There was nothing Rachel could do. If she walked around trying to find them, she might miss Mia’s return home. She tried her mobile again, scores of times to no avail. There was still no ring, still nothing but that calm, terrible voice. I’m sorry but the person you are trying to reach is currently unavailable. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. There was no way to contact Mia, no route to get to her. So Rachel sat on the front porch, the door closed behind her, her phone and keys by her side. It was still warm in those early hours. She perched on the stone steps, her breathing steadying, her eyes first on the road that led into the cul-de-sac, then on the alleyway that formed a pedestrian shortcut from the main road. She turned her head between the two every few seconds, watching for Mia to emerge from one of them. There was no other way in.
She watched, but there was just silence and nothing. No birds flew in the sky and no steps echoed. Rachel was entirely alone. Everyone in the cul-de-sac slept. Tim slept in the bed upstairs. Occasionally there was the squeak of an insect, a sound too exotic to be British; then it would vanish and the silence would grow dense again. Rachel hardly moved, hardly swallowed, just waited. The only light was from her own porch and in those lushest hours of dark, she could be anywhere in the world, at any time in history.
She longed for a cigarette. The grate of metal against metal that would take several attempts to spark, to whoosh. It had been years, but her lungs would know what to do. They longed for the fullness of smoke. She’d tremble at the nicotine, the relief of it. She’d devour the whole stick in three drags. But her hands were empty. As she sat, stony as the steps, the backs of her thighs grew numb. Rachel felt her insides tighten. Her daughter was out there in the night, drifting further and further from her. Mia knew how upset she would be. Lily was still missing. Mia knew everyone was on edge. She knew her mother would be in despair. It wasn’t just irresponsible, it was cruel. Even with Tim home, it felt targeted – an act of malice aimed at Rachel alone. Was this how her own mother had felt on those nights when she’d stood, hands on hips, in the doorway when Rachel had returned home, flagrantly late? She’d apologised back then, but never considered her mother’s distress. This was different. Rachel had stayed late because she wanted to be out, not because she didn’t want to come home.
Rachel heard Mia’s laugh before she saw her. A ripple of giggles came from down the alleyway, and was joined by a deeper voice, Aaron, the source of the hilarity. They came into sight but didn’t look towards the house. It wasn’t a laugh that indicated mirth; the shrill peel sounded more like mania. They were clumsy on their feet, drunk and unsteady, staggering together. They kissed, long and deep, clinging to each other. They had no thought of Rachel. A minute or more passed before they broke apart, before they looked to where she was sitting. The grin fell from Mia’s face when she saw her mother stand up. Had she assumed Rachel would just head to bed that evening, unconcerned, happy to check on her daughter in the morning? Rachel stared at Mia across the empty cul-de-sac for full seconds, then turned, closed the door behind her and walked upstairs.
There would be crumbs all over the bedspread. The room would look bare, with only their two bags of belongings to fill it. In that tiny template of a room, she’d sit on the bed. He’d be able to see her from the bathroom, reflected twice, her image bouncing from one mirror to another, from the dressing table to above the sink. Rachel knew the angles. The sun would be shining just as brightly in France, but they’d rarely feel it on their skin. They’d witness the weather as patterns on the floor formed by the blind’s slats. They’d have spent over a week indoors, breathing the same air. Lily would be getting fractious, tetchy in the gloom of that studio.
They wouldn’t have devices. Her phone would be nestling in the sand at the bottom of the Channel, a tiny submarine from which no message would ever be able to swim up. His would be switched off, hidden in a drawer. He’d be meticulous. He wouldn’t risk a Wi-Fi connection being their downfall. They’d be cast back two decades, before the internet had crept into every home, every pocket. It would smack of nostalgia for him, but be alien to Lily. Her time would feel endless. The TV in their room would look cumbersome to her modern eyes, as fat as a fridge and bulging from the wall. They couldn’t buy British newspapers and didn’t pack books. He’d rarely be leaving the room, paying with cash, his hat pulled low, and she wouldn’t have set foot outside for days. The crackling television would be their only portal to the world beyond that room.
Her year of GCSE French would be too sketchy to follow the local news, the national soap operas. She only knew Mme Cressida’s precise pronunciation. J’habite en Angleterre. J’ai quinze ans. Ou est le syndicat d’initiative? Or the phrases her friends trilled to each other in dense, foolish accents. J’aimerais voyager à Surrey. Surrey est plus belle que Marseille. The voices from the television would be speaking a different language altogether, not chanting classroom dullness or daft mockery, but something swift and liquid. Lily would barely catch a word. She’d try to silence her yawns, her sighs, but he’d hear them. He’d be worried that she was bored, that she was regretting her decision.
Mia should have looked younger. Lying in her childhood bed, with her face pale and her eyes closed, she should have seemed more approachable. Illness usually shrank her, taking her back to the years when she was willing to curl up in Rachel’s bed and let her mother stroke her hair, feed her from a spoon. This was very different. She wasn’t battling chicken pox or a throat infection, but a distinctly adult problem. These aches made her insurmountably older.
Rachel watched her daughter sleep from the doorway. Her eyes were puffed, with smudges of purple underneath. At a glance, it looked like bruising, like she’d been hit twice, hard, but Rachel knew it was just the impact of a surplus of ethanol and a deficit of sleep. Rachel tried to see the prone figure in the bed as her little girl, as the tiny creature who would snuggle into her, push her face into her mother’s stomach and hide. But there were so few traces of that girl left. She wasn’t limp like a sick child, but tense in her distress. As Mia’s eyes flickered open, Rachel could only see the coldness in them.
‘Honestly, Mia, I just hope you’ve learned something from all of this.’ Rachel heard her words as an unbearable cliché. It was absurd. The idea that Mia would eschew all alcohol due to this one nauseating headache. It was just the only thing Rachel could bring herself to utter. She found herself to be a bitter nurse. They’d turned their phones off. They’d ignored her calls. It had been deliberate. I’m sorry but the person you are trying to reach is currently unavailable. Rachel held the headache tablets in the palm of her hand, round like sweets with their name printed in tiny capital letters. She wanted to ask Mia about the other pills she might have swallowed recently, wanted to force a confession from her. But she couldn’t risk the response. Mia could never know how Rachel had followed her, how she’d watched from the car for so many hours. This stranger dressed in her daughter’s pyjamas, drinking from her favourite mug, could turn on her. This girl she’d done everything for. It was too precarious.
Tim found it only amusing. ‘Oh, Mia. Oh dear, little Mimi, what have you done?’
Rachel held his arm. ‘Don’t. It’s not funny.’
‘Oh, Rach, but it kind of is. I mean, we’ve all been there, haven’t we?’
‘Tim, she’s fifteen.’
He teased Mia, describing the rich concoctions he was planning for her breakfast, the heavy metal he thought they should play at full volume. She groaned, contorting her face into cartoons of anguish. Rachel had to walk away. She couldn’t watch Mia clowning for Tim’s attention.
Then Tim’s case was in the hallway, his taxi to the airport booked. Another three weeks would begin. Three weeks of missed calls and stilted conversations. Rachel kissed the soft of her husband’s mouth, held his face for a moment, stroked that longer stubble, met his eyes. She tried to breathe him in. I’ll miss you. By the time he returned permanently, the heat woul
d have faded. Rachel blinked hard.
Mia threw herself upon her father, whispering in his ear, so softly Rachel could only make out a low hiss. They waved as the Prius that carried him away left the cul-de-sac.
When they were alone, Rachel tried to muster the cooing softness that might lure her daughter back. She knew how it could be done. Favourite foods served in dishes she hadn’t used since she was little, calling her childhood nicknames. Mimi, Meerkat. Hours sitting on her bed in the dim light, sympathising, sharing stories of her own reckless teens, even sharing the pictures, laughing together at haircuts and dresses that had once been stylish, watching old episodes of loved sitcoms until she drifted off to sleep. But Rachel couldn’t summon it, couldn’t even do the impression. The tenderness had escaped her. She could barely look at that girl who was once half her, that toddler whose face she’d studied to see which of her own features would push from the bones. She was all herself now, no more like Rachel than a stranger. Mia had been as much formed by reacting against her mother as by inheriting her traits.
Rachel wanted to punish Mia. She wanted to snatch the palm of Nurofen away, have Mia beg for the privilege of pain relief. She wanted to leave the sink stained with Mia’s vomit, and make her clean the sour smell away herself. She wanted to make her answer tough questions whilst she was still weary enough to tell the truth. She tried to drop it in, disguised as concern, but her voice had no chance of hitting the right pitch.
‘What else did you take last night, Mia?’
Mia didn’t move. ‘Nothing more than alcohol, Mother.’ Her voice was blank. Her stillness was unnatural. The flame seemed to have burned out. She was usually so hectic, with each emotion – joy, hilarity, despair, horror – smacking into the back of the last before it had even ended. This flatness was new. Without seeming to move anything but her mouth, she spoke again.
‘You can hardly criticise me for that, can you? You have “adult headaches” most weekends.’ The dullness in her voice, the lack of expression, was far worse than if she’d been shouting. It felt more aggressive.
‘But I am an adult, Mia.’
Mia just curled her lip. She wouldn’t break eye contact. Rachel tried again. ‘You have to tell me if you have taken anything else. It is important. Tell me what that boyfriend of yours gave you.’
Mia didn’t deviate from her monotone. She closed her eyes, revealing the network of blue veins now showing on the thin skin of her eyelids. ‘It’s none of your business.’
‘That’s absurd. Of course it is. It is absolutely my business if my child is in danger.’ Rachel’s voice raised, clanging in the silent house, but nothing came back. It was futile. Mia rolled a little further into her pillow. Rachel couldn’t stop herself. ‘Mia, you’re being a complete bitch.’
Rachel stalked from the room and down the stairs, aware that the kitchen sat directly below Mia’s room, below the bed where her head was resting. She clattered as she heated soup from a carton, no concern for chips or breakages. She thumped the pan down, and scraped butter across toast with force. When she took it up to Mia’s room, Rachel slammed the plate and bowl onto her bedside table, satisfied with the jump of Mia’s body at the noise. Mia struggled to raise herself into a sitting position. Rachel watched as her eyes focused. The lilac dress still hung like a carcass on the outside of the wardrobe door, still in its grey protective bag. Rachel sweetened her voice to a coo, made it almost sing-song. She leaned in a little.
‘I assume you know there’s absolutely no way you’re going to the Prom.’
He wouldn’t allow her to find the English news channels on that lumbering television. He’d know it would upset her too much to see her own face beamed back at her, her mother trying to reach through the screen. Not seeing it would just mean that she imagined it. She’d wake herself with sobs so great she was nearly sick. He’d promise it would only be a few years, no different to if she’d gone away to university. But her mother wouldn’t see it that way. Lily would long for the soft pillow of her flesh, pliant and safe. Her mother might never forgive her.
Lily’s fingers would be itching, with nothing to click. There was no way to photograph her new surroundings, to scrawl comments over the top with the tip of her finger. For the first time, she’d have no connection to the lives of her friends. The fine chain that threaded them together would be severed. She’d have no route to them: what they were wearing, what they had chosen to do with those days of sunshine. The stories were all cut off mid-flow.
Without her phone, Lily would have no clock, no calendar. She’d be tempted to mark each day out with a line, like a cartoon prisoner. Her birthday was only a few months away. Her mum had already bought tickets to The Lion King in London; the girls had already watched the dancers on YouTube, their feet bare on the wood of the stage, fur stoles on their shoulders and iridescent smears on their cheekbones. Lily would fear they’d all go without her or, worse, that the tickets would lie in her mother’s wallet for years with their perforations unripped.
She’d have packed her perfume, that little blue star of glass. So much would be unfamiliar that she’d hold it, snug between her fingers, and inhale. Its sugary comfort would fill her lungs and, for a second, she’d be back across the Channel, far from him.
They were supposed to meet at Waterloo at two-thirty that Sunday afternoon. They’d both expressed an interest in the exhibition. Tim had left for his flight, and Amanda wasn’t bothered. They were going to stop at the street-food market behind the Royal Festival Hall and buy vegan dosas or artisan croque-monsieurs on cardboard plates. They were going to eat them perched on the stone slabs outside the National Theatre, licking the grease from their fingers, then walk in the sun along the river – maybe with an ice cream or frozen yoghurt – to the Tate Modern. Rachel knew how carefully Graham would have planned it.
It would be chilly inside the gallery. She’d feel the cold from the concrete floor creeping through the soles of her sandals. They’d walk in near-silence – except for the yelp of an occasional child – around each echoing room, pausing in front of the paintings or installations they found most intriguing. They’d breathe in that cavernous building’s odd, vinegary smell, that smack of art, pickled and preserved. They’d talk in low murmurs. He’d show her the rooms he loved the most, the works he liked to revisit: Louise Bourgeois’s majestic spider-mother, a David Hockney sketch he always found moving. They’d stop for small, bitter coffees after a few hours and compare their reactions, looping back afterwards to see favoured objects. They’d talk until they stepped back out into the blinding light.
Rachel couldn’t. She knew what the day would be. It would be lovely. And she couldn’t. She couldn’t have a day as untroubled and pleasant as that. She couldn’t leave Mia alone.
Rachel waited until Graham would nearly be leaving his house to head for the train, calculating the times exactly. She knew he’d check his phone. The text was sent with precision. Sorry. Not feeling great today. Let’s rain check. She couldn’t tell him the truth. When she pressed the button, her phone animated the journey of the words, articulated them with a whoosh. It felt like power. She had made him react. She knew she had. She knew how his shoulders would slump slightly as he read the digital letters. She closed her eyes, drunk on the bliss of impact.
Mia stayed in her room for the rest of Sunday. The hangover fug must have lifted enough to allow for movement, but she remained under her duvet, behind her closed door. Rachel had considered forcing her out for food that evening, but had instead delivered a bowl of chilli and received a curt nod of thanks.
As Rachel headed towards her own bedroom to sleep, she knocked on Mia’s door.
‘Mmm.’ Mia emitted a sound rather than words. Rachel took it as assent, and walked in. Mia didn’t look up. She was talking on her phone, her hands cupped over her mouth to keep her words private. She glanced at her mother, her eyebrows raised. It was a question, an accusation. Rachel rose
to it.
‘I’m just here to say goodnight, Mia.’
Mia looked away, and smiled down at her phone, giggling at the words from the other end. It must be Aaron, cooing his seditious thoughts into her ear. Rachel waited, insistent that Mia acknowledge her. Eventually, Mia looked up.
‘Goodnight, Mum.’ Rachel turned to leave. ‘Oh, and Dad says goodnight too.’ Her voice was flint. She was talking to Tim. He could only have landed within the last half hour, and the first person he’d called was Mia. Mia smiled at her mother, eyes unnaturally bright, then whispered again into her phone. Rachel walked out of the room.
Lily would be snatching the moments he wasn’t around. She’d be making her voice petulant, purring at him to buy a punnet of strawberries, a carton of ice cream, a circle of the chocolates she loved, just to get him out of the studio. When he was gone, the air would be cooler and thinner, able to slip into her lungs more easily. The tiny room would expand. She’d be able to stretch her limbs the full length of a double bed. She wouldn’t have to weigh her words before she spoke them.
She’d be working hard. Even at fifteen, femininity is a phantom. Rachel knew Lily would need time to retreat, to make herself look the way women are supposed to. She’d have to shave and pluck, to stain her lips and pink her cheeks. She’d be living in fear of a blemish, of the way her middle had thickened from the cheese and the bread, from the density of food and the scarcity of movement. She wouldn’t have ever done this before. She was a different person now, in a different city, across an ocean. She wouldn’t know how women prepared their bodies, the rituals they undertook to make it feel right, move right, smell right. She wouldn’t have practised in the mirror, learned the angles that most flattered, that made her flesh hang like a garment. And her blood was primed to betray her. She’d usually make marks in her homework diary, a tiny x next to certain dates, but those marks were over two hundred miles away and she’d lost track. She’d fear the smell it would bring, the pain, the mess. She’d try to reduce her body to something functionless, all decoration. Rachel knew how she’d try to erase every growl, every burble it made, reduce her pissing to nothing but a silvery tinkle, nothing that might put him off.
Heatstroke: an intoxicating story of obsession over one hot summer Page 19