Watching Edie

by Camilla Way

  I nod gratefully and, after giving her my details, sit down to wait. Slowly the room fills up around me. An old man with a loud hacking cough, a woman with two young children, a couple of gossiping schoolgirls. Little by little I feel my lungs empty of air. The sounds of the other waiting patients seem to grow louder and louder – the old man’s cough, the schoolgirls’ laughter, the children’s whining. One of the boys begins repetitively banging together two toy cars and the noise echoes around my head like gunshots.

  ‘Excuse me, are you all right?’ I look up to find the receptionist standing over me. When I try to speak I hear myself gasping for air, feel the sweat coursing down my face and look round at the other patients to find that they too are staring at me with curiosity. I get to my feet and stagger out into the street and though my chest feels as though it might burst I set off for home at a run, not stopping until I’m unlocking my flat’s door, stumbling past an astonished-looking Heather and finally sinking into my bed, pulling the duvet up over my head, still wearing my coat and shoes. I must stay here, I tell myself desperately, where I am safe, where I am looked after, where Heather is.

  I awake in the early evening to the sound of my mobile ringing. I wait, my anxiety building, praying for Heather to answer it, and at last she picks it up. ‘Yes?’ she says, her voice reassuringly guarded. She listens for a moment or two. ‘Geoff?’ she says doubtfully. ‘Geoff – oh. Uncle Geoff. Right. No, I’m afraid she’s not up to visitors, she’s not very well.’ She pauses. ‘Who am I? Her best friend Heather – no, no, from Fremton. I’ve come to look after Edie and the baby for a while. Yes, she’ll be fine, uh-huh, absolutely, of course I will. No, I don’t think that would be a good idea, but as soon as she’s better … yep, OK, will do. Bye, then. OK, bye bye.’ She ends the call and our eyes meet, her usual, cheerful smile unwavering. ‘Why don’t I hold on to this,’ she says, pocketing my mobile. ‘You don’t want people bothering you all the time, do you?’ And I nod, and turn away, pulling the duvet tight around me.

  Later, I hear Heather in the kitchen humming gently to Maya and listen for a while, trying to gather the energy to get up. When I do, I find the tiny passageway is littered with her stuff: boxes and plastic bags trailing dirty-heeled tights, a bottle of shampoo, a torn magazine, piles of clothes, and I wonder when she brought it here, how long it has been gathering without my noticing. In the bathroom I find her underwear – large greying knickers and bras – drying on the shower rail. A hairbrush loaded with dusty yellow hair is by the sink, and on top of the loo a box of sanitary towels sits.

  I hesitate outside the kitchen door, listening to the two of them on the other side, trying to make myself go in. And when I push open the door they don’t notice me at first, Heather smiling down at the baby as she feeds her from a bottle, Maya’s eyes fixed contentedly on her face. When Heather finally looks up we stare in silence at each other for a beat or two until she says gently, ‘Why don’t you go back to bed and rest, Edie? I can manage here.’

  Sleep lies waiting for me, thick and dark and warm. I step off the edge and it’s there, ready to catch me as I fall, the memories pulling me, pulling me …

  I lie with Connor on his bed, a shaft of sunlight streaking across our naked bodies. ‘You’re not like other girls, not like the ones I’ve been with before.’ I’m tracing my finger along the tattoo that spikes and curls greenish black beneath his belly button. Celtic, he says it is, and I think about something my nan used to say when I was a little girl. She would hug me tightly and tell me that she loved the bones of me, and I think how I understand now what that means, how in these few short weeks I know how it feels to love every inch of someone; their eyelashes, their earlobes, their toenails, the skin and flesh and muscles and veins and bones of them, every one. He wraps my hair around one of his hands and gently pushes my head down from where it lies on his chest, pushes it down until my lips brush his tattoo then further down until he’s in my mouth.

  The days pass. I listen to Heather come and go with Maya, to the sounds of her taking care of me, of the mess I’ve made. There she is, boiling the kettle for the baby’s milk. Now she’s loading and turning on the washing machine, next tidying the kitchen, changing a nappy, running Maya’s bath. I do everything I can to avoid looking at my daughter, the sight of her triggering such an overwhelming onslaught of guilt and fear that I can scarcely breathe.

  My intercom buzzes loudly one afternoon while Heather and I are watching television, and the two of us stare at each other in blank surprise until Heather gets up and strides purposefully over to it. ‘Yes?’ she says, into the handset.

  The receiver crackles. ‘Edie?’ Recognizing my uncle’s voice I instinctively jump to my feet but before I can say anything Heather speaks.

  ‘Edie’s not in,’ she says.

  There’s a pause, and in the silence I hear traffic passing on the street. ‘I’d like to come up and leave her a note then,’ says Uncle Geoff, firmly. I’m about to speak when Heather turns and shoots me a look that silences me, my mouth immediately snapping shut.

  ‘Hold on, please,’ she says and putting down the receiver doesn’t look at me as she murmurs, ‘I’ll deal with this.’

  ‘But perhaps …’ I begin hesitantly. ‘I should, I mean, he’s come all this way, and I think maybe I’d like to see if he’s OK …’

  ‘No!’ Heather’s voice is loud enough to make me jump and I stare at her in shock. A split second later her smile has returned. ‘I don’t think that’s a very good idea, do you, Edie?’ she adds softly. She drops her gaze and I feel her eyes sliding over me and I shrink away, covering myself with my arms. ‘I mean, look at you,’ she goes on in the same slow gentle voice. ‘You’ve got yourself into a bit of a state, haven’t you?’

  I gaze down at myself, at the dirty clothes I’ve worn for days now, feeling the grime on my skin, the grease in my hair, and I nod. ‘Yes,’ I whisper.

  ‘Yes,’ she says, and our eyes lock for a second before she turns, opens the door, and is gone.

  As I listen to her steps descending the stairs, I know that I should go after her, should speak to my uncle myself, but the thought of him seeing me like this fills me with shame. Instead I move to the window and wait, exhaustion sweeping through me until I see him walking away across the street. When he reaches the other side he stops in his tracks and turns to look up to where I’m standing by the window. Quickly I jump back out of sight, my heart thumping in the silence, until Heather returns and gently leads me back to bed.

  And the longer Heather stays, the harder it is to imagine life without her.

  Before

  I stand on the bridge over the canal, dropping pebbles in one by one. I’m thinking about Lydia. Clouds pass overhead and the shadows they cast are dark misshapen creatures swimming below the water’s surface. When I was a little girl I used to think I was adopted. A foundling like a child from a fairy tale. It was the only way to explain why I always felt so different from the rest of my family. Sometimes I used to daydream about my real relatives living somewhere far away, looking and acting exactly like me. One day I would find them and I would know at last I was where I was supposed to have been all along.

  It wasn’t just my stupid yellow frizzy hair or the fact I’m so big and clumsy. I was different from my family on the inside, too. I never worked out how they kept everything within themselves, how they stopped it from bursting out of them the way it always did with me. I couldn’t help it: if I felt happy or excited or whatever, it would build up and up until I couldn’t contain it any more. Sometimes I’d get so cross that the rage would explode from me.

  I remember the morning they brought Lydia home – how perfect she was right away. I loved her – everybody did – she was so pretty and good and sweet. She used to call me Hebba and she followed me everywhere. I’d pick her up from her cot and carry her off to the Wendy house or tuck her into my doll’s pushchair and wheel her up and down the garden path. ‘No, Heather! You’re too rough with her,’ my
mother would say. ‘Put her down! Put her down this instant!’

  And then one day, when Mum was cooking tea, I took Lydia from her playpen and put her on the garden swing. When she fell and I saw the trickle of blood on her face, I’d been gripped by cold terror. At her screams, Mum had rushed from the house and scooped her up, her face furious. ‘For Heaven’s sake, Heather! What’s the matter with you? Why can’t you ever do as you’re told?’ And I had stood there, watching the way she looked at Lydia, how she covered her soft silky hair in kisses and held on to her so tightly, and the sudden realization had come, like a stone dropping right through the centre of me, that my mother felt about Lydia in a way that she had never felt about me, and never would.

  I throw the last of the pebbles into the water. Above me the sky has begun to darken with rain clouds, and I shiver. Lydia still lingers somewhere in the damp breeze that trails its fingers around my neck, and in the darkly moving shadows of the water, and with effort I force her from my mind and look at my watch. Two o’clock. I will be seeing Edie in one hour exactly. Excitement flares inside me, Lydia pushed from my thoughts at last. I button up my cardigan and hurry off towards home.

  It’s half past three before she knocks on the door. ‘Dad’s at work, and Mum’s gone to the supermarket,’ I tell her. ‘So we’ve got the house to ourselves.’

  ‘Yeah?’ she says, yawning, and I notice how tired she looks, her face drawn and wan. But she brightens. ‘Hey, come on then, give us the grand tour.’

  I feel a bit giddy as I show her around. ‘This is our living room,’ I say, and watch her face as she takes in the shelves of books, the plain, uncomfortable furniture, the dark green walls. A grandfather clock strikes the half-hour behind her and she jumps in surprise and laughs. As we wander around the house and I point out various things, I get the feeling she’s only half listening, her replies dreamy and vague. I realize suddenly that she’s thinking about him, about Connor. She told me before that she sees him all the time now, that she sneaks out late at night after her mum’s gone to sleep. She mentions other names too. There’s a Tully, and a Jonny and a Niall I think. A sad, sour feeling rises inside me. I don’t think he can love her the way I do. I don’t think he could notice all the little things about her that I see. How her neck flushes when she laughs, or how, beneath her mauve nail varnish, her nails are bitten down to the quick.

  When we come to my dad’s study, I pause outside the door. ‘What’s in there?’ she asks.

  I hesitate, knowing I’m not allowed to go inside, then on impulse push it open. His desk is bare but for a pile of papers and a jar of pens. ‘Bit boring really,’ I shrug, but stop as I notice that Edie is gazing at a photograph in her hand.

  ‘Is this you?’ she asks, showing it to me.

  I suddenly find it hard to breathe. ‘Where did you find that?’ I ask.

  She nods to the bookshelf. ‘There, sort of sticking out from between the books.’

  ‘It’s my sister,’ I tell her, ‘Lydia.’ For a moment I’m too stunned to speak. I’m so used to my parents acting as though she never existed, never mentioning her name, that the fact my father has a secret photo that he might perhaps look at from time to time, leaves me speechless.

  Edie nods. ‘She’s lovely,’ she says softly.

  And I see with a start of surprise that her eyes are swimming, that she feels sad for me. I want to tell her that Lydia had shoes with blue bows on them, that she liked me to sing her to sleep at night, that she couldn’t pronounce her Ls. I want to tell her that I miss my sister more than anything, that my heart hurts from it still. But the silence stretches and I find I can’t say any of these things, because if I start I might never stop crying. Instead I take the photo from her and put it in my pocket and walk wordlessly from the room.

  We’re in the kitchen when my mother comes home. She frowns when she sees Edie leaning against the fridge, a glass of lemon squash in her hand. ‘Hiya,’ Edie says, and I’m struck by how carelessly she says it, how unafraid she seems in Mum’s presence. I rush to help with the shopping, quickly unloading it on to the kitchen table. I can’t seem to stop talking, and I’m telling them that it’s two weeks until school starts again, when Mum interrupts me.

  ‘Heather,’ she says. ‘Go and fetch a jumper from upstairs will you, please? I’m a little cold.’

  I hesitate, not wanting to leave the two of them together, but she glances at me sharply and says, ‘Well, hurry up.’

  Reluctantly I put down the potatoes I’d been holding and run up to my parents’ room. I grab a jumper as quickly as I can and on my return take the steps two at a time. But at the bottom I pause when I hear Mum’s voice.

  ‘We’re not used to Heather having friends call for her,’ I hear her say.

  ‘No?’ Edie replies.

  There’s the sound of drawers and cupboard doors opening and closing, before Mum continues, ‘No. She’s never been the sort that other girls take much interest in.’

  I feel the heat rise in my cheeks. Edie doesn’t answer, but I can almost see her frown and shrug, in that bored way she has.

  ‘Especially girls like you,’ my mother adds.

  There’s a short silence. ‘Like me?’ Edie asks, her voice suddenly very different.

  Mum gives a little laugh. ‘Well, she’s never shown much interest in the sort of things I imagine appeal to you. Clothes and boys, for example. She’s a quiet, hardworking girl. A bit … naive, I suppose.’

  ‘Is that right?’

  Another cupboard door opens and closes. ‘It’s just that I can’t imagine you’d have much in common. We’re hoping she’ll study medicine one day, and I’m sure she will, if she’s not allowed to become … too distracted.’

  There’s a long pause, and then Edie says, ‘I’m friends with Heather because I think she’s great. Because she’s funny and kind. Perhaps that’s all that matters, even to “someone like me”. Excuse me, I think I’ll go and find her.’

  I hear her marching to the door and I stand there, clutching on to the banister, happiness coursing through me.

  When Edie comes out and sees me she shakes her head. ‘Christ,’ she mutters darkly. ‘I thought my mum was a bitch.’

  It’s a week later, a few days before school starts again, when Edie and I catch the bus to Walsall together. I have told Mum that I need to buy some books for the new term, though that’s a lie, and I don’t mention that Edie’s coming too.

  I used to think telling lies would make God angry and send me straight to Hell. I used to think He punished people who were bad. But lately I’ve been thinking that perhaps a lie here and there doesn’t matter so much after all. Since the day Edie came to my house and spoke to my mother the way she did, it’s as if there’s an unspoken understanding between us; the realization that however bad things are at home for either of us, it doesn’t matter, because we have each other now. We sit on the back seat of the bus, Edie and I, each of us with a headphone bud in one ear, listening to her mini disc player, and I don’t think I’ve ever felt so happy. I used to hear the girls from school arranging to go shopping in Walsall together at the weekends, and now, for the first time, I’m going too.

  The mall on Bridge Street has marble floors and arched glass ceilings and shop after shop like Aladdin’s caves of colour and light, bursting with expensive, shiny new things, music pumping from each one. I glance at Edie, bouncing along in front of me, her hair flying behind her, and at that moment she looks around and grins, stopping outside a clothes shop. ‘I love this one,’ she says. ‘Come on!’ And she takes my arm and pulls me after her.

  I follow her through the rails of clothes as she weaves confidently in and out, pulling out various things and holding them against me. I would never in a million years, come to a place like this on my own. ‘This would look cool on you,’ she says, ‘and this.’ I smile as she grabs an armful of clothes then drags me off to the changing rooms where we squeeze into a cubicle together, a red curtain shielding us from the bored ass
istant’s gaze.

  ‘Go on,’ she says, handing me a pair of black jeans and a tight green top. ‘Get these on.’ She turns away from me and unselfconsciously begins to pull her own clothes off, until she’s standing in her underwear. Red-faced, I do as she says, awkwardly trying to cover myself with my discarded skirt as I wriggle out of my top. Out of the corner of my eye I notice small red bruises flowering over her neck and chest. I know what they are because I remember when Sheridan Alsop had one on her neck and she and Aisha Robinson had made a big fuss about putting toothpaste on it in the loos.

  When we’re both dressed she looks me up and down. ‘Wow, Heather. You look amazing!’

  I turn to the mirror. I do look better. The neckline of the top she picked out for me is low, the fabric tight over my breasts before flaring out around my middle, the black jeans somehow making my legs less like trunks. I look older, sleeker. I almost look nice, I realize with surprise.

  Edie is staring at my reflection too. ‘You really do look ace, you know,’ she says. ‘Are you going to get them?’

  ‘I’m not sure.’ For some reason this new version of myself makes me feel a bit afraid, though I don’t know why.

  Edie rolls her eyes, ‘You’ve got to stop dressing like your mum buys your clothes for you.’

  I’m about to reply when I notice the dress she’s tried on. She looks beautiful, the petrol blue fabric clinging to her, the colour so lovely against her skin it’s like she glows. She reaches behind herself, pulls out the price tag and grimaces when she sees how much it costs. ‘They’re having a laugh, aren’t they?’ Reluctantly she peels the dress off. ‘Oh well, no chance of that, then.’

  Later, when we’re dressed and have handed the clothes to the assistant, she says, ‘Hey, I know, let’s go to McDonald’s. I’m bloody starving.’

  ‘I’ve never been before,’ I tell her.

  She stops. ‘You’re kidding me, right?’ She shakes her head in wonder as she looks at me, then smiles and takes my arm, ‘Come on. Let’s gorge on cheeseburgers.’