by Louisa Reid
For some reason Rebecca still hates Craig. I’ve explained to her a million times why I like him and she’s seen for herself in class how clever he is. I tell her how he plays the guitar and writes songs for me, I even show her some of his lyrics, sure that will convince her, but she just sneers and turns her back on me. I know she’s jealous, I just don’t know what to do about it. I don’t know why I even care.
But it’s not all easy. After the first night, the night at Craig’s party when everything started, Mother grabbed me in the quiet of the church as I polished the lectern, shaking me out of my happiness. She circled my wrist with her bony fingers and told me she wouldn’t cover up for me again, do or say what I might, she wasn’t putting herself at risk one more time. I begged, I threatened, I cried, but it made no difference. And so all I asked was that she kept her mouth shut. And that’s when I found the tree.
There’s no way I’m going to give up my freedom and stay locked up in the vicarage when I could be with Craig. So I’ve devised my own escape route and I’m pretty proud of it. It means that I can sneak out and see Craig as often as I like, so long as Roderick’s dead drunk or out on some visit or just plain old asleep. I love my tree; even though I’ve got scrapes and scratches down my arms and up my legs, it doesn’t matter one bit. Craig thinks I’m mad. I’ve tried to explain to him that my parents are strict and insist he always gets me home on time, but he reckons that if I give them a chance they’ll get used to him and I won’t have to sneak around any more. I let him have his fantasy and keep the truth to myself.
He’s introduced me to his mum though. At first I didn’t know what to say or where to look. I don’t know many normal mums, so I settled for smiling a lot and agreeing with whatever she said. She’s dead nice. She keeps inviting me round for tea but I never can say yes. If she’s home during the day when I’m there I sit at their kitchen table with her and we chat about any old thing. Craig says she keeps threatening to come to one of Father’s services and to make him go too. She thinks it’s important that she at least introduces herself. I told him over my dead body and he agreed, so I hope he keeps her away. If she were to show up and talk to him then everything would be over.
I’m surprised I can sleep at night these days, there are so many things to worry about, so many ways in which I could be found out. Rebecca never stops reminding me either, like some tragic soothsayer she drones on and on about the risk and the danger. I can’t bear it, sometimes I want to sew up her mouth or cover her head with my pillow until she shuts up all together.
Pam, that’s Craig’s mum, is painting her house and she’s given me what she’s got left over from doing the living room. I smuggle it home, and a spare brush, and start straight in on the wall by my bed. Our room hasn’t been painted or papered for as long as I can remember. The wallpaper is faded now but you can almost make out a pattern of flowers, blooming here and there; it must have been pretty once. Maybe the family here before us cared enough to make the room nice. I paint until my arm aches and I have to take a break. I don’t really know why I’m bothering, it won’t be long until I’m out of here, I hope, if things go to plan. Sighing, I survey my handiwork and realize that I need to go over it all again. I’ll never have the money to buy more but maybe Pam will have a bit extra going spare. When I’ve got my own house and my own family I’m going to paint the rooms all the colours of the rainbow, just like Pam is. She wants to do Craig’s room orange but he won’t let her and says he wants it left alone. When they argue it’s not like when I fight with my mother and father – no one explodes, no one disintegrates, they just bicker, slam a door and forget it.
Our father has a book. In it he lists everything we do that, according to him, is wrong, and sometimes he’ll get it out and read it through, adding and amending as he goes. We have to kneel and listen; it’s one of his rituals, and I’m pretty sick of it. I won’t let him touch me now, no more hair brushing, no more hand holding, no more hitting. He’s getting madder and stranger and soon he’ll lose it, there’s only so far even I can push him and I’m right at the limits. I’ve got to get out of here.
‘What are you doing?’
‘What’s it look like?’
‘Why are you painting that wall, I mean?’
I don’t answer Rebecca, sometimes her questions are just too damn stupid to even bother with.
‘Are you going out again tonight?’
I nod.
‘When will you be back?’
‘Who knows? He’s at a meeting, you know, the school-board thing. It’ll be safe, don’t worry.’
She always worries, no matter what I say, and it makes me nervous too. But I have to go tonight, it’s special, it’s Craig’s birthday. His eighteenth. He should be in the year above us but he missed so many lessons when he was younger they wouldn’t let him move up when he should have been going into Year Ten, they said he was too far behind. It’s stupid, when he’s the cleverest person I know. But teachers like doing stuff like that, they like to make a point, just for the sake of it. Year Nine was when Craig’s dad left, but no one bothered to find that out. When Craig was bunking off he was out looking for his dad, he told me, but he never did manage to find him. He just disappeared into thin air. I managed not to say lucky you, but that’s what I was thinking. I told Rebecca about it and she went quiet for a very long time.
‘Do you think that might happen to us? Do you think one day he’ll just vanish?’
I shake my head.
‘Oh, Hephzi, if he did, I’d know God loved us after all.’
Poor Rebecca. I never look back as I climb down the tree and race down the drive to Craig. I know she’s watching, and I don’t want to know how lonely I make her.
Craig’s eighteenth party on Bonfire Night is going to be even better than the one he had at his house in September. This time it’s a proper do with a DJ and a buffet in the rugby club in the next village, there’s going to be fireworks too. I’ve never seen a fireworks display, but I don’t say that because that would be weird.
Pam is coming to the party, and her boyfriend, who Craig hates, and his big brother Jamie. They treat me like I’m one of the family and we all pile into Pam’s boyfriend’s car and drive there together. I have to squeeze in the middle in the back and Craig keeps his arm tight round my waist. I haven’t given him his present yet, I told him it’s something special and he’ll have to wait until later, so I think he’s guessed already what it is.
I know what I’ll have to do with Craig so he knows I really love him. When I was younger I found a book when I was nosing where I shouldn’t and the photographs branded themselves indelibly on the back of my mind. Fingers of shame crept under my clothes, hot and sour as I flicked through the pages and even though I dared myself to look again I stayed away from my father’s study after that. The thought of my parents doing those things made me sick, so I never told anyone, especially not Rebecca. I always wonder, though, how many more secrets the vicarage holds tight in its walls, whether it blushes or grins or hides its eyes in horror.
It seems like the whole sixth form is at Craig’s birthday bash and I’m glad I look good. Girls I’ve never spoken to before say hi to me and admire my dress and my hair. Pam lent me her straighteners and Craig gave me the money for the dress and took me into town when I should have been in Chemistry to buy it. It’s the nicest thing I’ve ever owned. Low cut, short and tight, I look like I could be in a magazine. I didn’t dare show Rebecca though, she’d only have told me I looked like a slut. She has no idea what people wear, anyway, she’s like an old sack of rags. Craig suggested I invite her along but I didn’t tell her that in case she’d have said yes and, let’s face it, that would have spoilt the whole thing. Craig and I dance, then I dance with Jamie, then with girls from college. People keep telling me what a great couple Craig and I are and I don’t stop grinning.
Everyone goes outside for the fireworks and Craig holds me tight as they
burst like hundreds of tiny bombs exploding in the sky. It’s beautiful. When the others all go back in to carry on dancing, Craig and I hold hands and run further out into the night.
‘I love you,’ I tell him in the darkness and he kisses me dizzy in the field behind the club. The ground is a bit damp but we don’t care and fall on to the grass.
That’s when it happens. I’d thought it would hurt but it didn’t. He was gentle, he knew I was a virgin. Ages ago I’d told him and asked if he was too, but he shook his head. ‘But that was before I met you,’ he’d said, ‘if I’d known about you I’d have waited.’ I didn’t ask more but soaked my pillow with my tears that night.
Afterwards we go back inside and I wonder if anyone can tell. I hide in the loos for ages, resting my hot face against the cold wall of the cubicle. I tell myself not to be silly and put on more lip gloss, almost the last of it, and paint my smile back on, although it doesn’t feel real any more. I don’t know why.
When I come out I see Craig dancing with Daisy. They’re way too close, like they were that first night in the pub. I watch and they don’t pull apart, she hooks her arms round his neck and leans forward to whisper something in his ear. I don’t like the sad way he laughs and looks around, as if he’s scared others are laughing at him too.
Once the party’s over we go back to Craig’s house. Pam invites me to stay but I shake my head and she kisses me on the cheek anyway and goes off to bed with her bloke. Craig and I sit in the lamplight of the living room. He stares at me for a long time then lights a cigarette and sits back on the sofa, taking his arm from round my shoulder.
‘You’re quiet. What’s up?’
Things don’t feel the same between us. He sounds cross with me.
‘You don’t regret it, do you?’
I shake my head, even though I feel a bit like crying. I’d thought I’d feel different, that I’d be grown up now. Instead I’m just even more scared. I chew my nail, wondering what I’m supposed to say.
‘I didn’t hurt you, did I?’
I shake my head again and he pulls me to him and kisses me as if that’s the only thing that makes me happy. He smells of cigarettes and Daisy’s perfume. I pull back.
‘Will you take me home now?’
He sighs and gets up without waiting for me and goes and starts his bike. I sit on the back and have to hold tight. I hope the wind will whisk the tears from my eyes before he sees them. I get off in the dark corner round the back of the vicarage and wish I didn’t have to scale the tree but know there’s no choice. Tonight I wait until he’s gone though, not wanting him to see me, suddenly realizing I must look like a fool. I wonder how long it will be before he tells me that we’re over.
Rebecca
After
Stupid me.
It turned out that Hephzibah was right. I’d been getting cocky. Of course I’d be found out. Of course there would be retribution. How could I possibly think that I could go AWOL for a whole day and get away with it? Later that night, splenetic with drink, he took his revenge. The Father rang Mrs Sweet at the care home and told her that it was summer flu. I heard them hauling away the beds in our room, heard him laugh, sick with hate, before they threw me back in. But now there was nowhere left to hide, nowhere to play invisible. The room echoed and moaned and somewhere in the silent shadows I heard someone’s baby start to cry.
‘Shhh,’ I pleaded, but the mewling wouldn’t stop so I screwed my eyes tight against the straining wallpaper and blocked my heart to the noise.
The Mother gathered up my clothes, everything she could find, which wasn’t much. I tried to hold on to the blue jumper but it ripped and tore as she wrestled it from my arms, the threads snapping and unravelling between us. They emptied the drawers in the chest of their paltry contents and scooped up the remains of Hephzi’s contraband make-up, the bangles her friend Daisy had lent to her and that I’d never returned. They didn’t find the silver chain and her perfume though, I’d put them under the loose boards in the corner under the window and so far they stayed safe. Then they left me in there, with barely enough food and water. There was no light and nowhere to go to the toilet. They left me for as long as they could, keeping me just almost alive. My hearing aids had broken entirely this time, he’d ground them under his shoe, and I lay there, in my pile of filthy blankets, scarred by my parents’ hate, deaf to the possibility of hope. Hephzi was no comfort. Angry and afraid, she was hiding now and there was just that oozing stain on the wall for company.
The babies cried on and I thought I ought to sing to them. Searching for a tune, I found only despair.
One day he would go too far and I would die too. I could see it coming, a juggernaut rolling fast towards me and I knew I couldn’t let that happen, not before I’d lived at least a fraction of my life. I crawled over to the window and pulled myself up to the sill to peer out. He hadn’t thought to put on bars or even a lock – I could still open that window and leap out if I wanted to badly enough. Oh, I wanted to. But I was too weak and the fall would finish me off. I knew he wanted to break me so that I would stay here, a slave and a sycophant for the rest of my life.
I won’t. I won’t.
The week faded, grey and black and brown. The sky outside the window was concrete, as hard as heartbreak. I wondered where the summer had gone; perhaps the sun had died too. My room began to stink after only a couple of days. Headaches came and went and I drifted in and out of sleep. Sometimes it was light and sometimes it was night and the longer I went with such a small amount of food and water the more I knew I couldn’t get out of the window. If only I could have heard something, listened out for noises downstairs and known that I hadn’t been abandoned. I wondered where Mrs Sparks was, or the postman perhaps; there was a chance that he might miss me, wasn’t there? I wondered if the whole village had perished and I was the only survivor of some terrible holocaust. Crawling to the door, I tried the handle. It was still locked. I could rot here, be gnawed to pieces by rats, and no one would ever come to find out what had happened to the girl with a face like fear.
Long ago in the past, far away from his madness, I’d understood for the first time what I really was. We’d been at our gran’s and we’d helped her to make a cake and then played skipping outside, taking it in turns to turn the rope for one another. Hephzi had got it straight away, her plaits flying, her cheeks pink with air and fun. It had taken me longer and I stumbled over the rope, clumsy and stupid, but Granny had been patient and in the end I managed five skips in a row.
It was growing dusky and a little chilly so Granny took us indoors and settled us on the sofa with hot chocolate and slices of the cake we’d helped to bake.
‘I’ll just be a minute, girls, doing the tea. You sit tight and do this little job for me.’
She handed us a huge book, heavy and thick, its pages crackled and rustled when we opened it. ‘Here,’ she said, ‘find a fresh page and see if you can’t stick these in for me, there’s good girls.’
‘What is it?’ I asked Hephzi, who’d immediately snatched the bundle. She crowed with delight.
‘Pictures! Pictures of us, look!’ She thrust the first one under my nose. ‘Look how pretty I am! And in this one!’
She scattered them everywhere, those pictures of us, photographs Granny must have taken on our trips out with her, some at the farm, some at the park. I smiled in all of them, big ugly grins, and I recognized at last what they all saw so clearly. My six-year-old self picked up those pictures and started to rip. I tore and I scrumpled, I scrunched and I threw. Hephzi started to shout and then to scream as I shredded the evidence of what I was.
‘Granny! Granny! Come quick, Rebecca’s tearing it all up. Granny!’
Granny came running and scooped me up like I weighed nothing at all and at once I stilled my flailing hands and let her hold me safe.
‘Why did you do that, love?’ she asked me later, quietly so that Hephzi wo
uldn’t wake.
I couldn’t answer her and shook my head.
‘You mustn’t destroy things, you know, those were my special photos of my special girls.’
‘No,’ I muttered.
‘What?’
‘No. You can see in the pictures, you shouldn’t look at them. I’m a bad girl.’
‘No, you’re not. Now, don’t be silly.’
I didn’t answer and she understood.
‘You’re perfect, my love, different but perfect nevertheless, you can’t help how you look, it’s not your fault. Do you understand me, Rebecca? Do you understand what I’m saying?’
She told me I had a syndrome. I asked if you could catch it, like a cold, and if it went away when you got bigger.
‘No,’ she said, sadly. ‘No, I’m sorry, my love.’ She said that it was called Treacher Collins. That the bones in my face hadn’t formed properly when I was in my mother’s womb and that’s why I looked a little bit different.
‘But Hephzi’s my twin. She doesn’t look like me. Why don’t I look like Hephzi? We should be the same.’
I waited patiently on her knee for an explanation. She couldn’t even begin to unravel the mystery for me; I was too little to follow what she said. All I knew was that I’d never change.
‘But you’re still perfect, you’re still a wonderful little girl. Do you understand?’
Even if I did, it didn’t matter. Even though she’d explained what was wrong with me and given it a name, even though she said I wasn’t the only one, The Parents had decided who I was and I wore their loathing like a badge.
After that weekend, back when we’d been six and Granny had told me all about myself, I’d heard Granny try to threaten him. She said she’d call Social Services and have them take me away. She said she’d take me away herself. It was four years before they let us see her again.
Now, in my room, locked up and slowly dissolving, I traced my face with my fingers and felt it grow wet with my tears.