Cross Her Heart: A Novel

by Sarah Pinborough

  I lean against the door frame as I puff on the cigarette. We don’t smoke much or often—it’s shit for our lung capacity—but there are times and this is one of them. Jodie’s mum, Amelia, apparently smokes occasionally and Jodie found the packet last night, after which Lizzie insisted we smoke to celebrate the death of virginity and one more girl being safe from vampires in the night. Weird punch and a cigarette. What a way to celebrate. I’d spent most of the time going to the loo—I think he’s burst my bladder with his big cock—to check my messages, and coming out with a big fake grin on my face to cover my disappointment at my empty inbox.

  The tobacco tastes horrible now I’m sober, and I don’t inhale. Only Jodie and Lizzie inhale. Does he smoke? I haven’t asked him. I mentally add it to the list of things I want to know about him. If he ever messages me again. Was he having sex last night? Was he thinking about me?

  “I’ll have to shower before I go,” I say, as a breeze blows my smoke back at me. “If my mum smells this on me, she’ll go apeshit.”

  “Tell her my mum was here and smoking.”

  “It’s not worth the hassle. You know what she’s like. She forgets I’m growing up sometimes.”

  The others have gone. Ange had to get home for some family lunch and Lizzie’s mum collected her half an hour ago. She’d offered me a lift too, but I can’t face my mum yet. She’ll want to talk, for me to tell her all about my night, and I’m going to have to come up with something to placate her or just storm up to my bedroom and hide under my duvet, which is what I really want to do. She makes me moody and then my being moody hurts her feelings. Anyway, it’s not ten thirty yet. If Angela hadn’t had to get up, we’d all be lounging in bed.

  “Did she never smoke?” Jodie asks.

  “Nope. She doesn’t drink much either. And she was probably a total loser when she was my age.” It feels disloyal but it makes me sound cooler when really I’m the mouse of our group—the most ordinary one. Maybe that’s what bothers me. Maybe me and Mum are too alike. Both boringly average.

  “At least she’s there for you.” Jodie doesn’t look at me, but stares out into the garden before throwing her butt down on the path. She nods at me to do the same. “I’ll clean up later.”

  She makes us huge cups of milky coffee and we go into the lounge, slouching into the furniture. Her home is like a show house—beautiful but impersonal. It never fails to surprise me.

  “I don’t know why we moved here,” Jodie says, curling her small frame up in the armchair. “It wasn’t so bad in our old house, but now she’s always in Paris. She comes home once a month for a night if I’m lucky, and I’m sure that’s just to check I haven’t wrecked anything. She needn’t have bought a house at all.”

  It sounds like heaven to me, but then I see Jodie’s face and realize maybe it’s not as good as I imagine.

  Jodie shrugs. “You know I’ve never met her new man?” She pauses. “She used to at least be home on weekends, but now she doesn’t even bother with those. Got to stay in France to see him apparently. God forbid she should want to see me. It’s not as if I even really want her here, but I want her to want to see me, if you know what I mean.”

  It’s only me Jodie opens up to like this. We’ve splintered from the others a bit. She’s older and recently I feel older too. Because of him.

  “But then she’s always been weird,” she continues. “Like I’m not really here. Not a real person. A pet maybe. She makes sure I have everything I need, but that’s it. I can’t say I know very much about her at all. She had me really young, did I tell you that? I didn’t live with her for years. Until I was about eight. She paid some people to look after me, how wrong is that? She was off traveling or working or both.”

  “How often do you see your dad?” I know her dad’s not around but that’s it. Swimming, clothes, music, sex, bitching, booze, those are the things we four, the Fabulous Four, talk about most.

  “I don’t,” she says. “He left when I was born. My mum gave me a photo once to show me what he looked like, but you know what, I’m not even sure it was him.”

  We’ve been getting closer over the weeks but suddenly I feel a surge of proper unity with her. As if foundations are being set underneath us. This is something the others can’t be part of.

  “I don’t care who my dad is,” I say. “I totally honestly don’t.” I pause. “A while back someone at school said maybe my dad was a rapist. You know, like he raped my mum and she didn’t abort me? And that’s why she’s never had a boyfriend or anything.”

  “Wow.” Her eyes have widened. “That’s some messed-up shit.”

  “Yeah. I mean, I don’t believe it, but it’s the only time I’ve ever cared about who he was. The rest, well. It’s hard to miss a ghost. I don’t even have a photograph.”

  “Did you tell your mum about the rapist thing?”

  “Yeah. She was horrified. She was fussing around me, reassuring me.” I laugh. “How fucked up is it to be reassured that your dad is just some bloke your mum shagged round the back of a pub after drinking too much?”

  I see her face.

  “I’m exaggerating. It wasn’t round the back of a pub, but she says it was a drunken one-night stand.”

  “At least she can’t have a go at you for anything to do with sex.”

  I laugh again, but I’m thinking of last night. My first sex. The only sex I’ve had. Shit sex. I can’t imagine having any one-night stands. “I haven’t told her about Courtney yet.”

  “Are you guys a proper thing now?”

  I stare down at my cooling coffee. “He wants it to be. I’m not so sure.”

  “I thought you were crazy about him. Was it the sex? First time’s always bad, so don’t judge him on it. Unless it was you who was shit.”

  I halfheartedly throw a cushion at her. “Shut up. It’s not that. It’s complicated.”

  “Someone else?”

  She sits up straighter, curious, and I know I should have lied and said everything was fine. I need to shut this down. “Maybe.” Everything I say is potentially making it worse. I wish I hadn’t opened my mouth. If Jodie tells Ange I’m interested in someone, she’s going to presume it’s someone at school and be on my case all the time to know who. I’ll have to make someone up. Pick some boy at random. I can’t think of anyone I fancy in Year Thirteen. “But it’s only a crush.” My face is flushing with worry. “It’s not going to be anything.”

  “Don’t worry. I won’t say anything to Ange,” Jodie says, reading my mind. “I love her, but she’s got a big gob and I wouldn’t want her knowing my secrets, if I had any.”

  “Or the others?” I ask. “I don’t want it to be a thing. I’m sure me and Courtney will be fine.”

  “I swear,” she says. “Your secret’s safe. But if anything happens, you have to tell me first. Deal?”

  “Deal.”

  For a moment I’m tempted to tell her everything. To tell her what’s really turned me off Courtney. The friend request. The messages. Everything about him. But suddenly, she’s up on her feet and saying I should grab the spare room shower and she’ll use her en suite, and then we should go.

  * * *

  “Shit,” I say when we get back to mine and I’m rummaging in my bag. “I’ve lost my keys.”

  “Check the car floor.” Jodie leans over. “I always find stuff down there.”

  I scrabble around under the seat, but they’re not there. My house key, swim-locker key, and school-locker key, all on a key ring with a pair of big red Mick Jagger lips. Gone.

  “Nope. Fuck it. Where can they be?”

  Jodie roots around but comes up empty-handed, and then it dawns on me. “That dumb bitch in the pub who knocked my bag over.”

  “What about her?”

  “I don’t remember picking my keys up.”

  “You must have.” She looks in my bag as if maybe my eyes aren’t working properly. “She was helping pick stuff up. Maybe she put them in a side pocket.”

  I
let her look, but I’ve already searched everything.

  “Your mum’s in though, right?” she says.

  “Yeah, but I’ll take the spare from down the side. She’ll want to change the locks if she thinks I’ve lost mine, even though there’s no address or anything on them. You know what she’s like.”

  “You don’t have to explain your mum to me, remember. The weird mums club, that’s us.”

  I grin and I want to say a thousand things to her but I think they’ll all make me sound lame, so instead I say, “I hear ya, sister,” and climb out of the car. “See you at training on Monday. But text me, bitch.”

  “Happy revising!” she calls out, and I groan. Three exams this week, and I can’t find a shit to give about any of them.

  She toots her horn as she pulls away, and I hurry down to the side gate and lift the loose brick on the wall, peeling away the taped key underneath. I know Mum will have heard the car. She’ll be waiting for me.

  11

  Lisa

  It’s pouring summer rain, but it’s so good to be driving Ava to school again. This used to be our everyday routine until Year Ten, when it became cooler to get the bus. It’s wonderful that my daughter is so independent and busy, but I still have a sneaky delight when she needs a lift, even though the journey takes me the wrong way to work through rush-hour traffic.

  There’s no swim training this morning—and I’m glad because Ava has two exams today—and in this weather a ride with Mum is definitely preferable to waiting for the bus. For all her sportiness, Ava has never liked bad weather. She feels the cold too much, and now there’s the added worry of how it will affect the way she looks. They make me smile a little, these worries of her youth. I like how she’s preoccupied by such things, because it means her life is relatively carefree. I’ve done a good job in that regard. I don’t pride myself on much, but I do think I am, in my own way, a good mother.

  The radio is on at my usual station. It’s the local one, which tends to play more music from the eighties and nineties, but Ava doesn’t complain. She’s head down over her phone, texting or whatever it is they do to talk to each other.

  “Everything okay?” I ask as her fingers fly over the keyboard. I keep my tone light. It’s dangerous ground, showing any interest in Ava’s life these days. In the wrong mood—and those come more frequently recently—she can bite my head off. I know it’s normal. I’ve seen enough TV shows with surly kids in them to know I’ve had a good run before we got here, but it still stings when it happens.

  “Yeah. Last-minute nerves and stuff.” She glances up at me. “Is it okay if the girls come round after my afternoon exam?”

  I almost say no, there’s still a week or so of exams left, but after two papers today she’ll probably need to relax. I’ve studied her schedule and she only has revision sessions tomorrow, so a few hours with her friends might be nice. Also—and I hate myself for thinking it—if they’re in the house, I know where she is.

  “Sure. Have they got exams today too?”

  “Lizzie has Geography AS I think. Ange is in History this afternoon with me, but she doesn’t have double Science this morning. Jodie’s all done. Her term is pretty much over.”

  Her phone goes silent and she looks away, out of her water-streaked window at the headlights that dance in the muggy morning. “Her mum’s back in Paris again,” she says. “New boyfriend there as well. I used to think it was cool her mum was away so much, but I think it pisses Jodie off a bit. Must be weird to be in that big house on her own all the time, looking after it for her mum when she could be having a great time in the halls of residence.”

  I don’t know Jodie’s mother. I’ve met Angela’s a few times at parents’ evenings, and I think I saw Lizzie’s once from a distance at a swimming event, but Jodie is older and her mother obviously has her own busy life. Our girls are too old for us to have become friends through them, but we all know a little about each other. I wonder what they know of me. Worrier. Doesn’t go out much. No boyfriend.

  “She didn’t even live with her till she was about eight. Not properly. How odd is that? She’s always working away. There’s some cleaning woman who comes in, and there’s always loads of easy food in the fridge and freezer, but it must get boring to live off posh pizza and microwave meals all the time.”

  Ava’s nonchalant, but she doesn’t fool me. A warm tingle floods my veins. This is almost a compliment. She might not be coming right out and saying it, but maybe my daughter is realizing it’s not so bad to have a mum who’s there for you. I say nothing, but tap my hands on the steering wheel along with the end of Salt-N-Pepa’s “Push It” as she goes back to her texting.

  The windshield wipers cut through the rain and along with the beat of the song, the rhythm is almost comforting. Apparently there are only a few more days of this terrible weather and then we shall all be bathed in glorious summer sunshine. Perfect timing for the end of Ava’s exams. Maybe I should suggest we go away for a weekend somewhere when they’re all done. Just the two of us, like we used to. Paris, perhaps.

  “And now for a request!” I don’t know who this DJ is but he hasn’t quite mastered the voice they all do on national radio. The ease with which they speak. “We haven’t done one for a while, but this one appealed to me. The caller apparently wanted to remain anonymous—obviously shy—”

  “Or married, Steve.” The cheeky cohost. Every show has one.

  “Oh, you’re a cynic, Bob. I’m sticking with shy. Anyway, not only did the caller want to keep themselves a secret, but they also wouldn’t give up the name of who this song was for! All they’d say is that the person would know. It was their song. And two people never forget their song.”

  We’re coming up to the roundabout and I flick my indicator on, peering out to my right, waiting for my turn to go.

  “Since we have no names, I’m making this everyone’s song. All of our listeners out there, if you’re stuck in traffic in the rain, this one is for you.”

  I pull forward with the traffic, and, half smiling at the cheesiness of the DJ, reach to turn the volume up.

  “It’s a classic of 1988. Frankie Vein and ‘Drive Away, Baby.’”

  My hand freezes and I stare at the radio as the oh-so-familiar tune, one I haven’t listened to in years, breaks in. I feel sick.

  Leave with me, baby, let’s go tonight,

  You and me together, stealing into the night.

  Is that a deal, is that a deal? We can make it all right.

  Drive away with me, drive away, baby, let’s take flight.

  The words assault me.

  Me. It’s meant for me. It was our song.

  An anonymous caller. The bunny rabbit. The strange feeling I’ve had of something being not quite right, that someone’s watching me, and now here’s the song, our song, requested in secret, and I think my heart might explode in my chest with the fear of it all. Frankie Vein’s husky voice fills the car, and fills my head, and the years vanish and each lyric is a knife in my brain.

  “Fucking hell, Mum!”

  I start suddenly as Ava grips the dashboard, and from outside, a dim and distant place belonging to other people beyond my panic, comes the squealing of brakes and blast of horns. The car stalls as I stop too quickly, my feet leaving the pedals and my breath coming in gasps as I pull myself back into the present as best I can.

  Beside me, Ava’s eyes are wide. “What are you doing?”

  I’ve come to a stop halfway onto the roundabout, and in my daze, all I can see is the anger and road-rage hatred in other drivers’ contorted faces as they go by.

  “Weren’t you looking?” Ava barks.

  “I . . . I didn’t . . . I thought it was clear.”

  Frankie Vein is still singing and making my head throb. I want to turn it off but I can’t let Ava see my shaking hands.

  “I should have got the bloody bus,” she mutters. There she is, my surly teenager. Her disdain kick-starts me into action, and I force myself to turn the
key again and move on, watching each exit this time, thankful that we’re so close to the school. The song finally fades out.

  “Great song,” Steve’s disembodied voice says. “Whatever happened to Frankie Vein?” he asks. “Where is she now?”

  I can’t turn it off quickly enough. Where is she now? The question makes my face hot and I press my back into the seat as if I can hide inside the fabric.

  “Good luck,” I say, the words thick in my mouth, as Ava gets out. She looks back at me, and I expect some form of reproach, but instead she looks concerned.

  “Drive carefully, okay?”

  I nod and give her a weak smile. My daughter is worried about me. Worried or fearful? Did I frighten her? Of course I did. I nearly crashed the car. For all my secret terrors, I could have been the one to harm her. As soon as she closes the door, I pull away, trying not to race over the speed bumps. I turn a corner and keep going until I’m away from the prying eyes of other parents and then stop at the curb. I lean out of my door and retch violently as the rain soaks me. My vomit is hot and burns my chest as I expel my breakfast and coffee and stomach acid and I wait until I feel entirely empty before flopping back in the car.

  My whole body aches and trembles. I’m purged but it’s a false emptiness. I can’t get my fear out by vomiting. My terror will never leave me. Nor the grief I keep hidden like a precious jewel, a hard diamond made from the black carbon of my burnt-up heart.

  The toy rabbit.

  The song.

  The feeling I’ve had of something being just a little bit wrong.

  How much of it can be coincidence? Random events? None of it? All of it? Am I going mad?

  I stare out of the window at the ordinary world and wonder how much of my makeup has run. I have to look presentable for work. I’ve got a jacket on, so my blouse is relatively dry, and my hair doesn’t have enough life to get wayward after some rain. I can always stick it under the hand dryer at the office and put it up in a bun.