by Rhian Ivory
She is shaken, I can see that, but she’s trying to hide it by talking. I picture her little brother hanging out of his bedroom window, his head far over the ledge, and behind him Eva smiling. She isn’t smiling now; she looks as if the situation is spiralling out of her control.
‘We were just messing around. The windowsill was slippy and I was worried he’d fall. He could have died, you know, I was trying to save him, stupid little idiot. But what you drew is sick, totally out of order!’ Eva slaps me hard across my cheek.
‘I wasn’t going to show them to anyone. I chucked them away, didn’t I?’ I swore to her.
‘For God’s sake, just leave it. It’s just a couple of pictures, that’s all. Go home, Noah!’ Sam breaks away from Theo and Harley and shouts at Eva, but she ignores him, leaving Theo to deal with him.
She leans in carefully once more, making sure the others can’t hear. ‘But it’s not just a couple of pictures, is it? How did you know? How could you have known what was going to happen?’ She looks frightened of me. Neither of us knows what to do next, but Theo has been psyching himself back up, enjoying the drama and the scene that’s building.
‘You’re a total freak, drawing my girlfriend and watching her through the window like some creep.’ Theo is smiling as he wanders back to me casually, like he’s just figured out something that had been bothering him.
‘I knew there was something dodgy about you the minute you turned up. I told you, didn’t I, Eva? Watch him; he’s got his eye on you, he’s into you. Arrogant shit thinks he knows it all too.’
Eva had only shown him the pictures of just her, just the close-ups I’d done of her face and not her little brother with her hands around his neck. He didn’t know what was really going on here. He couldn’t see past the fact that I’d been drawing his girlfriend, looking at his girlfriend. Theo pushes me hard in my chest, wanting to start something. Normally I’d have stepped back, moved away, but something in me sparks and I punch him in his stomach, making him stagger awkwardly into Jay.
Theo recovers quickly. He and Jay both charge at me, knocking me off my feet and over the edge. They’d been herding me towards the water the whole time but I hadn’t noticed.
They both jump down after me, thrashing through the shallow water. I get to my feet as they reach me and duck a punch from Theo, aimed at my face. I fling a fist at him, hoping to connect with his nose, knowing this will be painful and delay him for a few minutes, but instead find his bony cheek. Theo falls backwards into the deep water. He rises spluttering, water pouring from his body. He clutches his hand to his face then springs forwards, steadying himself by grabbing the front of my ripped shirt and the skin on my neck. His hand gathers up my necklace as he pulls me in, choking my throat.
‘Think you’re better than the rest of us, don’t you? Well, you’re not. You’re not like the rest of us. Well, some of us anyway!’
He glares at Sam, who has been shouting at him to stop, and then rips my necklace off and throws it across the river. I watch Beth’s stone fly high into the air and then fall into the fast flowing river. He grabs hold of my jaw, snapping my head back to look at his bloodied face as he issues his final warning.
‘Stay away from me. Stay away from my girlfriend. And stop drawing her or I’ll … report you to the police, stalker! You better just watch your back from now on, yeah, cos you never know who’ll be watching you.’
I shake him off and try to wade away from him, moving against the current. He thrashes through the water back to the riverbank with difficulty, his sodden clothes weighing him down. Harley holds out a hand and heaves Theo up out of the river.
‘Someone’s coming!’ Sam yells and I wonder if it is true. I don’t even care by now. I try to run after Theo, but he’s too quick. I stagger back through the water, my trousers clinging to my cold legs. Sam offers a hand but I don’t want his help. Eva laughs manically as I pull myself up out of the water. She mutters something about friends to Sam and then runs up the path to catch up Theo and Harley. Georgia shrugs her shoulders at Jay and then follows, trailing after Eva, as always. Sam walks in the opposite direction, away from them and from me. No one is laughing now, or even talking any more. It is so quiet. They walk up the path in silence and around the corner. Only then do I run away from the riverbank which tilts and tips like a boat.
CHAPTER 32
BLAZE
I woke in another bed, in a room smelling of piss that had been washed away but lingered still. They told me I was in Halstead Workhouse but I already knew this. I’d been here before. This was the place where Maman and I were sent and where she died. Now the circle was complete, I was back, interred again.
I could feel her presence in the sad air that hovered between the high walls. I remembered them as yellow but the dirt had got to them, staining the paint. I left her here when she died. A woman came and found me, said the Master was entertaining the Guardians, told me to run to Maman while there was still time. I agreed to Maman’s last wish, her last right. I promised to leave her, to get out while I could still run.
They told me, ‘You’re in the infirmary,’ as if that should make it better, but I was freezing in an iron bed with a thin grey blanket and no fire or Dog to warm my feet and send me to sleep with his snores. I soaked the bed with my cold sweats and for a long time no one came to help me. Eventually a woman sighed her way into the room, heavy footed and wheezy. She talked while she worked and at first I was not sure if there was someone else in the room or if she was speaking to me. The other beds looked empty but I couldn’t be sure.
‘You came back then. Well, you’re not the only one, don’t worry. Hold still … and turn.’ She heaved my body and I flipped over. She pulled the damp sheets out from under me with one hand. The other held me up, cold and rough on my back.
‘Don’t ’spose you remember me, do you? I remember you though, remember your mother too.’ She paused to look at me as she tucked a dry sheet under me. She let me go and I dropped back against the narrow bed.
‘She was a jacket woman, wasn’t she, your mother? They made her wear a yellow jacket when she turned up, because of you.’ She pointed her finger at me, as if I was at fault. I didn’t understand her. I shook my head just once. I didn’t see my mother again once they separated us so I had no idea what clothes she wore. When I saw her for the last time, she was in a bed, like this one, in a white gown.
‘Jacket women, unmarried mothers, plenty of us in here. Look at me!’ She pointed to her yellow jacket and gave me a sad smile. They must have made them wear clothes to mark them, make them stand out in shame. My stomach turned over in pity for my mother.
‘Your mother didn’t make much sense to me, but we did manage a few words, now and then. She told me about your father, him being sent away to sea in shame. Always wondered what a gipsy girl like her was doing in these parts. All on her own she was, except for you.’ She chattered on as if I knew all of this, as if my mother and I had shared this story, our story, many times. I didn’t have the strength to tell her the only stories my mother told me were made-up ones.
‘She was a good girl though. Selly, we called her, couldn’t get my tongue around her funny name, sounded like celery to me! She had her funny ways, said she was a lady’s maid or a French maid, but I never really believed her. Didn’t seem likely. I told her all about my Minnie when I could and she talked about you. I was sorry to see her go, when she passed.’ She stopped tucking the sheet under me, then leans in.
‘What did you say?’ she asked, her breath warm on my face.
‘Céline. Her name was Céline,’ I forced out through my cough.
She moved even closer and I recoiled, unsure, but then she wrapped her arms around my shoulders, holding me close for a moment. I felt the cold, hard iron of the bed press against me.
All I needed to do now was wait, watch and wait.
She released me and promised to come back later.
I must have fallen asleep because when I opened my eyes,
the light from the moon rested on the empty beds. I was the only one in here now. The woman bustled around noisily clearing old cups and plates and setting down new ones. I pushed myself up. I felt better. My bones were lighter and I could hear singing as I ate and drank the food she’d brought me.
It was late in the evening as the white moon shone on the brick wall. A nightingale started his evensong and I knew what I had to do. I could wait. I could bide my time, I decided, as I watched the woman moving around the room and the keys that hung from her belt, clanking and clanging in time to the nightingale’s chorus.
CHAPTER 33
NOAH
Beth sits on the churchyard wall, swinging her legs, ear-buds in, listening to something. I feel like running to her but manage to keep it together enough to walk across the road. My hand has other ideas as it dances in the air, waving at her, a limb with a mind of its own.
‘You’re late. Why weren’t you in school again yesterday? I tried ringing you but your phone went to answerphone. I feel like I haven’t seen you all week,’ she tells me, pulling her ear-buds out. Beth jumps down off the wall, picks up her bag and pushes the gate open. I follow her into the churchyard.
‘I texted you, I was ill. So where are we going? Why did I have to meet you before school?’ I ask, nervous about what Theo might have said to her, or what Eva might have shown her.
‘Somewhere private. I want to talk to you.’
She sent me a text last night asking to meet before school but wouldn’t tell me why. I wonder if she knows, if she’s found out somehow about what happened with Theo or worse, maybe she’s found out about Grace. She walks through the damp graveyard purposefully. It is still in shade, slightly dark and very quiet. She runs her hand over the top of a mottled gravestone and closes her eyes for a second.
‘What are you doing?’ I whisper.
‘Saying a prayer for Beloved,’ she answers and then pulls a face at me.
‘Who’s Beloved?’ I ask.
She laughs softly and points at the headstone.
HERE LIES THE BODY OF THOMAS GARLAND,
BELOVED HUSBAND OF AILEEN GARLAND AND LOVING FATHER TO CAITLIN AND THOMAS GARLAND.
There’s some more stuff about taken from this earth and something of this parish that I can’t read properly, but I don’t get why Beth is so interested in a Garland headstone. Clearly they weren’t related.
‘Who is he then?’ I ask.
‘I don’t know. It’s just something we used to do on the way out from Sunday School. We’d walk past the headstones and pick one. This one, Thomas, was mine because he was Beloved. I just loved the word. We’d all touch our headstone, say a little prayer and then run out. Last one to the gate had to go back and touch all three headstones again, on their own!’
‘Who’s we?’ I ask, slightly jealous of her playing this game with someone other than me, wishing that I’d know her all my life.
‘Oh … Eva, Georgia and me. We used to go to Sunday school together when we were little. They’ve both been really odd the last few days. They’ve stopped talking to me. Both of them were talking about me in the loos at lunch yesterday, but they went silent when I came in.’ She looks fed up.
‘So what happened?’ I prompt, desperate to find out what they might have said, to see if that’s what this talk is all about. I have some drawings of Eva in my bag, and the other drawing too, the one with the bones. I should just get them out and show her, tell her all of it, just spit it out, be honest for once and show her what I am, a freak. A total freak. I don’t need to be tested in the river like a witch. But I don’t want her to change the way she feels about me, not now we were back to normal again. So I don’t say anything, I sit and wait like a coward.
‘I don’t know, they were talking about you and me, I think. She won’t tell me what I’ve done. Georgia won’t speak to me until Eva does … so. She’s been acting like such a diva, such a control freak, since she and Theo got back together again. She came up with a list of rules about what we could wear, how we should look, who we had to fancy a few weeks ago, when you started school actually, and I’m just not into it. I know I’ve seen less of them since … I met you, but I don’t know what I’ve done to deserve this silent treatment and the nasty texts she’s been sending me.’ Her voice rises, defensive.
I put my arm around her and she turns into my chest. I feel like a traitor as I wrap both arms all the way around her, cocooning her, as if I can protect her.
Beth loosens my arms, breaking my hold gently and reaches down to pick up her bag.
‘She sent another one last night, here, I’ll show you; it’s a bit weird. It’s not bitchy like the others, but there’s something mean about it.’ She touches Thomas Garland’s headstone again and then takes my hand, leading me into the church.
Inside, she drops my hand and takes out her mobile. We sit on the back pew and I read the text she shows me.
So you think you know someone but turns out you can’t trust anyone, Beth. Watch your back! You never know who might be watching you.
It’s a threat not a warning. They must have known she’d show me Theo’s words. I bet he got Eva to send it.
‘I give up with her. Nothing makes her happy. She’s one of those people that has to have some kind of drama going on all the time and if nothing’s happening she’ll make something happen. I’m just … tired of it. I’ve had enough,’ she tells me before deleting the text. I watch her scroll through her phone to her contacts page and she smiles at me before pressing down hard on the name EVA. She gets a second chance when the screen asks her if she’s sure she wants to delete this contact. But she doesn’t want a second chance, she thinks this will solve the problem, but I am the problem. I’ve caused this rift and I have to sort it out, even if it means messing things up between us. She throws the phone down onto the pew.
Beth holds her hand up to the light coming in through the stained-glass windows spattered with rain and then reaches out for my hand. She wraps her fingers around mine, our different skin tones now all the colours of the rainbow together in the church. I have to tell her, now while we’re on our own. I am ready to confess and in church is as good a place as any.
‘It’s my fault, what’s going on with Eva and it’s not just that, there’s something else I have to tell you too, something that happened before…’
I start as her phone’s alarm clock beeps the time at her. 8:50am. The phone vibrates manically against the pew and Beth swears, the word out of place echoing round the empty church, as we realise how late we are. She hasn’t heard me; she hasn’t taken in what I was trying to say.
She grabs her bag, then my hand, and pulls me out of the church and into the rain. The weather has changed in the last few days, unpredictable, sudden heavy rain then back to meltingly hot sun again. We run all the way to school, our hoodies zipped up to the top, ducking our heads to avoid the pelting rain, diving in and out of the puddles on the path. Neither of us wants to miss the bus. We’ve been told it will leave at 9am ‘on the dot’. It’s only to the workhouse museum in Halstead for History but at least it was a day out together.
I sit next to Beth on the bus; we are the last ones on, so we have to take seats near the front. We both shake ourselves off before sitting down. I take off my wet hoodie and spread it out on the headrest to dry and Beth does the same. My knees push into the seat in front of me, my soggy thighs pressing up against hers as I try to shoehorn myself into the small space. I hear our names shouted out as we sit down, our backs to everyone apart from the driver, Mr Bourne and Miss Empingham, the other History teacher. I feel uncomfortable, unsure if this is the right time to tell her, but I have to. I have to get in there first before Eva.
Beth starts chatting to me, taking my hand, playing with the calluses on my palm as she raises her voice above the cheers, shouts, teasing and chatting of the class and above the first crack of thunder. I hate storms.
‘How did you get these marks on your hand? That one looks like a star,�
�� she asks, running her fingers along them.
‘From drawing, I guess.’ I watch her small hand flutter over mine. My stomach turns over as I look at the criss-cross of scratches and scars on my hands, remembering the drawing. I want to show it to her. I should have shown her in the church and now it is too late, there’s no chance of privacy on the bus. I hear our names called out again, followed by a word hissed down the aisle. It sounded like freaks and bitch or … possibly witch? It sounds like Theo and Harley and definitely Eva too. I can hear high-pitched, forced giggling coming from the back of the bus.
Beth has been staring at my neck. She touches her own necklace and then drops my hand, turning her body away from mine. She focuses out the window, concentrating really hard on the view as her fingers follow the trail of a raindrop. A solid silence descends over us for the rest of the journey. I pull the neckline of my T-shirt up, pointlessly trying to hide the empty space she’s just seen, where her necklace and stone should be.
A long tall building greets us as we drive into the car park. It has a ridiculous amount of windows all the same shape and size, rows and rows all lined up like soldiers. It stands to attention, tall, proud and intimidating.
‘Here we are, Halstead Workhouse. Take one of these between two as you get off the bus and make your way to the front entrance. No pushing please, take care down the steps.’ Mr Bourne and Miss Empingham hand out worksheets, clipboards and pens as we step off the bus relieved that the rain has stopped. Beth stands next to me chewing her pen. I tap her arm and nudge her to get moving and she scowls at me. Great, it’s going to be that kind of day.
We walk up a long graveled path to the front door; on our left and right are huge vegetable gardens with runner beans, cabbages, onions and carrots all in neat rows, like the windows, uniform and precise. I feel messy just walking along the path, out of place and time. There’s a high red brick wall surrounding the building, locking it in, framed by wrought iron gates, dull black doors and neatly squared, leaded windows. It is such a plain building, a tessellation with everything matching and repeated over and over like a child’s drawing.