Magpie Read online

  Marisa busied herself with the espresso machine, placing a cup under the nozzle.

  ‘Do you like those things?’ Annabelle asked from her seat.

  ‘You mean the coffee—’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I do, actually. It makes it all so easy. No coffee grounds to clean up and—’

  ‘I never think it tastes as good.’

  ‘Mmm,’ Marisa said and she felt like a child who had just been slapped down.

  ‘Sorry,’ Annabelle added, perhaps aware that she had been too brusque. ‘I’m sure it’ll be delicious.’

  This was all it took for Marisa to experience a surge of hope. Perhaps she had read the signals all wrong – she had a tendency to do that; to misread people and to believe they were judging her – and perhaps she and Annabelle were going to get along famously. She imagined Annabelle saying just that to her impressive friends: ‘Oh, I adore my daughter-in-law. We get along famously.’ Perhaps they simply needed to get to know each other better, to learn the quirks and hidden charms of their individual behaviours. Perhaps, perhaps, perhaps.

  ‘Here we go.’

  Marisa set down two cups of coffee, each one on a saucer they never normally bothered using. The cups were white with blue rims. Jake had bought them from a ceramicist in Cornwall, he told her when she commented on their prettiness. The blue reminded Marisa of the sea and the white was almost translucent, as if you were looking through a shell lifted up to the sunlight.

  Annabelle took a sip of coffee, her mouth twisting as she did so. She gave the impression of having to hold her breath while she drank.

  ‘Thank you.’

  Annabelle crossed her legs, leaning back against the chair, her hands loosely clasped in her lap.

  ‘So,’ she said. ‘We meet at last.’

  ‘We do.’ Marisa smiled. ‘I’ve been so looking forward to it.’

  Annabelle looked mildly astonished.

  ‘Really?’ She grimaced. ‘I can’t imagine why. I shouldn’t think Jake would have had any reason to talk about me.’

  ‘Oh … no …’ Marisa slid into silence. She had nothing to say to this.

  ‘But there we have it. I suppose children never tell their parents what they’re up to. Not really.’

  Annabelle placed the cup back on its saucer. It was still almost full. She left it untouched and Marisa knew that, however long she chose to stay, she was not going to drink any more.

  ‘Nice garden,’ Annabelle said, distractedly. ‘So,’ she went on, propping one elbow up on the table and leaning forwards, her face cupped by long fingernails painted a dark shade of plum that was precise in its tastefulness. ‘When did you move in?’

  ‘Two, three weeks ago? No, actually, maybe it’s been a month.’

  Annabelle nodded.

  ‘You’ll have to forgive me but I’m quite old-fashioned about this kind of thing. I don’t entirely approve.’

  It was Marisa’s turn to nod.

  ‘Living in sin, I suppose you’d call it,’ Marisa said.

  ‘Well, no,’ Annabelle said, taken aback. ‘I wouldn’t call it that. That wouldn’t be the right phrase. It’s just … in my day, things were done more traditionally.’ She placed great emphasis on the final word. ‘One always faces challenges, doesn’t one?’ She stared at Marisa, her blue eyes steady and shrewd. ‘But if it’s what nature intended, then it’s what nature intended. There’s no point forcing it. One must go at the pace dictated to us.’

  Marisa’s breath quickened. It was strange to feel so offended by someone whose good opinion she also craved. Annabelle lowered her head slowly. Her silence was more infuriating than her speech. In her right earlobe was a twinkle of studded gold. It probably cost more than Marisa’s entire outfit.

  ‘It might seem like we’re moving too fast to you,’ Marisa continued, ‘but it feels right to us, and that’s all that matters, isn’t it?’ There is still no reply from Annabelle. Marisa coughs. ‘I hope you can understand.’ No response. ‘In time, of course. We don’t mean to rush you.’

  ‘We?’ Annabelle gave a short, sharp bark of laughter. ‘You’re very possessive, aren’t you?’

  Well why wouldn’t I be, Marisa thought. He’s my bloody boyfriend. Just because you’re his mother and you’ve never thought any woman would be good enough. If you cared so much about him, perhaps you shouldn’t have sent him away to school when he was seven fucking years old.

  She thought all of this, but she didn’t say it. Her fury lodged in her flesh like a piece of buckshot. Her mouth set in a mutinous line.

  ‘Thank you for the coffee,’ Annabelle said, pushing the cup and saucer further across the table with such force that the coffee spilled out onto the wood. She wound the scarf back around her broad, swimmer’s shoulders and gathered herself up to her full height. Marisa, watching her, was reminded of a giant bird. A pelican, maybe, or an ostrich. A bird with beady eyes and an intrusive beak and an edge of malicious intent.

  She followed Annabelle back up the stairs and neither of them spoke. At the front door, Annabelle turned and shook Marisa’s hand again.

  ‘Nice to meet you,’ she said.

  In the distance, a siren sounded.

  ‘You too,’ Marisa lied. ‘See you again soon, I hope.’

  Annabelle took a pair of dark glasses from her handbag and slid them onto her face. Her eyes disappeared behind shellacked black ovals.

  ‘Oh, I shouldn’t think so,’ she said. Her voice, as she uttered this, was as polite as if she’d been observing the weather.

  Annabelle walked down the steps into the street and Marisa watched her go: a tall silhouette in white. She shivered in the doorway. Even though it was a hot day, she noticed as she turned back into the hall that her arms were trailed with goosebumps.

  4

  She didn’t tell Jake about his mother’s visit for several days. She convinced herself it was because he was busy at work and she didn’t want to bother him. She claimed to be tired and went to bed before he got home. She would hear the front door shutting and then his footsteps padding around beneath her and she drifted off to the reassurance of these familiar sounds. In the mornings, she waited until Jake had left for the office before going downstairs for her coffee and toast and then starting work, stretching out the paper methodically to calm her thoughts.

  But it was not his preoccupation that stopped Marisa from saying anything. It was her own humiliation. She had so wanted to make a good impression on Jake’s family when she met them. She had hoped an invitation would be issued at some point in the near future, perhaps to Sunday lunch in the house in the country or to some family gathering – a birthday or an anniversary – where Marisa would be able to wear a pretty dress with just the right amount of flounce and cleavage and she would insist on buying a bouquet of flowers, or perhaps a potted plant because it would last longer, and she would ask Jake what kind of wine his parents liked and he would laugh at her, kissing her forehead affectionately and he would tell her there was no need to go to so much effort. ‘They’ll adore you,’ he would have said. ‘How could they not?’

  And when they got to lunch, his mother would embrace her warmly and say they’d heard so much about her and Marisa would offer to help with the cooking, which ‘smells delicious, Mrs Sturridge’.

  ‘Oh please, call me Annabelle,’ Jake’s mother would say, patting her arm conspiratorially, and telling Marisa that she was a guest and absolutely must not lift a finger but that she must sit down and look gorgeous and ‘Would someone please get this darling girl a strong gin and tonic?’ Annabelle would say, and her voice would be serious but her eyes would twinkle and Jake’s father would do the honours and pass Marisa a crystal tumbler, rattling with just the right amount of ice, and he would lower his voice and say to her, ‘You’re already a vast improvement on all the others.’

  ‘Dad,’ Jake wou
ld say, catching Marisa’s gaze and smiling with fondness. ‘Stop! You’re embarrassing her.’

  ‘No, no,’ Marisa would laugh. ‘It’s fine! I’m having a lovely time.’

  That was how it was meant to happen. That was what she had hoped for: to make herself indispensable to both Jake and his family; no faults to be picked over; no reason for anyone to leave her behind.

  ‘I don’t know what we’d do without you,’ his parents would say. ‘You’re the best thing that’s ever happened to this family.’

  Wasn’t that how it was supposed to be? Wasn’t that the appropriate plot climax? Wasn’t that going to be Marisa’s redemption, where she righted all the wrongs that had been inflicted on her, all the bad things she might unwittingly have done to send her mother and baby sister away? Wasn’t that how this was going to end?

  Apparently not.

  So she didn’t tell Jake until the weekend, when the two of them were in the garden. Jake, stripped to the waist, was in loose-fitting gym shorts. He liked to work out on Saturday mornings, ears plugged with headphones streaming angry hip-hop as he did goblet squats and press-ups and held a plank for at least one minute, sweat dripping off his torso and leaving damp dots all over the yoga mat. Marisa was sitting on the bench, her face partially obscured by the wide brim of a straw hat. The book she was reading was face-down next to her, the spine of it flexed so that she kept her place. It was one of the summer’s bestsellers, a book that everyone seemed to know about before they’d actually read it, but Marisa couldn’t get into it. The cover was a modernist painting, depicting a woman’s head with no eyes, nose or mouth so that the only way you knew it was female was by the hair: a severe, fringed bob, sensibly cut to just below where the ears should have been. Marisa’s hair was long and golden: light brown which went lighter in the sun to caramel blonde. She liked her hair and took good care of it, shampooing it every day, then towel-drying it before applying conditioner that she would comb through before washing out. It had been so sunny lately that her skin was tanned, a spray of freckles across her nose.

  She took off the hat and lifted her face up to the warmth, closing her eyes for a moment and thinking of what she had to paint before the end of the week in order to meet the deadline for Moses’s sixth birthday. After a few moments, a coolness crept over her face and she opened her eyes to see Jake standing there, casting a shadow. He was glinting with moisture and breathing hard. He wiped his face with the inside of his T-shirt.

  ‘How was that?’ she asked.

  ‘Good,’ he said. ‘Needed it.’

  Seeing him post-workout made her think of him just after they’d had sex: his skin shining, muscles taut, the smell of his body in its purest form.

  He sat on the bench next to her, but left a gap between them. She took her book and folded it shut, placing it on her lap in case he wanted to shuffle up, but he didn’t.

  ‘Mum said she came round,’ Jake said.

  ‘Oh, yes,’ Marisa said, her heart leaping. ‘I was going to tell you but—’

  ‘It’s OK, you don’t have to. Not your responsibility. Anyway,’ he said, rubbing the hair by his right temple in that way she loved, ‘I’m sorry if she was rude to you.’

  She wasn’t sure what to say to that. She lets the realisation sink in, that Jake must have spoken to his mother to know that Annabelle had visited. Would his mother have called him, Marisa thought, or would it have been the other way round? Or – even more worryingly – would they have met for lunch? What would they have said about her? She knew they would have discussed her and she can’t imagine Annabelle would have been warm or flattering. Would Jake have changed his mind?

  A small panic began to rattle around in her chest like a loose marble. She looked at the back of the house, the window-frames painted white, the roof tiles ordered and straight. She could just about make out the edge of her desk in her study if she squinted. Marisa felt, with unexpected acuteness, the fragility of everything, the ease with which it could all be taken away from her. She told herself that she needed to redouble her efforts to do better. She could give Jake no reason to end their relationship. If it ended, she thought miserably, she would be undone.

  ‘Was she rude to you?’ Jake asked.

  She tried to laugh.

  ‘Why do you ask?’

  ‘I just … I know that she can be … intimidating.’

  She wondered if this was some sort of trap. Was she meant to say Annabelle hadn’t been rude and lie in order not to criticise his mother? Some people were funny about their own families. They would carp and bitch about them to their heart’s content but if anyone else did so, they would claim instant offence. Or was she meant to acknowledge what had happened and show that she was on Jake’s side?

  She settled for an indeterminate middle course.

  ‘Yes. I mean, no. It was fine. She is a very impressive woman.’

  Jake laughed.

  ‘That she is.’ He put the nozzle of his water bottle between parted lips and tilted it upwards to drink. ‘Very diplomatic, Marisa.’

  He looked at her tenderly.

  ‘Listen, she’s entitled to her views,’ Marisa said. ‘It’s just not necessarily how I would have chosen that meeting to go.’

  ‘I know. The thing is, she’s very particular about how things are done. She’s traditional and – don’t ever tell her I said this – a massive snob. She’s never going to understand how things are with us. And I don’t give a fuck whether she does or not. She – my parents – are irrelevant to this. To us, I should say.’

  He wiped his eyes with the hem of his T-shirt.

  ‘This,’ he said, gesturing towards the house and Marisa, ‘is the family I’ve chosen.’

  ‘Thank you,’ she said quietly. ‘That means a lot.’

  She felt so lucky then, so content to be with a man who understood the safety she wanted before she understood it herself. If Marisa could have stopped time right there, if she could have halted the ticking hands on the face of her watch, she would have done. They were perfectly happy on that bench, in the sunshine, sitting next to each other with an unread book on her lap and the faint smell of jasmine in the air.

  Nothing stayed perfect forever, did it? It was a lesson she had been taught as a child and she had promised herself never to forget it, but then Jake came along, and, stupidly, she had let herself be carried away by unfounded faith that everything was going to keep on getting better. She had allowed herself to fall in love.

  Looking back, Marisa would see this interaction on the garden bench as the last moment of bliss before everything changed. Before their little protected world slid on its axis and sent them spinning into blackness. She was foolish to have believed in their future. Because happiness was transient, and she would find this out when the lodger came.

  5

  It turns out Jake’s work has been going less well than he’s been letting on. The deal that was threatening to fall through did eventually collapse, and these are the words he uses to explain it to her, as if the exchange of vast sums of money has acquired a physical dimension.

  She can’t remember when the idea of a lodger was first mooted, but as the days go by, it shifts from a discussion of ifs to a confirmation of whens, and the concept roots itself firmly in his mind. Marisa was opposed to it at first. She hated the thought of a stranger in their home, filling up the fridge with food she didn’t recognise and watching television in the evenings when they would want their own space. But she didn’t feel she could say this to Jake, who had put down the deposit for the house with money she didn’t have and who continues to pay the lion’s share of the monthly rent. She knows he wants her to feel like an equal partner, but she doesn’t. She’s always aware of the precariousness of her situation, as if she is a Victorian governess forced to live off her wits, surviving on the charity of richer people. The study in which Marisa paints becomes, in these f
evered imaginings, a sort of box-room that she has to fold herself into, taking up the least amount of space and creating the smallest amount of bother so that Jake will never have a reason to break up with her.

  Jas had told Marisa that she went to one of two extremes with men she liked.

  ‘Either you’re the baddest bitch, who doesn’t give a single fuck,’ Jas said, ‘or you lose yourself completely in the idea of them.’

  ‘I don’t think that’s true,’ Marisa had protested. They’d been getting their nails done in her local salon at the time. It was called Tip 2 Toe and was staffed by sombre-faced Thai women who spoke to each other but never to the customers. Marisa was having a pedicure. Jas was getting sparkly purple gel on her fingernails, each one filed to a claw-like point.

  ‘What about Matt?’ Jas said, recalling Marisa’s most recent fling, with a singer-songwriter who never seemed either to sing or to write. ‘You lost your shit over him.’

  ‘That was a special case.’

  Matt had been extremely, unavoidably handsome. He was prone to sending Marisa lyrically composed texts and links to songs he had heard which reminded him of her. She had been smitten and only later had she thought to question the fact that ‘smitten’ came from the verb ‘to smote’, something more often associated with angry deities meting out dramatic lightning bolts of punishment and which, when she Googled the etymology, actually meant ‘to smear or blemish’ and wasn’t romantic at all.