too long, I’ve forced myself to tolerate his behavior, while I hold our marriage together, no matter what, for Niamh’s sake, ignoring the truth—that Andrew and I are toxic. He’s bullied away what love there was and shattered my trust. There is no honesty between us. Whatever his reasons for wanting me here, he doesn’t care about our marriage any more than I do.
After we’ve eaten, I wait for Niamh to go up to her bedroom, for the sound of her TV filtering through her cracked-open door, before I go to find Andrew in the living room. It’s a large, high-ceilinged room, with a plush carpet and a pair of expensive leather sofas, behind which a series of tall sash windows look out onto the garden. Slouched on one of the sofas, his empty plate is on the coffee table, his shoes kicked off, his attention focused on his phone. In the home we share, having eaten the meal I cooked for him, he’s blatantly texting her.
Pushing the door closed behind me, I walk over and stand in front of him.
“Not now,” he says sharply.
“Yes, now.” I don’t budge. “For fuck’s sake, Andrew. Why are we doing this?”
As he laughs cynically, I stare at him, trying to discern even the faintest trace of the man I fell in love with eighteen years ago. But he doesn’t exist anymore. “Oh, I think you know the answer to that.”
Leaning down, I snatch his phone away. “The very least you could do is show me some respect,” I hiss, keeping my voice low to prevent Niamh from hearing. “I know you don’t care about me, but Niamh sees the way you treat me. She sees everything. You could make an effort for once, instead of texting one of your sluts.”
The word is unfamiliar on my tongue, but I’m driven by a need to confront him. Standing up, he twists his phone out of my hand, but not before I glimpse the screen, taking in the image on it, frozen with shock as it registers. Then my stomach lurches, and I feel my heart race out of control as I realize what this means. “You disgust me,” I say with all the contempt I can muster.
Turning around, I walk back out to the kitchen, glimpsing a movement at the top of the stairs. Looking up, I catch the back of Niamh’s head before she closes her bedroom door. If there was any closeness between us, I would go up there and talk to her, reassure her that everything’s fine, that Andrew’s still cross about what happened to the car tires this morning. Laugh about it—a shared moment between a mother and her daughter. You know what he’s like.
But I can’t lie to her; can’t tell her platitudes that neither of us believes, because Niamh would see through it. She knows what’s going on, but we’re too distanced to talk about it. Far easier for both of us to say nothing.
Niamh
My parents’ marriage falls another step toward ruin, and I wonder why they stay together; but as always, it’s easier for my mother to say nothing.
I don’t see Hollie until the following weekend. She comes over while my mother is working and my father’s playing golf. Her eyes hold mine, open yet closed; making contact yet telling me nothing.
“I don’t know what to do.” For once, she isn’t theatrical. “Too many things are wrong.”
Not sure what to say, I watch her.
“Do you really know your dad?” Her eyes are huge. “Or your mum? Do you ever think like they’re this person with stuff in their life you know nothing about?”
I frown at her, not sure what she’s getting at. I know my parents aren’t happy, but only because it’s obvious. They don’t ever tell me anything. “Like what?”
“If I tell you...” Her bottom lip wobbles. “You have to swear, Niamh. On your life. You can’t tell anyone. Not ever.”
“I swear.”
Hollie’s eyes dart around, and then she blurts out, “I’ve found something out about my dad.”
Hollie’s dad wrote a couple of books a few years ago. For a moment, I imagine one of them being made into a movie. But Hollie would be excited about that, not upset. “What about him?”
“He’s into something. He knows bad people, Niamh.” Then she breaks off. “I can’t talk about it.”
“But you’ve started. You have to tell me.” It’s typical of Hollie to do this.
She jumps up. “Let’s get out of here.”
“Hollie, it’s raining. And there isn’t anywhere.”
“I know somewhere.” As she pulls on her jacket and does up her boots, I know she’s crazy, because there isn’t anywhere around here, just scattered big houses behind garden walls and a village church. But under her spell, I follow her.
There’s a rawness in the air as we step outside, where Hollie’s introspective mood is replaced by recklessness as she runs across the garden into the lane.
“Wait . . .” Zipping up my jacket, I run after her. “Where are we going?”
“Deeprose House.”
Deeprose House has high hedges and heavy locked gates. “We can’t, Hollie. It belongs to someone.”
“Of course we can. We can do whatever we like. It’s empty—it’s been empty for weeks. The Penns are away. They’re not back until March.”
At her side, I jog to keep up. “How do you know?”
She’s silent for a moment. “I just do. Oh God . . . Ida Jones has seen us. Run!”
As I glance at Ida’s window, she seems to be beckoning me. I pause, momentarily torn between finding out what she wants and Hollie’s retreating back, then break into a run.
Side by side, we turn up Furze Lane, past the row of terraced flint cottages, their small windows dimly lit, coils of wood smoke coming from two of the chimneys. Then beneath the trees on either side, the lane narrows. Deeprose House is still a few yards ahead, but Hollie stops suddenly.
“We’ll go this way.” She points toward a metal farm gate, the top bar of which is wrapped in barbed wire. Undeterred, she climbs over into a field of thick grass, waiting for me to join her, before heading toward the middle of it. “There’s a back way.”
My head fills with questions, but I don’t ask any of them. Being with Hollie is how it was with Dylan. It’s an escape into a world so different from mine that at times like now, I don’t question her, just allow myself to be swept along for the ride.
At the other side of the field, there’s a post and rail fence, which we slip through.
“This way.” Hollie skips through an orchard where last year’s apples lie mostly unused, rotting underfoot. As we reach the other side, she stops and gestures dramatically at the stark hedges, beyond which a sweep of lawn slopes uphill toward the house. “Crazy, isn’t it.” She shakes her head. “I mean the Penns . . . They have a place like this, but half the time, they’re not even here.”
If I had a house like this, I’d never want to leave it, but right now, the gardens have a wildness about them, from being untouched.
