postcards, hadn’t scared me too much. But seeing her in the flesh was terrifying, because I thought I recognised her. She was some distance away, her face mostly covered with a scarf and sunglasses, but she was dressed just like me, and in that moment, I thought it was her. It wasn’t. It can’t have been.
She ran away when she saw me. Ben came home early and we called the police.
I should be more worried than I am about my husband.
What is wrong with me? Am I losing my mind?
It feels as if something very bad is happening again, something a lot worse than before.
Galway, 1987
I feel lost when I wake up. I don’t know where I am.
It’s dark and cold. I have a tummy ache and feel a bit sick, just like I do when my brother takes me out on Daddy’s fishing boat. I reach out into the darkness, my fingers expecting to meet my bedroom wall, or the little side table made out of driftwood from the bay, but my fingers don’t feel that. Instead they touch something cold, like metal, all around me. I start to panic, but I’m very tired, so tired I realise that I must be dreaming. I close my eyes and decide that if I still don’t know where I am when I’ve counted to fifty inside my head, then I’ll let myself cry. The last number I remember counting is forty-eight.
The next time I open my eyes, I’m in the back of a car. It’s not my father’s car, I know that without having to think about it too much, because we don’t have one any more. He sold it to pay the electricity bill when the lights went out. The seats of the car I’m in are made of red leather, and my face and arms seem to be stuck to it when I first wake up; I have to peel them off.
I stare at the back of the head of the person driving, before remembering the nice lady called Maggie. Then I sit up properly and look out of the windows, but I still don’t know where I am.
‘Where are we going?’ I rub the sleep from my eyes, gifts the sandman left behind scratching my cheeks.
‘Just a little drive,’ says Maggie, smiling at me in the small mirror which shows a rectangle of her face.
‘Are you taking me back to my daddy’s house?’
‘You’re staying with me for a wee while, do you remember? There isn’t enough food for you at your house just now.’
I do remember her saying that, I’m just so tired I forgot.
‘Why don’t you have another little sleep, not far to go now. I’ll wake you when we get where we’re going. I have a lovely surprise for you when we get there.’
I lie back down on the red leather seat and close my eyes, but I don’t sleep. Even though I do like surprises, I’m scared and excited all at once. Maggie seems nice, but everything I just saw out the window looked so strange: the houses, the walls, even the signs on the side of the road.
I might be wrong, but it feels like I am a long way from home.
London, 2017
I think homes might be a little bit like children; maybe you need to establish a bond as soon as possible to achieve a lasting emotional attachment. Long days on set have meant that this house has been little more than somewhere to sleep at night. I’ve spent the evening searching for a picture of the man I have been married to for almost two years. I should have been learning my lines for tomorrow, but how can I when everything feels so wrong? I’m left with more questions than concern, unanswered mainly because I daren’t ask them.
I stare down at the only photo of Ben I’ve managed to find: a framed black-and-white picture taken when he was a child. I hate it, I always have; it gives me the creeps. Five-year-old Ben is dressed in a formal suit that looks strange on a boy so young, but it isn’t that. The thing that upsets me is the haunting look on his face, the way his smiling eyes stare out of the picture as though they are following you around the room. The child in the photo doesn’t just look naughty or devious, he looks evil.
I asked him to put the picture in his study so I wouldn’t have to look at it, and I remember him laughing at the time. Not because he thought I was being ridiculous, but as though the photo were part of a joke that I wasn’t in on. I haven’t seen or thought about it since, but staring down at the black-and-white image now stirs such a peculiar feeling inside me, something that is equal in dread and disgust. My husband and I don’t have any family left on either side, we are both adult orphans. We used to say that it was just me and him against the world, before it changed to me and him against each other. We never said the latter, we just felt it.
Wandering around the house tonight, I notice how horribly big it is for just two people; there’s not enough life to fill up the empty spaces. Ben made it very clear – after we got married – that he never wanted us to have children together. I felt tricked and cheated. He should have told me before that; he knew what I wanted. Even then, I thought I could change his mind, but I couldn’t. Ben said he felt too old to become a dad in his mid-forties. Whenever I tried to revisit the conversation he’d say the same thing, every time:
‘We have each other. We don’t need anything or anyone else.’
It’s as though we had formed an exclusive club with just two members, and he liked it that way. But I didn’t. I wanted to have a child with him so badly, it was all I wanted, and he wouldn’t give it to me; a chance to clone ourselves and start again. Isn’t that what everybody wants? I knew that his reluctance had something to do with his past and his family, but he never spoke about them, he always said that some pasts deserved to be left behind, and I can understand that. It isn’t as though I ever shared the truth with him about my own. We exchange the currency of our dreams for a reality funded by acceptance as we get older.
I remind myself that it cannot be this hard to find a single, recent photo of Ben. At one time we had albums full of pictures, but then I stopped making them. Not because the memories didn’t mean anything, but because I always thought we’d create more. I know other people like to share every moment of their private lives by posting pictures on social media, but I’ve never liked that sort of thing, and neither did he, it was something else we had in common. I’ve fought too hard to protect my privacy to just casually give it away.
I pull down the attic ladder and climb up the steps, telling myself I’m still looking for photos. There is nowhere else I haven’t already looked. Ben was supposed to take care of the move and all the unpacking. I’m guessing there must be a box full of old photo albums up here, along with all our other belongings that I can’t see downstairs: books, ornaments and the general shared detritus and dust of lives that have been lived together.
I turn on the attic light and I’m baffled by what I see.
There is nothing here.
Literally nothing. It’s as though most of the life I remember has disappeared, and there is very little left of us. I don’t understand. It’s as though we didn’t really live here.
My eyes continue to scan the dusty floorboards and cobwebs, illuminated by a single, flickering bulb. Then I see it: an old shoe box in the far corner.
The ceiling is low, and I crawl on my hands and knees, trying to protect my face from the dirt and spiders lurking in the gloom. It’s cold up here, and my hands are shaking when I remove the lid from the box. When I see what is inside, I feel physically sick.
I climb back down the attic steps, with the shoe box tucked under my arm. A cocktail of fear and relief stirs inside me; I’m afraid of what this could mean, but also relieved that the police didn’t find it. I put the box in the bottom of the wardrobe, sliding it next to others which contain things they should, instead of things