Heartstream

by Tom Pollock

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Amy

  One hand still gripping my wrist, Polly stretches like she’s just had a refreshing daytime nap, and gathers up the fallen knife. I stay in my crouch, paralysed, while she unfolds over me.

  “There was a bitter edge to the tea,” she says, “and where I’ve come from, I’ve had to become quite good at pretending to swallow things. Honestly, Amy. You could have killed me.”

  She yanks me to my feet and nods towards the nearest of Dad’s monster fruit cakes. For a moment, I don’t get it, then light glimmers in just the right way and I see how wet it looks, the plate it sits on brimming with cloudy liquid.

  I’m here to make a point, she’d said, after she’d flicked the TV on. She must have soaked the cake while I was distracted by the news.

  “You didn’t mean to hurt me, did you?” Her eyes are wide, vulnerable. “You just wanted to get out of here, to see your father and Charlie. I understand.”

  I nod frantically, unable to speak because my throat has closed to what feels like a needle’s eye. I can’t take my eyes off the knife.

  “That’s only natural.” She says it like she’s reasoning it out, talking herself around. “So you were careful with the dose of whatever you put in that cup. You made sure it wouldn’t do me any permanent damage, just put me to sleep, right?”

  I don’t answer. My eyes are stretched so open I can feel every stirring air current against them.

  “I haven’t been fair to you. I should have thought more about the stress this would put you under,” she muses. “I was selfish wanting to talk to you. Perhaps this would go easier on you if you slept through it.”

  She smiles glassily at me, and sets the edge of the knife to the cake. “Hungry? You’ve not eaten anything since I’ve been here, and tea does go marvellously with fruit cake.”

  Recoiling, I lunge for a shard of the Hatter teapot. My fingers claw the air a centimetre from the sharp ceramic, but she just tuts like I’m a dog that’s peed on the carpet and hauls me back, dragging me onto tiptoe. Her fingers are like iron wires around my wrist.

  “No, Amy,” she says. And now I can’t see the knife any more, but there’s an edge of something hard and horrifyingly fine at my neck. My throat feels like it’s been sandblasted, but I don’t dare swallow. The gentlest pressure lifts my chin until I’m staring into her eyes.

  I’ve never understood what’s meant by people having mad eyes until this moment. It’s not all that cartoonish bug-eyed swivelling. It’s the opposite, a stillness. Normal people blink. Normal people care how you’re reacting to them, so their gaze flickers from your eyes to your mouth and back, reading your expression and responding in kind. Polly’s eyes are like a doll’s.

  “None.” She bites off each word. “Of. That.”

  The blood is hammering in my skull; I’m held on tiptoe by the knife. I hold her mad gaze, trying to plead without speaking.

  A scream lances through my ears. Polly’s head whips around to follow it and the knife falls away. I look too, because I know that voice.

  It came from the TV, so loud it made the speakers crackle with feedback. Caught in extreme close-up, microphones shoved under his chin, the lines of running green mascara criss-crossing his cheeks like rivers on a map, is Charlie.

  He looks different, and it takes me a handful of my racing heartbeats to put my finger on why: he’s shaved his hair to an indistinct brown fuzz and his pupils are dilated to dark pools.

  He’s streaming.

  In the bottom right corner of the screen, an unobtrusive sign announces that the TV footage is live.

  Charlie’s mouth gapes slightly. He looks horrified – no, he looks terrified.

  He looks exactly how I feel.

  “Charlie?” an off-screen voice asks him. “Charlie, what’s going on?”

  His lips struggle to shape the words. “She’s scared,” he’s saying. “Oh god, she thinks she’s going to die.”

  His face vanishes as the screen goes blank. In the darkened glass I see Polly’s face, pinched, pale, furious. She casts the remote aside in disgust.

  “You’re streaming right now?” she demands.

  I don’t answer. It’s not bravado. I just can’t speak.

  She yanks me round to face her. “YOU’RE STREAMING RIGHT NOW?” she yells into my face. She drags Charlie’s scarf away. My patches hiss faintly as they begin to cool in the open air. Polly looks thwarted and betrayed. Her hands twitch forward like she wants to pull the pads off me, but when I flinch she flinches too. It’s too late and she knows it. Her once immobile gaze is flickering to the corners of the room, as if she could meet the eyes of all three million people who are streaming off me right now, feeling every jolt of my frightened heart, every drop of blood as it forces its way through my veins, every fraction of the terror and the pain she’s inflicting.

  She looks like she wants to plead with them. The knife clatters to the floor.

  I’m here to make a point, she’d said. While everyone’s watching.

  But, judging by her panicked expression, this wasn’t the point she wanted to make. For a split second I feel how I felt staring into the bathroom mirror that first night. Connected, unified, powerful.

  “There’s no time for this!” she snaps, seemingly as much at herself as at me. She grabs me and pulls so hard on my arm I almost come off my feet. I stagger down the hall after her, the pictures and mirrors and floorboards a blur of wood and silver.

  “Stay in here and think about what you did!” she yells as she hurls me through a doorway. My feet go out from under me and I tumble hard to the carpet as the door slams behind me. I lie spread-eagled and panting. I stare at the ceiling. The bare bulb tells me which room I’m in.

  I roll onto my elbows and try to get up, but adrenaline buckles my knees and I collapse. I crawl to the door and pull the handle down but it doesn’t budge. I bang on the door, throw my shoulder against it again and again until the pain in the bruise blossoming through it sickens me.

  “Let me out!” I cry. “Please! Put me somewhere else! Anywhere else!”

  But whether she’s suspicious or she just doesn’t care, there’s no answer.

  I turn and slump against the door. And then, staring at the bed Mum died in, sob after gasping, terrified sob, I break down.

  “PLEASE!” I howl it. The syllable’s barely comprehensible, barely human. Get a grip, Ame. Think of Charlie. Charlie who just saved your life.

  And then I do think of Charlie; I think of him with my arms around him, holding him outside this very door while he sobbed. “You shouldn’t have to see her like that,” I whispered to him, as if the problem was fucking aesthetics.

  I stay in that moment for longer than is good for me. The memory’s as tempting as a scab to pick at. I really, really hope Charlie’s stopped streaming off me by now.

  Why am I so scared of this room? It’s dumb. I know it’s dumb and I’m furious at myself. For God’s sake, I’ve already been in here today. But then I had a specific goal, and I could and did leave as soon as I had what I needed. I’m pretty sure I held my breath the whole time. My gaze lands on the window and its vicious glinting tape.

  Being trapped in here is a different thing.

  You see, this room is haunted.

  Not by the literal ghost of Mum, of course. And anyway, why would I be scared of that? That would be fantastic; I’d get to talk to her, and maybe now she’s lost all the weight she’s ever going to lose, she’d stop badgering me with diet tips.

  No, this room’s haunted by the ghost of her pain; by the slow revolt of her body against her mind; by the unfair but utterly unshakeable feeling that her family were betraying her by not helping, even though there was nothing they could do; by the nurses’ instructions to “make her comfortable”, a laughable endeavour that was more of a sop to our angst than her anguish.

  It’s haunted by her knowing that she was going to end, far, far too young. And what could conceivably make her comfortable with
that?

  I let out a breath I didn’t know I was holding. A sharp-sweet scent pricks my nostrils and I almost gag. I put my arm across my nose instinctively, but of course, the smell isn’t in the room; it’s in my head. It’s the mingled tang of open sores and antiseptic, of mud-thick meal replacement drinks and incontinence pads and fear sweat. Over the past six months, the air in here has been replaced one molecule at a time with whatever chemical compound comprises raw desperation, and even though Dad bundled all the soft furnishings into bin bags and kept the windows open for three days straight, here it’s stayed. It’ll probably still be here when the sun consumes the earth. At least it will for me.

  I try to stand, and this time I do make it onto my feet. I sway like a lantern at sea. I’m drained; the muscles in my legs and chest feel like wrung-out rags. I try the door again. It’s as immovable as death. I lurch over to the bare mattress and gape at it, blinking like a drunkard staring into headlights. Partly out of morbid fascination, partly out of an instinct for self-punishment, but mostly because I’m just really fucking tired, I lie down.

  I put my limbs where hers were the night I started streaming, one leg hanging over the edge of the bed frame. I stare up at the ceiling, my eyes finding the tiny hairline cracks in the paintwork, the cobwebs like an architectural five o’clock shadow. These were the last things she saw.

  I close my eyes, and feel my breathing go regular.

  When I become aware of my body again, pins and needles are marching down my calf where the edge of the bed’s cut off circulation. The light coming in through the window has dulled to a burnt street-lamp orange, the trees outside clawing long shadows across the floorboards.

  I’ve got a really pig-ugly ache in my lower back. There’s a lump that feels like an anvil in the mattress and God knows how long it’s been pressed into my spine.

  For Christ’s sake, Amy. You were supposed to try and keep her comfortable. You couldn’t even make sure her mattress wasn’t lumpy?!

  Except the mattress isn’t lumpy: at least, not anywhere else.

  I stretch my arms and legs like I’m making snow angels, but my limbs only encounter smooth memory foam. I roll off the centre of the bed and look. There, hard to see because of the striping on the fabric casing, is a solitary, suspiciously regular bump. It’s in the exact centre of the mattress, and it’s a near-perfect rectangle.

  What the…?

  I prod it delicately, like it’s a lump in my breast rather than in Mum’s old robo-bed. It moves. I push it again, harder this time, and it slides further under the surface of the mattress. I push it once more and this time it snags, a smooth corner of black glass emerging from a split in the fabric I didn’t know was there.

  Excitement and bafflement bubble up together in my throat as I dig my fingers into the slit and pull.

  The material rips loudly. I flinch like I’ve let out a deafening fart in a classroom and jerk around towards the door. My heart thuds, but the handle stays untipped. Slowly, I look back down, reluctant in case what I thought I glimpsed isn’t really there, but it is.

  Boxy, shiny, and unmistakably solid. A mobile phone.

  What the…?

  I picture Mum. Crippled, shrunken, sleeping eighty per cent of every day at the end. Even when she was awake she barely had enough strength to hold her eyes open, but with her last breath she protected … this? What is this, Mum? What was it for? What on earth were you—

  “Amy Becker,” I tell myself aloud, cutting the thought off. “If you die in here because you were too busy pontificating on the reasons for this godsend to actually make a call, no one will be able to say you didn’t deserve it.”

  Breath stalling in my chest, I press down on the power button. Mountains must have crumbled into dust in the time it feels like it takes for the little white apple to appear on screen, but I finally see it, and exhale.

  I’m so intent on the light coming from the screen that I don’t hear the door swing open behind me.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Cat

  “What the hell, Horse Girl?” Evie complains when she opens her door. “It’s the middle of the damn night.” She peers up at me, her expression a mix of affront and curiosity at my appearing without being summoned.

  “Can I c-c-come in?” I ask. I’m shivering, though it isn’t cold.

  She stands aside wordlessly and leads me upstairs. Her cavernous bedroom is in the same war-room configuration it’s been in for the past three months. Monitors and iPads are spread in a panoramic sweep across the desk, each open to a different site as Evie stamps out the brush fires that have popped up in Rickdom ever since the rumours about Ryan and his mystery girl started to appear.

  “The bed’s made,” I say stupidly.

  “Of course the bed’s made,” she says, sitting cross-legged on it. “I’m not a farm animal.”

  The phone clock, superimposed over my lock-screen pic of Nick lying atop Ryan after extinguishing his flaming quiff, informs me that it’s 02:47, but Evie’s make-up is once again in immaculate order. She replied immediately when I texted her too. It’s like she’s a new species, evolved to get all her sleep in microsecond instalments between notifications.

  “What is it, Cat?”

  I open my mouth and then shut it again. Dammit, Cat, you had this all scripted. But faced with this calm, beautiful inquisitor, my mind is a blank. Suddenly I’m sweating. This is insane; what am I doing? But I have to talk about this. I have to, or it’ll burst its way out of my chest.

  Evie rises from the bed, crosses the acreage of carpet between us, and stands on tiptoe to kiss my cheek. I flinch from her lips. I’m sweating so much inside my coat, I probably smell like the boys’ locker room at school. She must sense my fear, my weakness. She takes my hand and guides me to sit beside her on the edge of the bed.

  “Whatever it is, you can tell me,” she says.

  But it turns out I can’t. Open shut, open shut goes my mouth, but no words come out. I’m a muppet with no actor to voice me. Instead, my fingers go to the pocket of my coat, produce a folded piece of paper and pass it over. She frowns, but she takes the paper and unfolds it.

  She stares at my baby.

  “Dubs!” she exclaims, mock-scandalized. “What have you done? Or rather, who have you done? Or rather, who’s done you?” She laughs, genuinely delighted. Evie loves a crisis, she always has. She’s like a witch, only instead of the moon, the source of all her power is drama.

  “Well, I’m…” She tails off, apparently too astonished to know what to say. At last she drops her hands to her sides and asks, “Who’s the lucky fella?” I strain every sinew to detect any hint of sarcasm in the word lucky, but I can’t.

  “You don’t know him.” This part of my prepared story, at least, comes back. “He’s at school.”

  “I know some of the people at your school,” Evie contradicts me.

  “You do?”

  “Sure. You think you’re the only Ricker at Granford High?” Evie’s tone is innocent, but her brown eyes are like a terrier’s trained on a stick before you throw it. A shiver runs through me.

  “A … different school… I mean, he’s still at school. But not my school. Parkborough.” I seize on the Streatham grammar school on the assumption her Rickdom-based web will have fewer strands running through an all-boys’ place.

  “No,” she says gently. “No, I don’t know anyone there. What’s his name?”

  I did have a name prepared, I swear I did, but my mind is blanking on it. Evie’s painting of Ryan dipping Nick back into a ballroom kiss is in the corner of my vision, and then all I can think of is the Dance Hall with its peeling murals of Fred Astaire and Ginger…

  “Roger!” I blurt out.

  Her brow wrinkles. “Oh, honey,” she says. “That’s unfortunate. Surname?”

  I stumble on the question, and then it’s too late and any answer I can think of will sound made up, so I just stare at her. She claps her hands together.

  “You don’
t know!” she cries, with a little laugh. “Well, well, Cat. Never mind Wild White Horse, we should be calling you Dark Horse; you’re going to have to change your handle. Have you told him? Is he a regular thing? He can’t be, can he, if you don’t know his whole name? What, was he just a passing house party hook-up?”

  I stutter and choke, but my old familiar blush comes to my rescue, igniting in my cheeks, and she seems to take my inarticulacy as embarrassment rather than flat-out prevarication.

  “Oh my, he was. Do you even have a way to get in touch with him?”

  “We can communicate.”

  “Via smoke signals? Or carrier pigeon? Or—”

  “I’ve got his number, Evie. Come on.”

  “But not his surname,” she muses. “Interesting. Let me guess: he said he’d call, but never did?”

  I manage a tiny nod, like I’m ashamed.

  “Oh, kitty cat, don’t look like that. It’s not your fault he didn’t know what he had with you. Want me to track him down for you? I imagine that Parkborough’s digital records are, like most schools, about as secure as a wet paper bag, and there can’t be that many kids there unfortunate enough to be called Roger. I could call him out for you. Find out some stuff about him, remind him of his responsibilities.”

  My throat tightens to a pinprick, but I manage a smile. “Tempting, but before you go full Spanish Inquisition on him, I should probably give him a chance to step up first.”

  “You haven’t told him?”

  I shake my head.

  “Have you told your mum?”

  I don’t answer.

  “But you’re telling me. I mean, I’m flattered, but … oooh.” She puts a tiny manicured paw to her lips. “Because you’re trying to decide whether to keep it. And if you don’t, then you don’t have to tell him, or her, or anyone else.”

  She stands, smooths down her PJs – blue silk toucans tonight – and takes one of my hands in both of hers. “I’m so glad you came to me with this,” she says. “Really, I am. I’m honoured.”

  Then she does something I’ve never seen her do before, not with me, not with anyone. She settles herself cross-legged on the carpet at my feet, and looks up at me.