The One I Was by Eliza Graham

Author:Eliza Graham [Graham, Eliza]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Moreton Street Books
Published: 2014-03-30T00:00:00+00:00

21

Fear and frustration. That’s what this basement smelled like now to the adult me, the nurse Rosamond Hunter. Decades later the bitter note overcut the scent of the apples they’d once stored down here. A note that even Benny’s benign ownership of Fairfleet for the last thirty years hadn’t smoothed away.

I made myself take a few more steps until I was standing on the flagstone floor. This was mad. The furniture would long since have been cleared out of the storage room. Mum’s envelope wouldn’t still be stuffed inside the drawer of a chest stored down here. But still I walked down the basement steps, telling myself there was just a chance that the letter might have stayed down here during all the years of Benny’s ownership of Fairfleet. Benny hadn’t thrown much out, Sarah had told me when I’d arrived, just stored discarded furniture down here.

I trod along the passage, keeping my eyes focused ahead of me as though afraid that demons lurked just out of sight, still feeling the childish hope that if I didn’t actually make eye contact with them they wouldn’t bother me. I reached the laundry room. The familiar outlines of washing machine and dryer, the soap-powder box, the bundling of the washing into the machine, all these things soothed me for a few minutes. When the machine was switched on I was tempted just to go back upstairs again.

But on I went down the passage, half expecting, half hoping the storage room would be locked. Then I’d have an excuse not to go in. But the door opened.

Inside stood a collection of furniture. Chairs, tables, chests of drawers. Standard lamps. Desks. All jammed together. I didn’t recognize most of it. It would take me ages to move the things around so that I could open drawers. And there was no way that this could be done without a lot of noise. I stared at the objects and it was like staring at a projection of my own mind: a collection of unrelated objects, dusty yet throbbing with old emotion. Anger, mostly; bitter anger that, even as an adult, I could still taste in my mouth.

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