The Night You Left by Emma Curtis

Author:Emma Curtis [Curtis, Emma]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781473559790
Publisher: Transworld
Published: 2019-07-21T23:00:00+00:00

GRACE

Thursday, 26 April 2018

‘YOU DON’T MIND IF I CARRY ON, DO YOU?’ MRS Burrows says as Anna and I unwrap the lunch we bought at a service station on the way. ‘The family are coming down for the bank holiday. The place has been locked up since Easter. I have masses to do.’

‘We won’t be long. I want Anna to show me the house, if you don’t mind.’

‘I don’t mind in the slightest. I like to have people about the place.’

Anna goes first, and I follow her up a narrow flight of white-painted stairs. The treads are bare and scuffed, worn down by countless feet. There is a lovely, warm, lived-in feel about this house. It is entirely without pretensions. Beautiful objects rub shoulders with bits of tat, stuff that the children made, stuff that means something, recalls a particular moment in time. What a lovely, privileged upbringing those children had. A far cry from mine where nothing of value was bought or kept, where promises were only made to be neglected and broken. I shake the past off my shoulders and focus on why I’m here.

‘When you told me about Nick and Izzy’s relationship, about it becoming a bit blurred around the edges, you meant something, didn’t you?’

‘It was a throwaway remark.’

‘Nothing is throwaway. You implied they were closer than they should have been.’

She turns and looks down at me. ‘It was a feeling, you know, that he felt guilty about something.’

‘Like what? Is there something you’re not telling me? Please, Anna. This could be important.’

‘There’s nothing. As you say, he’s a good man. He wouldn’t deliberately hurt anyone.’

‘So you think he did hurt her? But that it was accidental?’

‘It’s a possibility, surely? We don’t know what happened. Maybe we never will. All of us feel guilty to some extent. I failed her. I have to live with that.’

‘I’m sorry.’

‘It doesn’t matter,’ she says brusquely. ‘We all failed her one way or another.’

What do I really feel about this woman? I’ve only known her a short time, and yet here we are, part of each other’s emotional experience, her head full of what happened eighteen years ago, mine full of what’s happening now. We’ve both experienced loss, but she’s accustomed to hers, while I wear mine like someone else’s clothes.

She takes me into an attic room furnished with twin beds. She sits down on the end of one of them, and I sit on the other. The room is long and narrow and has skylights either side of a pitched roof and a small window at each end. The windowsills are scattered with the carcasses of long-dead insects; flies on their backs with their tiny legs in the air. Sun-shredded curtains hang from yellowed curtain wire. There’s a camp bed folded up against the wall. It smells strange, not just of dust and damp, but of human occupation. Maybe the twins still use it. Or their kids, if they have them. Whatever, the place needs airing.

Anna sees me wrinkle my nose.

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