I call my father and tell him I am on my way back. By the time I get home he is crazed, pacing the floorboards of the hallway, still in his clothes from the day before. My mother is trying desperately to calm herself down and looks in need of a drink. Jess is there too, appearing relieved to see me when the front door opens. I asked Guy to drop me off at the end of the driveway. I am too ashamed to let them see me with him.
‘Where the bloody hell have you been?’ My father doesn’t give me a chance to answer. ‘And what were you thinking, staying out all night? I kept calling, left messages. When I see Guy…’ His breath is shaky, his cheeks ruddy and flushed. I was so angry with him yesterday, angry that he’d lied, over my assumption he’d cleared out my house. Only a couple of hours ago I was ready never to see him again, but now I think I might understand. Now, after what Janice told me, I need to give him a chance to explain.
‘Thomas, please,’ Mum says, arriving at my side. She takes my coat, hangs it over the banister. ‘Give her a chance to breathe. She’s not a prisoner, is she?’ She walks me through to the living room and Jess sits down next to me on the settee. ‘Do you want to tell us what happened, Chloe? We have been very worried.’
‘I didn’t want to come home last night,’ I tell her. I look to my father, see his anger increasing, that same tight look that I saw the night he found me in the mill with Andrew. I feel small and weak, sitting here in his shadow as he paces about in front of me. But I push on, looking up at him, bracing myself for what’s to come. ‘I want to talk about what you’ve been doing to me. The reconsolidation therapy.’
He stops pacing, glances towards my mother. He scratches his head, checks the pocket of his jacket. He folds his arms across his chest, steps closer. ‘What is it you want to know?’
His openness throws me. Thoughts fly around my brain. Possibilities. I snatch at one, run with it. ‘Can it be used to change people’s memories? To make them forget?’
‘Yes.’ Just like that, an answer. Just like that, he admits he has been manipulating and lying to me all along.
‘And did you try to make me forget Andrew and Joshua?’
My mother yelps, brings a hand up to her head like she might pass out. My father scoffs, shakes his head. He is angry with me, irritated.
‘How could you make such an absurd suggestion? Why would I want that? Why would I want you to forget your son?’
‘For the same reason you didn’t tell me about him when I first woke up.’
He is indignant. ‘You think I was happy about that? That you couldn’t remember your own child? My grandson? I might have been pleased that you couldn’t remember that poor excuse of a husband, but to think I would try to erase them from your memory … Chloe, I’ve been trying my best to help you recall them. Both of them.’
Is he lying? How can I know? If he wanted me to remember then surely he could have taken me back to my house instead of trying to keep it a secret, could have given me access to their things. I look him in the eye. ‘Was it you who took their things?’
He shakes his head, disgusted, as if I just keep making things worse. ‘You’ve been to the house as well? First he keeps you overnight, then he takes you there.’ He looks to my mother in the hope that she shares his outrage. She doesn’t. She is bewildered. ‘I’m going to kill Guy when I see him.’ And then, as if what I have accused him of suddenly registers, he says. ‘How could you think that of me, Chloe? I’m your father. I love you, for goodness’ sake.’
‘But I went to my house,’ I say, shaking my head in disbelief. ‘It was like you had tried to erase them. And the therapy sessions, they leave me so confused. I can’t remember anything properly.’ I’m losing some of my strength, I can feel it. My certainty is going up in smoke, the slow drift of embers from a fire.
He steps forwards, offers me his hand. I don’t take it, don’t want his skin against mine. ‘Come with me, Chloe.’
We leave the drawing room, me two paces behind him until we reach the door to the cellar. Without a word he turns the key, opens the door and reaches for the light switch. Halfway down the steps, he stops, turns to face me, my mouth dry, my hands shaking. ‘I thought you said you wanted their things. You don’t look very sure about it to me.’
From where I am standing my father is cast in shade, his eyes two black pits without emotion. I don’t want to be down here with him. But if he has their things, perhaps seeing them, holding them in my hands, will help me remember them better. Help me remember myself and explain the mess I have created. I watch every step I take as I follow him into the dark.
When we reach the bottom, he pulls another ceiling cord and a second hanging light above our heads sputters awake. I can just about make out the boundary walls as the light rocks back and forth, our shadows swelling and receding. Dust fills my throat and lungs with each breath. He turns and beckons me to follow, his pale face grey as a corpse.
Fear swells inside me, like a fever. I try to convince myself that it’s just the cellar that scares me, silly childhood demons about what lurks down here in the underbelly of our house. But it’s my father I’m frightened of, the rage I have seen spill from him, his expert manipulations and the fact that he knows so many things I do not. He has all the answers, but I don’t even know the questions to ask. He can tell me who I am, but after what I have learnt, I’m no longer sure I want to know.
In a small windowless chamber he crouches down, peels back a grey dust sheet. We cough and wheeze as a cloud of dirt encircles us like smog. Underneath there are four bulging black refuse sacks, each sealed at the top with a cross of brown packaging tape. I watch as he retrieves a Stanley knife from a cupboard and slices through the first cross, splitting it open with one silvery pass of the blade. Men’s clothes spill out like autumn leaves from a weathered garden sack.
He stands back, holds out a hand. ‘That’s what you want, isn’t it?’
I drop to my knees in front of the open bag and rifle through, lifting shirts and scarves and old T-shirts. A faint smell of mould drifts into the air, and I notice that some of the clothes have furry patches of green spreading across them. At one point I hear my mother arrive behind me, but my father shoos her away. Then, as I pull an old tartan shirt from the bag, a small white garment falls to the floor, closed at the bottom with three silvery buttons. A babygro. I hold it up to my nose, try to breathe in the scent. I get nothing. No memory comes back to me, no soft aroma of bathtime and cuddles, no tangible trace of an old life still lingering down here in the dark.
I feel my father’s hand on my shoulder. With a degree of effort he sits down on the cold, damp floor.
‘Leave me alone,’ I tell him.
‘I can’t do that,’ he says softly, shuffling closer. He’s a different person from moments ago, a complete shift in personality. Where is the anger, the irritation, the certainty that he knows best? He reaches for my hand but I move it away. I don’t want his comfort. I’m not even sure I deserve it.
‘Why, Dad? Why did you keep their things from me?’
When I look up, he is blinking anxiously. He isn’t sure of himself any more, and I realise he is about to cry. It all comes back in that moment. I remember the day I stood in the hallway and told my parents I was pregnant. How my father wept over Joshua’s conception, how he saw my life failing before it had even got started. He thought Andrew was a loser, and believed that the little thing growing in my womb, no bigger than my fingernail at the time, was going to tie me to him forever. How wrong he was; how fickle life is, I think as we sit here now, crying over my son’s death.
‘I’m sorry,’ he says finally. He reaches into his pocket and produces my wedding ring. He holds it out for me to take. I turn it over in my fingers, unsure what to do with it. ‘I found it under the footstool.’ Then he looks to the bags. ‘It wasn’t like I threw their things away, Chloe. I brought them here to be kept safe.’
But what does it even matter any more? These clothes are just things, belongings. The ring, despite the engraving of our names on the inside surface, is just a ring. There are no memories locked inside. I can never get Joshua back, and it sounds as though what I had with Andrew was ruined before the crash even happened. Regardless, I slip the ring back in place on my left hand.
‘I left him, Dad. I left him and took his son. Now Andrew’s in rehab, Joshua’s dead, and I can never undo what I’ve done.’
He moves towards me and holds me tight. ‘This isn’t your fault, Chloe. You could never have known what was going to happen. It was just a terrible accident.’
I draw back. ‘That’s not what you said in the beginning, though, is it? You told me I was to blame.’
‘I was wrong. It was just an—’
‘No, you were right. I understand now.’ I remember all the times I left Andrew crying; the times I ran away leaving him begging for my forgiveness. I used to scoop Joshua up, take him from the house. In Andrew’s darkest moments I took the precious thing we had created away from him. What kind of person must I have been to leave when he needed me most? Even though I had to protect Joshua, how could I have abandoned the man I loved, letting him sink further into the darkness of his addiction? ‘You knew I was having an affair, didn’t you?’ I say. ‘You tried to cover it up by not telling me what had happened.’
My father edges away, puts his hands in his pockets and then pulls them out again. It takes him a moment to answer. ‘No, Chloe, that can’t be true. You loved Andrew. I was wrong to tell you that you didn’t.’
‘Then why did I leave him?’
‘Because of his drinking, of course.’ He is using the voice he thinks will make me believe him. The voice that suggests he knows best. ‘You would never have done something like that, Chloe. How could you—’
‘Yes she would.’
We both look up to see Jess standing at the foot of the stairs.
‘She would, Dad, and you know it.’
He takes a step towards her. ‘Jessica, get back up those stairs,’ he says. There’s a hint of familiar anger in his voice, and a slither of fear returns to me. I see Jess gripping the handrail, desperately trying to be strong. ‘That’s quite enough from you.’
But she’s shaking her head. ‘No, Dad. She has to know. This isn’t working. She has to know the truth.’
‘Jessica, I’m warning—’
‘Chloe, you were having an affair,’ she blurts out. She comes forward, moving into the light. She looks older in that moment, as the light shines down on her face, shadows forming beneath her eyes and in the hollows of her cheeks. She has been drained by this too, just like the rest of us. ‘You came here two weeks before the accident, told us that you were leaving Andrew. That you’d met somebody else,’ she continues. ‘But then you talked to Andrew again and he promised you it would be different this time. You told me you weren’t sure, that you were having doubts about leaving with this other man. Dad was devastated, thought your second chance was slipping through your fingers.’
I glance over at my father, whose head is hanging in shame. He looks defeated. He knows it’s too late now, that there’s no turning back from the truth. I look back at Jess, see the tendons in her neck strained and tight.
‘On the night of the crash, you announced that you were going back to Andrew. You’d changed your mind, you said. You’d given up your job and the three of you were going to move away. Dad tried to stop you, and you argued. You left angry. Then you had the accident, and when you woke up, you couldn’t remember anything about what had happened. Couldn’t remember them, or us. But you kept dreaming about that night. About the crash. Dad was only trying to help you, Chloe.’
I look over at him, leaning against the wall by the stairs. ‘Trying to help?’
He wipes his eyes on a handkerchief. He looks so small and broken, all his efforts in vain. ‘You felt so guilty about the affair, Chloe. Before you left here that night, you told me you were going to tell this other man once and for all that it was over.’ He shakes his head, unable to believe where we have found ourselves. ‘I didn’t agree, wanted you to leave Andrew. But you told me you wished you’d never started the relationship, wished that you could turn back the clock. I knew I could help you do that, if it was what you really wanted. I’ve been trying to help you forget about the accident because I believed it was the only way you might forget Damien.’
‘Damien? Don’t you mean Ben?’
He stands back, seems confused. ‘Ben? Where did you get that idea from?’
‘Jess said … and I remember…’ Dad looks to Jess for an answer, but she just shrugs her shoulders. Am I wrong?
‘Not Ben, Chloe. Damien,’ he says, looking away. ‘He was the man you were seeing.’
For a moment I remain silent. I try to place a memory of him, a memory of us. But I can’t. How is it that I can’t remember anything about what must have been such a significant part of my life? ‘Are you sure?’
‘Ask yourself this: why else would he have been there on that night?’
So there’s the truth. Is this why Damien is now trying to convince everyone that he wasn’t there at the crash? Is this why he has no verifiable alibi? Does it explain why I thought he seemed familiar? Because we were having an affair and I was going to tell him it was over between us?
I walk towards the stairs, dumbstruck at what my father has told me. Jessica speaks but I don’t hear what she says. When my father steps in my path I put up no resistance. I wait for him to relent. He does, let’s me pass.
‘Chloe?’ he asks. I stop, turn to face him. ‘What now?’
I say nothing and walk away.
I have to find Andrew, face up to what I did. Because through my actions alone, my decision to have an affair, I am responsible for everything that has happened. I know now that my father was right all along: I am to blame for the death of my son.
I don’t know what you thought would happen. What did you expect when we left together that night? It was you who started it, kissing me like that. It was you who led me away from the crowd, told me I had more important things to do. You, Chloe. You wanted me to do you.
Yeah, that’s what you told me. That’s what you whispered, letting your tongue brush against my ear. You wanted me to do you. To fuck you. Who would have turned that down? For God’s sake, just look at you. You are beautiful. So wonderful. Your skin, your eyes, the curve of your lips. Your fingers, and the way I learnt they could touch me. You became so much more to me than a one-night stand. I knew from the moment I touched you that that was it for me. No, that’s a lie. Nothing but the truth from here on in. I knew from the moment I saw you.
Andrew sounded like a waste of space, somebody who was dragging you down, making your life hell. You deserved so much more. Joshua deserved more. I knew I could give it to you. I tried to play it cool, but it was hard. So hard to smile, to watch you walk away like I didn’t care, as if we had all the time in the world to get it right. But which world, Chloe? It was as if we were living in two separate dimensions. You with him, then you with me. Which life did you want? I was sure I knew. I was so damn sure. I still am. I know you still want me.
So just be brave that little bit longer, Chloe. Try to hold it together. I’ve taken care of it all. I’ve made it so damn easy for you, just like you made it for me on that first night we were together. Just like I’m going to make the rest of your life. All you have to do is say yes.