‘I am not leaving here until you do. Just open it!’
Carla heard her, heard the sharp, demanding rap come again on her front door. Her mother would not go—she knew she wouldn’t. Her mother’s will was unbreakable.
She walked to the door, opened it, and her mother surged in.
Then stopped.
‘Oh, dear God,’ Marlene said, her voice hoarse.
She stared, horrified, at Carla, and Carla knew why. Her hair was unbrushed, she was wearing a tracksuit, not a trace of make-up. Her eyes were red, cheeks blotched. There were runnels running down from her eyelashes to her chin, where tears had been shed and had dried, shed and dried.
For two whole days.
Her mother’s hand had gone to her mouth in disbelief, but now she lowered it.
‘So, it’s true, then?’
Carla looked at her. ‘I take it the gossip has started already?’
Marlene drew in a breath sharply. ‘Oh, yes,’ she said. ‘And several of my acquaintances have made absolutely sure I knew about it!’
Carla turned away. Tears had started again—but to what purpose? To what purpose was anything at all?
Her mother was speaking, her voice harsh, vicious, but she paid no attention.
She warned me, and I didn’t listen. ‘No happy ending,’ she told me—but I thought I knew better.
She felt her face convulse, her throat constrict as if a snake were strangling her, its coils thrown around her body, tighter and tighter, crushing the life out of her, the breath.
She felt her mother’s arms come around her, but what comfort could they bring? What reassurance? What help?
None. None, none, none.
Bitterness filled her, and self-hatred.
No happy ending...
She shut her eyes, resting her head against her mother’s shoulder as her mother went on speaking, saying things she might say to a child, patting her back, rubbing it as if she could make her better. But there was no ‘better’, no happiness, no nothing. Only memories stabbing into her, over and over again, each one eviscerating her, taking out a little more of what she was made of.
Dear God, I thought—I really, really thought—that he was being different that night in the restaurant because he was starting to feel something for me! I thought that there might be possibilities of his returning what I’d just discovered I felt. I actually started to hope...to believe in a future for us...to believe in love between us...
Anguish clutched at her, its icy hand around her heart. Her stupid, stupid heart.
Why did I have to go and realise what had happened to me? Why did I have to discover what I’d come to feel for him? If I hadn’t—if I’d still thought it was only an affair and nothing more than that—I wouldn’t be here like this now...destroyed...just destroyed.
‘You told me...you told me—no happy ending.’
She must have spoken. Words must have scraped past her lips. Her voice seemed to come from very far away, from polar regions where icy winds blasted her to pieces.
No happy ending.
She felt her shoulders taken, saw her mother step back from her, still holding her. Carla looked at her face, and what she saw made her stare.
‘But what there could be,’ Marlene said, biting out each word, her eyes suddenly as bright and hard as diamonds, ‘is a better ending.’
She dropped her hands. The diamond brightness in her eyes was glittering now, her face as hard as crystal.
‘There’s only one way to do this, my darling girl. Only one! When a man does to you what that...that swine...has done to you, there is only one thing to do!’