

  Connie was walking behind her, her mouth pursed in appreciation, dimples in her cheeks as she stepped back.

  ‘You’re a genius.’ Abigail laughed, pushing back the velvet stool to sashay across to the four-poster bed, standing on the stair beneath it, twirling round the post to dip her head back like the movie stars in films before they get kissed. Her sister making a low whistle and clapping her hands in delight.

  Their celebrations were so loud, they missed it. They didn’t hear the sound of the front door opening and closing, they didn’t hear the sound of keys being thrown down, of footsteps in the hallway, they didn’t hear footsteps on the stairs and the landing. In fact the first they heard of Larry was when he was standing in the doorway, the door swinging slowly back to reveal him, his mouth turned down, one eyebrow twitching.

  His voice was low, his mouth barely moving and their laughter dropped away. Abigail took a step away from the bed, snatched her hand from the post, biting her lip.

  ‘They might drop an H-bomb at any minute and you’re smearing yourself in lipstick,’ he said, staring first at Abigail and then at Connie.

  They looked down at the floor like scolded children. Connie didn’t say anything. Abigail could feel Larry’s eyes on the top of her head. Her painted face should have given her the confidence to look him in the eye, to say something. But the carpet swam before her, the peach blurring as rage built inside her. She willed her sister to stand up to him, to tell him what they were doing was harmless. Why shouldn’t they? The war was over, they were young and yet still, years later, everyone seemed to be dragging around the guilt of their survival, hands clamped over laughing mouths before the sound could leave them. They should be joyful; what did all those brave men and women die and work for if not so that future generations could laugh until their sides hurt, until tears rolled down their faces?

  The room felt crowded as he stepped forward, wearing his brown checked trousers, his shoes scuffed at the toe. The only exit was behind him and she felt dizzy with the thoughts hammering through her mind, the cloying smell of open powder pots tickling her nostrils, her sister’s terrible silence, her averted eyes. Abigail was firmly trapped.

  She raised her head, her lips pressed together. They felt sticky and unfamiliar as she spoke. ‘I’ll go to my room.’

  ‘Wipe it off,’ he said, unsmiling. ‘I won’t have you seen outside this house like that.’

  ‘But… I…’

  Connie looked at her quickly, tucking a strand of hair behind one ear, her eyes darting left to right. Connie tore off a piece of cotton wool, pushed it into the cream and moved across to Abigail, pressing it onto her skin, the make-up leaving orange smears on its surface, her face becoming a sad wash like a watercolour left out in the rain. She felt the tears prick the back of her eyes, the humiliation as Connie dragged the make-up away, brown streaks under her eyes from the mascara, stained lips and uneven skin. Her sister didn’t look at her as she undid all her work.

  She waited for Connie to say something, the triptych-mirror showing her three selves silent in the middle of the room. Abigail thought back to the hour before, felt their closeness snap shut as Larry moved behind her, blocking her view, meeting her eyes in the mirror.

  ‘And your hair, take it out,’ he said.

  Abigail removed the pins one by one, her hair remaining in waves down the side of her face, kinked and shiny after Connie had spent so long on it.

  She was Abigail again, messier and sadder, but Abigail.

  ‘Better,’ he said, one hand reaching out, squeezing her shoulder slowly. ‘Isn’t that better?’ He laughed, his face looser, his eyebrows raised. And Connie, slowly, painfully, started to laugh too.

  IRINA

  Irina could tell that she wanted to ask. Irina never visited mid-week. Her mother was sitting at the kitchen table, a blanket around her legs that seemed to age her. She’d been embarrassed when Irina had appeared. The flat had seemed too cold: she never put on the heating, even in winter. Irina never questioned why, not venturing into that territory, the place they didn’t go. Her mother eyed her over the hot chocolate that Irina had made them both, a film of milk now stubbornly stuck to the pan in the sink. She was waiting. Irina could feel her unanswered questions as she listened to the sound of someone moving around in the apartment above, the noise of a car on the road outside tracking through puddles, its engine straining.

  ‘A piece arrived, a bureau, last week,’ she began.

  Her mother looked momentarily disappointed, her mouth half-opening and then shutting again in a thin line. She seemed surprised. Irina wondered briefly what she had imagined she was there to say.

  ‘From an American client,’ she continued, her finger and thumb rubbing against each other. She noticed her mother looking at them and stopped.

  ‘Oh, right.’

  ‘Well, the thing is… This, well, it sounds sort of silly really, now I’m here, but I think…’ She stopped abruptly, perhaps not wanting to admit things aloud, perhaps feeling foolish for saying them in the first place, for thinking them. How much had really happened? It seemed so small.

  Her mother leant forward, cupping her mug with both
hands. ‘Go on.’ Her voice was rich with encouragement and Irina gulped and started again.

  ‘Mum, it sounds stupid, but I swear it’s not right, it’s making things… happen.’

  Her mother’s forehead crinkled and she leant back a fraction. ‘Happen?’

  ‘Well I suppose what I mean is strange things that I can’t really explain how they… Things are happening.’ She could hear how hopeless she sounded.

  Her mother took a sip of the hot chocolate. ‘What kind of things?’

  Irina took a breath. ‘There’s a feeling I get, it’s odd, I haven’t had it before.’

  ‘Go on.’ Her mother waved a hand, nails bitten away.

  ‘As if someone is watching, is with me in the workshop. And, well, it’s more than that. I… I saw a face… Well, I wasn’t sure, but there were footprints and I found photos, a photo and things in a drawer, but someone tore it up and…’

  ‘Hey, hey.’ Her mother hushed her in a voice that transported her right back to her childhood. She blinked and looked up. ‘Slower. What do you mean, footprints?’

  ‘They were watery,’ Irina explained, ‘as if someone had walked through water. But no one had.’

  She knew she sounded strange. She tried to take hold of herself, check her breathing. The images of the last few days, the feeling she got when she went into the workshop, it was overwhelming and she hadn’t even realized the extent of it. It had driven her here, to her mother.

  She let a breath out. ‘There was a pool of water by it, and someone’s face at the window, in the mirror, and my phone was moved, thrown on the floor…’

  Her mother didn’t cut her off, or laugh, or look disbelieving. It gave Irina the confidence to carry on, as if she wasn’t being ridiculous, as if these things could be happening. As she spoke she realized she didn’t feel so alone anymore.

  ‘And there was a photograph that was torn up. I know it sounds crazy, but things are happening and…’ She didn’t want to admit she was scared, didn’t want to say it to her mother, who had been through so much. Her fear would make it real and she wasn’t sure she was ready for that. ‘Do you believe in that? That stuff?’ she asked, not able to meet her mother’s eye.

  There was a pause that seemed to go on for such a long time. Sounds melted away and Irina strained to just hear her mother’s response, not sure what it would be.

  Her mother placed the mug down carefully, smoothed the blanket in her lap. ‘I… I’m not sure.’

  Irina nodded. Her shoulders dropped.

  ‘I suppose things happen that we can’t explain.’ Her mother pleated the blanket. ‘And we don’t know everything.’

  Irina bit her lip, thought of the torn-up photograph, the footprints, the face. How did you explain them? It seemed so absurd, though, to imagine something had been there in the room with her, that a piece of furniture had done that to her.

  Her mother was staring at her lap, her eyes unfocused as if she were caught far away.

  Then Irina heard herself asking, couldn’t believe she had, ‘Do you think they’re out there somewhere?’ She didn’t need to say who ‘they’ were.

  Her mother closed her eyes for a moment, breathing through her nose.

  ‘Sorry,’ Irina blurted, regretting the question, or rather the reaction, not wanting to upset her and yet wanting to know.

  ‘No, it’s fine, it’s…’ Her mother put her fingers to her lips absent-mindedly, rubbing them across the surface. ‘I have thought about it, of course,’ she admitted.

  It was Irina’s turn to nod. She stared mutely at the table and then back at her mother. She hadn’t realized she was holding her breath.

  Her mother looked up at her, a grim expression on her face. ‘But no, I don’t think so, they’re not out there.’

  Irina nodded once more, trying to convince herself. She thought of the boy in the blue jumper. And the woman at her window.

  It seemed to signal the end of the conversation. Irina nodded dumbly, taking both mugs and scrubbing at them in the sink. ‘Best get on,’ she said, bending to plant a kiss on her mother’s cheek, not giving her time to linger over a goodbye.

  She couldn’t shake the memory of her mother’s expression as she left and on the drive home she tilted the rear-view mirror towards herself and caught her own eye in the strip. She was reminded of another journey, the journey bathed in the glow of ‘Before’. Irina in the passenger seat next to her mother. They were driving back from picking up her dad’s surprise, an enormous cake in a ribboned box, the icing made to look like a putting green. Her mother had asked her about school and Irina had talked about the play they were doing; she had five lines in the first scene and was worried she wouldn’t remember them. Her mother had offered to help, touching her leg as she said it, glancing to her left with a quick, reassuring smile.

  It had been the last day like that, when Irina didn’t carry around all the other thoughts and sounds and smells. When she still had her family. Sometimes her whole body ached to be back in that car with her mother. Some days she wished they had never gone home.

  Pushing through the shop, past customers browsing for knick-knacks and Patricia’s raised eyebrows, she headed straight to the bureau, her jacket still on, puffing beside it, rolling up her sleeves. Loading up the woodstove with off-cuts, she fetched a strip of sandpaper and started to scrub determinedly at one of the empty drawers, in a rhythm, trying to distract herself with the monotony of the task, something she had done for years, back and forwards, back and forwards, smoothing the surface down, smoothing the marks away.

  She worked all day on the bureau, refusing lunch, cups of tea, just wanting to get it finished, not allowing herself a pause or a quiet lull that she could fill with more questions. Her arms were aching, the minuscule flakes of wood suspended in the air, clinging to her clothes and her skin, giving off their familiar smell, warm and comforting. She needed to glue a knife-cut veneer to the front of a couple of drawers but she didn’t want to leave the pieces to dry, not today; she wanted the momentum.

  Hours passed, with Patricia bustling about next door. The sound of the till rolling open with a rattle of coins as she counted the day’s takings nudged Irina into thinking about packing up. She was bent over the last of the drawers, sliding it into the bureau and out so that it didn’t snag.

  Drip, drip, drip.

  The sound was quietly insistent. Irina looked over at the sink. The tap was dry, hadn’t been used all day. She frowned and returned to her task.

  Drip, drip, drip.

  She looked over at the window. The sky was turning from blue to lilac, the sun having swept past the shop and now setting over the hills beyond. There had been no rain. The gutters would be dry.

  Drip, drip, drip.

  It was louder this time, close, the noise, so close she could almost see the splashes from the individual drops as they fell. She put a finger up to her ear, wondering for a moment if she was imagining it.

  Drip, drip, drip.

  She looked down at the bureau, the floor around it, and then dipped her head slowly to peer underneath, not quite making it as Patricia moved the beads aside to call a goodnight.

  She straightened up quickly, pivoting on a foot to face the entrance, one hand flying to her chest. ‘Oh.’

  Patricia was waggling her finger. ‘Stop working soon,’ she chided as she lifted her bag back onto her shoulder with one hand.

  ‘I will.’ Irina smiled, trying to hide her alarm, wondering for a second if she could ask her to stay. Saying nothing more.

  Patricia turned and left. The beads fell back with their clicking clatter and she moved through the shop beyond. No noises nearby. The faint bell as she’d gone, the key turning in the lock, the hint of her footsteps as she walked away from the shop. No other sounds.

  Drip, drip, drip.

 
Closing her eyes and then taking the sandpaper again, she carried on, over the edges, making it smoother, in a rhythm, faster. She would finish this piece. There was no noise, it was all in her head. There was no noise. Irina carried on scrubbing at it. She would finish this piece.

  ABIGAIL

  She picked her way up into the woods behind the village, the slippery damp of the forest floor forcing her to grab on to gritty branches as she stepped over a carpet of leaves in absurd shoes. She thought of her mum in that moment, clutching her sides with laughter at her city girl let loose in the woods in thin leather heels and a cotton skirt that caught on every bramble and weed. It felt good to be alone, just her and the muted hush of the trees around her, the whole world tinged with greens and browns, the leaves curled and brittle on the branches. She thought of her sister back in the house darning socks on the sofa, Larry by her side, one arm protectively looped over her shoulders, seeming to shield her from other people.

  The large house often felt too small for the three of them, the walls hemming her in, her sister glancing over at her, strained smiles, Larry padding into rooms, his footsteps soft, always there. Abigail had been making plans, writing to Mary about the work they could do, where they could stay as they saved up for that first boat crossing. It made her feel better to think ahead, to feel free of the house and village.

  ‘Hello there,’ a voice called, Richard’s face tilted up at her from the path below.

  ‘Hello,’ she replied, feeling her mouth stay open in an ‘O’ of surprise.

  She patted her hair pointlessly, brushing away a spindly strand at the moment he appeared, red-cheeked and out of breath, his hands pushing down on his thighs as he made his way straight up the slope towards her. He wobbled at the end, which made her shoot out a hand to grab him. She felt his jumper tug away from her and she seized his arm with two hands.

  ‘Whoa,’ she said, her own shoes slipping on the ground so that for a brief second she thought they both might tumble back down the slope.