White Goods (50 page)

‘Brrrr!’ she
muttered, rubbing her arms to increase blood circulation, making a
mental note to get someone in to have a look at the
heating.

During the
taxi ride to Harvey’s, she wondered whether leaving a message with
the Hourigans would have been a better idea than just turning up.
Isla had rung several times to both accept and decline the
invitation, but each time had cut the line before Emma or Stephen
could answer. What if they asked for Seth, she wondered, as the cab
left the residential streets of West Lindel and headed for the
centre. What would she say? There were always excuses, and this
wouldn’t be the first time she had turned-out by herself. Seth
could be held back somewhere, promising to catch them up, and when
he didn’t show, well, it was bad manners on his part, but Isla
wouldn’t lose face. Not entirely, she thought, opening her purse,
as the taxi pulled up outside her destination.

‘Three-twenty, love.’

Upon entering
Harvey’s, Isla discovered that she and Seth were not the only
invitees: ten to twelve others were spread-out around two large
glass tables, central to which were ice-filled buckets cooling
champagne.

Isla paused,
taken back by the suddenness of it all. She was on her own, without
Seth, in here of all places: Harvey’s Wine Bar.

‘No Seth?’
Emma Hourigan asked, stepping towards her, as Isla stepped back
from the past. Her otherwise flat voice was flavoured with sour
pips of disappointment.

‘Not yet,’
Isla lied, accepting a mineral water in place of the
alcohol.

Chairs
shifted to accommodate a space for Isla at one of the tables and
she sat down. Yet, her chair remained stuck-out from the group.
‘Will he be very late?’ Emma inquired, once or twice in varying
forms and people turned to look at Isla, half-smiling, but soon
resumed their talk.

Excusing
herself, Isla disappeared to the toilets, shut herself in a
cubical, and wondered what on Earth had made her come. She had
known these weren’t her friends; without Seth she had no connection
here, no reason to come. What was she proving by sitting-out the
lonely discomfort of their company? She was mad.

‘Utterly mad,
Isla,’ she told herself. ‘You should go home. Excuse yourself,
develop a headache, anything. They won’t care, or even notice,’ she
concluded.

Hearing
someone else enter the washroom, she pulled the flush, and returned
to the group, ready with excuses.

Yet, Isla
wasn’t obliged to say a thing. They had already gone. Someone had
scribbled on a napkin; ‘Sorry, table booked for eight-thirty,
couldn’t stall any longer. See you at the usual.’

The
usual
. Isla wasn’t sure if she’d been
cleverly abandoned, or whether the term was used to express
familiarity. Either way, she had no idea where they had
gone.

Had she
really been that long in the toilets? She had a sense of losing
time and couldn’t help but feel their fleeing her echoed Seth’s.
Still, there was part of her that felt liberated now the discomfort
of their company had ceased.

The imbalance
of humiliation and relief leaving her empty, she made her way to
the bar.

‘
Can you call
me a cab,’ she asked of the bartender and, in her voice, heard
echoes of the past and wondered if comfort could be sought here
after all.

As a taxi
took her home, Isla felt nothing. Not sadness, relief, desperation.
Nothing. The last few days whizzed by like the blurred roadside
view. Seth had left before; sometimes for a few days, occasionally
for a few weeks. Yet, he had never taken everything before; there
had always been something left to return for. She wondered where he
was. How far he had got? And how long she would hold-back without
him? For over six years he had been at her side. He had stood by
her, lending her his strength, giving her comfort, when others had
left, unable to cope with her self-pity and self-destruction. They
had even been lovers on occasion. With Seth’s help, she had come
back to life. By leaving, had he taken it all back? Doubts and
anxieties frightened Isla. What if only his presence had given her
sobriety? With the bottle of gin as his callous goodbye, was he
handing Isla back her old self, as if the new one belonged with
him? Isla wasn’t sure. She hadn’t drunk the Hourigans’ champagne,
hadn’t ordered anything at the bar, but still the gin remained in
her bag. Unopened, but present.

A violent
jolt and a sudden screech of tyres bolted Isla from her
thoughts.

‘
Shit! Christ!
You fucking idiot! You trying to kill us all?’ The cab driver was
out of his seat, out of his car, ranting into the night, his warm
breath like smoke on the cool air. ‘You fucking see that? Run
straight in front of me, he did! Bloody nutter!’

Isla, a
little shaken, but otherwise unhurt, stepped out of the taxi and
began to walk.

‘
Oi, love, you
alright? Thought you wanted a lift?’ the driver cried out, a hint
of concern in his tone. ‘Bit of a shock, I know, but no harm done,’
he continued, squinting to negotiate her figure through the
dark.

‘
It’s
alright,’ Isla cried back, her pace quickening. ‘I’ll walk the
rest.’

‘
What about
the fucking fare?’ she heard more distantly, but Isla didn’t care
about his takings, or the near-accident, or anything. She just
wanted to keep walking, to clear her head, to be away from it all.
She wondered if the driver would get nasty and follow her. If he
tried anything, she would definitely remember him: she hadn’t noted
his name, but she knew the taxi firm and could identify him by a
small tattoo just above his left wrist. It was of the
letters
MS
,
entwined. Yet, she needn’t have worried: his ranting faded and he
drove off in another direction.

It took her a
while to locate herself. The terraced area in which she lived
appeared uniform at night: row after row of three-tiered houses
fronted by a never-ending train of parked cars. The echo of her
footsteps set her on edge, too, and several times she stopped to
check she wasn’t being followed, suspicious that the worst was yet
to occur. With her mental compass finally in check, Isla calculated
just two streets to go and her paranoia lessened.

‘
Here,’ she
uttered, turning into Archer’s Avenue.
Here
, a word that sufficiently
replaced the one she’d have used before: home.

Inside number
three, the cold cut at her once again, as if arctic winds had stung
the walls with their icy breath. Yet, she was relieved to be there,
however cold and unwelcoming the place seemed to be.

Leaving her
shoes in the hallway, her stockinged feet padded the stairs, taking
her to the first landing. Seconds later, Isla was running a bath.
The water would rinse away some of the evening, swirl it into the
sewer beneath the house. Once it was ready, Isla removed her
clothes and rippled the surface with a big brave toe: the heat was
immense.

As she ran a
rush of cold into the hot pool, the mirror above the sink caught
her eyes. A message appeared to have been finger marked onto its
glass, and the dense steam from the bath water had brought the
scrawl from obscurity, like invisible ink. She hadn’t noticed it
before. It read: ‘In the attic.’

Isla
shuddered: was this Seth’s final insult? ‘In the attic,’ she
uttered, feeling colder again, in spite of the screen of steam
before her.

So, he had
known of her secret hiding place after all.

‘
Did you think
I’d just return there, Seth?’ she cried into the empty house, as if
Seth could hear her, as if his vanishing had been literal and he
had merely melted into the walls and was watching her from behind
the paper. ‘Did you hope I’d just fall apart, give up in your
absence? Is that what you thought? Let you get away with whatever
you’ve done, no questions asked? Well it’s not going to be like
that, not for me. You see, Seth, you hadn’t banked on something:
I’m not that weak. Not anymore. Not my mother’s daughter after
all!’

She was
crying now: tears artexed her smooth skin, leaving it puffed and
blotchy, memories she’d suppressed shaking her. In her mind she saw
ten years into the past: her mother, beneath the blue surface of
the swimming pool, her poppy-red bathing gown ballooning out like a
canopy above the waterlogged body. When the ambulance had arrived,
she was already dead. The autopsy report concluded suicide: her
stomach heaving with pills and alcohol. She had died just a month
after Carlos.

Isla was at
the top of the stairs, naked. She abandoned the bath; the mirror
message had distracted her, leaving her frustrated, imbalanced. For
the last nine days, she’d felt mainly numb, walking around, waiting
for someone to wake her up. And now they had.

‘
And here I
am,’ she uttered, looking up at the attic stairs, adding up its
dozen treads in her head. ‘Is this really what you wanted, Seth?’
she murmured, much weaker.

The final
image she had of Seth invaded her mind, demanding her sympathy,
confusing her further. He was sat on his bed, an open suitcase to
his right; his body battered and bruised, his savaged face
bleeding. ‘I’ll explain when you get back,’ he had said, before
sending her out for takeaway.

Below, the
answer-phone tape began running: ‘Hi, this is Seth, I’m sorry
myself and Isla can’t come to the phone right now. But if you’d
like to leave a message, we’ll call you as soon as we
can.’

There
followed a pause, a doubt, and then a voice broke the
quiet.

‘
Isla, it’s
Henry here. If you’re there, pick up the phone. If not, call me
back as soon as you can. It’s urgent. It’s about Seth.’

In the attic,
the still spirit of a sixteen year-old suicide began to stir: it’s
transparent lips cracked apart, an icy breath exhumed from long
buried lungs.

The house
grew a little colder.

And Isla
remained on the landing, looking up, counting the twelve
steps.