1

 

Ione

 

I thought if I prayed hard enough, there might be a let up in the rain. It began two days ago, a fine spray on the window pane, as I packed my life away in cardboard crates. I look over at Mrs Baxter’s garden from my patio windows. For her, the rain continues, her roses smiling to the heavens as if the rest of our prayers don’t count. Very soon, though, all the gardens will have fallen leaves collecting on patchy lawns, flowers will be deadheaded, patio furniture locked in sheds but I won’t be here to watch it happen.

​

This rain, today, falls hard and fast as if every drop was a pent-up emotion, crammed inside a cloud of fury, waiting to burst out. There are angry stabs on the decking, purposeful splashes on the leaves of the geraniums. I wonder if I should grab my pot plants and take them with me to my new flat, after all, but I have nowhere to put them now. My car is full, and the movers are almost finished loading. The small items of furniture I kept are all on board, and the boxes marked Misc are mostly stacked in the van. There are several boxes marked Misc. It wasn’t until I’d sat in the stark living room yesterday and noticed how many that it occurred to me I should at least have written Misc Kitchen or Misc Bedroom just so I knew where everything went when I got to the new place.

​

I decide to leave the geraniums.

​

The removal men, when they arrived two hours ago, looked at me with pity. They probably wondered why I was leaving a three bedroom house in Manchester and travelling all the way to London to a two bedroom flat on my own. What was my reason for downsizing? Had I lost people along the way? Had I been too hopeful about filling the house with a husband and children? Maybe I’m overthinking this. I’m just another job for them. They’d been efficient and matter-of-fact, but not in an unfriendly way.

​

On the floor next to the living room door, along with my handbag, is the box. Mum’s ashes. I’d kept them in the dark wooden box on a shelf in the top of my wardrobe. David complained that it was freaking him out, seeing them in the living room every time he sat down. Like the house was haunted. I moved them—couldn’t handle another argument—so they were out of sight. Mum was never out of mind, not for me. Although she’d left it to me, this would always be Mum’s house. Being haunted by her wouldn’t be so bad—I missed her with every fibre of my being.

​

I’m not looking forward to the drive: four hours with just one stop. Maybe I’ll take two stops if I feel tired. I didn’t sleep much the night before. Tossing and turning, worried I’d done the wrong thing, moving to a completely new city, one I really only saw through Mum’s eyes. She’d refused to go back there, not even for a visit. I’d wanted to stop the moving process many times, take the For Sale sign down, call the school in Holland Park and tell them I’d changed my mind, something had come up. But I’d had a long and successful interview and a new job was part of the big change I’d convinced myself I needed.

Two nights before, I’d gone for a farewell drink with Jeannie. She left her husband, Oliver, to sort the twins out by himself for a change and had taken me out. I wasn’t really in the mood. I forced myself to go. Of course, I wanted to say goodbye or au revoir to Jeannie. She is my best friend and has seen me through some difficult times. Jeannie helped me escape from my whole situation. One that had gone on for long enough. Any longer and I would have ended up on the psychiatric ward of Manchester General after yet another spell in A&E. Jeannie hadn’t meant for me to go as far as London, maybe just the next town or city.

​

‘You know I’m going to miss you like hell, Ione?’ she’d said in the trendy bar we’d found ourselves in after Jeannie said The Angel had the atmosphere of a wake. A wake in which the deceased had an assortment of morbid-looking friends who enjoyed a drink but were lacking in conversation. Jeannie said it was far too sad, and we should go to Grainger’s, ignoring my protests about not being dressed right and being the wrong side of thirty. Grainger’s played their music loud. All the tables were high and the stools were tall. I’d have felt as if I was on display, and there wouldn’t be a dark corner to hide in. I was still working on the coping mechanisms the counsellor had given me for that sort of thing, but I wasn’t quite there yet. I didn’t mention the part about not wanting to be noticed to Jeannie because I knew she’d lecture me about how beautiful I was. How she wished she had my thick hair and complexion. Exotic, she once called me. A Jamaican mother and Greek father equals exotic to Jeannie, and I couldn’t argue with her.

​

‘I’ll miss you, too,’ I’d said. I did all I could to choke back a sob. I promised myself I wouldn’t make a scene. Leaving Manchester would be the making of me. This was my mantra. ‘But I do have mixed feelings about leaving the house. He ruined it for me.’

‘Don’t think about the last few years. Just try and remember the time before.’

​

‘I’m trying. My childhood memories, the teenage years. They were the best, but it was hard to hold onto the memory of me and Mum. The times we had. I know I’ve told you this, but it broke her heart when I moved out to go to uni.’

​

‘Funny, isn’t it? When I left home, I told my parents, you’ll never see me again. I’m travelling the world, starting with New York. I’ll be rich. I won’t miss Manchester for a second. I told them I’d send them the odd Christmas card and that would be it.’ We both laughed at the reality of it all. ‘Two years in Leeds—didn’t even make it to an airport—and I’m back. Pregnant. Married to a slob and moving into a three-bedroomed semi round the corner from the flipping folks.’

​

Despite what she said about them, Jeannie was close to her parents. They’d helped her with Benjie, now fifteen, and when she and then Oliver had been out of work, they had paid the mortgage. Though she groaned non-stop about her husband, Jeannie was in total agreement whenever I reminded her how lucky she was to have found a man like Oliver.

​

I, on the other hand, had found a man who would kick me down a flight of stairs, then step over me to go out and play cards with his friends. As if seeing his wife’s legs lift from under her and hearing her cries as each part of her body jammed into a wall or banged into the banister as she careered down the stairs was perfectly acceptable. Like it happened in every household. The first time David was violent, physically that is, is a time I still have etched in my memory. I’d made some comment about not having anything nice. I was looking into the wardrobe at the time, referring to its contents and the fact I needed something for the baptism of Jeannie’s twins. I remember how, in a flash, out of the corner of my eye, I saw a dark figure lunging towards me. At first, I didn’t know what I was seeing. His eyes were wide; bulging from his head. His hands, outstretched as he came at me, were not like hands but savage instruments. David leapt at me to attack, but I couldn’t understand why. I didn’t move. He was on me, forcing me to look at him, spitting angry words into my face.

​

‘David. What are you doing?’ I kept screaming for him to stop, but he battered me around the bedroom, screaming obscenities, telling me I was ungrateful, he’d given me so much. I remember the pain as he beat my arms, my back. I tried to run from the room. He grabbed me again, clawing at my neck, wanting, as I realised in the next second, to pull me back into the room by my hair. I screamed, but there was no sound. I could feel the hot sting of his nails as they ripped into the skin on my neck and the cold feeling of exposed flesh. From halfway under the bed where I cowered and pleaded for him to stop, I saw the drops of red on the cream rug. Blood fell from open wounds, and I was trapped. I didn’t think he would stop there, but he did. He looked down at me, sneering, his eyes telling me I got what I deserved. That I was ungrateful. That I was wrong. That I should apologise to him.

​

At the baptism, I held one of the twins as I stood by the altar with Jeannie holding the second twin and Oliver standing next to his brother. The priest, highly spirited, performed the ceremony. Jeannie knew something was wrong. There were questions in her eyes as she watched my fingers moving to the scratches on my neck. I couldn’t stop touching them. It became an involuntary twitch I couldn’t shake for years to come. If I touched my neck and the scars were gone, then maybe the beating never really happened. The scars left their mark forever. From that day, many more wounds would appear on my skin. They’d come and they’d heal. At the time, I had no idea how hard it would be to heal the things you cannot see. At the baptism celebration party, Jeannie hardly left my side. If you want to talk to me. She kept saying it, over and over. I should have talked to her. I should have told her from that first incident. I wanted to.

​

‘Here’s to your lovely folks, Jeannie,’ I said above the din at Grainger’s. I raised my wine glass. ‘If it wasn’t for them, I wouldn’t have you as my best friend.’

​

‘Are we really talking about my parents having sex?’ Jeannie pulled a face.

​

We clinked glasses and laughed again.

​

I’d met Jeannie when I was teaching music at a local high school. I had taken a small flat instead of moving into Mum’s when I came back to Manchester after uni and teacher training. I was an independent woman who’d left home over ten years ago. Mum got to know Jeannie and loved her as much as I did. In the years to come, after Mum died and I married David, I began to see less and less of Jeannie. David saw to that. Always in my head, telling me I was hopeless, that I was useless and why the school made me head of music, he had no clue. He kept vowing to come to the school and tell them what a bad wife I was. He berated me for not knowing the first thing about love and affection. Said I was a lousy lover. I couldn’t cook. Everything I gave him made him gag. That was not true. He cleared his plate most evenings, coming in late and complaining the food was cold. Throwing things around the kitchen, watching me cower in a corner, afraid to look at him, afraid to move in case he kicked me into another corner of the room.

​

Jeannie noticed how I changed. How I stopped talking in the staffroom. Afraid to look anyone in the eye. How I lost weight. How I shouted at the children at school and demanded their very best, never allowing for one single, solitary mistake on their part.

​

‘Here’s to you, Ione.’ Jeannie raised her fourth gin and tonic double. She clinked her glass to mine so loudly, the dark images shattered before my eyes and dissolved into the highly polished floorboards in the bar. ‘You’re only a video chat away. You can show me round the new place, virtual tour and all that. But seriously, I know I say I’ll miss you, and I will, but a clean slate is going to make all the difference. Wow. Is that a smile I see? At last.’ She put her hand on mine. ‘Take good care. Enjoy the new school and don’t, whatever you do, take any shit from anyone. You are an amazing woman. A good, kind and sensitive person. You were there for your mum when she needed you.’

‘Jeannie, I’m all she had. Of course I was there.’

‘It doesn’t necessarily follow that children have to look after their parents, you know? I’m not looking after my folks when they’re old or on their last legs. Nursing home. The pair of them, and I’ve got the place with the cheapest rates bookmarked in my Favourites.’

‘Jeannie!’ Tears that pricked at my eyes welled as tears of laughter. It wasn’t a night for sadness, just joy, my forever memory of my best friend. We reminisced about how we first met. Jeannie was a special needs assistant who joined the school around the time of my promotion. I’d warmed to her straight away. No one could resist Jeannie, her loveable nature, her full smile and her sparkly eyes that crinkled at the corners. It felt as if we’d known each other forever. As it turned out, we’d not grown up that far apart. As if that wasn’t enough of a coincidence, while I was at the University of Leeds, Jeannie had moved there and was living with a chubby roofer and tiler called Oliver. He stroked her long hair and called her My Jeannie, telling everyone at their wedding that all his wishes had come true.

​

At my wedding, I’d stood in the Register Office, knees trembling. I had a strange feeling at the backs of my legs. I thought the bottom half of my body was going to give way and I’d fall to the floor, drop my bouquet. The whole day was surreal. Jeannie had rubbed my back in the toilets of Franco’s Restaurant at the reception, saying, ‘Don’t worry, love, you’re just missing your mum.’ Mum had died before having met the man I fell in love with and married within eight months of meeting him.

I turn on the car radio just as I hit the M6. It’s too quiet. Just the squeak of the windshield wipers and an occasional sigh from me. I take deep breaths in and out as I drive. Deep into my belly as my counsellor described, yet I’m not quite relaxed. The black tarmac miles roll on as I follow the flow of traffic, changing the speed of my wipers from fast to intermittent and then back again. The rain can’t decide if it’s a shower, fine or gusty. Can rain be gusty, or is that just the wind? The music on the radio and the voice of the DJ are my company. It’s the same station I listen to in my kitchen when I bake and plan and look things up on my laptop. For the entire journey, I’m trying to calm the nervous energy I have about moving so far and starting a new job.

By the time I reach the M1, I begin to wonder if the removal people will find the flat. They come from Manchester. How well will they know Shepherd’s Bush? How well did I when I looked at the Rightmove website day in and day out, searching for my escape home. My start-all-over-again home that will obliterate the lingering memories of my life with David.

I saw him again. David, my ex-husband. He walked straight up to me in the High Street and pleaded with me to take him back. ‘I’ll be good this time.’

‘You were supposed to be good the first time round. That was the time to be good. You ruined my life.’

I’d turned and walked back in the direction I came. A ridiculous thing to do, I realised a split second after. That was the direction David was going. I crossed the road without looking. The cars in the busy street tooted and swerved.

‘What are you doing?’ David said. He ran at my side to keep up, gluing his body to mine, walking as if we were close again. Like we were lovers. Smiling as he talked to me the way he used to smile when we were out and he was telling me how ridiculous I looked and that I looked cheap in that dress. ‘You could have got yourself killed.’

I stopped. Stared into the eyes of the man I’d instantly fallen in love with and thought I could never live without. I wanted to say to him, ‘You killed me. You. First my soul. You took it clean away with your disgusting words and the way you looked at me. We’d only been married a month. Mentally, you killed me, and if that wasn’t enough, after you’d alienated me from the handful of people I could call a friend, made it so I could no longer hold down a job, you tried to stamp out my life with your fists and feet and anything close enough for you to throw. Traffic is the least of my problems.’

​

I didn’t say any of this; in fact, it was the last time I would ever think like that again. I remembered all the work I’d done to get me to the place I was that day. I would never have looked David in the eye the way I turned and did right then. Not blinking, remembering the power of positive thought and definite action. He couldn’t bend or break me, and he could see that clearly in my eyes and something shifted in him.

‘Stop following me,’ I said.

‘I’m not following you. I live here now. I’m back. Can’t get rid of me that easily.’ It was a threat he left hanging, and I would never be sure, when I walked away, if he would ever come after me again.

 

London, thirty-six miles. I’ll be there by early afternoon. It won’t take long for the removal people to move my things in. Most of my furniture, I’d got rid of. Casting out the old and starting something new. Shepherd’s Bush is an hour away, and all of a sudden, I can feel the calm rising in me.​