Darling

by Rachel Edwards

  ‘Now sleep. Don’t worry. Wait …’ I rose, took an empty glass from her bedside, rinsed it and filled it from her bathroom tap, then returned. ‘I won’t say a word to Dad. And of course I’ll help you with the test. Nurse, remember? Now sleep.’

  ‘I’m in hell,’ she said, then gave a dry laugh. ‘And Will wasn’t even worth it!’

  ‘Rest now, Lo,’ I said.

  Then I rose and closed the door, certain that Thomas would have heard nothing.

  I could not believe how pale, how breakable she had looked. And yet how angry at her lot.

  Lola

  DONE LIST 7

  Yofuckety. I have screwed everything up big time.

  I called Will. Had no choice – we were supposed to be going in this big group to this ball and I was hoping he might still let me go because his dad had already paid for the tickets. I had figured that if I went to the ball really dressed up (I spent ages finding a dress that I didn’t actually look too whale-like in), then he might forget about us falling out. Also, I had to warn him that Darling had seen his photo and would probably tell Dad he was involved with Bright New Britain, who kept getting in the news for all those marches and made my father shout at the telly. Will said I should still come to the ball, if I liked (thanks), and that he would see me there and that he would get his mate Paul to give me a lift. Great – is he friend-zoning me? As for Darling’s suspicions, he couldn’t give a toss:

  ‘So what if she knows who I am? You’re having a laugh, right?’

  ‘No, what do—’

  ‘Christ, Lola, you melt! What’s she gonna do to someone like me, that dirty liar?’

  ‘I’m sorry, Will, shouldn’t have mentioned her.’ He sounded wound up and I didn’t get why. ‘I didn’t think.’

  ‘No shit.’ The phone went silent for a moment. ‘OK, forget it. It’s not like I’m involved, they already knew her. No, it’s good you told me, forget about it now.’

  ‘OK,’ I said.

  ‘And I’ll phone you next time, OK?’

  ‘OK.’

  Then we hung up. Bloody great. And then, best of all, I ended up vomming massively when this Paul was supposed to be collecting me and I couldn’t go to the ball at all. My life sucks more than Caro Francis, the poor cow.

  Shit-a-brick, how the hell have I got myself pregnant when I have only just started having sex? Surely that’s a kind of special cruelty, right? Reserved especially for idiots like me who believe the lies of hilarious, full-of-themselves young men. I think they call it ‘cruel and unusual punishment’. How can that even happen? I mean I do know technically how, I’m not that kind of speci

  I whatsapped Will to say sorry for not coming to the ball last night. He’s read it but still not said anything back. I’m guessing we’re definitely over.

  I suppose I should be feeling my heart breaking in two, but tbh right now I just feel tired and embarrassed. And my stomach still aches.

  Thank God, bizarrely, for Darling. She really looked after me last night.

  I’m starting to regret having been such a bitch to her.

  Darling wanted to tell Dad about what she calls ‘my predicament’. That made me giggle, then feel totally sick. She can’t can’t can’t can’t can’t tell Dad. I made her promise, straight up, on her life. It would kill him. I’m sixteen, still his baby.

  What have I done now? Is this it, finally the thing that I cannot ever undo? Please no.

  However, I have to go on. Tomorrow I have to be brave and go to the chemist. I think Darling might go with me.

  Do you know what? Fuck Will Benton.

  I’ve been sitting here for hours, hating myself for being such a dick and ruining everything. I got this message from Ellie, saying I should call her. Anyway, she told me that she was just trying to be a friend and that Sadie Connors was at this ball I had said I was going to with Will and she swears blind Will was all over some other girl last night. Really pretty redhead. They were practically screwing each other on the dancefloor. Ellie was even nice enough not to sound too happy about it, after everything. She said she just thought I should know, and I believe her.

  You know what else? I kind of did know, deep down. Will and me are done.

  Wow, WTF? Really?

  Just went to talk to Darling. I wasn’t exactly aiming for a humungous heart-to-heart but I did want to talk to her properly, for the first time ever. I had been thinking about Will and Daz and that beaten-up bloke with the horrible wrecked shin and before I could stop myself I was in the kitchen talking to her. I’ve got to put down exactly what we just said super-quick before I forget because it might be the most grown-up thing I have ever done (apart from getting pregnant ha ha not laughing).

  I said, ‘Darling you need to know something. If I tell you something, do you promise you won’t go nuts? Or tell Dad?’

  And she said, ‘No, go ahead.’

  So I said (I actually started shaking a bit, which was very weird and OTT of me), ‘I just wanted to say that I haven’t been totally honest with you. I was really upset after the wedding, just because of, you know … And you know Will? You know those leaflets? He was quite into all that and I sort of went along with it, but not because I’m like that. He told me about his mate Big Daz, Darren something—’

  She looked at me really hard for a second. Then she said, ‘Go on.’

  And I said, ‘Will knows him from the pub and he and I got talking and anyway, long story short, Will got big into finding stuff out about your past—’

  She was still looking at me hard as hell. ‘Like what?’ she said.

  And I said, ‘He didn’t really say, just stuff you might have done. Will said he knew people who knew you.’

  She was pretty tense and it all made me get teary and I confessed to her:

  ‘I basically wanted to split you and Dad up, which I know is really really really terrible, but I just couldn’t get my head around it all. The wedding and all that. And I really wasn’t happy. Do you forgive me?’

  And she said, ‘Relax, Lola. I already knew all that.’

  And then I just started crying like a total dick, but she actually put her arms around me and said:

  ‘I forgive you.’

  And I stayed there for a bit, but then I pulled away because it is not like we’re exactly an episode of the fucking Waltons. So I muttered something like ‘thanks, sorry’ and came straight back up to my room to think.

  It was a good move. As long as she doesn’t tell Dad and make him hate me, it was a very good move, I think. Now we might just get on with each other a little bit more, and this matters because I think she might be the only one who can dig me out of this mountain of merde I am in.

  It’s weird. Pregnancy is like this mahoosive revenge, this judgement – I take it all back, Darling, please make it stop lol. #notlolling

  At first, back in July or whenever, I really did just have a bad patch of making myself sick again. Happens – to me, anyway. Soon though, I couldn’t bloody stop puking.

  So here’s how it is: after that little stint I did feel a bit queasy all the time (I figured that she couldn’t cook for shit!). For a start, all that greasy cocoa butter stuff and other afro bollocks she fills their en suite with all stuck in the air, in my throat, but even with that and all the unnecessary fiery food, I was not fully fit to puke. I stuck my fingers down my throat because I just fucking felt like I wanted to let it all go, you know. I knew she could hear me and I did not care. I do it sometimes, it was the whole exams thing – deal with it. But the next day and the next day, I had to stick my fingers down my throat just to get a decent night’s sleep.

  But in the end I really did stop doing it.

  And – spot the irony, kids! – I would give anything never again to yak the way I yakked the night I had to blow Will out just so he could go suck on the redhead.

  For now though, please God, it all seems to have gone away.

  Achievements

  Agreed to go out with Darling to buy a pre
gnancy test.

  Agreed that I would cool off the AT visits for a while. Rather than have her interfere, or have to flat-out lie to her, it would be best to take a break. It was Darling who suggested it and she is a qualified professional, after all. We won’t tell Dad and I’ll still keep writing lists, kids, don’t you worry. Your inheritance is safe.

  Achievement fail! Was thinking of messaging Will and accidentally hit dial, then hung up, so now I’ll seem nuts. But I’m making myself not care. He’s such a bell-end – you’d think he would have at least waited until after that bloody ball after everything we’ve done together. Did he ever give a toss?

  Googled ‘terminations’. Was too scared to click on a single page and then I deleted the internet history just in case.

  I finally stopped worrying about being sick and thinking about Will for more than five minutes and started to sort of get the point of Darling.

  PART III

  Darling

  MONDAY, 14 NOVEMBER

  We had a new understanding, Lola and I. And it was beautiful.

  Hear dis. One, one coco full basket.

  I could hardly hide the smile. I could hardly hide the hope. Not for the arrival of a step-grandchild, heaven help us, or for her to renounce her sins narcotic and ideological; not even that I might get back into the marital bed (Stevie had been reassured that my side of the mattress was ‘getting fixed’, which in a way it was). But my hope was that at last all my caring might be winning her over.

  A it dis: Massa God nah let mi dung.

  I have always been too big on love. And as any child of a Jamaican mother knows, it is impossible to truly love someone without wanting to nourish them. To cherish, yes, there is always that old wedding vow, but to nourish – you do that most of all for your child. To nourish is to nurture, to feed, to raise; it is Latin, and Old French, norrir, and nourrir, new French too. European then, but with equivalents and synonyms in every language. Little wonder: to nourish is to nurse. That most human of endeavours, that most primitive drive. From nutrix ‘she who gives suck’, which is something to do with an old word for letting it all flow, like time itself. Like love itself.

  To love you must nourish. A pan-fresh Johnny cake, an untimed kiss, the milk of goddamn human kindness, whatever you can rustle up. But to love, you must nourish.

  I would nourish her.

  My thoughts were so full of all my plans for her that I almost stumbled over Thomas as I came in. He was standing in the kitchen, looking at me with cold eyes. Something felt wrong. Then he spoke:

  ‘Who are you, Darling? I mean, really?’

  I lowered the bags full of courgetti and salmon, fromage frais and steak to the floor.

  ‘You know who I—’

  ‘Someone rang while you were out. A woman.’

  I put a hand out to the doorframe. Just to feel it there.

  ‘She said that she had finally managed to find the number and could she please speak to Darling White? She said that she would really like to speak to Darling, that she was her sister …’

  ‘But I—’

  ‘That’s right! But you don’t have a sister! Except this woman, Jade, was quite clear that you do.’

  ‘All right, Thomas, I hear you. Jade rang.’

  I fought the urge not to slip back out of the front door. What? What had she said?

  ‘Jade, yes, you’re catching on. Your sister. The sister that you don’t bloody have. What on earth, Darling? I don’t even know who you are any more. I don’t know if I can trust you at all …’

  ‘Of course you can,’ I said in a whisper. Then I spoke up. ‘What did she want?’

  ‘Just to speak to you. She was pretty damn keen.’

  All those phone calls, the endless calls to my mobile, and now she had broken through, in the end, despite me. But it would all be OK. Lola’s change towards me was a sign. Maybe it was finally time to stop running scared.

  ‘Look, OK, I do have a sister and I should have told you. But I didn’t, because we fell out such a long time ago, years and years. I know I should have said, but … it’s complicated. Do you understand?’

  ‘No. And I’m starting to think I won’t ever know you, Darling.’

  My fingertips, pressing so hard, could no longer feel the doorway.

  It was time to tell him.

  Jade. She was called Jade. She was my younger sister and those in the caring professions would say she was my own template for caring.

  I had loved her long and well.

  Even Thomas, surely, would forgive the lie. Would it shock him so much that I had erased one little sister? I could give him comfortable, probable reasons, find words that hit home. I now realised, all these months later, that I had no choice but to try. She would never, ever stop ringing. Ever.

  Try harder, care more. We were all supposed to care more, weren’t we, these days? That’s what the news challenged us to do every night, when we were inclined to turn away; the cookie-enabled charity ads and the upturned caps on the street and the diligent door-knockers. Care more. It was a sound idea. If we all got to the point when we could not care less, then children would die for lack of love and good people would go hungry and bombs would blast the innocent and strangers would be felled in the street and the seas would boil, and … oh.

  We did still care – didn’t we? But me, I had always set out to care more. Not just more than average, or more than anyone else, but more than was convenient, more than even I thought I should, more maybe than the other person wanted. You were born into this, this caring. For some it was almost an affliction. It was born needing to be needed and so you fed it with good deeds – a neighbour’s baby rocked to sleep on your young lap, a wrong forgiven, a playground mate cuddled until the scraped knee was forgotten. It grew. It could go on to grow until it had expanded to fill your life and all your work, as it had mine.

  I loved Jade from the day she was born. Of course I did, big siblings do, and I had been prepared for her arrival with bucketloads of smartness and patience by my parents – Mommy still gat all her time fuh yuh, gyal. More than that, I had looked after my little sister even in the womb, fretting over our mummy, tugging her swollen hand so that she might please sit down, urging her to walk all careful and slow on the stairs. My parents had told their peers that I was so could-just-eat-her-up kind, so concerned for dear Grace, so caring – and I was, but I was caring for Jade, every second, before she had even been born.

  I knew, before she arrived, that I wanted to look after her more than anything, to show her games and hold her hand and keep her in the light.

  When she was old enough to move around on the floor, I would roll her in my special blanket, leaving her with her own tiny white rag to clasp under her sucked thumb; then I would tell her what was wrong with her. Some days she had German measles, other days chronic earwax, or a cut finger, or croup. On one memorable occasion she had undergone a near-fatal heart attack. Whatever the ailment, I would open my red plastic box with the white cross that Father Christmas had wrapped in gold and addressed to:

  Dear Darling, the new nurse in the family xxx

  As her nurse, I had been consistent and highly conscientious. Every fictitious injury or imagined ailment – Whappen, Darling, poor likkle Jade done mash-up herself again? Yuh a gud nurse, yuh seh – was treated in the same way: it got bandaged. Measles? Bandage. Finger? Bandage. Earwax? Out came the roll of gauze while I deafened my baby sister by blowing air into her completely clear ear canal with the nifty plastic syringe. Heart attack? Big fuck-off bandage.

  Jade – bless dat poor likkle girl – never complained. More than once she fell asleep while being bandaged. Or she chattered happily and gave excellent patient reviews and insisted that yes, the bandage had made her feel instantly better.

  I knew then I really was a nurse. I knew then that caring more made a difference and that as a result my love – more than crayoning, running fast, making gingerbread or writing stories – would keep my sister alive.

&n
bsp; Yes, I had a sister called Jade and once upon a time I had loved her.

  ‘So, this … sister. Why did you fall out?’

  ‘Oh a stupid thing, really. A misunderstanding that just grew and grew until neither of us listened to the other any more.’

  ‘What happened?’

  I could only say: ‘We fell out over some boy, that’s all. Like I said, stupid.’

  Thomas was looking at his feet.

  ‘This will take some time to tick through the system. For me to understand why you don’t trust me enough to talk to me about things—’

  ‘Thomas, I—’

  ‘So, this week I’ll only work from home today. I’ll go back into the office tomorrow. We both need a little breather.’

  I kept trying so damn hard. I had to prove to Thomas that he knew me. Why had Jade chosen now, when I was trying harder than ever? I had to make this family work, come what may. Lola had come so close to real hatred. Hate has its own alchemy, it changes people, families. Changes love itself, of course, or tries to. She could never be allowed to get so close to it again. Nothing was more important, not my own crowding doubts or fears, no laws, or social norms, or superstitions. We had to work, come what may.

  Maybe I could buy time, before working out how to keep Jade well away. I could no longer keep my concerns to myself. I had to step up, make Thomas listen about the company his daughter had been keeping.

  I cornered him in his study and, while true to my word – I never once told him that his daughter had wanted to split us up – I filled him in on the rest: the leaflets, the undesirable mates, the unattended balls. Thomas looked as shocked as he ought to have looked, to give him his due. Then, as I grew in confidence and began to hint at the other reasons we had to watch her, he grew tired of looking shocked, told me he would talk to her, said that the political thing had to be some stupid misplaced curiosity and that it was also clearly over before it had begun as she had never mentioned it, and told me she was ‘just a girl’ and opened a cold beer before dinner. He did not find it amusing or even remotely ironic that it was a Red Stripe, left over from the night of the chewy goat.