Melt My Heart

by Bethany Rutter

  ‘Good girls,’ Mum says, winking at us. ‘Well, since you’re taking care of this, I’m going to watch back-to-back episodes of Four in a Bed if you would care to join me when your domestic labour is done.’

  Daisy and I turn the radio on and dance to cheesy music while she washes and I dry, careful not to drop bowls in a fit of Phil Collins-induced mania.

  Our mum’s voice cuts through from the living room into the intro of another eighties masterpiece. ‘Lily!’

  ‘Yes?’ I call back, turning the radio down.

  ‘I forgot to tell you – there’s a letter for you from Leeds.’

  It feels like a fist has tightened around my heart.

  ‘Oh, OK …’ I say, hopefully loud enough for her to hear. ‘I’ll open it when I’m done in here.’ Daisy inhales sharply and twitches her nose, her universal symbol of disapproval. I guess she’s a bit annoyed about us not going to uni together anymore. She doesn’t notice my shaking hands. I was meant to be going to Bristol, same as Daisy. That’s what we had talked about. But when the offers came through and Daisy accepted hers straight away, I felt like maybe it was time for me to separate from her a bit. Go my own way. That’s the plan I deviated from. Now, of course, I don’t know what I was thinking. What I do know is I feel like I’m thinking about it all the time.

  When I start feeling like this, I don’t feel like I can make my body do anything. It’s like a tightly wound spring: all tension. I barely hold it together while we finish the washing-up and then I slip upstairs, swiping the letter from the little table in the hall.

  Daisy’s world may be the garden but my sanctuary is upstairs, in my room at the back of the house. Our small bedrooms are crowded together up here: Mum’s is painted a soothing mint green, Daisy’s a sugary lilac, and then … there’s the quiet chaos of mine.

  It’s not just the stuff – books stacked everywhere, art supplies overflowing from every surface, canvases leaning against the walls and the cupboards – it’s the walls. I’m not saying my mum was wrong to let me have free rein on my bedroom, but if she ever wants to sell the cottage my bedroom is going to need a complete makeover.

  The two walls that make up the corner of the room by the door are painted a flat, neutral white, with my bed pushed against the side that shares a wall with Daisy’s room. But the other two are a riot of colour and pattern and nature and leaves and vines and flowers in lush greens and vibrant blues and juicy pinks, like you’re deep in the jungle on another planet. I suppose letting me do what I want with my room is like letting Daisy do what she wants with the garden. ‘It’s your home, too,’ Mum always says.

  As usual, just being in my space takes a little of the tension away. I can breathe here. But the letter in my hand is weighing me down. More than anything, I do not want to go to university in September. I do not want to leave my home. I do not want to leave my family. I do not want to leave comfort and familiarity. I absolutely, one hundred per cent, do not want to leave Cassie. But it’s too late.

  I flop down on my bed, my heart pounding against my ribcage. I take a deep breath and slide my thumb into the envelope, tearing it open in jagged waves. When I wriggle the letter free, all the words jumble together in a nauseating haze until I finally unscramble them. An accommodation letter. What kind of halls do you want to be in? Catered or non-catered? How many people to a bathroom? How far from the campus? Do you mind sharing a room if push comes to shove?

  I let out a groan, close my eyes and take another deep breath. At this point I’ve had to accept that the whole university thing – the whole future thing – is hanging over me like a black cloud, and most of the time I can keep a lid on it. But every so often it becomes uncontainable and I have to confront the fact that at the end of this summer I’ll have to leave my home.

  It’s such a dark thought that I haven’t shared it with anyone, but I’m clinging on to the possibility that I might not get the results I need, and then I won’t have to go away. Results day is in forty-one days – I counted them on the calendar. That’s when it’s real.

  Until then, I’m going to enjoy myself. I’ve only got one summer left. The last summer.

  One summer to get my head around all the ways my life is going to change.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Another day, another dollar.

  As I speed-walk from my house to the ice-cream stand on the green with its uninterrupted view of the sea, I know I’m running late. Not because I’m checking the time like a maniac, but because I pass the same people every day. I don’t need a watch to tell me I’m definitely late. It was the same when I went to school. If the dad in the baseball hat with the big beard and the little girl with a pink scooter were already round the corner, I was probably going to miss the bus. If they hadn’t made it round the corner yet, I still stood a chance. It’s the summer holidays now, so no one’s on the school run, but I’ve already missed the old man walking his Yorkshire Terrier. It’s not quite the kind of small town where everyone knows everyone, but it just works. Predictably, comfortingly, a well-oiled machine. Like a toy town. Late. Definitely late.

  Finally the pink-and-burgundy-striped ice-cream stand appears in the distance and I breathe a sigh of relief that Cassie is already there. It’s still exciting that I get to spend the day with my favourite person. It’s not as if it’s particularly glamorous work, and we’ve only been doing it for a week, since her parents opened the cafe in Seaforth and needed two sensible young people to keep everything going here. But it’s fun to be outside all day, seeing what the town is up to, and being able to chat to Cassie like we’re still in the common room at college.

  ‘What an amazing dress!’ I call out to Cassie as I approach the stand. She looks up from the till, grins and gives me a twirl. Her midi smock dress is made of the most outrageous multicolour gingham and looks extremely cool with her chunky white trainers. Definitely a Cassie Palmer original.

  Cassie likes making her own clothes not just because she can, but also because she’s really tall. And kind of … big. Our bodies aren’t the same – mine is softer, rounder, more conspicuously there. But there’s something about her body – the scale of it and its presence – that makes me feel at home when I’m with her. I don’t feel self-conscious with Cassie, or like she’s judging me. She’s too interesting to think that whether someone is fat or thin is a good basis on which to judge them.

  ‘Why thank you.’ She beams. ‘Only yesterday this very dress was …’ Cassie lowers her sunglasses in an invitation for me to guess.

  ‘No offence but … a duvet cover?’

  ‘Close! But nope!’

  ‘Curtains? A tablecloth?’

  ‘A tablecloth!’

  ‘Amazing. Truly amazing.’

  ‘I told you, I’ll teach you how to use a sewing machine one day. If I can do it, anyone can.’ I stop myself from telling her that’s not strictly true. Cassie is very smart, but because she’s mostly good at practical things like sewing and cooking she thinks that makes her less ‘actually smart’ than other people.

  ‘Does it feel like …’ Cassie says, squinting judiciously out towards the seafront while she yanks the lids off the ice cream tubs. ‘There are more people here this year?’

  ‘Yeah, I think you’re right. Obviously it helps that the weather is incredible.’

  ‘And it’s Friday. Nice little long weekend from London.’ She rummages in the cupboard underneath the counter and produces our matching baseball caps and aprons, which are surprisingly not too bad, just the iconic pink and burgundy stripe of all Palmer’s Ices promotional materials. I tend to wear black to work to account for these colourful flourishes, but Cassie just lets the patterns and colours clash gloriously together.

  ‘And it is indeed Friday!’ I clap. It’s the first weekend since we started working. Not that we’ve been working too hard.

  ‘It’s already twenty degrees at eleven o’clock in the morning on Friday the nineteenth of July. What a time to be alive,’ she says, spreading he
r arms wide and tilting her face towards the sky. It’s only going to get hotter from here. I dread to think what four o’clock will feel like.

  ‘Global warming though, isn’t it,’ I say with a grimace, giving in to my inability to chill the hell out. If university doesn’t kill me, maybe the heat death of the planet will.

  ‘Live in the moment, my dude,’ she says as the generator buzzes into action, ensuring our stock will stay nice and frozen. ‘I think we’re going to do a roaring trade today.’

  I realize I’m beating my fingers against the palm of my hand in time to what Cassie’s saying. It’s something I’ve found myself doing lately when I feel overwhelmed by my thoughts. A way to find order in the chaos. ‘Live in the moment’ is the perfect phrase because it’s five syllables, which means one for each finger before ending on the thumb. Ending on the thumb. Another perfect phrase. I tap it out a few times before realizing I should stop. I snap out of it, shaking my hand to loosen the fingers that were balled up in a fist. ‘And if we do well here, imagine how business is gonna be in Seaforth – your parents opened the shop at exactly the right time.’

  ‘Right?’ Cassie gesticulates in exasperation. ‘They were so cautious about opening a proper sit-in cafe but I knew it was a good idea. Plus, this way we get to hold the fort here without them breathing down our necks.’

  I pause for a moment, checking there’s enough change in the till (there is – the Palmers would never let something so important be overlooked). ‘Some guys threw a can of Red Bull at me from a moving car last night.’

  ‘What the hell?’

  ‘Yeah … that’s weird, right?’

  ‘I mean … who does that?’ Cassie asks, arching an eyebrow. ‘It’s madness! Did their parents not raise them right?’ She looks genuinely furious on my behalf.

  ‘Evidently not …’ I say, glowing with delight at her indignation. ‘I was running at the time.’

  ‘Running?!’

  ‘Don’t sound so surprised!’

  ‘No, no, I’m not! It’s just very … plot twist-y.’

  I sigh, remembering my burning thighs. ‘It’s not for me. And not just because of the projectile.’ But as I say that I wonder if it’s true. I’m already wondering, if I went out again, how much further I could go, even if I only lasted another thirty seconds or a minute.

  Cassie shrugs. ‘It’s cool that you tried though. I like this spirit of adventure for you.’

  Perfect. Cassie is the perfect person to get involved with my little scheme to try new things this summer. She’ll be able to make all the terrifying stuff I’ll be doing heaps of fun, and I’m never more comfortable or more myself than I am when I’m with her. ‘Yeah, about that …’

  ‘Oooh!’ She looks enthused already.

  ‘So. The inescapable truth is that, yes, I’m going to uni at the end of the summer.’

  ‘Ah yes, that famous death sentence: university,’ Cassie says drily.

  ‘Look, you know I’m a little … wobbly about the whole thing. So to make everything slightly less wobbly, I want to hype myself up for The Big Change by trying something new every day, at least until I get my results.’

  ‘I’m listening.’ She nods, clearly intrigued now.

  ‘And I would like to enlist your help. You know, to keep me accountable and motivated and tell me what to do when my imagination fails me. All the things you’re good at.’

  She beams. ‘I am honoured you would think of me for this task. You got today’s thing already?’

  ‘Nope!’

  ‘I’ll figure something out,’ she says, gazing mischievously out to sea, her big brown eyes focused on the still water.

  We usually tag-team our brief lunch breaks and split whatever Cassie has brought with her: today’s lunchtime special is orzotto with peas. She always brings enough for both of us, but just puts it all in one Tupperware box because we’ll never be eating at the same time.

  ‘Are you sure we can’t eat lunch together?’ I ask, digging in.

  ‘If my mum drove past and saw the stand so much as looking like it was unattended, we would be unemployed so fast your head would spin.’

  ‘So … that’s a no, then?’

  ‘That’s a no.’

  I suppose I should get used to not having someone to eat lunch with. Who knows who I’ll be sitting with when I get to uni.

  By the afternoon, our biceps are aching from all the scooping. Chocolate orange was, as predicted, a great success. By three o’clock we have to ring Cassie’s mum at the cafe in Seaforth to tell her we’re out of strawberry, and within half an hour she’s run round another tub in their pink Palmer’s Ices van. She barely parks, pulling up by the green and waving at Cassie to come over, then speeds off back to work, blowing kisses at us out of the window.

  Cassie’s mum, Tracy, is basically a business genius. She stepped in when Cassie was a baby and kind of took over the management of the whole company from Cassie’s dad, who’s a nice guy but has the complacency of someone running a family business whose success they take for granted. Since then, Tracy’s expanded the brand from back in the day, when you could only really buy the ice cream from the creamery where it’s made, to today, when it’s distributed to the cutest cafes on this stretch of the coast, and has two sites of its own. She could give any president or tech founder a run for their money. Hey, if Facebook was run by a forty-three-year-old Jamaican woman maybe the world wouldn’t be such a shitty place. Tracy Palmer’s firm but fair command could take on Zuckerberg any day of the week.

  ‘Still not tempted to take over the family business?’ I ask Cassie.

  ‘They wish,’ she says, ruefully. Cassie’s plans rather diverge from those of her parents. ‘Look, at least an art foundation course gives me plausible deniability. As far as they know, I could be planning on doing Palmer’s stuff after that.’

  I look at her out of the corner of my eye. ‘But you’re not, right?’

  ‘Nah. You and I both know I was put on this earth to stress out my mum.’

  We stand in silence for a moment, contemplating our very separate futures. Only a few months ago my big bold decision made so much sense – finally! Following my own path! Getting out of my little town, living away from the inevitable comparisons with my twin sister. Then reality set in. It started creeping up on me and never stopped.

  ‘Well, well, well, if it isn’t our old friend, Señor Mango Sorbet,’ Cassie says. I look out towards the seafront and spot a couple of our regulars: a stylish, good-looking, well-groomed couple in their early fifties, who have taken to stopping by on their way home a few times in this first week alone.

  ‘And his wife, Lady Red Plum,’ I chime in.

  ‘One scoop of mango sorbet, please!’ says Señor Mango Sorbet, fishing in his back pocket for his wallet. ‘And for the Mrs …’

  Lady Red Plum says, ‘I’ll have—’

  ‘A scoop of red plum?’ Cassie interjects, grinning.

  ‘You read my mind! Am I that predictable?!’ The woman smiles and brushes her hair out of her eyes. A huge diamond ring glints on her finger.

  ‘Not at all,’ I reply. ‘It’s my favourite flavour too!’

  They pay and thank us, wandering off licking their ice creams.

  ‘Do you reckon people find it weird that we remember their orders?’ Cassie asks me, as if struck by a horrible thought.

  I consider it for a moment. ‘I’m not sure … maybe people like feeling seen? And remembered?’

  ‘Yeah. I mean, there are worse things to be remembered for.’

  ‘We remember those two because they’re so together. So sure of themselves. Not just because they always order the same thing.’

  ‘Yeah …’ she agrees. ‘Except … no one’s really all that together, right? Everyone’s got stuff going on. I wonder what their stuff is.’

  Finally, six o’clock rolls around and it’s time to close the stall. Mercifully the weekend shift belongs to Graham, an overzealous retiree who has discovered a se
cond life as an ice-cream salesman, and Chelsea, who doesn’t take it seriously at all, so Cassie and I are at liberty to hang up our aprons and indulge in a couple of pints.

  ‘Where do you want to go?’ Cassie asks. ‘Crown or Lighthouse?’

  What she’s really asking is: what kind of night are we planning on having? There are other pubs in Weston Bay – lots in fact – but we generally just pinball between those two. The Lighthouse is run by my Uncle Michael, who takes his work sufficiently seriously that he’s there almost every night of the week. He took it over with his husband, Mark, a couple of years ago and it’s now a perfectly Instagram-ready haunt with cocktails, velvet seats, hanging planters and kitschy details. If we go to the Lighthouse it’ll be a sedate evening under the watchful eye of Uncle Michael and/or Mark. But if we go to the Crown … anything could happen. It will be extreme summer evening vibes.

  ‘Crown,’ I say, decisively.

  ‘Oh, so it’s going to be that kind of night. I’m gonna save your “one new thing” until we get there, in that case.’ Cassie smiles as she zips up the cash bag, ready for her parents to pick it up in a few minutes. ‘See you at eight thirty?’

  ‘See you there!’ I blow her a kiss before starting my slow stroll home.

  The man at the shellfish stand waves to me as I pass, and I let the Friday feeling infuse my wave back. Carl? Kyle? I don’t even know his name, but Daisy and I went to primary school with his daughter Maisie and I guess no one forgets the twins. The waving was a ritual we started when I used to walk home from school in town and even though I disappeared for two years for college, we’ve picked it right back up again. And on the rare occasion I actually buy something there, like a styrofoam cup of cockles doused in vinegar and pepper, he always gives me a bigger cup than he charges me for. It’s just one of the many threads that make up the fabric of my life here.

  I know you’re meant to hate the place you grow up, but I don’t. Weston Bay is … fine. No, it’s more than fine. Even in the winter when the place seems to go into hibernation, as the freezing wind whips up the sea and sends the spray right into your face … OK, that’s not great. But on days like this I wouldn’t change it for anything. Some of my fellow Westonians are walking in the fading light, taking pleasure in the sea air and the beauty of living here and now. I get out my phone and take a photo of the way the light is hitting the pier and glinting off the sea like glitter. I’ll paint it next time I have a moment.