by Emily Elgar
The video is a series of short interviews with people from Summervale. It opens with Sylvia and Zara side by side outside the salon. Zara, in huge gold hoop earrings and gold eye shadow, talks, and Sylvia casts shy glances at Zara, nods along at everything she says.
“Grace was, well, Grace was an absolute ray of sunshine, she was the smiliest little girl I ever knew. Even when she must have been in huge pain she’d smile through it all. She used to come into the salon and she’d always have us all laughing, cheer us all up.”
But, if Jon is right, Grace wasn’t a little girl, she was a young woman. Neither of them knew Grace, not really. They only saw her how they wanted to see her, as bright and false as a Disney character. It was just so much nicer for everyone if the disabled girl was happy. I see Grace, staring at me through the rain by her brother’s grave, how she walked with such ease, as though she’d never even sat in a wheelchair. Zara and Sylvia have no idea, but the sweet Grace they talk about in the video doesn’t exist. But Zoe does, and she’s the riddle I have to solve.
Next up on the video is Dennis outside his butcher’s shop, hands on hips in his white apron.
“When they first moved here Grace was in one of those manual wheelchairs, but you could see she was nowhere near strong enough to shift the thing: her arms were like twigs, you know. Anyway, everyone in the community collected money and held fundraisers, ran marathons and what-have-you, and we raised over two thousand quid to get her the powered wheelchair so she could operate it herself with the joystick and not have to be pushed when she came to a hill or whatever.”
The interviewer says something I don’t hear. Dennis smiles in response and his cheeks grow into round red apples of pride.
“Yes, we’re a very close-knit community, that’s what we’re like down here on the estate: we all look after each other, doing shopping for the elderly, visiting the sick. We like to help each other out, do what we can for our neighbors, you know.”
Dennis trots out his neat little lies. I don’t remember anyone coming to visit Granddad when he was bedbound after his stroke, and there were reports last year of a retiree dying in their bungalow from the cold and no one noticing until spring. Most of what Dennis is saying is bollocks. Before Meg and Grace moved here the neighbors wouldn’t say hello in the street. Even Dennis was just “the butcher” until Meg told us his name. But Meg and Grace changed us: everyone would stop to say hello, to ask after Grace as the brave mum wheeled her broken daughter down the road, as though ignoring them would be like turning away from a lost, frightened toddler crying for help. Meg would welcome the sighs, smiles, and arm squeezes like a prima donna accepting flowers at the end of a performance. It was as though they flirted with us until we fell in love with them, as if they knew that one day plastic-faced news reporters would be asking questions and they’d have us to tell the world how wonderful they were.
The camera cuts to the outside of the salon. I stare at the photo of Grace and Meg in the window, the one where Grace is holding on to her IV and Meg is holding on to Grace. It makes me think of the photo I showed Charlie, and as I stare I hear the phlegmy rattle in his voice again. I remember how his finger shook over the photo before he started shouting.
“She’s sick, don’t you people understand? She should never have been born! She’s sick.”
But I’ve seen Grace standing, watched her run. I know she’s not sick, not anymore. Is it possible the doctors misdiagnosed her? I remember Dr. Rossi, how suspicious she seemed: What do you know?
Was she worried we’d uncovered malpractice? That she could somehow be held responsible? But if Grace had been misdiagnosed, if she wasn’t as sick as she thought, why didn’t she tell the world? Why aren’t we celebrating instead of mourning?
My alarm wakes me at 4:45 a.m. Cookie has disappeared and my laptop has slipped down the bed. My heart leaps so hard in my chest it makes my ribs ache. It’s time.
I dress quickly, jeans and an old cardigan, my Dr. Martens. Just before I leave, I shuffle through a drawer and find the rape alarm Mum was given at a self-defense class Meg organized in the community center a couple of years ago. I shove the alarm into my pocket with my phone.
The TV is still on in the sitting room, Mum collapsed in front of it. Her wine glass has fallen, empty, on its side on the floor. She’s snoring softly, the air thick and sour around her. I think about putting a blanket over her, but I worry she’d stir, ask where the hell I’m going at five in the morning, so I settle for picking up her glass. At least when she sees I’ve gone she’ll know I had one small thought of her. I’m about to leave when I turn back and whisper “I love you” into her sleeping ear.
The morning is chilly, but noisy with birdsong. Angel’s Bay is just over ten minutes’ walk away. At the end of our road I go through a passage that takes me onto a public footpath, which eventually leads either down onto the beach or up into an open field overlooking the sea. Before she got her powered chair I used to push Grace all the way. She’d pretend to help but usually she’d be too excited, her attempts halfhearted. I didn’t mind; those were the days she’d still let me help her. I remember how her upper body would shift and jive around in her chair, but I never saw her legs move. It was like they weren’t part of her at all. Did they work all along?
I’m pleased I’ve arrived at the clearing before GoodSam. A thin barrier of barbed wire separates the end of the grass from the cliff and the drop below. I’m too far from the edge to see, but the waves sound restless, agitated, and here the gulls drown out the songbirds. There’s no one around. I stamp my feet to extinguish a small puff of fear that’s risen inside me. I’ll make sure we stand way back from the edge. I remind myself I know this place well, know the few hiding places. I try to ignore the voice inside that whispers, “But so could he.”
He arrives soon after. I know it’s him, not just because he’s the only person I’ve seen this morning but because there’s something about the purposeful way he walks. He doesn’t seem to notice or care about the scenery. Instead, he walks with both hands in his pockets, his eyes fixed on his black shoes. He’s wearing a black hat and his black bomber jacket is zipped high up his throat. He doesn’t lift his head until he’s in front of me. He’s tall and whippet thin, with an angular head so sharp it looks like it must hurt to rest it anywhere. He has a small gold hoop in one ear and on his neck, above the collar of his jacket, there are two black flicks of tattoo ink, like the fork in a snake’s tongue. His mouth is sloppy, turned down, like the taste of his own mouth disgusts him. He’s nothing like the smiley cartoon face online, nothing at all like the sweet, bashful kind of boy I imagine Grace would pine after. I feel small in Mum’s red raincoat. His cold eyes settle on me. One side of his mouth lifts as though he finds me funny. I think about the Grace I saw in the graveyard. She had the same hardness in her eyes. I force myself to talk first.
“I saw Grace yesterday.”
His smirk becomes a full smile. “You thought you saw Grace yesterday.” His voice is a guttural rumble, his vowels round and soft, Cornish.
“You wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t her. How did you know about this place?”
I hear the same plumpness in my own accent. He shrugs his thin shoulders.
“You’ve been pretty upset recently, haven’t you, Cara? You might not tell people what you’re feeling but I know you’re upset. Who’s to say you didn’t just see someone who looked a bit like Grace and got overexcited?”
His eyes are slits, as though even the bleached colors of early morning are too bright for him. I shake my head.
“So why drag me all the way out here then? Why not just ignore me? I know you know something. And I know what I saw. I saw Grace.”
“Yeah, but you know how it sounds, don’t you? A local disabled girl is missing and you see her able-bodied and well, running around in a graveyard?” His voice is only just about a whisper. “You think anyone’s going to believe that? C’mon, Cara, where’s your evidence?”
He l
ooks as though he’s trying not to laugh. How does he know so much? Grace must have told him everything—my name, the day she saw me . . . but did she tell him willingly or did he force it out of her?
“I have evidence.”
I want the lie to be small but powerful, but he doesn’t even flinch.
“Don’t bullshit me. We both know you don’t.”
“How do you know? The only way you could know is if you’ve got Grace. She’s telling you everything.”
Without taking his hands out of his pockets he steps towards me. I feel suffocated by his height. I take two steps back.
“You need to stop, Cara. Grace wouldn’t want you to be in any danger, would she?”
He’s so close I can see his Adam’s apple moving below the zipper of his jacket. I take two more steps back, the barbed-wire fence getting closer. He presses on again, close to me, trying to trap me.
I take another step back and the barbed wire presses against my back through my thin coat. I hear the sea, boiling and messy below. GoodSam looks at it over my shoulder.
“You know, I remember there were a bunch of teenage kids who used to dick around up here, cliff-jumping. Then one day one of them landed on a rock, smashed both his legs and his spine into little pieces.”
He moves towards me again, so close I can see myself reflected in miniature in his eyes. I strain back, I can’t bear to touch him, I cry out, but he ignores me as the barbed wire bites into the skin on my back.
“The lesson being that you need to be careful of what you can’t see, because what’s just below the surface can be worse, far worse, than you ever imagined.”
“I’ll go to the police,” I say. He hears the tremble in my voice. It makes him smile again.
“No you won’t. What would you say? You saw a disabled girl running away from you? They’d laugh at you—think the trauma had got to you. If she wanted to be rescued, why would she run? Come on, Cara, think! We know everything about you. We know where you live, where you work. I went past your mum’s just now. She’s on her own, isn’t she? You’ve seen what happens when we get angry. Don’t do it to your mum, you’re all she’s got now.” The hairs all over my body rise as his words flow like a flood of freezing water through me.
“I keep thinking, about a barrel of petrol and a match,” he says in his quiet voice. “What a show that would be.”
I see Mum asleep on the sofa, then her eyes flip open and her skin starts to bubble and melt. I press my hands down onto the barbed wire behind me, feel it slide out of me, the shock of it makes me panic. I try to move away from the edge, but he won’t let me go, he forces me back again. I cry out as the barbed wire presses like a dagger but he just keeps talking, his soft words like drugs straight into my blood. I try to twist my face away from him, but he’s everywhere.
“I know all about you and you don’t even know my name.” He’s smiling again. I turn away, cover my face with my hands as he whispers right in my ear.
“That’s it, Cara, good girl, keep your eyes and your mouth shut and you’ll be safe, but open them and I swear to God you’ll wish you listened to me.”
I feel him pull away, but I don’t move my hands, don’t open my eyes. Fear has welded them shut. I fall to my knees, low, like I’m about to be executed. My breath is hard and jagged, my lungs feel full, sharp, small sacks of broken glass. I feel a line of blood ripple down my back. I smell the earth, ageless and wet with dew. I see Grace snarl and run away through the graves. I see Meg’s forehead smashed, blood dark and sticky, then I see Mum’s eyes flash open and I curl myself up tighter and I pray for it all to stop, to end now, and I keep low, curled on the ground, and hope the early morning sun will bleach it all away.
4th June 2019
If someone’s reading this it means I’ve either been arrested or I’m dead. Either way, at least one person—you—will know what really happened to me, Zoe Grace Megan Nichols. Everything people think they know about me is a lie. The truth is this: I was never the sick one. She was.
Those are the only words I want to write. I could write them again and again and never grow tired. But this isn’t a diary for me. I’m writing this for you, whoever you are. An explanation of sorts, so you know who she really was, how she made me sick, kept me small and stunted, her eternal little girl. I need you to know that when she squeezed my hand she was controlling, not comforting, me. When she read medical journals she was looking for ways to make me sick, not heal me. She kept me in a wheelchair until my muscles became so weak they forgot how to work and all the while she called it love. I need you to know all of this.
Before I got meningitis I don’t think I’d ever seen her smile or heard her laugh. We lived each day in numb silence, as if Danny had only drowned the day before. She said it was Dad’s fault, all this sadness. She threw herself down the stairs in front of him, though she told people later he had pushed her. He called her a crazy bitch before the front door banged shut after him for the last time. Mum would only take me out of the flat to visit Danny’s grave after that. I ate sugar sandwiches I made myself. I didn’t grow. I drew faces onto my fingers and called them my friends. Then, one morning, my skin seemed to be full of red-hot ants and there was a rash, like scales creeping up my arm. I couldn’t move my neck. Everything went black and when I woke Mum was running with me boiling in her arms, screaming through the hospital, and, just like that, my life changed. Suddenly she noticed me. She stroked my hair, told me I was a good girl when I swallowed the pills she gave me. She kissed me and lied to the doctors about my symptoms, she wouldn’t let me leave my bed for weeks. I remember the nurses telling Mum how small I was for my age and praising her for her courage. I’ve often wondered if it was then that she started to lie and pretend I was three years younger. It wasn’t hard. No one would question such a devoted, loving mum. I was almost nine the first time she told me she loved me and I knew I’d do anything—even lie to the world about who I really was—to hear her say it again.
We got older, but I still didn’t grow. I knew if I tried, if I really tried, I could move my legs more than any of the doctors thought, but it’d make Mum angry so I imagined they were made of stone and stopped moving them completely. My body ended at my waist. Mum said it wasn’t my fault, but my muscles didn’t work properly. Mum was my world. I believed her and so did the specialists. They did physical exams and more tests and said I had high levels of creatine kinase in my blood, which can be a sign of muscle disease—but can also be a sign of being forced to swallow statins. But the doctors didn’t think of that. Why would they? Mum was perfect. No one questions the mother of a sick child. So instead they shook their heads, looked at the fake test results Mum got off the internet, prodded my wasted body a bit more before they said, “The most accurate diagnosis we can make is that Grace has muscular dystrophy. It’s exceptionally rare in females, but it can happen. I’m so sorry.” That night Mum made us chocolate mousse and we watched Disney films. It felt like my birthday.
I thought I was happy when we moved to Ashford. Mum told everyone I was seven. I knew it was a lie, that I was older, but I was always in my wheelchair then, shaved head, skinny, and thin as the drug addict I’d become. She called me Grace, she said it suited me better than Zoe. So Grace I became. Again, no one questioned Mum. She said being younger meant I could be her little girl for a few more years, and that changing my name helped keep Dad away, helped her keep me safe.
Years passed. I spent whole seasons in bed. She started giving me a new pill, bright pink. It made my mouth so slippery I couldn’t swallow food anymore. Dr. Parker said I had dysphagia and Mum pretended to cry when another doctor decided it would be best for a PEG tube to be fitted in my stomach. I threw one of those pink pills across the room so Mum locked me in my bedroom without anything to eat or drink. She shouted that she’d never love me as much as she loved him. After two days I took the pill and a few months later I had the operation.
It was after the PEG tube was fitted that everything starte
d to change again. People kept telling me I was going to be an adult soon, able to make my own decisions. I tried to stop them because it made Mum clench her jaw, grind up more pills. That’s when I knew that somehow I had to escape. I was slowly starting to understand: Mum was addicted to attention, and who would get more attention than the mother of two dead children? Then, at last, we wanted the same thing, Mum and me. We both wanted Grace Nichols dead.
16
Jon
It takes me a while to compose myself enough to start the drive back to Ashford. The methodical nature of driving helps calm me, softens the horrifying images I have of Meg giving Grace drugs she didn’t need. As I pull on to the highway my phone starts ringing. I shuffle it out of my pocket expecting to see Cara’s name, but it’s not Cara calling. It’s Jakey. I click the speaker button and answer.
“Hi, mate.”
“Hi, Dad.”
“Shouldn’t you be at school, Jakey?”
“Yeah, but I’ve got the dentist’s this morning, so Mum’s dropping me at school later.” His voice is monotone, the vocal equivalent of heel-dragging.
“Everything OK? You sound a bit low.”
“Auntie Emma came over last night.” Ah. Ruth’s twice-married and newly single best friend from her schooldays, who is in a determined man-hating phase. A hundred quid says I am the current target.
“Mum thought I was in bed. They’d been drinking wine and I heard them talking about you. They were saying some really shitty stuff, Dad.”
“Jakey, don’t swear.”
“You do, so does Mum and Auntie Emma, all the time.” There’s a small squeak to his voice, a reminder that adolescence is right around the corner.
“Yeah, well, if you want, when you’re in your forties, you can swear. Look, mate, I really want to talk to you face-to-face about what’s going on, so how about I come over later, after school, and we can go and get burgers at that new American diner place Mum hates.”