by Ann Morgan
She turned back and looked across the room. ‘Come on,’ she said, beckoning.
Dizziness billowing up around her like mist, Smudge crossed the floor, drawn on in spite of herself, as though the very shadows were sucking her back to the time before. Of course, she should have known the child would be outside. Where else did you go when you were on the fringes of things like that? Where had she gone? The inevitability of it all was sickening. She could not escape.
Heloise got the door open and together they stepped out onto the lawn. The walls of the garden rose up around them, cutting off the trees nearby so that there was only the blind sky. Flowers nodded in the breeze, releasing night perfume to the air, and somewhere a bird, thrown by London’s perpetual dusk, warbled on.
Heloise stumped to the edge of the lawn, where a hydrangea bush huddled close to a rhododendron, their outermost branches touching as though clasped in a conspirators’ handshake. ‘There she is,’ she said, pointing at the space in between.
Smudge peered into the hollow – straining to make out the sorry little shape, the sheen of nut-brown hair – but could see nothing. There was only the earth and a bit of rock stuck in the middle. She crouched down and looked to left and right but still there was nothing – only the leaves of the bushes and an old plastic ball that must have got left there when it rained and was slowly being absorbed into the earth.
‘Where?’ she said.
‘There,’ said Heloise, pointing at the centre of the space.
Smudge looked again and found that the rock transformed itself before her eyes into a little marble stone with some sort of pot set into it and inlaid with silver letters. Emily Margaret Davidson, read the inscription. 20 August 2012 – 29 October 2012. Briefly known, but for ever loved.
‘Oh,’ she said.
‘She got born for a while,’ said Heloise, her fingers curling the bottom of her pyjama top. ‘But then her body wouldn’t work very well and she couldn’t live with us any more. Mummy comes to see her every day but now she’s asleep all the time I have to do it.’ She stood on one leg and held her arms out to keep her balance. She looked up at Smudge. ‘When do you think Mummy will wake up?’
‘I don’t know.’ began Smudge. ‘I think the doctors say…’
‘Oh yes the doctors!’ said Heloise, losing her balance and stamping her foot down. ‘But doctors are silly poos!’
‘Mmn,’ said Smudge.
Heloise closed one eye and squinted up at her. ‘Do you think one day my body will stop working properly and then they’ll make me a stone in the ground?’
A breeze skipped over the lawn and tousled her hair.
‘That’s a big question,’ said Smudge uncertainly.
‘Anyway, you’re not going anywhere, are you?’ said Heloise, sneaking her little fingers into Smudge’s hand. ‘You’re not planning on doing something stupid like dying or going away without saying goodbye?’
‘I—’ began Smudge.
But suddenly Heloise was bouncing. ‘Come on,’ she cried. ‘Let’s go and play Dora the Explorer behind the hut!’ And she scampered off across the lawn, the light from the lamps in the park twinkling on the soles of her feet.
24
Not being you has its advantages. You can do what you like, when you like, whether you like it or not. You can stay out all night, bunk off school, steal lip balms in Boots. You can rip up your homework, laugh in teachers’ faces, smoke in the living room. You can swear whenever you want to, eat honey out of the jar with a spoon, write on the walls. You can rip up Hellie’s awards and certificates, scrawl faces in lipstick on the bathroom mirror, guzzle from Akela’s drinks cupboard until you throw up. You can rake patterns in your arm with a compass, stamp on Richard’s toys, scream until it sounds like the voice is coming from somewhere far away outside your head.
And when they come at you with their sour faces and sensible words, when they blame and cajole and bribe, when they threaten you with the consequences of what you’ve done, you can just shrug and look away. Because the truth is, it’s not you who did those things and it’s not you they’re talking to. You’re far away, floating in the sky, looking down on them all, laughing until you want to die.
Sometimes when you go to the park, you find the others in the upside-down tree. Baz and Gina and all of them. They’re a bit wary of you at first because of what happened the time before but you soon break them down. Now you can drink deeper and huff harder than all the rest of them because you just don’t care. You enjoy it, the rush, the buzz, but behind it all, you know there’s nothing there. Getting high is like the bright backdrop they put up for the school production of Kiss Me, Kate, the one with Hellie dancing centre-stage: it looks impressive, but when you crash through it, yelling and shouting swearwords, there’s nothing but the breeze-block wall and the steps that take you down to the bins.
It’s an amazing secret to discover: the power of not caring, of having nothing to lose. It opens doors, it wins respect. It means people don’t mess with you because they know that if push comes to shove and then to rolling, biting and kicking on the playground tarmac, they’ll be worrying about how they’re going to explain this to their mums while you will be thinking of nothing at all. You don’t care if you hurt them and you don’t care if they hurt you and – weird, isn’t it? – that means you hardly ever get hurt. And even if you do, it doesn’t matter, because you’re not really there. They can’t touch you.
But sometimes you want to feel something. And when you do, there’s only one place to go: you let yourself out and go down the back lane to the house where Mary used to live. And there, with the music thumping and the cigarette smoke curling up from the ashtray next to your head, amid the piles of fake IDs he cobbles together with sticky-back plastic to sell to the school kids up the precinct, you let him do it to you as hard as he likes. Now and then when you go there are women there: peroxide blondes in tight jeans teetering on little heels, drinking miniatures and flipping through his CD collection. He makes you wait round the corner while he gets rid of them, mouthing excuses about work. Then he comes and snatches your wrist, dragging you inside with all the strength of his anger at how you have power over him, at how he can’t resist. You get a flicker of triumph from that, at the way you control him. But it’s towards the end, in the final moments when the thrusting quickens and his face twists into a snarl, that the string of the balloon of who you used to be dangles near and you feel you could reach out and clutch it if only your arms weren’t pinned by your sides with his writhing.
You don’t think ahead. That’s the key. Pregnancy, injury, expulsion, death – none of these are things that could happen, right now, to you. As if falling in with the plan, your body stays childish and compact, a tightly shut bud. The consequences are somebody else’s problems, another girl’s, far down the line, broken shards for someone else to sweep up. Shards like the fragments of glass from the tumbler you smash in the kitchen – the ones you think about lacing Hellie’s plate with before carrying it through.
When you float out of your head above the world, none of this means anything. It is like events in a dull soap opera: an episodic script that does not hang together well. You watch with occasional interest, mostly boredom. Around you, people press on as though everything matters so much. You wonder where they find it in them to be so committed to the lie that every moment links to the next in a coherent manner. It is as though, at the gateway to existence, they were handed a script for being them and yours got lost in the post. Sometimes it makes you cry: standing in line in the canteen, hanging on to the bar on the bus, in the newsagent’s. You wear your tears angrily, glaring at people, defying them to ask you what’s going on.
It works. No one does. They don’t because they’re scared of you. Because you’re the girl who throws things in corridors. Because you’re the bitch who elbows her way through the lunch queue, sending people flying. Because when they look at you closely, they see there is nothing behind your eyes.
In the park, they’re scared of you too. Even being that much older. It’s the unpredictability that gets them. You never know with you. One day you might walk up to one of the boys, bold as brass, and shove your tongue down his throat then and there. You don’t even care if he’s got a girlfriend. Another day it might be sizzling a cigarette into the back of your hand for a bet. And then there’s the swing-frame incident.
That day you’re all bored. The highs feel small and nobody’s got any beer left. Even Shaz and Jon, who normally go off to have sex in the bushes, can’t be arsed doing it today. So it’s down to you to think of something to do.
‘How about we walk along the bar over the top of the swings?’ you say.
They all look at you. You can see that jerk of alarm that tells you you’ve got them.
‘Come on,’ you say. ‘What are you? Scared?’
A few of the boys bridle at that.
‘Nah,’ they mutter, rolling their shoulders like boxers before a fight. ‘We could do that. What’s the big deal?’
You go to the playground. The frame looms above you: two As linked by a pole in between. It’s very high – higher than you remember – but you don’t care. You look around the group.
‘Who wants to go first?’ you say.
They all look at each other, shift from foot to foot.
‘Pussies,’ you say, enjoying the way the word lands among them. You heard someone say it up the precinct not that long ago and the way it made everyone look the other way told you all you needed to know about its power. ‘Guess I’ll have to do it myself then. Someone help me up.’
Baz steps forward. He holds up his hands. ‘Nah, Ellie man,’ he says. ‘You don’t have to do that. We believe you.’
You don’t back down. That’s essential. You’ve learnt this. Once you commit to a thing, you see it through to the bloody, gritty end.
‘Someone help me up,’ you say again, looking around.
No one moves.
‘Fine,’ you say, cheeks flushing hot. ‘I’ll do it myself.’
And even though it’s too high for you and it hurts your knees and hands, you go and scramble up on the cross bar. Then it’s about pulling yourself up to stand on top. A flash of fear streaks through you as you glimpse the tarmac slanting way below, but you squash it ’til it burns out. It’s nothing you haven’t felt before. Chances are, it won’t kill you. Not that you mind much either way.
When you get up to the top and balance there, feet angled on the bar, you look down at them. They stand with their heads tilted up like children staring at a giant. They can see up your skirt from where they are, but nobody’s laughing and you don’t care. Let them get a good eyeful if it gives them any pleasure. Something for their wet dreams. Perverts.
You turn to face the end of the bar. Left to your own devices, you’d shuffle your way along, but you know you need to look confident with them all watching, so you take a step, slanting your foot so it splays diagonally across the bar. Then you take another and another. The end of the bar wobbles closer, jiggling with the treetops behind. But suddenly it’s all going too fast, your feet have to run to catch up, and before you know it, you are teetering and your arms are flapping like the wings of a flightless bird. The tarmac shifts and leans below you, arranging itself at a crazy angle that surges up suddenly to come and meet your face.
The next thing you know, you’re in the hospital. Gina’s there and Akela in his windcheater, and it’s the middle of the night. An Indian doctor comes in.
‘Oh dear, oh dear,’ he says, shaking his head. ‘Got ourselves in quite a little state, didn’t we?’
He peers at the side of your face.
‘Still,’ he says. ‘We’ve patched you up, although I’m afraid there will be a scar. A lesson learnt, isn’t it?’
They don’t want you to see, but you make them give you a mirror: Gina’s compact, the glass dusted with powder. They are worried that you will be upset. But when you peer in at the Frankenstein stitches running up the side of your head, wriggling round your eye like the tracks of Richard’s trainset, you feel a warm sensation flooding through you. You are pleased. Now no one will mix the two of you up ever again.
The following Saturday you’re lying on your bed, watching the afternoon sunlight shift across the ceiling and down the scratches in the yellow wallpaper covered in rosebuds where you carved FUCK! with the kitchen paring knife. Hellie’s out somewhere – a party, the cinema, some girly thing with kids from school. You weren’t invited, of course – why would you be? You’d just screw it up – have everyone backing away nervously from your idea of fun. Fuck them anyway. You don’t need them. They’re boring. They’re children. They don’t know life like you do. Besides, your head still hurts from where you whacked it on the tarmac. The stitches itch and the kids all call you Frankenstein when they think you can’t hear them at school. You don’t need that kind of aggravation.
A click and the door opens. You look up to see Mother’s face peering into the room.
‘She’s not here,’ you say.
‘I know,’ she says. ‘It’s you I’ve come to see.’
You shrug and look at the wall. Then you glance back and see her coming in, shaking her head.
‘What?’ you say, even though you know what – she’s annoyed about all the stuff flung about the room. Your clothes and make-up tumbled everywhere and cluttering up Hellie’s neat half. You don’t talk about it any more, the two of you. When Hellie gets home, she just gathers everything together and shunts it towards your bed, over the invisible line.
‘Well,’ says Mother, reaching a hand up to pat her rigid curls, as though checking they’re still there, ‘it is rather a mess in here, don’t you think?’
You look around the room and shrug again. You know your nonchalance infuriates her and that makes you glad. You like to see her tensed up, angry words poised, but holding back from letting rip for fear of what you’ll do. It feels like an achievement, like all of Hellie’s LAMDA certificates rolled up into one gold-leaf scroll and delivered to you at a public ceremony, in front of photographers clicking pictures as fast as a typewriter’s keys.
Mother sighs, picks a dirty bra off the edge of Hellie’s bed and sits down. She clears her throat.
‘How’s your head?’ she says.
You reach your hand up, touch the rail-track stitches.
‘All right,’ you say.
She nods, coughs again, turns to the side and looks at you through one eye.
‘They told Horace at the hospital that you’d been taking drugs that night and that was why you did it,’ she says. ‘Is that true?’
You frown for a moment. Then it all falls into place, like letters through the front door.
‘Oh, you mean the glue,’ you say. ‘Yeah, I suppose – if that’s what you want to call it.’
Mother shuts her eyes.
‘Drugs,’ she says with a moan, like a character on EastEnders. ‘Why on earth would you want to go and do a stupid thing like that?’
Anger prickles at the back of your neck.
‘I don’t know,’ you say, quickly. ‘Because I’m bored? Because I’m lonely? Because I hate my stupid, fucking life?’
Mother winces.
‘Don’t swear, please, Eleanor,’ she says.
‘It’s Helen,’ you say, tracing the contours of the ‘K’ carved into the wall.
Mother sighs. ‘Oh dear. Haven’t you grown out of that yet?’ she says.
You curl your fingers in under the paper sliced open by the ‘K’ and rip it from the wall. The pink plaster below looks like an open wound.
‘You don’t grow out of the truth,’ you mutter.
‘What’s that?’ says Mother, leaning in. Then she sees the wall. ‘Oh, for crying out loud,’ she says. ‘Can’t you be trusted with anything nice? You’re almost fourteen years old. You really should—’
She stops herself, sits down on your bed.
‘What I’m trying to say,’ she adds, after a
deep breath, ‘is that this can’t go on. We’re worried about you. I’m… worried about you.’
She reaches out a hand and taps your arm. You lie there, feeling the thump of her fingers, and wonder if they practised this, her and Akela, muttering between themselves this morning in the kitchen while you were still asleep.
‘This situation is not good for anyone,’ Mother continues, her voice assuming a newsreaderly tone. ‘These episodes have got to stop. Richard’s only small still and—’
You give a snort. ‘Oh yes, precious Richard,’ you say. ‘We mustn’t upset him.’
She pulls her hand away. ‘So that’s what this is about, is it?’ she says. ‘You’re jealous of Richard. Of things moving on. You don’t want me to be happy. Is that it?’
You give another snort and turn more resolutely to the wall. The paper gapes at you and you itch to grab another piece of it and rip as hard as you can.
There’s silence for a while. Then Mother swallows and puts her hand back on your shoulder. You feel her lacquered nails through the cotton of the bleeding skull T-shirt you know she hates.
‘Look,’ she says. ‘I understand things haven’t been easy. Perhaps I haven’t always been… perfect. But, you see, your father made life difficult for all of us when he did what he did, and—’
‘Killed himself, you mean,’ you say, leaping in. ‘Topped himself? Looped a tie around the banister and choked himself to death?’
It’s all in the papers in the local archive. You spent an hour going through them one afternoon when you should have been in geography. You drank in every detail there was with a sort of grim satisfaction. An artist, they’d called him. A family man.
You hear a sharp intake of breath. The nails tighten on your shoulder, digging in like claws.
‘That’s enough,’ she says. ‘I will not have you talking like that. Whatever you may feel, whatever you may know, you have to keep it to yourself and find a way to carry on with things. Because that’s what decent people do. No matter how much it hurts. We all have to do our best.’