She’d never be certain of what would delight him, what would make him withdraw. It was a game with no instructions. And he knew everything. She’d have learned to make her eyes lengthen and tighten as he looked into them, but it would be no shield. His eyes would make her feel naked. She’d worry he could see all of her, not just the good, that he could see the things she’d do anything to hide; the embarrassments, the contradictions, the weaknesses, those blasts of humiliation that played on loop through her mind as she tried to sleep.
The Hub was empty, and Rachel sat, blank. She didn’t move, didn’t even raise her eyes. Sleep had been a stranger for more nights than she could fathom. She’d arrived in the building that Monday whilst everyone else was still at home. Mia had declared that she would walk to school. Rachel had waved no goodbye. The papery wisps of her eyelids were lead. Every blink stung. Her body seemed to be moving by some volition other than her own. She felt automated. Only her thoughts had energy, but every imagined scenario robbed her of something significant.
He could still wake up. In that white-sheeted bed, cold and clammy, he could know in a bolt that what he’d done was disastrous. He could think of the weekend they’d spent together. He could still leave Lily, her face pressed into the pillow, her dark hair tangled. He wouldn’t even need to say goodbye, or kiss her on the forehead. He could just leave a note, a stack of euros tucked into her passport. Rachel tried to clear her brain of the images, but couldn’t muster the effort.
He’d get back to England. Against all likelihood, he’d get back. He’d do whatever it took to get through customs, to find a boat that would stow him. He’d fly or float; whichever was safer, whichever was more likely to get him back to her. He wouldn’t waste a second once he was on British soil. He’d rent a car from Kent or hitch a lift to hurtle down the M20. He’d find a way to send her a text, lighting up her phone, or he’d knock on her door. Or he’d leave a note between pages fifty-six and fifty-seven of Pat Barker’s Regeneration in the sixth-form library, or on the staff noticeboard just above the sports-hall schedule. Rachel still checked both. He’d ask her to meet somewhere no one else would think to go. They’d stand, facing each other. He’d look at her and she’d fight the deafening rage to listen to him. She was the only person who knew the inside of him, who understood the struggle. She’d listen to him try to explain it. There might still be a way for him to excuse himself. She’d listen to him beg forgiveness for his rashness, his idiocy. His callous treatment of her. She’d see the tears prickle his eyes. It could be okay. They could go back. It could still be pure. Rachel’s eyes closed, and she swayed into the salty darkness.
‘Rachel!’ Graham’s voice jolted her awake. It sounded like a yelp of undisguised delight. Rachel made her legs propel her to standing. She couldn’t quite remember what delight felt like. Where Graham’s voice had lifted, she made her own deepen through the syllables of his name, as if they were reading football results.
‘Graham.’ It would seem professional. She understood he couldn’t show favouritism, couldn’t reveal too much of their friendship, even though the room was empty.
‘How are you feeling now?’
She’d told him that she hadn’t felt well. Of course. Her face would corroborate the story. Rachel slipped a coffee pod into the gleaming Nespresso machine, snapped it shut and pressed the button that made it whir and steam. ‘A little bit better. Thank you.’
‘We should arrange another day, if you like, whilst the weather holds. The Twombly exhibition is only on until late July.’
Rachel felt her eyes blur. She looked down at the stream of coffee that was filling her mug. ‘Absolutely. I’m pretty busy in the next few weeks, but let’s see.’ Her face and her tone made it clear, even if her words were neutral.
‘Oh. Okay. Great.’ His gaze stayed even, but his mouth – for a moment – became a smudge. He couldn’t hide the sudden softness, the smear of his lips. It gave away the disappointment. Rachel felt heat creep up her neck like an allergy. Her body was awake now, and entirely her own again. This wasn’t heat from the sun or the coffee-machine steam; this was heat from within. She knew her chest, her collarbone would be mottled with crimson like an illness from long ago. There was no covering it. No cool air could soothe it away.
He reached over to get his own coffee pod, picking the deep purple capsule that indicated rich intensity of flavour. As he fed it into the device, Rachel didn’t walk away. As Graham leaned to turn on the milk foamer, his hand brushed Rachel’s arm and, for a single second, their bodies were connected.
They were no longer huddling around a laptop. A flatscreen television had been rigged up in The Hub, with BBC News scrolling silently all day. Its bland authority was calming. Occasionally Mark’s face would appear, back in that space where they all knew him, peering down at them. It always sent a judder through the room. He was there, again, in that place where he’d killed time between lessons, where his phone had glowed with Lily’s words, where he’d examined foreign streets on Google Maps, where he’d marked her work, leaving notes in the margin with his red pen, drawing tiny smiling faces next to her mistakes.
The same two pictures had been used in every news report. Her school photograph, his Facebook profile shot. Rachel had felt them become uncanny, then meaningless. They became avatars for strangers. The newspapers had used the pictures most days, charting minute developments, printing the same titbits of information over and over. There had been opinion pieces, guides for parents on watching for signs of distress in teenagers, endless quotes from sources close to the school. The television reports were marginally more measured, returning to the story only for new developments, so when the pair of pictures flashed up, Rachel took notice.
The room was filling now, and in one movement cups ceased clanking and conversations ended. All eyes were on the television. Someone found the remote and the stilted words along the bottom of the screen became sound. Foreign streets were shown, bustling with people, shopping and working, going about their day. Rachel had been right about France. She walked up to the screen, so close that focusing made her eyes ache. She wanted to pause the images and zoom in, confirm her suspicion, recognise the jut of a building, a shop or street name, know that it was that town, know that her imagination had firm roots. The voiceover declared that the police were closing in on the couple. The couple. Lily and Mark. Their faces expanded to fill the whole screen. It was as if they’d been away for years. Even their names seemed hollow now. They were characters rather than people. The couple. The police were near them now, smoking them out. They knew where they were, but couldn’t mention the town. They didn’t want to move in too quickly. They couldn’t risk the couple fleeing.
The heat would steal all oxygen in that room. The days would be blurring. He’d be spending longer on the bed; she’d be spending longer gazing out of their single window. As Rachel recalled, the view was only of the building across the alleyway, but that would be enough to keep Lily’s attention. There would be a boy there, a French boy in the window opposite. She’d have jumped from sight the first time she noticed him but, as the days wore on, she’d let him see her face. With her brown hair, she’d look nothing like the images online. To him, she’d just be a girl. He’d be so much younger than Mark that he could easily be his son, but would look nothing like him. Mark’s features were dark against pale, but this boy would be golden. Lily would wonder how different it would feel to kiss him.
He’d lean his head one way, and she’d copy. He’d lift his arm to hold the cord of his blinds, and she’d do the same to the dusty one in their room. She’d have learned that a tilt of her head could render Mark feeble, but might not have considered that it was universal. Were all men so simple? She had never before wielded that power. The boys at school hadn’t noticed, but now the print of sex was upon her, this boy might be able to sense it, even across the passageway and through two panes of glass.
Mark would clock hi
m eventually, register the rival gazing into his domain. His voice would gravel, and Lily would feel his fury for the first time.
‘Fuck him, looking at you!’
She’d feel the chill of what would have happened if Mark had seen her looking back, if he’d witnessed their strange semaphore. Rachel knew how the fear would whip through her, take the air from her body. He’d backtrack, try to undo what he’d done. He’d stroke her arm, her neck.
‘We can’t risk being seen, honey. They’re all looking for us.’ His accent would twinge with American, like some fantasy road movie. ‘Come here. Look at me. You are the light, you hear me, the light of my life.’
She’d been hidden for so many days, she wouldn’t have walked on solid ground, wouldn’t have had any chance to leave. Her face would be in his hands, his head shaking with disbelief or something worse. He would have grown a beard easily; his was the sort of stubble that cast a shade across his whole face by dinner. It would have felt coarse after a few days, ripping into her skin when they kissed, reddening what was once white, then suddenly soft, like the pelt of an animal, and almost damp, sleek as an underground creature. It would have carried smells like burrs; from the food they’d eaten, cigarettes he’d drained on the balcony. She’d feel that fur in the cove of her neck as he held her. His fingers on her throat. She’d fear anything that could trigger his withdrawal. A flat look from him could slay her. His voice in her hair. ‘I don’t want those boys to get their hands on you.’
When Rachel reached the drama studio after school, Dominic was there alone. Briony couldn’t make it; Ross had football practice. Rachel wanted to go home, tell Dominic to leave it for that day. But he’d turned up. He still believed the play was going to be staged, still believed Lily would come back and everything would return to how it was before. The performances were still scheduled for the last days of term. Rachel willed herself to wake up, to reward that loyalty. Dominic wanted to apply to drama school after sixth form. He longed for dark rooms and dusty lights and faces thick with emotion; he wanted to wear white tights or leather jackets or wigs or sandals; he wanted to carry the words of made-up people.
‘Which part do you want to run through, Dominic?’
‘With just the two of us here, maybe the Laura and Jim sequence right at the end of scene seven?’
‘Perfect.’
Dominic glanced at his copy of the play, found the line he wanted to start from. His eyes were so clear. He still retained the sweetness of a boy. He hadn’t yet lost it all to the gruffness of grown masculinity. Boys and men were creatures apart to Rachel. Dominic was teetering on the edge, but – with his undisguised enthusiasm, with his downy cheeks – still fell on the softer side. Rachel read Lily’s lines straight, with no attempt to inhabit the character. She spoke them only so Dominic could respond. It seemed to throw him. He faltered on the words, seeming unsure of himself. It was hard to extricate his own awkwardness from the fumbling of his character. Rachel didn’t know if he was lost in Jim, or just lost. She stood up, to break his flow and address him as himself.
‘It’s a tough scene.’
Dominic nodded. ‘I’m not sure I get it. I can’t work out what he’s thinking.’
‘Yeah. He’s torn. You should remember that Laura is very unusual. She’s not like his fiancée, she’s not like the other girls he knows. He’s totally . . . totally wowed by her in that moment.’
‘Is she beautiful? Is that what it is?’
‘Um, it’s more that she’s sort of magnetic. Does that make sense?’
Dominic looked away. ‘Yeah. It does.’
Rachel sat down again, folded script in hand. She pointed at the printed words. She tried to make the words all she thought about, tried to be nothing but a teacher. It was her best escape. If she focused, she could cast away the thoughts that smothered her.
‘You really have to put yourself in his position. Imagine that she is so lovely that you can hardly bear it.’
It was suddenly too hot. Even in that dark room the sun could never hit. Rachel was sharply aware how close they were, no more than inches apart, as she played both actor and director.
Dominic cleared his throat with a small cough. ‘I think I know what you mean.’ His voice was soft. He rested his hand on her shoulder.
Rachel froze. She was so brittle that a single finger laid on skin could snap her, and his hand on her shoulder shattered everything. She couldn’t hold it in. That little gesture was all it took. She couldn’t hold the sob back, and in that second of tenderness, her face was entirely, irrevocably, wet. She tried to hide in her sleeve, tried to turn so far away he couldn’t see.
‘I’m so sorry. I’m sorry, Dominic. I don’t know what’s wrong with me.’ She felt panicked. She was showing him something she’d fought so hard to keep hidden.
He didn’t move his hand away. ‘Nothing’s wrong with you. Nothing at all.’
His voice was sweet and low. Rachel didn’t have the strength to stand up as his arms moved around her and held her more firmly. It was an act of genuine comfort. She could feel his heart through his school shirt, beating faster than it should. His human heart pumping blood around his body. He didn’t let go of her. His warm arms on the bare skin of her shoulders. She should move. She should leave, but she let the sobs continue to rack her, let him continue to hold her, his face next to hers. Rachel closed her eyes against the sting of the tears, screwed them tight, so she could retreat. Then damp. Damp on her cheek, her neck. Her own tears, or something else. The heat of his breath or the heat of his mouth. There, then not there any more. Only fleeting, but definite. Something.
In a second, Rachel was out of the room, bags in her hands, books grabbed, out of the dark drama studio, through the blazing, blinding light and into her car.
Rachel drove without looking, without thinking. She was motivated by nothing but being as far away from the school as possible, as far from that drama studio, from that downy-faced boy with his damp lips. She couldn’t process it, couldn’t recall the moment, only minutes before, with anything like clarity. Was it the heat of his breath or the heat of his mouth? It made such a significant difference. Her mind wasn’t reliable. She couldn’t have let him kiss her. It was impossible, unthinkable. But when his arms were around her, when his gaze was on her, when she couldn’t see through teared eyes? She wiped at her cheek with the back of her hand, like a child removing the germs from a loathed source. He couldn’t have. But she couldn’t be sure. Rachel pressed the accelerator harder than she’d ever pressed it on those safe suburban roads, flooring it like she was on the motorway, flying down each stretch, taking the corners wildly. The journey home was only three major junctions, and the home-time rush had faded. Other cars beeped their horns as she swung into side roads without pausing, with only a cursory glance, but she hit nothing; she caused no one to leap or screech out of the way. It was fine. Then she got to their cul-de-sac, their driveway.
She jammed the brakes, left the car where it stopped and ran inside. Their house. Mia wasn’t there. She was at netball, the only outing allowed in her grounded state. Rachel ran up the stairs, with no clear sense of where she was trying to get to, just trying to be as far away from other people as possible. She wanted to burrow herself away where no one could see her, no one could make her explain herself, make her deal with her actions, her thoughts. Before she could even get to the bedroom, she curled onto the floor of the landing. A pile of recently laundered towels sat there, and she nestled into them, grateful for their smell. Their fibres soaked up the remaining tears that sat on her cheeks. She breathed through their fabric, slowly and deliberately, her nose and mouth full of their chemical cleanness. When her breathing calmed, when her heart had slowed to a bearable rhythm, Rachel rocked onto her back. She could see only the ceiling, the tops of the doorjambs. The world seemed more serene from that angle, pale and sparse. And then she saw a wisp of lilac chiffon.
&
nbsp; Mia’s prom dress had been moved from the wardrobe door, and had shed its grey skin. It had been suspended like a hanged woman from Mia’s light fixture for days, jolting Rachel several times when it had swung into her peripheral vision. It was there as a message to her, a rebuke against the punishment that meant Mia would miss the biggest night in her social calendar. The dress was ridiculous. Rachel would never have worn anything like it. It was a pretty confection – a little-girl fantasy that had been slashed too low at the front and back. Mia loved the layers upon layers of pale purple that had cost as much as their monthly food bill. Tim had happily paid, and Rachel had smiled in the shop, saintly, despite the disdain she felt. Mia had played it cool, but gripped the woven cords of the bag until her hands turned white.
Rachel had to stand on Mia’s desk chair to reach it, to unhook the dress’s hanger from the metal light fitting. No longer tethered, it lay across her arms like a swooning heroine. It was heavier than she’d expected, no wisp but something substantial. Stepping back onto the carpet, she held it at its full length, like another person in the room. She and Mia were the same height. Rachel draped the dress against her own body, as if she was wearing it, but her black top and trousers ruined the effect, peeping out from the sides. She slipped her vest off, peeled her trousers down, and stepped into the dress, holding its straps. She didn’t imagine she would fasten the zip. It would stick halfway, surely, the dimensions of her daughter’s body so different to her own, but if she breathed in, she was able to just close the tiny metal hook at the top, run the zip all the way up. Rachel sighed in victory. It was more structured than she’d imagined; it held her more firmly.
Heatstroke: an intoxicating story of obsession over one hot summer Page 20