1
I’m in hell, I think. Sunlight slices through my eyelids. My head pounds thickly, almost percussive.I’m in hell and it’s my childhood bedroom.
Open my eyes. The tinny taste of bile and tequila at the back of my mouth. My mother standing at the window, a look on her face of disappointment, worry. I groan and turn over, wincing at the glaring white of the walls. They used to be pink, back when I was a teenager. Damson-rose and covered in posters—Eminem, Buffy, Green Day—but after I married and moved out, my mother had taken them all down and repainted. She’d missed the picture of the Backstreet Boys taped behind the vanity mirror, though. It was the first thing I’d looked for when I came home.
Home.The word has a strange taste. Sour, bittersweet almost. This isn’t home. Home is with Joe in Wiltshire, the undulating chalk hills, Neolithic barrows, and ancient, weathered stones. Home is the beehives and wrens nesting in the eaves.
“You really tied one on last night.” My mother’s voice is clipped and disapproving. “You left the fridge door open when you went tobed. Your dad’s gone mad. He thinks you’re going to burn the house down while we’re away.”
“I won’t.”
Ugh. My eyes are gummy and dry. Wine, beer, tequila. Thank God Mum had taken that bottle of gin off me. I’m a misery when I drink gin.
“You sure you don’t mind us going, love?” Her voice has softened. “I can always stay behind if you need me.”
“Don’t be daft. You can’t send Dad off on an eight-week cruise on his own. Besides, think of the money you’ll lose.” I let my hands drift into the air and play above the covers like two birds.
My mother watches silently before looking at the large brown envelope she is holding. “This came for you this morning. Hand-delivered. I think it’s probably—”
“Iknowwhat it is, Mum.”
“Divorce is such an ugly thing. In my day we just muddled through.” She looks at me with real concern. “Youwillbe all right, won’t you, Hazel?” Her voice catches, just a little bit.
That surprises me into sitting up. “I’ll be fine, Mum! I’m thirty next month. You have to stop worrying about me. Besides, I’ve been thinking about everything and—well, this is a new start for me, isn’t it? I need to make the best of it.”
She nods, coming over to kiss me on the cheek. Her perfume is so familiar: bergamot and a musky, powdery jasmine. I feel choked.
“I’ll leave this in the kitchen. Make sure you read it carefully and don’t sign anything without a solicitor.”
“Goodbye, Mum. Don’t get seasick.”
My mother laughs, face still youthful despite the gray startingto show in her hair. She goes to leave but at the last minute turns in the doorway, looking over at me with unmasked concern. “You will call Cathy, won’t you? Don’t leave it too late.”
After my parents leave, I take a long bath in the en suite, propping the window open so the air walks cold fingertips up the back of my neck. Outside, a mist skims the tops of the pines which grow along the ridge and creep into the valley. The light is the mellow luster of autumn, peach colored and woozy. I slide beneath the surface, my hair floating in the water like long fronds of kelp. There’s an old joke that keeps going round my head:
What’s an apiarist’s favorite chat-up line? I’m a keeper and I’m looking for a queen.
Joe had liked that one so much he’d repeated it on our wedding day during his speech, his face flushed with champagne and delight, eyes soft as he turned to me and raised his glass. That evening we’d danced alone in a walled garden, the hem of my dress damp in the long grass. He’d fed me wedding cake made with spiced honey from his hives. The sun had hung in the sky like a gold medallion. Swaying cow parsley, the purr of bees. I close my eyes and try not to think of the stiff brown envelope.Decree Absolute.
Downstairs, I boil the kettle as my mother’s beloved Persian cats—Conquest and Celeste—wind around my legs, gazing up at me with their luxurious amber eyes. My mother loves these cats more than life itself—certainly more than my sister Cathy and me. They are all over this house—in photographs and oil paintings and the rosettes pinned to the noticeboard:BEST OF BREED, IMPERIAL, FIRSTCLASS. After Cathy moved out, Mum turned her bedroom into a cat lounge complete with plump cushions and scratching posts. I figure it’s only sheer luck that my bedroom didn’t suffer the same fate, otherwise right now I’d be sleeping on the sofa.
A new start.
I make coffee and take a couple of painkillers with the first sip, burning my tongue. The problem with new starts is that the first step is just so fuckinghard. I guess I need to begin by cutting my drinking down. I find the gin my mother had taken off me last night and unscrew the cap without hesitation, pouring the remains of the bottle into the sink. The smell makes me gag, but I stand there until it is done, my headache receding just a little by the time I’m finished.
What’s next? Get a haircut, maybe?
I seek out a pair of scissors and study my face in the hallway mirror, lifting my fringe away from my forehead and touching the lines which have formed there, seemingly overnight. My expression is serious, even in repose. I see glimpses of my parents: My father’s hazel eyes, his heavy brows. His dark Italian hair. That’s my mother’s pale complexion and flared, equine nostrils.
A haircut is too drastic, I think, returning the scissors to the drawer. I once cut it too short and ended up looking severe and oddly masculine, like an Italian grandfather. I’m not like Cathy, who looks good in anything, even the bowl haircuts our mother gave us our last year of primary school. There’s a picture of me somewhere in this house with that exact haircut, and Joe had told me I looked like I should be on the sex offender register.
Joe. Okay, don’t think about Joe. He is in the past. He is not part of my new start.
Cathy, though. Yes, I should call Cathy. That would be thegrown-up thing to do, right? After all, it’s been nearly five years. I pick up the phone. Put it straight back down again. I told you I’m not good at this new start stuff. I’m a procrastinator.
Maybe I could go for a jog?
Enough crazy talk. I pick up my phone again. Scroll through to find Cathy’s number. Put it down. My heart is beating out of my chest. I think of last night, overhearing Mum and Dad talking when they thought I couldn’t hear them. Mum’s voice had been quiet, almost weepy.