I stare at the bowl of cereal in front of me. It’s gone soggy. The bran has turned into a murky paste.
“Not going to eat?” Seb asks. We’re in the dining room, playing house. But this morning I don’t feel like pretending.
I shake my head and stare out of the window. The sky is clear, which means it’s probably freezing outside. But if I look only at the sun, it’s the Spain I was hoping for.
“I’ll make you a coffee,” Seb says, walking to the kitchen.
I bring my hands to my temples. If I could only switch off my brain. Stop the images from last night playing on repeat.
Two shadowy figures. Brother and sister. Kissing. Did it really happen?
Ana’s leaving for Barcelona in two days. And then it’ll just be Seb, Alma, and me.
I look at my cereal, willing the brown sludge to part, like Moses parted the sea. To make way for something. Anything.
They say you see the things you want to see. If that’s true, what does that say about me? I can hear Eleanor’s disappointed voice in my head again. I can hear you in my head again—calling me crazy.
Seb walks back into the room and puts a steaming mug next to me. “Be careful, it’s hot.”
He smiles and I force one back. I look for a trace of something dark, a clue that he’s lying. But if he is, he’s doing it well.
“Are you going to Deb’s today?” he asks.
Deb. I’ve forgotten all about her since last night.
“Yes, a bit later.”
He nods. “It’s nice that you’re looking after her. I never thought Richard would turn out to be an asshole.”
“Me neither.”
“It’s a shame,” he says, turning his attention back to his laptop screen.
I stare out of the window again, thinking back to this morning. How I watched Seb get out of bed, afraid to stir and let him know I was awake. He went to the bathroom, and when he returned, he sat on the bed and greeted me happily, asking me how I’d slept.
As if nothing was wrong.
I just smiled and told him I was fine. His concern for me last night felt real, believable. I almost bought it. Until Ana gave the truth away with her shaking hands across the dining room table. I can still see those eyes, full of fear. But fear of what?
I felt she was trying to tell me something. She looked torn. But she said nothing for the rest of the night, and she’s been gone all morning. I hoped for clarity today. I even prayed for it last night, as if the universe would give me a sign that Seb was lying. But looking at him now, I’m so conflicted.
Everything feels wrong. Seeing him at the top of the stairs last night, dressed in his cream turtleneck. He was so handsome, like the Seb I knew. But I had seen the black turtleneck in the bay window.
I know I did.
“I’m going to get ready,” I say, getting up and taking my coffee with me.
“I’ll be here,” Seb says, his words feeling more like a reminder than a comfort.
I walk up the stairs and close the bedroom door behind me. Heading to the bathroom, I put my coffee on the basin and stare at my reflection in the mirror. Am I going mad?
I whisper the words, watching my lips move. Am I crazy?
I half expect to cry, but my face refuses to crumple. Before I can ask the question again, my insides tug at me. It’s the same visceral feeling you get when you’re standing too close to the edge of a cliff, or a balcony.
“I’m not crazy,” I say out loud. Because I know what crazy feels like. It feels like you can’t believe who you are. Like everything you’ve ever known is a lie. Like that day the restraining order arrived, and I saw my name in print.
That’s what crazy feels like. And this doesn’t feel like that.
I sip my coffee and look at my hands. A part of me wants to reach for the razor again, but even that doesn’t feel right. Because this time it doesn’t feel like my fault.
So instead, I do something else.
I put the mug on the basin and walk over to the washing basket in the corner. I rummage through the dirty clothing. Searching. If I’m right and I’m not crazy, then there will be evidence of what I saw. Something to prove that it wasn’t all in my head.
I fling the contents out onto the floor. Blue jeans, emerald dress, black stockings, cream turtleneck.
And then I find it.
A piece of clothing at the bottom of the basket. The black turtleneck.
“Something wrong?” Deb asks.
It’s past two, and she’s still in her nightgown. Even from across her kitchen island, there’s a musty smell to her.
“I think I’m getting a cold,” I say.
She walks over to a cupboard and takes out a tube. She puts a glass of water and a tablet beside my cup of tea. “Here, vitamin C.”
I want to tell her the real reason I’m sick—I’m living in a house full of liars. But I drop the tablet in the water and watch it fizz.
“You sure you’re all right?”
I meet her gaze. “Are you?”
Her lips compress into a thin line. “Sorry,” I say, “I didn’t sleep well either.”
She fiddles with her mug. “It’s okay. You’re right. I’m not doing too well.”
She chuckles weakly. We stand like that for a while, silent. Sometimes stillness between two people is the strongest remedy. A way of recognising each other’s pain without verbalising it or touching it.
“I might as well go and shower,” Deb announces, putting her mug in the sink. “Staying for lunch?”
I can’t think of anything I’d rather do. “If that’s okay?”
“Macaroni and cheese?” she says with a grin. I love her for it, but I know she’s got none of the ingredients for that in the fridge. I give her a smile.
As Deb goes upstairs, I stand by the island until my tea is cold. The questions keep bashing around in my head, each heavier and more hurtful than the one before.
Are you going to confront Seb? What makes you think he’ll admit to it? And what would he be admitting to? Changing his sweater?
And then, almost unbidden, a word bubbles to the surface. Incest.
I walk around the island. Once, twice. I need to keep busy, keep my mind from spiralling out of control. The old photograph I found in the house comes to view again, the one of Seb and Ana when they were children. Her pigtails, the frown on his chubby face. It can’t be, but what if it is?
I look at the study door. From here, it’s half-closed. Like a relief, my mind recalls yesterday’s thoughts. The charity email, the bank statements.
Without thinking, I walk to the study. I hear the water running upstairs. I switch on the Mac and listen to it whir to life. I type the charity’s name into Google’s search bar. Suddenly, the page returns no matches. Has it been taken down?
I navigate to Richard’s Gmail, new messages in bold taunting me to read them. I type Save a Village into the search bar and click on the emails that appear. The African woman grins toothily as I scroll down the letter to the website link.
It loads slowly, and when it’s done, my breath catches in my throat.
If the website looked suspicious before, it looks even more so now. Apart from the outdated layout and colours, the latest posts on the site are from 2013. Did I notice these before? No wonder Google hasn’t found it. The site looks dormant. Even the URL name has a series of numbers behind it.
I click on the Donate Now button, but nothing happens. I click again. Nothing.
I’m scrolling through the Our Vision page when I realise there’s a silence from upstairs. The shower has stopped. If Deb finds me here, I’ll have no excuse. No ASOS order to check this time. My finger clicks hastily, navigating to the Contact Us page. It’s blank with only a phone number and email address. I open my phone and take a picture of the page.
I switch off the Mac and straighten the chair. Before I leave, I find the bank statements in the cupboard again. From the pages, I find the line with the charity donation, take another picture of it. The last shot is of the bank account number at the top of the page. I can hear Deb on the stairs by the time I leave the study, striding over to the kitchen.
“Let’s get our Italian on, shall we?” she says, a towel wrapped around her head.
I watch her walk to the fridge, examine its contents, then close it. She looks almost comical. “On second thought, how does oven pizza sound?”
I break into a smile. It’s good to see her in a better mood today. “Perfect.”
She preheats the oven as she pours us wine, her eyes sparkling as she talks about some of the delicious meals she’s had in her life. The falafel in the Middle East, the prawn curries in Sri Lanka, the stamppot in the Netherlands.
“You’ve seen so much,” I say. “I’ve barely left Europe.”
She brushes the comment away. “You’ve got time. I did most of my travelling in my thirties.”
“Don’t you miss it?”
“The older you get, the more you want something of your own. Put down roots. Well, at least for me it’s like that.”
I nod. “I get that.”
She gulps some wine, takes a pizza out of the freezer. “But like I said, you’ve got so much time.”
Why do people always say that? It feels like a warning. A reminder that one day you won’t have it anymore. That you’ll be like them, nostalgic about the days when they had the luxury of time. I think of Seb, of all the places we haven’t been. How we might never get there. How he could end up just like you did—stuck in my brain but not in my life.
And somehow, it doesn’t hurt as much as I expected it to.
“Have you thought of taking a trip?” I ask. “It might be good to go away. Especially now?”
Deb raises her eyebrows. “Maybe. I wonder where I’d go. Got any ideas?”
We list places, slurping more wine. Bali, Maldives, Morocco. “Maybe I’ll even find someone to rub lotion on my back,” she says, winking. We chuckle, and talk of the adventures she could have.
But it’s futile, because we both know it’s just a dream. Like me, Deb has other problems to worry about. An impending divorce, a separation of lives.
As the wine loosens my limbs and my worries, I think of telling her. But the words sound awful in my head. I think Seb kissed Ana.
I also think of telling her about the charity, and showing her the pictures I took of the website and the bank statements. But something inside me holds it close. Tells me not to. Not yet.
I need to do more than tell. I need to show.
And this Save a Village charity—whoever they are—might just be the right people to help me do it.