“Bloody hell,” said George. “I’d better go see if they need my help refereeing.”
“I guess you know about her,” said Simon carefully, when they were alone in the room. “About his ex-girlfriend.”
“Yes,” said Ellen. She was pressing her hands to her thighs, to stop herself from leaping out of her chair to run to the door. I just want to see what she looks like!
She strained to hear what was going on.
Simon shook his head. “Must be a bit weird—upsetting for you?”
“Oh, not really,” said Ellen. “I’ve never even seen her.” She tried not to make it sound like a complaint.
Patrick’s voice carried loud and clear into the room. Ellen had never heard him speak like that, his voice so rough-edged and unpleasant. He sounded like a big, beefy, red-faced man holding his palm up to the camera on one of those early evening current affairs shows. “Saskia. If you don’t leave now, I am calling the police. You’ve crossed the line. This is unacceptable.”
And then Jack’s voice, high with fear or excitement: “Daddy? Why are you calling the police?”
Simon winced. “I might just try to extricate Jack.”
He left the room. Ellen stayed pinned to her seat. There was no valid excuse for her to get involved.
She wondered if she should be frightened for their safety, if Saskia was about to pull out a gun or a big shiny kitchen knife. The book she was reading said that the vast majority of stalking victims weren’t even physically assaulted (just mentally terrorized), but it was still filled with horrific real-life case studies where some poor victims did end up dead.
Or perhaps her mother was right and she should be frightened for her own safety: Maybe she was Saskia’s target. Ellen’s mother would be so cross if Ellen ended up dead.
“OK, let’s everyone just calm down.” It was Patrick’s dad. Ellen still hadn’t properly heard Saskia’s voice.
She put her drink down on the Ayers Rock coaster on top of a crocheted doily and wandered restlessly about the room. There was a bookshelf crammed with framed photos.
She recognized one of Patrick with another woman and picked it up greedily. Could this be Saskia?
Then she saw that the photo was taken in a hospital and realized that the young blond-haired woman sitting up in bed holding a baby in a blue bunny rug must be Colleen. Patrick’s wife. His dead wife. Ellen wondered if the cancer cells that would take her life just a year later were already there in her body, gathering force for their malignant attack.
Patrick must have climbed up on the bed next to his wife. They were squashed close together, with their backs propped against the bars of the hospital bed. Colleen had one arm around the baby and the other hand lay entwined with Patrick’s on his lap. You could tell he was holding it tightly.
Colleen was smiling at the baby; Patrick was smiling at the person taking the photo. It was only eight years ago, but Patrick looked so much younger and different: His eyes seemed rounder, his cheeks chubbier, his hair thicker and longer, his T-shirt a younger person’s T-shirt. Colleen’s hair was messy and Patrick was unshaven. It must have been taken only hours after Jack was born. They had that amazed look about them that Ellen had seen in other people’s first-baby shots. Look what we did! The birth of a first baby. One of those everyday events that only seem incredible to the people involved.
Ellen felt vaguely embarrassed. She’d spent the day thinking about sex in the shower with that young woman’s husband. How tacky. He’d had a real relationship with Colleen. He’d married her, had a child with her. It had been a grown-up relationship. You could tell how much Patrick had loved Colleen by the way his body was curved around hers.
Ellen felt a sense of kinship with poor, silly, crazy Saskia standing at the front door, still holding on, making a fool of herself. If the lovely Colleen (you could tell she was lovely, just from the photo) hadn’t died, Patrick would never have spared a glance for Saskia or Ellen.
Dying was such an elegant way to leave a relationship. No infidelity, no boredom, no long, complicated conversations late into the night. No “She’s still single, I hear.” No running into each other at parties and weddings. No “She’s stacked on the weight” or “She’s showing her age.” Dying was final and mysterious and gave you the last word forever.
“That’s my mum.”
Ellen started. Jack was standing next to her, looking at the photo in her hand. “That’s the day I was born. My mum is dead.”
“Yes.” Ellen carefully put the photo back in its place. She wondered if Jack felt the same way about his dead mother as she did about her nonexistent father: a sort of emotion without emotion. “I know.”
“My dad’s ex-girlfriend is at the front door,” said Jack. “Saskia. She lived with us for a while.”
“Do you remember her?” asked Ellen curiously.
Jack looked shifty. “Sort of. Like, I remember her picking me up from school, and she used to say, ‘Welcome back, Jack!’ She always had this little plate ready with biscuits and fruit and stuff.” He gave her a quick, warning glance. “Dad doesn’t like to talk about her.”
“I know,” said Ellen. Why was Saskia picking him up from school? Didn’t she have to work? Why wasn’t Patrick picking him up after school?
Out the front of the house, there was the sound of a woman’s raised voice, and then a car door slammed and tires squealed.
He said he would call the police if I didn’t leave.
I hadn’t even known he was going to be there. I was so pleased with how good I looked in my red dress and I still felt so cleansed from that naked swim at the beach, and I had this idea that going to visit Patrick’s mum and dad was just a normal, social, everyday thing to do. I was half thinking that maybe it was time to start looking up some old friends, and they seemed like a good place to start.
I didn’t think of it as part of my “habit.” My dirty, nasty little habit.
The proof is that I didn’t even notice Patrick’s car was parked out front! And I’m fixated on that car. I’ve got so used to following it, my vision telescopes in on it even when I’m stuck in traffic miles behind.
All I was thinking about as I walked up the front path was about the first time Patrick brought me here to meet the family. Jack running up the path ahead of us. I was nervous because it had been less than a year since Colleen had died and I thought they might think I was too quick to snap up the grieving widower.