Black Heart Blue

by Louisa Reid

  I’d saved up forty pounds by the time they found out. Thursday night was delivery night and I’d finished my round by half past six. The nights were getting lighter and even though the March wind whipped up the rubbish on the streets and flapped the papers from my hands, the usually interminable task of posting each paper through letter boxes which closed like traps on my fingers hadn’t seemed quite as bad as usual. I was looking forward to adding the crisp ten-pound note to my stash, to going to bed with my book and holding my secrets safe. I talked to Hephzi as I made my way round the village, telling her about the course and asking her for ideas about how to get enough money in time. Her advice was to steal it, to creep into our parents’ bedroom and empty The Father’s wallet while he was asleep or dead drunk. I shouted her down.

  ‘Too risky, Hephzi, what if he caught me? What then?’

  How else will you do it, idiot? You’ve got to get out.

  We argued like that the whole way round and she’d almost convinced me by the time I got back. For her sake this time I walked down to the estate and on to Craig’s road on the way home and paused to see if we could spot him. I didn’t like doing it any more, I was afraid someone would report me because I’d been there so often, but I felt sorry for Hephzi. She had to rely on me now for her social life and frankly I’m not much of a joiner. It had been nice spending time with her, but she disappeared as soon as she saw The Father standing outside the vicarage, arms folded, legs akimbo. I knew he was waiting for me.

  He pinched the back of my neck hard as he propelled me into the house. From a distance no one would notice his hand on me, no one would ever see the mark underneath my hair.

  ‘Where have you been?’

  ‘At school.’ The words came out as a whisper and I knew my lie convinced no one. Lifting me by the hair, he picked me up and threw me against the wall. My head clipped the ancient mirror hanging there and brought it crashing down, banging my shoulder painfully as it went.

  ‘Don’t lie to me,’ he threatened, his fist poised. I smelled the whisky on his breath, saw the red eyes and florid cheeks. Cowering, my arms over my head, I waited for the next blow.

  ‘Where have you been?’ he demanded again. ‘The truth of it.’

  ‘At a friend’s house.’

  ‘Liar!’ he screamed and I braced myself for the blows.

  I needn’t have bothered with the fabrications. He knew I didn’t have friends and he knew all about my job, one of the local busybodies had spotted me and spilled the beans, and my pathetic attempts to worm my way out of trouble saw me tumbling in the force of his rage; drowning, wheeling, caught by a wave elemental in its power. I could only wait for the tide to abate and trust that I would soon come up for air. When he’d finished with me I crawled up the stairs. He’d hit me in all the places where bruises can easily be hidden: my torso, upper arms, chest, buttocks and thighs. And he knew I wouldn’t scream. The whole thing was silent, almost balletic, the dance so familiar now that I knew how best to crouch, how to move a shoulder to deflect a blow aimed at my breasts, but most of all how to hold back the tears. At least this time he hadn’t had his strap. Hephzi had always said she would hide it and maybe that had been her last gift to me.

  Earlier he’d ransacked my room and found the money I’d saved from the job and hidden under Hephzi’s mattress. So he relieved me of today’s ten-pound note too and emptied the edition of Eliot’s poetry out of my bag, grinding it with his foot on the floor, just to make sure I learnt my lesson. I crawled under my bed, shuddering, and then started to hum a quiet tune, deep down in the back of my throat. If I filled my head with that noise I wouldn’t remember anything else, I could force the pain away and become invisible. He’d knocked my hearing aid off the screw attached to the side of my skull and I was glad that everything was even more muffled now, as if I were swimming underwater. I lay under the bed with the dust balls and odd socks and imagined drowning. The carpet dissolved and I let myself sink, further and further, deeper and deeper, just as Hephzi had on the day she’d died.

  Hephzi

  Before

  Finally I make it home from the pub. I’ve run all the way from the bus stop and I’m out of breath, but Reb has been watching for me and opens the front door to let me in, at no small risk to either of us, as she tells me in her best bossy-boots voice. I tell her to shut it and we scamper up to bed fast. I decide not to bother telling her what a horrendous night I’ve had when I see her scowl.

  ‘What are you wearing?’ she asks, dropping her mouth open, in horror, I suppose.

  ‘Stuff of Daisy’s. Why?’

  ‘You look like a slut.’

  ‘Shut up! You sound like Mother.’

  ‘No, I don’t. And you do look like a slapper. Admit it.’

  I nearly laugh hearing Reb say that word, she’s obviously picked up something about how to be normal at last.

  ‘Don’t you dare laugh! Don’t you realize how risky all this is?’

  We’re hissing our argument, she’s sitting there in her bed, a little ball of malice, and I’m trying to get out of the clothes fast before someone comes in and I’m rumbled. I stuff them under the mattress, my heart still skipping from the run home from the bus stop and the sneaking upstairs. If he’d caught me I’d probably be half dead by now.

  ‘I’m not doing that again.’ Rebecca won’t shut up.

  ‘Doing what?’

  ‘Lying for you. Sneaking around, opening doors in the middle of the night. You’ll get caught and we’ll be in so much trouble.’

  ‘Don’t be so bloody pathetic. Nothing’s happened, has it?’ I leap into bed and pull the covers up to my nose, the thudding boom of my heart still crashing in my ears. It feels so good to be back in my room. I never thought I’d say that.

  ‘Anyway, what was it like?’ she asks eventually into the silent dark. I’d had my eyes closed but was nowhere near sleep. The night’s events flash through my head, stills from a crazy film: me puking, Daisy dancing with Craig, the bus journey home.

  ‘All right.’

  ‘Only “all right”? All that trouble for “all right”?’

  ‘Oh, shut up. Mind your own business. Come next time if you’re that interested.’

  ‘No thanks.’

  ‘So what are you going to do, then? Live here for the rest of your life with them?’

  For a long time she doesn’t answer, then her words surprise me.

  ‘No way. I’m getting out of here. First I need my exams and then that’s it. I’ll be gone.’

  I can’t believe that she’s finally realized that we can’t stay like this forever. It’s about time too. I’ve never heard Rebecca talk like this before; she’s the quiet one, the one without opinions or ideas about the future. I’ve always led and she’s always followed and I wonder where on earth she thinks she’ll go and what she thinks she’ll be able to do.

  ‘I’ll go where no one knows me, where I can find a job.’

  ‘Yeah, right. And where will you live?’

  ‘I’ll find a flat. Or rent a room.’

  ‘In your dreams.’ I don’t know why I have to be mean and stamp on her hopes but I just do. ‘You’ll never get a job, Rebecca. You’re too boring. Boring and ugly. Who’d want to have to look at you all day?’

  She doesn’t reply then and I mouth a silent sorry into the room and lie awake for a long, long time, watching her wrestle with some private demon – the one who makes her cry nearly every night.

  I’m dreading going to college on Monday morning and, for the first time since the first day, I sit next to my sister at registration. I doodle on my notepad, not looking up or around in case they’re all laughing at me. Rebecca is quiet too and for a second I think I know how she feels here almost every day. But then she nudges me hard and I look up. Craig is standing by the desk and I feel the hot flush on my cheeks before I can do anything about it.

  ‘Al
l right?’

  I nod. Swallow. Smile, sort of.

  ‘What happened to you Friday night, then?’

  ‘Oh. Um. I was there.’

  ‘Yeah, you disappeared.’

  I don’t answer, just shrug. This is the longest conversation we’ve had. I keep waiting for him to walk off but he doesn’t.

  ‘I was looking for you. We all went on clubbing at Chequers.’

  ‘Yeah?’

  I don’t really know what I’m supposed to say.

  ‘I thought you might be there.’

  ‘Oh. Sorry.’

  He shrugs, shoves his headphones back in and wanders off, and I turn to Rebecca, who’s looking like she might vomit. I elbow her in her side and she sucks in her breath and buries her head back in her Maths textbook.

  So I’m not finished, not yet anyway. Even if Daisy did tell him about me puking up maybe he wasn’t bothered. There might still be a chance. I spend all day looking out for him but he must have bunked off again because I don’t see him anywhere.

  This is my sixth day at this college. So far I’ve learnt a lot.

  I’ve learnt not to look bothered if a boy talks to you or smiles at you.

  I’ve learnt to make my voice rise at the end of some of my sentences.

  I know how to use a computer, just about, and how to check my emails and Facebook account in the college IT room.

  I’ve learnt that flicking my hair is quite sexy, although I think I’d got that one on my own.

  I’ve also learnt the names of characters in EastEnders and more or less what’s going on in the storylines, just by listening carefully. I’m quite proud of this actually.

  I know who Cheryl Cole is, and all the characters from Glee.

  I know the people here are probably not my BFFLs.

  I know never to repeat a single word I hear in the vicarage.

  I know that I’ve got to lie every day and that I can never invite any of my new friends home.

  It’s pretty exhausting spending every moment of every day lying to someone or other. I’m either pretending at college or pretending at the vicarage. The only time I get to relax is in bed at night and even then Rebecca could easily ask me a question that might catch me off guard. The only thing that she doesn’t know about me though is that my life is as crap as hers. That I find it all as hard as she does. Maybe she’s guessed but I don’t think so, she thinks it all comes so easy for me, that I’m Little Miss Normal. God, how could anybody growing up in this place with parents like ours turn out normal? That’s what I’ve been hoping college might teach me, instead of all the stupid Maths and stuff, and I wish Rebecca would work a bit harder on her normality skills too. I watched her walk past me in the corridor today, her backpack heavy on both shoulders, bent over and muttering to herself, her trousers too short and those awful bright-green socks emerging from her clumpy shoes. I wanted to run over and push her behind me, hide her from the stares. I see people sniggering all the time, I’ve had to watch it all my life and for a long time I think it hurt me more than it ever hurt her. I want to yell at them to get lost, to leave her alone, maybe shove them or hurt them so they’ll know what it’s like to be picked on. But Rebecca, it’s like she doesn’t even notice and doesn’t even care, so that’s why I’ve given up on her and I leave her to get on with it now. She can embrace Weirdsville all she likes, but she’s not taking me down with her.

  I hope Craig’s in tomorrow and that he talks to me again. If he does I need to make the most of it this time and show him I like him. Maybe he’ll ask me out on a date and take me somewhere nice, just the two of us.

  The week drags though and he’s barely there at all. I take the plunge on Thursday and send a friend request on Facebook during study time. We’re not supposed to use the Internet in the sixth-form centre during study periods but nobody else takes any notice of the rule so I don’t see why I should. I wait for him to add me, fidgeting in my chair, clicking the mouse every couple of seconds for the entire forty minutes, forty minutes which should have been spent trying to do my Physics homework. Our parents made us take these stupid subjects and I can’t follow a word of it. Nothing. Nada. It goes through my head like sand through a sieve and I know the teacher can see it too. I haven’t answered a single question right yet. I watch Rebecca struggling to understand, the concentration on her face makes her look odder than ever, and I want to scream at them that we hate it, that we didn’t want to do it and that he made us. Instead I copy someone else’s answers and keep my fingers crossed the teacher will keep on letting me get away with it if I smile nicely and hand my homework in on time.

  Every lesson is like that. What do Rebecca and I want with Maths and Physics and Chemistry? He chose our subjects, he thought they posed the fewest risks, and guessed we wouldn’t understand a thing. We might as well have been studying Martian. He gets a kick out of proving we’re useless. Him and his poxy Theology degree from Cambridge, which as far as I can tell has been the high point of his life so far. Ever since then he’s been chasing greatness, trying to prove he deserves the big time, but the Bishop doesn’t rate him, I guess, despite the hours he spends licking his boots, and the rest of his life has been a ride on the helter-skelter of anticlimax. He should face facts: we’re not going to be brain surgeons or scientists or Nobel Prize winners. Rebecca should be doing English, every chance she gets she’s in the library like some timid little mouse, burrowing into a book, and I could have done something fun like Photography or Drama. Daisy does both and laughs when she sees me trailing off to Chemistry with all the geeks, as she calls them. I’ve a good mind to swap classes, he would never know, not if I was clever, and I’d get to have a bit more fun. But Craig is in Physics, that is if he’s in at all, and Maths too. Daisy told me he wants to go to uni and that he got all As in his GCSEs. Never judge a book by its cover, Granny used to say. Looks like she was right there. But she’d disapprove of me hanging around, moping about Craig. She was always on about how we should make something of ourselves, not just get married and have kids, but do something proper, something to make her proud. Never rely on a man, she said. Silly old thing. We had fun with Granny though, until our parents found out and that was that.

  Rebecca

  After

  After he found out about my job delivering papers, after he stole my money and beat me black and blue, I didn’t know what more I could do. He’d meant to put me back in my place and to prove again that he was the king and I a mere minion. Hephzi didn’t agree. She told me to get out, and to do it right then and there.

  It’s the only way, Reb, she says. Like I’ve always said, we’ve got to get out. Please hurry though, don’t wait, you have to hurry because there isn’t time to spare. I promise we’ll go together this time, you and me, we’ll go together and be free.

  At last she’d begun to talk to me properly, not just little words here and there. She was back to making me laugh and acting the fool and I was glad to have her near. It had been so long since her funeral, so long since they’d put her in that box and piled earth on her head. Three whole months without her. And now that she was really here, with me whether I called her or not, it made the minutes I spent in the vicarage softer, almost bearable. But she was angry too; she thought people should know what had happened and that I ought to tell. I didn’t want to die, Reb! she tells me, crying, her head nestled beside mine on the pillow, just like when we were little. Why didn’t they care? she asks, and I have no answer good enough, my own mistakes clanging loud in my ears like the Sunday church bells. Her life had just been getting interesting, she said. She and Craig had made plans. She wanted to know why no one was bothered enough to find out the truth, why Craig didn’t at least come to our window and call.

  I’d given up asking those questions long ago. When we were little I’d thought about pasting a sign on Hephzi’s back for people to see as we tramped up the road. Help us! it would say. Quick! But
I knew better than to bother, that the ink would be trick and would disappear on drying; no matter how fast I re-wrote the letters they would only melt away, dissolving like snow on water.

  There had been a chance, just one. I don’t know what happened, that was time that I lost, but Hephzi says I had a fit when he hit me too hard at the top of the stairs and Mrs Sparks walked in and there I was writhing on the hall floor, jerking and twisting, spinning like a top. Before he could say the words ‘devil’ or ‘possession’ or strike up a prayer, she was on the phone for an ambulance – cool as a cucumber, Hephzi said later. I just remember waking up in the hospital and staring up at the lights. Whether it was heaven or not, I wasn’t sure, but I was almost hoping it would be, if Hephzi was there too.

  A nurse came in.

  ‘Awake at last! What on earth have you been up to? What a pickle you’re in.’ I read her lips. This was before my hearing aids and the sound of the world was just a faint sigh.

  Of course I didn’t answer. But I felt that there was some sort of chance. She had something fine in her eyes.

  She took my temperature and wrapped a tight band around my arm, pumping it up, then letting it down.

  ‘How about a drink?’ she asked and I nodded and sipped through a straw.

  ‘The doctor’ll be round soon. But don’t worry, you’re safe.’ She smoothed the hair from my forehead and that touch was so cool that I cried.

  ‘Hey, hey!’ she soothed. ‘It’s all OK. You’ll be fine. We mend people here! We don’t want tears.’ And then, almost as I opened my mouth to speak, she brought the sledgehammer down.