We talk a little more and then everyone comes in for a cup of tea. Everyone except Dad, that is. I know I’ll need to face him sooner or later, just not right now.
When we’ve nearly drunk our tea, Baaba comes to sit next to me. I see Mum looking nervous as she nods at her.
‘Gemma, we’ve been talking and we wonder … We need to go to the police.’
I immediately shake my head. ‘No. I couldn’t do that to him …’
‘He was abusing you!’ Esi bursts out. ‘He deserves to face the consequences.’
‘Esi!’ Baaba says sharply, but I’m already running upstairs in a storm of tears.
Chapter Fifty-Four
Gem
I keep on crying. The amount of tears Aaron’s pulled from me … and still I can’t imagine talking to the police, them going to knock on his door … My heart hurts thinking about it.
My phone starts to ring: Aaron. Voicemail clicks on. Then a message comes through, and another. I put a pillow over my head.
A while later, there’s a tap on my arm. Esi, with more tea. It’s like someone died.
‘They’re arguing about you downstairs. They won’t let me in but I’ve been listening at the door,’ she says in that direct way of hers.
‘Why are they arguing?’
‘Your mum wants to go to the police and take your phone away – is that him now?’ She grabs my phone, hits the button to answer it, shouts, ‘Piss off!’ then puts it down before I’ve even had a chance to do anything but stretch my hand out.
‘Esi, what the hell?’ I say.
‘I agree with your mum, by the way,’ she says. But she tosses the phone back to me. A minute later, a text goes again. Then a notification from Instagram. I haven’t even been on there for weeks.
‘My mum thinks we need to let you come to your own decision. That if you’re pushed too hard, you’ll run back to him,’ she says, rolling her eyes to let me know what she thinks about that option.
I pull my knees up to my chest, loop my arms over them. ‘Glad everyone’s got an opinion about my life,’ I say. I don’t mean to sound harsh, but everything’s so confusing. I just want to go to sleep.
‘Well, I think you should go to the police,’ she says. ‘For all you know, he’s done it before. He might do it again.’
And suddenly I remember Cherine.
‘What?’ Esi says,
‘I’m not sure. I just need … some time, I think,’ I say. Esi nods and goes back downstairs.
I sit for a while on the bed, cuddling one of Esi’s teddies, thinking about Moonshine slinking back to Aaron on the beach, how much I wish she was here. About Michael and Mum. All those messages she sent me. And I think it’s that which makes me look at the website Esi has left open on her laptop. I read the whole page fast, as if it would hurt less that way. Signs and symptoms of coercive control, emotional abuse.
Me and Aaron, we tick each box.
It takes another two days at Esi’s house before I know what I want to do.
I’m crying again when Esi comes in one morning. She doesn’t say anything, just sits next to me until I’m cried out. Then I look at her through tear-blurred eyes. ‘I need your help with something.’
It doesn’t take too long for us to track down Cherine’s Facebook. Her name is fairly unusual and I remember the area of London. Esi helps me send her a message and then we wait. Mum and Michael pop over for a while, but I’m not ready to go back home, not yet. Lunchtime passes, then dinner. I don’t eat much, not even Baaba’s jollof rice, which is always amazing, the smell of spices and tomato filling the house.
We’re watching something on Netflix early evening when Cherine messages Esi. My own phone is off for now, but every so often I look at it. I miss Aaron so much it’s taking everything I have not to call him, not to believe all his messages telling me things will be different if I just give him another chance, that I owe him another chance.
‘Hey. It’s her,’ Esi says. She grimaces as she reads the message. ‘She doesn’t want to talk, she’s just said to call Aaron’s mum. There’s a number.’
We look at each other, then I shake my head. ‘I can’t.’
‘I will then. I’ll put it on speaker,’ Esi says.
The phone rings as my heart speeds up. I don’t know what I’m afraid of, just that I’m afraid.
‘There’s no one there,’ I say after about twelve rings.
Then, ‘Hello?’
I clap one hand over my mouth.
Esi springs into action. ‘Hello, Mrs Weaver, we wanted to talk to you about your son, Aaron?’
There’s a long pause, then the woman says, ‘Who is this? Has something happened?’
Esi explains briefly who she is. And then who I am. That we got the number from Cherine. And Aaron’s mum lets out a long breath that crackles down the line. ‘I was afraid this would happen.’
I’m holding on to my mouth so hard as I hear Aaron’s mum talking. Words like ‘Harassing her … she went to the police … caution …’ filter through. Then she says, ‘We argued about it a lot. I tried to explain how he couldn’t treat her like that. All those phone calls … the other things.’ Her voice catches. ‘But he saw that as a betrayal, especially when I wouldn’t … He wanted me to back him up. Then he left to stay with his father. I haven’t heard from him in months.’
Esi thanks her and hangs up, then looks at me for a long time.
‘I think that’s your answer,’ she says.
I can’t sleep that night. I play everything over and over in my mind. I hear Aaron’s voice whispering, ‘I love you,’ feel his arms around me. Me saying, ‘As you wish.’ Then the image changes to him shouting, the way he looked when he talked about Cherine. His mum told such a different story, but I saw the hurt in his face too. Cherine really did break his heart, but his mum said he was abusive to her. How can both things be true at the same time? And all the while every part of me misses him with such an intense ache I don’t know how to keep breathing.
The next day, I say thank you to Esi and her family and go home. It’s so weird to be back in my house. Dad gives me a bear hug and a rough pat on the head which is maybe as close as either of us want to get to a proper talk. In Dad’s eyes, that’s ‘girl stuff’. He does say if he ever sees Aaron near me, he’ll ‘knock his block off’, so there’s that, I guess.
A week goes past. I stay in my room, mostly, looking out of my old bedroom window towards the sea. Esi brings Cal and Rachael round one day. We go up to my room, and I can’t lie: it’s awkward. It seems like I’ll be spending a long time saying sorry and having people tell me it’s not my fault.
But I still feel like it is.
After an hour or so, Cal says, ‘Hey, you want to sing something?’
I go over to my old guitar, but all I can see is the other one, the one Aaron bought me. His foot smashing into it.
I can’t sing.
I can’t even play.
I’m dreaming. Aaron holds me on a beach and whispers in my ear. ‘I hold your heart. I’ll hold it forever,’ he says, as music plays in the background. The sky above us turns luminous and I sit upright in bed, heart pounding. A moment later, the familiar, gnawing ache starts in my chest, spreads to my stomach. I’m so focused on my misery, it takes me a moment to realise I can still hear music. It’s faint, but there.
I have to check I’m not still dreaming, but no, I’m definitely awake.
The music continues. Am I going mad? Maybe I really am this time.
Through a crack in my curtains I see a pale glow.
I get up and look out of my window.
The entire garden is covered in candles. They’re by the bushes, in the trees. And in front of them, holding a bunch of massive red roses, is Aaron.
He looks like the old Aaron, my Aaron, dressed in a suit. His face open, loving, lit by a thousand tiny lights.
I open my window.
‘Gem.’ That’s all it takes. One look, one word, and my heart feels like it�
��s left my body and travelled to meet his.
I grab my dressing gown and slip downstairs.
The garden is full of light and shadow, and in the middle, Aaron. The tea lights behind him spell out, ‘I love you.’
I walk towards him until I’m only a foot away. He has a box in his hand.
‘Gem. God, I’ve missed you,’ he says, his voice cracking. He puts the roses gently on the ground and opens the box to reveal a diamond engagement ring, candlelight catching on it.
I don’t move. A gust of wind cuts across the garden, making me shiver. A few of the candles at the far end of the garden blow out. I feel the goosebumps rising on my legs, the back of my neck. I can’t look away, his eyes capturing mine. I think about soul mates.
‘I need you to hear a song,’ Aaron says. He hits Play on his phone and the music starts again, louder down here.
It’s one of my songs. The one I wrote before I met him. ‘Sea Dreams’.
I hear my voice, singing a story of love.
‘This is you, this is the Gem I know. I love you. Come back to me,’ Aaron’s whispering.
I feel myself take a step towards him, and another. He’s so close I could raise my head just a little and touch his lips with mine. My tongue is forming around the words ‘As you wish’. I can feel the heat coming from his body, my heart, the way it seems to beat in him.
The ring in his hand. The promises in his eyes. I want to believe in them so badly.
As you wish.
What I would give to be able to say those words again.
Slowly I reach out with one hand, place it over his heart. In my mind, we’re back on the beach by the waves all those months ago, exchanging something powerful, something that felt like forever.
Aaron’s heart flutters under my fingers. His face seems soft in the candlelight, younger.
I know what to do.
‘I take it back,’ I whisper. Then I look, really look, full into his face.
He takes a quick breath, but he can’t meet my eyes.
The wind cuts between us, blowing more candles out, until his face is shadowed.
And I realise the strange truth of it: both Aarons are him. The boy who loves me, the man who hates me. I think about all the fear I’ve carried, of never being good enough, loved enough. It was there long before I met Aaron. All the ways I’ve been selfish and unkind. Perhaps the dark places are in all of us if we look hard enough.
I feel something release from me, out into the night sky. I know I’ll never be called Gem again.
‘Goodbye, Aaron.’
His face is contorting, but I turn away. In the doorway, light spills out. Michael stands there, holding one crutch like he’s prepared to use it if he needs to. I walk towards my brother as the wind whirls around me, the candles snuffing out as I go.
Epilogue
Gemma
‘So I found this LGBT support group in Portsmouth,’ Esi says.
We’re lying on her bed. I have to go into town soon; I’m due at my own group. It’s called the Freedom Programme. Most of the women are way older than me, lots with kids and stuff who go into a crèche while we sit with cups of tea and workbooks to talk and, sometimes, to cry.
They might be older than me, but I recognise their stories.
I struggle at times with the way they describe Aaron’s behaviour as calculating, how he planned all the things he did. I think the truth is more in-between than that. Esi told me a good word: liminal. It means a space which isn’t one thing or another. I do think Aaron believed he loved me, in his way. But I understand more now about what love is and what it’s not.
After I went to the police, Aaron got another caution and an order banning him from getting in touch with me. I still have nightmares he’ll appear in my garden, or in the cafe one day, but I think I’d deal with it. He’s moved anyway. Last I heard, he was in Bristol. He left Shiney behind though.
Aaron’s dad said I could have her. The day he dropped her off at my house, I held on to her familiar fur and cried and cried while she licked my tears.
I focus my attention back on Esi. ‘A group sounds good,’ I say.
She bites her lip. ‘Would you come with me?’
We’ve talked a lot recently about what being bisexual means to Esi. How for such a long time she figured she had to be straight or lesbian, like sexuality is some kind of set menu, rather than something that’s just you. She told me about always knowing she had the potential to be attracted to more than one gender, her sadness whenever she saw people in books or on TV turn out to simply be ‘gay all along’, the way it felt like she disappeared a little every time that happened. And more than anything else, how terrified she is of telling her parents. ‘I mean, I hope they’ll be OK, but it’s going to be a massive shock. To be honest, I’m having a hard enough time with it myself, but I spoke to one of the church pastors and it wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be. I guess even if it had been, well … I want to feel like I can be me too.’
I kind of knew what she meant. Right now, I reach over and touch her hand, for reassurance. ‘Of course I’ll come with you,’ I say. I’m learning other things too, like how to actually be a good friend, to think about other people as well as myself. Sometimes I’m amazed we’re still friends. Maybe it’s because we’re both figuring things out about who we are, and even though I don’t understand everything she’s going through, I can at least try. It makes me ashamed sometimes, to think how I used to act, how little I listened, but like Esi said, feeling guilty is pretty pointless. In the end, it’s just another way of making it all about you.
After Michael’s boot came off, he went back to training but he can’t do a full week yet. We’re still waiting to find out if this means he’ll get kicked out for good. I hope not. And if he stays, I’ve promised I’ll be cheering the loudest at his first match. I’ve figured that much out at least.
What I don’t know is what to do next. I still haven’t written a song or even sung a note since the second audition. It feels like I’ll never listen to another country song again, like that part of me has died. If I could just sing one thing, anything, then maybe I could stop feeling so frozen.
We’ve talked about me going back to college or even going to Portsmouth and starting their Performance course, but I’m not sure. And sometimes, on the beach walking Shiney, I’m so lost.
Yesterday, Dad surprised me at the dinner table. He’d just finished a long explanation of why Gareth Southgate was the best England manager in decades, which was not exactly a conversation we’ve never heard before. Then he said, ‘I saw a singing group – what do you call it? A choir thing in the town magazine the other day. You just turn up and sing. You fancy it, Gemma? I can drive you down. I used to sing a bit when I was younger. I could always come in, keep you company?’
Three forks stayed in the air.
‘What?’ Dad said.
‘Maybe next week,’ I said.
But I did smile.
Aaron
My Gem,
I wanted to write you a proper letter, but the police would say I’m not allowed to send it. I want you to know I’m not angry with you, I understand your parents and Esi and all the others put pressure on you. I need to see you. I miss you …
I slam the laptop shut. I was going to send it this time. Set myself up in a cafe with a new email so the IP address couldn’t be traced. I know she misses me as much as I miss her. I feel it like a bullet to the chest. Nothing went the way it was supposed to that night at the flat. I guess things got out of hand, but she needs to take responsibility too, for pushing me. She was the one who blew hot and cold. Nothing I did was ever enough for her …
I rub my hand over my eyes.
She wanted to come with me, the night I went to her house, I know she did. If her brother hadn’t come out and interrupted us …
I still don’t understand how she could do this to me, that she can’t understand how much I’ve been through. How much I love her. I cycle through
anger and pain, disbelief and hope every day. She has to know what she’s done to me.
‘Are you finished?’
I look up. This girl has a laptop bag slung over her shoulder. She’s smiling, and with the sun coming through the window behind her, she looks angelic. I feel my heart, cracked and rusted, give a couple of harder beats under my shirt.
‘It just looked like you were.’ She gestures around the cafe, which is packed. I’m entranced by the way she moves, the way her hair looks in the light. Her eyes are playful, friendly. Open.
‘Sure, here you go,’ I say, and she slides into the seat I’ve just vacated.
I pick up my laptop and then I can’t help myself, because I can sense she’s special. ‘Hey, you fancy getting a coffee?’
The girl smiles up at me again, a faint blush on her cheeks. It’s adorable. There’s something different about her, I can tell.
‘I’d like that,’ she says.
Gemma
‘So, are you going tonight?’
I laugh. ‘It would be kind of worth it to hear Dad singing. I mean, can you imagine?’
‘Not really.’ Esi flips over on to her stomach, hesitates like she wants to say more about Dad. But we’ve kind of covered it before and I don’t think he’ll ever stop being a dinosaur. He’s trying though, and I guess that counts for something. Esi flicks her phone at me. ‘I found the poem, the one you talked about. I don’t know if it will help. But I thought you might want to read it.’
I stiffen, but take the phone. I’ve never looked. I know Aaron used to quote things and pretend they were his. Like even when he was loving me, or thought he was, there was something in him that had to do it through someone else’s words.
I Hold Your Heart Page 23