by Ali Mercer
Oh, no, this is the last thing she needs – not right here and now, in front of her classmates, Miss Finch, and Sophie Elphick.
All she wants is for today to be over, to have got through it unscathed, without catastrophe, and to be home safe and alone in her bedroom with nobody bothering her and the door firmly shut. At least Dad knows when to leave her alone.
Sophie Elphick is talking about self-harm. God, is she ever going to stop? The last thing Becca wants to dwell on right now is blades and blood.
Amelia flips her long, shiny hair over one shoulder and turns to whisper something to Millie. Her shoulders shake with suppressed giggles.
Everyone else is perfectly fine. It’s just Becca who can’t bear it.
It’s then that it happens, and there’s absolutely nothing Becca can do about it.
It starts with a sound like the humming of telephone wires, quiet at first, which intensifies until it is singing like a sawed note, louder than an orchestra of violins in unison, drowning out the rush of her blood and the pumping of her heart.
The sound has a colour, only at the edge of her vision at first, then bright white like lightning but static and fuzzy. It accumulates, like a car windscreen in bad weather getting silted up with snow. And then the blizzard is a whiteout, and everything turns black.
Three
Rachel
It is three o’clock and the windows are already darkening when the sound of a phone ringing interrupts the trance-like state into which Rachel has fallen at her desk. So far, most of her time at Fun-to-Learn has been spent copying information from an old website to a new one, but the monotony doesn’t bother her; she’s not sure she would be up to anything more challenging.
It is so unusual for anyone to call her that she’s not at all quick to realise the ringing phone is hers.
And then she recognises it and comes to, and it’s as if a long-dormant part of her suddenly awakens. There’s only one person this call can be about, only one person who really matters.
She lunges for her handbag and fishes out the phone.
It’s him, as she had known it would be.
As she heads out of the office she has a fleeting impression of her colleagues’ faces turning towards her in surprise. Then she’s passing through the little entrance lobby and out into the privacy of the gathering gloom.
‘Mitch, what’s going on? Is Becca OK?’
‘Yes, no need to panic. She’s at home. She’s all right, more or less.’
From terror to relief in the space of a heartbeat – that’s the power Becca has, has always had. Some things don’t change.
‘More or less?’
‘She fainted. The school called me to come and pick her up.’
Rachel should have been the one to collect her – to hug her, to take her home in the car, to give her sweet tea, to tuck her up in bed. But she wasn’t. And here she is, alone and shivering in the dark, and the physical yearning is so intense it’s like a wave knocking her off her feet – the need to have Becca in her arms, to hold her and reassure her. To be there.
‘But she’s never fainted before. Did she hurt herself? Is she OK?’
‘More embarrassed than anything, I think. She was in the lecture theatre when it happened, and she seems to have just slumped onto the shoulder of the girl next to her. Which was Amelia, actually. Amelia Chadstone.’ As if Rachel was likely to forget who Amelia was. Or what she’d seen. ‘Amelia thought she’d fallen asleep, so she nudged her and Becca slid onto the floor, and that’s when she came to. Amelia felt pretty bad about it, I think. She was waiting with Becca when I got there.’
‘That was nice of her.’
Rachel would much rather never to have to think about any of the Chadstones again, but there it is, there’s no getting away from them.
Mitch sucks in his breath and says, ‘Look, Becca and Amelia are friends. It’s not fair on Becca if you have a problem with that. I thought you’d been working on all of that… stuff?’
‘I have. And I get that. It’s just… I’m worried about Becca. Can I speak to her?’
‘She’s fine, Rachel. There’s no need to make a fuss. Anyway, she’s having a nap right now, actually. I think she might have been overtired.’
‘Overtired? Why? Have you been making sure she gets to bed on time?’
‘Please don’t make out that this is somehow my fault, Rachel. It’s really not necessary. Or helpful.’
‘OK. I’m sorry. But… she did look a little pale last time I saw her. Maybe she needs an iron supplement.’
‘I spoke to the school nurse about it. She thinks it could be anxiety. A delayed reaction to stress.’
That gives Rachel pause. What Mitch is saying is that it’s her fault. And that’s what the school nurse meant, and that is no doubt what the Chadstones will agree on when they discuss what happened at dinner tonight. That’s what they all think.
And, no doubt, they’re right.
‘Will you take her to the doctor?’
‘I spoke to him earlier. He said she should be fine, but to keep an eye on her and bring her in if there are any ongoing issues.’
‘Such as?’
‘Dizziness, feeling disoriented, nausea, loss of appetite.’
‘So… when did all this happen?’
‘Oh, around eleven-ish? Just before lunchtime.’
‘This happened this morning, and you’re only just telling me now?’
‘Rachel, don’t shout at me. If you do, I’m going to end this call.’
She’s holding the phone with her right hand; she moves her left to touch the skin of her right wrist and pinches, hard, and keeps pinching. After a moment she’s able to speak quite calmly: ‘OK, I’m sorry. It’s just that I wish the school had let me know.’
‘We’ve been through this. I’m the primary contact. It’s not reasonable to expect them to notify us both.’
She pinches even harder. She’s going to have a bruise. ‘OK, OK, I’m sorry. Look, when do you think it would be all right for me to call Becca?’
‘Maybe after dinner? Seven-ish?’
‘Seven-thirty?’
‘I thought you were desperate to speak to her. What else can you possibly have to do that’s so important?’
Silence. Rachel pinches even harder. She says, ‘I have an appointment.’
‘Oh. OK then. Just try not to call too late. And, Rachel?’
‘Yes?’
‘I can’t guarantee she’ll want to talk to you,’ he says, and ends the call.
Rachel is suddenly aware of just how cold and dark it is. She lets go of her wrist, rubs it, and puts the phone away. Somehow she manages to remember the key code and make her way back into the office.
Leona looks up as she comes back in. She says, ‘Is everything all right?’
‘Yes, everything’s fine. I’ll stay late to make up the time.’
‘Don’t worry about that. Look, if there’s somewhere else you need to be, don’t feel you have to stay. There’s nothing you’re doing that can’t wait till tomorrow.’
Rachel sits down. ‘There’s nowhere else,’ she says.
She’s conscious of Leona watching her as she starts work again. The other woman is suspicious, that much is obvious. She smells a rat.
Sooner or later, Leona will see her chance and she’ll take it. She’ll start asking questions. She’ll want to know. And that’s when Rachel will start running out of options. Evasion will be off the table. She’ll have just two choices left: to tell an outright lie, or to reveal herself for who she is.
Four
Digby Street is not neighbourly, which suits Rachel just fine. Most of the houses – boxy 1960s semis, slightly ramshackle and prone to leaks – have the look of homes into which as many residents have been crammed as possible. ‘For rent’ or ‘Recently let’ signs protrude from weedy lawns, and at weekends, curtains stay drawn across the windows of converted garages and living rooms used as bedrooms. People come and go without anybody els
e taking much notice, let alone attempting to talk to them.
Her usual spot has been taken by a familiar Ford Fiesta, carefully parked. It is already six-thirty, the appointed meeting time, and she hasn’t eaten since the cheese sandwich she’d brought in for lunch. She will have to get through what lies ahead with a rumbling stomach.
She finds a place to leave her car a little way down the road, in front of one of the few houses on the street that has children living in it; there is an abandoned, rain-sodden pushchair on the front lawn, its wheels facing the sky. Having manoeuvred into the space without disaster, she sprints back to the Ford Fiesta. Oh, God – she can’t even remember if she managed to make her bed before leaving for the office that morning.
The driver’s window slides down before she gets there.
‘So sorry – could you give me a minute?’
It’s fine. Of course it’s fine. Her heart is thumping, but there’s really no need to be afraid – it’s not like she hasn’t been through this before.
She hurries into the house. This is it, the safe ground she has created out of the rubble of her old life – such as it is. She steps round somebody’s bicycle that occupies most of the space in the entrance hall. The carpet, the walls – it’s all grimy, uncared for. But what does it matter? Nobody she really cares about is ever going to come here.
Upstairs, someone is showering. There is one bathroom between five of them, and it’s in almost constant use. Rachel lets herself into her room. A faint pulse of music, the kind that is meant to convey mindless euphoria, reverberates through the walls.
Actually, it doesn’t look too bad – no dirty cups or dishes lurking, and she’d folded away the sofa bed and stashed her bedding in the cupboard. This is intimate enough as it is: for one of them to have to perch on Rachel’s bargain-basement sheets would be an additional mortification that she could really do without.
She goes back out to the Ford Fiesta and Sophie emerges with her briefcase, presses her key fob to lock the car, then double-checks it. Rachel doesn’t blame her; Digby Street doesn’t bring out your trusting side. Neither of them says anything as Sophie follows her up the garden path and into the house.
They don’t bump into anyone in the corridor – not that anyone has ever asked who Sophie is, any more than they have ever shown any interest in Rachel herself.
Rachel says, ‘Can I get you anything? A glass of water?’
‘I’m fine. But do get something for yourself, if you’d like.’
‘I’m fine, too,’ Rachel says. She can hardly stop for something to eat now.
Sophie sets down her briefcase, takes off her coat and folds it over the back of one of the chairs next to the wobbly table. She’s dressed slightly more formally than usual, in a long-sleeved white shirt and dark trousers. Maybe she’s had an interview, or been in court. Rachel doesn’t ask. It is not her business to ask questions; this relationship is strictly one way.
She stuffs her own coat in the wardrobe, though the bedsit is cold enough for it to be tempting to keep it on. She really must have a clear-out. Once she’d moved into Digby Street Mitch had asked her to take all her clothes with her; most of them are too big for her now, and too bright, too look-at-me.
The music stops and starts again, to a slightly more insistent beat. Sophie’s non-judgemental face falters and gives way to a frown. She says, ‘Is that going to carry on, do you think?’
‘Probably, I’m afraid,’ Rachel says.
‘Never mind,’ Sophie says, non-judgemental face back as if it had never been away. ‘Do you mind if I sit?’
‘Please do.’
Sophie perches on the chair she’d chosen for her coat; Rachel takes the sofa. Sophie reaches into her briefcase and brings out the familiar clipboard with its sheaf of papers.
‘I should remind you that all being well, this is going to be our last meeting for a while,’ she says.
‘I know,’ Rachel tells her.
Rachel had thought this would be a relief, but actually, now it comes to it, it seems like another loss. Sophie has been her only visitor, and now there will be none. Also, the regularity of Sophie’s visits has been a way of marking time, like the progression of a school term towards the holidays, though with no expected release at the end of it.
A bruise has come up on her wrist; has Sophie noticed it? Rachel rests her other hand over it. She’d rather not have to explain. She has always tried to be honest with Sophie, up to a point. But she’s never told her everything, and there’s no point starting now.
Anyway, she can talk about the phone call without drawing attention to the bruise. Sophie will doubtless encourage Rachel to think of ways to handle conversations with Mitch more constructively in future. Rachel will mention how terrible the Chadstones make her feel, and Sophie will remind her of the techniques she has learned to calm herself: Breathe in as if you’re smelling a strawberry… and out like you’re blowing out a candle.
They won’t exactly avoid the sequence of events that led to Rachel moving out of the family home, but Sophie is all about solutions, and her approach is to divert Rachel from the past – from all of the past, not only the crisis of three months before.
Sophie doesn’t believe in guilt. Or obsession. Or rather, she does, but she thinks they’re a negative use of energy. She certainly won’t be drawn into a discussion about how, if Becca is vulnerable or under par, it’s because of her mother.
Rachel’s daughter, the baby she held in her arms, the toddler whose first steps she missed. Home is where the heart is, and home is somewhere else, and so is her child. And with the best will in the world, there is absolutely nothing that Sophie can do about that.
Five
The notice is already in place when Rachel comes in on the first Monday of her second week. It isn’t immediately obvious, and Rachel doesn’t spot it until she’s hung up her coat, sat down and switched on her computer. And then there it is, the only thing that has changed about the view from her desk since she left on Friday evening, unavoidably in her line of vision beyond her PC screen.
It’s on the pinboard on the far side of the window, next to the Christmas menu for the nearest pub and the timetable for yoga classes at the business park gym: a modest poster, home printed in black ink on a piece of A5 paper, displaying a few words and a telephone number either side of an innocuous picture of a cup of tea and a slice of cake. The key message is in big bold capital letters and leaps out at her like an accusation.
ARE YOU A MOTHER APART?
It might as well be a Wanted poster with her own face on it.
She puts on her glasses and the words underneath the picture come into focus. Christmas isn’t always easy. Well, that’s true enough. But if you’re a mother who doesn’t live with her child, you are not alone.
That does not strike Rachel as being true at all.
Leona emerges from the kitchen with a cup of green tea and ginger, her ritual morning drink: the smell of it always makes the office seem slightly warmer. She’s wearing a loose-sleeved cardigan that exposes the tattoo of bluebell flowers on the inside of her right wrist, presumably a leftover from a rebellious phase when she was younger.
‘Morning, Rachel. How was your weekend?’
‘Fine, thanks. Yours?’
‘Oh, not bad, thank you. Too short.’
Is it Rachel’s imagination, or did Leona give her a sharp look as she approached, before she settled at her desk?
Almost suspicious. No, not suspicious, challenging. Well, it must have been Leona who put the poster up. Rachel decides not to mention it. After all, it is not a conversation she wants or needs to have.
This is the day Mike Findlay, the managing director of Fun-to-Learn, is back from his golfing trip to Spain. He shows up at about half-past nine, a middle-aged man with an unlikely tan and a suit that is too broad across the shoulders, and bids them all a cursory good morning as he strides slightly breathlessly towards the office in the corner. He looks gloomy but determined, as
if it’s cost him something to make it to this position of lonely responsibility, and to acquire such a very heavy briefcase to carry on the way. Or maybe he just has a post-holiday hangover.
He doesn’t acknowledge Rachel, which is fine by her. The less attention everybody else pays her, the better.
At ten o’clock Leona, who seems to be Mike’s unofficial deputy, knocks on the door of his corner office and the two of them go off to the meeting room on the other side of the corridor. The change of mood in the office is as instant as in a classroom left to its own devices. Chatty Susan, the sales administrator who sits to Rachel’s left, has been unusually quiet and industrious all morning. Now she stretches and allows herself to yawn.
‘I reckon Mike’s wife must have given him a hard time for going away. He looks a bit browbeaten,’ she says to Angry Annie, the product and distribution manager who sits on the other side of the bank of desks. Annie isn’t always angry, but Rachel thinks of her that way because of her habit of making long private phone calls of complaint to big companies, and the pride she takes in securing compensation.
An empty place separates Angry Annie from Leona; Rachel gathers that this buffer zone is usually occupied by the IT guy, who is off sick with shingles. Periodically Angry Annie complains of headaches and speculates that she’s coming down with shingles, too.
Angry Annie says, ‘Well, you can’t let your hubby get away with too much, can you? If mine buggered off to Spain for a week he wouldn’t half find a long list of chores waiting for him when he came back.’
Susan gets up, goes over to the noticeboard and inspects the poster. She’s wearing a jumper with a reindeer on it today; Annie has Christmas tree earrings and a necklace of little baubles that light up.
Susan says, ‘Did you see this, Annie?’
‘See what?’
‘Come and join our new support group, based in Kettlebridge,’ Susan says, reading the last line of text before the phone number. ‘Enjoy a friendly chat with other women who know what it’s like. For details, phone Viv.’