A Girl Like Lilac

by Victoria L. James

  I shook the thought away immediately. I knew I was Toby’s peace. One he loved to wrap his young, strong arms around and lose himself in.

  But the time kept… on… ticking.

  The clock on my bedroom wall taunted me. Tick, tock. Tick, tock. Over and over and over again. I walked to the bathroom, convinced I was going to be sick as the dread made my blood the bad kind of drunk. Nothing happened, though. You couldn’t just throw up and flush away your fears.

  When I opened the bathroom door, Aunt Coral was waiting outside for me, her back pressed against the hallway wall, her arms folded across her chest as she chewed on her fingernail, too.

  “You’re sick?” It wasn’t a question, even though she made it sound like one. It was a suspicion.

  “No. I thought I was, but…”

  “Just nauseous?”

  “Yeah,” I sighed, my body sagging. “It’s Toby.”

  “What about him, sweetie?”

  “I don’t know. We went away last night to a place in Saint Osyth, not far from the beach, and it was, oh, it was incredible. The best night of my life. We were on such a high when we came home earlier, and we didn’t expect to find what we came home to. Toby’s dad was leaving his mum.”

  Her eyes widened, and she pushed off the wall, letting her hands drop by her sides. “Wayne? He’s left Darlene?”

  I nodded slowly.

  “But…” She gasped, her face filled with pain. “Why?”

  That was one of the things I loved most about Aunt Coral—the way she ached for people she barely even knew when their love started to fracture. The way she believed in the strength of pure love overcoming all obstacles, even the darkest and ugliest ones of all.

  “I don’t know. Wayne took Toby’s younger brothers, and he was talking all cryptic-like, telling Darlene that she needed to be honest with Toby about something before it ruined him like it had already ruined them.”

  Aunt Coral’s eyes searched mine, and her scowl was deep and painful like it hurt her to think. “That sounds serious.”

  “I know. But Toby promised to come to me as soon as he found out what was going on, and it’s been four hours, and he still isn’t here. Why isn’t he here?” The tears started to rise like traitors, making my voice wobble as they shot through my body.

  Without realising how and when it happened, my aunt had guided me back to my room and sat me on the edge of my bed, her arm wrapped around my shoulder protectively.

  “This is life, Lilac, and whatever Toby is going through right now, he needs to deal with it however he wants to deal with it. Just because you aren’t by his side or he hasn’t climbed through this window yet, it doesn’t mean he doesn’t love you. It doesn’t even mean that something terrifying is wrong back home. It could just mean that because he has so much faith in your love for him, he knows you can wait. His mum is…”

  “... fragile,” I finished for her. There was no use pretending. We all knew Darlene Hunter had her issues.

  “Fragile.” Aunt Coral inhaled slowly. “Give him time to make her feel stronger. He’ll be here.”

  “And if he isn’t?”

  “Then you go find him. You’ll know when to chase.”

  I must have silently cried myself to sleep soon after because it seemed like all I’d done was blink before my body jumped and my eyes flew open. I lay curled in a ball on top of my duvet, my hands tucked under my cheek, my mouth tasting like distress.

  The sound of car tyres screeching away down our cul-de-sac was what had woken me, as well as the temporary stream of headlights that flashed into the moonlit walls of my room.

  I sprung from the bed and ran to the window. Toby’s car was gone.

  There was no need for me to look across at his bedroom window. Everything was dark inside the house. Everything.

  He hadn’t come to me as promised.

  And I think somewhere deep inside, for some reason I would never be able to understand, I knew that he wouldn’t.

  “Lilac!” Mum called from our front door, but it was too late for me to answer. I was already running up the steps of the Hunters’ home. I knocked delicately at first, despite my shaking hands. My patience had slipped away with my hope, and I was soon pounding at the door. I didn’t think anyone was in, so what did it matter?

  It mattered because I was wrong.

  The slow twist of the key in the lock had me freezing mid-knock, until a tired, grey, worn out looking version of Darlene stood before me.

  “I’m so sorry to bother you, but...” Even though it had only been a few hours that had passed since I’d held her, she looked like she’d aged ten years.

  Her eyes were cast down at my feet, flickering away like she had a nervous twitch that made her blink four times a second.

  “Where is he?” I asked quietly.

  “Gone.”

  “Not Wayne, Darlene. I mean Toby. Where’s Toby? My Toby?” I didn’t care that I was claiming what was rightfully hers. He was mine, and I was there to fight for him, tooth, nails, claws, the thorns of an angry rose. I didn’t care what I had to use. “Tell me.”

  Her body swayed from side to side, and I heard the lump she swallowed before she looked up at me through bloodshot eyes.

  “Gone, Lilac,” she whispered. “He’s gone.”

  “He… he can’t be.”

  “I’ve lost him.”

  No.

  No.

  No.

  It was the one clear word that echoed in my mind and my heart like a beating drum.

  “Where? Where has he gone?”

  She shrugged weakly and pulled her loose dressing gown belt tight. Then she turned around like I wasn’t even there and dragged her feet through the dark hallway of their home. Darlene may not have been inviting me in, but she wasn’t turning me away, either. I was taking anything I could.

  He’s gone.

  I’ve lost him.

  Panic crept over my skin like a slow-burning, itchy plague.

  Shutting the door behind me, I reached over and turned on the nearest light switch I could find, grateful when the hallway came to life immediately. Darlene turned a corner to where the long dining table was, and she pulled out a chair, sinking into it with a slump before she dropped her head into her hands and became a statue again.

  I pulled out the chair beside her, turning it so I was facing her. I needed her full attention, and I was willing to do anything I could to get it.

  “Darlene, you’re going to have to forgive me for pushing you here, but you’ve just told me that the guy I’m in love with has gone, right after I woke up and heard his car screaming down the road like it was as angry as he felt. I’ve waited hours to see if he’s okay, and I need to know if he’s—”

  “Stop it.” She growled behind her hands. “Stop it.”

  I flinched at her harsh tone.

  She began to rock her body backwards and forwards, shaking her head in despair. “Drown out the noise. Forget it all happened. Push it away, push it away, push it away. It’s not my fault,” she sobbed quietly into her hands. “Not my fault. He did this to me. He did.”

  I was out of my depth, and I already knew it. “Who did what to you, Darlene?”

  “Toby didn’t need to know yet. He didn’t need to know. He’s too young.”

  “Only in years.”

  She shook her head violently again, rubbing the heels of her hands into her eyes with far too much aggression. “Not anymore. Not anymore. Now he’s weak because I was forced to say things I didn’t want to say. It’s never my life. Never my way. Never what I want. I can’t do this. I’ve messed everything up,” she cried. Her jaw went slack, and her mouth hung open, and all of Darlene’s misery poured out of her like a howling wolf. Her shoulders shook, her tears a tsunami as her fingers dug into her scalp like she was trying to penetrate her skull. “I just want to forget. Forget it all.”

  “I can help you,” I said bravely, moving closer. “Let me help you.”

  “How?”


  “I can take your pain. I don’t have any, so give me yours. I don’t have any pain apart from the fact that I love your son and I’m worried about him, about you, about what’s going on right now. Let me carry some of your burdens, Darlene. I have strong shoulders—stronger than they look. I can hold them until you’re ready to own them again.”

  Her sobbing eased, although her tears still fell, and her body became still for just a moment.

  I reached up to gently pull her hands away from her swollen eyes, dropping them in between us as I rubbed my thumb across her knuckles and waited for her to look at me. She did, and I was staring into the soul of someone who was living a colourless life, always running away from whatever black cloud of evil taunted her.

  “Let me hold your pain for a while.”

  “You… you can do that?” she asked like a child.

  “I can try.”

  She glanced down at our hands for a single second before she looked back up at me.

  “A girl like you is so full of light, Lilac,” she whispered, “and on this side of the garden, there’s only dark.”

  “I don’t believe that. Your son has lived here for most of his life, and he’s the lightest, most beautiful, good boy I’ve ever known. You have to take credit for that. Your other two children, Charlie and Harry, are just as perfect, and all three of them came from you, Darlene. All three of them came from the same parents on this side of the fence.”

  She swallowed, then licked her lips to wet the cracks. “Not all of them came from the same parents.”

  “What?”

  “Not all of them are the same.”

  And just like that, my heart sank into the depths of my knot-filled stomach and stayed trapped there.

  “They all have the same mother,” she said quietly.

  “Are you saying…?”

  I already knew.

  “Toby isn’t Wayne’s.” Three words, dumped at my feet like they shouldn’t hurt, made me bleed for the boy I loved.

  “And Toby just found out?” I whispered.

  “Yes,” she said through a strangled cry, her face scrunching up as the pain washed over her anew. “But there’s so much more to the story than that.”

  “Tell me all of it. Let me carry it for you.”

  My thumbs continued to stroke her knuckles and Darlene seemed to focus on that and that alone, like the soothing repetition was enough to lull her into thinking she wasn’t talking to anyone but herself.

  “Stop me if it gets too heavy,” she whispered.

  “It won’t.”

  I braced myself for what she was about to tell me. I braced myself, thinking how bad could it be because my positive, sunny disposition in life had always worked in my favour.

  How wrong could one, naive young woman, be?

  Wrong. Very, very, very wrong.

  TWENTY-FIVE

  Toby

  My tyres screeched as they tore out of Southwold, riding free of the heavy weight of that dark place until I hit Pakefield, tearing past the holiday camp on my right off the main road, and almost forgetting to brake when another car came flying around the roundabout. I exhaled heavily, waiting for it to pass. It was the perfect opportunity to take my foot off the pedal and calm the fuck down. But opportunities were meant to be wasted in my world, and no sooner had I thought I could breathe again, my chest became tight, and my foot became heavy. It sank down on the accelerator, and I flew around the roundabout with what little control I could muster. It felt good to grip the steering wheel and make my knuckles turn white. It felt good to try and outrun the rain that was starting to fall.

  The only sound I could hear was my mother’s words on repeat, and it annoyed the hell out of me. I’d been living a lie, and not one damn person who loved me had had the guts to feed me the truths I deserved. Not one of them. Protection, she said. It was all for my protection. Like I couldn’t handle hearing the tragedy that I was.

  Like it wouldn’t hurt to know I’d been created in such a horrid fucking way.

  I turned up the volume of the stereo, my teeth grinding together, my jaw set tight and my nostrils flaring as I curled my fingers tighter around the wheel and tensed my arms.

  The anger burned.

  I wanted to close my eyes to block it out, but her words were too loud.

  The truth was too noisy.

  “I need you to understand that not a day has gone by where I don’t thank God for bringing you into my life.”

  “What the hell has God got to do with this, Mum?” I snapped, letting the dread take over. I never snapped at her. I always walked away. But not today. Today I demanded answers.

  Mum fiddled with the end of her robe’s belt, twirling it around her fingers before she sat on the edge of the sofa and let herself cry.

  “The first boyfriend I ever had was…” She sighed and huffed out a humourless laugh. “Oh, boy, was he something special around town. Everybody wanted him, and he knew it. He was so arrogant. He was so beautifully arrogant. I wanted to bathe in his honesty and the way he didn’t care for anything deemed popular. He was so brave with his uniqueness. He stood out because he had no desire to blend in.”

  I immediately thought of Lilac and how she fit that description perfectly, but I blinked and forced her—pushed her away so cruelly—to the back of my mind. I couldn’t think of her yet. I couldn’t let myself soften. I needed to remain like stone.

  “I was young, and so was he. We weren’t meant to become a thing. I was quiet, reserved, but strong enough to know what I liked and didn’t like. He said that’s what drew him to me, to everyone’s shock and surprise. He loved how I could be so passive about some things, yet so determined and strong about others. He would often push my buttons just for his amusement. He’d make me fire up, just so he could watch me become someone else, someone who would defend their beliefs and dreams. Whenever I’d be about to explode with rage, he’d laugh and wrap me in hugs and kisses so sweet.” She shook her head. “He said it was one of the reasons why he’d left his previous girlfriend. He didn’t want the popular girl everyone had had before him anymore. He wanted the hidden gem the rest didn’t even know was there.”

  The muscles in my jaw twitched as I watched her.

  “I should tell you, his ex-girlfriend was heavily pregnant when I got with him. She was young, scared, alone, and about to have a baby. But he swore she was lying about it being his. All of his friends backed him up, too, all of them making out he was the victim, and she was nothing more than a slut, spreading vicious rumours about the baby being anybody’s but his. He said it was a trick she was playing to tear us apart, and I believed him because I loved him. Like a fool, I stayed with him for months, even while that girl had her child… alone.”

  Mum wasn’t in the room with me then. She was living life back there, with him, whoever he was. She tilted her head to one side and smiled softly. “Looking back, we were so in love. Stupid and selfish. I believed everything he told me because he truly made me feel special and unique. Men wanted to be him, and women were desperate to be with him. Especially his ex. But I was his little sidekick, always on his arm, always by his side, smiling brightly up at his perfection. We were together only a few months before he pushed to get intimate with me.”

  “Pushed?”

  “He said it was unfair of me to expect a boy like him to wait so long.”

  Her face fell serious and her brows knitted together. She cast her eyes down to focus on her fingers as they twisted the robe belt around, over and over again.

  “You have to understand, Toby, I was scared.”

  “Of what?”

  “Intimacy.”

  She looked up through her tear-filled eyes, pleading with me for something I didn’t have.

  “What does this have to do with me, Mum?”

  “Because I need you to know that you were born from love, but you were created from fear.”

  I frowned harder. My silence said enough.

  “The first time I
ever… we ever… you know, became intimate, we were at his place. His parents were away for the weekend. We had the whole house to ourselves. He’d never, ever pushed me for anything before. Not even when we’d argued about different political beliefs or which football team was the best, or why he hated Prince’s Purple Rain while I absolutely adored it. I knew he’d had sex before, but he’d never before done anything but respect me, even in our disagreements.” Mum rubbed her lips together, her tears falling free. “Until he didn’t respect me enough to hear me when I said no.”

  “When you said no,” I mouthed, thinking of Lilac.

  “We were making out, kissing, whatever you kids call it these days. We were on the sofa, and he was on top of me.” She choked on her tears suddenly, her breath catching in the back of her throat. “I… I can’t do this, Toby. I’m sorry. I can’t.” She stood up and shook her head, searching for the nearest place she could flee to.

  “No!” I commanded, stepping in front of her and pressing down on her shoulders. “I need this from you, Mum,” I pleaded. I fucking begged her with my eyes. “I need to know. You owe me this.”

  Her chin trembled like a baby’s, the rocking of her lips violent as her fight crumbled. “I loved him so much,” she sobbed. “I loved him so much, and I knew one day I wanted to sleep with him. I knew one day it would happen. I just needed him to be patient—to trust me. And he couldn’t give me that. H-he touched my legs at first. His hand slid up my thigh while his other hand had a grip on the back of my neck.” She reached up to cup the very spot on her neck like his hand was still there. Like she could feel the burn of his touch. “He kept rocking into me, and I could feel him. I could feel his…”

  She swallowed, not needing to say the rest. I felt sick, but I held onto her, trying to control the flames of anger inside me.

  “I told him no, Toby,” she finally whispered, looking up at me. “I told him no, but he took it anyway. He put his hand over my mouth, told me I’d be grateful he’d taken control once it was over, that I’d enjoy it. Even when he was inside me, he said the pain would disappear, and it would get easier each time. He knew from experience, I should trust him. Even when my tears were falling down my cheeks, he kept telling me it was for my own good. I’d learn to enjoy it. He was getting rid of the fear for me, taking away my doubts. He was doing me a favour.”