The Silence

by Daisy Pearce

‘Goodnight, little orphan Annie,’ he murmurs. I am instantly cold, as if my internal organs are covered with frost. I stiffen and he opens his eyes wide. ‘What’s wrong?’ ‘Why did you call me that?’ ‘It’s a joke.’ ‘It’s a joke that my parents are dead?’

‘Why didn’t you tell me?’ ‘I did.’ I catch my breath. ‘When?’ ‘When it happened, last week. We talked about it over dinner. Remember?’ I stare at the wall. I don’t remember, but that doesn’t mean it didn’t happen. I’m so hazy on things these days.

‘I wouldn’t dream of telling you what to do, Stella.’ Another sharp bite, near my hip. This time I clench my fists. He is smiling, I can hear it in his voice. ‘Can we stop talking about this, please?’ ‘Just promise me.’ A soft kiss, another. ‘Promise me you’ll tell her no if she asks again. Stop enabling her.’

And it came to my home address, which fan mail didn’t, usually it went to the TV studio. And of course when I saw my name, so beautifully written in ink, I opened them.’

‘Funny really.’ ‘How so?’ ‘Funny that someone who spends so much time out of her knickers should end up selling them.’ I stare at him for a moment, and when he smiles it is nothing more than a show of teeth.

‘Don’t you like Carmel?’ ‘I didn’t say that.’ ‘You didn’t need to.’ ‘I just feel – what I mean to say . . .’ He looks at me lucidly, smiling. ‘Do you want to hear this?’ ‘I don’t know. Do I?’ ‘I just think she takes a lot from you but doesn’t give anything back.’ ‘Oh, Marco. Come on.’ ‘I told you you wouldn’t like it.’ ‘I’ve known her nearly twenty years. She’s my best friend in the world.’ ‘I know, I know. I’m sure I’ve put my foot in it. Forget it, forget I said anything.

Leaving your bag behind like that, it’s a pretty lame trick.’ ‘You think I did it on purpose?’ He raises his eyebrows at me but says nothing. ‘I thought I’d put it in the boot. I honestly did.’ ‘I just can’t believe anything you say anymore. All I’m doing is trying to help you.’

‘Afraid not, baby. You understand, don’t you, how hard it was to get this booking, how popular this restaurant is?’ He leaned over to kiss me. ‘Your real friends will find a way to be there,’ he had said.

‘It’s like you have a trigger. You turn on me. I don’t know, maybe it’s me, maybe I’m the problem.

‘But – I don’t remem—’ ‘No, of course not. Of course you don’t.

‘The taxi driver didn’t mention it.’ ‘Of course he didn’t. He was probably as embarrassed as I was.’

Then I remember and feel a sour, childish petulance rising. Marco was right about her. She is a leech.

‘I need her number,’ I’d told him, and he’d said sure and he’d written it down on a piece of paper, folding it smaller and smaller and pressing it into my palm. ‘Here you are.’ And of course I’d lost it.

‘We’re all going out for dinner tonight when she gets back, and I’m baking a cake,’ I enthused when Carmel had hung up. ‘I’m baking a cake in the shape of a bra.’ ‘You can’t cook, Stella,’ he said, leaning against the fridge and tucking his hands beneath his naked armpits, ‘and can’t you put the heating on? It’s freezing.’

‘Yes, but it’s not your brilliant job, is it? What are you so pleased for?’ ‘Because she has worked hard for this. I’m allowed to be pleased for her.’ ‘We all work hard, Stella. I started off working seventeen-hour days. After my dad died I took on his business at nineteen years old. No one baked me a cake.’

Don’t know why you don’t just buy one. All that time and effort, you know you’ll only end up binning it.’

He lowered his voice. ‘Listen to yourself. I thought we’d agreed this. We all know you can’t cook. Isn’t it better this way?’ I blinked at him. ‘Honey, don’t you remember? We talked about it earlier, about how you burn everything you bake, how you can’t be trusted in the kitchen.’ He laughed, looking around the table, appealing to the others sitting there. ‘Come on, you can’t be mad about this. Don’t you remember? When I said we should just buy one?’

I feel better. I thank her. She tells me not to worry, that she is used to it. It won’t be until later that I will think what a peculiar thing that was to say.

Later, when we are clearing away the plates, Frankie retrieves my phone from beneath the table, handing it over to me. ‘You know, they have satellites that can pinpoint your exact location just from your mobile signal,’ he says. ‘Every time you switch that thing on, you’re never alone.’

‘You’ve always been a biter,’ he’d said to me afterwards, and I’d laughed, but something in those words now makes me feel strange. You’ve always been a biter. Have I?

“Besser allein als in schlechter Gesellschaft”,’ Heidi says and smiles. ‘I have German grandparents. It means “Better to be alone than in bad company”.’

‘It’s that little chemical that makes you stay with a man even when he’s breaking your fingers or cutting up your face. Just a little hormone with a lousy name, making you blind.

‘I need you to look at these damp patches,’ I tell him, taking the milk out of the fridge. Marco doesn’t look up at me. ‘What are you talking about?’ ‘In the hallway. You can’t miss them. They’re as big as I am.’ ‘I haven’t noticed.’ ‘Are you kidding?’ Now he looks up, blinking slowly. Shakes his head. I feel a throb of anxiety.

‘Did you bring it with you from my flat?’ ‘Not your flat, not anymore. No point paying rent when you’re not living there. I’ve packed up your stuff and taken it to mine. Most of it you won’t really need.’ ‘What do you mean?’ I ask as Jackie hands me a drink – apple juice and ice, a little bent straw. ‘I don’t want you throwing anything away. That’s mine. It belongs to me.’

You could have told me the truth. I thought we were friends.’ ‘Yup. I lied because I’m an asshole. But unlike Marco, I don’t try to hide it. I don’t make people do things they don’t want to do.’

I forget what it means now but at the time you can be sure that there was some deep philosophical junk I’d attached to it. At that age everything is heartbreaking. One thing I’ll teach my kids is that you grow out of it. You always grow out of it.

Everyone keeps telling me I’m losing control.’ He bends towards me. Our faces almost touch in the inky twilight. ‘Say that again. The last bit, say it again.’ ‘Everyone keeps telling me I’m losing control.’ ‘Yes, Stella. Now we’re getting somewhere.’

‘So you want to hear about Marco, do you?’ I nod. ‘I can’t look at you. You’re so like her. At the end, I mean. When he’d finished with her.’

‘Ellie isn’t important anymore. I’ve got you now. So you need to hold on, Katie. Just hold on. I’ll be there soon. I’ll be there.’ I heard it. My heart is pounding as he hangs up the phone. He called me Katie. I don’t think he even realised he was doing it.

‘It’s a big house.’ Beverley is pouring water into the cups. ‘And like me it’s falling apart. Far better to move everything I need into the one place I like best of all in the whole house and let the rest of it rot.

‘Just because he didn’t use his fists doesn’t mean he didn’t hurt her.

He’s been undermining you – he wants you to think you’re going mad. To doubt yourself, to lose it. Until, at the very end, you can’t get by without him.’

‘You’re so ungrateful,’ he continued. ‘I bought you the clothes you wanted, the shoes. You’re still not happy.’ I looked down at my ruffled dress and rounded patent-leather shoes. They were not very ‘me’. I didn’t remember wanting them. But he was looking at me with such weary anger I suppose I must have done.

‘What did I tell you, Stella? What did I ask you explicitly not to do?’ ‘Embarrassh oo.’ My voice was soft and pulpy. ‘It’s a simple request, isn’t it? You can follow instructions, can’t you?’

Alice was very kind. Very polite. Not pushy. But she knew. She said, “Has she gone with him?” ‘“Yes,” I told her. “Looks like she forgot her luggage.” ‘“No,” Alice said, “I doubt that she did.”

He wanted to be the one to find you, Stella, to save you. Then you would be indebted to him. Bound to him.’

I’m still wearing his ring, the one he said had belonged to his grandmother. I slide it over my knuckle and place it on the tabletop. It comes from Penang, he’d said. That’s in Malaysia. I know where Penang is, dickhead.

Marco looks at me carefully, his mouth twitching in a barely concealed smile. That’s the thing about Marco. He always could read me.

It’s called gaslighting, the things that you do. Did you know that?’ ‘They were dragging you down, Katie. All those monstrous friends, that boring little life you had. You should be thanking me. You should be on your knees thanking me.’

It is a good day. A warm day. I will enjoy this day and all the ones after it. And I will make scar tissue of my memories. And I will heal. I will heal.

Lastly, thanks to Stephen King. I love you, man.