The Life She Wants

by J. M. Hewitt

  ‘That this is what I’ve dreamed of?’

  Miss Hayle tittered; Mr Clayton’s lined face creased in a smile. I lowered my head. My words were stupid. I had shown them what I was feeling, and that wasn’t how life worked, and now they were laughing at me.

  I raised my chin and set my shoulders back. ‘I deserve this,’ I said.

  Miss Hayle looked at me, uncertainty on her face. ‘Yes, we know. That’s why we’d like to put your name forward, if that’s okay?’

  It wasn’t a mistake or a trick. It was real.

  ‘How do I do it?’ I demanded.

  They produced papers, leaflets and pamphlets and spread them out over the desk. They talked over each other then, and I looked from her to him and back again, and down at the literature on the desk.

  Edinburgh.

  It was as far away as I could ever get.

  My face ached, and I wondered if I was crying. I swiped at my cheeks to brush away the tears, but they were dry, and belatedly I realised that the strange sensation I was feeling was a smile. I never smiled.

  ‘Take this away, talk to your parents. We’re happy to meet with them, discuss any concerns or questions—’

  ‘That’s okay, you don’t need to do that,’ I said quickly, the smile slipping away, my face back to its usual stern and serious expression.

  ‘Well, we’ll need to talk to them anyway. Part of the scholarship requirements are access to bank statements, combined income, et cetera, et cetera,’ replied Miss Hayle as she shuffled the papers together.

  Miss Hayle and Mr Clayton at my house. That couldn’t – wouldn’t – happen. If they saw where I was from, they would realise they had made a mistake; they would take this away from me.

  I looked at her, this happy, smiling teacher in her lovely clean dress and spotless shoes. I imagined her walking through my house, picking her way carefully, making sure not to stand on a stray needle or knock over one of the overflowing ashtrays.

  I shuddered and glanced at the top leaflet on the pile she pushed towards me across the desk.

  A glossy photograph of the university. The grey brickwork, the tall windows, the proud turret in the background standing sentry over the students who passed through this coveted place. If these people saw where I came from, the scholarship would be taken away before I even won it.

  Clipped to the brochure was another piece of paper. I glanced at it and my blood ran cold as I saw two names hand-written there. One of them was mine. The other was Rebecca Lavery.

  ‘How many people get a scholarship?’ I asked, my voice rushed. ‘How many places are there?’

  Miss Hayle’s smile slipped just a little as she saw what I was looking at. Deftly she reached across the desk and snatched up the list that had broken my heart.

  ‘Just one,’ she said, the brightness back in her tone, but it was falsely jovial. ‘So you need to continue working extra hard, up your game.’

  ‘But she doesn’t need it, she has so much money now. She doesn’t even go to school here any more!’ I blurted.

  Her smile settled into one of understanding and sympathy. Neither emotion was of any help. I thought fast, and spoke before I lost my nerve.

  ‘I have to go along Billingham Road to get home. I see her there.’ I paused, and then added for effect, ‘I see her there all the time.’

  Miss Hayle, for all her niceness, knew what went on in Billingham Road. And she knew what I was telling her.

  The smile slipped, properly this time, and she paled beneath her make-up.

  ‘Right,’ she said. ‘I see.’

  * * *

  It was a lie, but not an awful one, I told myself as I went home. I had seen Rebecca. Not in the way I had insinuated, not buying or selling on Billingham Road, but I had seen her near there. That dress she had worn, the expensive restaurant I was sure she had been in… My fists curled. She didn’t need this scholarship. I did.

  But even if my lie had been enough to remove her name from the list, my battle wasn’t over.

  * * *

  ‘Mum, I need to talk to you,’ I said.

  She was in the kitchen; a good sign. She wasn’t dressed, but then I hadn’t seen her wearing proper clothes in months, years even.

  I studied her from the doorway, allowed my eyes to take in the home from a stranger’s perspective. It was kind of clean, I made sure of that. I’d seen from where Rebecca came from that if you didn’t clean your house, the aromas of filth transferred to your clothes and became common knowledge.

  No, that wasn’t the problem. Even though it was old-fashioned and tatty in decor, and freezing cold, the house itself wasn’t an issue.

  It was her. I narrowed my eyes, knowing that if these people were to come calling, the odds on catching her like this, a relatively good day, were not in my favour. And it was Carl who was to blame for that.

  ‘Where’s Carl?’ I asked.

  She turned around and I flinched at her face. Her skin was grey, her hair greasy and lank. Her chest, visible through the open neck of her house coat, was mottled with tiny scars. I knew those scars. When she took the brown stuff, she complained more and more of things in her skin, and she scratched and tore at her chest until it turned raw and bled.

  She would need to wear a button-up shirt, or a polo neck, I realised.

  ‘He’s gone to get me some stuff,’ she said.

  Stuff, I knew, meant brown, and fags and booze.

  ‘He’ll be back soon,’ she said.

  I backed out of the kitchen and retreated to my bedroom to think.

  * * *

  Later, I moved around their still bodies as I searched the cabinets and piles of papers for bank statements and giro cheques. Our income was to be scrutinised, and it was non-existent. The money that came in was from the dole, and the money for the rent went out to the council.

  I found a pile of statements, most of them unopened, and I took them out of the envelopes and smoothed the creases away. She was overdrawn, I noticed. I looked at the benefits that went in and the rent that was deducted, and frowned. The rent was a bit less than the amount she got from the government. There was enough of a difference to allow for other essential items like food and heating.

  I looked across the room at her, deep in slumber. The brown cost money, I knew that, but I also knew she hadn’t been anywhere in a long time to withdraw money to buy it. I had assumed Carl was giving it to her for free, or in return for what she used to do with other men to earn some cash.

  Those men never came here any longer.

  A red-hot poker of anger stabbed at me. Carl was taking her money. The money that should be buying us stuff to eat, and gas and electricity. As if to prove a point, the single light in the lounge dimmed and went out.

  I went to the cupboard underneath the stairs and pressed the button on the electricity meter. It blinked at me – zero. They no longer gave our home emergency credit; we’d used up that favour a long time ago.

  Back in the living room, I picked up Carl’s wallet from the coffee table. I looked at him as he lolled on the sofa, one arm thrown behind his head. A bubble of spit floated on his lips as he slept.

  I took his wallet to the kitchen, and by the light of a torch I emptied it of its contents.

  Business cards, credit cards, scrawled paper with phone numbers, a list of names with figures beside them. People who owed him money, I reckoned, and with a snarl – emotion that I rarely showed – I ripped it up and pushed the bits of paper down the plughole in the sink. A single bank card remained. I pulled it out, saw my mother’s initials and surname embossed at the bottom.

  I shoved the card in my pocket and was about to put everything back when I saw there was something else in the wallet. Behind a clear flap, there was a photo. I brought it closer to the torch and inspected it, realising with a jolt that it was my mother. It was years old; she was young and fresh-faced and happy, a dimple in her left cheek as she smiled for the camera. A dimple I never even knew she had.

  B
ehind it was another photo, this one folded, and I plucked it out and opened it up. I heard a whoosh of noise, a thin breath – more of an exhalation really – and spun around to see who it was, dropping the photo so it landed face down on the floor. I clapped my hand over my mouth. The noise had come from me. In the living room, the two of them slept soundly on.

  I knelt down, picked up the picture between my thumb and forefinger. It was a photo of me. It was also old; in it, I must have been around seven or eight. I recognised my bed, the pink flowery duvet cover that I still had now. I recognised the nightie that I used to wear, white with a yellow lace trim. I was sleeping, just as deeply as they were now next door. My nightie was pulled up to my neck, exposing parts of me that were never meant to be photographed at that age.

  I had no knowledge, no memory of that picture being taken.

  On the kitchen floor, I wept. Hot tears coursed down my face as sadness swirled inside for the little girl in the photo. I turned the torch off and went to bed, pushing my chair under the door handle so it couldn’t be opened from the outside.

  * * *

  ‘You got something of mine, missy?’

  It was days later, and the appointment for my teacher to call on us was imminent. I was surveying the kitchen with an exacting scrutiny. Every plate had been cleared away, every cup and spoon had been cleaned and scrubbed free of stains. It had been hard work; cold water didn’t wash as well as hot, but we had none of that, so good old-fashioned elbow grease had done the job.

  Carl was hovering, his eyes beady and black in his face.

  ‘Like what?’ I asked.

  ‘My wallet,’ he said.

  He was holding it and I gestured to it. ‘That’s your wallet.’

  He slapped it down on the counter. ‘Things are missing from it.’

  I said nothing, though I wanted to scream at him that the things that were missing were not his. He came close to me. I backed up until I hit the wall. No way out, nowhere to go. I was trapped.

  ‘I’m watching you,’ he said.

  It was nothing new; he was always watching me. I looked through to the dining room at my mother. She sat at the table, her back curved as she slumped in the chair. Her finger had found a hole in the tablecloth and she poked at it, stretching it and pulling at it until there was a gaping rip in the fabric.

  At the supermarket there had been a cash machine. I’d inserted the card and typed in the PIN. I got it right first time: my mother’s birthday. Not mine, because she never remembered it.

  I tried to withdraw fifty pounds, then twenty, and finally ten when it was declined. The card was spat out and no money followed.

  I’d put the card away. I would have to wait until the benefits went in, and slowly the account would crawl out of the red. In the meantime, I would have to fill up on free school dinners. As for heating, I would simply wear more layers at home.

  In my pocket, I felt the edges of the photograph of myself and wondered what I could do about Carl. It was clear, that morning in the kitchen, that I could do nothing. He was a permanent fixture. If I tried to get rid of him, those two men might come round again. Them, or different ones. There were many of them, I was sure. If I told the authorities, it wouldn’t matter. Carl was a charmer, able to talk his way out of any situation.

  Edinburgh.

  It had become my mantra. It was my escape, my salvation, my future.

  I just had to hold on a little bit longer.

  * * *

  I didn’t listen to what Miss Hayle said to my mother. Instead, I kept my eyes on Mum. She looked okay, I thought. I’d washed her and helped her to dress in a high-necked blouse and an old pair of black trousers. I pinned her hair up and patted powder on her face with a little bit of blusher.

  She didn’t look great, but she looked like some of the other mothers I’d seen at the school gates.

  ‘Don’t open your mouth too wide when Miss Hayle is here,’ I said as I caught a glimpse of her brown teeth, whittled down far more than they should have been by her incessant jaw-clenching.

  ‘Okay, baby,’ she’d said, obediently.

  I looked into her eyes as I rearranged her fringe. Deep pools of baby blue. She had beautiful eyes, I realised, if you ignored the redness in the whites of them.

  I will never become you.

  I brushed off her gratitude and thought of where I would be when I was her age. I would have a beautiful home, with a kind husband; there would be money for heating and lovely clothes, and hot water would come out of the tap, and I wouldn’t have to read books by torchlight.

  She was forty, my mother. It was too late for her, but not for me.

  Miss Hayle talked on, showing Mum the same leaflets she had shown me. Every so often she looked up and around the room, and I wondered what it was like to see my home through a stranger’s eyes.

  Everything bad was hidden. The burn mark on the windowsill from one of their cigarettes had been covered up with Tippex that I’d stolen from school. The hole in the tablecloth was concealed by a lamp I’d placed strategically over it. The lamp didn’t work because the electricity meter was empty, but it did the trick.

  How easy it was to hide the rot, I marvelled, my mother especially. She looked decent, clean, normal. If you scratched at the surface, though, it was all so different. The scars on her chest, the sense of absence in her eyes when you looked a little too closely.

  ‘You can keep those,’ I said as Miss Hayle picked up the bank statements and benefits letters that I’d found.

  She looked at them briefly, the only sign that she was shocked a slight widening of her eyes as she glanced at me. I kept my gaze locked on hers. Yes, see, miss, I need this scholarship.

  She left soon after, and I sagged with relief as I showed her to the door. She said goodbye, and I sucked in a big breath and put my hand on her arm.

  ‘Miss,’ I said, ‘is… is anyone else on the scholarship list?’

  Her lips pressed together in a straight line. That ever-ready smile slipped again, and she put her hand on mine and patted my fingers.

  ‘No, dear. There’s nobody else applying for the scholarship.’

  I tried to hide the joy in my sharp inhalation. Miss Hayle had kicked Rebecca off the list! Something fluttered inside me. Guilt? Or a sense of accomplishment? I couldn’t decide, and I flicked the emotion away.

  I deserved this. I needed this.

  I dropped my guard; I was smiling as I let Miss Hayle out. Then Carl’s dirty old van pulled up.

  ‘I’ll see you later, Miss Hayle,’ I said hurriedly, practically pushing her down the path.

  Too late, too slow. Carl was there, grinning, showing his gaping black hole of a heroin-ruined mouth.

  ‘She’s a good girl, isn’t she?’ he leered, putting his arm around my shoulder. I fought against the urge to squirm away, felt my face hot and red, out of keeping with the winter air.

  ‘This is my mother’s friend,’ I rasped, my voice disintegrating at Carl’s touch. ‘He doesn’t live here, though.’

  It was a lie – he was here more than he wasn’t – but I knew we’d had to provide household income for the scholarship. I glanced at him as I shrugged him off me. Not that it mattered; his bank statements were probably in worse shape than my mother’s.

  ‘Can’t believe you’re taking her away from us.’ Carl shook his head sadly. ‘Don’t know what her mother and me will do without her.’

  ‘Miss Hayle was just leaving,’ I said desperately.

  ‘Ok-aaay.’ She nodded, put her hand out to shake Carl’s.

  I inserted myself between them and led her to her car.

  ‘Thank you,’ I said. My voice shook, was still hoarse.

  She smiled over my shoulder. ‘You’ve got a nice family,’ she said as she got into her car.

  I watched as she drove away and thought about her words. You’ve got a nice family.

  It really was easy to hide the rot.

  Chapter 20

  Alone at the bank of
computers, Paula read the article again, slowly this time. It didn’t help; phrases and words jumped out at her – bruises on his face… fingerprint marks… airways blocked – and with every paragraph, she found her eyes wandering back to the photo.

  She zoomed in, but it only served to make the image blurrier. She zoomed out again, looked at it in its normal composition. The woman the police were hunting was Anna, she was sure of it. That beret, the tailored coat, the stance of the figure in the picture. Caution pricked at her: these were not unusual items, the clothing was not enough to pin it on her.

  The hat might have hidden her hair, but it was likely to be short, just like Anna’s was. If the woman in the picture had long hair, surely there would be some strands hanging down, unless she’d pushed her full head of hair underneath the beret?

  There was something else, something confusing. A kind of recognition or knowledge of this woman. Not that it was Anna, but someone else, someone or something that tugged at Paula’s memories.

  Her mind went blank and she frowned as she clicked off the website. She checked her watch and saw that it was late. The lounge had been deserted since the sudden flurry of people racing for the deck. She shivered at the knowledge that she was totally alone down there.

  Grabbing her key card, she hurried back towards the stairs.

  * * *

  It was after midnight, and Anna hauled herself to her feet and dressed. She felt like a sitting duck here, a criminal just waiting for the officer to come and arrest her.

  In a few hours they would dock in Reykjavík. Was that what they were waiting for: for the passengers to disembark so there wouldn’t be a scene on the luxury liner when they handcuffed her?

  She pulled her padded winter coat out of the wardrobe and slipped it on. Gloves, hat – not the pink beret, but a black knitted one – and carefully opened the door. The corridor was silent, the main lights out; just the soft white glow of the bulbs lined the hallway. As she strode towards the elevator, she heard the distinctive noise that signalled its arrival.