As my fingers root through the medicine box, my mind is searching for a plausible explanation as to how I’ve hurt my wrist, should anyone notice.
I find some gauze and a stretchy, tube-like bandage, and cobble together a dressing, folding the bandage back on itself. It’s secure, and as long as I pull my sleeve down, it’s hidden. I bury the inadequate Band Aid in the bin.
Dylan throws his book across the table, making my insides tumble. I was so zoomed in on my arm, so far inside myself, I’d forgotten he was with me. I’m embarrassed, but I’m determined to fight that horrible rise of guilt and shame that begs me to harm. I’m determined not to give in again so soon. ‘I can’t leave Dylan on his own,’ I whisper.
I zap some milk in the microwave, test its temperature and pass it to him. I receive a smile and a staccato ‘Ta’, for my efforts. It goes a long way to appeasing me, and the urge to cut is weakening. ‘Fifteen minutes. Just keep going for fifteen minutes.’ It’s become my mantra of late.
With the medicine box returned to the cupboard, Dylan placated, and my cut clean and protected, I can carry on making tea. I lift the lid from the pan of boiling water and swear as the steam scorches my skin. There’s no damage, but the incident has given me a cover story for my bandage.
I snap the thin, crisp strands of spaghetti in half and shove them into the pan, picking up the splintered pieces that shattered under the pressure of breaking. I’m trying hard not to compare them to my life. The splintering sound and the physical force of the crack vibrating through my fingers discharged an acute degree of tension. I follow it up with a deep breath and a slow release.
I hate the fact I slipped yesterday, but hearing Mum cry out was the start. It reminded me that no matter how old I am, and no matter how hard I try, I can’t protect her. There is nothing I can do that will stop her getting hurt. And if I can’t help her, who’s going to be there to help me?
Then, at school, I had sport.
I have scars. I don’t wear them like a badge. I don’t want people to see them. I don’t want to have to explain myself. What I do is private. And sport is the worst possible lesson for someone like me. Getting changed is like running the gauntlet. I can usually separate myself from the class, find a corner and get into my kit with minimum fuss, as long as I’m swift. The isolation makes me a target, but a few choice words and showing the abuser the finger can have a devastating effect. The colder months are better, as I can wear my sweatshirt, but yesterday, the crafty spring weather did the dirty on me and chucked out the warmest day of the year so far.
The teacher told me to strip down to my polo shirt. I refused. I heard the class bully say, ‘The Ginger Whinger’s being all weird again.’ Then her friends joined in. ‘Stressy Tessy’, and ‘Minging MacDonald.’
I got sent to the changing rooms for telling them to piss off. How unfair is that?
Anyway, I was glad to be out of the spotlight. It meant I could get back into uniform without suspicious eyes glaring at me.
As I dragged my sport’s top up and over my head, I heard the swoosh of the cloakroom door. I scrambled into my school shirt and turned round to find the bullies’ ringleader standing a foot away. Her arms were folded, and she had a sneer plastered on her face. She’s bigger than me. She’s bigger than most people in the year, to be fair.
‘Are you frigid or something?’ she said, laughing. ‘Only I’ve heard you never get your tits out. You know, for the boys. And you’re always quick to change. You never shower after hockey.’ She stepped to the side and looked me up and down. ‘No wonder you stink, you filthy cow.’
I did the cuff buttons up and reached for my blazer, unconcerned my front was still exposed. My arms were my priority. Facing away from the girl, I hitched my jacket over my shoulders, and picked up my trousers from the slatted bench.
‘I don’t know what you’re hiding,’ she said, lunging towards me, ‘but I’m going to find out.’
With her breath hitting my neck, she snatched at my hair, pulling it to the side until the pain made me go with it. She eased up once I was facing her, and she stood there, staring at me.
I couldn’t speak. And I was frozen to the spot.
I was five all over again, watching the dominant person take control through violence, knowing that hair pulling led to something worse – something that made my mother cry in agony – something she begged my father not to do. Then, all I could see was him scrambling out of his trousers, out of his pants. Him pinning Mum to the wall, or the door, or the cabinet, shoving her over the bath, the sofa, the table, ripping clothes from her, his whole body banging into her, and her screaming with every single push.
I didn’t know what he was doing, but I wanted it to finish. I ran to my bedroom and hid under my duvet. I put my hands over my ears to block out the sounds – the grunts, the yells, the sobs, the slaps – but I heard everything.
And could do nothing.
‘Let go,’ I said as my vision returned to the changing room.
The girl scoffed as she closed the gap between us even further. ‘Why? What are you going to do?’
I did nothing. I did nothing and I said nothing. I was passive, resigned to my fate, and accepting of the consequences. As long as I didn’t retaliate, the situation remained manageable.
The girl began to smirk. It started as a twitch on her top lip, but quickly turned into a sneer of disgust. ‘I know what you are,’ she said, flicking away my hair. ‘And it makes me sick to the stomach.’
As she drew back her fist, the life-saving sound of an opening door brought an instant halt to my ordeal.
‘You tell anyone about this and I swear, the next time I find you alone …’ The girl shoved herself away, followed up her threat with a murderous glare, and then carried on as if nothing had happened, greeting her cohorts as they piled into the changing room. ‘Guess who’s not showering,’ she said as she stripped to her underwear.
‘Ghetti! Pease!’ Dylan’s banging his plastic beaker on the table trying to get my attention.
‘Soon,’ I say, wiping my brow with a sheet of kitchen roll. ‘Fifteen minutes. Just fifteen minutes more.’
I wanted to tell Mum everything when I’d got home from school yesterday – the intimidation and humiliation I’d suffered at the hands of the school bully, my crazy, confused, mixed-up feelings about my sexuality, my mistrust of men, how I cut myself, how I’d stayed clean for almost a month – everything. But she wasn’t in. Griff was, building a train track with Dylan.
But it wasn’t Griff I needed.
By the time Mum returned, I’d already resorted to the quickest way I knew of relieving the pressure in my head and the pain in my gut.
And I’d decided Mum didn’t need my shit piled on top of her own.
I open a can of bolognaise, knock it into a saucepan and let the heat do its thing. After a few minutes, my stomach acknowledges the comforting smell, and I set the table for two.
Credit where it’s due, Griff was sweet yesterday. He tried to help, but my head was all over the place and I was unreceptive. After he’d told me Mum was at Logan’s and not due home for another hour, he asked if anything was wrong, but my urge to cut was so compelling, I waved my response at him, and dashed upstairs to my bedroom.
I didn’t expect him to follow me there five minutes later.
It was too late by then. I’d already nabbed the bottle of gin from under the squeaky floorboard, and poured it over the blade. I was slicing into my wrist when Griff knocked. It startled me, causing me to push the metal deeper than I intended.
‘Don’t come in,’ I shouted.
I reached into my drawer, tugged a sanitary towel from its packet, and pressed it against the wound. Not ideal, but with the severity of the cut I needed something more than my cosmetic tissues to soak up the blood. I prayed I wouldn’t need stitches.
I sat in silence, hoping to hear Griff’s footsteps run down the stairs, but he rapped on the door again.
‘It’s okay,’ he s
aid. ‘I’m not coming in, but I’m concerned. You’re upset.’
I tried to hone in on his voice, but I wanted to give myself up to the moment. Despite it happening so quickly – the bleeding, the interruption, the desperation to hide my equipment – the release had come, and the rush convinced me I’d done the right thing.
‘Tess?’
‘Give me a minute,’ I said. ‘Just another minute.’
‘Ghetti? Ta?’ Dylan’s quiet request touches me and I give his food one final stir.
‘It’s ready,’ I say, smiling and serving up the bolognaise. I sit next to him and hand him his spoon and fork. They have rubber handles and Dylan’s chubby fingers can grip them easily. My fork is metal. Like my blade. The one I’d thrown under the floorboard in my haste to prevent Griff finding out my secret.
Once I’d agreed to talk with him, he’d backed off and gone downstairs.
The sanitary towel had done its job, and when I’d stopped bleeding, I’d replaced it with a tissue, letting my sleeve hold it in place. I’d wanted to climb into bed and sleep. I was relaxed, loose, and breathing with ease. Instead, I cleaned myself up, sterilised the blade and buried my tools again.
‘Just nipping to the loo,’ I shouted down to Griff.
I found a box of plasters in the bathroom cabinet and applied the largest I could find. It didn’t cover the length of the cut, but it was better than nothing.
When I reached the living room, Griff was sitting on the sofa. Dylan was snuggled in beside him, and there were two mugs on the small table.
‘Made you a coffee,’ Griff said, pointing to a red cup.
‘Coffee? Mum never lets me drink coffee.’ I picked it up and settled in the armchair.
‘It’s decaf.’
‘Figures.’
Smiling, Griff stroked the top of Dylan’s head. ‘Tough day?’
‘No tougher than normal.’ Of course I lied. I couldn’t explain myself to Griff. ‘But thanks for asking.’ I meant that. Life was difficult for us all and I appreciated him taking the time to ask. ‘What about you? Were you working?’
‘Nope. In the middle of my four days off. It has quietened down at work, though. Can’t say I’m missing those storms.’
‘You’re talking literally, right? You mean the actual storms that flooded Portland? Not the ones that tore through the cottage at Christmas?’
He smiled again. The creases around his mouth strengthened his structure. It made him look solid. Reliable.
‘I’m talking literally, but granted, the high tides and your mother are formidable forces of nature.’
Dylan popped his thumb in and closed his eyes.
‘I don’t want you to worry about your mum and me,’ Griff said. ‘I love her. And I want to be here for you and Dylan. Nothing that happens between Evie and me affects my relationship with you.’ He pulled Dylan in tighter, wrapping a muscular arm right round his small body. ‘I realise you and I don’t always see eye to eye, and I know how protective you are of your mum and how close you are – you had quite a few years when it was just you and her against the world, and I get that – but I’d really like to be a person in your life you can turn to. I’d like to earn your trust, Tess.’
Dylan’s giggling at the way the spaghetti keeps slipping off my fork. I act the clown for him with the next three mouthfuls, and then prompt him to finish his portion. ‘We’ll have custard after,’ I say, pushing my bowl away. ‘And then it’s bath time. Fun for both of us.’ I’ll have to wear a rubber glove to protect my bandage. ‘We can play with the foam letters. I promise to keep the words clean.’
Clean. I’m no longer clean. There’s a chance the new cut will produce a thick, ridged scar. I pledge to massage oil into it as soon as it heals over. It’s how I manage the after-effects.
Griff’s asked if Dylan and I would like to visit at weekends when he’s not working. He said we could walk Ozzy and maybe stay over once in a while.
‘Your dad wants to take us out for a burger,’ I tell Dylan. ‘I can’t help feeling that’s a slippery slope, as Mum would say.’
Fast food restaurants are the hangouts of divorced dads and their children. Divorce is not the answer. Griff told me he loves Mum, and I know she’s miserable without him.
‘I’m not sure about this love stuff, Dylan. This man and woman thing – I can’t see how it can work. We’re different species, put on this planet to procreate. Do we need love to do that?’ I look at Dylan. The food stains circling his mouth like a racetrack are as brown as his eyes. ‘Okay,’ I concede. ‘You’re a cute advert for love, but I don’t think it’s for me.’
In my experience, love between a man and a woman always ends badly.
Chapter Seventeen
Evie
The small box, gift-wrapped with Evie’s usual care, remained on the bedside cabinet, where she’d placed it the day before. She’d come upstairs to collect a warm cardigan for Logan. March was disrespectful of weather lore, deciding to hang on to its lion status. One day warm, the next chilly.
‘In like a lion, out like a lamb?’ Evie said, first picking up the birthday present, then pulling a grey, woolly jacket from Logan’s wardrobe. ‘More like in like a lion, tease us with your lamb-like innocence, and then clamp your huge jaws around the month.’ She hugged the jacket to her as she returned to the living room.
Logan was huddled in his chair, the green fabric accentuating his pale features. Evie placed the gift on the coffee table, and held out the cardigan. ‘Would you like this on, or over your shoulders?’
Logan shuffled forward. ‘Just wrap it round.’
Evie obliged, helping Logan settle back. ‘Haven’t you got a heated pad?’ She approached the understairs cupboard and flicked on the light. ‘I’m sure we bought a fleecy one for your lap.’
‘I don’t want it,’ Logan said.
His tone wasn’t far from one Evie had heard Tess use towards Griff. Petulant.
She exited the cupboard. ‘You have to keep warm, Logan. You refuse to turn the heating back on, you’re not eating properly, and it’s nippy outside. It’s no wonder you’re cold.’
‘I am not a child. I don’t need you making decisions for me. This jumper is enough.’ He turned his head and closed his eyes. ‘I don’t need anything from you, except—’
‘You haven’t opened your present.’ Not wanting to enter the whole assisted suicide debate again, Evie cut him off. ‘It’s from all of us, and I’ve not used any sticky tape on the paper. Just a loose ribbon. One small pull and it will unwrap.’
The package contained a box of Logan’s favourite and difficult-to-buy mint fondants, a pocket book on ‘armchair’ gardening, so he could plan his seasonal plants and maintain control over what went on in his garden, and a limited edition of Harper Lee’s To Kill A Mockingbird, which had cost Evie more money than she was prepared to let on. Certainly more than she could afford.
A gift of hope didn’t deserve to be left languishing unseen.
‘I told you not to buy me anything.’ Logan opened his eyes and stared at Evie. ‘It’s just more junk for you to clear out when I’ve gone.’
‘Did he open it?’ Tess liberated a tangerine from the fruit bowl next to the fridge and dug her thumbnail into the peel. Juice squirted onto her cheek, sending a giggling Dylan running from the room.
‘Not by the time I left.’ Evie took a tangerine for herself and sat at the table. ‘He’s never really been one for birthdays, though. I don’t know why I expected this year to be any different.’
‘Because you love birthdays.’ Tess chucked her peel straight into the food recycling bin. ‘And because you always think the best of people.’ She sucked a segment into her mouth, and pushed out a thread of pith with her tongue. ‘Why are oranges so disgusting and difficult to get into?’ She wiped her hand on the side of her black jeans.
Evie sent her a disapproving look and nodded towards the sink. ‘Wash your hands if they’re dirty.’
It was an interesting phr
ase. To some extent, it was what Evie was trying to do with Logan by getting him to agree to outside care – wash her hands of him. If that was how she saw it, the outside world would see her as a monster. ‘Am I wrong to ask for help with Logan?’ She gazed at the dimples in the fruit skin as Tess joined her at the table.
‘How can you think that? You’ve done so much for him over the past couple of years. You get up at ridiculous o’clock every morning and go to bed at stupid o’clock every night. You’ve done more than your fair share.’ Tess hesitated as Dylan re-entered the kitchen and held his hand out for some tangerine. She picked off the remaining pith, and passed the almost-complete ball to him. ‘I’ll help more, Mum. I can go to Logan’s after school, and at weekends. I can do his breakfast on Sundays and you can have a lie-in. We’re a team. We always have been. You and me against the world.’
Evie smiled. Her beautiful girl’s kindness and care had warmed her heart. ‘It’s a lovely idea, but it’s not fair on you. I already leave Dylan with you when you should be out with your friends.’
‘Honestly, Mum, I don’t mind. And I’m on Easter holidays now.’
‘Then you’ll have time to study for your exams.’
‘They’re mocks.’
‘Your science one isn’t. And mocks need just as much attention as the real thing.’
Tess produced a dramatic huff and a groan, and threw her hands up in a gesture of despair. ‘Mum, I’ll be fine, but if it worries you, tell Griff it’s time he took some responsibility. Logan’s his father.’
The indignation in Tess’s voice was barely detectable, but it was there. Evie reached a hand across to her, but withdrew as soon as Tess clamped her arms behind her back. ‘I married Griff, making Logan part of our family,’ Evie said, quietly.
‘And Griff has buggered off.’
‘Language, Tess.’ Evie glanced at Dylan, who, although too young to understand, was old enough to copy. ‘It’s not as simple as that. It wasn’t a case of Griff upping and leaving. Things were difficult between us. We needed space and time away from each other so we could work out what’s best. For everyone,’ she added.
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