Darling

by Rachel Edwards

  They both looked up.

  ‘Oh we do this, we silly-dance sometimes,’ she laughed, as if it were nothing at all. ‘We’re just playing around. Why, what’s wrong?’

  ‘He can’t get too tired,’ I said, an acute pain punching somewhere around my temples. Maybe I had taken a blow to the head. It had been so fast.

  ‘I’m not tired, Mum!’ Stevie shouted over the blaring soul.

  I was tempted to stomp over and turn the radio off. But I had to deal with the sharp, digging ache now at my ribs – a stitch? Worse? – and the pain in my temples. I could not think in all the funky clamour; but then I truly did not know what I might do if my thoughts knifed through that clatterbanging of confusion.

  Overcome, I retreated to the kitchen, tried to think. I had not been mugged. What could I report except that I had been ‘roughly pushed past’? The man, I could not now be certain he was the same man from so long ago, not at all. He had the body, the air, but they had all been one burly blur. Best forget it. Best tell Thomas a version, an unworrying account that would end in a hair stroke, a cheek stroke, a bear hug, calming sex. My husband was not made for too much reality. But for now, me. I had not been hurt, had I? I lifted my top, and moved my right hand to my stomach, only then to see that it was balled into a fist. I opened it – the broken sweet, my mud-smeared palm. Why had I picked that up? I dropped it where I stood, examined myself with my dirty hand. No, no bruises or flesh wounds. One thought did pierce me though, one cutting certainty: from now on I could never leave my boy alone with that girl.

  Lola

  DONE LIST 5

  Darling came back from town and yelled at me just for dancing with Stevie or something and later she was talking to Dad and it turned out that these three guys had pushed her over in some dirty little alley. No need for her to yell at me like it was all my fault, but I suppose I have to admit it did sound quite bad.

  I could be wrong, but I think she was trying to make out to Dad it was something to do with her being black, which is all a bit obvious. They probably just wanted to mug her for her cash and iPhone like everyone else. No need to go for the major sympathy vote, Darling. Still, I suppose it must have been pretty upsetting, the way she shouted. I think I’ll ease off her this evening, that should cheer Dad up.

  There you go: just when I was starting to feel sorry for her, she goes and pisses me off again, a fucking masterclass in piss-off. I was trying to talk to Dad, had him on his own for a change and then she needed some stupid thing urgently – probably to use his credit card – and next thing I’m left standing there in the lounge like a dick while he goes and helps her, then I spot them having this long kiss and she walks past and gives me this look, like ‘See?’ and I hated her like mad. I know I sound nuts but I do get cross, really incredibly angry sometimes. I can burn up with it if I am not careful. Never mind red mist, it’s a volcano – reeking of sulphur, a purifying fire. #poetsdoknowit

  One good thing is that I’ve stopped moaning on to AT quite as much as I did. In fact, I am thinking of shutting up for good – it only causes more issues. Up until a few weeks ago, I used to say, ‘It’s not fair!’ and Dad would always reply ‘Life’s not fair!’ as if he was teaching me some kind of great valuable lesson. Now I am starting to realise what he was driving at, but he did not go far enough.

  ‘Life’s never fair, Lola,’ he should have said. ‘Life’s never fair.’

  Don’t slash your wrists yet though. All I mean is that lots of good people – people in hospitals and charity workers, or people helping with the homeless and that – are trying very hard to push things in one direction, but the shitty crowd still swing it too far the other way. They must do, because life just never seems fair. I hope I grow up to be wrong. Or maybe I’ll go ahead and grow up to be one of the shitty crowd!

  Am I getting depressed? I feel like I, or maybe just my thoughts, need to be fired up and moulded into something new, like metal. My ideas need to take a hammering to get into the right kind of shape. It feels like some kind of destiny, that I must be pulled onwards, like my mother. Who can do that for me now, though? There’s only Dad. Or Darling lolol.

  I don’t know why I think of all this crap. I should be thinking of my ‘outstanding’ GCSE results, my ‘brilliant’ future, blahdiblah. But I get like this sometimes, this must be what AT means about getting low. I try to lie to her about it, to hide it. After all, she’s a pretty good shrink and I don’t want her to think that all her years of hard work on me have gone to waste …

  I want to be funny about that but I don’t know how.

  Worked it out.

  If you make yourself ill enough, you will become ill. That’s the truth of the matter.

  Will said something odd but brilliant about Darling on the phone. He said he’d gone and spoken to his dad and they had done some digging and that Darling ‘is definitely not to be trusted’. I can’t believe he actually talked to his dad about it. Is that a bit weird? That he actually got his dad to check up on her? To be honest, I thought he was joking when he said all that stuff before about how she was bound to be a criminal. I never thought he was actually going to try and investigate her! He was loving it, of course:

  ‘Told you, Lol!’

  He calls me Lol sometimes and if it were anyone else I would be annoyed but he just makes me laugh so much. So then I asked what Darling had done and he was all, ‘Don’t worry about it, but take it from me: she’s trouble.’ I tried to get it out of him and he just said, ‘I can’t, but she is known by people. She has form, believe you me.’ And he actually sounded pretty happy about it, so I didn’t want to push it any more at that moment. I’ll find out soon, I’m sure. But it does feel like things are all moving in the right direction. Any day now, we’ll get to the bottom of what she’s done so that Dad can realise she really was a massive mistake. Then life can get back to normal.

  This morning Darling sent me a Facebook request. Bit awkward, much? I don’t want her to see all my private shit. Let her request sit there a while and let’s see how long it is until we both forget about it.

  People can be so obvious. It’s disappointing, lazy thinking.

  Pretty much like my actual so-called friends.

  Et tu, Ellie? Again, seriously? Even though we were sort of getting on once more and she said she never really liked Will that much and that she got off with this uni guy on holiday anyway, she is now being majorly OTT about the fact that Ben Wischer invited her and all my old school friends to his brother’s party, but not me. ‘I feel sooo bad, Lo, really!’ She could just not go, as Dad and even Darling said. She could tell Ben Wischer that we’ve been friends since Year 5 and that I have gone to a Sixth Form College, not died, and that he could invite me too or go fuck his preppy self. Lazy, see? Thinking with no passion, no fire in it. But people have school (or college) to worry about, or their craptastic jobs, or they marry my dad … They’re just far too busy to think, I suppose.

  I’ve tried to phone Will back, a few times, but he must be blanking me too now. Fan-fucking-tabulous. Caro’s whole friendship group still all hate me for telling everyone about her ‘going with Will behind Ellie’s back’ – duh, hello? What do they think Caro did in that hot tub, then? Clue: she wasn’t scuba diving down there. Plus, I didn’t know for certain Ellie and Will had anything real going on, which they actually didn’t. Plus, I can’t believe Will has not stood up for me once, not even to Ben about the party thing. I really thought he liked me. #geturdumbasschixhere

  Ellie insists that she is cool with me but she doesn’t want Will and his mates – especially not Ben Wischer – to hate her. Weak. Basically saying that I mean nothing as a friend. How invalidating, right, AT? Thumbs-up smileyface! #fml

  I am quite specially talented at being friends with people who hate me #jointhequeue. Need to sort my life out.

  So anyway, all this has made me think of something from just before we broke up from school. We did this dull-as-fuck trip to a gallery with literally no one t
alking to me on the coach and no phones allowed and so my head was like a washing machine before we even arrived. And the one thing that made me stop wondering when we would get to the gift shop and whether they stocked vodka (I could just see them selling out of handbag-sized novelty bottles in that place, with The Scream or something on them) was Hieronymus Bosch. Yes, I can spell that, what am I, twelve? Twisted bodies and weird troll dudes and arrows and tortures and all the reds and browns and no, I thought, my head does not look quite like that, even when I’m in a massive rage. Like I said; more wet and spinny. I only stopped and stared at the painting because that was how I always thought it should look, stuffed full of tortures and revenges – like this human volcano sort of place. Mind you, I don’t suppose God’s judgement, which was what it showed, is supposed to be the same as revenge exactly, but how would I know? Anyway, the painting looked like I thought my head should look, but the more I talk to AT or Dad about that stuff, the more I realise: my mind is white. White-hot and turning and slowly attempting to cleanse everything inside it as well as itself. Nearly pure, but not yet. I’m trying but it is hard.

  OM fucking G. I spotted a prescription slip for her pill in their room, Femu-something. The pill. It had not even begun to occur to me she might conceivably get pregnant, she’s way too past it to have a baby! What have I been thinking this whole time, what have I been doing? This really is no joke. An actual baby, could you imagine?

  Darling has got to go. There is no point me being a wimp about it – they cannot stay together. This new life is making me sick, it’s all got so much worse with her here. I don’t know much, but I know she has to go.

  Achievements

  Finally worked out that Ellie is just not worth it and Will’s probably not worth it either. Although at least he had been trying to find out more about Darling before he started ignoring me. Also, note to self: will have to hide all my stuff better because Darling’s such a nosy bitch.

  Did not tell anyone except Dad and even Darling over dinner (to be fair, everyone else knows): Will’s older brother’s girlfriend – who is reading Law ffs – kissed Laetitia, Anna’s sister – who is doing teacher training – at a toga party, even though both boyfriends were apparently there. They were wasted, but … what is going on with everybody? #dontneedit. Then, better still, had to hate myself longtime – and loudly – for being thrown scraps of two-day-old goss by Izzy bloody Farmer. Lesbo kisses go viral in seconds, not days. I have no friends any more.

  Ta-da! At last, a real Achievement! I worked out how to get him to want me again, like before … It really worked, bigtime! Now I know how to keep him interested in me. Feel like a goddess!

  Finally worked out how you breathe with a thingy in your mouth. But not underwater, yet. #nostrilsrock

  Deleted all the Friend requests from people I never want to be friends with. Oh, that’ll be just you then, Darling.

  Darling

  SUNDAY, 30 OCTOBER

  I fought. Fought to understand Lola, fought to not fight about it with Thomas, fought to push everything from my mind: the phone calls, the stares, and now the alleyway. So far, I was not winning.

  Still, I was scrappy.

  ‘She acted like a cruel maniac,’ I said. ‘She is an active kleptomaniac,’ I said. ‘You don’t know her; she is even taking …’

  ‘… and so you see, I took twenty from your purse,’ said Thomas, ‘to give to the collector, and forgot to tell you.’

  No sneak-theft then, I was simply wrong. But I was still shocked. My head had been rocking and rolling with thoughts of Lola’s heartless dance for days. How could she make fun of my boy as she had? She protested a number of times that they had just been having a laugh together, and of course Thomas insisted that had to be true, but I knew what I had seen.

  The trick was not to get too paranoid. Teens could do that to you. Tech could do that to you: make you think you had a need to know when none had existed before. Find My iPhone fever? No fear; I was going nowhere that I wanted to hide from her and I had all but given up looking at her movements on the app – she was always where she said she would be and mostly with friends or at home. Still, an interesting tool. It reminded you to focus on the present, not to let it get away from you.

  I looked about me to see what else I might have missed. I had to refocus on my new family, us Waites.

  Thomas was surprising me. He was talking to me more about Lola, the stuff that bothered her, the quirks and funny little ways and worries that would help me better understand his daughter. He so wanted us to get on. We talked once more about her history of bulimia, how he had first noticed it sometime around her thirteenth Halloween. He talked about how she missed Tess, no longer seeming to worry that I would feel any pangs at this (he was right to talk; and wrong). He even told me some of her weirder worries: that she got so morose sometimes she thought she might actually be a living painting of hell. Or was it that she was living in a painting of hell? That gave me pause.

  I decided that I had to look after everyone better. I would cook up a storm for them, make something Caribbean again.

  It bin a likkle while, innit?

  I made Escovitch fish, a six-headed sea monster for Stevie: a swimming platter of seasoned red snapper, onions and peppers. The smell of it lured Lola down from her room. For the first time she was already sitting at the table as I bore this Scyllan delight aloft from the kitchen.

  ‘Oh, it looks …’

  She sat and stared out this fish that had been plonked on her plate with its head still on; a quick glance at her dad. I had saved her the most bright-eyed specimen.

  ‘Come on now,’ I spooned over plenty of the liquor. ‘Dig in. Help yourself to rice and Johnny cakes and things.’

  We dug in, Stevie waving his fork in glee, ever happy to be eating ‘Grandma Food’. He did enjoy it too. Was that some genetically conditioned preference? Not unless he was also Italian, Indian and Chinese. Perhaps he simply liked the best food, food that made families talk, food that told family stories.

  ‘Mmm, really good, Darling,’ said Lola.

  I looked up.

  ‘Wow. So nice.’

  What was this? I looked at Thomas. He beamed as his daughter heaped praise upon his wife’s table. A fishy smell in the air. I looked at Lola. Impassive, simply eating.

  ‘Oh, I love this, Darling!’

  There it was: that magnesium flash that told me the lie had just exploded. I could hear what my husband was deaf to, that tone, mocking and plastic, the first resort of the insincere. It said, ‘Here’s a wall. A strong, fast-built wall, through, over and around which nothing you do or say can get.’ It said, ‘Screw you and your weird fish too.’ ‘Give it up,’ it said.

  I wanted to call her on it, bawl her out, but Thomas would have been hurt. Baffled. He would swear he could hear no malice – hush dat wicked chile mout’ – and he would not have been lying. I had learned fast, these past few months; my husband was not attuned to that which it was not in his interests to hear. Had I yelled, we would have soon found ourselves on that steep dead-end path, the one bumpy with rocks for hurling at each other’s heads. Far better to suck on stony silence, or fish bones.

  Lolapoo eyed us with a saccharine smile.

  ‘So good.’ She would not stop.

  I broke cover:

  ‘Why thank you, Lola! Let me get you some more of the liquor.’

  I shot up to grab the jug from the kitchen and slosh more tepid sauce into it.

  Yuh gotta suck salt outta wood’n spoon, Darling.

  Salt. There was a thought. A little sharpener, take the edge off all that saccharine. It could kill slugs, you know. But despite the provocation, I over-seasoned it with nothing more than a smile.

  ‘Here you go, Lola,’ I said. ‘The very best bit.’

  ‘Thanks so much, Darling.’

  Nothing to do but join in, outnice her, force her into the shadow of my nightlight grin as I slopped the sour juice all over her plate. Who could be the bes
t girl for Daddy?

  I felt it keenly, minded a lot that Lola regarded me as other, less than, unworthy, inferior. Not a new concept. I had learned from a young age that there were those who would look at me and assume I was poorer, less intelligent, less cultured, a quandary solved upon sight; sexually incontinent, insanitary, ill-mannered and ill-educated for good measure. Not everyone, not most, even. But for those who saw colour and wanted you to know it, these were the cudgels with which they daily tried to crack your thick black skull.

  As a child I had not seen it, beyond the playground. When I developed the narrowed gaze and broadened horizons of a teenager, just thinking about it made me want to swear, loudly and at everyone concerned. But as I grew I learned that simply swearing was a fool’s gold tooth. No, I was duty-bound to confound. I took the fight to them, beyond them. I would call them out in French, in German and in Shakespeare; prove them wrong in Italian and Nietzsche; checkmate them in Chaucerian; demolish them in Dutch and Dante; crush them in Spanish and Latin and Maya and Morrison and Molly-freakin-yeah. Then I would sit back to watch their little faces, unable to compute, their clodhopping ideas all covered in darkest dismay.

  I’ve been storing up words, lines, ripostes – and books – for many, many years. I’ve read libraries and read faces and I have learned and learned, and all in order not to be a teacher, or professor, but to be a true nurse. A nurse of nourished mind. The truest and the best, pure of thought and heart and mouth.

  But this was my step-daughter, our girl. And she wanted me gone. She was itching to rub me out of the picture. But surely, as long as there was hope and chicken …

  Gentle persuasion betta dan force.

  True enough, not just of heads stuck in railings and tricky locks, also of teenage girls; of the love and the food you could feed them. Lola could not be forced into being friends, but perhaps I could persuade her with my dishes, maybe even save her.