by Camilla Way
Finally, on the other side of Wrexham, we turn off down a dirt track and up a steep hill and at last Connor slows down. The tape we’ve been listening to comes to an abrupt end and as the winding road takes us higher and higher the car is silent. I look around myself in confusion. What is this place? When at last we reach the top, Connor stops the car and we all get out. I trail behind Edie. I just need to speak to her, to make her see how sorry I am. Then she’ll have to forgive me, she has to.
We pass through a copse and what’s waiting on the other side makes me stop in amazement. I’d heard of the Wrexham quarry before, but I’d never been here or dreamt it was anything like this. An enormous jagged basin of white rock filled with water that’s a strange unnatural green, a sheen of oil upon its still, rippleless surface. On the furthest side groups of local kids are getting drunk in the sunshine, music playing from their car stereos. Now and then one of them throws himself into the water, to a chorus of shrieks and cheers. I take it all in, the sun beating down on me, the sky an intense blue.
I notice that Connor and the others are talking to a group of people sitting beneath some trees a few yards away. Hesitantly I follow them, realizing as I draw closer that I recognize some of his friends from the party. I sit down in a scrubby patch of grass nearby and wait. Nobody looks at me, as though they’ve forgotten I’m here, and I turn my attention to Edie. She’s wandered a little further away and is sitting by herself, staring out across the quarry. Occasionally she glances back at Connor, and she seems so sad and alone it makes my heart hurt.
I suddenly realize that the boy nearest to me is the one I’d met before in the square. Liam. He looks even younger without his hoodie, with his thin naked arms, his close-cut brown hair that shows the fragile curve of his skull, his pale, thoughtful eyes. I creep a bit closer to him, feeling a little better to see him here. ‘How come there’s no one in the water on this side?’ I ask him when he looks up, nodding at a large red sign that says, ‘DANGER: NO SWIMMING’.
He shrugs and says in his low, mumbling voice, ‘Full of crap over here. People dump all sorts in it: shopping trollies, dead dogs – you name it. Supposed to be an old car wreck down there somewhere.’ His eyes flick up to me from the joint he’s rolling and away again. ‘Some kid jumped in and got impaled on a pole a few years back. Sticking right up, it was, just under the surface.’
I shudder; open water terrifies me. At that moment Connor calls Edie’s name and I see her look up eagerly with a hopeful smile. But when he speaks his voice is cold and flat. ‘You bring that gear, yeah?’ he asks her. She nods and throws him something from her pocket, and when he turns away again I see the disappointment on her face.
A few moments later she stands up. I’m not sure what she’s doing at first, but then, as I watch, she slowly and deliberately pulls her top off, standing in her bra for a second or two, before kicking off her flip-flops and wriggling out of her skirt. I can tell she knows she’s being watched. Finally, when she’s only in her underwear she lies back down, stretching out, her eyes closed against the hot sun, her long hair spilling around her shoulders. It takes my breath away to see how beautiful she is, her long slender legs, her small perfect breasts, like a model from a picture in a magazine. When I glance back at the others I see that they are watching her too. No one speaks.
Suddenly she props herself up and turns to me and my heart leaps. ‘You not sunbathing then, Heather?’ she says.
I look at her in surprise. ‘I haven’t got my swimmers,’ I stammer.
Her voice is cold. ‘So? Haven’t got mine, have I?’
I’m conscious that the others are listening, and I look away in embarrassment. But when I next glance up, she’s still staring at me, her eyes challenging. ‘What’s the matter? You too stuck up to get your kit off or something?’
I shake my head. ‘No, but …’
‘Go on then, do it.’
I hesitate. Is this what I need to do to make it up to her? To make her forgive me, love me again? I would do anything to make that happen. A long moment passes.
‘Do it,’ she says again.
Slowly, my cheeks burning, I stand up. I pull my top up and over my head and quickly sink back to the ground, my arms folded tightly across my chest, the sun biting into my naked white flesh.
‘And the rest,’ she says, nodding at my legs. ‘Not going to get a tan with them on, are you?’
Reluctantly I get up again and undo my jeans, losing my balance and almost falling over as I slide them down my legs. I hurriedly sit back down, knowing how awful I must look compared to her. When I look up our eyes lock.
And then, in the silence, Connor speaks. ‘Now that’s what you call a proper pair of tits, ain’t that right, Edie?’ He pauses before adding casually, ‘Not like your fried eggs, are they?’
In the loud laughter that follows mortification sweeps through me and when I glance up at Edie I see the humiliation and fury in her eyes. Abruptly she gets to her feet and storms off to the edge of the quarry, slides down one of the large white rocks and disappears.
At first I don’t move. I’ve made everything worse. Everything is even worse than it was before and now she hates me more than ever. What if she’s fallen in? At last I get to my feet and follow her, not even caring about the view Connor and his friends must have of my bottom. When I reach the edge I peer over and see that she’s a couple of metres below, sitting on a ledge, her feet dangling above the water. Clumsily I lower myself down to her, the gritty surface of the rock scratching at my skin.
‘Edie,’ I say, a little breathlessly. ‘Please, Edie.’ But she continues to stare down at the water. ‘I’m so sorry about what I did,’ I tell her desperately. ‘You’ve got to forgive me.’
She looks at me then. Now that we are so close I can see that she has lost weight and there are deep shadows beneath her eyes; unhappiness radiates from her. Finally she speaks, spitting her words out at me, each one sharp as a tack. ‘I’ll never forgive you,’ she says, getting to her feet. ‘You’re a fucking bitch.’
I gasp and tears fill my eyes at her look of disgust. ‘You’re pathetic,’ she says, her eyes travelling over my body. ‘Look at the state of you.’
I scramble to my feet and reach out to her, grabbing her by the arm, trying to stop her from leaving. ‘Please, Edie,’ I beg. ‘I didn’t mean to do it, I’m so sorry—’
What happens next is definitely an accident. She whirls round so quickly, and she’s so angry as she shouts, ‘Get off me, Heather, just leave me the fuck alone.’ She doesn’t mean to push me into the water, I’m sure she doesn’t. But still I topple and fall backwards off the ledge. I hit the surface with a loud slap, the shock of freezing cold knocking the air from my lungs. As I fall through the green murky water I think about what Liam had told me, about the cars and the dead dogs and the boy who died, and I kick and kick until at last my head bursts up through the surface, into the sunshine again, and I’m gasping for air.
I swim towards the ledge where Edie is standing, and for a moment, just for a moment, I see the relief on her face before she turns away and begins to climb back up to the top. With difficulty I haul myself out, scrabbling about on the rocks before finding a foothold and following her. I’m only a little bit behind her when I look up and see Connor there, staring down at the two of us and smoking a cigarette, the oily green surface of the water reflected in his shades.
They drop me off where they found me. As I watch them drive away I think about Edie, and why they picked me up, and what it could possibly mean, but mainly I think about how unhappy she seemed, and how horrible Connor was to her, and I think about how she needs me now more than ever.
That night I dream about the quarry. But this time, I don’t fight my way back up to the surface; my head doesn’t break up into the warm sunlight. Instead I continue to plunge deeper and deeper until suddenly it’s no longer my body I’m inhabiting: I am my sister, I am Lydia. The water begins to fill my mouth, my nose, choking me until I can’t b
reathe. As I sink lower and lower the awful, burning pressure in my lungs builds and builds until I wake to darkness, to dizzying panic, my face wet with tears, my breath ragged gasps. Lydia. Grief floods me: how frightened she must have been.
We had been camping in the Brecon Beacons, near where we lived in Wales. A little site next to a lake with a scattering of tents and caravans, a few communal wooden buildings. One morning I woke early to see Mum gathering her things for the shower block and when she saw me she put her finger to her lips and whispered, ‘Stay here.’
Dad was fast asleep, snoring in his sleeping bag, but almost as soon as Mum had zipped up the tent behind her, Lydia had woken too. ‘Hebba!’ she said, smiling up at me.
I glanced at Dad and, just like Mum had done, put my finger to my lips. ‘Come on.’
We had crawled out into the misty, early morning sunshine and gone down to the shore of the sparkling lake and looked at the boats tethered to the jetty. ‘Me boat, me boat!’ she said, hopping about in excitement.
I knew we weren’t allowed. ‘No, Lyddy,’ I said, but held her hand as we paddled in the lacy ripples of the lake’s shore, the hem of her nightie and the cuffs of my pyjama bottoms growing heavy and dark in the lapping water. Near us, a blue-and-yellow dinghy bobbed gently.
Lydia held out her arms to it, looking back at me, her round, cornflower blue eyes beseeching. ‘Me boat, me boat!’ she said again.
I’d hesitated, glancing back at the silent tents. What fun it would be! In that moment all the reasons why we shouldn’t had disappeared. ‘OK,’ I said and using all my strength had lifted her into the dinghy, before hopping in myself. I guess it was our weight and movement that had set it loose and I hadn’t noticed we had become untethered until we were a metre from the jetty. I’d grabbed hold of the oars, immediately dropping one into the water and began chopping so inexpertly with the other that we just moved further and further from the shore. I started to panic. Mum would be so cross. We drifted closer towards the centre. Lydia saw my face and began to cry, ‘It’s OK, Lyddy,’ I said.
But she must have felt my anxiety because she got up and walked towards me, her arms outstretched. ‘Want to go back. Want Mummy.’
‘No,’ I shouted. ‘Sit down, sit down! It’s not safe!’ And she had started back in shock, crying even more because I’d shouted, and that’s when she’d lost her balance and fallen in.
I didn’t know what to do. Shock and terror had paralysed me at first. She flailed about for a few moments, her head bobbing in and out of the water, crying and swallowing and spluttering, her white nightie ballooning around her, and then she had disappeared. I wasn’t a very good swimmer, the worst in my class. I couldn’t see her, couldn’t reach her. I should have jumped in after her, I should have, but I was too scared. I hadn’t realized I was screaming until, far away, on the shore, people began to run from their tents. I saw my father leaping into the water and beginning to swim, while I’d sat in the middle of the lake and screamed and screamed, and knew that she was gone.
It’s about four the next afternoon when I arrive at the Pembroke Estate. I stop at the bottom of Connor’s tower and stare up at the rows and rows of black windows, wondering which one of them is his. It strikes me that he might be up there right now, staring down at me, watching me, and I shiver, looking around myself at the concrete outbuildings, the garages and bin sheds. A dog tied to some railings barks unceasingly up at the sky and a child throws a football at a wall, over and over, thwack thwack thwack. I take a deep breath and walk towards the lift.
When Connor answers the door I don’t say a word, ignoring the flicker of surprise and then the smirk on his face as I walk past him up the hallway to the living room. Several of his friends are sprawled across the sofa, armchair and floor, music thudding from the speakers. Edie sits in the corner and when she looks up, her expression doesn’t alter. She squints at me for a moment, before her head falls and she goes back to watching the muted TV screen. Everywhere you look there are cigarette papers and lighters and pipes and bags of weed. I take a seat on the sofa next to Rabbit, who’s bending over a line of white powder on a CD case. On the floor by my foot I notice a small bag of white pills.
I turn my attention back to Edie, whose eyes are closed now, her head lolling on to one shoulder, and I wait. Someone’s got to look after her; someone’s got to make sure she’s OK. I won’t let Connor destroy her. I will not let that happen. I see him, standing in the doorway looking in at us, his cocky smile, his cruel green eyes, and a pure, white-hot hatred sweeps through me. I clench my fists tighter and tighter, as the seeds of an idea begin to take root in my mind.
After
We stand at Monica’s back door, looking out at the communal garden. ‘What a tip,’ she says, kicking at an abandoned armchair, its guts spilling foam and rusty springs on to what might once have been a lawn. It’s viciously cold today; icy and bleak, the trees black and skeletal against a flat white sky. I look at a sodden mattress rotting beneath a mountain of rubbish and I shiver, wishing Monica would hurry up and close the door so we could return to her cosy flat. But she’s warming to her theme. ‘It’s a disgrace,’ she goes on. ‘Why haven’t the council been to sort it yet? They need to pull their finger out. I’m going to complain.’
‘Yeah,’ I say. ‘Good luck with that.’ The cold bites into me and I blow warmth on to my fingers. ‘Christ, Mon. Let’s go back in. I’m bloody freezing.’
‘Why don’t we do it ourselves?’ she says. ‘You, me, and the boys – see if we can rope in some of the other flats too?’
‘Um …’
‘Yeah,’ she says, enthusiastically. ‘We’ll get the council to take away all this crap, then we can start turning it into a proper garden again.’
‘Well,’ I say slowly, ‘that might …’
She turns to me impatiently, ‘Don’t you think it’d be nice to have somewhere Maya can play?’
I look at her eager face and cast my eye over the garden again, seeing it now through her eyes: cleared, growing, with flowers and a lawn, Maya playing in the sunshine, and I smile. ‘Yeah,’ I tell her, ‘it really would.’
She nudges me. ‘Could even get that fella of yours to help out.’
The familiar hot creep of embarrassment returns at the mention of James and I look away and mumble, ‘I already told you, he’s not my fella.’
‘We’ll see.’ A sudden icy rain begins to fall, and at last we return to the flat. We find Billy sat at the kitchen table, Maya perched on his knee as he tinkers with a part from his motorbike. She looks up and smiles when she sees me, a line of black grease streaked across her cheek. It’s warm in here with the rain pelting at the windows, the radio playing a Lady Gaga song that Monica hums along to as she puts the kettle on and washes up some mugs. I take a seat as Ryan appears and hands his brother a spanner, the two lads conferring intently as they work.
As I watch the boys I wonder how it must have been for them, to have grown up the way they did; how it is that they turned out so well despite the things they must have witnessed, all the violence they’d seen. It occurs to me that the goodness in their mother must have been enough to outweigh the evil in their father, and my thoughts turn to Heri. He’d been a good man, I remind myself anxiously, and I hope with all my heart that it’s him who Maya takes after, and not me.
‘Earth to Edie?’
I look up, startled. ‘Sorry, what?’
Monica laughs. ‘I was saying, why don’t you and Maya come to us for Christmas Day? It’ll just be me and the boys, but you’re welcome too.’
‘Really?’ I say. Uncle Geoff had already told me he’d arranged to spend the day with old friends. ‘I didn’t know if you’d be back in touch by then you see,’ he’d added apologetically and I’d felt a fresh wave of guilt and reassured him that Maya and I would be absolutely fine, that we’d see him on Boxing Day instead. I smile at Monica. ‘That’d be amazing! Are you sure?’
She laughs. ‘It really won’t be, but yeah, o
f course.’ She lowers her voice. ‘Ryan and Billy haven’t had a decent Christmas for a long time, I want it to be special this year.’
I’m so touched I have to swallow hard before I reply, ‘I’d love to. It’ll be great.’
She smiles. ‘Yeah, it will, won’t it?’
The next morning, after weeks of freezing rain I wake to a December Sunday morning so unseasonably mild that I step out on to the roof and blink up at the hazy blue sky in astonishment. Below me the quiet streets and dew-soaked gardens glisten expectantly in the sunshine and I bundle Maya into her buggy and set off for the park. Warmed by this bright, beautiful sunlight my fears about Heather begin to recede. There had been no more phone calls since the night I went to James’s, and Jennifer had never replied to my email. I feel a tentative flicker of hope: perhaps it was all over, after all.
The park’s already busy when we arrive, people emerging like moles from their burrows, smiling their surprise while their kids charge around without their coats. I take Maya to the swings and she laughs so delightedly that a man walking past stops and smiles. ‘Now there’s a happy little face,’ he says, and I feel an almost overwhelming rush of pride as I think of how far we’ve come, Maya and I; what a distance we’ve travelled together since those first few grim months of her life.
Later, as we sit together on the grass, I spy a grey-haired woman sharing a sandwich with a little boy and as I watch, the image of my mother’s face flickers across my mind. A memory comes to me of one of the last times we spoke. I was standing in our old front room, Mum sitting on the sofa, her crutches propped up next to her. She was smoking a cigarette, hair done and lipstick on her face even though she hadn’t stepped foot outside for months. She was crying, and I was refusing to look at her. ‘Edie,’ she said. ‘Please talk to me.’