The Broken Ones

CHAPTER 16

SIMONE

Now

I stare at the shattered white shells littering the driveway, puddles of slimy residue congealed on the glass windows. The front door has been assaulted, too, shards of shell glued to the oak surface, rivulets of white streaking down the burnished wood like tears.

There is a sound behind me. I turn, and Mrs. Bates, the strange old bird from next door, is staring at me, a thick scarf wound around her wrinkled neck.

"Did you do this?" I hiss. She knows who I am, of course. They all do. All the judgemental, small-minded women in this obscure little town, such a far cry from glitzy, glamorous London.

She shakes her head slowly from side to side, her faded, watery eyes staring at me unblinkingly, for far too long. She has a few loose marbles --- at least, that's what Albert, the distinguished-looking retiree at the end of the lane, tells me. She's harmless, he had said, smiling at me, his face slightly flushed, looking at me as if I were an exotic or fantastic creature. Mrs Bates is just a wee bit batty. I had laughed along with him, until his scowling dowdy wife had marched over, glared at me and dragged him away. It had made me laugh harder.

How old is Old Batty? She must be in her nineties. The mottled skin, the scraggy neck, the curved spine. She takes a step toward me. Her smell hits me on the face: a reminder of Mother the last few years at the nursing home. A mix of boiled vegetables, urine, and decay.

My heart lurches.

I turn my back on her, fumble for my keys in my tote bag, unlock the front door. My hand is trembling.

"Hussy. Husband-stealer." Her voice, just a whisper, slithers over my back like a snake.

"You --- " I swivel, but she has shuffled away, back into her decrepit, ancient house. The door creaks shut behind her. The curtain twitches a second later. She takes up her post at the window. She's always there. Watching me. Judging me.

There is something lying on the egg-stained doormat. Her scarf. It must have fallen off. A gust of wind blows, and a corner of the scarf lifts, flutters.

A memory stirs.

My aunt Gilda, my mother's sister, had a scarf like this, a red-and-black striped scarf. She had bought the scarf, made of the purest, softest cashmere, in Edinburgh. I'd loved it and wished it were mine. My mother was forty-five then, fifteen years older than her sister. I was ten, an only child.

I came home early from school one day and it was draped over the doorknob in my parents' master bedroom. I was reaching out to touch it reverently when the door opened and my aunt came out. She froze when she saw me.

My eyes flickered to the person who had appeared behind her.

It was my father.

He was staring at me, his face oddly still.

My aunt said I could have her scarf if I didn't say anything to my mother.

Instead, I told Mother what I had seen.

My father moved out the next day. He bought another house two towns away from us, and moved in with my aunt. He married her a year later.

I never spoke to either of them again, and my mother never really recovered. I think she had always known about the affair, but she loved her younger sister a great deal, and now when I think about it there must have been more going on, more history between the three of them than I ever found out. You shouldn't have told me. You should have turned the other way. You broke this family. She blamed me, for bringing it into the open, for forcing my father to act, and I had to live with her bitter resentment for the rest of her life. My aunt died a few years ago and my father died not long after. They were childless, and my wealthy father left the bulk of his estate to me.