Paperweight

by

Rebecca Klassen

THE WAX HAND ON FIONA’S DESK lies palm up across articles she’s ripped from magazines, leaflets for family days out, and to-do lists without everything ticked off. I’ve noticed that when the pile gets precariously untidy, Fiona bins the papers, and a new pile gradually grows. The fingers are slightly parted and cupped like they’re holding an apple. There’s only a couple of inches of slim, fair wrist before it’s cut off, smooth and flat. The nails are polished glacé cherry-red. A gold-coloured ring with a green stone sits on the index finger. Wrinkles and crevices have been crafted into the faux flesh to near realism.

Once, when Fiona popped to the loo, I touched the ring to see if it was real, to see if it would slip off, but it was wax, just like the hand, shiny and melded in place.

I’M NOT SURE HOW I RECOGNISED FIONA when she moved to our cul-de-sac. Her hair was brown, not blonde like it had been in the news footage outside the crown court, and she’d lost weight, which she’s kept off. Nothing about her face is distinctive, except perhaps her ski-jump nose. As I got out of my car on my driveway, I watched her take a box from her boot without looking about, like she’d already lived here years. In her position, I would’ve relocated to the middle of nowhere, rather than another suburbia. When our eyes met across ours and our neighbours’ driveways, she smiled, said hi, and asked when bin day was. I told her Mondays.

“By the way,” I added. “Your driveway might get blocked at school-run times. Pain-in-the-arse parents use the cul-de-sac as a carpark for the secondary school round the corner. My son, Caleb goes there.”

Her boys were starting there too, Archie in the same form as Caleb, also mad on rugby. She was grateful when I said I’d tell Caleb to look out for him.

I knew exactly where Fiona had moved from and why. She’d moved from Wembley because everyone there knew who she was; the daughter of the midwife recently sentenced to life for snuffing out so many fresh, miniscule souls. The unsuspected Nightingale who’d had mothers name their babies after her, who’d volunteered in a local soup kitchen, and had two rescue dogs. I’d read that Fiona and her family had lived down the street from her mother. Whenever I think about it, I imagine jerry-built houses crammed together, pavements running alongside lounge windows, and Fiona feeling everyone’s eyes crawling on her like rats.

I still asked Fiona about the move because it was a natural question, and to not show interest might have made it apparent that I knew who she was. Fiona said London had become too expensive, and her husband, Russell, had got a promotion, which meant a transfer to the Cotswolds; it was too good an opportunity to pass up. That all might have been true, so I decided that if anyone asked about new girl Fiona, I’d tell them the same story she’d told me. If they mentioned she looked familiar, or they thought she was the midwife’s daughter, I’d correct them, maybe admit there was a similarity, but confirm it definitely wasn’t her.

Everyone deserves a fresh start.

NO ONE I KNOW HAS EVER FIGURED OUT WHO SHE IS. If they did, they kept their mouth shut, which is unlikely. I moved to the neighbourhood a few years before Fiona, when I split from my cheater of an ex-husband. I hadn’t wanted Caleb to know the reason for the break-up to preserve their fragile relationship, but someone must’ve found my ex’s Facebook page and blabbed in front of their children. Caleb found out about his father’s infidelity from another student during a science lesson. He threw a beaker at the wall, smashing it, and was suspended for a week. It’s never stopped him pining for his father to visit, even though all he gets are late birthday cards and texts promising trips that never happen.

ON A SATURDAY IN MAY HALF TERM, about a fortnight after initially talking to Fiona, it was warm with no breeze. Caleb came downstairs at lunchtime, dressed in shorts and a Nike t-shirt, his hair spiked with styling putty.

“You’re dressed?” When he surfaced, he was usually still in pyjamas.

“Can we go to Archie’s barbecue?”

Fiona’s eldest son had come up in bites of conversation with Caleb, giving me little windows into their new friendship. Archie likes sick rap. Archie’s got the phone I want. Archie’s brother is goofy. Archie’s got a decent drop kick.

I’d seen Archie a couple of times from my window, getting in or out of the family car with his father, both of them wearing tracksuits and carrying racket cases. Russell and Archie look alike, Archie a streamlined version. Fiona looks nothing like her mother. The midwife on the news had a round, jowly face with large eyes, while Fiona’s face is narrow with high cheekbones. I suppose Russell is especially glad of the dissimilarity.

“When is this barbecue?” I asked Caleb.

“In an hour.”

I looked doubtful, and Caleb started pouting, saying he’d already said yes, so I got him to call Archie with my queries. Was the invitation an assumption on the boys’ part? Was an occasion being celebrated? Were we to bring anything? I could hear Fiona’s voice through the phone, airy and casual as we conversed via the boys. Just a nice day; nothing special. A few burgers and sausages. No need to bring anything. Come as you are around one.

I changed out of my baggy shorts and vest into a flowery tea dress. Going through the kitchen cupboards, I found a share bag of kettle chips and a bottle of shiraz from three Christmases ago; red wine gives me heartburn, and I’d planned to regift it. For all I knew, they were teetotal, but not taking a sufficient offering would’ve made me more uncomfortable than I already was.

As Caleb and I walked the hundred yards to their door, I was agitated that my knowledge of who they were was etched all over my skin. I questioned whether I’d have got changed and brought the same consumables if they were normal people.

I’ve always detested the phrase the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree; everyone whose parents are a disappointment does. My mother smoked herself to death, so of course I’ve never smoked or been close with anyone who does. She fell apart when my father left, so when my husband left me, I immediately put the house up for sale so I wouldn’t be tempted to wallow in the heartache and memories of our marital home.

They are normal people, I reminded myself as Caleb knocked.

Fiona answered the door, wearing the same dress as me.

“I see you got my memo,” she said, and I laughed too loudly.

A boy younger than Archie and Caleb thundered down the stairs behind Fiona.

“Caleb! Archie’s on the phone with Mia!”

“Jack, don’t stir!” But the smirk on Fiona’s face told me she was as enthusiastic as Jack about this news.

Jack and Caleb ran upstairs, making kissing noises and shouting Mia’s name.

Fiona sighed and closed the door behind me with a smile. “Welcome to the madhouse.”

She showed me around. The layout is the same as my home; hallway, lounge on the right, kitchen-diner straight ahead, sliding patio doors to the garden. They’d unpacked, but the walls were still bare of pictures. I figured there had to be a box of framed photos in the house. School photos of the boys, a wedding picture, and one of her mother, the decision of whether to hang it surely delaying the photos being displayed.

Fiona ran through the decorating she wanted to do and the carpet she wanted to change. She told me about her job, working from home as an administrator for a construction company in London.

“Zoom changed everything,” she said as she led me into her study. “Since COVID, I’ve never had to go back to the office, which has worked well for the move. I can work from a beach in Thailand if I want.” I wondered if the family considered such a far-flung move. I still suspect it was Russell who insisted they stay in England, maintaining stability and connections with his own family.

The study in my house is still the unconverted garage, rammed with old bikes, Christmas decorations and some of my ex’s old tools that I’m unsure I’ll ever need.

A bookcase lines a wall of Fiona’s study, with two wingback armchairs in front of it. This is where we sit nowadays to drink tea and talk about the endless school emails, books we’ve swapped, and our worries about our boys journeying further into adolescence. Fiona’s desk is old but upcycled, the ornate patterns carved into the wood painted a brassy gold.

The first thing I noticed in the room was the hand.

It was on top of scrawled pages ripped from notepads and a book of second-class stamps – the first pile in Fiona’s new home.

I pointed at the hand. “Where did you get that thing?”

“It’s Elizabeth Taylor’s.”

“It belonged to her?”

Fiona smirked in the same way she had about Archie on the phone with Mia. Not a smug smile, just mischievous. “No, it was part of her waxwork at Madame Tussauds.”

“Wow.” I moved to touch it, then remembered my manners. Fiona had put me too much at ease with our identical dresses, her talk of cutting in and shagpile, making me neglect that we were strangers, making me forget who she was. “How did you get that?” I asked.

“It’s not what you know . . .” She tapped her nose and winked, and I wasn’t interested enough in the hand to press her further, though I couldn’t fathom why she would want to keep such a trivial secret when she had a much larger one taking up her energy.

Russell cooked chipolatas and minted lamb burgers on a trophy barbecue. He sung loudly to pop songs playing on an Alexa through the kitchen window. His singing and hip-wiggling were funny enough that I sipped the glass of the shiraz Fiona poured from the bottle I’d brought; it blazed in my chest. We sat on patio chairs under the awning, the smoke from the barbecue keeping bugs away. Russell and Fiona brought me everything before I knew I wanted it. The meat was a little overdone, just how I like it, and the boys were in a good mood, playing football instead of sitting inside on their phones. Russell joined their kickabout, and Caleb looked so happy that my cheeks heated at how his father constantly lets him down.

When the boys went inside and Russell sat back down, panting and commenting how he’d run rings around the whippersnappers, I was suddenly aware of the imbalance of being a single person sat opposite a couple.

As we ate and talked about our jobs and interests, they didn’t ask me about Caleb’s father. By skirting around him, it felt like he was being put in the same clandestine category as the midwife who’d smothered little faces while their mothers dreamed nearby. That, encompassed with another glass of wine, was why I told them about how I knew my marriage had been over before he’d started seeing Donna. How my heart had already been fractured in several places, and Donna turning up to collect him in her Audi had been the pressure to break the pieces apart.

He’d simply lost interest in me.

Fiona’s hand was already on mine before the wine burning my esophagus made my eyes well. She really was normal.

Jack shot from the patio doors across the garden, yelling no, and laughing. Caleb and Archie chased him, Archie holding the hand from Fiona’s study like an extension of his arm, raised in attack-mode. It didn’t look as real outside, the sunlight reflecting its unnatural sheen.

“Run from the claw!” Archie called after his brother as Jack squeezed behind the shed. Caleb laughed so hard he folded over. Their laughter, their friendship, the sun, the food; it was beautiful, like floating in a warm ocean.

Fiona got to her feet. “Archie, what the fuck are you doing?”

Archie stopped, his smile disappearing like it had never been there. Russell watched, his glass halfway to his mouth as Fiona snatched the hand from Archie and took it inside the house. Archie looked at his dad, but Russell watched the patio doors Fiona had departed through, a low “sorry about that” to me before he told the boys to play football. Then he busied himself flipping meat.

When Fiona came back, carrying the kettle chips in a dish, I decided that when the bowl was empty, I’d thank them and make an excuse to leave. Her dress (my dress) clung to her armpits and spine in damp spots. She picked up a crisp and held it. Then she apologized.

“I don’t usually swear at my boys. It’s just that I’ve told Archie so many times how valuable the hand is.” Her eyes trailed over him as he kicked the football, like he was a mystery. “He doesn’t think.”

“I know what you mean,” and I told her how the previous year, Caleb had crushed a Christmas decoration of my mother’s. It was made from an eggshell, red sequins and ribbon stuck in basic patterns, the white paint yellowed from her nicotine. I’d kept it in a smaller box, packaged in tissue and bubble wrap, separate from the other decorations. Every year I told Caleb to be careful, that it was delicate, that it was important to me, but he’d purposefully crushed it. I’d seen on his face the satisfaction from the crunch and the concaved mess of sparkles and shards in his fist.

Fiona ate the crisp at last. “Being a mum is tough sometimes.”

I agreed, but added, “The truth is I didn’t like that decoration. It was tacky and still stank of cigarettes. Even though my mother’s been dead seven years I was hellbent on keeping it safe because she’d always warned me to be careful with it.” I’d said mother, the weight of what the word meant to Fiona making it feel like a cuss. “I guess being the kid is tough too sometimes.”

Thankfully, Archie came over to apologize to Fiona.

ONCE, I CAN’T REMEMBER WHEN, I asked her how much she thought the prized hand she used as a paperweight was worth. I’d already googled after the barbecue that a waxwork of Elizabeth Taylor’s hand would go at auction for around twenty-thousand pounds, which explains Fiona’s outburst.

“It doesn’t matter. I’d never sell it.”

I made a joke about getting one of Eliabeth Taylor’s feet for a doorstop, but she didn’t seem that amused.

ONE SCHOOL DAY AFTER THE BARBECUE, as the summer holidays closed in, Caleb brought Archie to our home.

“We’re gonna play Xbox,” Caleb said to me.

As Archie stood in my kitchen, watching Caleb gather crisps and cans of Sprite, I considered how Archie’s grandmother would’ve held him when he was probably less than a day old, still covered in vernix, his purple fingers squeezing her thumb. When he was a few weeks older, Fiona likely left Archie with his grandmother while she took a nap, had a shower, or went food shopping. When his grandmother had held Archie, alone with him, had she vised his tiny throat, feeling his fluttering heart decelerate, indulging in watching his pulsing soft spot slow? Had she repeated these tricks with Jack, manipulating the babies to the edge of life before pulling them back?

I wanted to pull Archie to me, but instead I said, “Help yourselves to biscuits in the top cupboard, boys.”

Archie looked at me with a flash of large eyes and said thanks.

LATER THAT EVENING, Fiona knocked on the door for Archie, saying she hoped he’d been well-behaved. I told her he’d been no trouble and could stay for tea.

“I’ll shove some pizzas in the oven.”

Then I clocked Russell in his car at the end of my driveway, giving a friendly wave, engine rumbling, exhaust fumes pluming in the brake lights. Jack was in the back, his downturned face lit by a tablet. Archie and Caleb came down the stairs, both looking at their phones and talking to each other in staccato sentences.

“Thanks,” said Fiona, “but we’re just on our way out. Off to see the new Marvel movie.”

“Lucky!” Caleb groaned, and I rolled my eyes, telling Fiona she was good to go, and that I couldn’t stand anything with superheroes.

“Oh, we’re big fans. Caleb is welcome to come with us,” she said. “Our treat.”

My ex frequently told me: “You could be having a breakdown or the best day of your life; if you don’t want me to know, I won’t.” Potentially my silence gave away my trepidation. Caleb and Archie bowled into the silence, Caleb grabbing his shoes and coat, Archie talking about a post-credits ending that changes everything. They squeezed past Fiona and got into the car with Russell before I could speak, not that I knew what to say.

Fiona losing her temper with her teenage son was normal. Inviting a neighbour over for a barbecue was also normal. Using a quirky collectable as a paperweight was still normal. Asking your son’s friend to the cinema was completely normal.

I’d never met Fiona’s mother and she was locked up far away, but the unprovoked and earth-shattering wickedness she’d inflicted made her family inscrutable and unpredictable to me, and my only baby was in their people carrier.

“Sorry, we’ve rather bulldozed your evening,” Fiona said, looking embarrassed. I waited for her to ask me if Caleb was allergic to anything, or to say she’d have him home by eleven, but she kept holding onto the door frame.

I shrugged. “Don’t worry about it. Thank you for taking him.” Fiona stayed on the step, looking at my doormat. “Have fun then,” I said. She nodded and went to the car.

OVER THAT SUMMER, Archie and Caleb’s friendship pulled Fiona and I together. Our houses became like one, the small divide of two neighbour houses between ours insignificant as the boys went back and forth to whoever’s house had more snacks, the game they wanted to play, the mother in a better mood. Fiona and I inevitably had to knock on each other’s door. He’s not answering his phone; is he with you?

As she waited for Archie in my living room, she noticed my cheesy DVD collection, and said Russell wouldn’t watch anything with Hugh Grant in it. One night she texted me: Russell is out. I have a share bag of Maltesers and need to see Colin Firth declare his undying love to someone. Wanna join? Maybe I seemed lonely to her, and maybe she was right.

I hadn’t been inside their house since the barbecue. I should’ve invited them over to return their kindness, but I can’t barbecue, and the awkwardness over the boys playing with the hand was still stuck in my mind like a knot. I should’ve been more understanding after everything that had happened, Fiona’s mother uprooting their lives.

Caleb gamed with Archie and Jack upstairs. Fiona poured wine – white, thankfully – and talked about how a glitch on her laptop had made her working week a nightmare. While she prepped in the kitchen, I looked at the photos that now hung on the walls around the dining table. Their wedding photo – Russell with no beard, Fiona with her blonde hair. School photos of Archie and Jack – purple uniforms, cheeks chubby, teeth missing. A photo of the four of them on holiday – sunglasses, bare golden skin, a calm harbour with docked sailing boats. The boys with an elderly couple in a restaurant – the woman with Russell’s hairline and square jaw.

No midwife.

AS WE WATCHED COLIN BUMBLE THROUGH a proposal in Portuguese, Fiona asked me if I’d given up on love.

“No setups, please,” I said. I smiled, but I meant it.

“That’s not what I asked.” She passed me the bag of chocolate. “Do you still want your ex?”

I snorted. The man who failed his son? Who had moved on so swiftly? Who made me doubt that I’d ever be truly happy again?

Yes. Because he is also the man who gave me Caleb. Who I’ve had some of my happiest moments with. Who told me I was better than my mother.

“No, I’ve not given up on love, but I think it’s given up on me.”

Fiona rolled her eyes. “God! You’re more miserable than this film!”

I threw a Malteser at her. She caught it and ate it. That smirk again; it always tickles me.

When the film finished, she mentioned we should watch Colin in Pride and Prejudice soon.

“My favourite,” I said, “though I’ve never read the book.”

She frogmarched me to the bookcase in her study. “Austen will make you love Mr. Darcy all the more.”

The hand was still there, this time on top of a scribbled carbonara recipe, a leaflet for a kid’s STEM club, and the local magazine packed with tradesmen adverts. On the desk was something new. An oval photo frame, palm sized. The photo is like one from my own childhood – me as a toddler sitting on my mother’s lap, blurry with red reflex in our eyes. Fiona was lost in her bookcase, comparing Firth’s Darcy to Austen’s, so I leaned closer to the photo. The child is Fiona – the unmistakable ski-jump nose and unruly hair – her expression that of a toddler startled by a flash, not understanding the concept of having their photo taken. The large-eyed and jowly woman can only be Fiona’s mother, a short perm just like she had on the news. She’s kneeling on the floor, smiling with her arms around Fiona’s chest, like she’s just won her at a fair, her chin resting on Fiona’s head.

“Here it is.”

I snapped my eyes away before Fiona turned from the bookcase.

Sometimes, when Fiona invites me over, the frame isn’t there. It’s not there as often as it is.

THAT CHRISTMAS, I GOT STUCK SELLING CAKES at the school Christmas fête – or rather, I said to PTA Kate I couldn’t bake, so she said I could sell them instead, like doing nothing wasn’t an option. Fiona said she’d help me, as she wanted first pick on the stall, hoping to nab a homemade Christmas cake she could pass off to her in-laws as her own. She chose Kate’s, as it was decorated with anal precision and loaded with booze.

The school hall was a rumble of voices competing with Christmas pop songs; George Michael, Shakin’ Stevens, and Cliff Richard. Scents of sugar and cinnamon mixed with the smells of handmade soaps at the next stall. Fiona dealt with the money while I bagged the requests for mince pies and iced biscuits, glad that my job required the least brain power. When things quietened down and we were setting out the last of the cakes, PTA Kate came over, carrying a money tin.

“Wow, girls, you’ve done so well!” Fiona nodded. I could sense she hated being spoken to like a child as much as I did. “I’ve just got to collect the bulk of your notes.” She pointed to our float in an ice cream tub. “Nothing personal. The PTA have had money go missing before, so we’re just being cautious.”

Fiona held out the tub before Kate finished speaking. “Here you go.” Fiona carried on arranging the cakes.

“I’ll get us some mulled wine,” I said to Fiona.

“Bloody brilliant idea,” she replied.

“You know, Fiona,” Kate said, locking the notes in her tin, “I’m sure we know each other. You look so familiar. Did you study at Manchester?”

Fiona had gone to Middlesex.

“No, sorry. I must look like someone else.” Fiona squatted down under the table, reaching into a box we both knew was empty. Kate leaned over the table, her skirt pressing into buttercream.

“Are you from round here? Perhaps we went to swim club together.”

I went to step away for the wine, but Fiona gripped my leg, her head down in the empty box.

“Fiona went to Loughborough,” I said. “Sorry, Kate. We’ve got to get these cakes out before the next rush.”

“Of course!”

When Kate scuttled off, Fiona stood, her snowman earrings swinging, and her face flushed.

“I’ll get us the wine.” She pushed through the crowd, and all I wanted to do was follow her.

ON A WEDNESDAY THE FOLLOWING JANUARY, Caleb got a text from his father. He showed it to me.

I’ve got us ice skating tickets this Saturday. I’ll pick you up at ten 😊

As blood thumped in my ears, I wondered whether my ex’s domineering nature had gradually increased over the years and I just hadn’t noticed it when we’d been together, like being in a hot tub and someone slowly turning up the heat until you boiled.

I made myself sick thinking about him picking up Caleb. Would he be with Donna in her Audi? Would he knock on the door? How was I supposed to act around a man I’d hugged and kissed every day for fourteen years? The cul-de-sac would be a theatre and my driveway the stage for this awkward and complex exchange. I still wanted to be with him, but at the same time, I wanted him dead. There’s no line between love and hate, just a blur.

Caleb has rugby training on Saturday mornings, not that his father knows, or that it matters. He sent Caleb a text, cancelling due to snow, but it had only fallen in the north.

IT’S MAY, AND FIONA TEXTS ME IN THE EARLY EVENING.

I’ve been your neighbour for one whole year! We must celebrate with Colin!

Caleb and Archie are on a school trip in Devon for a few nights. Jack is out with Russell. I go to Fiona’s, and we talk about how nice it is to have peace and quiet, and how much we also wish the boys were home. After we finish watching Bridget Jones, we have tea in Fiona’s study with a pack of chocolate digestives. This May is cooler than the last, and I cup the mug in chilly fingers, looking at Fiona’s desk. The oval frame with the toddler Fiona and her mother is gone again and, for once, there’s nothing under the hand, its palm facing down on the bare wood, the previous pile of work notes, a summer holiday brochure, a spa coupon, and a Pilates leaflet tossed away.

Silences are few between Fiona and I, and usually easy. Perhaps this one is uncomfortable because she sees me staring at the hand.

“Why Elizabeth Taylor’s hand? You know there’s a waxwork of Colin, don’t you?”

She sips her tea and the steam fogs her glasses. While her lenses clear, the quiet feels oppressive, so I go to make another joke about a waxwork foot for a doorstop, then I remember I’ve already made the same poor remark, so I wait for her to answer me.

“My mum got a summer job at Madame Tussauds when she was young. Before she turned to midwifery,” Fiona says.

Fiona knows about my mother smoking herself to a painful end, and that she’d given up when my father moved to Spain. She knows I enjoyed watching Only Fools and Horses with my mother, and that the woman could draw in such detail that she was wasted working in a launderette. Fiona knows it had been complicated, but that as much as I wanted to shake my mother, my love didn’t die with her. Fiona knows all this because over the past year I’ve told her. Our friendship though, has depended on neither of us talking about her mother, so Fiona mentioning the midwife now feels like a violation of our relationship.

“The celebrities didn’t always hang around to have everything cast,” Fiona continues. “Sometimes staff were used to cast limbs. During Mum’s trial, I found out they were revamping Taylor’s waxwork. I explained to them about the hand, and when they checked the records to see it was definitely Mum’s, they were obviously happy to let it go.”

Fiona opens a drawer and sets the oval frame on the desk. The midwife’s red eyes stare at me.

“The day I took Caleb to the cinema and you were dubious at the door, I doubted whether I’d ever be able to make a real friend again. Mum bleeds into everything in my life now. I keep meaning to start a hobby, go to the theatre, further my career. If someone realises who I am, their perspective shifts. Then when you lied for me at the Christmas fête, I knew we would be okay.” She puts the photo back in the drawer. “I can’t always look at her. I’ve seen her face too many times in the media, mixed with awful words I know are true. But there are other things about her that are wonderful. Her face makes me feel too many feelings at once. It’s like stuffing my mouth so full that I can’t taste, chew or swallow. I don’t know why, but I can live with the hand, which seems stupid considering what it’s done.”

She puts the frame back in the desk drawer before picking up the hand and cradling it.

I mean it when I say, “That doesn’t sound stupid at all.”