We’ve stumbled into someone else’s desperation. The wind shivers through the gaps in the walls. It’s a lonely, discordant sound that makes me want to turn round and get the hell out of there.
‘Let’s just go.’
We back up and Liam softly closes the door. ‘Who’d live in a house like this, eh? Surprised the council aren’t on to them.’
I pick up one of the little stones from the window ledge and cup it in my hand, smooth as a peppermint. ‘This just reminds me of . . .’
‘Just coincidence, that’s all. Come on.’ Liam jerks his head towards the path. I replace the stone and follow reluctantly.
There are two versions of the night we finally did it. The first one is Liam’s experience, and in a way, mine too, because I’ve taken the best bits and put a spin on them. I’ve concocted a folktale. And then there is the truth. Liam isn’t familiar with this version, because the worst bits happened after he’d gone. They’re the bits you block out. No amount of spin can ever make them audience-friendly.
We know it’s going to happen tonight. Things have altered between us. We have been mooning around like unsatisfied zombies for weeks. He’s waiting for me when the school bus pulls up outside my house. We kiss behind the hedge, with tongues. We’ve been practising a lot and we’re getting good: no clashing teeth; just a slow, liquid flow which I can feel all the way down to my toes. ‘Tonight,’ he breathes when we break apart. ‘I’ll meet you in the woods.’ Then he goes in for his tea, leaving me feeling cold and hopeful and tingly.
‘So what are you up to tonight?’ Mum says, scraping my half-eaten fry-up into the bin. My insides are too jittery to digest much, and anyway, I don’t want to end up stinking of onions.
Dad grunts from behind his copy of Auto Trader. ‘Don’t you have homework?’
Mum jumps to my defence. ‘She should be out in the fresh air, these bright nights.’
‘Getting up to no good, you mean? Hanging around the village.’
‘She’s only meeting her friends.’
‘Family first. She should be making herself useful round here. You’re far too soft.’
I look from one tight face to the other. They’ve forgotten about me.
‘I might go for a walk later,’ I say.
Dark comes early under the trees, and we’re glad of it, parading up and down the car cemetery, giggling like kids.
‘The Cortina?’ Liam makes an extravagant gesture, and I shoot him down.
‘Piss off! That’s an old man’s car. Give me a bit of style!’
‘The Jag then. We’ve got to do it in the Jag!’ Liam slams a hand on its grey bonnet, and something panics in the undergrowth. A rabbit, probably.
‘No seats.’ I point out. ‘I think we need seats, at least.’
I’m acting all cool and amused, but inside I’m as jittery as the rabbit. I’m worrying about my breath and my body and whether I’ve shaved my legs properly. I wonder whether it will hurt. Eventually, we choose the Triumph Herald, because it’s at the end of the line-up and it still has both doors and a bonnet, with a racy chrome strip in the centre and the letters T and M. The rest have disappeared, along with its wheels. No headlights either, but above the empty sockets the wings are tip-tilted like sarcastic eyebrows.
There’s nothing new under the sun, Grandma Rook used to say. Nothing new in the way Liam is prising open the driver’s door, bundling me into the back. Nothing new in the way he’s snogging me until I can’t breathe. ‘Slow down,’ I say, struggling to sit up. He has two bottles of lemon Hooch and Green Day on his Walkman. We sip and listen, sharing the earphones. Maybe slow isn’t the best thing. It gives me time to register my surroundings. The inside of the car smells like a dirty hamster cage, I’m scared to put my hands anywhere but on Liam and the damp is seeping through my jeans. I’d thought about this a lot, but I’d imagined it differently – all soft focus, silky and rose-scented.
Liam is trying to unhook my bra. I sip from the bottle and let him get on with it. Over his shoulder, I catch sight of myself in the rear-view, reduced to one eye and a fragment of hair. I look as if I’m watching myself from a distance.
I’ve spent months longing for this moment. Liam is here, with his hands inside my top. My breasts seem to swell against him, and I give an experimental moan. We have to put down the bottles. One of them gets kicked over and the Walkman slithers to the floor. Because it seems expected, I unzip his jeans. He’s hard and I’m clumsy, so there’s a yelp of pain, but it’s okay, it’s okay, he assures me, terrified I’ll stop. I don’t stop. His penis is pale in the gloom and I’m curious, but I don’t get a chance to explore because things are moving rapidly. Liam is gasping like he’s just run up the stairs, and I think it’s time I struggled out of my clothes.
It does hurt – a pinching, dragging hurt. I struggle against it for a while, trying to adjust my body to his, but by the time I relax, it’s all over. Liam is on top of me, moaning in my ear. We lie for a long time, not speaking, sharing Hooch from the single bottle that survived our flailing legs. The warm wetness on my thighs feels like a badge of honour.
‘That was awesome,’ Liam whispers into my neck. ‘We need to do that again.’
I smile in the darkness. I’m not convinced.
19
Thirteen Days After
‘River. River!’
I bang so hard on his bedroom door that pain shafts through my knuckles. A muffled F-word from behind the door. I shoulder it open.
‘Fuck off! Get out of my room.’
‘Come on, River, get up. It’s Monday. You need to go back to school.’
The room is gloomy, only the light from the doorway slanting across the carpet. It smells of sweat and kebabs. I make a mental note to get in here after he’s gone, scout around for drugs. The dark hump in the bed curls in on itself.
‘I’m not going back. Now piss off.’
‘We’ve had this conversation. The woman is coming out to see you today, the one from family services, so you either stay here and speak to her or you go to school. Your choice.’
‘Aw, what?’ A face appears, a pale blur in the dimness. I want to rip aside the curtains and open a window. ‘Why didn’t you fucking cancel it? Shit.’ He wipes his hands over his face, scratches his head.
I hold the door a little wider. ‘Shower. Come on. Shake yourself.’
My mother’s words coming out of my mouth. I smile sadly.
I make tea and porridge. Find some bread for toast. River finally rocks up, fully dressed, scrubbing his hair with a towel. He smells clean and damp, like a baby. As a child I loved to hold him, brush his shock of dark hair.
‘I’m not going to school.’
‘Fine.’
Pick your battles. We sit down on opposite sides of the table and eye each other up.
‘I’m sorry for swearing at you. It’s the . . . pressure.’
‘Is that why you don’t want to go to school? Because of Mum? Or is there something else?’
He’s tired, vulnerable – ready to talk, perhaps. The toast pops but we don’t move. I have him now. Maybe he’ll open up, tell me about the money. Tell me what’s really going on.
‘Like what?’
‘River, do you remember when I tried to kill Katie Coutts?’
This catches him off guard, and his face breaks into a slow grin. ‘You were the talk of the village for days. A proper legend, you were.’
I wince. ‘She had it coming. That girl tormented me all through school.’
‘She still has a scar, I’ve heard.’
It was a Monday when I tried to kill Katie Coutts. I remember because the hurt had been festering all weekend, and by school on Monday I was fit to burst with it. We had netball after school and we were on the same team. As if.
I grab her in the changing room afterwards, pinch her arm.
‘I know about you and Liam.’
‘What about us?’
‘Us? Us? The only fuckin’ us is Liam and me.’ I�
��m glaring into her face, and she’s giving me that blank look, the one she always uses to wiggle out of problems. My fingers bite deeper into her arm, and she twists away.
‘Get off me, you tink.’
There’s a white mist pooling around my ankles, like I’m standing in a mythical spring and some force is coming up from the earth, pouring into me. Rage is burning in my belly. I want to smash her stupid face in. The mist rises, enveloping me. I hear the sound of my own breathing. My hand connects with her head; the sting ripples through me.
STOP IT!
I hear the words through glass, not connecting them with my actions. My hands are full of her hair. Her eyes, a sludgy seawater grey, are wild and scared. She screams. My fingers are full of hair and it’s not connected to anything. I’m looking at it through the white mist.
STOP IT, ELLIE!
The PE teacher pulls me away. A supply teacher, young and out of her depth. Katie Coutts is on the floor, sobbing, and I’m vaguely surprised. I open my fist. A thick chunk of her hair floats down to rest on her leg.
Katie Coutts got off with Liam after a school disco. I’d slept with him six times (I kept a note in my diary, in code, so no one would know; sex was a cheeky little asterisk). Katie Coutts was not going to take that away from me. I’d seen them kissing, but I was so hurt I could do nothing but slink home. Mum had made hot chocolate and asked no questions.
Dad has that white mist. I’ve seen it. I wonder if my brother has it too.
I come back to the present with a shock.
‘The point I’m making is that the rage got to me. I went off on one. I’m pretty easy-going most of the time, but sometimes . . . You know how they talk about a red mist descending? For me, it’s like a white mist rising. Like the spray from the waterfall, it soaks me and . . . and in that brief moment, I think I could be capable of anything.’
We sit in silence, River mulling this over. He will see himself in me. This will open a door, give us a way into a conversation we need to have. About his pain, his rage. That money in the freezer. Is he doing drugs because of all the stuff from our childhood? Stuff we’ve never talked about.
I hold my breath.
River’s mouth twists and he gives a little shrug. ‘Nah, that’s never happened to me.’
I sag in my chair. The moment is lost.
Then he adds, ‘You must take after Dad.’
20
The meeting with social services has been cancelled. News of my mother must have filtered through the system, and Mandy Cotton called me this morning. She was sympathetic but stern, hinting that I’d breached data protection guidelines (Me? You were the one who assumed) and asking for my father. ‘He won’t speak to you,’ I said. ‘Just delete our name from your files.’
I’ve no idea whether she did or not, because I put the phone down on her. I expect we’ll get a sympathetic but stern letter in the post. I didn’t let on to my brother that the meeting was cancelled, but he didn’t stick around anyway. He put his boots on and disappeared, muttering something about getting breakfast at Ned’s.
Sighing, I get up to switch the kettle on and make fresh toast. The ignored slice, now cold, I crumble into pieces for the crows.
With River gone, I sit down to check my emails. There’s one from my boss at the Language Centre, Mrs Chang, asking (very gently) when I think I’ll be returning – ‘We’re just wondering what’s happening’ – and another from Claire, my American flatmate – ‘I’m just wondering what’s happening.’ I probably owe her rent. It’s hard to imagine that two weeks ago I was going about my life: scooting across Hanoi on my moped to teach my English class; sitting on tiny plastic chairs in Chicken Street; downing beers with my friends in the Cafe Pho Co. Just two weeks ago I was paying bills, doing laundry, avoiding cleaning the bathroom.
And now I’m trapped between lives. This one no longer fits, but I can’t make the decision to move on. I cannot leave River here to grow into my father.
I should answer my emails, but even that feels like a chore. I sit down with a coffee and scroll through Facebook, but it’s painful to see what my friends are up to without me. I turn my mobile face down on the table and let my mind drift.
Liam and me. Our first time. It should spark tender memories. But we didn’t know that Dad had followed us that night. What was my father doing, while I was losing my virginity in the back of an abandoned Triumph Herald? Even now, I don’t want to think about it. My brain shrivels and curls up at the idea. I suppose that, by not intervening, he gave us enough rope to hang ourselves. What happened next is the stuff of nightmares.
We climbed out of the car, giggling. A bit tipsy, a bit high on life. Clothes were adjusted, buttoned, zipped. Liam tidied my hair behind my ears and told me I was beautiful. I didn’t believe that for a minute, of course, but I was elated. A rite of passage had been negotiated, and I’d be able to whisper about it in the right ears at school – and hope it got back to Katie Coutts. She might have the cool parents and the posh home, but I had Liam Duthie.
I was still dusting off flakes of car rust when I spotted my father. His long shadow disentangled itself from the trees, moving forward until he was blocking the path. His white hair glimmered, like water when the light hits it, although I don’t think there was much light that night. No romantic full moon for us. Liam swore softly. My heart plummeted.
‘Good evening,’ my father said. ‘I wondered how long it would take. You’ – he pointed to Liam – ‘what exactly don’t you understand about keep off my property?’
Liam stuttered something, and I realised my fingers were digging into his arm. I backed off as if I’d been burned. My father’s eyes were unreadable pools, but his white brows made a ridge like snow atop a wall. Another shape formed behind him, mean and bulky. Offshore Dave.
‘No, Dad, I can explain . . .’ My voice had taken on a wheedling tone, the way it did when I wanted to stay up late or borrow cash. Liam was still stuttering excuses, which everyone ignored.
‘Dave,’ said my father, ‘I think this young man needs a cold shower.’ And Dave laughed and surged forward to grab Liam by the front of his sweatshirt. He stank of old booze and diesel. He was spoiling for a fight.
It all happened so fast – and so slow at the same time. Offshore Dave bundled a kicking, cursing Liam down to the water’s edge. I must have screamed, standing there, rooted to the spot, the white mist rising up through the soles of my feet like steam. And then I was outside of everything, watching myself attack my father, pummelling his chest, yelling abuse at him as the water churned and splashed beside us. Dad stood his ground like a boundary stone, and I only hurt my fists. He waited until I burst into tears, and then he ordered me home. I caught one quick glimpse of Liam’s terrified face, water funnelling from his hair, and then, defeated, I went.
The slam of the back door jolts me back to the present.
‘What’s for lunch, lass?’ Dad gazes around expectantly, as if the butler is about to appear with a silver platter.
I shrug, and mutter something about running out of food. Who knew that grieving people could eat so much? Sighing, he peels three twenties from the stash in his wallet.
‘Don’t forget milk,’ he says. ‘I’ll be looking for my milky coffee at three.’
His words carry me abruptly back to another time, a time I’d been willing myself to forget. I can’t bear to think about it now, and anyway, I’m spending far too much time in the past. This isn’t the way I roll.
21
I intend to stop at the Spar and buy milk and bread and all the everyday, mundane things that make life go on. Instead, I park up at the cafe, wondering if River is still there. I should speak to him, make things right.
He’s sitting at a table, chatting with Ned. I pause for a second, staring through the glass door before I open it, composing a speech. Look, River, we need to stop arguing. We need to talk. He’s talking now, face grave, a half-eaten croissant clutched in his fingers. Ned’s sitting at the table with h
im. Caring Ned with his liquid eyes.
That’s it. Maybe River’s gay. That would make him angry, if he couldn’t face coming out. My stomach lurches when I think of Dad’s reaction. A gay guy in the scrappie? They’d have him for breakfast. Even Piotr gets shit for being foreign.
I open the door slowly, as though trying not to frighten the little birds in the garden. Ned and River glance up, bold crows waiting for me to open my mouth – Ned wearing his concern like a barista’s apron, my brother looking slightly confused.
‘What are you doing here?’ River stuffs the rest of the pastry in his mouth, as if to justify why he’s there, but tension lingers around him. I search Ned’s face, but it’s closed, his expression unreadable.
‘Want a coffee, darlin’?’
‘No, I just came in to see River.’
Ned rises from the table. ‘Be gentle with him.’ He looms above us, biceps bulging out of short sleeves, beard freshly oiled and glinting. ‘Later, bro.’ He touches River on the shoulder before disappearing back into the kitchen.
‘I came to see you, bro, because we’re not finished.’ I pull out a chair and sit heavily. ‘There’s something you’re not telling me – although you seem to be able to talk to Ned.’
River swallows the last of his croissant and sips his tea. His face is partially hidden by the chunky white mug, but his eyes are big and watchful. Our mother’s eyes, and the way she used to observe, waiting for the right space to speak. Sometimes she never got the right space, not with Dad anyway.
I plough on. ‘I want to know about the money, River.’
‘What money?’
‘The money in the fucking freezer! In the lentil soup tub!’ One of the other customers looks up sharply. I lower my voice, leaning closer to my brother. ‘What are you hiding, River? Are you into something dodgy? Is that why you’re hiding wads of cash? Are you worried about something? Why were you speaking with Ned?’
River rolls his eyes. ‘You ask way too many questions, man. I’m not doing drugs, and the money has nothing to do with me. Ned is just a mate. We play poker on Tuesday nights.’
The Unmaking of Ellie Rook Page 9