by Byrne, Tanya
‘What’s wrong?’ I asked, my heart dropping to my feet.
For a moment, I thought that was it, the blade had dropped and they knew. I half expected Mike to grab me by the arm and shake me, tell me that he knew who I was.
But he just sighed. ‘It’s nothing.’
‘It’s not nothing,’ Eve snapped.
My cheeks burned, even though it wasn’t aimed at me. When her gaze found mine across the kitchen, I had to tell myself not to run.
‘Mike and I had a row this morning,’ she told me. My shoulders fell.
‘If your mother hadn’t—’ he interrupted.
She glared at him, her hands clenching into fists on the table. ‘Can we not?’
He glared back at her and it seemed to go on for ever before he huffed and marched over to the kettle. Eve sighed to herself and rubbed her forehead with her hand as he began banging around, getting a mug out of the cupboard and slamming it down so hard on the counter, I don’t know how it didn’t break.
Then she looked up at me again. She looked exhausted. If Juliet had been there, she’d have known what to do. She would’ve leaned down and hugged her, told her that everything was going to be okay. But I just looked at her as I tugged on a loose button on my jacket.
‘We had a row.’ Eve sighed again. ‘Nancy overheard. She got upset and ran off. We don’t know where she is and she won’t answer her phone.’
I looked over at Mike. He still had his back to us and my nerves felt as tight as ropes as I watched him make me a cup of tea I didn’t even want. I’d never seen him like that before – I’d never seen either of them anything other than sparklingly happy – so I could see why Juliet was so freaked out. I was freaked out, too.
I should have been thrilled, I suppose, that Juliet was upset, that there was a crack in her perfect little life. But then I thought about her, sobbing into Sid’s chest while he stroked her hair, and something in me hardened.
‘I’ll find her,’ I said with a sigh.
Eve’s face brightened. ‘You will? Oh, thank you, Rose.’
When I looked at Mike, I saw the muscles in his back relax through his T-shirt.
‘Thanks, Ro,’ he said, turning to face me again.
‘Don’t worry,’ I told them both with a small smile, heading out of the kitchen.
As soon as I got outside, I called Juliet. She answered, which I wasn’t expecting.
‘You alright, Nance?’
‘Have you been to the house?’ she asked. She always called it the house, never home.
‘Yeah. What happened?’
I heard her sniff. ‘They had an argument. It was awful, Rose.’
‘What about?’
‘I don’t know. I was upstairs and I heard Mike screaming. Literally screaming, Rose.’ She stopped to suck in a shaky breath. It sounded like something in her was broken. ‘I had no idea he had such a filthy temper. I thought he was going to hit her.’
Something in me tightened and I laughed. ‘He wouldn’t.’
‘You should have heard him, Rose.’
‘Where are you? Are you with Sid?’
‘No. I’m on my own.’
I wasn’t expecting that, either. ‘What? Why didn’t you call him?’
‘I’m a mess,’ she said with another sniff. ‘I don’t want him to see me like this.’
I should have respected her for that, for not running to him sobbing, begging to be rescued, like most girls would have. But really, it made me hate her more, because she had him but she didn’t think she needed him.
‘Where are you?’
‘At the bookshop.’
When I got there, I found her sitting on the floor of the poetry section. A friend would have brought her a green tea, but I just sat next to her.
‘Hey,’ she said when she saw me. She seemed relieved and I tensed, half expecting her to start slobbering all over me. I don’t do well with slobber. Mercifully, she didn’t move.
I nodded at the book she was holding. ‘What you reading?’
She closed it and showed me the cover. To Kill a Mockingbird.
‘Atticus is about to shoot the dog,’ she said. The so maybe everything will be okay floated unsaid between us.
We sat there for a minute or two, her staring at the red cartoon bird on the cover and me staring at her staring at the red cartoon bird on the cover.
Some girls are good at this. Juliet is. If we’re out, at a gig or in the pub, and she goes missing, Sid sends me to the toilets to look for her. She’s almost always there, sitting on the edge of the sink consoling a hysterical girl whose boyfriend has just got off with someone else. It’s sort of amazing, how she can talk to anyone. I don’t know how she does it, but she always knows what to say, knows the right way to stroke someone’s hair so it isn’t creepy. When to speak, when to listen. The truth is, Juliet is actually really sweet. So sweet that I wanted to break her open sometimes, find that bad bone.
I know she has one.
‘You alright?’ I said eventually.
She shook her head and sniffed. ‘Not really.’
I began tugging on the loose button on my jacket again. ‘Was it that bad?’
She looked up at me then. The skin under her eyes was bruised with mascara but she didn’t look ugly, she looked vulnerable. Even when she was broken, she was beautiful.
‘You know when you think everything is perfect,’ she said, lowering her voice as though she was telling me a secret, ‘then you find out it’s not?’
I thought about Dad and I almost laughed. I used to want things, you know, before then, before her. I wanted to live in Paris and play my cello on street corners for spare change and applause. I can’t imagine doing any of that now.
I tried to smile. I wonder if she could see it – the bitterness – haemorrhaging out of me, bleeding through my pores. ‘Yeah.’
‘It kind of breaks your heart, doesn’t it?’
I nodded and tugged on the loose button so hard, the last thread gave way. ‘Life is never what you think it is, Nancy. What you need it to be.’
I suppose I could have said something more comforting, but I wasn’t trying to comfort her.
She looked at me and I was sure she was about to start crying again, but she just smiled. ‘Thank you.’
I frowned at her. ‘For what?’
‘For never lying to me.’
I nodded and it was one of those perfect, perfect moments. I had to look down at the button in my hand in case she saw my eyes light up. ‘Everybody lies, Nance.’
‘At least you tell the right ones, Rose.’
I know I said I had to be careful, that I couldn’t go too far, but I did once. I didn’t think I was ashamed of anything I did to her, but I guess I’m ashamed of that because I didn’t write it down earlier. Some part of me mustn’t want it to committed to paper forever, but you should know, in case you think I lost my nerve, that I had my head turned by a pretty boy.
You should know what I am capable of.
Juliet had a photograph. She didn’t show it to me, I found it, between the pages of a book I’d taken from her room. I’d had the book for weeks. My intentions only strayed as far as taking it, I had no purpose for it after that, so it had languished at the bottom of my bag until a particularly restless night when I went in search of something to read. I can’t even remember what book it was now, I just remember how my heart stopped, then restarted at double speed as the photograph fell out and landed on the floor by my feet.
I picked it up, turned it over and there they were: Juliet, her mother and father. I didn’t know what to do; I felt like an old lady on Antiques Roadshow who’d found a priceless brooch at the bottom of her jewellery box. So I just stared at it.
Juliet was tiny in it – three, maybe four – with the same big eyes and wild curls. It was her birthday, I guess, she was wearing a green dress not unlike one I had when I was that age, except that mine had a ribbon around the waist and a pink silk rose. She was laughing – dancing,
I think – and her mum and dad were clapping. Her dad looked younger, but just as I remember him. I’d never seen her mum before, though. She was thin, too thin, the veins in her hands as thick as ropes. Her head was wrapped in a brightly coloured scarf and I realised that it must have been the last photograph of the three of them.
I don’t know how Juliet had it. Maybe she had it that night – the night she stabbed Dad. Maybe she carried it everywhere with her, tucked into some secret pocket in her purse. Or maybe she begged one of the Witness Protection team to go back to the house and get it.
Either way, it had survived, and I had it.
The shock dissolved and I reached into my bag, my fingers fumbling through the empty fag packets and balled-up tissues for my neon-pink lighter. As soon as the flame touched the corner of the photo, it caught and began to curl. The flame was orange, I remember, bright orange, and I was rapt as I watched it devour the photo in one hot gulp.
When the flames reached my fingers, I ran into the bathroom and dropped it into the sink. Of all the things that come back at me at night, it’s the image of that burnt photograph in the sink. If I closed my eyes right now, I’d see it. I wonder sometimes, when I think of her, of what I did, if that’s what my heart looks like, if it’s thin and burnt and black.
Val’s back. I walked into the TV Room after breakfast, and there she was, staring at the telly like she never left.
‘How come she’s back?’ I asked Doctor Gilyard when she asked me how I was.
‘Valerie was readmitted this morning.’
‘Why? I thought she got a suspended sentence?’
‘She did.’
‘So how come she’s back? Her bloody chair’s still warm.’
Doctor Gilyard opened her notebook. ‘Why is it upsetting you, Emily?’
‘I’m not upset,’ I said, but it sounded much harder than I intended, like a door slamming shut. ‘I thought she was better, that’s why they let her go home.’
‘What do you mean by better?’
‘Better. You know, better. Un-mad. I thought you’d fixed her.’
‘Is that what you think I do, Emily, fix people?’
I couldn’t sit still. My skin was itching, my blood fizzing. ‘What do you do, then?’ I asked, pulling at the loose thread under my chair. ‘Why aren’t you trying to help her?’
‘I am, Emily.’
‘You’re not! She’s still here, staring at the television!’ I sat forward and pointed at the door to her office. ‘Do something. Give her something.’
Doctor Gilyard thought about it for a moment, then took off her glasses. ‘This is a prison, Emily, not a hospital.’
I felt it like a punch.
When I looked away, she carried on. ‘Do you need to be fixed, Emily?’
I got up and walked over to the window. It was raining so I couldn’t see anything. Not that there was much to see; just walls and fences topped with razor wire. But if you tilt your head, you can see the sky. Just a piece. A strip. It’s usually the only blue thing you can see but today it was grey. Everything was grey; the sky, the walls, the razor wire. Grey, grey, grey.
‘Naomi says Val’s mum died when she was little.’ I knew Doctor Gilyard wouldn’t respond, but I still felt a small sag of disappointment when she didn’t. ‘That was ages ago. Shouldn’t she be over it by now?’
‘Grief is tenacious, Emily.’
‘Naomi says she shoplifted something to get back in here.’ I traced the edge of the window frame with my finger. ‘Why would anyone want to do that? Why would you want to come back here?’
‘Why do you think someone would want to do that, Emily?’
I stared at the rain for a moment or two, watching the fat drops chase one another down the other side of the window.
‘Her life must be pretty shit if she’d rather be here.’
Doctor Gilyard was quiet for a long time, then she said: ‘When people are here for a long time, Emily, they find it hard to adjust to living in the outside world again. They get home and realise that home isn’t what it was before they left, that home isn’t where it was before they left.’
My chest felt so tight then that I crossed my arms as though that would relieve it. It didn’t and the more I thought about Val, the more it hurt. She’s seventeen, her life is supposed to stretch out in front of her like a red carpet. It shouldn’t be a chair, here, surrounded by girls who don’t even realise she’s there. This can’t be it; there has to be somewhere else, some other place where she’s missed, where someone is waiting for her.
‘They say home isn’t where you live,’ I said, ‘but where you’re understood.’
I heard Doctor Gilyard shift in her chair, heard the scrape of her heel on the lino as she crossed her legs, and I held my breath.
‘Perhaps she needs to find somewhere she’ll be understood, Emily.’
I hate this. This is why I don’t tell Doctor Gilyard things. It’s three in the morning and I’m sitting in the bath writing this because I’m not allowed to have the light on in my room. I lied and told the nurse I couldn’t sleep because I had to write something for Doctor Gilyard – which is sort of true – so she said that I could sit here as long as I don’t lock the door.
I’m so tired that I can’t read my own handwriting. I’ll probably read this back tomorrow and it’ll be gibberish, but right now it makes perfect sense.
Today, in my session with Doctor Gilyard, after we talked about Val, she returned a book to me.
‘Where did you find this? I thought I’d lost it,’ I asked with a frown.
‘In the TV Room.’
‘I must have left it in there yesterday.’
‘Do you do that a lot?’
‘Do what?’ I asked, running a finger over the cover.
‘Lose things?’
I chuckled to myself. I lose something about once a week. Even here; I’ll put a mug of tea down somewhere or leave my shoes under a chair.
‘Uncle Alex says I’m scatty.’
‘Does it bother you? Losing things?’
‘I’m always losing stuff. It’s never bothered me, even when I was little.’
‘Why not?’
I thought about that time I left Henry Bear on the tube. His fur was worn away and the red ribbon around his neck was frayed, so Dad was bewildered when I sobbed and sobbed.
‘Don’t be silly, little one,’ he’d said, picking me up and kissing me between the eyebrows. ‘It’s just a teddy.’
The next day he came home with a bigger one.
‘It was no loss, I suppose,’ I told Doctor Gilyard with a shrug.
She nodded and wrote that down. ‘Do you think he was overcompensating?’
‘For what?’
‘For your mother? For what he did for a living?’
My stomach turned inside out and I looked away. ‘I’m not spoilt,’ I told her.
But I am. Whatever I asked for, I got. Especially when I went to St Jude’s; he wanted so much for me to fit in that he made sure I had everything the other girls had. If Olivia got a new laptop, I got a better one. If she got a Mulberry satchel, I got one in every colour.
‘I didn’t say that you were spoilt, Emily.’
‘I’ve never thrown a tantrum in my life.’
‘You haven’t needed to.’
I turned to look at her again. ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’
‘It means that your father would have done anything to make you happy.’
I laughed at her, but I’ve been thinking about it all day. I can’t stop thinking about. That’s why I’m sitting here now, shivering in this stainless-steel bathtub. Dad didn’t care how he earned his money and he passed that on to me, didn’t he? I was raised with no concept of money, of the value of anything. Why else would I have a hundred quid in my purse and nick a nail varnish from Boots because I couldn’t be arsed to queue up and pay for it?
As I’m writing this, I’m thinking about a night in October when I couldn’t find my purse. I was
more concerned about not having milk for a cup of tea when I got home as I stood in the petrol station, rooting through my bag. I thought it was because I was tired, but, thanks to Doctor Gilyard, now I’m not so sure.
‘It’s here,’ I told the bored-looking bloke behind the till as I tipped the contents of my bag on to the counter. My keys clattered hysterically and my tube of lip-gloss rolled towards him. He caught it before it rolled off the counter. ‘I bought a round earlier so I must have it.’
He looked at me as if to say, Okay, love. I couldn’t blame him; I must have looked a right state in the harsh light of the petrol station with my tangled red hair and ruined make-up. I’d just been to a gig with Sid and Juliet so I was a sweaty mess. I could feel my T-shirt sticking to my back. He probably thought I was a drug addict.
Who else buys a pile of chocolate bars and a pint of milk at midnight?
‘I got it,’ I heard someone say.
I looked up as Mike handed the bloke his credit card. ‘That better not be your dinner, young lady,’ he added with mock disdain, nodding at all the chocolate.
I smiled sweetly. ‘I was studying so hard that I didn’t have time for dinner.’
‘You mean the crisps you had at the pub before the gig weren’t enough?’
I giggled and he shook his head with a tut.
‘Anything else?’ the bloke behind the counter asked flatly. The look he gave us said, Please go away now.
Mike nodded out the window towards his car. ‘Pump number four.’ Then he turned to me again. ‘What are you doing, hanging around petrol stations at midnight?’
‘I needed milk. And cigarettes.’ I fluttered my eyelashes at him.
He rolled his eyes. ‘And twenty Marlboro Lights, mate.’
When I grinned at Mike, I imagined saying something like that to Dad and couldn’t. He’d have an aneurysm.