To Keep You Safe

by Kate Bradley

  I don’t need this clifftop to remember you or what happened that Friday afternoon in May three years ago, when everything that I’d ever loved would be gone before the sun rose on Saturday.

  I think and I think and I think; thoughts of what I’m going to do next, beating relentlessly into the shallows of my mind.

  Monday

  06:59

  Destiny

  As I watch the sun creep through the too-thin curtains I realise I don’t even remember coming back or going to bed. I’m not surprised and I don’t try and remember. I am tired of thinking because it doesn’t change anything. Instead I will change it myself, but before I get to Wednesday and pull the plug on this stasis, I have to get through today.

  I sit up in bed and grab my fags. I light one. My social worker said, ‘Dee, move over to a vape.’ I told her, ‘Why would I do that when they don’t kill you?’ She asked me if I wanted to kill myself and I had the sense to say no. I have always had the sense to keep my mouth shut about what I really think.

  I light my fag and lean back; I can’t smoke lying on my back, so I lie in a recumbent position and think about the days ahead. Tomorrow is my last meeting with the social worker. I run my finger down the dirty mattress. She’s not coming here. If she was, I would’ve got a bed sheet from Primark, as I know she thinks I’m not taking care of myself enough. Last time she was here, she actually looked in my kitchen cupboards and saw I was living on noodles. ‘You’re already too thin,’ she told me, so I told her she was body-shaming me. That shut her up.

  But she’s not meeting me here today; she won’t want to know that I’m not taking care of myself properly as that would mean that she would have to do something about it. She won’t want to do something about it, because as of today, I am eighteen and therefore, finally, an adult. They just want to pass my case over to the next team so they can forget about me.

  My hand moves over my ribs and I count them. I wonder if the social worker will get me a birthday card. I bet she doesn’t. Their budgets have been slashed. But she’s nice, I think as I pull on the fag and decide she might feel sorry for me; she might get me one out of her own money.

  I grind my fag out in the overfull saucer. I wonder if I might be the only person turning eighteen who doesn’t get a single birthday card. I wonder if that’s not true, if there are others who have no one to buy them a birthday card. Perhaps I’m just the only one who doesn’t care.

  It’ll all be over soon anyway; I only have two days of this life left. To leave it, will be a relief. Wednesday is the big day. It can’t come quickly enough.

  I fall back on the mattress, too apathetic to get up, even though I am short on time now. I stare at the cracked ceiling and am pleased that I only have two more nights where I stare into the night and not sleep. I check the clock: I don’t even have that as I’ve got to be up in a couple of hours to catch my train. Big day.

  I twist a lock of my short bleached hair; it will need to be washed. Normally, I just gel it back which looks hard, but I can’t do that for my meeting tomorrow, and I can’t when I go to work. It occurs to me that after today, I will never gel my hair again. I think of Aleksander and how pleased he would be that I can’t do it any more. He would’ve hated it. He used to love my long hair. He used to love to fan my hair out on a pillow or brush it for me after the shower. He bought me a Mason and Pearson hairbrush, which he said was the best you could get. He loved to take the tangles out. Once Ollie came in and laughed at him. Aleksander threatened to shove the hairbrush up Ollie’s backside and Ollie never said anything about it again.

  Thinking of Ollie makes me want to read the clippings one last time. That gives me the motivation to get up and have my shower.

  *

  Today is my birthday; I can’t believe it. It feels so surreal – how is it that I am only just an adult? I feel like I’ve been grown up all my life.

  My bedsit is small; part of me is sorry to go because it has felt like a real home. But I’d have to leave it anyway, because at eighteen I am too old. I want to fucking laugh: too old.

  This place will be filled with another hard-to-place kid in care by next week. He or she will know nothing of me, of my life. I’ve told the managers that I’m moving in with a friend. They’re supposed to do checks, but they haven’t, because if they had, then they would know that I’m not moving in with a friend, because I don’t have any.

  Living here was better than being in care. They let me come here when I was sixteen. They knew after Aleksander died that I wasn’t doing well. After four months in a mental unit, they found this place for me instead. There are twelve bedsits and we are all allowed to live pretty much as we want, as long as we are in by eleven at night and we don’t let guests stay over. The guy who runs its, Robert, is pretty nice. He tries to get me to go to church but I tell him that God won’t want me. He says that’s bullshit and that God loves me no matter what. ‘Destiny,’ he said, finding me a picture of a super-cute fluffy white puppy on the internet, ‘if this pup was yours, what would you call it?’

  ‘Lexi,’ I said, not telling him that I always wanted a daughter called Lexi.

  ‘So Destiny, say you had Lexi and you loved her so much – you would love her, wouldn’t you?’

  I looked at the puppy’s eyes and yearned for her. I would love her more than she could bear.

  He continued: ‘Say you came home one day and Lexi had chewed your furniture and pooed on the floor, would you throw Lexi out? Or would you clean up and continue to love her?’

  I stared at that picture on his phone. I wished I could believe it’s true, but God will know what I’ve done even if Robert doesn’t. Once I nearly told Robert, but I figured I like living here and I wouldn’t want to do anything to ruin it.

  My bedsit is pretty tidy; Robert and Marlena, the deputy manager, can come in and inspect it anytime they like so I do the minimum; I keep the mud-brown carpet clear of stuff and just shove everything in the wardrobe. There’s only the one room with the kitchen at the far end but it’s got a balcony, which I love to sit out on. If I angle my chair just right, I can get the sun on my face all afternoon. There’s a big tree right outside and the wood pigeons coo, and they sound so close, I like to imagine that I can reach out and pet them; it’s the most lovely sound in the world.

  I take a shower, staring at the pale blue tiles. This was the only bit of the unit I didn’t like when I moved in; the shower tiles reminded me of being on the psych ward. Being on the ward reminds me about how it felt to watch the blood come out of Aleksander and my future slip away.

  I use soap today and scrub like I can scrub that memory away, but I know I can’t because I’ve tried before. That time I didn’t use soap and that’s why I ended up in hospital with bleach burns. Most of the bleach damage is gone now, there’s just some discolouration on my left thigh and a patch on the inside of my forearm. I feel sad when I look at it: my poor body has been through too much for only eighteen. It has been to places it never should’ve been. I almost start to remember, but tip my face under the shower spray. I remind myself that I don’t need to remember – the suitcase has been packed for the last time. I’m glad: I don’t want to think any more.

  I am tired of myself.

  I dry myself and think that if I have another bad night, I might struggle to get up before six thirty and I’ve got to be on the ward by eight. I’ve worked for the hospital for over a year if you include the voluntary work, but only got a transfer to Willow ward last week and since then I’ve been late twice. I would’ve thought that since I got the transfer I would’ve behaved impeccably, but the bad dreams and sleeplessness have been getting much, much worse, and I struggle to get up and get in on time. I know they’re not too happy about it. Still, it won’t matter soon.

  I dry myself not thinking about anything much. When I come out of the bathroom, I see someone has pushed a card under my door.

  I stare at it while I get dressed. I dress in jeans and a hoodie, still staring at the
white rectangle on the matt. It holds such promise.

  I went through a phase last year, before I got a job at the hospital, of buying lottery tickets. I became a bit obsessed. I loved that feeling of holding them just before the numbers were announced, the exciting promise of what I would do when I won. I never thought it would be a possibility, more a certainty that I would definitely win big one day. I could see it so clearly in my mind’s eye. I imagined making the call, what they would say when I told them I had a winning lottery ticket; what I would do with the money. I saw a house in the country, an amalgamation of the wonderful country homes I had seen with Aleksander. And I was never alone in that house; I had filled it with dogs and cats and fabulous friends, who would want to know me. Who felt I was worth something.

  But I never won.

  One day I just gave up. I just suddenly got that it would never happen for me, that I would never be worth anything. I understood that I had been born unlucky. I learnt then that the absence of hope is a terrible thing.

  Looking at that envelope reminds me of those lottery tickets. If I don’t pick it up and open it, it’s like an unchecked ticket: it still holds that intoxicating possibility.

  I make a cup of tea first. Then I can’t put it off any longer. When I pick it up, I’m surprised that my hand is shaking. I hate my mum for making me feel like this. How can I, after all this time, still care? Why, when I don’t even like her, do I still get that lurch in my stomach, with the slight possibility that she might have got in touch with me? That’s why I hate those PPI calls on my phone – I see a strange number and I think it might be her. I wish I could think something else, but still, despite the therapy, despite me trying to train myself, I am still pathetic. And I do it now. I have that hope.

  Then I turn the envelope and see just my name written in blue biro: Destiny, and nothing else. No stamp. No address.

  Of course it isn’t from her.

  But I still think, maybe she came here and popped it through the letterbox, but I don’t believe it, not even a little bit, I’m just trying to stop that crashing sick feeling in my stomach. My mother wouldn’t remember; she hasn’t remembered my birthday for ten years. She doesn’t even know where I live. Well, I guess now she doesn’t have to feel any guilt. Today I am officially grown.

  I rip the envelope open. It’s a small card. The picture is of a painting; it’s of a seagull flying over the ocean. Inside are cheery messages from Robert and Marlena. They want me to have a special day. Of course they do – they’re nice people. As kind as they are, my sigh is still audible in the silence of my flat.

  I look around the small bedsit and wonder where to put it. I decide on the bookshelf. I balance it on top of books I bought when I still thought there was a point to buying and reading books. They are fiction: ephemeral crap, thrillers and romance I devour to distract me, hip and shoulder to the classics I savour. I pull out my favourite, The Great Gatsby. I balance it on top of the others like a shelf, and then stand the card on it. Robert and Marlena won’t understand the reference when they find it, but it’s there in case they are smart. The stupid, romantic part of me, thinks that they might possibly care enough to want to know why I did what I did; that they might want to look for clues. Perhaps they will see that this book has been pulled out, selected above others. Perhaps they will read it and possibly understand how we are all helplessly pushed back into the past, unable to escape our actions. I am as trapped as Gatsby chasing Daisy. But my Daisy is dead.

  Or maybe my mother is Daisy. I shudder. Unfortunately, she is still alive.

  I stare at the card, a little freaked that it depicts of all things, a gull. I expect they buy these cards as a job lot to keep in a desk drawer ready for a resident’s birthday, but even so.

  The only animal Aleksander ever cared for was seagulls. He once broke Ollie’s cheekbone when Ollie kicked one, hurting its wing. He had a thing about them, said they were survivors, like him. A couple of times we even fed them, down in Hastings. He said no one liked seagulls, said that to some people they were like rats with wings. But he loved to watch them soar, said that one day he would get off the ground, stop picking at other people’s leftovers and rise, like them, victorious.

  I stare at the picture, of it flying against a blue sky.

  Its significance feels unnerving.

  Monday

  14:31

  Destiny

  Hastings to Hull is five hours. I missed a connection so I’m here so much later than I thought. This level of hassle is why I don’t visit my mother I tell myself. I know it’s a lie. It’s not that long ago I used to run away from care to come back and see her every weekend, but it was a habit, with Alek’s help, I could break.

  Until now.

  As I walk towards the nearest thing I had to a childhood home, I pull my coat around myself like it is cold – but it isn’t, in fact it’s the opposite: there’s a heat in the air that’s more like August. The sky is a pretty blue, but it doesn’t touch me. I can’t feel anything here: I have to be careful. This place is dangerous to me.

  I haven’t been here in so long. It feels important coming back here today. Cars line both sides of the street; other than that it’s featureless, no trees, nothing of interest except the two long stretches of small terraced Victorians. In some ways, it reminds me of the road where we had our last party house. Despite the warmth, I dig my hands deep into my coat and rub my knuckles with the thumbs. My fists explain that I mustn’t remember that place.

  Once, maybe, this street might’ve been a salubrious area, but not now. A fridge has been dumped outside one house; rubbish has been dropped all along the gutter. I stand for a moment, looking at a pile that looks like someone picked up their bin and emptied it in the street. A broken mug; a couple of barbecue skewers; a pile of fag butts from an emptied ashtray; a stool with only two legs. How can people bear to let their lives be so publically displayed?

  I walk until I get to number 232. I haven’t been here since I was fourteen.

  So much has happened since then, I almost expect my old house to look different. But I stand in front of the door and it looks the same. The door is the same – dark navy, the same as all the properties in the street owned by the local authority. It’s dirty with the exhaust from the cars who use this street as a rush-hour rat run. I look closer – there, I can see a dent. I breathe. I needed it to be there, the marks the police ram made when they bust down the door all those years ago. The drugs raid was the last night I spent here as a legal ward of my mother’s. I couldn’t bear there not to be a sign of the catastrophe it caused, a memorial to the final death of my life with my mum. But it’s here: it’s all the same as before.

  I can’t believe I’m here again. I know it will only hold disappointment – and pain. But I came with a purpose, a duty, even: I feel I should say a final goodbye.

  But as I stand here, a small voice inside whispers what I don’t want to hear. Yes, I can convince myself that I am here for duty – to do the right thing – but I know that it is something different. I still want her to hold me, to love me, to change my mind. Even though I’m an adult today, it seems I still can’t quite kick the childish habit: today, on my birthday, I still want my mum.

  Angry with myself, I rap the door hard.

  My knock pushes the door open. It opens right back as if anyone has the right to cross the threshold here – all comers, come and take what you want, it’s all yours, just come in and help yourself.

  Inside, the house is as dirty as the outside. The hallway still has the same pink carpet I remember. It was worn threadbare in places, but now it’s also been sullied to grey. The house stinks of cigarettes and something else, something that could be cat shit. I can also smell something else, something chemical. I know that smell and know that my mother has moved past heroin. Of course she has: I’ve been off the drug scene for a while, but I will bet all I have that fentanyl would’ve found my mum and my mum would’ve found fentanyl. What a twisted romance.

>   Despite the sunshine outside, the house is dark: the kitchen at the back has blinds pulled down and the door to the front room is shut. I glance at the staircase. I wonder if my old bedroom has changed at all. I’ve got no desire to see it. I remember that the social worker I had at the time stood in the doorway while I packed my stuff up; his name was Malcolm or Martin or maybe even Mark, and when I started to throw things around, the sympathy in his face dissolved to fear.

  ‘Hello?’ I call out into the silence.

  A black cat springs out of the shadows to weave between my ankles; the sudden movement makes me start. I want to pat it to reassure myself that it’s OK, it’s only a cat. But I don’t – I’m suddenly afraid. I can feel myself being watched. There’s a gap in the door to my right. My heart is beating hard and I can’t breathe. I push it open.

  Inside, it has changed. The sofas have gone, the TV too. Everything, in fact: the room has been stripped bare. The heavy framed mirror my mother liked so much has gone from above the fireplace. There’s not even a shadow to suggest that it was ever there. There is only the dirty pink carpet and a mattress where the sofa used to be. I can’t delay it any more; I finally look down.

  She is lying on the mattress with the thinnest, dirtiest of duvets across her.

  ‘Hello, Mum.’

  Monday

  14:56

  Destiny

  ‘Well, lookee here at what the cat brought in,’ she says laughing at her own joke. We look at each other for what feels like a long time. I wish she would sit up, not lie like that, half-slumped. She has new angles on her face but her dark hair is still long. She only looked at me with the vaguest surprise despite not seeing me for years. I thought she would get out of bed. I didn’t expect her to bring out the teapot and the bone china, but not to get out of bed . . . I check myself, fingernails digging crescents into my palm. Stay real, I remind myself.