Close Your Pretty Eyes

by Sally Nicholls

  So if Jim was going to chuck me out, why didn’t he just do it already?

  “If you’re going to chuck me out, why don’t you do it already?” I said to Jim at breakfast.

  “Who says I’m going to chuck you out?” said Jim.

  “You are,” I told him. “You are.” And I threw my bowl of Coco Pops at his face.

  I expected him to get angry. I wanted him to get angry. But he just carried on eating his porridge with milk dripping down his cheeks and into his beard.

  “You look stupid,” I told him. “You are stupid.”

  “That must be hard,” said Jim. “Living with someone you think is stupid.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “It is. You’re stupid and pathetic and horrible, and I wish I lived with Liz instead of you.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that,” said Jim, calmly. He didn’t even care.

  I picked up the milk bottle from the table and threw it at him, as hard as I could. I hoped it might break, but it didn’t. It bounced off his face and rolled across the floor, spreading milk in a white puddle. Harriet squealed, and Grace said, “Olivia!” I stared at the puddle with a mixture of glee and horror. What was going to happen now?

  “What the hell do you think you’re doing?” said Grace. “Are you insane?”

  “All right,” said Jim. He stood up. “Come on, kids, let’s let Olivia be. Harriet, bring your Coco Pops upstairs if you haven’t finished them.”

  They all stood up and went upstairs. I followed.

  “You’re such a loser, I said. “I hate you. I hate you!”

  They went into Jim’s room and shut the door. I tried banging on it, but he wouldn’t let me in.

  “Why don’t you just send me back to Fairfields?” I yelled. “I wish you would!”

  And then I went downstairs and poured the contents of the teapot into Jim’s coat pockets, just to make myself feel better.

  Somewhere close by, a baby began to cry. It wasn’t Maisy, because Maisy was still in Jim’s room with Grace.

  “Go to sleep, my baby, close your pretty eyes. . .”

  “Shut up!” I yelled. “Stupid ghost baby!”

  “Angels up above you are peeking through the skies. . .”

  I could feel Amelia in the kitchen beside me. I could feel her anger. It tasted sharp and metallic in my mouth, like blood. It pounded like blood in my ears.

  In the bedroom upstairs, Maisy started wailing.

  “Make her stop!” I yelled. I ran upstairs and started kicking the bedroom door, like they do in films.

  Maisy’s wails increased. I wanted to smash her stupid face into the wall. Would that do it? Would Amelia leave me alone if I shut Maisy up for ever? The thought excited me and terrified me at the same time. I really would be a monster. Everyone would know how awful I really was. No one would ever dare try and love me again.

  “Leave me alone!” I yelled. “Why don’t you ever just leave me alone?”

  “Great big moon is shining,” Amelia was singing in my head. “Stars begin to peep. It’s time for little babies to go to sleep.”

  BLOOD MAGIC

  I went into my room. I pulled open the drawer of my bedside cabinet, unzipped my pencil case and took out the knife, the one I’d stolen from school. I tested its edge with the tip of my finger, and the blade cut through the skin. Blood pooled on my fingertip: deep, dark, thick and red. Like a magic potion. Like a magic spell. Like witchcraft.

  Still sharp.

  I think I might be a witch.

  The knife didn’t have a sheath, so I made one for it out of a cereal box and Sellotape, the way the big girls used to at Fairfields. Then I put the knife into the pocket of my red cardigan that Liz bought me, and buttoned up the pocket so nobody would know it was there. Liz’s cardigan was big and old and woolly, and had been washed so many times it had pockets as big as the Doctor’s in Doctor Who. Nobody could see the knife from the outside, but I knew it was there.

  It made me feel safe, knowing my knife was nearby.

  If I needed it, I’d be ready.

  HOME NUMBER 7

  JACKIE

  I was five when Hayley and Jamie and I were taken into care for good. My mum had gone off, the way she did sometimes, only this time she hadn’t come back. We’d been on our own for four days. We’d eaten all the cereal, and Jamie had drunk all his milk, and now he was crying because he was hungry and I couldn’t make him stop. I was terrified that my mum really had forgotten us this time and was never coming back, but I didn’t know how to get out of the flat. The door was a big metal one with no windows, and Mum had locked us in and taken the key. I could have shouted for help, I suppose, but I was worried about what Mum would do to me if she came back and found out what I’d done.

  It was afternoon on the fourth day when someone started banging on the door. Hayley and I ran into Mum’s room and hid under the bed, but Jamie started crying, so they knew we were in there.

  “Open up!” a man shouted. “It’s the police!” Then I knew they weren’t going to go away, so I shouted through the door that we didn’t have a key and they went quiet.

  I don’t remember how they got the door open, but I do remember them coming in in big fluorescent jackets, and talking on their walkie-talkies, and looking round our dirty, half-empty flat and shaking their heads. Mum sold the furniture when she ran out of money, which was often. Then they took us to a police station. Someone took Jamie away, but Hayley and I had to wait for hours and hours and hours, in the corner of this big office. I thought we were going to prison, because Mum always said I’d go to prison if I carried on being so bad.

  Eventually, a new lady came and told us she was going to find us a nice home to stay in. I said I wanted my mum, and she told me Mum wasn’t very well and couldn’t look after us right now. I only found out years and years later that she was in prison. She hadn’t even bothered to tell the police about us being locked in the flat. They only found out because we were on her file, and one of the policemen asked where we were.

  The lady took Hayley and me in a car to a flat with a big fat lady called Jackie. I said, “We’re supposed to be with our brother,” and the lady said Jamie was staying in a different home, and we’d see him soon, but I never saw him again.

  I said, “We want our mum.”

  And Jackie said, “You’ll see your mum soon, pet,” but we didn’t. We didn’t see her again for weeks and weeks, and then it was only for about an hour.

  Jackie gave us a bath, and made us stand in the cold while she wrote down all the marks and bruises we had. It took for ever. Then she gave us some soup, which was brown and had horrible slimy bits of spaghetti floating in it. I hadn’t eaten in over a day, but I felt more sick than hungry. The soup tasted gross, but I was scared to say so in case she hit me.

  Afterwards, she made us go to bed in big T-shirts that had belonged to other kids before us, and were all thin and faded with too much washing. They made me even more frightened, because if she stole things off other kids, maybe she would steal our clothes too and we’d never get them back.

  I didn’t want to sleep in a bed on my own, so after she’d gone, I crept in with Hayley.

  “Do you think we’ll ever see Mum and Jamie again?” Hayley whispered.

  “Course we will,” I said.

  “Are we living with this lady now?” said Hayley.

  “Yes,” I said, but I was wrong. Jackie was only an emergency foster carer. We stayed with her for a few days, until another social worker came along and said we were going to live with Donna and Craig now. Just until we went back to our mum.

  SNAP

  Something changed.

  I stopped trying to be friends with Daniel and Harriet. I stopped trying to be nice to Liz. I stopped caring about what Grace said to me, and I stopped worrying about whether Jim liked me or not. I didn’t care
about any of that any more.

  I snapped at Harriet when she asked me if I wanted to play dressing-up. I shouted at Daniel when he asked me if I wanted to go out on my bike. I screamed at Grace when she had a go at me for snapping and shouting and screaming. And Jim. . .

  I was horrible to Jim. Totally, definitely, absolutely, utterly, completely horrible. I knew I was, the whole time I was being horrible, but I didn’t stop. I spat at him. I threw things in his face. I kicked and screamed and bit when he tried to get me to go into the dining room, or sit down and put my seatbelt on, or do whatever it was he wanted me to do today.

  “I hate you!” I said to him, over and over and over again. “I hate you!”

  I watched Daniel and Harriet moving further and further away from me. I watched them tense whenever I came through the door. I heard them talking about me in rooms where I wasn’t. I could feel them whispering in the spaces I left behind. It was terrifying, how easy it was to push them away.

  Jim fought, but he couldn’t win, and he knew it. I could see it in the way he looked at me, the way his back clenched when I glared at him, the way his eyes flickered towards Harriet when I came into the room. I could see it in the slump of his shoulders when he told me to go into the dining room and I just laughed at him.

  I was more powerful than thunder.

  Jim tried to talk to me about it.

  “Olivia, where did all this anger come from? What’s happened?”

  I wouldn’t answer.

  Daniel tried to talk to me too.

  “Olivia, you know Amelia’s ghost isn’t real, don’t you? It’s just the man who runs the pub teasing Harriet.”

  “Teasing!” I said. “Murder and people killing themselves, teasing!”

  “Well, stories, then. There isn’t really a ghost here. I don’t know why you hear things that aren’t there, but I don’t think it’s Amelia Dyer. Maybe it’s just . . . memories. Bad memories that won’t be forgotten.”

  But isn’t that what a ghost is?

  Liz talked to me on Saturday, in Pizza Hut, after the football.

  “I wonder if you’re acting like this because you’re worried Jim’s going to ask you to leave,” she said. Wondering Aloud was another Liz thing. Jim did it too, but only when he remembered.

  “I don’t care if he does ask me to leave,” I said. “I don’t like him anyway.”

  “He likes you,” said Liz.

  “No, he doesn’t.”

  “Why doesn’t he?”

  This was why I hated Liz sometimes.

  “Because,” I said. “Can I have potato skins?”

  “Because what?” said Liz, ignoring me. I don’t know why she kept going on at me for being rude. She was nearly as bad.

  “Because!” I shouted. I didn’t mean to shout. It came out louder than I’d expected. “You know why. Because I’m evil.”

  “Olivia,” said Liz, and I suddenly wanted to get out of there as fast as possible. “You aren’t evil. You’re hurt. Lots of bad things happened to you, and because of that you need to do things to make yourself feel safe, and that’s OK, Olivia. That’s what people who are hurt do.”

  Liz had said things like this lots of times before, but I never believed her.

  “If it’s OK,” I said, “then why did you always punish me for doing it? Why do you keep telling me I have to be different for Jim, if it’s not bad?”

  Liz laughed. “That’s a good question,” she said. “It’s because you might not be in control of your feelings, but you are in control of what you do with those feelings. All those tools we talked about – remember? I think life would be easier for you if you used them when you felt angry or scared, rather than just flipping out. I think you’d feel safer.”

  Huh. Helen kept going on about tools too. Stupid things like use your words and count to ten. They worked all right when I lived with Liz, but when I lived with Jim I was too frightened to remember them most of the time. When you’re frightened, you don’t have time to think Is Daniel really saying he hates me, or does he just want to read his book? You think Daniel hates me! and then you panic.

  “So if I don’t use my tools, am I bad?” I said.

  “No,” said Liz. “You’re just scared. Everyone gets scared. When you’re scared you make mistakes. And what I try to do is to help you find better ways of dealing with that.”

  “I don’t make mistakes!” I said, furiously. I hated the smug way she said that, like I was just some stupid kid getting things wrong. “I do bad things on purpose. Because I want to.”

  “Well, then you’re someone who does bad things,” said Liz. “That doesn’t make you a bad person. Actions are bad, but people are always more complicated.”

  Sometimes Liz just talked nonsense. I hated it, because I wanted her to protect me, and how could she do that when she was so wrong?

  “There are bad people,” I said. “There are. Evil people. Amelia’s evil. Violet’s evil. So’s—” I stopped. I wasn’t sure if my mum was evil or not. I loved my mum. “I’m evil,” I said instead.

  “Well, I know that’s not true,” said Liz. She ruffled my hair. I pulled away.

  “Listen,” she said. “Violet did some evil things. Things which should never have happened to you. But . . . she’s not the things she did. She’s a human being. Maybe she was ill. Maybe she was hurt herself. Look, I know you don’t want to hear this, but it’s important that you try. Jim likes you. He wants you in his family. And Daniel and Harriet like you too, and they want you to be their sister. I know it’s hard for you to believe, but it’s true. But, Olivia, Jim can’t keep you in his house if it’s not safe for Harriet and Maisy. That doesn’t mean you’re a bad person. It means Jim has to look out for all the kids in his house. OK?”

  “But it’s not me,” I wailed. “It’s Amelia.”

  She’s trying to make me hurt Maisy. I don’t want to, but I don’t know how else to get her to leave me alone.

  I wanted to say the words, but I couldn’t. They really would chuck me out if I said that.

  Liz waited. Then, when she could see I wasn’t going to say anything else, she sighed. It was an Olivia’s-being-stupid-and-annoying sigh.

  “Look,” she said. “Let’s not fight. I love you. And I think you’re a wonderful girl, and I’m sorry you’re finding things so hard right now.”

  I hated it when people gave me stupid lying compliments like that. Hi, Olivia, just wanted to tell you that the guy who’s supposed to be your dad thinks you’re so evil he doesn’t want you in the same house as his family. But don’t forget what a great kid you are! And I hated, hated, hated that Liz was doing it worst of anybody, because now she was lying to me like everybody else.

  “Shut up!” I shouted. “Shut up, shut up!” And I tipped the table up and over, spilling everything on to the floor with a clatter, clash, shatter, crash, smash.

  SOMETHING TO HURT

  When I first came to live with Jim, I hated my bedroom. But somehow – over the six months I’d lived there – it had become a place that belonged to me. The bed had my old red-and-blue-striped duvet cover from Liz’s on it, and a hollow at the end where Zig-Zag liked to sleep in the afternoons. The bare notice board had gradually been filled up. There was a photo of me and Liz by a canal, another photo of me and Daniel and Harriet in our wedding clothes, eating wedding cake, and a picture of Hayley that Jim had found and stuck up when he finally unpacked my bags. Other things had found their way up there too: a postcard from Liz on holiday on the Isle of Man, one of Daniel’s drawings of me as Wolverine, two Harriet drawings of us as zombies, and loads of stuff Harriet had presented me with over the last half year – a lanyard, two friendship bracelets, and a flower and a monkey made out of Hama beads. There was a real sheep’s skull that Daniel and I had found in a field, and a pile of stones and pine cones on the windowsill which I certainly wouldn�
��t be allowed to take with me when I left.

  There were big things too; things that had drifted in from the rest of the house, like Daniel’s rounders bat and a rug Jim had let me take from one of the empty bedrooms. There was the big Dalek poster Liz gave me, and the stack of books we’d been reading, piled up on the bedside table. There was even an Asterix poster Jim had found rolled up in the attic and said I could have, though I wasn’t sure if that was for always or just while I stayed here. Usually when I moved house, I had to leave things behind. Foster parents were forever chucking stuff out, or telling me to leave toys I’d grown out of for the other kids. If I was in charge, I’d never throw anything away, ever.

  After I came home from seeing Liz, I sat on my bed and looked around my room. It made me edgy, how home-like it was starting to look. It made me afraid. It made me restless. I picked up the rounders bat and went into the corridor, looking for something to hurt.

  “Olivia,” Harriet said.

  Harriet was standing in the doorway of her bedroom, watching me. Her dark little face was screwed up with something I couldn’t read. Perfect Harriet. I wanted to smash her perfect little face in.

  “Don’t you want to be in our family any more?” she said.

  I stared at her. Don’t you want to be in our family? Of course I wanted to be in her family. Her family was brilliant. She was brilliant. I didn’t just want her to be my sister, I wanted to be her. That’s how brilliant she was.

  “Your dad hates me,” I said. “So I’m not in your family anyway.”

  Harriet chewed on her lip. “I thought you liked me,” she said.

  “Well, I don’t,” I said. “You’re stupid and pathetic. I wish I’d never come here.”

  Harriet backed into her room.

  “I thought you liked it here,” she said.