by Camilla Way
But instead of replying, Heather turns her back and walks away from me to the far corner of the roof, still dangerously close to the edge. I watch helplessly as she holds Maya tightly, her face entirely blank. But although I’m almost senseless with fear, Monica doesn’t falter, her voice low and steady. ‘Heather,’ she says again. ‘Whatever this is, whatever has happened, Maya needs to be safe now.’
I see Heather listen to her, and I hold my breath, praying wordlessly.
‘You are very upset, I know, I can see that,’ Monica continues, ‘but this isn’t the way to make things better. Maya hasn’t done anything to hurt you, has she? Has she, Heather?’
Heather shakes her head a tiny fraction, and a tendril of hope unfurls inside me.
‘I want to help you, Heather,’ Monica says. ‘I want to listen to you. But you have the chance now to keep Maya safe. Because she’s only a baby, isn’t she? Isn’t she, Heather? And she trusts you to keep her from harm. Bring her to me, Heather, so that she’s safe. Will you do that for her, Heather? Please?’
A long moment passes. It hangs in the balance, what Heather will do. And then, at last, Heather turns, and slowly, mutely, steps towards Monica. She passes Maya to her and I let out a long, painful gasp of relief. I take my daughter from Monica and fall to my knees, crying into Maya’s hair.
But Monica doesn’t move. ‘Why don’t you come in, Heather?’ she says. ‘It’ll be just you and me. We can talk.’ She speaks with infinite gentleness, as though to a small child, and for a moment I think Heather is going to do as she asks, but instead she takes a step backwards, and then another, and I let out a stifled scream of fright. But Monica doesn’t waver. ‘Come in now, Heather,’ she repeats. ‘Come in and let me help you. I’d like to help you, if you’ll let me.’
At this, Heather stops, her face crumples, and she begins to cry.
‘Heather,’ I beg, ‘please … please, Heather.’
Monica takes a step forward and holds out her hand to Heather. There is absolute silence, the world waits. And then, finally, Heather takes it. Together they climb down into the kitchen, and, overwhelmed with relief, I get to my feet and follow them.
James stands in the door staring back at us, his face blank with shock. ‘What the fuck? Shall I call the police? Who is this?’
After a silence it’s Monica who answers him. ‘This is Heather. Edie’s friend.’
But when Heather next speaks, it’s to me. ‘Tell them what you did,’ she says. ‘You were my friend. Tell them. Tell them what you did.’
‘I’m sorry,’ I cry, clasping Maya to me and sobbing. ‘I’m so sorry, there’s nothing I can do about it now, there’s nothing I can do!’
‘What is this about, Heather?’ Monica asks. ‘Let me help you. Tell me what’s wrong.’
And so she does. She tells them everything. I can’t look at Monica or James while they listen to her story. I sit on the floor of my kitchen and hold Maya to me as Heather tells them what I did. When she’s finished, Monica turns to me. ‘Is this true, Edie?’ she asks, and finally I nod. She gapes at me, shocked and bewildered. ‘But … didn’t you call the police, tell somebody …?’
‘I … I …’
But Heather interrupts me. ‘She told me not to tell.’
Monica stares at me in disbelief. ‘You told her not to tell anyone? Why?’
‘Monica,’ I say desperately, ‘I can explain, I …’
I hear the phone ringing as though from somewhere far away and pull the duvet over my head, sinking back into my pain, my bruised and battered body curled tightly in the position I have lain in for the past three nights and days.
At first I’d tried to struggle free, kicking and punching with a strength I never knew I had, but the more I fought the more forcefully they’d held me. I could hear myself screaming, my hysterical NONONONONO like something not a part of me, a sound I’d heard myself make only once before, the day my sister died. And then it was as though I left myself, floating away until I was looking down from far above, watching it happening to someone else, limp and passive as they finished what they’d set out that day to do.
When at last it was over, when they’d all had their turn and driven off, I had stayed in that strange and disconnected state and I’d thought about my sister, about the moment when she’d fallen, back, back, back into the water, how I’d not been able to save her. And then I thought about Edie, how the moment I’d realized what Connor was going to do, I’d screamed for her to help me and in my panic and my fear had turned to her and seen the way her eyes were locked on him, and I’d known then, even before she’d turned and run, I’d understood that it was only Connor she could see, and it always had been.
And all at once, I’d returned to myself, all feeling and sensation coming back to me in a sickening rush, and that was when I’d heard the awful endless high-pitched scream, like an animal, going on and on and on, and realized that it came from me.
Here in my room the distant ringing of the telephone stops abruptly and I hear only the slow, rhythmic sound of my own breathing, in and out, in and out, and I hold my breath, because even the sound of myself disgusts me now. Sometimes, since it happened, I leave myself for hours, drifting far away from this body lying motionless upon this bed. I have not eaten, nor talked, nor barely left my room in days.
A knock on my door. ‘Heather?’ I open my eyes to see Dad’s face, his pleading, anxious eyes peering at me as he says, ‘It’s Edie on the phone. I don’t know what’s happened, but please talk to her, Heather, please.’ He has barely finished speaking before I’ve leapt out of bed, running to Dad’s study, shutting the door in his face and grabbing at the receiver, so desperate am I to speak to the one person who can help me, who can tell me what to do, how to stop this awful gutting choking pain.
‘Edie? Edie is that you?’
‘Yes.’
I can barely speak for sobbing. ‘Where are you? You must come back, you must help me. Please, Edie, please help me.’
But her voice is flat and cold. ‘I’m in London. Heather, you must listen to me. You can’t tell anyone. Do you understand?’
‘But—’
‘I mean it, Heather. Do not tell anyone. If you do, I’ll be dragged into it too. I’ll be a witness.’ For the first time her voice cracks. ‘He’d kill me, Heather. He’d find me and he’d kill me and then he’d kill you too. I’ll tell them that you’re lying, that you’ve made the whole thing up.’
I sink to the floor, struggling to breathe, dizzy with shock, certain that I’m going to be sick. ‘But, Edie, I can’t, I don’t … please, Edie, you’ve got to help me.’
Edie’s voice cuts through mine. ‘If you love me, you’ll keep quiet. If you talk about this to anyone, I’ll never forgive you. Do you hear me? I will never fucking forgive you.’
And then she hangs up.
In my kitchen, so quiet now you could hear a pin drop, Heather tells Monica what I’d said to her that day, and when she’s finished, Monica’s expression when she looks back to me has changed from bewilderment to disgust.
After
The train pulls out of Euston station and the woman opposite me takes a paperback from her bag and begins to read. On my lap, Maya sucks on a breadstick, looking out of the window as the world slips past. A recorded announcement tells us that the buffet carriage is situated at the rear of the train, and we begin to pick up speed. Soon inner London turns into pebble-dashed suburbia until at last the final loose strands of the city’s outskirts, with its industrial estates and depots and warehouses, peter out into green fields.
On the rack above me sits a small suitcase. A dog-eared newspaper left by someone else lies on the table in front of me but the words swim before my eyes and once again my mind begins its sickening replay of Christmas Day.
After Heather had finished her story a stunned silence had fallen. For a moment, nobody had spoken or moved. Unable to look at Monica or James, I could do nothing but cling to Maya and cry. Finally, Monica had gone
to Heather and put her arms around her. ‘Ssshhh,’ she’d soothed. ‘It’s OK now, it’s all going to be OK.’ And then she had taken Heather’s hand and led her out of my flat. She didn’t look at me as she passed me by.
James had stared at me, open-mouthed with shock. ‘Edie?’ he said. ‘I don’t … Surely this can’t be true?’ But I could only nod, and after several silent seconds he had left too. And then I had sat down at the kitchen table with Maya, and waited for Christmas Day to pass.
An hour or so later the train stops at a small rural station and a crowd of teenagers get on, clutching cans of beer, traipsing noisily down the aisle, swaying and laughing as they go. Maya, who had fallen asleep somewhere near Birmingham, stirs briefly in my arms but quickly settles again, leaving me to gaze out of the window, hardly seeing the countryside that’s flashing past. Suddenly the train enters a tunnel and I find myself faced with my reflection, staring into my own eyes for a moment or two until the train emerges once again into daylight, and I vanish once more.
On Boxing Day morning I’d gone to stay at Uncle Geoff’s, leaving almost at the crack of dawn to avoid the possibility of bumping into Monica – I couldn’t bear to have to face again her hard cold stare of contempt. Despite my uncle’s kindness, the passing of those icy late-December days and endless nights had seemed interminable, a horrible reminder of the last time I had run there to hide. And then, finally, I had come to my decision.
On my way to the station this morning, I’d made one final stop. When James had opened the door we had stood in silence for a long moment. I saw a flash of sympathy in his eyes and I had clung to it desperately. ‘Are you OK?’ he asked quietly, and I had nodded. He had stroked Maya’s cheek and I’d been overcome with loneliness and longing.
‘I wanted to say goodbye,’ I said, and he had nodded, but didn’t ask where I was going. Behind me the taxi’s engine growled.
‘Have you seen Monica?’ I asked at last.
‘I’ve spoken to her,’ he said. ‘She gave me her number. I guess I just needed to talk to her.’
‘How is she?’ I asked, tears stinging my eyes. ‘How’s Heather?’
And he had told me how Monica had taken Heather in, had found her a refuge to go to in the New Year, somewhere they could help her. ‘She’s a good person, Monica,’ James had said.
Shame had slammed into me. ‘Yes,’ I’d whispered, ‘she is.’ And then, with nothing left to say, I’d turned and walked away.
The train pulls in at Wolverhampton and Maya and I get off to wait for a new one to take us on the last leg of our journey. Half an hour later we chug slowly through countryside that becomes increasingly, sickeningly familiar with every passing minute. I grip the table in front of me, trying to keep the waves of nausea at bay. I feel Connor’s presence getting nearer and nearer, not just a memory, an intangible monster from my past, but a real person, existing in the world somewhere close. I remember the morning I’d left Fremton for good, just before dawn as the first light had bled into the sky, and as the train pulls into Fremton station I begin to shake so violently that I can barely stand.
As Maya and I walk along the familiar streets I feel a growing panic as memory after memory slams into me: the town square where I’d met Connor that first time, the pubs and off-licences we used to go to, the road that leads to Braxton Field where the fun fair came to town. In the windows of small, black-bricked houses, tired Christmas trees stand, bedraggled beneath wreaths of sagging tinsel. Torn wrapping paper trails from overstuffed wheelie bins. The pavements are mostly empty in this cold, end-of-year mid morning, but I fearfully scan the face of every passer-by. Does Connor even live here any more? Do any of them? As I approach Tyner’s Cross I see the estate looming ahead; its three towers glowering down at me and the closer I get, the noise of the motorway grows louder, like the warning growl of some unseen beast.
At last I reach my mother’s street. I pause at the gate and see that nothing whatsoever has changed; the peeling paint on the door is the same shade of lemon, the same curtains my nan had once chosen hang at the windows still. I make myself approach and knock on the door, fear pounding through me.
When my mother sees me standing there her mouth falls open in shock. We consider each other for a long, silent moment, until her gaze falls from my face to her granddaughter’s and for an instant, in the shadows of her hallway, I see her eyes flicker with a sudden light. At last I begin to speak and I don’t stop until I’ve finished the speech I’d rehearsed on the long journey here. Her face betrays no emotion as she listens, but at last she nods and after a second or two I hand Maya to her before I turn and leave.
Retracing my steps through the quiet streets I reach the market square and stand for a while, taking in the empty shops and spray-painted statue, the air of sudden abandonment. And it seems as though the very second I look up at the sky, snow begins to fall, thick and white and fast, filling the world with a soft blue light. I walk on towards the large red-bricked building on the farthest corner of the square and I pause for a moment on its steps, until finally I go in, the door of the police station swinging silently shut behind me.
Acknowledgements
My thanks to: my agent Hellie Ogden at Janklow & Nesbit (UK) – without her vision, hard work and all-round brilliance, this book wouldn’t exist; my excellent editors, Julia Wisdom and her team at HarperCollins in the UK; Danielle Perez and her team at Penguin Random House in the US; Kate Stephenson, Claire Paterson, Emma Parry.
I am also indebted to my friends Alex Pierce, Steven Regan and Justin Quirk for their many readings of the work in progress, their wise advice and endless encouragement.
Finally, but most of all, huge love and thanks as ever to David Holloway.
About the Author
Camilla Way was formerly an editor on the style magazine Arena and has written for Stylist, Elle and the Guardian.
She first became interested in the theme of toxic female friendships and the question of whether we can ever, truly, escape our past after hearing a news story about a teenage friendship that went horribly wrong.
Camilla is now a full-time writer and lives in south-east London with her partner and twin boys.
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