On My Life

by Angela Clarke

  ‘Fucking hell,’ says Ness.

  ‘Communication from inside the prison, allegedly from inmates who have access to mobile phones, state that prisoners are unhappy with recent events at the institution, following one inmate taking her own life.’ The newsreader’s words sting, despite the surreal aspect of watching her speak about us.

  What would I think if I was watching this at home? I try to remember what I’d thought when I’d seen that footage before. It would be karmic if I’d judged those rampaging through wings, but I don’t remember feeling that. I don’t remember feeling anything. It hadn’t concerned me. It hadn’t had anything to do with my life. And now here Ness and I are, trapped, as it unfolds around us. While others, watching at home, perhaps tut momentarily, before returning to their own lives. What would Judith and David think if they saw this? Would they watch, aghast, as they ate their lunch at the kitchen table? Would they worry about me, or the baby?

  As if on cue, my stomach tenses. As if my body knows it should hold on tight to its precious cargo. I rub it with my palm. Getting worked up won’t help.

  The news has moved on to cover an MP visiting a local factory.

  ‘They didn’t say there are innocent people in here!’ Ness’s voice is panicked.

  Innocent? Then what am I? ‘I’m not the only one with a telly – maybe they don’t want to inform the prisoners. So they don’t think they have hostages,’ I stammer.

  ‘Fucking hell.’ Ness exhales again. ‘Or they don’t know that I’m stuck in here.’

  ‘They must – there’s a check-in, right? You have to show your passport?’ Right. That has to be right.

  Help has to be coming.

  Has to be.

  Now

  I make tea. Because what else do you do in a crisis? We’re not going anywhere.

  We sit on the bed in the middle of the room, sipping quietly. I feel calmer. Ness has stopped fighting it too. It’s a comfortable silence. The type you can only share with people you love. The noise of the riot outside is just flickering background shouts and chants.

  ‘If I have to be locked inside a prison protest, I wouldn’t want to be with anyone else,’ I say.

  Ness gives half a laugh. ‘Trust us.’

  The absurdity of it. ‘It’s just like when we used to barricade out Carl,’ I say.

  ‘Yeah, except I’d rather take my chance with this lot than him.’ She grins.

  ‘I wonder what happened to him?’ Did he sober up? Did he know how much he scared us as kids? He wasn’t nice, he would smash things up, sure, but I wonder if we overreacted. If we liked our own secret space that he and Mum couldn’t enter.

  ‘He’s dead.’ Ness tilts her head to crick her neck.

  She must know through the estate grapevine. I feel a stupid pang for having missed out on that. I kept telling myself I was too busy to get back there. Telling others. Too busy for a takeaway. Too busy for drinks. I was so focused on my job, my new life, and then Robert, Emily. Too practised at that fob-off. I’d love to but I’m booked then. Let’s get together soon though. I thought I’d found new friends, my people, the ones who truly got me in the way my mates from the block never could. But where are my new friends now? I’ve had no contact from Sally, from Becky, from Deb, from any of them. I should have made more effort with my old friends. What I’d give for a mug of wine on the sofa and a takeaway chippie with them now. I’m sad even for Carl, not to know that he’d passed on. He wasn’t so very different from Mum. ‘Poor man.’

  Ness jumps up. Plants her plastic cup firmly on the cabinet. ‘He was an evil bastard.’

  I blink. Shocked. ‘It wasn’t him though, was it? It was the drugs. It messed him up.’

  ‘Ones like that are messed up already.’ Ness’s words have the air of finality. This is not a debatable point. I don’t want to upset her again. I need her to stay calm.

  ‘Course,’ I say.

  ‘You were just a kid,’ she says. ‘You didn’t know half of what he did.’

  ‘Sure.’ I just want her to sit down. Calm down. I saw more than she knew. More than she likes to admit. Ness has always seen herself as my protector, but she was just a kid too. It’s just having seen people in here, having known them, I can see how things could go wrong. We both know what drugs do to people. The hunger that overpowers everything else, even love for others. But it’s not their fault. It’s not Mum’s, or Erica’s, or anyone else’s. Some people have the addiction gene. But it’s not really them behaving like that. They’re a puppet to their own addiction.

  ‘Life is wasted on some people!’ Ness spits.

  Did Carl OD? More than possible.

  Ness flops down onto the bed, her anger drained. She scrubs at the floor with the toe of her trainer. And for a moment we listen to the squeak of the rubber against the concrete.

  Without looking up, Ness says: ‘Do you think about her much – Emily?’ And I realise why she’s angry. What this is about. Carl gambled his own life with drugs, Emily was an innocent.

  I don’t think I’ll ever be able to go swimming again. The smell of chlorine on her hair. It’s too evocative. Too hard. ‘Always,’ I manage.

  I squeeze her hand. She gives half a smile, the one I recognise so well, the one we all give when we’re trying to be brave. Recollections peek like sun rays through the grey clouds of loss. One day, I hope the clouds will fade and we’ll be left only with the happy warmth of our memories. I cling to that.

  ‘I just keep thinking of her in her pink hoodie.’ A tear slides down her cheek. Ness swipes at it with the back of her hand. ‘Stupid, huh?’ She shakes herself, as if she can cast off the weight of the loss.

  My breath stops somewhere in my throat. The whole room shifts. A shard of ice slots into the remaining gap of the puzzle.

  Ness, oblivious, rolls her shoulders, shakes her arms, pushes herself up off the bed, starts to pace.

  Inside of me something is screaming. Something is shrieking. I can’t speak. I feel like everything’s tilted and I’m sliding, falling.

  ‘You got any more tea bags?’ Ness picks up the kettle and sniffs it.

  She looks at me, waiting for an answer. My body gives an involuntary shudder. This can’t be right. It’s the stress. The situation. The baby.

  Peeking out from under the notes on evidence against me is the photo of Emily I tore from the newspaper.

  Ness follows my gaze, the kettle still in her hand. It must show on my face. I feel like it’s carved into my chest. Illuminating my whole body. I see it flicker behind her eyes.

  She knows.

  Now

  In her pink hoodie. Emily didn’t have a pink hoodie. She didn’t wear pink: scorned it as too girly. I hadn’t really thought of it at the time. There were so many more important things, so many more terrible things, that had filled my head. But it was there, in the background of that awful memory, the one that replays in my nightmares: Emily was wearing a pastel-pink hoodie over her uniform. I’d never seen it before. We hadn’t bought it for her. It must have been new.

  The belt contracts around my waist and I reach for the wall. Am I steadying myself from the pain or the realisation? The hoodie must have been a birthday present from her friends. I wish I could see it now, examine it. Could I be wrong?

  I exhale slowly.

  ‘You okay?’ Ness is still holding the kettle. Ness. My big sister. The one who has always been there for me. The one who protected me when we were growing up.

  I need time to think. ‘Fine.’

  Ness fills the kettle at the sink. There has to be an explanation.

  Think about the hoodie. What can you remember of it? There’d been a symbol on the breast, a logo, the one Emily and Phoebe had designed for their Tumble Tuck band. Emily didn’t wear pink, but Phoebe did. It must have been a gift from Phoebe for her birthday. Could Phoebe have anything to do with what happened? No, she’s a child. That’s a crazy thing to think. This is crazy. My mind claws for answers.

  Ness shuts the
kettle lid with a snap, like a bubble bursting. ‘You sure you’re feeling all right?’

  A pit opens inside my stomach, me and my baby teetering on the edge of it. About to be dragged down. There has to be a reason. A simple explanation.

  She walks back round the room, plugs the kettle in. Flicks the switch.

  ‘How did you know her hoodie was pink?’ I wait for Ness’s response. The sentence that will clear all this up. I’m still gripping the wall.

  ‘What?’ Ness looks confused. The water in the kettle starts to bubble.

  ‘How did you know Emily’s hoodie was pink?’ I force the words out. Try for a laugh. ‘It was new. It must have been a present.’

  ‘Pink, purple, whatever – it was just an expression.’ Ness looks at the window. ‘They could pull these bars out with that helicopter. Get a ladder up.’

  My mouth runs dry. Ness is my sister. We survived our childhood together, we grew up together, she practically raised me when Mum couldn’t. I know that when she lies, her right-hand little finger thrums. It’s a small and tiny tell, as if she can control every part of her except there. As if the physical pressure of lying has to escape somewhere, like steam rattling a saucepan lid.

  And her little finger is shaking.

  Bile twists in my stomach. I feel it slosh round my baby. I imagine the small child pushing it away. I run to retch over the toilet.

  ‘Jesus!’ Ness shrieks.

  Her hand is rubbing my back. I feel myself stiffen. She’s lying. Lying about Emily’s hoodie.

  I pull at my hair, as if I might free the pressure of my own thoughts.

  Ness, mistaking it for pain, starts to make soothing sounds. I gag again. Ness knew where we kept the spare key. What the alarm code was. She could get into the house.

  There must be an explanation. I’m about to ask, when a contraction squeezes across my stomach. The strength of this one turning my inner pain into a moan.

  ‘Was that a contraction? It’s too early, isn’t it? Breathe.’ She puts a hand on my shoulder.

  Her touch scalds my skin. I grit my teeth as the cramp radiates over my stomach. ‘You know what Emily was wearing when she was killed. You were there.’ I need her to explain. To make this all right.

  Ness hesitates. What does she know? What did she see? Robert flashes through my mind.

  ‘Jenna, you’ve got to understand, I . . . I didn’t mean for any of this to happen.’

  Happen. Happen?

  She starts to snivel.

  She has to explain. Tell me she saw someone else. Tell me it wasn’t her. I grab her shoulders and shake her. ‘What did you do?’

  ‘It was an accident.’ She looks into my eyes. ‘I didn’t mean to hurt her.’

  I pull the world into me, as everything collapses like a black hole. All the oxygen gone. My star has died. I can’t breathe.

  Ness reaches for me.

  ‘Don’t touch me!’ I turn to run but there’s nowhere to go. I back me and my bump against the wall. I need to be away from her.

  ‘Jenna, you’ve got to listen to me. It was an accident. She went for me, she wouldn’t stop screaming.’ Ness comes toward me.

  This can’t be happening. This can’t be real. Memories tumble in my head, like Emily turning in the pool. ‘Why would she do that? You got on. She looked up to you!’

  ‘She just went crazy.’ Ness’s eyes are like a frightened animal’s. ‘She was kicking and punching me. It was self-defence. I just grabbed for the nearest thing to defend myself!’

  ‘A knife! You grabbed a knife? You stabbed her, Ness. Is that what you’re saying? You did this?’ I think of the blood in the kitchen. Emily slumped on the floor. ‘Why were you there? Why did she hit you?’ My mind feels like it’s stuttering, misfiring, like it can’t keep up. Ness killed Emily. She was there . . . With the blood. In our house. Our home. The contraction starts from low down and squeezes up over my stomach like it’s a tube of toothpaste. The power of it bends me forwards. Stops the words. All I can do is try and breathe.

  ‘You okay? Is it the baby?’ Ness steps toward me.

  It’s too early. I’m only eight months gone. I smack her hand away. Robert’s blood was in the kitchen. Robert was there—

  A flash of light interrupts my thoughts.

  A lighter flares through the door hatch. The pile of blankets on the mesh net high now, like a mound. A bonfire.

  No. Annie is holding a lit rolled newspaper.

  ‘Oh my god.’ Ness is breathless beside me.

  Annie lets the flaming newspaper fall. It turns in the air, and drops onto the blankets below.

  My throat closes. Fire. It ripped through the visitors’ hall in minutes.

  ‘No! We’re locked in!’ The door is cold, immovable. It barely rattles under my fist.

  The grey blankets billow, catch. Flames burrow down into the rest. My whole body convulses, like my baby is hammering her fist against the inside of me, desperate for us both to get out.

  People run from their cells. A woman passes our door in a blur.

  ‘Help! Let us out!’ Ness hammers against the door.

  Us. Emily. I didn’t mean to hurt her.

  As the smoke curls its sickly perfume under the cell door I could just close my eyes on it all. Don’t find out. Don’t ask. Don’t face the horror. Let it burn. Let it all burn.

  My stomach clenches. Hardens under my skin. A rock. My daughter screams at me to move. Run. Fight. For Robert. For Emily. For her.

  I grab a book and bang it against the door. ‘Please! Someone help! I’m pregnant!’ I scream.

  Through the smoke, flames dance among the remnants of the blankets, slithering down onto the piled debris like a snake uncoiling.

  The landing’s empty. Everyone’s fled to the roof. No one can hear us.

  No one is coming.

  Now

  ‘We’re going to die.’ Ness sounds frightened, small.

  I want to hug her. I want to punch her. ‘What were you doing at my house?’ I register the taste of tears, salty and smoky.

  Ness runs at the wall, jumps, catches hold of the windowsill. Tries to scrabble up. But there’s no escape. Neither of us can fit through the bars. ‘Help me!’ she screams.

  Me. Me! How can she think of herself now? After what she’s confessed? I grab her waistband and pull her back. She careens backwards into the bed. The room looks shaken. Everything turned upside down. Everything broken. I’m coughing. My eyes watering. Ness looks fearful, then angry. She jumps up. Her fingers thrusting into my tender chest.

  ‘This is your fault,’ she screams. ‘Why couldn’t you let me have one good thing?’

  I know Ness gets angry. She can be a bit selfish but this? Not this. ‘Why did she hit you? You must have done something.’ I push her. And again. Hard. ‘What did you do?’

  I don’t see the backhand coming. Perhaps it’s the smoke, or the fact that I never believed Ness would actually hurt me.

  The impact is sudden. An explosion against my cheekbone. My centre of balance, wriggling somewhere new and unsure in my stomach, tilts me sideways. As I fall, I realise I didn’t think this was real until now. I was wrong.

  Her trainer comes toward my face. I deaden the blow with my arms. I feel the bone flex, chip, maybe snap. A sickening twist inside of me.

  ‘You always get everything! Everything!’ Ness is screaming.

  Spittle rains down on me, breaking the tightening film of smoke on my skin.

  ‘The house! The money! The fancy fucking job! You got away!’

  Anger fires me and my voice up. ‘I’ve worked hard for what I’ve got. For where I am!’

  ‘You had it easy,’ she spits. ‘I took the hits. I protected you.’

  We were both on the Orchard as kids. We both went through stuff with Mum. ‘I was there too.’

  ‘You were there? You were there!’ Hate swirls round her with the smoke, making me breathless. ‘What do you know?’

  What do I know? The ridiculousness of
it. The childish teenage idiocy. I know what it’s like to be locked in a prison. ‘I know what it’s like to fear for my and my baby’s life.’ A contraction rips through me again. It’s too soon. I pant in smoke. Cough.

  She shakes her head. Her eyes look dead. She’s no longer shouting. ‘So do I.’

  What? She has lost her mind. It’s a breakdown. A psychotic episode.

  ‘I killed my baby.’ Ness’s words are flat.

  I can’t breathe. ‘What baby?’

  ‘Carl’s.’

  The name comes at me from the side. In the wrong place, the wrong time. Carl who we barricaded the door against. Carl who is dead from an overdose. ‘Mum’s boyfriend?’

  ‘He forced me.’ Her words are without emotion. Fact.

  Rape. No. It’s like my history is being broken down and re-shuffled around me. A baby. ‘When?’

  ‘You want details?’ She looks up, incredulous.

  No. Yes. I want this to stop. To go back to this morning when I understood the world. When things made sense.

  A tear cuts through the grime on her face, and falls onto the dirty floor. ‘It was the first time they were together.’

  She means when he was with Mum. But she would have been . . . my mind is slowed by the smoke. The shock. Twelve. She would have been twelve. I was six. I dry heave.

  ‘Mum was out cold. You were asleep in your bedroom. I didn’t want you to wake up. Didn’t want you to see. Didn’t want you to be next.’

  I cover my mouth with my hand.

  ‘After that I started sleeping in your room. Blocking the door.’

  It was when she dropped out of school, got work collecting glasses in the working men’s club, and at the taxi rank. Was she getting money to get away? ‘Why didn’t you say something? He should have been arrested.’

  Ness looks almost pitying. ‘Who would I tell? Mum was off her face, Gran was gone. Who would believe some kid from the Orchard estate? Who would care?’

  I think of the broken women in here. The chaotic childhoods that shattered them and never quite let them gather the pieces of their lives together again.