The doorbell and loud knocking combine to create a tsunami of noise through which no normal person could ever sleep. I roll one way in the bed, then the other, squinting through the gloom to the clock that reads 06:53.
Ugh.
I’m trying to get the sleep out of my eyes as I realise that I’ve slept on David’s side of the bed. I’m almost certain I started where I would usually sleep, but, in the absence of my husband, I’ve unknowingly spread myself across onto his.
The doorbell continues to ring over and over as thumps also bounce through the flat. I pull myself out of bed and stumble into the main area, before peeping through the window to see who’s at the door.
I suppose I should have expected this.
When I open the door, Yasmine shoves her way in with such force that she almost stumbles into the counter. It would almost be funny, if it wasn’t for the fact that she is one of the most pregnant people I’ve ever seen. Some women can disguise a pregnancy almost up to birth, whether through flattering clothes or some sort of wizardry. Yasmine is definitely not one of those women. She is so huge, it’s as if she’s smuggling a small hippo under her top.
‘You can’t just come in here,’ I say.
‘What happened?’ she fires back.
‘What do you mean?’
‘I had the police around. They say David’s missing.’
‘I know. Who do you think reported it?’
‘So, where is he?’
I have to fight away a yawn, which only seems to make her angrier. It’s only now that I realise I’ve never given her my address. She must have got it from David.
‘If I knew where he was,’ I say, ‘I wouldn’t have reported him missing.’
Yasmine stands up a little straighter and smooths her top across her stomach. Her belly button has popped and looks like the cherry on top of a bakewell. Her eyes scan my roll-neck neck top and it’s as if she knows.
‘What did you do to him?’ she asks.
Until now, I thought I’d have no problem dealing with her, but it’s as if the force of the accusation is too much as I find myself taking half a step backwards.
‘What are you on about?’
‘He wouldn’t just disappear.’
I’m not sure why I react in the way I do. I should sympathise and perhaps try to force out a tear. We could be sisters in arms. Instead – and I suspect because I simply don’t like her – I fire right back.
‘He disappeared all the time,’ I say. ‘He’d claim to be off in one place – and then I’d find him sitting in a service station by himself.’
Yasmine’s arm remains half raised. ‘What do you mean?’
‘What do you think I mean? It’s not a metaphor, it’s a fact. There’s plenty he didn’t tell me – including who you were, until you showed up in my class.’ A pause. ‘And why did you turn up?’
Things have swapped and now Yasmine folds her arms defensively across herself. ‘Because he’s my brother,’ she says. ‘He’d never had a proper girlfriend before and I wanted a look at you.’
‘Why not tell me that at the time, instead of running away?’
She slumps a little, unfolding her arms and gripping the counter. There’s a moment in which I wonder if she’s about to go into labour. I’ll have to bundle her into the car and get her to hospital.
‘I’m not sure,’ she says, quieter this time. ‘David’s a complicated person. He’s been hurt by girlfriends before – or at least that’s what he’s said. Sometimes I wondered if he was the problem. I was going to ask if you knew what you were getting yourself into… but then I thought you were playing games in pretending not to know me.’
‘I didn’t know you.’
‘Well, I know that now…’
It’s now that I know I should stop – except this is when I twist the knife. It’s one thing to tell lies to cover; another entirely to tell them to cause someone else pain.
‘Do you know where he might have gone?’ I ask.
I picture the lake and the bridge.
There was no need for that – and yet I feel like she started it by announcing herself after my class and then storming away. What goes around, and all that.
‘I did tell the police,’ Yasmine says. Her tone has changed from angry and accusatory to soft acceptance.
‘Tell them what?’
‘Dad’s old house is out in a place called Greatstone on the Kent coast. We’ve not known what to do with it since Dad died. It’s too run-down for anyone to live in and neither of us have the money to restore it. Developers have been interested – but only to knock it down. David would never agree to that, so it’s still sitting empty.’
‘He never told me…’
Yasmine shrugs and there’s a moment in which it feels as if we could – and maybe should – be closer. It wasn’t only me from whom David kept things.
‘Dad was a hoarder,’ she says. ‘He wouldn’t get rid of anything. I can’t even bare to look at the place. David and me have been arguing about it for years.’ She stops and then adds: ‘I guess he didn’t tell you that either…?’
‘No.’
She glances towards the doorway and, I suspect, is starting to wish she hadn’t come. ‘David always was one to keep things to himself.’
‘I’ve come to realise that.’ I point towards her belly, while thinking of my own. Yasmine’s child will be a cousin to mine… at least in everyone else’s mind, even if it’s not the truth. ‘Do you know if it’s a boy or a girl?’
‘Girl. She’s due in ten weeks, but nobody seems to think I’m going to last that long.’
She turns towards the door and it feels like we’re done – not just now but for good. I suspect that, unless we run into one another in someplace like a supermarket, we’ll never see each other again.
‘I should go,’ Yasmine says. ‘I, er… hope I didn’t wake you.’
I wave it away as if it’s all fine – of course she woke me.
She starts to head for the door, before spinning somewhat abruptly. She picks up the pen on the counter and scribbles something onto the pad next to the Tigger pot.
‘That’s my address,’ she says, ‘just in case you need it.’
‘OK.’
We don’t swap numbers and I wait until I hear the sound of an engine disappearing before checking what she’s written. It’s a place in Kingbridge that I will likely never visit.
I figure I might as well go back to bed, but, when I turn, it’s as if someone has jabbed knitting needles into my midriff. I double over, struggling for breath and wheezing like an asthmatic. I have to hold onto the back of the sofa to steady myself as I stumble across the room before eventually reaching the toilet. I’ve barely managed to get myself into a sitting position when I realise the true horror of what’s happening.
There’s blood.
Lots of it.