An Unravelling Read online

  AN UNRAVELLING

  Elske Rahill

  www.headofzeus.com

  First published in the UK in 2019 by Head of Zeus Ltd

  Copyright © Elske Rahill 2019

  The moral right of Elske Rahill to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act of 1988.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

  This is a work of fiction. All characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

  ISBN (HB): 9781786691002

  ISBN (XTPB): 9781786691019

  ISBN (E): 9781786690999

  Author photo: Hatwig Klappert

  Cover painting: My Mother Sitting, 1986 (oil on canvas), Maggi Hambling (b.1945) / Private Collection / Bridgeman Images

  Head of Zeus Ltd

  First Floor East

  5–8 Hardwick Street

  London EC1R 4RG

  WWW.HEADOFZEUS.COM

  For Bomama

  Contents

  Welcome Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  PART 1

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  PART 2

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  PART 3

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Chapter 57

  Chapter 58

  Chapter 59

  PART 4

  Chapter 60

  Chapter 61

  Chapter 62

  Chapter 63

  Chapter 64

  Acknowledgements

  About the author

  An Invitation from the Publisher

  PART 1

  1

  UP HERE THE AIR is weighted with the mulchy tang of slow-drying laundry.

  With careful steps – the baby is sleeping in the room below – Cara moves across the low-ceilinged attic and sets the cafetière on the floor by her desk. It’s an architect’s desk; a wide thing of hollow metal, its drafting board covered in a faint grid. The desk was designed to support clean, calculated marks, but she has defied it with clusters of stones, leaves, shells, photographs of tiny animals enlarged to grotesque detail.

  She lifts the sheet off yesterday’s work and positions her pages in sequence – the burrow scene with its filigree of roots, then the rabbit emerging into the moonlit undergrowth… Oh but, no. No. The ears are wrong, and the whiskers too. How did she go on working yesterday without seeing it?

  The morning brims up at the rain-sprinkled skylight, turning shapes of freckled white across her drawings, a sudden heat on her face. It’s later than she thought. The kids will be up soon. She pulls down the blind and switches on the lamp, filling the space with merciless light.

  She gathers the three pages into a pile, spreads them out again and squeezes her eyes shut before looking at them afresh – all wrong. Page after page, the rabbit’s ears are cutesy, limp things; the idea of a bunny and nothing rabbit about it at all. She thought she was on a roll yesterday, but she was just being sloppy. She’s even committed one of them to ink. Stupid girl. She’ll have to scrap it all and start again.

  Coffee first. Squatting by the cafetière she presses too hurriedly on the plunger, sending a quick little splurt out the spout, and peers under the desk for something to drink from. She has allowed the mugs to collect again – mugs and jam jars and ceramic yoghurt pots, silt rings glazed into their floors. Pat is right; they’d have enough mugs if she just kept on top of the housework. She selects the cleanest one – a tin camping mug bought on honeymoon in Italy – and returns to the desk for sugar. She keeps a stock of it beside her ink pots – chunks of blonde crystals filling a small cork jug that once belonged to her grandad.

  She pops a piece into the mug and pours, uses the wrong end of a paintbrush to stir.

  She blows at the coffee, and sips – the relief of caffeine, calories, heat; a promise that this headache will lift.

  Look at that mawkish snout! It’s like a greeting card. She will have to rethink this project. Dürer’s Young Hare – she needs to go back to that; that life inside the stillness, the distillation of a moment. Her grandfather had the print hanging in his studio. A reminder, he said, not to get lost in the page, to stay with the subject. It was the ears she liked best – cool envelopes of sound and each fleck of fur alive to the passing light.

  With a pen from her dressing-gown pocket she blacks over yesterday’s ears. She marks the hump where they should sprout from the narrow skull; a sensitive spot, maybe, for a rabbit. Whiskers too – she makes thick sweeps above the eyes and muzzle. It will all be in the whiskers and the ears – that’s where Little Luke Rabbit’s personality will lie. The ruined page can be her guide. There must be no stasis; no overworking; just action – trembling, bristling, swivelling, sniffing—

  Cara’s pen stops. She listens – the ugly clacking of magpies far down the garden, the groan of the boiler rumbling through the house, but there’s someone here. Her daughter – Cara can feel it on her skin and down into her glands – the animal signals of her child; a softening of the muscles, warmth surging to her breasts. Megan is there at the foot of the stairs, her breath moistening the air. Then the whine:

  ‘Mammeeeya?’

  Cara holds her breath. There is a chance Megan will give up and go in search of breakfast.

  The child lurches up the steps on all fours, hands slap slapping, the thud of one slippered foot, the drag of the other.

  ‘Mammmeeeeya? Maaaaaa – meeeeeee!’

  ‘Mammy’s working, darling.’

  ‘Mammeeya no but Mammy don’t work. I want you.’

  ‘Go and cuddle Daddy. Say good morning to Daddy, baby. Tell him your mammy is working.’

  ‘But Mammy no I want you. I want to give you a twiss.’

  ‘Come and give me a quick kiss then, Megan.’

  When she reaches the top the child scuttles speedily at her, clambers onto her knee, face alight with a victorious grin.

  ‘Good morning, Megan my lovely.’

 
‘My mammy.’

  Megan’s cheeks are very red, her nosetip glazed with dried snot. Cara touches her mouth to the dark, sweat-slicked hair, nuzzles in behind her daughter’s ear, cheek pressed to burning cheek; breathing her in.

  ‘Dood mowning Mammy.’ Megan raises her chin to receive the kisses, nosing her mother like a purring cat. She draws back and plants a sticky palm on either side of Cara’s face, kissing one cheek, then the other, then her nose; puts her face into her mother’s throat, a hand under the lapel of her robe, and sighs. Cara lifts Megan’s hand away from her breast, and kisses her fingers. She puts the lid on her pen, pulls the sheet back over her work.

  ‘Are your sisters awake?’

  Megan nods against her chest. ‘DenDen is be doing Lego.’

  ‘Baby Peggy?’

  ‘Nope. Baby Peggy is being in her cot. Her be sleeping maybe.’ She shakes her head, and adds an exaggerated, studied shrug – hands turned out, one shoulder hitched to her ear, mouth twisting, nose wrinkled. The idea of maybe is new to her. ‘Maybe,’ she says again, holding the pose, ‘Baby Peggy be sleeping maybe.’ Then, as an afterthought, ‘Or needs a feed maybe. Boobies.’

  The little fingers slip in under her robe again; cold. Cara pulls Megan’s hand out and makes a pocket around it with both of her palms, blows on it.

  ‘Where’s your dressing gown? Is Daddy up?’

  ‘I hate Daddy.’

  ‘You don’t hate Daddy.’

  ‘Do.’

  ‘Come on, I need you to help me find something quickly. Then we’ll have some breakfast.’

  ‘You smell horwible, Mammy. You need to wash you.’

  ‘Come on, off you get. Help me. We need to find a picture of a bunny rabbit. It’s somewhere in here, I think. So, I’m going to lift down the books one by one and you keep looking and when you see a picture of a bunny you say BUNNY! Okay?’

  There’s a stack of mess against the wall – old specs from projects that never happened, her grandfather’s illustrated encyclopaedias with strips of paper and twists of yarn stuck in as bookmarks. The hare is in there somewhere, crouched in one of the books, staring with that mute blend of disgruntlement and terror at the blank weight of leather-bound volumes.

  Megan hooks her arms around her mother’s neck. Cara can feel the saliva on her breath. ‘Otay. But Mammy… Hello?’

  ‘Okay but Megan hello.’

  ‘I’m hungry.’

  ‘You’re hungry.’

  ‘Yep and my froat hurts.’

  ‘Your throat hurts?’

  ‘Yep.’

  The bang of the front door sends a gentle rattle up through the house, and Grandma’s voice whoops from the hallway – ‘Cooookoooo! Lazy girls!’

  ‘Mimi, Mimi Mimi!’ Megan jiggles on her mother’s lap and leans back, pulling with all her weight.

  ‘Ouch, Megan! Gentle, baby, stop hanging out of me.’

  *

  It’s with a mixture of relief and rage that Cara carries the child down the attic steps – she’ll have to start this project all over again. Today was a write-off from the start. Dribs and drabs are no good – it will take a few hours just to get on track. It will have to be Monday, when the girls are at Montessori…

  ‘Mammy?’ Megan’s fingers are on Cara’s chin now, her lips up close enough to speak into her nose. She whispers, ‘Mammy tell Mimi I am hungry otay?’ and nods for confirmation, her eyes open round.

  Cara inhales her daughter’s stewy breath. ‘Okay, my love.’

  ‘And tell her I have a sore froat.’

  ‘Yes, okay, I’ll tell her. You go on down, Megan.’ She lowers the child onto the landing carpet, prying the arms from her neck.

  ‘I’m just going to wash my face.’

  ‘Caaaaara!’

  ‘Coming, Grandma! Just a second.’

  Cara soaps her cheeks quickly, swishes mouthwash around her teeth.

  *

  Her grandmother has set a big wicker basket on the kitchen table. Megan is jumping up and down like an excited pup.

  ‘Mimi Mimi Mimi, I’m hungry!’

  ‘Poor chicken, has your mammy been neglecting you?’

  Cara kisses her grandmother on the cheek. ‘Hi, Grandma.’

  ‘Well Cara, wouldn’t you be ashamed! Are you not dressed, darling? And what a day! It rained last night and, oh this morning when I went out to feed the birds I looked at the grass there, bright wet and I thought, you know Cara, what could be more beautiful than a sunny morning after a night of rain? Well, and the birds came—’

  ‘Mimi I have a sore froat. Tell her, Mammy!’

  ‘She’s fine.’

  Megan frowns at this betrayal, a ferocious bulldog frown, black brows eclipsing her wolf-pale eyes, fists bunched tight at her sides.

  ‘She has a bit of a sore throat…’

  Grandma cups Megan’s head and gestures towards the kitchen table, where Cara’s eldest is kneeling, hands on her knees, peering into the basket.

  ‘Denise opened the door all by herself!’

  Denise nods. ‘I got a chair.’

  ‘Well,’ says Cara, smiling guiltily at her eldest daughter – how long has she been down here all by herself, no slippers on her feet? – ‘she’s a big girl now, aren’t you, Denise?’

  ‘Yep. I’m so much. Mimi, guess what number I am?’

  ‘How old are you, darling? Let me think… two, is it?’

  Denise shakes her head, a broad, lipless smile pulling a variety of dimples up into her cheeks.

  ‘Oh. Okay, I know – three?’

  The child scooches to the edge of the table and stands upright on the wobbly kitchen bench. She is pot-bellied, her knuckle chin plumping into her neck and a ruff of softer chins beneath. Some trick of genetics has given Denise her Aunt Freya’s white-blonde fuzz for hair and a complexion that can range from rose-white to the colour of crushed berries in a matter of seconds. Now her cheeks flush fever-pink with pride, and she pushes a splayed hand up at her great-grandmother.

  ‘This much, Mimi. Five.’

  ‘Five? Well Janey Mack, Dennie, aren’t you a great big girl?’

  Grandma removes her coat. She is wearing her summer blouse; shoulder pads, short sleeves, yellow flowers on swathes of blues and flecks of green. She hands her coat to Cara and works hurriedly at the headscarf knotted beneath her chin. Even on a sunny day like today, she won’t leave the house without a scarf over her head to protect her perm from the wind.

  ‘Well now my little waifs, your great old grandma has brought you pancakes. She’s still of some use after all!’

  Lifting a foil-covered plate from the basket, she looks at Cara and nods towards the hallway.

  ‘Your sister is just changing for work. She needs you to mind Jem.’

  ‘What? Why?’

  ‘She’s working all day. Poor chicken. She has three gigs, one after the other. Get the tea on, Cara, good girl. She’s in a rush.’

  While Cara fills the kettle, her sister Freya jangles into the kitchen, dressed up as a genie in billowing indigo-coloured pants, a gold-sequined waistcoat and many cheap bracelets. Her hair flops at the top of her head in a great flossy mess. There is a clatter of foil coins strung across her forehead, giving an exotic look to her wide, sleepy eyes. Her five-year-old son, Jem, is holding her hand.

  ‘There he is, my darling boy!’ says Grandma.

  ‘You don’t mind if Jem stays here for a bit Cara, do you?’ says Freya, kissing her cheek. ‘I have three gigs today, and it’s too much for Grandma.’

  ‘Yeah, fine.’ Cara hunkers down to Jem. ‘What do you think, Jem? The girls are making a birdhouse, are you going to help?’

  He gives a small smile, then looks up at his mother for sanction. Freya nods. ‘That sounds fun doesn’t it? Cara, is the kettle on?’

  ‘Yep.’

  ‘I’ll have a quick cup and then I better go.’

  Grandma peels the aluminium off a stack of pancakes, releasing the buttery swelter, and steadily unpacks an
ice-cream tub of lemon wedges, a jam jar of demerara sugar, a pint of squeezed oranges in a glass passata bottle – on its label three tomatoes, washed yellow.

  ‘No pancakes for Megan,’ says Cara, ‘she’s allergic.’

  Grandma rolls her eyes. ‘Allergic,’ she says. ‘Poor chicken, doesn’t your mammy talk such nonsense? What could be healthier than an egg? Get me some plates and glasses, will you, Cara? Jem helped to squeeze the oranges – didn’t you, my little man? For his cousins.’

  Jem nods delightedly, climbs onto the bench and waits for his breakfast, hands on his lap, legs swinging, mild little smile and great brown bush-baby eyes. A yellow light filters in through the wide kitchen window behind him, dances along the contours of his cheek, catching on the tiny hairs and illuminating the tips of his ears.

  Grandma nods at Jem – ‘Such a blessing, that child’ – before turning to the little girl at her knees.

  ‘Now, Megan, you can have bread if your mammy is going to be funny about the pancakes. I made some nice soda bread just for you. It might sting your throat a bit, chicken, but drink up some juice and you’ll be all better in no time. They are lovely ripe oranges. I got them from a lady on Moore Street – a whole box so ripe you could smell them from the other end of the street.’

  Cara watches the sun on her nephew’s face – the different colours it makes of the gristly little ears, the padded curve of his jaw. She stroked a rabbit once – a friend from school had one. It shrank down, trembling. When she moved a hand over it, the fur shifted a little, loose over the tight muscle and bone. Its head and body were warm, but she can remember the alarming cold at the tips of its ears. If the sun shone from behind Little Luke Rabbit, it would make the fibrous streaks of his ears wine-red and turn the veins to snaking black. But not the moonlight. That’s what she’s been forgetting – how should the moonlight work on his ears and his wet snout?

  She lays a pile of plates and a tower of plastic cups on the table. ‘Where are you working, Freya?’

  ‘Oh God, I have a birthday party at one o’clock and then a christening – both for Southside mummies. Then a nine-year-old’s birthday… Oh, before I forget, I need to plug in the phone…’

  ‘So you’ll be back around what – seven?’