The Last Night Page 7

  He stepped inside, eyes rounded as he took her in, leaning back against the door in the semi-darkness of the corridor. Hearing then the sounds of the coffee morning, a slow smile crept across his face as he stepped towards her, a finger to his lips. She returned the smile, feeling embarrassed to have been caught like this. His grey eyes danced with mischief as he walked over to her, bent towards the door, almost brushing her ear as he whispered, ‘Running away, eh?’

  She felt herself hold in her breath, felt the warmth of his words on her ear, fusty and metallic. She couldn’t step back, hemmed in between him and the door. The corridor seemed tiny, as if she was Alice and things were just getting smaller and smaller.

  He didn’t move away, stayed by her ear, his hand moving inches from her face as if he were about to cup her cheek. She looked at his hand, feeling the muscles in her neck straining.

  ‘I best get back,’ she whispered.

  A bubble of laughter spilled out of him then and he steadied himself with a hand on the corridor wall. ‘Stay,’ he pleaded, staring at her as if they were colluding together. ‘It will be unbelievably dull for you: you’re not like them.’

  She felt terrible for having had the same thought moments before, disloyal. He was really close now, she could see a couple of bristles on his chin that he’d missed when shaving. Her eyes crossed as she looked up at him, inches away from her.

  ‘What are we going to do with you?’ he said in a low voice, his breath smelling of pipe smoke that seeped into her pores.

  She moved her gaze down, away from his, wishing she had stayed inside with the glow and heat of the other women. She could hear her sister asking where she’d gone, a sentence suspended. He was leaning right into her now, the smell from his jacket, rain-soaked tweed, overwhelming her senses. She stared resolutely at the buttons on his shirt; a thread was coming loose.

  ‘She just stepped out,’ one of the women said, so close to the door it made her start.

  As if the sentence had alerted him to the others, he melted away down the corridor and she stepped back into the room. She felt as if she’d been gone an age, saw her sister’s momentary frown, a smile quickly plastered over before anyone could tell.

  ‘Would you like more tea, Abigail?’ Connie called out.

  She stepped inside the room, feeling the hubbub and chatter encircle her. She felt a release inside her, cast a quick glance back at the corridor before closing the door again.

  ‘I’d love some,’ she said, returning to her tea cup and saucer, the milky grey remnants of her last cup still lying in the bottom. ‘Please.’

  IRINA

  Though most people she knew looked forward to weekends, Irina often found the stretch of time unsettling. She found herself going through the motions, forcing herself to lie in even when she was twitching to get up, keen to fill the space with clatter and activity. She would go to pub lunches, see friends with babies, catch up on paperwork and sometimes find an excuse to work on something in the shop.

  Today she was seeing her mother, had bought plain scones from the bakery next door. She’d left there with her nostrils full of the smells from their kitchen at home when her mother used to make them, flour on her arms and clothes as she rolled out the dough. They would eat them with large dollops of clotted cream and homemade raspberry jam at the small table in their kitchen, Joshua with a dash of flour on his cheek as he reached for a second one.

  The car seemed chilled by its week-long wait and the engine sputtered into life. She backed out of the spot, a hand on the passenger seat. It had started to rain, droplets dotting the windscreen, the wipers making occasional efforts to clear it as she joined the cars heading out of the village.

  Staring at the back seat in the rear-view mirror, she had a memory from years ago. Sitting in the seat next to Joshua squealing as he sang along to her favourite tape, getting all the words wrong and roaring with laughter. She wondered whether she would mention it to her mother, whether it might make her smile or whether today wouldn’t be a good day for stories like that. She felt a familiar tightness in her stomach as she drove on. What sort of day would it be?

  The greens gave way to the tarmac-covered A-road to Brighton, and then the buildings, shops and people of the town. A couple holding an umbrella and a child who was straining to be released, a woman walking quickly, a folded newspaper held above her head. Irina parked outside the block of flats, the number 5 sign on the parking spot perpetually tilted even though she straightened it every time she visited. Her mother lived on the second floor and Irina buzzed the intercom and stood, patting pointlessly at her hair, which was damp with rain and already frizzing.

  They hugged, one armed and awkward. Irina turned her head to present her with smooth skin to kiss. Her mother smelt of talcum powder, her lips brief and dry but there.

  ‘Ready?’ she asked, watching her mother reach for her coat.

  They walked down to the pier, through the iron grilles of the arched entrance, the sweet smell of doughnuts and coffee clinging to their clothes. Their footsteps were soft on the wooden planks, the water washing in somewhere below them, just visible through the narrow slats.

  Irina loved piers, the neon colours, victorious shouts, the buzz and flash of a hundred games under one roof. She moved through the hall, the sounds changing as they crossed the swirled carpet, the whole place a clash of lights and noise. The rattle of coins, the distant screams of someone winning, the persistent thud of a song played over and over again, a siren. Her mother was shoving 2ps into the machine, the coins standing on their sides before dropping down and pushing others off the ledge. For a moment it seemed her mother was twenty years younger, that they were back in Southsea, that they were all together. Her eyes crinkled as she reached to scoop the coins into her hand, a triumphant look as she saw how many had fallen. Irina felt lighter then, as she allowed herself to enjoy simply being with her, no need to fill a silence, no need for anything but to enjoy the day.

  The rain had stopped, the boards of the pier still slick with water as they moved outside. Irina tucked her hands into her coat, watched people milling along the promenade. She felt her mother join her, her hands up on the balustrade. They looked out in silence for a while, the muted sounds of the pier behind them. And then, perhaps instinctively, they both turned in the direction of the skeleton of the West Pier, its crippled rusting remains gradually being reclaimed by the sea, stubbornly sitting out in the water, not ready to give up yet. The top a twisted, sunken mass of metal. Irina looked sideways at her mother, who had turned away from it.

  ‘It’s getting cold, we should get back,’ she said with an irritated swipe at an errant strand of hair.

  Irina wished they’d left via the other side of the pier. They could have looked out over an unblemished stretch of sea, a length of golden sand, the painted arches of the pier, the rotating big wheel crammed with happy faces in its glass capsules. Why had she guided her out this side? Had she known? Had she wanted the reminder? Like a small thorn in her palm, wanting to press at it tentatively, see if it still hurt, wanting to talk about it, complain?

  She opened her mouth to reply; perhaps this was the moment they should take. They should talk about it, it was absurd to continually skirt the thing that seemed to drag around behind them. How many times had she opened her mouth to do just that? She turned her back to the sea too, taking a breath, tapping her feet on the wooden planks beneath her, jumping as a seagull swept right past them. She opened her mouth, imagined how she might begin things. ‘Mum, do you think we could…’ ‘Mum, do you ever wonder…’ She raced through the false starts, the pathetic attempts to initiate something she wasn’t even sure she wanted to, but her mother had already pushed herself from the balustrade and was walking towards the exit.

  ‘We can get back and put a kettle on,’ she called over her shoulder, her voice stretched thin.

  Irina followed
in her wake, as if she was eight years old again and struggling to catch up with her. ‘Kettle,’ she repeated. ‘Great idea.’

  On the left, the West Pier stood, its rusting bones admonishing her for failing once more to talk about it all. Soon it would be called back to the sea, its body would fail and crumble, part by part, with a roar, a splash, a whine and a screech as things came loose and fell in. It would move slowly down through the water, swaying gently with the pull of the sea floor, throwing up sand in puffs as it landed on the seabed, resting there to be eaten away over time, algae clinging to its surface.

  Irina turned. For a brief second she thought she saw a small boy standing on one of the pier’s platforms, a tiny dot above the water. He was waving at her, or gesturing to her. Then he was gone and there was nothing but the rays of the sun bouncing off the water and the whitewashed buildings.

  Her mother didn’t speak at all on the walk back, stayed silent as she put the tea on and took the scones from the oven. Irina drew the small table to their spot by the window and pulled out the wooden tray. There was an unspoken assumption that they would play a round of Yahtzee, safe, just the sound of the rolling dice, the tiny changes in their breathing if the roll was a good one, a fraction faster, the next roll a little harder.

  She went to fetch the dice, unable to avoid the space where the one photograph on the mantelpiece had stood. Where had her mother moved it? They had been on the beachfront in Southsea, sticky with suncream and candyfloss, smeared smiles under straw hats, their parents both grinning in sunglasses. Her mother with long hair, not the neat iron-grey bob she had now. Irina got up for her tea, feeling her stomach roll a protest, the familiar queasiness of the memory as if she had eaten candyfloss until she was full; her mouth seemed sticky with it now. The tea washed the taste away as she returned to her spot, a winged armchair with a flattened cushion.

  Her mother had licked her finger and was pulling away a used score sheet. ‘Last week Brenda scored over a thousand,’ she commented, looking at the figures.

  ‘Did she get a lot of straights?’

  ‘None. Four Yahtzees.’

  ‘Gosh.’

  ‘She was absurdly lucky on the last roll, four threes in one roll, it seemed impossible.’

  ‘Well let’s see how we get on.’ Irina took a sip of her tea and waited for her mother to get comfortable, take up the five dice in her hand and roll.

  The room was warm, woozily so. Irina’s eyes were drooping. The peach floor-to-ceiling curtains were shut, making everything the same shade and blocking out the view of the tops of houses and then somewhere behind them a strip of beach and the sea. Invisible from the window but you still knew it was there. The thought made Irina relax, the velvety softness of the armchair enclosing her in the space.

  Her mother smiled at her, the creases around her eyes like ripples on the surface of a lake, extending down to her cheeks and around her mouth. The skin folded; the powder, dashed on that morning, caught in the cracks. Irina couldn’t remember her mother without lines on her face. Where was the photo?

  ‘I thought I saw Joshua the other day.’ She blurted it out quickly, loudly, as if she had no control.

  There was a heavy silence then, her mother’s fist clenching the dice, her knuckles strained and white. The room was filled with the ticking of the kitchen clock, the gentle hum from the computer left on. Her mother didn’t say anything for a second, seemed suspended. Irina didn’t know why she had said it, wanted to pile the words back into her mouth, cram them in there and shut her lips over them tight. She bit down on the inside of her cheek, cleared her throat.

  ‘I was in a café, I thought he walked past…’

  Where had it come from? Why did she have to ruin the morning with it?

  The words seemed to pull her mother back into the moment. She rolled the dice then, not looking at her. She didn’t make a comment.

  ‘Well now. Brenda’s husband is ill again,’ she said, writing ‘15’ in the third box, a thin smile of sympathy on her lips as she looked back up.

  ‘Oh that’s a shame,’ Irina replied, taking her mother’s lead as if nothing had happened. Another day when they wouldn’t prise anything open, his name dissolving into another moment they wouldn’t talk about.

  ‘He does have a very weak immune system,’ her mother said, rolling the dice once more. Five sixes spilled onto the table. ‘Yahtzee,’ she said, clapping her hands once.

  ‘Well done.’

  MARY

  Joe was back in the pub, ordering pints of cider as if it were about to run out. He didn’t have a shift behind the bar, but he didn’t seem to have anywhere else to be. He was slurring his words and sloshing the liquid over the sides as he spoke. Mary didn’t like to see him like that, his eyes slipping and sliding about the place, his mouth in a thin line when he thought no one was looking. He told her more about his war, sometimes she forgot he was only twenty-six, his face seemed to carry extra years in the lines. It still hurt to think of her father like that, not even twenty years older but ancient when he’d returned from the prisoner-of-war camp. She didn’t remember him ever sitting down when she was a child; he’d be restless, bent over the kitchen table, greasy parts of a bicycle laid out on newspaper, tinkering, screwing, hopping up to reattach things. After the war he’d sat in a chair by the window, clouds skittering past, his eyes not focusing on them, lost somewhere, jumping if she laid a hand on his shoulder.

  Joe called her Abigail that night, leaning on her as she put one of his arms over her shoulder, feeling the weight of him as she pulled him up from the stool. She’d laughed at him, pointing out the ankles that merged into her calves, the stubborn roll around her middle that didn’t seem to shift. Abigail had a nipped-in waist and legs men would stop and stare at. Still, she couldn’t resist the teeny glow as he muttered it. ‘You’re a lovely girl, Abi, a lovely girl.’

  ‘Thanks, Joe.’

  She propped him up on the way out and he patted her on the arm before weaving over the cobbled street, one foot stumbling in the gutter so she thought he might knock his teeth out on the pavement. He’d perked up for a moment earlier, when she’d read to him from Abigail’s last letter. She told him about the peppermint chaise longue. He’d chuckled at that.

  Abigail’s letters were filled with descriptions of the house, her sister’s very fine clothes, her hair that somehow didn’t seem to get mussed up the moment she went out the door. Abigail’s hair, on the other hand, was permanently salty, the wind on the moors tossing every strand about so that it looked like she’d been burrowing through hedges; and she hid her dreadful darning efforts under other layers.

  Sometimes Abigail sounded wistful, as if she wanted to say something bigger but the page was too small. Mary knew what that felt like, struggling to translate the thoughts in her head through the pen in her hand, gazing at the blank space that she needed to fill, but missing their chats on a rug on the Downs, spilling every thought onto the grass, clutching their sides with their secrets and their laughter. She thought her looping, rounded handwriting looked childish, Abigail’s elegant scrawl highlighting the difference.

  She walked back through Bedminster after her shift, her legs aching from doing a double, her hands and clothes smelling of cigarette smoke; she imagined her insides filled with the stuff, swirling around her body. The apartment was dark when she got back, the lights off in the flats downstairs. Mary cringed at the cranking sound as she switched the geyser on over the bath and stepped gingerly into the tub. She washed quickly, a threadbare towel round her as she shivered on the bare boards of her room. Rubbing at her skin, she looked over at the tips from that night, collected in a small pile of change on her chest of drawers. She was saving money now, wanting to get on with the life she had planned, get out of Bristol and see the world. She needed to get to Abigail first and then on to somewhere exciting.

  She hugged the blan
kets over her that night, smiling to herself as she remembered Abigail’s ability to tell long stories plucked from her imagination. There had been an evening during the war when bombs were being dropped on Bristol and Mary had stayed on the floor of Abigail’s room, Abi’s mum in the bedroom next door. They’d eaten pork casserole for dinner and lit candles behind the black-out curtains and told ghost stories, blocking out the distant thuds and shakes. Abigail had always loved being dramatic and she’d recounted a particularly nasty story about a headless woman who haunted a hotel corridor, her mum on the sofa rolling her eyes at Mary at the more absurd moments. Mary had held a cushion to her chest and listened to every word, her flesh breaking into goosebumps as Abigail made the most of it, arching an eyebrow as she described the ghostly figure, the bloodcurdling reaction of the guests.

  She wished Abigail were there now in the empty flat to tell stories or talk to her more about their future travels. They were going to head to Hollywood, drive up the coastal roads, see the desert. She wondered whether, somewhere, Abigail’s mum was still smiling at them in that quiet way. The days were getting longer and the moon was bright, turning the room a silvery blue. For a second Mary imagined Abigail looking out on the same moon, imagined the beams shimmering on the surface of the sea beneath her window.

  ABIGAIL

  The next few days dragged by in a haze of fog, spitting rain and grey. The sea churned, a moody purple, beneath the house. Abigail would wake in the morning and need to switch on the bedside lamp, looking out through the spattered panes of glass. Spring appeared to have left them, time seemed to be turning backwards now.