Eventually I push all thoughts of the past aside—not away though, never that—and check my reflection in the rearview mirror. It’s not as bad as I thought. I won’t have to go home and redo it all.
At least I’m not a crier, I think as I start the car again. I’ve never been a crier. In the silence the song lyrics echo in my head and I know they’ll stay there all day. I can’t wait to get to work. I don’t care about Julia and the money. I don’t care about Simon Manning. I only want to be somewhere I feel safe.
12
Ava
My bedroom is more like a studio really. I’ve got my double bed, my desk with a little drinks fridge under it, and there’s even a sofa up against the wall—one of those reclining ones you can slob on and watch TV. It all came as part of my bedroom revamp last year. We only got mine done, not Mum’s. She said it was because she loved her room and didn’t want to change it and I was growing up and needed something different. I was young and I believed her. Now I know she could probably only afford to do one room, and by making mine so cool I might spend more time at home. It was around the time I started going out more on my own. Being a proper teenager. It’s kind of backfired because recently we spend most of our time at Jodie’s rather than here.
“Thank fuck no exams tomorrow.” Lizzie is stretched out on the sofa, Ange is lounging on the bed with me, on her side, all hips and curves, and Jodie’s sitting against the wall on the old beanbag I had when I was little. Coke cans and crisp wrappers are strewn across the coffee table.
“But we’re nearly done,” I say. “And then freedom.”
It’s not only the long hot summer holidays waiting for me this time, it’s a sense of a new future. Even though Ange and I are staying at KEGS for sixth form, it’s still going to be like going somewhere new. Different rules and freedoms. Being above everyone else. Crossing a new boundary. Another step toward the adult world. It makes me think of Saturday night. I crossed a boundary then. In some ways, staying at KEGS feels a bit lame, but the college is too far and our A-level pass rate is high.
“Swimming tomorrow?” Ange says. “We should train even if we don’t have any proper meets coming up.”
“It’s so rubbish they won’t let us race during exams.”
My phone pings. Courtney. Again. Do I want to meet up tonight?
“Him again?” Lizzie asks, and I nod, chewing my bottom lip, trying to think how to respond.
The lethargy in the group evaporates and I’m sure Angela purrs. We’re on heat all the time. Sex is everywhere in the summer, and we’re like dogs waking up to it, sniffing it in the air. We’re nearly adult. Sex is part of that. It’s what adult is in many ways. I hadn’t wanted to do it with Courtney on Saturday, but I had wanted to do it, and I get a strange thrill remembering the feeling of him inside me and the sounds he made when he came, and it all seemed so different from the things we’d done before, even though I liked that stuff better. I spend so much time thinking about sex. Just not sex with Courtney. Sex with him.
“He loves you, he wants to kiss you . . .” Ange mocks.
“Oh, shut up.”
“When are you going to do it again?” Lizzie says, blunt. She’s always so direct. “It’s better the second time.”
“Like you’d know,” Ange says.
“Better than you.”
It’s probably true. Lizzie is a year older and is on the pill. Ange figures it’s only to regulate her periods, but at Christmas when Lizzie went out with Chris or whatever his name was for a couple of months, she swore blind they’d done it. She went into pretty graphic detail, and Lizzie isn’t a liar. Maybe I should talk to her about what pill she’s on. Just in case. Not that I’m worried. My period is due soon and my boobs are getting sore like they always do, so I’m sure it’s fine.
“I can’t see him tonight. My mum won’t let me out in the week while the exams are on.”
“Your mum never wants to let you out past eight,” Ange says. “Like primary school.”
“She’s got better,” I answer. It’s true, she has. And as much as she drives me mad, I still have pangs of loyalty to her. It’s always been just us and now I’m growing up and abandoning her. I don’t mind slagging her off myself but it bothers me when Ange does it.
“Ava!” The voice sounds distant through the door but instantly recognizable.
“Jesus, what is she, psychic?” Jodie says and smiles. It’s not malicious like Ange was. She gets it. Weird mums club.
“Ava! Can you come down here for a second?”
I groan and roll my eyes as if this is the biggest pain in the arse, but actually I’m pleased to get off the topic of Courtney. I know I’m not behaving as they expect so I’m trying to cover my tracks. I made some comment to Ange at lunch about him being needy, so while I’m out of the room she can share that snippet with the others. We’re best friends. We talk about each other almost as much as we talk to each other. MyBitches. Sometimes the WhatsApp group name is too true. The group is like a hub, but then we splinter off to discuss the things one of the others says that pisses us off.
As I slouch down the stairs I wonder if boys’ friendships are the same as girls’. Do they give a shit about the minutiae—a look or comment or a pound of weight or two put on—the stuff we so obsess about and judge each other on? I don’t think so. I don’t think they have the same high expectations of each other that girls do. We demand everything of one another and it’s impossible to deliver.
Still, when it comes to the crunch, though we may be bitchy at times, we have each other’s backs.
“Did you knock this off?” She’s standing by the hall table holding a broken photo—it’s a picture of the two of us from a few years ago. Alton Towers? Marilyn took it, I think. The glass is smashed in the frame.
“Nope.” I’d forgotten it was even there.
“What about the other one?”
“What other one?” She looks angry, her soft, doughy face pinched and tight, and I feel suddenly defensive. She never gets angry. Disappointed and hurt and all that shit, but rarely angry. My loyalty of moments ago fades.
“There was another picture here. Of you. Your first day of Year Eight. It’s gone.”
“You must have moved it.” I don’t know what the big deal is. They’re just old photos.
“I didn’t,” she snaps.
“Well, it’s nothing to do with me!” I bite back; it doesn’t take much to light the touchpaper between us.
“What about your friends? Could they have done it? By accident? Maybe thrown the other one away?”
“No. They’d have said. They’re not idiots.”
She’s looking down at our younger faces through the broken glass as if this is some major deal.
“Can I go now?” I’m surly. All my guilt, the sex, him, bubbling out in moodiness. He tells me she’s too clingy. She should let me be free. He’s right. He understands me. She wants me to stay a little girl.
“If it was you, tell me. I won’t be angry.”
And there it is. The pleading tone along with the pathetic facial expression that makes all the fine lines on her forehead and around her mouth crease and deepen.
“For God’s sake!” I explode, as if she’s accused me of stealing or something. My jaw tightens as rage surges through me. My fingers curl into claws. I feel more animal than human. “I’ve already told you! No! Anyway, they’re just stupid old photos, so who cares! Maybe it’s a poltergeist or something!” I don’t wait for her response but turn and stomp back up the stairs.
“Oh, and my exams went fine—thank you for asking!” I send the words down to her with enough venom to make them poison arrows in the heart and leave her there, clinging to the old photo frame. Maybe that’s why I’m so angry. She misses those days. I know she does. And I do too. Life was simpler then, with no tits and no sex and no becoming something new, but I can’t help growing up—I want to grow up—and she needs to let me get on with it.
“Everything okay?” Ange
asks when I close the bedroom door firmly behind me.
“Yeah. Exam stuff. You know.” I force a smile. It’s a lie, and I have a feeling Jodie knows it because as I pass her she flashes me a sympathetic look the others can’t see. Weird mums club. That, or they all heard me shouting.
“Jodie was telling us how she likes old men.” Lizzie snorts as I flop on my bed. “So gross.”
“I said older, not old.”
“I don’t think it’s gross.” I try to sound nonchalant. “A lot of older guys are hot.”
“I don’t think she means like thirty.”
“Neither do I. Brad Pitt’s still hot and he’s fifty or something.”
“I don’t care what you say.” Jodie lets their mocking disgust wash over her. “It’s true. Older men have something.”
“Experience,” Lizzie says and giggles. “And cash.”
“Your dad’s pretty hot, Lizzie.” Jodie leans forward, enjoying the conversation. “How old is he? Forty-four? Forty-five?”
“God, you’re disgusting!” Lizzie shrieks.
“He’s in shape though.” Jodie wiggles an eyebrow. “I bet he looks good naked!”
Lizzie looks so appalled we all lose it and soon we’re trying to outgross each other with how Jodie could fuck Lizzie’s dad until our sides ache with the kind of laughter that makes your eyes water and your breath catch. We’re laughing so hard I forget to text Courtney back and I don’t care. I don’t need anyone but these girls. MyBitches. The Fabulous Four.
13
Lisa
This has not been my day.
The thought is so comical I let out a snort of a hysterical giggle. It’s the kind of thing the old me would say. Before all this. Before Daniel. Back when I was funny. The laugh turns to a choked sob and although it’s still hot, I pull my duvet up to my chin like a child scared in the night.
You and me together, stealing into the night.
Is that a deal, is that a deal? We can make it all right.
Around and around in my head all day.
There was no respite at work either. Marilyn was off sick with one of her migraines and didn’t text back when I checked on her, which left me with more unease—something’s going on with her she’s not telling me about—and then Julia had gone out this afternoon for a first client meeting and come back smug and flushed and with cakes for everyone. It made me think of the money again and I missed Marilyn.
I had a meeting with Simon to finalize some job specifications, and found myself saying yes to having dinner with him when Ava’s exams are over, because I was too weak—too weak at the knees—to say no. It was easier to say yes. Less confrontational. That’s what I told myself. It was easier. It’s not true though. I said yes because I wanted to. Because I’m lonely. Because he makes me throb in ways I thought were lost to memory. Because being near him is like peeling back layers of delicate crepe paper wrapped around a treasure you’ve packed away somewhere to keep safe and forgotten about.
Alive. He makes me feel alive again.
But I got home and there was the broken picture and the space for the missing photo and my first thought was, That will teach me to try to be happy, and my stomach cramped in that way from then. Sharp, acid pains as if two sides of my gut had been glued together and someone was trying to tear them apart again. I’d had to wait five minutes, doubled over, before I could call Ava down because I could barely breathe, let alone speak.
Above me, in the gray of the night, the ceiling swirls like dangerous eddies in a river. I want it to suck me up and drown me and break me into nothing.
It wasn’t Ava or her friends who smashed the picture of us and took the other of her. After I confronted her and she stormed upstairs, I feverishly searched all the bags the girls had dumped in the kitchen, no doubt while ransacking the cupboards for snacks. There was no glass, no picture frame, nothing. Neither did I find anything in the kitchen bin or the larger ones in the garden. I even forced myself to check the recycling container where I’d thrown the not–Peter Rabbit. Though I knew it had been emptied days ago, I still half expected to see the sodden, dirty toy looking balefully back up at me. He wasn’t there. Neither was any hastily hidden evidence of broken or stolen pictures.
Drive away with me, drive away, baby, let’s take flight . . .
Maybe I am going mad.
When the girls were leaving—all tight clothing, nothing hidden there—I asked Jodie if she wanted to stay for tea. She’s the one I know least, and although she’s older I didn’t like the thought of her going back to an empty house and a microwave meal. Also I didn’t want to fight with Ava anymore. I thought maybe my edginess was what was making her moody and if I made an effort with her friends she’d calm down. But as it was, Jodie scurried out fast, head down, and I felt worse about whatever Ava must have been saying about me.
I made us dinner, my hands on autopilot and my mind numb, but my gaze kept stealing off down the corridor to the empty spaces on the hall table and so we sat in near silence, Ava still rankled at my accusation and me in the grip of some paranoid fear. It was, in the end, a relief when Ava took her plate and went to the sitting room to watch something on MTV and I was left to sit staring at my own reflection in the kitchen windows.
One photo missing, one broken. Was one left broken to draw attention to the missing one? Is it a message of some kind? A picture of my little girl taken, and the one of the two of us looking happy, smashed. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out what that means, does it?
Ava. My baby. I must keep her safe.
My breath is hot and sour against the covers as I try to stay on the right side of hysteria. I checked all the doors and windows. There was no sign of anyone breaking in. The kitchen door was locked. How could someone have got in and out without leaving a trace?
Maybe it was Ava. The thought is a tiny buoy to cling to in the dark ocean of fear. Maybe the evidence is hidden in her room somewhere. It’s the only place I haven’t been able to search. Maybe it was Ava, I repeat over and over, but I’m not convincing myself. I keep seeing her face on the stairs. She was confused. She didn’t know what I was talking about.
My eyes burn, tired, despite my racing mind. They want to close, to rest, to sleep, but I can’t allow it. I dread the dreams. I can’t face Daniel, not tonight.
And I know he’ll come, because I can’t let him go. How can I ever let him go?
You have to learn to live in the present. Focus on every day. On Ava.
I thought it was crazy bullshit the first time a therapist said it to me, and I’ve tried, God knows I’ve tried, but it remains impossible. The past is my shadow, always there, clinging to me.
Maybe I should ring Alison. She’d listen to me. Listen to what? my inner voice sneers. I have an odd feeling? A photo has gone missing? I heard a song on the radio? I know what she’d say. I’ve rung her too many times recently. She probably thinks I’m crazy. It’s only my imagination. Take deep breaths. Let it go. I should cancel dinner with Simon. Maybe then all this will stop. It was stupid to think I could go on a date. I should know better.
I’m withdrawing, a snail pulling back into its shell.
We’re gonna live wild and free, on the road, you and me,
It’s a deal, a done deal, now drive away, baby . . .
Maybe it’s nothing. Maybe I am just going mad. Maybe I broke the photos. Maybe it’s me who’s broken.
14
Ava
My room is dark, except for the glow from my iPad and iPhone screens, like two moons in the night. Facebook is open on my iPad and I stare at it, waiting. I’m always waiting for him and it’s like an itch on the inside of my skin that I can’t reach. I think about him all the time. More when he’s like this—in a hurry or stuck doing something in his boring real life. He said he’d be back in ten minutes but it’s been nearly twenty.
Have I driven him away by ranting about my mum? Was it teenage and childish? The skin on my bottom lip is sore where I’ve been biting
it. He didn’t seem to mind. In fact, he was so understanding of how embarrassed I’d felt when she invited Jodie to stay for tea. She hadn’t invited the others so it was totally obvious I’d been talking about how Jodie’s mum is never here. I really like Jodie and I felt like I’d betrayed her somehow—sharing her weird mum’s behavior with my own mum. Thankfully, Jodie didn’t mind. Or if she did, she didn’t say anything and seems pretty normal.
I look down at our last WhatsApps on my phone.
So, is it a teacher? Your crush?
I’d answered: Kind of.
She hadn’t asked more. It’s what I like about Jodie. She knows when not to push. If it was the other way around, I’d be nagging her to tell me. I make a mental note in my “how to be a better person” endless list to try not to do that anymore when someone has a secret. In a lot of ways, it’s made me want to tell her more. I want to tell someone. I’m bursting with it.
My WhatsApp has three unanswered messages from Courtney too—even though he’s probably seen I’ve been online. I sent one to him earlier saying my mum was being a bitch about going out while my exams were on and he seemed to believe it.
It made me feel a bit bad because he’s being so nice but I don’t want anyone here in the evenings. Not past around nine or ten when he might be around to chat.
It’s midnight. Jodie went to bed an hour ago and Courtney’s given up on waiting for a reply, so I shut down my iPad and relax against the pillows, opening Messenger on my phone. Once, a while back, I sent a text to Lizzie meant for Angela. Thankfully, it wasn’t bitchy, but it made me paranoid about having too many conversations on the go at once on one device. I’d hate to send something meant for him to someone else.
In the silence of the house, I find myself listening out for sounds in the corridor. What if Mum comes in my room again like she did the other night? Maybe I should go under my covers.
You there, Beautiful?
Cross Her Heart: A Novel Page 6