Sworn Secret

by Amanda Jennings

  ‘I should get back.’

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Me too. I’ve a bowl of tuna mayo waiting for some bread.’

  ‘You’ll be all right getting home?’

  ‘I should be OK,’ she laughed. ‘I’m not sure I’m in too much danger in Brook Green at midday as long as I stop, look and listen, of course.’ She nodded in the direction of her house, directly across the road from them.

  Jon looked over and his eyes immediately settled on her front door. The kiss in the air was forgotten as he stared at the door through which his daughter had escaped. He saw her then, so clearly, watched her step out of the house, close the door quietly. She stood motionless, holding her breath and listening hard, making sure she hadn’t been heard. Then he saw her creeping through the shadows, turning on to the pavement, and once she was clear of the house, he saw her break into a jog in the direction of the school.

  Rachel stepped up to the curb. ‘Enjoy your tea,’ she said.

  She crossed the road and walked the short distance to her house. Her lemon-yellow sundress shone as if it were the only splash of colour left. Like that film, Jon thought as he watched her, the one with the child in the red coat who wanders through the greyscale decimation.

  Scars

  Lizzie felt like a prison inmate in a bid for freedom, terrified that any minute there’d be a shout, the click of aimed rifles, the wail of an urgent siren.

  She kept her head down and walked with purpose, counting her steps to the front gates to ease her thumping heart. The unfamiliar kick of being naughty jumbled with the thrill of seeing Haydn, knowing that in a matter of minutes she’d feel his skin against hers and smell his sweet tobacco-tainted breath, and sent adrenalin pumping into her blood by the litre.

  As she got closer to the school gate and the promise of beyond, a sweat began to crawl over the palms of her hands and down the hollow of her back. Surely it couldn’t be this easy, she thought. But then she was out, through the gates. She laughed out loud as she pulled her tie loose and stuffed it into her bag. She’d been sure someone would stop her. She’d been worrying about it all morning, so engrossed with watching the clock on her classroom wall that she’d not heard a word from anyone. But there she was, out of school, sunshine on her face, about to meet her boyfriend. Her boyfriend! She still couldn’t believe it.

  When she turned the next corner he was there, leaning against the wall and smoking, his iPod plugged in, hair covering his face, and jeans so tight she could see every line of his leg. She smiled and broke into a jog. When he caught sight of her he pulled the earpieces out of his ears and wrapped them around the iPod, which he slipped into his jacket pocket. Then he smiled back and she ran faster, jumping into his arms as soon as she could. He twirled her twice around and nuzzled his face into her neck.

  ‘I can’t get you out of my mind,’ he whispered into her ear. ‘I’ve been thinking about you every minute.’

  ‘And me you,’ she said. She kissed him.

  ‘Let’s go back to my place,’ he said.

  ‘Are you sure?’ She wasn’t. She would have been much happier to go to her shed. She felt safe there. But he nodded and grabbed her hand and her worries were swept away.

  They didn’t talk as he unlocked his front door. She put her arms around him from behind and rested her cheek against the rough denim of his jacket. This was bliss. Three weeks before, she could never have imagined she would be this happy. She wouldn’t even have thought she was capable of feeling this happy. She’d imagined it, of course, but she assumed it was just fantasy and would remain so, captive like she was in the misery of her family tragedy. But she had emerged, the butterfly she always hoped she was. Haydn was her brave new world.

  They ran up the stairs to his room and closed the door. Within seconds they were kissing, tearing at each other’s clothes, tumbling towards the bed and collapsing on to it in a lustful giggling heap.

  ‘This is definitely better than hockey,’ she said.

  ‘I can’t believe you bunked off. I thought you were, like, the world’s best-behaved pupil.’

  ‘That was the old Lizzie. The new Lizzie does all sorts of bad, bad things.’ She took his hand and put it between her legs.

  ‘So she does,’ he said, his voice a rasp, which made Lizzie smile. ‘I like her.’

  ‘Me too,’ she said.

  ‘You’re so fucking gorgeous.’

  ‘You are too.’

  ‘I’m not.’

  ‘Oh my God! You completely are. You’re the best-looking person I’ve ever met.’

  ‘Not like my dad, though,’ he said.

  ‘Your dad?’

  ‘All the girls at school were always going on about how handsome he is and that. I used to hear it all the time; it got so fucking boring. I’m glad I don’t go to that school any more so I don’t have to keep hearing that shit.’

  ‘Well, they’re all freaks. You are so much better-looking than he is. Like a million times more.’

  And then he kissed her. Hard. As if he was never going to stop.

  They kissed and groped and fumbled, submerged in this new and exciting place, where the body ruled and the mind followed like an acquiescent slave. Lizzie was totally absorbed until she heard a noise somewhere outside Haydn’s room; her heart almost stopped with the shock.

  ‘What was that?’ she said, pulling away from him and sitting up, clutching the sheet over her chest.

  ‘What was what?’ He tried to pull her back down.

  ‘No,’ she said, and shushed him with a hand against his mouth. ‘I heard something.’

  ‘It wasn’t anything.’

  ‘Your parents?’

  ‘Don’t worry about it. They’re both at school. They never leave that place. Come on; you can’t stop.’

  She hesitated.

  ‘Look, it was probably the cat,’ he said. ‘The stupid fleabag is always knocking shit down.’

  She laid her head on his chest and stroked his shoulder down to his hand, feeling the bumps of those scars on his arms. She put the tips of her fingers to one of the thickest, risen as if it were embossed, and traced its length.

  ‘How did you get them?’

  Haydn shrugged.

  ‘There’s so many.’

  He stayed quiet.

  ‘This one must have been nasty.’

  Still he didn’t speak.

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘Stanley knife.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I did it with a Stanley knife,’ he said, with grim admission.

  ‘But why would you do that?’ She sat up, unable to hide her alarm. ‘Did you do them all?’

  He nodded.

  ‘But why?’ She felt sick that he could hurt himself.

  ‘It helps.’

  ‘With what?’

  ‘With lots of shit.’

  There was silence as she eyed the now seemingly hundreds of scars that struck his body with random malice.

  ‘How does it help?’ she asked, steadier now as her initial horror ebbed. She laid her head back on his chest.

  ‘It’s hard to explain,’ he said. ‘But if something is hurting inside me, you know, from what I’m feeling or thinking, then I cut, which is properly painful, and it sort of takes my mind off the other shit for a while.’

  She tried to imagine cutting into her own skin. She bent down and touched her lips to the scar nearest the crook of his elbow and then she moved down his arm, planting the lightest of kisses on every one. With each kiss she became more and more upset until she found she was crying.

  ‘Hey,’ he soothed. ‘What’s wrong?’

  ‘I can’t bear the thought of you doing that to yourself.’

  ‘Don’t be dumb. Now I’ve got you I’ll never do it again. Ever.’ She shifted her head to look up at him. He smiled at her then pulled her up to him. ‘You’ve made me OK again.’

  He kissed her then, hard and passionate, different from before, more demanding. He moved her around, using his hands
to guide her on to him. He was almost rough, as if he’d lost control of himself, and though at first she felt unnerved, she soon began to enjoy it as the force of his desire excited her. As he climaxed he shouted out her name.

  Afterwards, Lizzie lay curled into him, her stomach clenching with the aftershocks of sex. ‘I wish we could live in your room for ever,’ she said.

  He laughed and reached over her for the cigarettes on his desk.

  ‘No, seriously. I mean obviously we’d have to get food and have somewhere to, well, you know, pee and stuff, but otherwise, I wish we could lock that door and never leave.’

  ‘I’m going to sit outside your bedroom window tonight,’ he said.

  It was her turn to laugh. ‘You’re what?’

  ‘Tell me which window is yours. I’m going to sit outside it. So I’m close to you while you sleep.’

  ‘No, you’re not.’ She laughed again and kissed his chest.

  ‘Which window?’

  ‘Don’t be dumb.’

  ‘Tell me.’

  ‘It faces the road, upstairs, far right.’

  ‘I’ll be there.’

  ‘Freak.’ She smiled at him. ‘Now, how about you kiss me again? We might as well make bunking off worthwhile.’

  Paint

  ‘Your teacher called.’

  Kate watched as guilt rouged her daughter’s face from the neck up. Lizzie took her school bag slowly off her shoulder and hung it on a chair. She moved deliberately, her eyes lowered.

  ‘Really?’

  ‘She said you missed hockey and afternoon registration.’

  Lizzie looked at her mum and Kate saw her take a deep breath. ‘I couldn’t find my kit this morning. I asked you, remember? When you came into the kitchen. You didn’t know, so I thought it was at school, but I couldn’t find it there. It must be here somewhere.’

  ‘You were seen leaving the school.’

  Kate was fuming. Following her dreadful night, talking to the police and her blinding headache, the last thing she expected having to deal with was a phone call telling her that Lizzie had bunked off school.

  ‘I can’t believe you did that.’

  ‘It’s only hockey.’ Lizzie adopted a surly teenage slouch that a year ago would have made Kate smile.

  ‘You left school premises. Anything could have happened to you. If you’re supposed to be at school but instead you’re gallivanting about the place, how can I know you’re safe?’

  ‘I’m nearly sixteen; I can cross a road.’

  ‘Don’t take that tone with me. You are not nearly sixteen and you do not bunk off school.’ Kate tried not to think of the number of times she’d played truant; at Lizzie’s age she was out of school more than she was in it. ‘Where did you go, anyway?’

  Lizzie folded her arms ‘Nowhere.’

  ‘Don’t.’ Kate tightened her voice and raised her eyebrows.

  ‘For a coffee.’

  ‘On your own?’

  Her daughter’s eyes dropped to the floor. ‘Uh-huh.’ Then she looked up, and the two of them stared at each other. Kate saw for the first time how much Lizzie had grown up. She was staring at a young woman, taller, more beautiful; her slimness had become graceful rather than stringy, and she wondered how she’d not noticed these changes until now. Kate tempered her face.

  ‘Look, Lizzie, I don’t mind you missing hockey; I hated sport. But you can’t leave the school. Promise me you won’t do it again. I need to know you’re safe. I can’t be worrying about you all day, every day. Do you understand?’

  Lizzie didn’t move for a moment or two, then reluctantly nodded.

  ‘She said you’d be given detention.’

  Lizzie looked away from her and flushed again. ‘Who saw me leave?’

  ‘Mrs Howe.’ Kate clenched her fists at her sides. Of course it had to be that woman who’d seen Lizzie leave. The fact that her daughter had skipped school for a few hours was neither here nor there; it was being spotted by Angela Howe that boiled Kate’s blood. She was just thankful it was Lizzie’s form tutor who called instead of her.

  Lizzie seemed to turn a few shades paler. ‘I’m going to my room; I’ve got some reading to do.’

  Kate made her way up to the studio. She wondered how many times Anna had bunked off. She’d like to think never; it unsettled her to think of her daughters doing things behind her back that she had absolutely no notion of. Kate was suddenly hit with another graphic image of Anna with Stephen Howe, and squeezed her eyes shut to concentrate on driving the filth out of her head. Repelling these flashes drained her; she loathed the way they snuck up on her at any time, haunting her with their vileness, playing with her mind like water torture.

  She picked up her paintbrush and dabbed it into the smudge of brown oil on her palette. Then she lifted it to her canvas. She closed her eyes and waited for the familiar calmness to settle over her. When it did there came a perfect conception of Anna as a baby, gurgling, holding her feet, her chubby legs dimpled at the knee and creased at the thigh. Her shock of chestnut hair, innocent and untouched, was a thousand miles from the alien Anna in the gritty films that plagued Kate’s devastated world.

  It was late when she finally put her brush down. Anna was on the canvas grinning a gummy smile at her. Though the twinkle in her eye was a masterpiece of Kate’s recollection, there was something about her mouth that didn’t work, but she was done. She was tired.

  Jon and Lizzie were already in bed. The kitchen was dark and quiet, save for the restful whirr of the dishwasher. She opened the fridge, squinting against the light inside, and looked for something to eat. She wasn’t hungry; it was habit. She was never sleepy after she’d painted and often made herself a late-night snack to fill the wakefulness. Nothing grabbed her, though, so she closed the fridge door and the kitchen fell back into darkness. Moments later the phone tore into the stillness. Kate jumped and made a lunge for the receiver.

  ‘Hello?’ she said quietly, glancing at the clock on the oven. It was past eleven.

  ‘Kiki, it’s Dan.’

  ‘Why the hell are you calling at this time?’

  ‘Were you sleeping?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘That’s OK then.’

  ‘Jon and Lizzie are.’

  ‘I wondered if you wanted that drink.’

  ‘At this time?’

  ‘If you’d like.’

  She thought for a moment. She was wide awake, hyped up; if she went to bed now it would only be with yet more thoughts of Stephen Howe and Anna.

  ‘Yes,’ she said with a sigh. ‘OK.’

  ‘Only if you want to.’

  ‘I might as well. I’ve had a day and a half. I won’t be able to sleep anyway.’

  ‘Thinking about that cock?’

  ‘I can’t think of anything else.’ She paused. ‘We went to the police today.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘God, Dan, this whole thing’s so hideous—’ Kate pinched the bridge of her nose and breathed for a second or two to stem her tears. ‘I’m sorry. It’s been a hard day. A drink would be great.’

  ‘I’ll be with you in ten.’

  She filled herself a glass of water, and as she drank she heard Jon’s voice calling her from the landing.

  She went to the door and peered up at him. ‘Sorry?’

  ‘On the telephone?’ he asked, his voice croaky with sleep.

  ‘It was a wrong number,’ she lied. ‘Kids mucking around.’

  He nodded and then turned and trudged back to bed. Kate felt guilty for lying and she considered calling Dan back and telling him she didn’t feel like a drink any more. But in truth she’d never felt more like a drink. She opened the coat cupboard and found a jacket, and then slipped out of the house to wait for Dan on the street.

  It was a warm night with a clear sky, no clouds and lots of stars. Someone coughed from the other side of the road. She looked over to where the noise had come from, but couldn’t see anyone.

  It wasn’t long before there
was a screech of grating gears at the top of the street and she allowed herself a brief smile; Dan was an appalling driver. She walked up to the pavement and waited for him to pull over.

  Dan wound down the window. ‘Good evening, my dear. Fancy picking someone of the likes of you up on a street corner.’

  ‘It’s not a corner.’

  He waved her away. ‘Devil in the detail.’ He got out of the car and walked around to her. He was grinning, that ridiculous trilby set far back on his head. He held out a bottle of whisky.

  ‘Your drink, m’dear.’

  She eyed the bottle. ‘Whisky?’

  ‘Well, if you need a drink, you should have a drink.’ He paused. ‘Not that I want to be a bad influence, or anything.’

  ‘Liar.’

  He grinned again and reset his trilby.

  She hesitated, then grabbed the bottle. What the hell, she thought, and tipped it to her lips. The liquid burned her throat and she whistled.

  ‘Right,’ he said, taking back the bottle. ‘Hop in. We’re going for a drive. It’ll be like the olden days. You, me, a set of wheels and some booze.’

  She looked over his shoulder. ‘I seem to remember you were driving your parents’ car back then, too.’

  ‘Ahh, but it’s a Mercedes now. The days of squeezing you into a Morris are gone.’

  Against her better judgement she smiled. She was fond of Dan. They’d shared good times, been part of a wild group at art school. She couldn’t remember much of that first year. She remembered having fun, though; anarchic, irresponsible fun. It seemed like centuries ago.

  ‘Was that a smile?’

  ‘It’s good to have a break, that’s all.’

  ‘Come on,’ he said. He turned and opened the door, then removed his hat and waved it extravagantly to usher her in. Again she hesitated, but only for a moment, then she climbed in. The car smelt of paint.

  ‘More whisky?’ He nudged her hand with the bottle.

  ‘I’m not sure Jon would think this was a good idea.’

  ‘Being with me?’

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘Proof alcohol as the solution to trauma.’

  ‘Ahh, well, what does he know?’ Dan took the bottle and swigged. ‘Millions of alcoholics can’t be wrong.’