‘Oh no!’ her mum had screeched, rattling the handle and pushing on the door with the flat of her palm, as if this might encourage it to miraculously spring open. ‘I’ll have to go and get Maura’s Dave.’ She snickered. ‘I never thought having a friend whose bloke had been inside for breaking and entering would be so useful!’
‘What’s breaking and entering?’ Anna had asked.
Her mum had stared at her, blankly. ‘You haven’t got any shoes on!’ she said, pointing out the obvious.
Anna had wiggled her toes against the stained, cracked concrete, feeling the cold seep through her thin socks.
‘Right, hop on!’ her mum commanded, gesturing at her own feet. Anna had duly hopped on: facing her mum and placing her feet on top of her slippers, they gripped each other’s forearms. It was in this dance pose that they sidestepped down the street, laughing until tears rolled down their cheeks, ignoring the quizzical looks of people at the bus stop. Anna knew she’d never be as happy as she had been that afternoon, walking all the way to Maura’s house, clinging on to her mum for dear life and giggling fit to burst.
‘You might want to go up and see your room,’ her aunt said, nodding towards the ceiling as she shrugged off her wool coat. ‘Your cousin will be back from youth club soon. Funny how you’ve never met.’
Anna wasn’t sure how she was expected to respond. She trod the open stairs slowly in her stockinged feet, taking in the magnolia-painted woodchip wallpaper and the three small prints that hung symmetrically at the top of the stairs, pictures of ladies in crinolines each holding a lacy parasol at a different jaunty angle.
Uncle Alan had placed her heavy case on the end of a single bed in a small room at the top of the stairs. The bed was narrow but fancy, covered in a lacy counterpane on top of a pink duvet; a matching valance skirted the carpet.
‘Shall I close the curtains?’ he asked as he reached up towards the abundance of peach-coloured faux water silk that hung at the window.
‘No!’ She reached out her hand, aware that she had raised her voice. ‘I... I don’t like the dark and I don’t like small spaces. I like a breeze.’ She whispered the last few words, curling her hand against her chest, seeing a burst of anxiety in her uncle’s eyes.
‘Righty ho.’ He coughed. ‘We’ll have supper and then we can help you unpack, how does that sound?’ He pulled a white handkerchief from the pocket of his brown suit trousers and dabbed at his red face.
‘Thank you,’ she managed, her voice no more than a squeak as she dug deep and tried to mask the thoughts that raged. I don’t want to unpack because that means I’m staying here and I don’t want to stay here!
‘Ah, that’s a good girl!’ He smiled. ‘You get settled, love, make yourself at home, and I’ll give you a shout when supper’s ready. Jordan is looking forward to meeting you. He’s a good lad.’ He walked towards the door. ‘And just for the record, Mr Dickinson takes minutes in meetings about extended opening hours for pubs or whether someone can close a road for a street party or not. The way your aunt speaks about him, you’d think he works for MI6. Still, I expect you’re not really interested in all that right now.’
Anna waited until he’d left the room before sitting in the small space on the bed next to her suitcase. She knotted her fingers through the gaps in the lace counterpane and listened to the muffled stream of conversation in the kitchen below. She couldn’t make out any words, which was probably just as well.
The room was sparsely furnished, apart from a pink velour chair and a white melamine dressing table placed between two built-in wardrobes on the opposite wall. The wardrobe handles and mirror frame were all picked out in gold.
‘What would you say about this room, Joe?’
‘Looks like a granny room. Probably smells of piss!’
‘I miss you,’ she whispered, as fresh tears fell. ‘I don’t want to stay here. I don’t like Aunt Lizzie and I don’t like this house. I want to go back to London.’
She laid her hand on the suitcase, knowing her mum must have touched the exact same spot at some point.
She leant back against the wall and sobbed quietly.
Pressing her palms against her forehead, she screwed her eyes shut, as if trying to hold her thoughts together. ‘How could you do this to me, Joe? You knew that I was already as sad as I could be, and now...’ She gasped again, trying to steady her breathing. ‘I love you and I miss you, but I am mad at you too. You were all I had, Joe. You were everything, my brother.’
‘Tea in ten minutes!’ her aunt called up the stairs.
Anna wiped her eyes and sat up straight. She unzipped the suitcase and began rifling frantically through her clothes and possessions to find the thing she was looking for. With a sigh of relief she placed her hands on the shiny surface of her notebook. She held it briefly to her chest, before gripping the pen. Raising her knees, she rested the book on them.
Hello Fifi and Fox,
I was sitting on my bed thinking about you, which I haven’t done for a while now. This is going to sound weird, but you are all I have now.
I like that no one knows about you apart from me and Mum. It’s like even though she isn’t here, you are still our secret thing.
I wanted to tell you that you will never have to worry about anything because I will always be there for you to talk to about anything that is worrying you.
And if I can’t be there for you to talk to, then I will make sure there is someone else for you to talk to because when there is no one to talk to it can make you feel very lonely. You can talk to each other or I will find someone that will listen to you.
Like if you don’t like sweetcorn there will be someone you can tell so you don’t have to eat it and pritend you do.
I am so sad that my whole body hurts. My whole body.
I told you long ago that you would not meet my mummy Karen and now you will not meet my brother Joe, the one I told you about, my big brother.
He died too.
But don’t worry about this.
Most people don’t die and you will be fine.
When I am older I will teach you the alphabet game, it really helps, and I will take you to the seaside and you can eat as much ice cream as you want and I won’t even mind. And when you come home I won’t make you take your shoes off in the hall and I won’t make you eat sweetcorn if you don’t like it.
And make sure you don’t take drugs. Don’t ever take drugs. Please don’t do that. I will make everything better for you.
Anna Cole
Anna sat back and thought of the million ways Joe had made life better for her when he was having one of his good days. He used to come home bouncing with energy and optimism and present her with a box full of goodies – mismatched odds and ends of used make-up, a white embroidered lavender bag. Best of all had been the music box, covered in red leather and with a worn brass lock. When she lifted the lid, a skinny ballerina with a melted face had popped up on a tiny spring. She was wearing a white net tutu and had a painted-on bodice. She pirouetted on a little stick to the sound of ‘Für Elise’.
That music box... He’d wanted to get rid of it, but she’d pleaded with him. ‘Please, Joe! Please can I keep it!’
Her tears came again.
She made herself look round the room to distract herself.
L... lamp.
M... mirror.
N... nightstand.
O... ornament.
P... pillow.
Qu... qu...
‘Anna, your tea’s ready! Ham, egg and chips, don’t let it go cold now!’
She jumped at the sound of her aunt’s yell and stood tall, trying to stem her sobs. She concentrated on breathing in a normal rhythm, ignoring the way her heart thudded in her ears.
Quiet.
Quiet – apart from Aunt Lizzie’s shouts. It’s so quiet – no street noise, no buses. I don’t want to feel this sad, it makes me tired all the time. I don’t want to go and have tea with them. I don’t want to meet Jordan.
>
I wonder how long I can be here before something cracks.
4
It was a rare hot day in late May and summer was peeping its head around the corner. Anna lay on her front, stretched out on the square of lawn in the back garden. She’d hitched up her burgundy school skirt so that the sun could kiss the backs of her legs, and she’d looped her shirt under her bra so her midriff could get the same treatment. She’d been at her aunt’s house for just over a year now, but it was still a novelty to have access to an outside space that wasn’t a busy street. She thought of all the things she and her mum would have done had this been available to them during her childhood. She wondered how different her life might have been if Lizzie had been the sister that had followed her unreliable boyfriend to London; if Lizzie had fallen in love with Michael the cabbie who was married to someone else; if Lizzie had had to watch helplessly as her son got drawn further into his all-consuming drug addiction.
We’d have had a paddling pool for sure and we would have had picnics whenever we wanted to. I’d have played catch with Joe and we would have built things like forts or castles out of boxes... I know you would have planted flowers, Mum, and I would have picked some for you when they were tall and put them in a jug on the kitchen table. We could even have had a party out here! That would have been so cool. But best of all, I’d have liked you to have had what you wanted: a garden to look out over, with big windows thrown open to let in the scent of the flowers.
‘This is the life!’ Jordan settled back in his deckchair. ‘I think it’s the ultimate decadence, having the time to lie in the sun and crisp up, don’t you?’
Anna gave some thought to what represented ultimate decadence to her. The answer came quickly. Ice cubes. Ice cubes were for her what glamorous characters on TV had in their drinks and what wealthy people on holidays abroad chucked into their cocktails. She pictured the loud, rattly fridge in their Honor Oak Park flat, with its rusting freezer compartment in the top that was just big enough for a packet of fish fingers and a couple of ice pops. To have the room for a tray of ice cubes would have been quite something. Imagine using up that space and energy just for a little cube to make your drink cooler – what a thing!
‘Look at you, smiling away to yourself! What are you thinking about, Toots?’ Jordan reclined in the deckchair, blowing smoke rings up into the sky from between lips coated in a sticky pale pink gloss.
‘You should stop smoking – it’s bad for you.’ She squinted at him, evading the question, still finding it hard to share her private thoughts on such personal matters. She scratched her head with the end of her pencil, then went back to making notes in her geography textbook.
‘And you should start!’ he replied drily, adjusting the foil-covered flap of cardboard that he was holding in place under his chin. ‘It’ll make you look cool and interesting.’
She eyed the foil contraption. ‘Remind me why you’re doing that again?’
‘It reflects the sun’s rays so that I get a tan under here as well as everywhere else.’ He ran the backs of his long fingers under his chin. ‘And just to be doubly sure of a good result, I’ve given my face a little coating of cooking oil.’
Anna rolled her eyes and smiled at him. ‘Jordan, you need to revise. You’re in the middle of your O levels.’
‘Darling, I couldn’t give a shit about them. As soon as I’ve saved enough, I’m getting the hell out of here and going to New York, where I shall be discovered, and the next time you see me it will be with my name in lights on Broadway.’ He stretched his arm skywards, sliding it up against his cheek, bending his fingers and tilting his head, as though he had just finished a dance number.
‘It’s what they are going to discover that bothers me,’ she quipped.
Jordan took a deep drag on his cigarette and blew the smoke in her direction.
‘Urgh!’ She flapped her hand in front of her face. ‘Disgusting!’
‘What are you revising anyway?’ he asked.
She ran her fingers over the text. ‘I’m learning about how the earth’s crust, its shell, is divided into tectonic plates and how they have shifted over the last two hundred and fifty million years to form continents and mountains. Isn’t that incredible? Two hundred and fifty million years...’ she whispered. ‘And humans have only been here for a blip of time in comparison. We are so insignificant.’
‘Speak for yourself.’ He giggled.
‘I think I already know that our little lives don’t mean much, not in the great scheme of things.’ She chewed the end of her pencil.
Jordan lowered his foil and sat up in the chair. ‘Because you’ve lost people you love.’ His eyes misted.
Anna nodded, paying little heed to her cousin, who was of an emotional temperament. He cried when he heard Barbra Streisand sing and had sobbed so loudly in the cinema when they’d snuck in to see An Officer and a Gentleman that an usher had come over and shone a torch in their faces to see if he required any assistance. She had felt acutely embarrassed, knowing this was code for ‘pipe down’. Jordan, however, had thanked the usher for her kindness and taken the proffered tissue.
‘I can’t imagine what you’ve been through, Toots. You know I love you, don’t you?’
‘I do. Now please shut up so I can read this,’ she answered flatly, rereading the paragraph in her book. She was well used to his effusive outpourings of love and devotion.
‘But I also admire you.’
‘Jord, thank you, but I need to revise and so do you! Your mum will flip out if you don’t get the grades you need for college.’
‘I’m not going to college. I’ve told you – I’m going to New York!’
‘I know that...’ She looked up at him. ‘And you know that, but you still haven’t told your parents. And so why not hedge your bets and do a bit of revision?’
‘You are such a nag,’ he yelled.
‘I nag because I care.’ She smiled at him.
‘You know, you might be a bit less judgemental if you did smoke and drink.’
‘Thank you, for that.’ She twitched her nose at the acrid smoke that lingered, recalling the scent of Joe, his body swilling with chemicals and alcohol. She often wondered why her brother had chosen that path, whether he was just built that way, whether he was subconsciously trying to replicate the life of his deadbeat dad. It got her thinking about her own dad and whether she might be unknowingly emulating some of his behaviours and choices. Did Michael have a fascination for the alphabet, for example?
Probably not, you weirdo.
‘Anyway, you can talk!’ Jordan sniped. ‘Or rather, you can’t talk. You really shouldn’t let my mum boss you around. I worry, Anna, that if you don’t find your voice, someone else will always speak for you, and then you won’t ever change their opinion or let them know the true you and that would be a tragic waste. You have a lot of good things to say.’
She considered this truth, but, yet again, felt a distinct lack of desire to tell her cousin just how powerless she felt. Yes, she was fond of him, grateful for his friendship, but this was not her family home. Her aunt and uncle felt like caricatures of people she only vaguely recognised. She had nothing in common with them.
Even after a year of being there, everything still felt temporary, from her old-lady bedroom to the school she attended, and she suspected it always would. She was alone, even in a crowd, bent out of shape by what she’d been through, with a deep ache in her chest and a veneer of sadness coating even the most positive of experiences.
She knew her presence in the house made everyone tense. Just the previous week she’d overheard her aunt say exactly that – and more. She’d been tiptoeing down the stairs when she heard her aunt and uncle talking in the kitchen.
‘I don’t know what I was thinking,’ her aunt said. ‘I wish we hadn’t bothered. I can’t stand even knowing that she’s up there over our heads, cluttering up my lovely spare room.’
Anna had immediately turned back up the stairs and faced the l
anding. But if her aunt didn’t want her in her bedroom... She turned and faced downstairs again. She’d only be in the way if she went into the kitchen, plus it would mean having to face her aunt. For a full minute, Anna turned this way and that, at a loss what to do, tears fogging her vision. Absolutely no one wanted her and there was absolutely nowhere she wanted to be. She was trapped.
The doctor had asked if she was depressed. She had stared at him. Yes, she was depressed! She began each new day with tears and an overwhelming feeling of sadness. But the despair that engulfed her was so much a part of her now that it had become her normal.
Did she want drugs, the GP had asked, reaching for the prescription pad, pen poised before she’d had time to respond.
She had actually let a snort of laughter leave her lips. ‘Drugs? No, thank you. I’ll pass.’
Anna had learnt that the only way to survive without her mum and her brother was to try not to think about them. But this brought wave after wave of guilt when they sneak into her thoughts, as if compartmentalising her grief was somehow cheating. She tried to focus on her school work, and she kept herself to herself. There was an unspoken agreement with her classmates that they would ignore her, the new girl, and she would do the same to them; it was far easier to remain aloof than to try and break into the long-established friendship groups. Besides, being openly friendly would only invite questions about where she’d come from and why. God forbid that any of them should try and make her their project.
The worst moments were when she woke in the middle of the night and for a split second didn’t know where she was. The bedding and the smell of the room were still unfamiliar and her first thoughts were always to call for her mum and then Joe. When realisation hit that they were gone, her grief would suffocate her, squeezing so tightly she feared she might stop breathing. ‘I miss you, Mummy. I miss you so much,’ she would whisper into her pillow, crying as silently as she could for fear of waking her aunt and uncle, who slept down the hallway on a squeaky four-foot-six divan.
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