The Woman in the Dark Read online

  “What about today?”

  “Today?”

  “After school? I could come straight home—we’d be in town by four.”

  “That would be lovely. We could go for coffee as well, maybe pick up takeout for later.”

  “Can we go to Starbucks? Dad won’t—he hates it there.”

  “If we have to.”

  She smiles at me, the big beaming one that takes up her whole face and makes my chest ache with so much love I could burst. She bounds back into the room and leans in to kiss my cheek and give me a one-armed hug. “Thanks, Mum.”

  Joe passes after she leaves, as silent as Mia is loud. “All okay?” I ask. There’s none of Mia’s anger on his face, but none of the smile either, and what is there is somehow worse. I’ve asked all okay or some variation nearly every day for the last six months, because I see on his face the same thing I see when I look in the mirror: he’s haunted by some pain that lives below the surface, a weeping wound that cuts and spreads. If it came out it would consume him.

  He hovers in the doorway and I can feel all the other questions I’m desperate to ask hanging in the air. I want to wrap him in a hug and not let go until he’s my smiling little boy again. Let him come to you, the therapist told us, but he hasn’t and I’m afraid he never will. We used to be able to talk, before my mother died, before his accident. But he stopped and I got too scared to ask what was wrong, scared I’d expose the wound and make it fester.

  I think I’m coming down with something: I’m achy and shivery, my eyes gritty with tiredness, my head pounding. I thought sea air was supposed to be good for you. But it’s the dead air from inside that house that clings to my throat and lungs. Despite my exhaustion, I couldn’t sleep last night. Every time I closed my eyes I saw that awful place and they snapped open.

  The house is quiet when I drag myself out of bed and I think they’ve all gone, but when I get downstairs, Patrick is in the kitchen. All the drawers are pulled open, their contents messed up. I’m heading for the kettle when I see what Patrick’s holding.

  “What are you doing with my bank book?”

  He doesn’t flinch, but I see his hand tighten on it. “Nothing. I came across it at the back of the drawer so I was”—he holds it out—“returning it to you.”

  I take it and stuff it into my dressing gown pocket.

  “Sarah?” he calls, as I turn to leave. “Have you thought any more about…”

  I grip the door frame. I hate this. I saw, when we were in that house, that this is his dream. With my mother’s money, I could make my husband’s dream come true. But in doing that, I’d be destroying every dream of my own.

  “What about all our plans?” I say. “We’ve never had so much spare money before. We could do something amazing—something we’ll remember forever. All the things my mother never did—go to all those places I’ve always dreamed about. There’s enough for holidays for the whole family and time away for you and me…” I stop talking because I see from his face he doesn’t get it.

  “Think of Joe and Mia,” he says, a pleading note in his voice. “You’ve seen how withdrawn Joe has become. Since the accident, he’s been teetering on the brink. And Mia—I don’t like those friends of hers or how she acts around them. Even her teachers commented on it at parents’ evening, remember? It’s affecting her grades. We have a chance to give them a fresh start.”

  “We’ll travel together, Patrick. We’ve never traveled abroad as a family—think of all the new experiences. That’s a fresh start, too.”

  I watch stubbornness flash across his eyes, and I feel my own stubbornness rise to meet it. “I can’t,” I say. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry, but I can’t help you buy that house.”

  “That’s it, then,” he says. “Someone else will buy it. Someone else will get to live in my house and we’ll be stuck here.”

  Guilt tastes bitter but I swallow it. “I’m sorry,” I say again.

  “It’s fine. It’s your money, isn’t it? Your name in that savings book. Your choice what you do with it.”

  I bite my lip when Patrick leaves the house. He doesn’t slam the door, but I hear a slam anyway in the slow click. I hear hurt and accusation and all the other things my guilt feeds me. I get out my travel brochures, but even their siren song doesn’t ease the nagging ache.

  My phone, when I switch it on, buzzes and a birthday reminder comes up on the screen. The grief, almost a physical pain, doubles me up, hands squeezing the edge of the counter, eyes closed. Mum’s birthday—it’s Mum’s birthday. I forgot to delete the reminder.

  Last year I didn’t manage a visit, but the phone reminder made sure I called her, checked that the gift basket I ordered had arrived. Why didn’t I visit? I can’t even remember now, but I always seemed to have some ridiculous excuse not to make the two-hour trek north, to the house where nothing had changed since the day my father had walked out twenty-four years ago, where she’d waited in limbo for him to return ever since.

  After Dad left, she clung so hard to me I couldn’t breathe. It suffocated me, terrified me: our roles became reversed—I had to be responsible for her when I was still very much a child. But when I did get away, when I left for college and the freedom I’d been craving, I discovered I didn’t know how to cope with being alone. I felt so lost. Caroline used to worry about me settling down to marriage and motherhood so young, but what I could never explain to her was how safe I felt with Patrick. He offered all the security of home but none of my mother’s clinginess. His uncomplicated strength and confidence were everything I needed in the world.

  My visits home grew fewer and fewer as the children grew older. I always had reasons. I always called her on Sunday, like a good daughter. Why didn’t she go away, live her life, use all that money to do something fulfilling? I’ll never know now. I ran out of excuses six months ago when a neighbor found her, two days dead, mold growing on a half-eaten microwave meal.

  That day, I broke.

  I went into such a dark place I couldn’t find my way out. Everything from that time is cloudy… It took a week in the hospital, then months of medication and therapy to find my way back here. And the children—I saw how my breakdown frightened them. I became a stranger to them in those months and none of us have recovered. At first they hovered around me like I was made of glass, flinching every time I said a cross word or looked sad, as if we were all playing a waiting game… waiting for me either to be all better or to fall over the edge again. Then they began to move away, let hardness, bitterness slip between us, as if they were afraid to see my pain. But I did get better. I am better. I feel it in my heart and in my gut. I feel strong and well, but things won’t ever be the same in their eyes—the children’s and Patrick’s—because when they look at me, I’m permanently tainted by the shadow of the woman who had a breakdown. That’s who I’ll always be now.

  But I’m trying to show them. Trying to eradicate the shadow. I promised Patrick. I promised myself. No more.

  I strip the beds, fill the washing machine, and switch it on, making a third coffee as I wipe down the kitchen. There’s a half-full bottle of wine on the side and I’m tempted to pour some. Eleven in the morning and I already want a glass of wine.

  I drop the damp cloth into the sink and sit at the table. God, I’m tired. I close my eyes and Patrick’s house hovers there, looming and dark. My mother hovers, alone and dying. Panic flutters. No. Stop. But the other way is Patrick’s dream and my guilt at denying it: a house on the seafront, windows open, the sea breeze billowing the curtains. A life straight out of Good Homes, our very own postcard destination, Joe happy and smiling again. But even in that picture I’m at the shoreline with my back to the rest of them, looking out to sea, wishing I could sail away. Go to your happy place, Mum, Mia used to say, in those first bad weeks after my mother died, when she could see me drowning, but could Patrick’s house ever be that place? I can see it—what he wants it to be, what it was—when he talks about it, and part of me yearns for tha
t too. I know we’d never in a million years be able to afford something else that beautiful. But I’m scared. Scared that what happened in that house since will feed on the dark shadows I’ve spent half a year pushing away and that it’ll bring them back.

  I open my eyes and my vision is blurry with tears. My headache’s getting worse and I go upstairs to look for painkillers, washing down two Tylenol with water. I sit on the edge of the bath, teeth gritted against the throbbing pain. I grab the bottle again and take out another couple of pills—I need more than two to push this headache away. As I put the bottle back in the bathroom cabinet, I see Patrick’s sleeping tablets.

  He started having nightmares years ago. He can’t remember what happened in them, but he’d wake up screaming, scaring me and the kids. It got so he was reluctant to go to bed and the doctor gave him these sleeping tablets. He took them and, after a while, the nightmares stopped.

  God, I could use an end to my nightmares, too. I know the painkillers will just dilute the headache—the only thing that will cure it is sleep. I swear I can hear the echo of the clock ticking a floor below me. It’s hours until I’m due to meet Mia for our shopping trip. I could sleep, eat up the hours in one greedy gulp—numb myself for a while and drift away to a dreamland where my toes sink into white sand and the sea is turquoise and pristine. I’ll set the alarm and when I wake up, I’ll feel better.

  I take the sleeping pills out of the cabinet. Take two tablets before retiring, it reads. I press one into my palm, then add another. The second sticks in my throat and I gulp down more water to get rid of the bitterness. My heart’s beating faster as I go through to the bedroom.

  I sit on the edge of the bed. The clock is ticking downstairs. It’s getting louder, but I’m still awake. The pills are probably expired after all this time. Maybe I should take another… I go to take out one, but two land on my palm.

  My fingers close over them. I shut my eyes and drift. I try to find that soft white sand, but instead there’s a rocky beach under a stormy sky, a house with staring black windows and a door swinging in the breeze, broken police tape fluttering from it. Lights pulse and flicker and I’m sinking into a dream where an unfamiliar door opens and a shadow comes in. I think I’ve had this dream before. I try to pull out of sleep—this doesn’t feel safe anymore—but I’ve sunk too far.

  Who’s there? my dream self says, and it comes out slurred. The shadow shushes me, flickering in and out of focus, and in my dream it’s Mum coming in, brushing my hair back, soothing away my headache, offering me water.

  So tired now, I’ll just sleep. Sleep for a few hours…

  “Sarah? Fuck, Sarah—what did you do?”

  Someone pulls me up, drags me out of sleep. There are fingers in my mouth, stretching it wide, pushing in too far, down my throat until I gag. I can’t breathe and I pull at the hand, try to get it off, but I can’t. It’s Patrick. He’s pushing his fingers farther down my throat and everything comes up with a choking lurch, vomit spewing out, down his hands, down me, all over the bed. Oh, God, the mess, I’m sorry, but he’s dragging me up, off the bed. My legs won’t hold me, I can’t walk, but he hoists me up, dragging me into the bathroom, pushing me into the bath, turning the shower on cold, so cold. I gasp as the cold bites at the numbness and I struggle, but his hand holds me under the shower.

  Someone’s screaming, I think it’s Mia but I can’t see her, and Patrick’s yelling, Call an ambulance, call a fucking ambulance, and I’m wondering, Who for? What’s happened? But then the water stops and I’m still so tired and I just want to sleep and I’m drifting again…

  “I won’t let you leave me—not like this. Don’t you dare, Sarah—don’t you fucking dare,” Patrick says, and he slaps me hard across the face, and I slip back in the bath and my head smacks against the taps and I—

  “Sarah? Sarah? Wake up, Sarah. Sarah? Wake up, Sarah—please… I’m sorry I had to be so rough but, God, Sarah—I thought you were dying.”

  “Mum? Can you hear me, Mum?”

  Mia. Mia’s voice. She’s crying. I fight my way to the surface, struggle against the heaviness trying to push me down. I open my eyes and she’s in a chair next to me and I’m in a bed but I don’t know where—this isn’t home.

  I remember… I don’t know. I don’t know what I remember. Someone. Pills. Patrick, his fingers down my throat. I swallow and a sound comes out of me. Not a word, more of a whimper.

  Mia leans forward. “Mum? God, Mum—why did you do it?”

  Do what? But Mia’s out of her chair, in the doorway calling for someone. A nurse in blue scrubs comes in. I must be in the hospital. Patrick’s behind her and I close my eyes again, let myself sink. Not yet. Not ready for Patrick yet.

  When I open my eyes again, Joe’s there, the chair pulled up close to the bed so he’s only inches away. His hair hangs over his face, a black curtain hiding his eyes. He’s so thin, his arm resting on the bed nothing but skin and bone. I move my hand to nudge his and he lifts his head, gives me a familiar half-smile when he sees I’m awake.

  “I knew you’d make it,” he says, then leans in even closer so I can feel his warm breath on my cheek. “Did Dad do something?” he says. “He did, didn’t he? Is that why you tried to kill yourself?”

  What?

  What?

  This time I stay awake. There’s no one sitting next to my bed and the corridor outside is dark, one set of footsteps echoing away into the distance. My hand hurts. There’s a tube and a needle going into it and a drip stand next to my bed. My throat aches and feels swollen. I’m cold and shivery, like I’ve got the flu, but I don’t think it’s the flu that’s brought me here.

  Joe’s words are fluttering around my mind and I can’t get them to go away. Kill myself? No. I don’t understand. It was Mum’s birthday and I was tired and I had a headache and I took some painkillers and… the sleeping pills. I remember them. But I didn’t take enough to make people think I was suicidal, did I? It was only two, wasn’t it? I can’t remember. Fuck. I can’t remember how many I took.

  Patrick’s holding my hand, the one with the tube going in. His thumb is stroking the bump in the bandage covering the needle, and although he’s stroking gently, it’s making the needle move and my stomach turns in slow, lazy waves. I try to pull my hand away and he squeezes, just for a second, long enough for my whole hand to throb. He lets go then and leans back in the chair.

  “I thought you were dead.” He whispers it and I can see fear on his face. “I came in and saw you sprawled on the bed and I thought I was too late. I thought you were dead.”

  “No…” My voice is a croak, a raw, grating rasp.

  Patrick waves his hand, like he’s waving away my protest. My words have wings too. “I don’t understand—I thought things were better. I thought you were better.”

  “I didn’t…”

  “What do you think this is going to do to Joe?” He leans forward and he knocks the drip stand, making it rattle. He steadies it, looking down at me. “Do you know how close you came to dying? Really? Do you know what damage you could have done to yourself taking that many pills? The only reason you’re not dying now is because you hadn’t swallowed all of them. They were still in your mouth and I got them out.”

  Two. I took two pills. I got more out of the packet, but I didn’t take them, did I? And a few painkillers. Too many, I know. But not enough for this. I was tired, not suicidal.

  “Please, Sarah,” he says, and it’s his voice that sounds raw now. “I can’t lose you, I can’t.” More than fear. It’s panic—he reeks of it.

  CHAPTER 4

  “I brought you more brochures and a coffee—I guessed you must be sick of hospital dishwater tea by now.” Caroline sets a steaming paper cup next to me on the bedside table and sits down. The coffee smells like heaven.

  “Thanks,” I say, pulling myself upright. I shake my head as she holds out a glossy brochure offering exotic safari adventures. The word adventure puts a bitter taste in my mouth.
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  Her hair is black, hanging straight and heavy, suiting a scowl. It was copper red the other day. I abandoned the hair dye years ago, giving in to the mouse, but Caroline still colors hers half a dozen times a year. Less of the blue and pink these days, though.

  “What the fuck happened?”

  “I didn’t do it,” I say.

  “What?”

  “I didn’t mean to take an overdose.”

  She leans back, staring at me for such a long time. There are tears in her eyes and I wish I were stronger, that I could speak without it bloody hurting so I could make her believe me.

  I reach for the coffee and take a sip. They’ve taken the drip away, but I can see Caroline staring at the back of my hand. It’s purple, a big dark bruise, like a flower with a red center where the cannula went in. The bruise on my arm has faded, yellowed—this new one is much more impressive.

  “How’s Joe doing?” she asks, and I tense.

  “He’s fine.”

  “Really? Because last time you had a meltdown, he drove a car into a wall.”

  I flinch. “It was an accident.”

  “He accidentally stole your car?”

  “You know what I mean. It wasn’t…”

  “It wasn’t like-mother-like-son?”

  “Fucking hell, Caroline.” My hand jerks and coffee spills on my wrist.

  “Where are the children now?”

  “With Patrick.”

  She rolls her eyes. “With Patrick? Oh, yeah, he’ll help. Christ, I should have grabbed you the moment I saw you two together at that party and steered you in the opposite direction.”

  “It’s not Patrick’s fault.” I think of the first time I saw him—he was so beautiful. “And besides, I don’t think I would have let you.”

  “I should have hit you over the head. Knocked you out and dragged you away.”