I pace the flat incessantly, stopping only to throw a double vodka down my throat. I find myself back at the window looking down at the deserted street, as if in disbelief. We’ve never spent a night apart ever since the first night I spent at his house. After two hours of waiting, I finally admit to myself that he’s not coming back. Not tonight, anyway.
I go and sit dry-eyed in front of the television. I recognize that I’m watching a movie, but beyond that I don’t register anything. All I can see before my eyes is the moment he ripped my chest open with a knife by saying, ‘I just can’t do this anymore.’
Do what? I haven’t pushed or tried to get from him anything that he didn’t want to give. I switch off the TV and put on my CD player. Whitney Houston’s ‘I Will Always Love You’ comes on. It grates on my nerves. I switch it off with a grunt. The flat becomes horribly silent.
I rush to fill it with sound. I pick Vangelis. It’s Dom’s favorite. Beautiful, dramatic music fills the air, but for some reason the only thing I want to listen to is ‘Stairway to Heaven’. The wistful longing and mysterious lyrics suit my mood. I listen to Heart’s rendition of the song.
In my condition it seems to me that the arrangement of music is in timeless layers that open up like a flower to reveal a yearning, fragile soul calling for something almost forgotten.
When Heart’s version ends, I move on to Dolly Parton’s. As soon as I’ve listened to her, I put on Led Zepplin’s original version. Then I go back to Heart’s version. Obsessively, I open my laptop and look at street performers singing the song. Again and again I return to Heart’s version. I listen and I listen. As if the solution to my problem is hidden in the song.
But there is no solution.
I am the woman who thought that everything that glitters is gold. The one who was building a stairway to heaven, but, as Dom once told me, my stairway is whispering in the wind.
When dawn breaks in the sky I am still listening to music.
Dom doesn’t call even in the morning.
I go to work, a wreck. I open the door to my office and look at my desk with dread. I hate this temporary job I took last week where I have to field on-line complaints all day about packages that have not arrived, are delayed, lost, or damaged. My job is to calmly absorb their frustration and send them on the relevant department.
The dreary drudgery of it has to be seen to be believed. At least when I was at HMRC I felt I was doing something good. There was always that feeling that I counted for something.
Here, I’m a cog in the wheel.
I truly count for nothing. Perhaps I should have listened to Dom. Perhaps I should have taken his offer of money and waited until I found a better job. But I couldn’t bring myself to do that. I was too proud. And now I think, Thank God I didn’t take his money.
No matter how bad this job is, at least it pays my bills.
I sit at my desk and jump every time my phone rings. Sometimes I stare at it as if I can metaphysically make him call me. I wait and wait. Until lunchtime, until I can bear it no more. I pick up my phone and call Jake.
‘Hey, Ella,’ he says. His tone is surprised and cautious.
‘Hello, Jake. I … uh … Can I talk to you … um … alone?’
‘Of course,’ he says immediately, and his tone tells me what I suspected. He knows exactly what’s wrong with Dom.
‘Thank you, Jake.’
‘No problem. We’re in the country tonight. Want to come over for dinner? I can send a car.’
‘No, no. No need for that, I’ll borrow a friend’s car. And I won’t disturb you at dinnertime. I’ll come just before that.’
‘All right, see you about six thirty.’
‘That’ll be great. Thank you.’
‘You know how to get to mine, right?’
‘Yes. I’ll see you then.’
‘See you later.’
‘Jake?’
‘Yeah?’
‘I really appreciate this.’
I hear him draw in a sharp breath. ‘That’s OK, Ella. I’m always happy to help.’
I park Anna’s company car next to Lily’s Mercedes-Benz and walk up to the front door. Smoothing down my hair, I ring on the doorbell. Lily opens the door with a smile.
‘Hello,’ she greets.
‘Hey,’ I say awkwardly.
She opens the door wider. ‘Come on in,’ she invites.
I step into her home. Lily is one of those women who have it all. Happiness, beauty, love, wealth.
She’s wearing a long, halter-neck dress that comes to her ankles. It’s one of those dresses that you know cost an arm and a leg. Once, a dress like that would have sent me to my computer to see if her husband’s tax records matched that level of expenditure, but those days are gone. It feels as if the notion that I was a tax officer at Her Majesty’s Revenue Customs was another life, or just a dream of mine.
I smile at her. ‘Congratulations. I heard you’re pregnant.’
She rubs her belly and smiles contentedly. ‘Yes, thank you, Ella. And how have you been keeping?’
‘Good,’ I say.
‘Jake’s expecting you. He’s in his den. Do you want to come through and have a drink before you see him?’
‘No. No, thank you,’ I refuse politely.
Liliana runs in from one of the reception rooms, screaming, ‘Aunty Ella, Aunty Ella.’
She is wearing a pink skirt and a T-shirt that states in bold letters ‘My Mother Thinks She’s The Boss’. I go down on my haunches. ‘My, my, look how much you’ve grown since I last saw you.’
‘That was yesterday,’ she says scornfully.
‘Dear me. Yes, that was yesterday.’
‘My poo was blue today,’ she declares suddenly.
‘Oh,’ I exclaim.
‘Lil,’ her mother reprimands, ‘what did I tell you about telling the whole world about the color of your poo?’
‘Aunty Ella is not the whole world,’ Liliana argues with impeccable logic. She turns her adorable face toward me. ‘My poo was made of icing.’
I straighten and look at Lily.
‘She went to a birthday party yesterday and ate too much blue icing from a Thomas the Tank Engine cake,’ Lily explains
Even though I was distraught, it made me giggle. How utterly sweet.
‘Where’s Uncle Dom?’ Liliana demands.
The laughter dies in my throat. ‘I … I have no idea.’ Voicing the thought saddens me greatly. Far more than I would have expected.
‘Lil, Aunty Ella has come to see Daddy. Say bye-bye now.’ She looks at me with an encouraging smile. ‘Go on, Ella. It’s just at the end of the corridor.’
‘See you later, Liliana,’ I call as I start walking down it.
‘Can I go and sit with Daddy and Aunty Ella?’ I hear Liliana ask her mother plaintively.
‘No, you can’t.’
‘Why not?’ the minx demands.
I don’t hear Lily’s answer because I’m already too far away, or they’ve moved into one of the other rooms. It hits me then: I’m not part of this family, and it looks like I never will be. I stand for a moment outside the door at the end of the corridor. Taking a deep breath, I knock.
It is opened almost immediately.
‘Come in,’ Jake invites cordially.
He is wearing a black T-shirt and gray jeans, and I must admit, just being in his presence makes me nervous. He is as big and intimidating as Dom, but there are absolutely no buttons to push. No weakness. No secret sadness to exploit. He is one of those smoothly impenetrable and guarded people. It was always clear to me that he is the boss of his family. He guards them as ferociously as a mother lion guards her newborn babies.
Woe betide anyone who tries to hurt them.