The Alibi Girl

2

Wednesday, 23rd October

My name isn’t Mary. It’s Joanne. Well, that’s the name they gave me. I can’t tell anyone my real name. I might be free now but I still have to imprison parts of myself. And that’s the big part. I don’t have all the children I told the hairdresser about, either, or a successful career in medicine. Or a personal trainer husband called Kaden. I have a new neighbour with that name, and a man’s sweatshirt I got from a charity shop sprayed in a free tester of Paco Rabanne that I pretend belongs to him, but that’s all. Mary is an act. One of my many acts to keep them at bay.

But they’ve tracked me down, haven’t they? They’ve found me again.

No, I tell myself, no they haven’t. Maybe it wasn’t them. Maybe Scants is right, as always, and I’m being paranoid. Or maybe he just says that because he’s paid to look after me and this is what he’s supposed to say. If it was them, The Pigs, this is still a big town and at the moment it’s flooded with tourists, families on half term, coach loads of people on outings. I’ve been swallowed by all that. They could think I’m staying at a hotel or one of the B&Bs. So while I’m in the flat, I’m safe.

As a precaution, I haven’t been outside in two days. I told work Emily has a bug. She doesn’t. I’ve just been playing with her and the cats, making the odd cake, having the odd bath, trimming up far too early for Christmas and watching DVDs – mostly Disney movies up to the sad bits, then I fast forward or switch off. I decided as soon as I was old enough that I didn’t have to watch the sad bits if I didn’t want to. So, in my world, Mufasa’s still alive, Nemo doesn’t even go missing and the Beast never turns into that disgusting prince.

I’ve ordered a few things off the internet – a new rug to cover most of the hideous old lino in the kitchen that the landlord won’t replace, a board game for my paper boy, Alfie, that I was telling him about the other day and found quite cheap on eBay, these really cute hair slides, and some silver glitter. I don’t know what the glitter’s for yet – a Christmas something I expect. I know I can make use of it somehow.

I’ve done some research on Frida Kahlo, too. She was a bisexual feminist Mexican painter and her portraits ‘allow a deeply intimate window into the female psyche’. So says the internet. She was also in an accident when she was eighteen which left her unable to have children. And she kept spider monkeys. I like the picture in my bedroom of her a lot more now. Her eyebrows don’t scare me as much.

And I’ve had another message on the answerphone. More silence. And crackling. And breathing. Then the Click. Then the dead tone. Another coincidence? I have to believe that. It’s a ‘little nothing’, that’s what Scants will say. Unless it’s a viable threat, I cannot pester him about it. That’s the rule.

I’ve eaten nearly everything in the flat. Even the Findus Crispy Pancakes I keep in for emergencies. I’m like the Tiger Who Came to Tea – there’s still water in the tap, but I bet any minute there’ll be a cold snap and the pipes’ll freeze. Emily’s getting ratty. She needs fresh air. I will go out soon. Maybe I could nip across the road and get some doughnuts from the van? But it’s not healthy, is it? Doughnuts for tea. I counted fifteen sugary paper bags in the recycling box this morning. Fifteen. Plus the one on the table I’ve doodled all over. I pick it up and admire the curly handwriting:

Ann Hilsom

Melanie Smith

Claire Price

Joanne Haynes

I feel greasy. I’m going to have a bath.

I settle Emily in her bassinette by the chest of drawers and she’s happy enough lying there looking up at the mobile I’ve fixed to the side. She’s so small. Sometimes I wish she was bigger so she could hug better. And then I realise what I’m thinking – the bigger she gets, the more she’ll stop being my baby. The more she’ll learn. I want her to stay small and unknowing and thinking the world is a charmed place where imagination is real and everyone thinks you’re fascinating. Being an adult looked so much more appealing when I wasn’t one.

A bath, I’ve found, is the nearest thing to a hug. You get fewer hugs as you get older but we had loads as kids. Auntie Chelle was always wrapping me and Foy inside her arms and squeezing the breath from us. I can’t hug you two tight enough, she would say. It’s scientifically proven that baths help depression in the same way a hug does. Something to do with balancing our bodily rhythms. As a kid I used to eat the foam. Spread it out on a sponge like a little waffle loaded with squirty cream.

Scants is funny about hugs since he got mugged in a pub in 2008. He’s funny about a lot of things. I can’t think about him – he’ll visit when he’s next in town, that’s what he said: ‘Don’t pester me’ – and he said it in his Serious Voice so I knew he meant it. I must not call him unless it’s an emergency. It’s three random men and a couple of wrong numbers. That’s all. I’ll leave the flat soon. Everything’s normal.

I sink down in my warm bath and allow the water and essential oils to hug me all the way up my body and back down again. I picture all my worries as a kite on a string, and imagine letting go of it, watching it float up to the sky as I count backwards from ten. Gradually, the panic disappears, though I know it’s only a temporary break from a world that feels so wrong all the time.

The door creaks open and The Duchess saunters in. I roll over to tickle her head.

‘Hello Duchess, how do you do?’

She sits proudly on my bath towel, butting into my hand, her white fur soft as clouds beneath my fingertips. She’s looking tubby today – I think I’m overfeeding her. I’d rather that than underfeeding her, though, or any of them. They’re my other babies. The Duke of Yorkums and Earl Grey sleep all day on my bed while the other girls are more inclined to wander. The latest one, Queen Georgie, doesn’t get on with Princess Tabitha Rosynose or Tallulah von Puss, though. She’s taken up residence on the couch on the blanket. Prince Roland won’t come near any of them – he prefers it at the back of the wardrobe guarding all my jumpers from Jumper Pixies who bite holes in clothes to make their little hats. But The Duchess always comes to play or say hello. Of course, I’d never tell the other cats this, but she’s my favourite.

My dad used to say cats were cursed kings and queens in hiding. That’s why they’re all so aloof and it seems like they don’t care about anything. It’s not that – it’s because they have royal blood. It goes against their protocol to get too involved.

I wish I could stay in the bath forever, the water lapping against the sides, The Duchess still butting my hand. I wish this was my bath. My bathroom.

Suddenly, an awful buzzzzzzzzzzz resounds through the flat and my chest tightens – it’s my door buzzer. It’s not Scants – he always calls ahead. There’s no one else it could be. Maybe it’s a relative of the people in the middle flat. Or Kaden, the guy who’s just moved into the top floor flat. Maybe it’s a mistake. Maybe they have the wrong number altogether.

Maybe they don’t.

I scramble out of the bath and yank out the plug, grabbing my towel from under The Duchess and she protest-reeeaaaawrs, but moves out the way. I wrap myself up and wait – it’s a mistake. Or the postman? No, he’s been. It can’t be for me. My rhythms are all to cock. What if it’s them? What if they hear the bath gurgling? What if Emily starts crying?

Buzzzzzzzz, buzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz it goes again.

She’ll cry and then they’ll know for sure where I am, where I live.

Buzzzzzzzz buzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.

I fumble for my robe on the back of the door and slide it over my now-freezing wet body. Panic has taken over and I can’t think in a straight line. I stumble into the bedroom, pull on my boots and lace them up as best I can though my brain has temporarily forgotten how to do laces.

‘Bunny ear, Bunny ear, Bottom Bunny ear over Top Bunny ear, tie and pull.’

Buzzzzz buzzzzzzzzzz buzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.

‘Oh no, oh shitake mushrooms.’ I want to cry. How do I run with a baby? And what about the cats? If I go through the patio doors and up the front steps they’ll catch me. I’m soaking wet, in my dressing gown, wearing no knickers and badly tied DMs. They’ll be shooting slow, fat fish in a tiny barrel.

I need to be brave, be rational, and take a look before doing anything stupid. Before I can change my mind, I run to the kitchen and grab the Flash bleach spray and a bread knife. I go to my door and scramble the chain off, opening it slowly onto the hallway. I’m at such a high pitch, I’ve broken out into a sweat and my mouth is so dry my lips stick to my teeth. My tongue feels like an invader.

I see the shadow behind the glass. One shadow. It’s only one of them.

‘WHAT DO YOU WANT?’ I force myself to wobble-shout.

‘Hi, it’s Kaden from upstairs. I think the bolt’s on? I can’t get in.’

Relief floods through me. I deflate and the tears start pouring as I pull back the bolt and release the Chubb to find the guy from the top floor flat standing there in his leather gear with his motorbike helmet under one arm, a bag of shopping in his hand. I can’t stop shaking.

‘Oh god, are you alright?’ he says. ‘I’m so sorry. I’ve been away for a couple of days, and came back and my key wouldn’t work… I didn’t mean to get you out of the bath. I definitely didn’t mean to scare you. It’s Joanne, isn’t it?’

NO, I’m NOT Joanne, I want to say. I have an alarming urge to tell him my real name. I want him to help me. Tell me he’ll fight the Pigs away with his strong arms. Not very Frida the Feminist Icon, but then I’m not Frida – I’m me. And not a very convincing me either. I sit on the stair, dropping the knife and spray gun to the carpet.

The front door closes. He puts the bike helmet on the shelf and there’s a creak of leather as he kneels down. ‘Hey. It’s alright. I’m not going to hurt you.’

And I pull him into me and he wraps his arms around my back and we’re hugging like two lovers. Lovers who’ve only previously shared Hellos and door openings for the past two weeks since he moved in. I blush every time. Because in one of my newest lies he is of course My Husband. The Father of My Five Children. The screensaver on my phone, from when I followed him to the gym at the other end of the seafront where he works, and took a photo of the picture of him behind reception – Kaden Cotterill, Certified Personal Trainer. How sad is that? Now that he’s here, holding me, I can see how sad it is. Here he is real and perfect and my tears chase down his leather jacket. The back of his neck is sweaty and he smells of the sea breeze.

‘I’m sorry, I really am,’ he says. We pull apart, his face packed full of concern. ‘Is there anything I can do?’ I shake my head. ‘Did you think it was someone else?’ I nod. ‘Do you wanna talk about it?’ I shake. ‘Do you wanna be on your own?’ I shake again. ‘Okay, well I need to go and shove some of this in the fridge,’ he says, indicating the carrier bag. ‘Why don’t you go and put some clothes on and when I come back down we’ll go for a coffee and unwind a bit, yeah? There’s a nice café I’ve found on the seafront. They do my favourite roast.’

I sniff. ‘I don’t like coffee.’

‘What do you like?’

‘Strawberry milkshakes.’

He touches my head and his hand comes away with a chunk of white foam from the bath. He smiles and it lights up the dark, damp hallway. It’s a glowing lamp in the fog. A flame in a cave. A lifeline. All I can do is smile back.

I sit in the coffee shop – Full of Beans – stroking Emily’s head in the papoose, watching Kaden’s grey T-shirted back as he orders our drinks – a Columbian Granja La Esperanza roast with hot milk for him, and a milkshake with cream and paper straw for me. I can’t believe I’m here with him. I imagine we’re Man and Wife. He’s on paternity leave and we’re out showing off our new baby. An older couple look across at us in sweet recognition. A woman in a peach overcoat stops by the table and bends down to peek at her. I instinctively pull away, covering the top of Emily’s head with her blanket. I hear her grizzling.

‘Sorry, she’s a bit under the weather today.’

‘Aww, how old?’

‘Five weeks.’

‘Ahhh, she’s gorgeous.’

She can’t even see her properly but the woman is right, Emily is gorgeous. All babies are. The woman thinks me and Kaden really are a couple with a baby and that’s a lovely feeling. A warm, huggy feeling. Perhaps it really is Our Anniversary, like it was Mary Brokenshire’s. Perhaps we Met Here.

When he returns with our drinks, I snap out of it – he’s here because he’s a nice man and he’s concerned that he scared me. And something is clearly wrong in my life if I’m terrified of my own door buzzer. That’s the truth. And the truth always stings.

He sets my milkshake down before me with a ‘There you go.’

It’s only when he sits down with his cup and saucer and biscotti that it occurs to me how childish my drink choice is. He’s changed his motorbike gear for a T-shirt and jeans and white trainers, and the back of his neck is still slightly sheeny with sweat but he doesn’t smell badly at all. I’m close enough to smell his aftershave properly now – not Paco Rabanne as I’d initially thought. It’s that one in the blue man-shaped bottle. Le Male by Jean Paul Gaultier. Oh it’s lovely. My cheeks heat up. Foy and I used to go mad in the fragrance department in Boots, spraying them all up our sleeves.

‘Think it’s going to be a nice day today,’ he says, staring through the window. ‘You can see the Lake District from here.’

I look out in the direction of where he points. Blurry mountains. ‘Cool.’

‘Have you ever visited the Lakes?’

‘No. I’ve been to Scotland.’ I can’t tell him about that, so I hurry on. ‘Have you?’

‘Yeah, I used to go hiking in the Lakes all the time with a couple of mates from Uni. It’s really stunning. It’s good to inflate your lungs with a long walk every once in a while. You could take the little one to the Beatrix Potter house.’

‘Emily’s only five weeks old. I don’t think she’d be that impressed.’

‘No, maybe not,’ he laughs.

‘I like Beatrix Potter though.’

‘Oh right.’

‘I mean I did when I was a kid,’ I clarify. ‘Tom Kitten’s my favourite story. And the one with the frog. And the patty pan one. I still don’t know what a patty pan is.’ I’m losing him. Men don’t talk about Beatrix Potter. I need to talk about more grown up things, more manly things like motorbikes and wrestling. But I can’t think of anything I want to know about motorbikes or wrestling. I push my drink away. ‘How long have you lived in the flats?’ I say, even though I already know the answer.

‘Nearly two weeks,’ he says. ‘You?’

‘Two months tomorrow,’ I say. ‘I don’t think people live in our flats for long.’

He smirks. ‘Yeah, the landlord gave me that impression as well. What do you make of him, old Sandy Balls?’

I laugh too. ‘He hasn’t exactly got people skills, has he?’

‘Have you met the junkies in the flat between us?’

‘No, they keep to themselves.’ The flat between us. One flat away from us living together. One floor of separation. I wonder if his bed is directly above my bed. I wonder if he lies on top of me at night. My cheeks go warm at the thought.

‘Where were you before?’ he asks.

‘Nottingham,’ I tell him. This is true, but I was only there for a few months, less than a year. I can’t tell him any more than that. And I can’t tell him about Liverpool or Dumfries, or Manchester or Scarborough… certainly not Scarborough.

‘Ah, fancied taking in the sea air, did ya?’

‘Mmm. I prefer the flat here to the one they gave me in Nottingham.’

‘Who’s they?’

‘The council,’ I lie. ‘That one was awful. I never got a full night’s sleep. Drunks would spill out of the clubs below every hour through the night. And the fridge had slugs in it.’

‘Nasty.’

‘Yeah. The one drawback here is that it’s a basement flat, not top floor, so I often get a drunk peeing in the front garden or a can thrown over the wall.’

‘Better for the little one here though, I’d have thought?’

‘Yeah. Much.’ I kiss the top of Emily’s fluffy head.

My god I can barely look at him. In anyone’s storybook he is stunning. He’s every Disney prince only four-dimensional and with smell-a-vision. I could look at him for the rest of my life. His eyes sparkle like the sea and he has faint freckles on his cheeks. If I get to know him better, I’ll count his freckles. I’ll lie next to him counting them, waiting for him to wake up in the morning. I wonder if he sleeps naked. I blush again, furiously, and it goes all down my neck too. I pretend to focus on Emily.

‘Do you have any family?’ he asks. ‘Apart from Emily?’

I shake my head. ‘No.’ I think about telling Kaden the well-rehearsed lies that Scants gave me, but I don’t want to lie to him. I want him to know as much of the truth as possible. So I leave out the untrue stuff. ‘I live alone.’

‘Oh right,’ he says. Is that pity in his eyes?

‘How about you?’

‘No, I’m here in the short term for work. My family all live in London.’ Family, he said, not girlfriend, not boyfriend, not fiancée. That’s good. That means a mum and a dad. Though it could mean a wife and kids. I’m not going to think about that right now. ‘I’m a PT at Sweat Dreams on Tollgate Road, at the end of the seafront?’

‘Yeah, I know it.’ There’s a plunge of dread in my chest as I take in what he said before. ‘So you’re not staying here permanently?’

‘No, it’s a temporary contract. Six weeks’ cover. My predecessor broke his leg doing an Iron Man, so I’m filling in for him until he’s back at work.’

‘But you’ll definitely go back to London after that?’

‘Yeah, as things stand, though they might keep me on longer. It depends.’

It’s not enough hope to cling to, but it’s small comfort. I want him to stay as long as I stay. I want to know every inch of him, even the hidden inches. Thank god he’s not looking at me, I can feel yet another blush coming on. I stroke Emily’s back. ‘How are you coping with her on your own?’

‘Fine. She’s a very good baby so I must be doing something right.’

‘Are you on maternity leave then?’

‘No, I don’t get any. I managed to find a childminder who takes them from new-born so I could still work. I’m a housekeeper at The Lalique.’

‘Do you like working there?’

‘No, it’s not really a job to enjoy. My colleagues all hate me for some reason. There are some parts of it I like. The views from the top floor over the bay. And there’s a lavender air freshener we’ve got in the lobby at the moment that’s really nice. And the porter, Trevor, he’s okay. Well, he gave me a mint once. I love meeting the children who stay there as well. I adore children.’

‘Me too,’ he says, and I have a sudden vision of our children buying him a Best Daddy in the World mug for Father’s Day.

He’d be a good dad. I’d watched him for two hours walking around the pool at the gym, giving swimming lessons to the St Jude’s kids then tidying up the floats afterwards and chatting to parents. He was so sweet with them all. I knew it wasn’t an act. By the time I left I knew more about him, more clay I could add to the statue of him I sculpted every night in my mind to get me to sleep. The shape of his torso, the muscle pattern of his back, what his feet looked like in flip flops. He has a tattoo of a snarling tiger on his right shin. I imagined what Us would look like. Us on our wedding day. Us getting the keys to our new home. Us wheeling a trolley round Ikea, choosing crockery. Us at the hospital, me in labour sucking on the gas and air, him scrolling his phone for funny videos. Stroking my face. Telling me he’s proud of me.

My heart thumps abnormally.

‘Are you a member of the gym then?’ he asks over the hissing of the coffee machine and the clanking of cutlery as a waitress clears a neighbouring table.

‘No.’ His face flattens. ‘I was thinking about joining though.’

‘You should. Or come along for a class, if you like. We’ve got Ladies Only Pilates, Ladies’ Boxercise, Fight Klub, which is like a self-defence class but to music…’

He’s staring at me – the way he said ‘self-defence’ was loaded with meaning. He wants to ask me more about my hallway hysteria. There’s nowhere to hide. His eyes hurt me – green like ponds, flecked with tiny pennies. He touches my arm. Fingertips to forearm. Skin to skin. My thoughts are scrambled egg.

‘I rescued a duck last week,’ I tell him. ‘On the beach. Its wing was broken.’

‘Oh right,’ he frowns.

‘And one of the cats caught a little bird once, brought it to the door. I rescued it. Took it to the RSPCA centre in town.’

He looks at me. ‘Is it her dad? The one you’re afraid of?’

I bite down on my lip. I give him a nod that barely registers. He says no more about it. ‘I love animals, do you?’