How there was a present with his name on it even though no one knew he was coming remained a mystery to him until years later; we were packing to move to Oxford. Patrick found the book on a shelf and asked me if I remembered it. He said, ‘It was one of the best presents I got as a kid. No idea how Winsome knew to get it for me.’
‘It was from her emergency gift cupboard, Patrick.’
He looked vaguely deflated but said, ‘Still,’ and stood reading it until I took it out of his hands.
*
I only spoke to Patrick once that first year, on the walk through the streets to Hyde Park and all the way around Kensington Gardens, which we were always made to take in the afternoon so Rowland could watch the Queen’s Speech in relative peace. Relative because my mother would begin railing against the institution of the monarchy from the first sweeping aerial shot of Windsor Castle and continue for the duration of Her Majesty’s address, while my father read bits aloud from a book he had gifted himself for Christmas.
Ingrid and I were walking directly behind Patrick when, near the top of the Broad Walk, he stopped suddenly and lunged for a tennis ball Oliver had just thrown to him. My sister did not stop in time and was struck hard in the chest by his outstretched arm. She swore and told Patrick he’d massively hurt her boob. He looked stricken and said sorry. I told him not to worry, it was hard to not hit Ingrid in the boob. He apologised for that as well and ran ahead.
*
Patrick returned the following year, this time by arrangement with Winsome, because his father had just got remarried – to a Chinese-American litigator called Cynthia – and was on his honeymoon. I was seventeen. Patrick was fourteen. I said hello when he appeared in the kitchen with Oliver; he stood near the door, doing the same rolling thing with the hem of his jumper while my cousin looked for whatever he had come in to find.
At some point that day, we all went up to Jessamine’s room and sat on the unmade airbeds, except Nicholas, who went over to the window and took a cigarette out of his pocket, a roll-your-own that was loose and coming undone. Jessamine, who was nine, flapped her hands and started crying while he attempted to light it.
Ingrid said, ‘No one thinks you’re cool, Nicholas,’ and got Jessamine to come sit between us. ‘It looks like a tea bag wrapped in toilet paper.’
I offered to go and find him some sticky tape, then asked Jessamine if she wanted to see a trick. She nodded and let Ingrid wipe her face with the sleeve of her jumper. I had braces then and with everybody watching, I started moving my tongue around inside my cheek. A second later, I made my mouth into an O and one of my rubber bands shot out. It landed on the back of Patrick’s hand. He looked at it uncertainly for a moment, then carefully picked it off.
At home later, Ingrid came into my room so we could lay out all our presents on the floor to see who had got more and divide them into Like and Don’t Like piles, although we were getting too old for it. She told me she saw Patrick put the rubber band in his pocket when he thought no one was looking. ‘Because he loves you.’
I told her that was gross. ‘He’s a child.’
‘The age gap won’t matter by the time you get married.’
I pretended to throw up.
Ingrid said, ‘Patrick loves Martha,’ and took Hot Tracks ’93 off my Don’t Like pile and put it on my CD player.
That was the last Christmas before a little bomb went off in my brain. The end, hidden in the beginning. Patrick came back every year.
4
ON THE MORNING of my French A level I woke up with no feeling in my hands and arms. I was lying on my back and there were already tears leaking from the corners of my eyes, running down my temples into my hair. I got up and went to the bathroom, and saw in the mirror that I had a deep purple circle, like a bruise, around my mouth. I could not stop shaking.
In the exam, I couldn’t read the paper and sat staring at the first page until it was over, writing nothing. As soon as I got home, I went upstairs and got into the space under my desk and sat still like a small animal that instinctively knows it’s dying.
I stayed there for days, coming down for food and the bathroom, and eventually just the bathroom. I could not sleep at night or stay awake during the day. My skin crawled with things I couldn’t see. I acquired a terror for noise. Ingrid was constantly coming in and begging me to stop being weird. I told her to please, please, go away. Then I would hear her calling out from the hallway, ‘Mum, Martha’s under her desk again.’
My mother was sympathetic to begin with, bringing me glasses of water, trying to coax me to come downstairs in various ways. Then it started to annoy her and when Ingrid called out after that she would say, ‘Martha will come out when she wants to.’ She no longer came into my room, except once with the Hoover. She pretended not to notice me, but made a point of vacuuming around my feet. That is the only memory I have that involves my mother and any form of cleaning.