by Byrne, Tanya
‘It’s okay. I’m alright.’
I heard him sigh then and the car stopped. When I turned to look at him, he was getting out and I took a step back. ‘Just get in the car,’ he said, and I swear – I swear – my heart threw itself at my ribs so hard, I thought they were going to break.
‘Oi!’ I heard someone shout, and when I looked up, Mike was jumping out of a black cab. I don’t know where he had come from, but as soon as I saw him, I went weak with relief. If I didn’t think my legs would betray me, I would have run to him.
The man shot me a look over the roof of the car before he got in and drove off. I just stood there, watching his tail-lights as they disappeared down the street, the horror of what had almost happened echoing through me.
‘Ro,’ Mike breathed when he got to me. ‘Are you alright?’
I looked up at him, my lips parted and my heart thumping on and on. I don’t think I responded, because he took my face in his hands and asked me again. His fingers were cold, like Sid’s mum’s were that day at the wedding. I remember thinking, cold hands, warm heart.
‘Yeah,’ I said with a small nod.
‘Are you sure?’
My brain recovered from the shock then, and I blinked at him as though I’d just woken up. ‘What are you doing here?’
He looked relieved and tucked my hair behind my ears. ‘Eve and I are on our way home from a midnight showing of Nosferatu.’
‘That’s a great film,’ I muttered and he chuckled to himself.
‘What are you doing here?’ he asked, but before I could respond, Eve was next to me.
‘Oh, Rose,’ she gasped, her eyes wide.
Mike looked furious. ‘I told you to stay in the cab.’
She ignored him and pulled me into a hug. ‘Are you okay? What happened?’
I’d never been hugged like that before. It was a proper hug – a mum hug – and it made my heart hurt so much that I couldn’t breathe for a second. I closed my eyes and pressed my cheek to the wool of her coat. She smelled like Eve, of Palmer’s cocoa butter, and there was a smudge of green paint on her scarf.
‘Oh darling girl,’ she said, kissing the top of my head. ‘Are you okay?’
‘I’m fine,’ I murmured. I could have gone to sleep right there and then.
‘You’re freezing!’ She rubbed my arms with her hands. ‘Come on. Get in the cab before you catch pneumonia. Where’s your jacket?’
I shook my head. ‘I don’t know.’
Mike followed us into the back of the cab. He apologised to the driver, then turned to look at me, the skin between his eyebrows pinched. ‘Are you drunk, Rose?’
I shook my head again. ‘No.’ I wasn’t, but I was, drunk on the attention. I hadn’t been made such a fuss of since I was fourteen and had that kidney infection. I fainted in class and Mr Lyndon, my oh-so-delicious English lit teacher, insisted on carrying me to the nurse’s office. The girls in my class worshipped me for a week.
‘Why are you on your own?’ Eve asked, her forehead creased too. ‘I thought you were at that Halloween party with Nancy?’
‘I was.’
Mike looked confused. ‘Where is she now?’
‘At home, I suppose.’
‘You suppose?’ Eve blinked. ‘Didn’t you go home together?’
‘Yeah, but when we got off the tube, she went home.’
I saw Mike and Eve exchange a glance. Eve thought about it for a moment, then asked, ‘So Nancy walked home on her own too?’
The old cab creaked as it turned a corner. I slid along the back seat and when I nudged into Eve, I giggled. ‘No, she was with Sid.’
They exchanged another glance, then Eve looked murderous. ‘Wait. She left you to walk home alone at two-thirty in the morning while she walked home with Sid?’
‘Yep.’
It was such a pretty little lie, almost true, but not quite. It was hard not to smile because, oh it was delicious. I remember the taste of it, the thrill, how the air in the cab tensed as Mike looked at Eve and Eve looked at Mike, then they looked at poor little me.
‘Hang on, it’s two-thirty in the morning?’ I added. ‘We got the last tube so we must have got off at Angel at about half twelve.’
Eve gasped. ‘What’ve you been doing since then?’
‘I dunno.’ I shrugged, swaying a little for effect.
I saw Mike shake his head, but he didn’t say a word and as soon as the cab pulled up outside their house, he jumped out. Eve paid the driver and as she led me up the path, her arm across my shoulders, Mike was already opening the front door and roaring, ‘Nancy!’
Eve took me to the kitchen and sat me at the table. I immediately started rearranging the fruit in the bowl and when I heard Mike yell, ‘Are you kidding me?’ from upstairs, I dropped a plum and looked up at the ceiling.
A moment later, he paced into the kitchen and glared at Eve, who was holding the kettle, looking bewildered. I waited for him to tell her what was wrong, but when I realised he couldn’t, my hands froze. Juliet had said Mike had a filthy temper, but I hadn’t believed her. He’s the most laid-back bloke I’ve met. I didn’t think he could get angry, but he was furious.
‘What, babe? Is everything alright?’ Eve asked, her voice shaking a little.
But then Juliet walked into the kitchen, her head down and her curls ruined. For a moment, I thought Mike had woken her up, but when Sid followed her in, my heart.
My heart.
Eve stared at them for a moment, then looked at Mike. ‘Were they?’
He nodded and she slammed the kettle down on the counter. ‘Oh, no,’ she said, shaking her head, her dreads flying in all directions. ‘No. No. No. No. No.’
It was a perfect, perfect moment. Everything I’d been plotting for weeks. I should have been thrilled; at last, a not-so-perfect response from Juliet’s oh-so-perfect foster parents. It was working. I was unpicking everything – slowly, slowly – but I wanted to cry my heart out. I know people say that, but I’m sure that if I’d started crying then, my heart would have dissolved so my tears would have been pink for hours.
‘This isn’t how I hoped it would happen, but it’s a pleasure to meet you, Mr Brewer.’ Sid held out his hand but Mike just looked at it.
‘I’ve just seen your bare arse. I think we can dispense with the pleasantries, Sid.’
Sid looked at me. I looked away.
Mike pointed at Juliet. ‘First things first,’ he said, and Eve came to stand beside him with her arms crossed. ‘Nancy, I know you’re sixteen and there’s nothing much I can do to stop you, but you do not do that in this house. Do you understand?’
‘We weren’t—’ Juliet started to say, but Mike killed the protest with a look.
‘Enough,’ he snapped. ‘That’s the end of it. This isn’t a discussion.’
Her gaze dipped to her red toenails. She’d never looked so small.
‘Do I make myself clear?’ he asked, looking between them. ‘If I ever come home to find you doing something like that again—’
Eve put a hand on his arm and he stopped.
‘Moving on,’ he said, putting his hands on his hips. ‘Why did Eve and I just stop Rose from being pulled into the back of a man’s car?’
Sid and Juliet gasped in unison, then looked at me.
‘What? What happened?’ Sid asked. He looked so concerned that I almost felt sorry for him. Almost.
‘What happened,’ Mike said, crossing his arms, ‘is that you two left Rose at the tube and two hours later, she was almost raped on Upper Street.’
There was a long silence after he said it. I hadn’t thought about it until that moment, but as soon as I did, I had to wipe a tear from under my eyes. I glanced up to find Sid looking at me and turned my face away again.
‘What happened?’ Eve asked, finally breaking the silence.
Juliet lifted her head to look up at her. ‘What do you mean?’
‘I mean,’ Eve explained, clearly unamused about having to do so, ‘how
could you leave Rose to walk home on her own?’
Juliet opened her mouth to say something, but Sid immediately leapt to her defence. ‘We asked her if she wanted us to walk her home, I swear, but she said she was fine.’
‘First of all, it’s Rose, not she,’ Mike said tightly. He was the same height as Sid, but he suddenly looked ten feet taller. ‘And let me tell you a little something about chivalry, Sid. Chivalry is doing, not asking. It was gone midnight and Rose was on her own. You should’ve walked her home, or at least put her in a cab if you couldn’t be arsed.’
Mike may as well have punched Sid in the face because he looked crushed and when he looked at me, his forehead creased, I won’t lie, it made my heart flutter just a little. I know how cruel that sounds, but Sid’s undivided attention was finally divided.
‘You’re right, Mr Brewer,’ he said with a nod.
Mike turned to Juliet. ‘What were you thinking? This is Rose.’ He nodded at me. ‘The girl who eats dinner with us almost every night. The girl you leaned on when you started college. You told me that you would never have got through moving in with us without her. So, what? Now you’re all settled you don’t need her any more?’
Juliet crossed her arms. ‘Of course not.’
‘Then, regardless of what she said, you should have made sure she got home okay.’
‘She walks home by herself all the time.’
‘She shouldn’t!’ Eve interrupted. ‘Do you?’ Juliet shook her head. ‘Of course you don’t, because you have Sid. Rose probably doesn’t want to intrude when you’re with him.’
Eve stopped as if she was waiting for it to sink in, through Juliet’s pores, into her bones. Then she delivered that final, beautiful blow. ‘Don’t be that girl, Nancy. Don’t be that girl who dumps her friends as soon as she gets a boyfriend.’
When I looked at Juliet, she had tears in her eyes and I knew then that I’d finally done it.
I’d left a crack.
Naomi’s trial started this morning. It was strange seeing her in a suit, her face scrubbed pink and her hair tied back. She looked tiny as the guard led her away. No one wished her luck. Not even me. I didn’t hug her, I just pressed the emergency cigarette I’ve been hiding on top of my wardrobe into the palm of her hand as she left.
Doctor Gilyard went with her to court. I was grateful for the reprieve, until we had to do art therapy instead. It’s Easter so they wanted us to paint boiled eggs.
I walked out, and fell asleep in the TV Room. I was woken up an hour later by a burst of canned laughter and when I peeled my eyes open, Val was sitting in the chair next to mine, gaping at the screen.
‘Hey,’ I said, but she didn’t flinch.
We sat like that for a while, her staring, me waiting, waiting for what I don’t know. A smile, maybe, a chuckle at one of Dick Van Dyke’s jokes. But she didn’t make a sound.
It was nice at first. Quiet. But after a while, the silence started to make me itch. I began to fidget in my chair, drawing my knees up to my chest, then putting my feet on the floor again. I tapped my foot, my fingers, my chin, in time to the cheesy eighties music, then twirled my hair around my finger so tightly it made my scalp sting.
After five minutes – five hours, days, weeks – I looked at Val.
‘Why don’t you want to leave?’
Silence.
‘Don’t you want to get better?’
Silence.
‘Isn’t there anyone out there waiting for you?’
Silence.
‘Aren’t you lonely? I’m so lonely.’
I looked back at the screen.
I don’t know what I expected. If this was a television show, Val would have reached for my hand and said something profound to help me find my way back. But she didn’t. How could she? She’s out there with me.
Doctor Gilyard’s didn’t have to go to court with Naomi today.
‘What was the tipping point?’ she asked me this morning.
I didn’t know where this was leading so I hesitated. ‘The what?’
‘Every relationship has a tipping point, Emily, the point where it tips from one phase into another. What was the tipping point with you and Sid?’
I crossed my arms and sat back in the chair. ‘What do you mean?’
‘When did you know that you had feelings for him?’
‘Feelings,’ I scoffed, looking away.
I pressed my lips together. I didn’t want to tell her; it felt like one of those things I had to hold on to. But holding it in isn’t helping. You know how you think of some people and you feel butterflies in your stomach? When I think about Sid now, after everything I’ve done, I feel moths chewing at my insides.
‘Juliet saw her counsellor on Wednesday afternoons,’ I said, literally spitting it out before I could stop myself.
Doctor Gilyard sat a little straighter, pencil poised.
‘I didn’t know what to do with myself,’ I admitted. I waited for her to interrupt. She didn’t. ‘I usually sat in the park and read a book, but by November it was too cold. So one Wednesday I sat on the bus sketching.’
‘Sketching?’
‘Yeah. I’d never done art before and I had to, because Juliet was doing it. I was struggling. People were using spray paint and computers and I didn’t even know to wash the oil paint off my brushes with turps. My tutor was horrified when she caught me rinsing them under the tap.’ I blushed at the memory. ‘I didn’t know why she was being so impatient, but I found out later that I needed a portfolio to get on the course. Turns out Uncle Alex bought one off a student at Central Saint Martins.’
When I looked at Doctor Gilyard again, she was nodding.
‘So I was sitting on the bus practising. I was still shit, but working in pencil was a bit easier because I could rub it out if I did it wrong.’
Doctor Gilyard smiled at that as she scribbled something in her notebook. I wonder if that’s why she writes in pencil, too.
‘What were you sketching?’
‘Things people left behind; jackets on the tube, umbrellas on park benches. Rubbish, I suppose.’ I shrugged again. ‘But things that would be missed. Like, that afternoon, I was sketching the book on the seat in front of mine on the bus. It was nothing, really, just a cheap novel, but someone will always wonder how that books ends.’
Before I could finish the sketch, someone sat on the seat and picked up the book. I guess I should have been annoyed, but when they started reading it, I couldn’t be mad so I closed my sketchbook and looked up at the gaggle of girls in black-and-white school uniforms who were sitting a few rows in front of me. They kept looking towards the back of the bus, whispering breathlessly about a girl called Amy. Curiosity got the better of me and I turned to find a boy and girl kissing like the world was about to end.
I rolled my eyes and when I turned back, the bus pulled into the next stop. Someone at the front stood up and I don’t think I would have noticed much more than that if the girls hadn’t stopped whispering to watch, utterly rapt, as he walked towards the stairs.
‘Alright, sexy,’ the boldest one said, sitting up and grinning. ‘Where you going?’
I saw the briefest flash of a smile through his dark hair, before he disappeared down the stairs, then I was out of my seat and following him down them.
When I got to the bottom, he was helping a lady with a buggy off the bus.
‘Sid,’ I breathed, and he looked up.
I hadn’t seen him since that night in Juliet’s kitchen so I wasn’t sure how he’d react, but his face lit up when he saw me. ‘Hey, Ro. You alright?’
I nodded.
‘What you doing ’round here?’
I held up my sketchbook with a small smile. ‘You?’
‘I was just saying hello to my dad.’ He nodded over his shoulder.
I hadn’t realised, but we were standing in front of a cemetery. I was so surprised that I dropped my sketchbook. It landed on the pavement with a loud SLAP. ‘Oh I’m sorry. I—’
‘That was the tipping point, I guess,’ I told Doctor Gilyard. ‘When he asked me if I wanted to meet his dad. He said he wasn’t as mouthy as his mum.’
She raised an eyebrow. ‘His father is dead?’
I nodded.
‘Did you know before that day?’
I shook my head.
She began scribbling furiously.
‘Did Juliet know?’
‘No.’ I said it like I was proud, held it up as though it was proof that I’d meant something to him, that it wasn’t all in my head.
‘How did he die?’
‘Breaking up a fight outside a pub. Smacked his head on the pavement.’
‘That’s very noble.’
I scoffed. ‘Seems like a waste to me.’
‘Why?’
‘Dying like that, in the street, bleeding into the cracks of the pavement while your wife and kid are waiting for you to get home. And for what? To stop a couple of idiots kicking the shit out of each other? He should have left them to it. It’s natural selection.’
Doctor Gilyard nodded. ‘Do you think that’s why Sid did it?’
‘Did what?’
‘Tried to save you.’
I had to look away because I know that’s why he did it. That’s why Sid is the way he is. Something like that would make most people hard. Cold. Not Sid King. His eyes remained wide, his heart restless. If anything, his father dying like that made him see the good in people. I don’t know how, but where most of us would kick and spit at the injustice of it, the way Sid saw it, his father died trying and it made him want to try, too.
When I didn’t respond, Doctor Gilyard moved on. ‘So what happened?’
I’d never been in a cemetery before. I’ve never needed to, which is a good thing, I suppose. Gramps died when I was eight, but Dad wouldn’t let me go to the cemetery because he said I was too young. I went to the funeral, though. I don’t remember much, just climbing into a big car and umbrellas, everyone had an umbrella. And I remember that the church smelt of furniture polish and blown-out birthday candles.