You Let Me In

5

Elle

I drop the final piece of naan into my mouth, then gather the takeaway dishes, following Fiona through to her kitchen.

‘Avert your eyes,’ Fiona instructs, glancing at the sink, which is piled with washing up. ‘One of those weeks.’

‘I’ll do them. It’ll take me a minute.’

‘You will not.’ She blocks the sink. ‘You can pour us more wine.’

My sister’s relentless bossiness has a nostalgic flavour. I’m used to my actions being channelled, as if I’m something fluid, destined to flow around Fiona.

‘I’ve been meaning to ask,’ I say, watching her rinse the plastic takeaway dishes, then jam them into the recycling bin, punching down a cereal box to make room. ‘You know when you cleaned after the Airbnb, did you happen to go into my writing room?’

‘Oh God, don’t tell me I was meant to clean in there, too?’ She forces the bin door shut with a shove. ‘I had such a busy week that I only got over for an hour. I’m not doing it again, by the way. Next time you can find a cleaner.’

‘No, it’s not that – it’s just, when I went in there, the window was left open and it felt like things were different.’

‘Different?’

‘Like things had been moved.’

Fiona turns. ‘What do you mean?’

‘I have this blue glass paperweight on my desk. Do you remember? Mum brought us them back from Malta.’

‘Yes, with the swirls of ink.’

‘It’s been chipped. I found the missing part lodged in my bedroom carpet.’

‘And?’

‘I think it happened while I was away.’

‘Thought you’d locked your writing room?’

‘I did.’

‘So, you think,’ Fiona says, an eyebrow cocked, ‘that the Airbnb renters broke into your writing room, chipped your paperweight, then tossed the broken piece into your bedroom?’

I’d anticipated this reaction: dismissive, unperturbed. That is precisely why I decided to tell my sister.

Fiona continues. ‘The glass probably got stuck to the sole of your shoe, and then you walked it around the house, and it finally came loose in one of the rooms.’ She slots a tablet into the dishwasher and clanks it shut with more force than is necessary. ‘I knew you’d get like this after renting your house. You need a dog.’

‘I do not need a dog.’

I fetch a bottle of white from the fridge and refill our glasses. The fridge door is covered with photos, notes, and the first of Drake’s crayon scribblings. My gaze lands on the picture of me and Flynn standing in front of our campervan, alongside Bill and a heavily pregnant Fiona.

I miss that camper. An old Mercedes Sprinter, which Flynn had spent months converting. We’d pull up at quiet beaches and cook dinner with the slide door pulled wide.

I pluck the photo from the fridge, looking more closely. I remember the first time I’d seen Flynn – the long sandy hair, the sun-tanned face, the skateboard slung under his arm, the carefree curve of his smile. My stomach flipped with desire as I’d served his coffee, slipping an extra biscuit on the saucer. He’d come back to the café every day for a week before he worked up the nerve to ask, ‘Fancy hanging out after you finish?’

I was twenty-four years old at the time and felt impossibly lost. I was working shifts in cafés and bars, sleeping at strange hours, barely leaving my rented flat except to go to work. I felt as if I were submerged … that life was happening to other people and I was watching it at a distance. I’d lost contact with my school friends and had distanced myself from Fiona and our mother. I didn’t know who I was or what I wanted until, on a Tuesday morning in spring, Flynn Fielding walked into the café with his skateboard. I could see the surface again; I could breathe.

Fiona moves to my shoulder. ‘Remind me why you’re divorcing again?’

I shoot her a look that says, Don’t.

‘You know what I’ve been thinking?’ Fiona says as I pin the photo back in place.

‘Here we go.’

‘You need to start dating.’

‘I thought I needed a dog.’

‘Date a man with a dog.’

‘Leave it with me.’

We take our wine through to the lounge and settle onto the sofas. In the warmth of the room, I find myself yawning, my eyelids heavy. It’s not even ten o’clock.

‘So tell me about the tenants. What were they like?’

‘Sorry?’

‘Joanna and her family. The renters. When you did the handover, did they seem okay? You know, not paperweight-chipping maniacs?’

Something passes over Fiona’s face. She inspects the stem of her wine glass. ‘Yes, they seemed fine.’

I know my sister. ‘What aren’t you telling me?’

‘Nothing at all.’

‘Fiona …’

There is a good three- or four-second pause before Fiona looks up, right at me.

‘Listen, I’m sorry, but I didn’t meet them.’

‘What?’

‘I went over the morning they arrived like we agreed, but they were out – so I just left a note with my phone number. I planned to check in with them later in the week, but then things got a bit chaotic and—’

‘You said you had! You told me you’d met them.’ My palm slams the sofa arm, surprising us both.

It is just like my sister to not follow through with something that doesn’t directly benefit her.

In the bright overhead light of Fiona’s bathroom, I’m confronted by how tired I look – the bags beneath my eyes settling into dark bruises. I’ve learned that you do not say you’re exhausted to a mother of a toddler who has been parenting on her own all week.

I wash my hands, forgetting that the cold tap sprays water, which shoots over my top. I snap off the tap. Not finding any towels, I dry my hands on the dressing gown hanging from the back of the door.

I remember offering to pay for a bathroom refurbishment – back when my book advance felt like it might never run out – but Fiona had given me one of her lethal, haughty stares, and I knew not to offer again. In a way, I’m pleased. There’s a sense of comfort in the bath edge lined with shampoos and conditioners, the plastic ducks and toy boats spooling from a net suckered to the tiles; there are toothbrushes jammed into a chipped mug, a bowl of tiny bottles of shower gels pilfered from hotels. There are no hidden cupboards for toiletries, or woven baskets to house neatly folded towels. It feels lived in and there is something appealing in that.

I’ve often thought that people who know Fiona in a professional capacity – who are used to her straight-talking, razor efficiency – would be surprised if they stepped into her home. It is a valve, a little pocket of chaos to relieve the pressure of her exacting approach to her work.

In that sense, I suppose we’re opposites. My house is my sanctuary: uncluttered, ordered. Everything has its place – and that gives me a sense of security, of calm.

It’s the rest of my life that’s in chaos.

Moving onto the landing, I pause outside Drake’s room. His door is ajar and my heart lifts at the thought of his little pyjama-clad body, the biscuit smell of his neck, the light raspy sound of his snores. It is so tempting to slip into the room, check his blanket, make sure he has his comforter by his hand – but I daren’t risk waking him. It took Fiona an hour to get him down and I don’t want to experience her wrath at being dragged to her feet again.

The room opposite is Fiona’s study, which is lit by a desk lamp. It is the boxroom in the house – the would-be-nursery, if Fiona would entertain the idea of another child (she won’t). Her desk is swamped beneath a sea of papers, notebooks and articles, a computer screen floating above the flotsam.

For years, Fiona worked as a journalist in London, writing ground-breaking exposé pieces about industry professionals. She went after those men and women like a hound following a scent, uncovering illegal fund transfers, tax evasion or any whiff of inequality towards staff. The work appealed to her exacting sense of fairness and she thrived in an industry with punishing hours and high pressure.

Moving to Cornwall and having a baby was not so much a change of direction, but the squealing of brakes, the burn of tyres on tarmac, a vehicle sliding out into a U-turn. It was impossible to do both; her job was driven by contacts, interviews, sources – all of which needed to happen in London.

Fiona’s work has always been central to her identity, so Bill and I were pleased when, on the evening of Drake’s first birthday, as party plates were being stacked, Fiona announced that she was going to set up as a freelance copywriter.

Now her working hours are defined by seeking out the perfect word, a crisp turn of phrase to appeal to customers, to draw them to a brand. A pin board is tacked to the wall above her desk, filled with briefs, images, and guidelines about a client’s specific language choices. In the middle of it all, there is a postcard. I recognise my own handwriting. You are so fearless, so talented, that I KNOW you’ll succeed. May Cutting Edge Copy fly!

I smile, touched that my sister keeps this note pinned above her work station.

Behind me, there is the creak of floorboards. ‘Not quite a sea view, is it?’ Fiona is standing in the doorway.

‘I love it in here.’

‘What are you looking at?’

‘You kept this postcard I sent you.’

‘Did I? I’d forgotten it was there.’

Then, from behind Fiona, there comes a wail. ‘Mummy!’

The front door opens, and Bill loafs into the house, a rush of cold air chasing after him.

He throws down a holdall, slinging his suit jacket over the top. His shirt is undone at the collar, tie removed.

‘Hey, aren’t you that famous author?’ He beams at his old joke, then opens his arms, shirt straining across his barrel chest. ‘Thought I spotted your car.’

As we hug, I catch the scent of car air-freshener and mints – and the subtle hint of cigarette smoke, too. Fiona banned him from smoking when she gave up six years ago, but we all know Bill likes the occasional secret cigarette. As does Fiona.

‘They taste better smoked in secret,’ Fiona had once explained. ‘Makes us feel as if we’re living dangerously.’

‘So where’s that gorgeous sister of yours?’

‘Upstairs. Drake woke.’

‘Ah.’ He glances at the takeaway menu on the side. ‘Fiona’s been cooking you lavish meals again?’

‘Makes a wonderful korma. Sorry, we didn’t know you’d be back early. We’d have saved you some.’

‘All I need,’ Bill says, moving into the kitchen, me following, ‘is one of these.’ He pulls a bottle of beer from the fridge, twists the cap free, and clinks the neck of it against my wine glass. ‘Cheers. To the end of the week.’

‘The end of the week,’ I agree, although I don’t share his buzz. Tomorrow I’m delivering an author talk at the local library and know I won’t relax fully until it is over.

Bill grabs a packet of pistachios and shakes them into a dish. He offers them first to me, then begins snapping the shells, dropping the nuts into his mouth, washing them down with beer.

‘How was France?’

‘Good. I enjoyed it – although I was ready to come home.’

‘House still standing?’

‘Thankfully, yes.’

‘Fiona said the Airbnb all went well.’

‘Think so.’

‘Next time you rent it, give me the nod. Wouldn’t mind escaping the chaos of this place for a few days.’ He laughs, eyes sparkling.

I remember meeting Bill for the first time when Fiona was living in London. He was standing at her sink, thick arms plunged into a bowl of soapy water, the kitchen light reflecting off the curve of his bald head. My first thought was that he was one of her housemates’ fathers.

Bill was so unlike the sallow-skinned academics who Fiona tended to date that I’d worried it wouldn’t last – that Fiona, with her tendency to bore quickly, would become distracted.

‘You know he has a proper job,’ Fiona told me later, when we were alone. ‘Something to do with sales. They give him a car to drive. This ugly great silver thing with awful tinted windows.’ She spoke about their relationship with a tone of quiet amusement, as if she couldn’t quite believe she’d fallen for him. ‘Bill hasn’t read a novel in two years. He watches snooker. He classes a good night out as having “a few jars” at a comedy club. He’s twelve years older than me. He wears jewellery – and I don’t mean body piercings. I mean actual jewellery. A gold neck chain. And a signet ring.’

I’d looked at her closely. ‘You really like him, don’t you?’

She’d smiled, glanced away – a girlish expression I rarely saw in my sister. ‘Yes, I think I do.’

Now Bill is asking, ‘Everything okay? You’re looking a bit tired, m’dear.’

I love Bill’s knack for sensing when I’m off-kilter.

‘I’m not sleeping brilliantly at the moment, that’s all.’

‘Ah, the insomnia snake. You’ve got a lot going on, eh? Flynn. Your book deadline. Maybe you’re still adjusting to being in the new house, too.’

I nod, reminded of how intuitive Bill can be.

‘You know that we’re here if you need us, don’t you?’ he says, placing a large hand on my shoulder. He squeezes – his grip just a fraction too firm.

‘Thought I heard the door,’ Fiona says, crossing the kitchen and kissing Bill on the mouth. ‘No traffic?’

‘I had a meeting in Bristol. Finished on time. Came straight here. Drake all right?’

‘Fine – but he’s yours for the weekend.’

‘As long as you’re all mine for the weekend, too,’ he says, pulling Fiona into his arms and burying his face in her neck.

I move towards the chair where I’ve left my coat and handbag. ‘I’m going to disappear.’

‘Don’t be silly! Stay!’ Bill says, releasing Fiona.

‘I’m giving a library talk in the morning.’

‘I saw the posters,’ Fiona says. ‘We’re going to try and pop in.’

‘Are we?’ Bill asks.

‘Don’t you dare!’ I say.

Fiona bats away my resistance. ‘It’s at eleven, isn’t it?’

‘Please, you’ve got better things to do with your weekend.’

‘We are immensely boring people, Elle.’

‘And anyway,’ Bill adds, ‘we want to sit in the audience and show off that we’re related to you.’

‘Just don’t ask any embarrassing questions, okay?’

Bill links his arm through Fiona’s, wiggling his brows as he says, ‘Us?’

I step from the warmth of their house and cross the street towards my car. Fiona and Bill watch from the doorway, checking I make it safely to the vehicle.

I start the engine, flick on the heater, turn up the radio. As I move off, I lift my hand to wave – but they are already turning away.

Bill pulls the door firmly behind them, locking his family inside.

2003

Elle’s skin held the deep tan of a summer holiday spent largely unoccupied. She was running late, still learning to navigate the sprawling campus, and she slipped into the back of the lecture theatre, breathless.

She scanned the sea of heads looking for an unoccupied seat, dismayed to spot only one at the front. As she tiptoed down the central stairway, trying to make herself invisible, the lecturer paused mid-sentence.

He was sitting on the edge of a desk, the screen behind him illuminated with the words Shakespeare’s Tragedies. He had foppish brown hair and wore a well-cut cord jacket, over a pair of dark jeans.

‘I should mention,’ the young lecturer said, ‘that if anyone is late, they have the regrettable task of being my assistant at the end of the lecture and handing out the day’s notes. So,’ he said, his gaze finding hers, ‘that role is awarded to you, today.’ He smiled. A boyish smile that lit up his face and created sunbursts of lines around his eyes.

The attention in the auditorium swung to her, as a hundred pairs of eyes followed his. Perhaps because she was nineteen, perhaps because she was still buzzing from the shots she’d only stopped drinking at four a.m., she had – right there in front of a packed auditorium of English Literature students – grinned as she curtsied to him.

‘At your service.’

Luke Linden, he was called, ‘but just call me Luke’. He was one of those lecturers, she would learn, who abandoned the lectern and preferred to roam, striding expansively from one end of the hall to the other. He had a flair for using a pause to great effect, causing even those students with a tendency to drift, to suddenly look up as if silence had summoned them. Luke Linden was a man who could talk passionately about semantics and notions of romantic love in Jacobean England – yet still looked like one of them.

Except he wasn’t one of them.

And that’s where Elle had made her first mistake.

6

Elle

‘The best story to tell – the only story to tell – is the one living within you, inhabiting you, insisting that it be heard.’

Author Elle Fielding

I push open the car door into darkness, feel the hurried beat of my footsteps across my frost-hardened driveway.

On the doorstep, I fumble in my handbag looking for my key.

Maybe I should have had an extra glass of wine, crashed on Fiona and Bill’s sofa, not come back to an empty house.

I slot the key into the lock and slip inside, bolting the door behind me.

There it is, the silence. It pins me, fills my ears with its voiceless boom.

I hate coming home to an empty house – particularly after dark. Jesus, maybe Fiona is right: I do need a dog.

I keep finding myself missing the congestion of my old life in Bristol; the steady thrum of traffic, the stores open all hours of the night, the sounds from other people’s lives that filtered through the walls of our flat – voices, televisions, cisterns refilling, plates being stacked, laughter.

I force myself to move briskly through the house, flicking on lights, the radio and television.

It will be my first winter here and I wonder how warm it will be. Underfloor heating doesn’t give the same heat as a fire. I must start using the log burner – but each time I think about laying it, I’m overwhelmed by Flynn’s absence. It has always been his thing.

In the last place we rented, there was an open fire, and I remember the way he’d carefully select the wood each evening, telling me whether it was apple or silver birch, or a piece of plum chopped down from a job he’d done the previous year. He’d describe how long each piece would burn for, what the notes of the smell might be, how long it had been seasoned.

Before I can talk myself out of it, I slip my mobile from my pocket and dial his number. I want to hear his voice. I want to say, I’m thinking of lighting the log burner you chose. I want to tell him, I miss you. To hear him say, I forgive you.

When he picks up, I catch the low riff of music. Muddy Waters. One of Flynn’s favourite blues artists. He plays his music on a record player that used to belong to his father. He loves the ceremony of setting the needle, hearing the fuzzed scratch as the record begins to spin.

‘Elle?’

‘I just … I thought I’d … say hello.’ I glance at my watch. It is midnight on a Friday. Shit.

‘Right. Hello,’ Flynn says, lightly amused.

Tucking the phone under my ear, I move into the kitchen to make certain the back door is locked. I press on the handle, check the bolt. Then I follow the perimeter of the kitchen ensuring each of the windows is secure, and the wine cellar is locked.

I tell Flynn about my evening at Fiona and Bill’s as I move into the lounge, looking behind the sofa, running my hand along the curtains until I can feel the wall. Every room needs to be checked. Every window. It gives me peace of mind.

When I’m satisfied that the house is secure, I move into my bedroom, sinking down onto the bed, letting myself fall backwards, my head hitting the pillow with a soft thump.

Pressing the phone close to my ear, I can hear the slow draw of Flynn’s breath, can picture him sitting on the sofa, fire lit, an empty bottle of ale on the side table, the lights low.

The Muddy Waters record comes to its end and our conversation ticks comfortably into silence. I let my eyes close. In our previous life – the version of us that runs parallel to this one – I would be stretched out on the sofa, my feet on his lap, the warmth of the fire playing over my shins. We would be making plans for the weekend ahead: a walk in the forest with a pub lunch perhaps, or a drive to the coast to visit friends.

Across the phone waves I hear a door opening, then footsteps. Quick and light. There is the murmur of a female voice, low, keening.

‘Oh,’ I say, sitting up, a hand moving to my chest. ‘You’ve got company.’

His mouth sounds closer to the phone, as he says, ‘Listen, Elle, I didn’t know you were—’

I try to form words that will make this okay, but I can’t think what to say, what to do with this sudden, crushing realisation.

So I do the only thing that comes to me: I hang up.

I pace my bedroom, replaying the phone call, over and over.

Flynn.

Flynn and another woman.

It’s a fist in my stomach.

I launch my mobile at the bed. It bounces off, hits my cream bedside table and lands on the carpet.

I run a bath, add some essential oils, let the water slip over my body until it is cupping the disc of my face. I concentrate on my breathing, on trying to relax.

But I can’t. I climb out, water sloshing over the bathroom floor.

I wrap myself in a dressing gown, then eye my bed. There’s no point trying to sleep when I’m agitated, wired.

I’ll write, I decide.

The lamp casts a white spotlight across my desk. Behind me, the rest of the writing room is in darkness.

I take a breath. Hover the mouse over the Word document labelled BOOK 2.

It’s coming along well, I’d told Jane.

Five and a half weeks until my deadline.

Downstairs, I picture the unopened bills piled on the bureau, the mortgage repayment not met this month. Everything is riding on this book, waiting on me. I think of Booklover101’s latest post on my Facebook page. A gif of a woman sat at a typewriter, face possessed, keys bashing up and down. Hope you’re working hard. Remember, your no.1 fan is waiting