Chapter 4 - Dear Esty

Esther’s request seems to have fallen on deaf ears, and an unexpected letter arrives that she can’t seem to dismiss…

Previously: Esther’s spooked after seeing Gloria at The Pines, but dinner with Roni helps her to see the positives in Neil’s suggestion.

Esther

Neil was not twenty minutes.

I drifted in and out of light, dozy sleep until almost one, when I reached over and found his side of the bed cold and untouched, and the light was still on in the hallway. Downstairs, he was tapping away on his laptop, fully immersed. He’d barely even noticed when I’d poked my head around the door. 

‘What are you doing? It’s so late,’ I’d yawned. 

‘I’ve made a spreadsheet,’ he’d said. ‘And if we both up our savings to six hundred pounds a month, we’ll cover moving costs without even noticing.’

I wished he wouldn’t spend my money for me, and that’s not unreasonable.

‘Are you actually mad?’ I’d complained. ‘That’s so much money. I’ll definitely notice that leaving my account.’

‘I’ve set a tight budget for everything else,’ he’d said. ‘We’ll be making substantial savings elsewhere.’ 

‘Neil, do you remember when I said that I wanted us to do all this stuff together? Let’s talk about this tomorrow,’ I’d almost begged. ‘Come on up now. This will keep, I promise.’

I’d held my hand out across the room and he’d looked up from his spreadsheet, his face illuminated by the screen, and then back at it, as if it was a wrench. ‘It’s really exciting, but I want to be a part of it when it isn’t the middle of the night.’

He yawned and tapped at the keyboard a few more times. 

‘Well, I guess it is quite late,’ he’d agreed finally. ‘And we do have to be up for work in–’ he’d looked at his watch. ‘–just under six hours.’

‘This is true.’

Back upstairs, and back in bed, just under six hours didn’t seem like such an issue to him. He pulled me close and kissed my neck and I needed the things that spooked me earlier in the day, and everything they represented, out of my head, so I turned around and kissed him, and all our terse words from the morning were forgotten.

Two weeks on, things are moving at pace. We’ve adjusted our savings, just like he suggested, and even though I refused the full six-hundred I’m still officially skint. There’s another spreadsheet, too; this one with a graph of projected amounts based on interest rates and deposit amounts and I can’t deny that the upward trend is nicely acute. He’s brought it along to our appointment with the mortgage advisor, and they’re having a lively chat about income figures, credit history, and where we’ll meet affordability criteria but only if we cancel, seemingly, everything.

I’m pretty sceptical. It doesn’t track that my Netflix subscription would be the deal breaker. It’s a tenner a month. But who am I to argue with a man who left his house wearing a stripy vest under a see-through shirt?

Straight afterwards, we drive to the supermarket and Neil is a man obsessed. He’s so consumed by saving every penny he can that he scrutinises our offers on his app and talks loudly in the pasta aisle about our new food budget, and our direct debits, and I wish he wouldn’t. No one here cares about his subscription to Wired magazine.

‘Can we just talk about this at home?’ I say, throwing a bag of orzo I have vague, undocumented plans for into the trolley.

Neil stares at it, and then at me. He wrings his hands.

‘That’s neither on the list, or on offer, Esther,’ he says, and he fishes it out again, and hands it back, all sad eyes and pursed lips, like he is genuinely sorry but it isn’t coming home with us.

I put the orzo back on the shelf and, feeling chastised, swear under my breath and tell him I’m off to find the tampons.

And I get it. I know these are sensible, responsible steps to take, and it would be good to see how much money we can save, but sometimes I’d like to get a takeaway. Or even simply buy a packet of orzo and not worry that it isn’t immediately accounted for, and I don’t think that’s too much to ask. It’s hardly living life on the edge.

In the afternoon he goes to play squash, and I nip out to buy secret patisseries, because Mum’s coming over, and it’s nice to have something with a cup of coffee that isn’t a slightly soft Bourbon Cream.

She bustles through the hallway, hanging her bag on the newel post, and we sit at the kitchen table and natter as the kettle boils. The sun slices a triangular wedge of light on the table and I rest my hands in it, enjoying the warmth through the window, and ask about my sister.

‘Between us,’ Mum says, her own hands in her lap and her eyebrows slanted. ‘I think she’s feeling it more now that Will’s busier at work. You should go and see her, I know she’d appreciate it.’

‘I’ll call her,’ I promise. ‘Maybe we can take the kids to the beach.’ 

Mum thanks me and pats my hand. ‘I hate to think of her feeling isolated.’

‘She’s only half an hour away,’ I say, grabbing two mugs and the cafetière. ‘It’s hardly Siberia.’ 

She takes a bite of a chocolate eclair and wipes cream from the corner of her mouth with her ring finger.

‘I just don’t want her to feel like she has no one.’

‘Why would she feel like that? She goes to toddler groups, and she has friends,’ I say, but it’s met with pursed lips, as if to suggest that I don’t know what it’s like to wrangle small children, which is, I suppose, a fair assessment. Then, she casts her eyes over at the unopened post on the table and suddenly perks up.

‘Oh, that reminds me. A letter came for you.’

‘For me?’ I ask. ‘To your house?’

Bit weird. I haven’t lived at home for years.

Mum scurries to her handbag and returns with a white envelope. Standard, nondescript. My name and my parents’ address in small, neat letters on the front. She slides it across the table and I put it on top of the others and press the coffee.

‘Your dad found it last week. What do you think it is?’ she asks. ‘Aren’t you going to open it?’

‘Not right now, no. Surprised you didn’t to be quite honest,’ I say. ‘And I don’t know. Optician letter maybe.’

‘Has it really been that long since you had your eyes checked?’

‘More than likely. How is Dad, anyway?’

‘Oh, you know, always squirrelled up in his office. He’s been appointed as an external examiner again. Manchester this time. Thinks this one’ll be his last time.’

‘Tell him congratulations. I’ll come and see him soon.’

We drink our coffee, and finish our cakes, and afterwards take a walk around the neighbourhood, and she asks if we’ve started viewings yet, and casually mentions it’d be nice if we moved closer to her and Dad, but I tell her we probably won’t leave the area because where we are is convenient. That we like it here and the memories we’ve made are just for us.

‘Esther, love,’ Mum says, and she stops and reaches for my arm. We’re on the edge of the estate now, just getting to some meadow-like parkland with a brook and wild flowers. It’s undeveloped and unspoilt. A beautiful mess of colour in the spring and summer. A haven for bees and butterflies and dragonflies, and I like to walk here when it’s sunny. Neil rarely joins me. ‘I know you have mixed memories from school and college,’ she continues, ‘but really, all that was such a long time ago now. So it might be like starting again. Just, if you were to see something you like.’

I go to argue but she cuts me off. ‘It’s a good area,’ she says. ‘Just don’t write it off completely. I’ll keep an eye out for you.’

‘Fine, fine,’ I say, but it’s only to get her to stop. 

I think about what she said for a long time after she leaves. Mixed memories. It feels like a deliberate turn of phrase. But to me they aren’t mixed as such, more a linear timeline of skirting under the radar in secondary school, followed by the brightest flare of everything good and beautiful that swiftly free dived into a total bin fire towards the end of college.

And during that time, I stayed at home for months, hidden away and protected by my family from the things that would destroy me all over again. The whole thing fucked me up, truly. I deferred my exams for a year, gave up my place at art school, and eventually, following what my parents still refer to as ‘Esther’s lost times’, got a job.

It’s not until later that I remember the letter, and I hook my thumb under the flap and rip it open. It definitely isn’t from the optician. A sheet of note paper folded cleanly in half. Illustrated flowers around the edge. Lined. Handwritten in the same small, neat, letters as on the envelope.

Dear Esty,

Esty! No! I haven’t been Esty for years. In fact, I made a conscious decision never to be Esty again, and seeing it makes my stomach churn and my heart race. Because I know who the letter is from and I scrunch it up and push it away as if it’s burnt me. The clock on the kitchen wall ticks. The washing machine beeps at the end of its programme. I’m not sure I want to continue, and yet, I can’t stop myself. I flatten it out on the table, and hold it down with my hands.

I imagine this will come as a shock to you and I’m sorry for that, but seeing you briefly the other week made me wonder. I’m probably clutching at straws, but I hope you’ll read on. 

I don’t know if you’re aware of the situation Ash finds himself in at the moment. He’s made some bad choices, some of which you probably know, some which aren’t what they seem, but please believe me when I say that I truly believe he’s at a point where he wants to be well again. I’m sure you’ll remember he always had a rebellious side, but what you may not know is that he was at his best when he was with you.

No doubt you’ve made a wonderful life for yourself and will have little interest in revisiting the past, but I’ve enclosed my phone number and if there was any chance you’d be willing to speak to me, I’d love to hear from you. 

Yours faithfully,

Gloria Ramsay

I’m relieved Neil isn’t home and yet at the same time all I want is for him to be here. I refold the letter and stuff it back into the envelope without looking at her number, terrified if I do it’ll somehow etch on to my memory and I’ll never be able to forget it. And even though it confirms what I think I already knew about why she was there the night Roni and I went for dinner, I’m not getting in touch. She was right; I have moved on and I do have a lovely life. And not a single facet of it contains Ashley Ramsay.

I stare at the envelope and immediately I need it out of the house. Even having it inside feels wrong, like it’s encroaching on my space, and so I take it outside and shove it deep into the recycling bin, calmer straight away. The kitchen feels like mine again. The space, cleansed. The bin will be emptied later in the week and the letter will be sorted and recycled into something new, and it’ll just be something else to file away and not think about. 

Except I do think about it. I think about it for the rest of the evening. When Neil gets home and gives me the low down on his squash match, it’s there, in the back of my mind. And as we make dinner, I find myself wondering what Ash might be having. And what Gloria has made. If she’s sitting at a table in her kitchen alone or if she’s with a friend or a partner, or Tyler. If anyone other than her is rallying around for Ash, because it sounds like he needs people to be, or if anyone other than me even knows he’s here.

Neil goes to bed, and I sit in front of the television and stare mindlessly at a film I struggle to concentrate on, and during a break I creep back outside. The security light clicks on, bathing me in bright white light, and next door’s cat’s eyes reflect back at me from under their car. I open the bin again and reach down inside. 

‘Don’t tell anyone,’ I whisper to the cat, and it blinks and runs away. I’m back inside before the ad break is over, and I shove Gloria’s letter to the bottom of my handbag. I’m not going to call her, but it’s just that throwing it away suddenly began to feel a little hasty, especially after the way she reached out. She was such a nice woman; and even now I can’t bear to dismiss her outright. I’ll sleep on it. See how I feel in a few days.