by Kate Hamer
She sounds like she’s trying to end the conversation and it tips me over the edge. I hold the receiver away and yell into it like I’m screaming at a face. ‘You have to come back. You can’t do this. She’s going to be absolutely fucking furious with me and all this will just go on and on and on. It’s not fair. It’s not fair.’
Her voice at the other end sounds tiny and electric. It reminds me of an insect buzz. It opens its little tin wings and flies out of the receiver. ‘Oh fuck off, you little weirdo,’ it buzzes at me and then the line goes dead.
I don’t bother calling her back. She won’t answer. She’ll be outside already with a drink in her hand and flicking her hair as she tells everyone her peculiar sister just got hold of her. Actually, no, she won’t want anyone to know that she’s ignoring the fact her mother has had a car accident and wants her back. She’ll pretend the call never happened. Instead I stand shaking, trying to calm myself down before dragging my feet all the way up to Mum and Dad’s bedroom. At the bottom of the flight that leads to their room I get the shock of my life. She’s sitting on the top stair and glaring down at me. I startle so much I have to hang onto the banister. I even let out a little scream. I calculate quickly. I don’t think she could have overheard what I said from the kitchen. It doesn’t stop me quaking, though. Her mouth is so pursed up it looks as if it’s been stitched and the thread pulled into a pleated gather.
‘Well? What happened?’
I can’t tell her. I can’t.
I can’t stand the sight of her pain. I never have been able to. It’s too dreadful to witness. When it happens the look of it is like a nerve or muscle that has been severed but still lives, coloured electric blue and blood red with agony, dragging itself across the floor. It has no control over itself. It is without thought. When I was a child the house was set up permanently with tricks to deflect its might that sometimes I revisit. I’d angle the bread knife in the drawer so it was pointing at her. The thought of its point staring straight at her through the wood was an ally. I’d open up the blades of all the scissors in the house and the sight of their open pointed beaks, sharp and ready, was as if I’d armed myself. Now is just the same. I’ll do pretty much anything to deflect or run away from it. I must make her believe I haven’t spoken to Verity. It’ll send her over the edge.
‘I … I couldn’t get hold of her. I did try. I rang round her friends.’
‘You are such a dreadful little liar.’
I hang onto the banister for dear life. ‘What?’
‘I heard you on the phone. Talking and screaming. Honestly, you sound quite off your head sometimes.’
For a moment I think she’s managed to hear me from all the way up here, like she has superhuman powers. I shake my head. ‘How did you hear that?’
‘Because I was down there. I thought I’d better come and do it with you so you wouldn’t mess it up.’
‘But how did you walk?’
‘I didn’t. I came down on my bottom like some child. I made it to halfway down the bottom staircase so I could hear every word.’
‘Oh no.’
‘What did she say, exactly?’ There are bright red spots on both her cheeks and she’s digging her nails into her palm. The sight of it makes me feel there is something screwing through my insides. The rage. The rage. It’s going to happen and there’ll be nothing she can do about it.
I want to collapse but somehow I manage to stay upright. My voice squeezes out. ‘Mum. Look, I can be here all the time for you. I’ll do whatever you need. I promise. Really.’
‘Tell me what she said.’ Her face contorts into a shape that is both dreadful and familiar. It makes my heart tilt.
‘Mum, you don’t need to know. Everything will be all right, it really will. I promise.’ My voice is just a squeak now.
‘Tell me.’ She grates it out.
‘She said …’ I heave a breath in and start again. ‘She said it would be really difficult to come home. She sends her love and she’s told me to do anything I can—’
‘Oh, stop it.’
The rage doesn’t come as I expected it. It stays inside this time. I wonder at the way she is managing to hold it. It must be eating at her flesh there. Very slowly she drags herself up. I know I am supposed to watch, to be a witness to it. With a series of sharp gasps she raises herself to standing, then, bent over and with baby steps, she turns to the direction of her room. It takes an age for her to reach the door and all the while we are both spangled with silence, her harsh breath the only sound that flows through the hollow of it so it presses at my ears. She opens the door and slides inside; and there’s a click as it swings shut behind her.
My knees buckle. No, no, no. I will not. I will not let myself be destroyed. I heave myself up and crash down the stairs. The familiar sights of the house whizz past as I pick up speed. Outside, the light is burning bright again, eating at the edges of everything. The long grass whips at my knees as I run through it. It is as if I am pulled by a thread. It’s the only escape I can cling onto right at this very minute. It’s so acute. I need to act straight away. I need to make myself feel better now.
I scrabble at the back of the ivy but my hand grasps only at the tough branches or at thin air. Have I been caught? Does she right now have the phone locked inside her bedside cabinet? Is she monitoring the texts as they come in? I move closer into the heart of the plant and the sharp green winter smell fills my nostrils and the edges of the hard shiny leaves jab into my face. I feel around and my hand touches cold plastic. It’s fallen down a branch or two and become wedged in. I pick it out with two fingers and switch it on. It seems to take an age, the screen brightening, then dimming and then brightening again.
Finally it lights up and stays that way. In the little glass window there’s an envelope that tells me there are twenty-four messages waiting, one tucked tight inside the other like Russian dolls. Twenty-four. I want to scream again.
26
Phoebe
It all got so much better when I remembered about Rapunzel’s plait.
At first I wasn’t going to answer the messages from Lucas. They sounded desperate and intense. I wanted to and didn’t want to. It felt like there’d be no going back. Then I thought about the plait and how Rapunzel could dangle it into the world but at the same time stay completely safe even though it was poking out. She could bring stuff in, then push it out again.
I can meet him – I realised – then return. There will be no outward change that could be distinguished. I’ll return to my contaminated eyrie and it will be like nothing happened, except it will have done because the spell will be broken and I’ll have something for myself, something outside this crushed little world, that I can think of all the time and that will keep me healthy. It began to feel like my only chance. I needed that smile, that masculine ease, that strength and power to sweep all of this away.
The fruits are already beginning to ripen on the trees when I go to meet him. I wonder at that. It’s been summer for such a short time and already everything is speeding towards ripeness. Winter and the dark will arrive before we know it. The sun will plummet towards the earth and bury itself there.
I leave Mum sleeping and take the shopping basket. I stick my empty hand in my pocket and swing my skirt as I walk. I smile in what I imagine is a mischievous way.
I know a place where no one goes.
Nobody knows where I’m going or who I’m meeting except for him. It’s treasure to me and I like to lay this secret treasure around me in a circle, where I can look at it over and over again.
He’s waiting for me near the Spinney already. I can see him in the distance watching me approach, the tall girl in the swingy blue skirt brushing through the long grass. He puts his hand up to wave, then puts it down again.
When I reach him there’s so much pollen clinging to the hem of my skirt, I am ringed with gold.
‘It’s very open here,’ is the first thing he says. There are blobs of sweat on his forehead. He loo
ks so awkward and jittery I have the idea that he was about to leave at the precise moment he caught sight of me across the field. One of his texts said that he was becoming obsessed with me. I know all too well how obsessions can click over onto something else at a moment’s notice. Perhaps the sight of me is a disappointment and he’s changing his mind. It makes me want him to stay even more. There’s something about the wanting of something more powerfully when it’s about to slither fish-like from your grasp.
‘Follow me.’ I throw the basket over the tumbledown wall and go to squeeze through the hole. I’m sick to the pit of my stomach at what I’m doing but I do it anyway. I don’t even really know why.
‘Really?’ His jacket is hooked over his shoulder by one finger and the stripes on his shirt betray quite a plumpness on his belly.
He doesn’t look the same as I imagined or remembered him. He’s sweaty and nervous. There’s a heaviness to his brow, a thickness to his skin that I would like replaced with more girlish features. Something more romantic. Does that make me gay? I remember the kiss with Orla, the one I don’t usually think about. When I’m with her it’s like we’re two girl/boys together.
‘You can climb over if you like. It might be better for you.’
I see he likes this, the idea of climbing rather than slithering through holes.
‘OK, hold my jacket then.’ He slips about on the stones because of his hard leather soles and I think he’s going to give up, but he manages to scramble over in the end. I pass over his jacket, then squeeze through the hole beneath.
‘So.’ He grins at me, sickly. His face is greenish from being under the canopy. I turn. Walk away, expecting him to follow. He does. I can hear the crashing in the undergrowth. We’re close to the river now. The wishing bowl has started to dry out around the edges, with a thick cakey sludge at the bottom where our offerings must’ve sunk. All that’s visible now are a few walnuts, a pine cone and the jellied remains of a red Haribo ring. He lays out his jacket on the ground and I notice the finicky way he checks for mud and scrutinises the ground, removing bits of sharp twig and leaf. I swish my skirt about and watch.
‘There,’ he says finally and sits down, patting the space next to him. I sit on the satiny lining and he lies back and puts his hands behind his head and looks up at the trees. The gravity of lying down does something to his face. The male heaviness of it smooths away and the shadows of the leaves play across his skin. Even his belly flattens, sinking down back inside his body, and his shirt stops trying to gape apart at the bottom. I realise then, it’s not manliness I was wishing away but how old he is. It’s a considerable relief knowing this. I crave the maleness to counteract everything about home. The relief makes me feel fonder of him and I stroke his cheek, which still feels sweaty.
He closes his eyes. Looks almost in pain. ‘I can’t stop thinking about you.’
This delights me! Charmer. Spell-binder. Weaver of dreams and desires. The power goes through me like an electric charge right into my fingertips.
He opens his eyes so I can see the blueness of them and for a moment I almost wish my mother could see us both lying here. I lean over him so my hair hangs down in a waterfall and I kiss his face, his forehead, his eyelids. Delicately I kiss his mouth and then he surges forward; he takes me by the shoulders and then I’m the one lying on the ground and he’s kissing me using his tongue. I could go on forever like this. The day is so soft and warm, and the feeling of his tongue is like discovering a new taste of drink that I didn’t know existed before. It reminds me of the Turkish delight that the Queen of Narnia dispenses from her sledge.
He sits up. ‘We shouldn’t be doing this.’
‘I’m fine,’ I say. ‘I’m enjoying it.’
He hiccups a laugh, like I’ve said something funny, and sits back. ‘You’re just a young girl, Phoebe. I don’t know anything about you.’
I smile and instead of an answer I pluck the square package from the pocket of his shirt that I spotted as soon as I saw him. Like I could tell he was about to leave before, now I can tell that he’d decided not to use the condom that he’s brought with him, that he was going to leave it at kisses. He looks embarrassed.
I tear it open.
‘Have you … before?’
I nod. It’s true, but the memory of the ten-minute losing of my virginity at a birthday in one of the bathrooms of the party girl’s house is something I’d rather forget.
And then we do it and it’s not as bad as the time before. I wonder if perhaps I’m getting used to it and that’s part of what sex is all about – just getting used to it, and in doing that it’ll get better and better as time goes on. I’m hoping so. In fact, it just starts feeling nice when he jerks around on top of me and I know it’s all over. That was disappointing – again, I think, but I smile at him like it was OK because I can’t bear for him to go. After he’s rolled off me I get the sense he wants to leave as soon as possible but doesn’t have the guts to say so.
‘Don’t go. Let’s chat for a bit,’ I say. ‘I’m desperate for someone to talk to.’
‘Of course. Of course. Tell me anything you want.’
He lies back down and we curl our hands together and I tell him everything I can think off. I tell him about The Beloved and my house. I tell him I knew something would happen the day I first clapped eyes on him as I watched from the window as he hurried out of his car, his arms full of books, late already on his first day. I tell him about Bertha and how she is my only respite from home because I know that everything will stay where I’ve put it and what a relief that is because Mum sometimes comes into my room and takes things away.
He frowns. ‘What kind of things?’
‘Oh, anything that she disapproves of or thinks might draw attention to me, like a nice evening dress I got in a jumble sale once. It was midnight blue and fitted me like a glove, like it had been made for me, but I came home from school one day and it was gone, just like I always knew it would be when she first saw me in it.’
I can’t help it. I cry a bit then, because I loved that dress so much and I really was so sad to think of it being taken away with the rubbish and covered in eggshells and old gravy.
He sits up. ‘Really, that’s a very strange thing to do.’
‘What is?’
‘Taking things without your permission like that.’
‘Oh, she does it quite often.’
‘Really?’
‘Yes, and reads my diary too. Though I make sure there’s nothing of interest in there.’ I bite my lip, thinking of the day I’d convinced myself I’d written out bloody and ludicrous fantasies.
He’s looking at me, frowning. ‘Very strange.’
I wish I hadn’t said anything now. Even I don’t understand what happens in our house. The hundreds of criss-crossing wires that can be plucked at any moment, sending vibrations to any corner, even to places that have been undisturbed as yet. I wouldn’t want to.
‘It doesn’t bother me, really.’
He won’t leave it, though. ‘I can’t believe anyone could disrespect boundaries in that way. Does she do anything else like that?’
I try and force my face to look blank, but it makes me think of what pussy-cat face said that time about Mum having a personality disorder and how I kind of forgot about it in the end because no one else seemed to think so. Now Lucas says he thinks she’s strange too but we weren’t supposed to be going into all this. I don’t know why I brought it up. I wanted it all to be separate.
‘No, it’s fine,’ I cut him off.
‘What?’
‘No, I wasn’t upset about the dress at all. I think I might’ve told her I didn’t want it any more so it was all a mix-up.’
That’s not true at all. I really did want it and she knew exactly how much, but somehow I’m seized with feeling protective of her. Talking about her like this feels wrong, as if we’re putting her in a laboratory and hurting her by taking her to pieces. I don’t want to do it any more. It’s private.<
br />
He’s looking nervous, uncertain now, though. I think maybe I’m scaring him a bit by saying contradictory things like that. It probably sounds a bit crazy so I smile widely. ‘It’s all just nonsense that goes on in families,’ I say reassuringly. ‘I expect the same happens in yours.’ Turns out that’s an even worse thing to say as I’ve reminded him about all his responsibilities.
‘I should be getting back.’
‘No, don’t. We’re having a lovely time, aren’t we?’
‘It’s not right. I’m so sorry. I really am.’
He actually has tears in his eyes.
‘What are you crying about?’
He dashes them away. ‘Nothing. Look, I’m sorry I have to go.’
‘Will you meet me again?’
‘I don’t know. I need to think.’
‘Stop bloody crying,’ I say, because he’s frightening me now, crying like that, a grown man crying like a stupid big baby.
He rubs his eyes on his shirt sleeve.
‘You deserve better than this, Phoebe.’
I sit up. The condom is on some leaves, leaking semen. He begins clearing away like it’s a messy kitchen. He does up his trousers, then folds the condom up into a tight neat square inside a tissue and drops it in his pocket. His face is blotched and tired-looking. I watch him silently, trying to guess what he’s thinking.
‘Come on,’ he says. ‘I’ll walk you back as far as the road.’
‘I’m fine.’ I deliberately make my voice as cold as possible because I can see he can’t wait to go. ‘I’m going to stay here for a bit.’
‘Honestly, I would be so much happier to see you safely on your way.’ He looks around at the silent trees, the tangled undergrowth, the single bird hopping through the ivy that chokes the ground. ‘It’s very lonely here.’
I shrug. ‘I like it.’
He stands, shifting his feet uncertainly with his jacket once again hooked by one finger over his shoulder.
I lie back. ‘I think I’m going to take a nap.’