by Byrne, Tanya
‘Of course,’ I told her with a small shrug. ‘But I couldn’t tell him.’
‘Why not?’
‘He wouldn’t understand.’ And he wouldn’t. He wouldn’t understand how I wanted to bleed into every corner of Juliet’s life.
‘Did he offer to do it again, to –’ she stopped for breath – ‘to sort it out?’
I nodded.
‘Why didn’t you let him?’
I shrugged again. I knew that if I said it out loud, it wouldn’t make sense. There’s something about Doctor Gilyard, about this tiny white room, that distorts things. I say things to her sometimes, things that make sense, things that have always made sense, but when I hear myself say them, they sound weird. Cruel. Ugly. So I didn’t tell her why, that I could just see Juliet, building this new life for herself, and I had to be in the middle of it, a red thread running through it. I had to be her friend. The one she split her Twix with. The one she called the first time Sid kissed her outside that curry house on Brick Lane.
‘It made me feel better,’ I said instead, lifting my eyelashes to look at her, ‘to know that every good memory Juliet had from then on would involve me.’
‘Why?’
‘Because when the time came, she would question it all – me, Sid, her foster parents – just like I did when I found out about Dad. She would ask herself if any of it was real and that’s what I wanted, for her whole life to catch light and burn and burn and burn until all that was left was smoke. Then she would have nothing. Nothing.’
Doctor Gilyard waited for me to catch my breath, then said, ‘Did you tell your uncle Alex that? Did he understand?’
I shook my head. He couldn’t because he just wanted her dead. He’d never understand the satisfaction of picking her apart – slowly, slowly.
‘Everything is black and white to Uncle Alex,’ I told Doctor Gilyard. ‘Left, right. Up, down. Love, hate. Right, wrong.’
‘How are things with you, Emily?’
‘I see everything in between. All those shades of grey and red and blue.’
She nodded at that and scribbled something in her notebook. ‘What do you think would have happened, if you’d listened to him? If you’d gone back to Spain?’
I turned my face away. ‘I don’t know.’
‘Should he have tried harder to stop you?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Would any of this have happened if he had?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Would you be happy, Emily?’
This is why I can’t let her in, why I have to lock things in boxes and behind doors, because she makes me think about things. She makes me ask myself things like, Would I be happy? Thirteen hours later, I’m still sitting here asking myself, Would I be happy? Would I be happy? Would I be happy? Would I be happy? Would I be happy? Would I be happy?
These are the things that keep me up at night.
What I’ve lost.
The person I’ll never be now.
I didn’t tell Doctor Gilyard this, but as soon as Uncle Alex left that night, I ran to Juliet’s house, resolve burning fresh and bright in my blood.
I was out of breath by the time I got there, my lungs throbbing as I went through the side gate and walked along the side of the house.
‘Hey, Ro,’ Mike said when he saw me. ‘Where’ve you been? You missed dinner.’
‘Sorry,’ I said, stopping to snatch at a breath. ‘My uncle popped round.’
It wasn’t until I stopped that I realised how cold it was. September had come and gone like a fever. Branches had started to droop, leaves darken, and the nights began to creep closer, closer. I don’t remember most of September, just coming out the other side of it that evening in October more Rose and less Emily.
‘You okay?’ Mike stepped away from the back door and when he turned to face me, his eyes looked inhumanly blue in the light spilling out from the kitchen.
‘Yeah. ’Course. Mum just wanted us to have dinner. Sorry I didn’t call.’
By then, the lies came more easily. I’d started to enjoy it, pretending to be sixteen again. Rose Glass felt more whole than Emily Koll sometimes. More of a person. I suppose it’s because as Rose, I had to have an answer for everything. I never felt ready when I was Emily; I was always a few steps behind. I wasn’t as pretty as the girls at St Jude’s, as rich, as thin, as clever. They had boyfriends and were on the hockey team and had short stories published but still managed to get straight As while I struggled to read all the books on my reading lists. But Rose didn’t need to pass any exams. She didn’t need a boyfriend or a place at university. It was strangely liberating, not having to try to be someone.
The funny thing is, I think it might have made me someone.
‘You’re quiet tonight.’ Mike frowned, obviously concerned when I didn’t try to ponce a cigarette or ask if he’d saved me some dinner.
‘Yeah. Sorry.’ I shook my head, then smiled.
The back door was open and as I leaned against the frame, I looked in at the kitchen. It was empty. The dishes were done and drying on the drainer.
‘What’d I miss?’
‘Spag bol. Eve saved you some,’ he said and I smiled again.
The kitchen still smelt of onions and garlic. It always smelled of something; burnt toast in the morning and on Sundays, when Eve’s mother made gizzadas after church, it smelt of coconut. I’d never had a kitchen like that; Dad didn’t cook and when I was at boarding school I was cooked for, so coming home to the smell of onions and garlic wasn’t something I was used to. Maybe I found it comforting, that’s why I was there so much. I don’t know. All I know is that the first time Juliet invited me back to her house to have dinner with her ‘aunt and uncle’, I knew I was doing something right. That I was taking root.
It was a couple of weeks after we’d started college. I’d braced myself to endure dry pork chops and peas with a slightly overweight middle-aged couple, but when I walked into her kitchen, I found Mike and Eve already loose with red wine and singing along to Amy Winehouse as they chopped onions.
They seemed genuinely pleased to see me and before I could take my jacket off, Eve had me chopping green peppers next to her at the counter while Mike got me to sniff spices.
‘Smell that,’ he’d said, holding a jar of something that smelt of Starbucks under my nose. ‘Nutmeg. Perfect with lamb.’
‘Okay.’ I’d nodded as he put some into the sizzling Dutch pot on the stove.
‘Cinnamon,’ he’d said, getting me to smell another jar.
‘Smells like Christmas,’ I’d told him and he’d grinned.
He wasn’t the balding retired policeman I was expecting. He was a retired policeman, but he was in his mid-thirties, like Eve, with a shaved head and these enormous blue eyes, like the Johnson & Johnson baby all grown up. There was nothing remotely dad-like about him; he nudged me with his hip when he wanted to get my attention and let me have sips of his wine when Eve wasn’t looking.
Not that she was paying much attention; she’d gone into the living room to find the book on René Magritte she’d been telling us about. She was an art teacher at a school in Islington and there was nothing remotely mum-like about her, either. She had short freeform dreads, a silver nose stud and a tattoo of three birds on her wrist.
When she found it, she came back into the kitchen saying, ‘Ceci n’est pas une livre.’
I had no idea what she was on about but I was impressed that she’d even found it. Nothing in the house seemed to be in any order so I don’t know how on earth she saw the book on the bowing shelves in the living room. Maybe it wasn’t there. Maybe it was in the pile by the battered leather chair next to fireplace, or on top of the fridge, or on the stairs, or on the windowsill in the downstairs toilet.
It could have been anywhere.
But that was the wonder of that house. It was nothing like mine. Dad liked things clean. Simple. The walls were white, the carpets cream. Everything had its place. Our housekeeper spent
her days making sure his shirts were arranged neatly by colour in his wardrobe and all the calla lilies in the vase on the table in the foyer were the same height.
The flat I was living in then was a lot like my old house. Alex rented it furnished so the glossy floors, thick rugs and leather sofas weren’t really me. But Mike and Eve’s house bled personality, through the cracks in the walls and the holes in the floorboards. They were everywhere. In the mismatched mugs and painted sideboard. And there was stuff all over the place; pot plants and records and piles and piles of magazines – on every table and worktop. Even on the floor. Dad would have had a stroke. But I loved it.
I remember walking into the living room the first time I went there and seeing the framed God Save the Queen poster over the fireplace. I’d laughed and pointed at it saying, ‘Sid and Nancy. How apt.’
That was the day after Juliet and Sid had kissed outside the curry house on Brick Lane so I expected her to laugh too, but she’d blushed and made me promise not to say anything. And I didn’t; we were both raised by over-protective fathers so I understood her need to keep things to herself, but that’s not why I didn’t say anything. I kept it. Filed it away. Everything you say will be taken down and used in evidence against you, and all that.
‘Ro?’ Mike said, and when I looked up, he was leaning against the frame of the back door too. ‘You sure you’re alright?’
He turned his head to blow the smoke from his cigarette out across the garden. It was so dark that as soon as he did, it disappeared and it made me wonder how much of what surrounded us was smoke and how much was darkness.
‘I’m fine. Weird day,’ I told him, taking the can of Red Stripe out of his hand.
He watched as I took a long swig, then reached into the pocket of his jeans and pulled out his box of cigarettes. ‘Here,’ he said, opening it. ‘Don’t tell Eve.’
I plucked one out with a grin and he lit it for me with the neon-pink lighter he stole off me. Or I stole off him. I can’t remember; I just remember it going back and forth a lot between us. I inhaled deeply and stepped back from the door so that I could tip my head and blow the smoke towards the sky. As I did, I could see Juliet upstairs in her bedroom. She was on the phone, obviously talking to Sid. She looked so happy. Content.
I took a swig of beer and looked at Mike. ‘Who’s Nance talking to? Sid?’
He frowned. ‘Who’s Sid?’
Lily’s gone, back to the main wing. She’s eating again and the livid cuts on her arms have faded to pink so a guard came to get her after breakfast. No fanfare. No card. No cake. I can’t even remember the last thing I said to her.
I was sure Doctor Gilyard was going to ask me how I felt about it, but she just took off her glasses and asked if I’d ever tried to break Sid and Juliet up.
It was quite an opener.
‘I told you already,’ I said with a long sigh, inspecting my hair for split ends. ‘It was nothing to do with Sid. Everything I did was to fuck Juliet over.’
‘Okay.’ She nodded. ‘How did you use Sid to fuck Juliet over?’
(I got Doctor Gilyard to say fuck, I want that noted for the record before I continue.)
‘I meddled.’ I looked up with a mischievous smile.
‘How did you meddle?’
‘I told Mike that she was seeing him.’
‘Didn’t he know?’
I shook my head.
‘Why?’
I rolled my eyes. ‘She loves the drama.’
‘And you don’t?’
(I’m not sure I like the new sweary, sarcastic Doctor Gilyard, by the way.)
‘How did he react?’
‘He was fine,’ I said with a shrug. ‘She wasn’t.’
‘Was she upset?’
I chuckled to myself as I remembered how Juliet dragged me up to her bedroom after Mike and Eve confronted her and slammed the door. ‘She was furious.’
‘Why?’
‘She’d told me not to tell them.’
‘How did they react?’
‘They were shocked and they weren’t thrilled that he was eighteen, but they were cool.’
And they were. They were perfectly calm. Neither of them flipped their shit and threatened to lock her in her room until she was thirty like my father would have. If anything, they seemed happy for her and genuinely wanted to know all about Sid.
‘That clearly wasn’t the reaction you were hoping for, Emily.’
‘I shouldn’t have been surprised.’ I laughed bitterly. ‘It was the perfect reaction from her perfect foster parents to her perfect relationship with her perfect boyfriend.’
Doctor Gilyard wrote that down. ‘How would your father have reacted?’
I didn’t respond, but I know how he would have reacted: he would have demanded to see Sid like he did when he found out about Andre Alexander.
‘I want to meet him, this Andre who thinks he can take my daughter to the cinema. Call him and tell him to come here now,’ he’d said, pointing at me over the desk in his office. ‘Call him or I’ll get Alex to call him.’
I thought he was just being over-protective but I don’t know any more and I hate that. I hate that now I look at every memory of my father from a slightly different angle so that even my fondest memories are dirty and dog eared.
‘People say I’m spoilt,’ I said, looking at the crack in the wall behind Doctor Gilyard’s chair. ‘But Juliet’s a fucking brat. She had everything and she still wasn’t happy.’
‘In what way wasn’t she happy, Emily?’
‘Like that night, when I told Mike about her and Sid, she dragged me up to her bedroom and slammed the door like a twelve year old.’ She’s only a year younger than me, but sometimes it felt like ten.
‘What did she say?’
‘Nothing. She just threw herself on the bed.’
‘What did you do?’
‘Nothing.’
I distracted myself with the stuff on her chest of drawers before I slapped her and told her to grow up. I unscrewed a pot of hair wax and sniffed it, then picked up a pink and white tin of lip balm and dabbed some on to my bottom lip.
I did that a lot then. It was as though I had to touch everything that belonged to her, to hold it, smell it, turn it over in my hands. There was a pile of receipts and loose change next to her jewellery box and a cinema ticket for a film I wanted to see. She’d seen it with Sid and it made my heart hurt so much, I brought a hand up to my chest.
‘When she got there, to Mike and Eve’s house, she had nothing, just a suitcase of clothes that the Witness Protection team bought her,’ I said. Doctor Gilyard stopped writing and her office was suddenly too quiet. ‘She didn’t have anything else – she had to leave it all behind.’
Doctor Gilyard took off her glasses. ‘But you said that she had everything.’
‘Yes she lost everything,’ I snapped, suddenly out of breath. ‘But what did she actually lose? Just stuff. Clothes and photos and books. Nothing she couldn’t replace. And she got it all back, didn’t she? She had a roomful of stuff while I had to question everything I had ever known. Everything. Every memory. Every present my father ever bought me. You even have me questioning my fucking cat!’
I was shaking as I said it. Just like I did that night in Juliet’s room, when I wanted to rip the photos of her with Mike and Eve off the notice board and smash her bottles of perfume. But I had closed my eyes and sucked in a breath.
When I opened them again, I looked at the mirror over her chest of drawers.
‘Who did this?’ I’d asked, nodding at the picture of Maya Angelou taped to the frame of Juliet’s mirror. Someone had written Phenomenal woman, that’s me in lipstick across it.
‘Guess?’ she said with a small smile and I laughed.
‘I need to introduce Eve to my mother. She has a picture of Audrey Hepburn on the door of our fridge with What would Audrey eat? written across it.’
She didn’t, of course – I have no idea what my mother has on her fridge – but
Olivia’s mother did so it wasn’t a lie. Someone’s mother has a picture of Audrey Hepburn on the door of their fridge with What would Audrey eat? written across it. I did that a lot then too, steal other people’s memories and pass them off as my own. I still get them mixed up sometimes. I’ll think of something – like that picture of Audrey Hepburn – and smile. Then I’ll remember that it isn’t my memory to smile about.
I looked at the picture of Maya Angelou and wondered what it would have been like to have a mum like Eve. It was Olivia’s mother who taught me how to plait my hair and took me to buy my first bra and I wonder sometimes if things would have been different – if I’d be different – if I’d had a mum of my own to do those things with. If I’d strung pearls around my neck and shuffled around in too-big heels when I was little, like other girls.
‘How come you only have photos of you with Mike and Eve?’ I asked, making sure I had my back to her so that she couldn’t see me smiling as I looked at her notice board. ‘What about your mum and dad? Your mates?’
But she didn’t miss a beat. ‘They were destroyed in the fire.’
When I turned to face her again, she was on the bed, painting her toenails.
‘Why are you doing your nails? It’s October.’
I showed off my new patent Doc Martens to prove the point, but as soon as I did, my heart dropped into my stomach. Teenage girls only paint their toenails in October if they know they’re going to be seen. I imagined her and Sid on her bed, his mouth on her neck and her toes curling in the sheets and turned to face her chest of drawers again, picking up an eye shadow and staring at it until the writing on it lost focus.
I wanted to take something. Something of hers. I did that a lot as well, take things. Nothing big. A pair of earrings. A lip-gloss. A picture she’d torn from a magazine. Nothing she’d miss straight away. Once I took a necklace I’d lent her and as I went home with it in the pocket of my jeans, I imagined her tearing through her room looking for it.
The next day she was almost in tears when she apologised for losing it and I saw it then, the doubt in her eyes. What had happened to them – the necklace, the earrings, the lip-gloss, that picture of that dress? Had she really lost all of them? I knew then – I saw it – she was beginning to wonder if she was losing her mind and the satisfaction was overwhelming. I was dizzy with it, drunk on it for the rest of the day. I was unpicking her – slowly, slowly.