Page 26 of Rock Paper Scissors
It makes me feel sad how he idolizes a ghost.
By all accounts, Adam’s mother was a nice enough woman—she was a nurse and very popular on the estate where they lived—but she wasn’t perfect. And she definitely wasn’t a saint. I find it strange how he compares every other woman in his life to her. Including me. The pedestal he put his dead mother on isn’t just wonky, it’s broken. For example, he seems to have conveniently forgottenwhyshe was wearing the red kimono. It’s what she always wore—along with the matching lipstick—whenever male “friends” came to visit the little council flat that they lived in. The place had thin walls, thin enough for Adam to hear that his mother had a different “friend” stay in her bed almost every week.
Memories are shape-shifters and dreams are not bound by truth, which is why I write everything he chooses to remember down. I want to fix him. And I want him to love me for it. But not everything that gets broken can be repaired.
One day he might remember the face he saw that night, and the unanswered questions that have haunted him for years might finally get answered. I’ve tried so hard to make the nightmares stop: herbal remedies, mindfulness podcasts before bed, special tea… but nothing seems to help. When everything is written down, I turn off the light so that we are in darkness again, and hope he’ll be able to get back to sleep.
It doesn’t take long.
Adam is soon gently snoring, but I can’t seem to switch off.
I swallow a sleeping pill—they’re prescription, and I only take them when nothing else works—but I’ve been popping more than usual lately. I’m too preoccupied with the growing number of cracks in our relationship, the ones that are too big to fill in or skim over. I know exactly why and when our marriage started to unravel. Life is unpredictable at best, unforgivable at worst.
I must have dozed off at some point—the pill finally kickingin—because I wake up with an unsettling sense of déjà vu. It takes a few seconds for me to remember where I am—the room is pitch-black—but as I blink into the darkness and my eyes adjust to the light, I remember that we are in Blackwater Chapel. A sliver of moonlight between the window blind and the wall illuminates a tiny corner of the room, and I strain to see the time on the face of the grandfather clock. Its slender metal hands still suggest it is only half past midnight, which means I haven’t been asleep for very long. My mind feels fuzzy, but then I remember what woke me because I hear it again.
There is a noise downstairs.
ROBIN
Robin can’t sleep either.
She’s worried about the visitors. They shouldn’t have come here.
When she looks out from behind her curtain and sees that the chapel is in complete darkness, she knows what she needs to do.
It looks farther away than it is. But Robin thinks the distance between places can sometimes be as difficult to perceive as the distance between people. Some couples seem closer than they really are, while others appear further apart. When she watched them eating their frozen dinners on trays on their laps earlier, the visitors didn’t look especially happy together. Or in love. But marriage can do that to the best of people as well as the worst. Or perhaps she was just imagining it.
The walk across the fields from her cottage to the chapel would normally take no more than ten minutes. Even less when running, as she discovered earlier. But now that so much snow has fallen, it takes longer than it should to navigate a path for herself without slipping over. It doesn’t help that her Wellington boots are several sizes too big. They’re secondhand: she doesn’t have her own. She would have had to drive all the way to Fort William to buy a pair,there are no shoe shops selling footwear near Blackwater Loch or even in Hollowgrove. She could have bought some online but that would require a credit card instead of cash, which is all she has nowadays. Robin cut up all her cards a long time ago. She didn’t want anyone to have any way of finding her.
She enjoys the sound of snow being compacted beneath her feet, it’s the only noise to dent the silence, apart from the distant clicking of bats. She likes to watch them swooping over the loch at night, it’s a rather beautiful sight to see. Robin read recently that bats give birth to their babies while hanging upside down. Then they have to catch their children before they fall too far, but that part is the same for all parents. Her path tonight is lit by the light of a full moon, without it the night sky would be a sea of black, as the clouds have hidden all but the brightest stars again now. But that’s okay: Robin has never been afraid of the dark.
She isn’t bothered by a snowstorm or howling wind, and she doesn’t mind being cut off from the rest of the world for a few days—it’s not so different from her normal routine if she’s honest. And Robin does always try to be truthful, especially with herself. She has gotten used to living here now, even though she only planned to stay for a short while when she arrived. Life makes other plans when people forget to live. Weeks turned into months, and months turned into years, and when what happened, happened, she knew she couldn’t leave.
The visitors won’t be able to leave when they want to either, not that they know that yet. It’s impossible not to feel a tiny bit sorry for them.
Robin reaches their snow-covered car and stops for a moment. She recognized the man as soon as he got out, and the memory of it winds her. She didn’t know if she’d ever see him again. Wasn’t even sure she wanted to. He’s older now, but she rarely forgets a face, and could never forget his. Her mind wanders back in time, and she thinks about what happened when he was a boy. What he saw and what he didn’t. The story is as tragic now as it was then, and Robinwonders if he still has the nightmares about the woman in red. She thinks the time has come for him to be told the truth, but he isn’t going to like it. People rarely do.
When Robin reaches the chapel’s large wooden doors, she takes one last look around, but there is nobody here to see what she is about to do. The moonlight that was kind enough to light her path reveals the loch and the mountains in the distance, and she can’t help but notice how unspoiled and beautiful this place is. People who do ugly things do not belong here she thinks, as she looks at the visitors’ Morris Minor covered in snow. It’s her favorite kind of weather, because the snow covers the world in a beautiful blanket of white, hiding everything that is dark and ugly underneath.
Life is like a game where pawns can become queens, but not everyone knows how to play. Some people stay pawns their whole lives because they never learned to make the right moves. This is just the beginning. Nobody has played their cards yet because they didn’t know they were being dealt.
Robin takes a key from her coat pocket and quietly lets herself inside the chapel.
LINEN
Word of the year:
hornswoggleverb.To get the better of someone by cheating or deception.
29th February 2012—our fourth anniversary
Dear Adam,
I feel as though we have always shared the same dreams—and nightmares—but it’s been a difficult year. Youlet me downshould have been by my side, but you weren’t. I sat in the waiting room alone and afraid, despite you promising to be there with me.
After three years of trying, two years of appointments, a whole cast of different doctors and nurses, seemingly endless trips to hospitals and clinics for the last twelve months, and one failed round of IVF, I feel broken. This was not how I wanted to spend our anniversary.
I should have known today would be awful, it didn’t start well.
