The pier stretches out to sea on its millipede legs, with its old-fashioned white buildings and the slumbering, mechanical bodies of fairground rides, but it is the indoor section and amusement arcades that draw us in.
The chinking and the bells and the lights and the music are addictive. I move from machine to machine having a go with the pot of coins that Dad has passed me, with the memory of Ben and me doing this when we were young, and feeling the pure adrenalin and excitement that is all about winning.
A large woman with her hair scraped back into a straggly ponytail frantically drops coin after coin down a metal shoot, hoping to push the cheap watch with the five-pound note attached to it off the edge and onto the tray. She doesn’t know or care that she could buy a nicer watch for the money she’s putting in.
Dad is bent over a shotgun, aiming at round targets that pop up randomly, while Mum waits for her go with a smile on her face. I don’t care about winning any money; I haven’t come here for that, However fake these places, however much of a rip-off, they are still exciting. They are full of beating hearts, adrenalin and, most of all, they are full of hope. And for today that hope is all mine.
Mum and I buy a bag of hot, fresh doughnuts at a nearby stand. Sugar sticks to our lips and we try to lick it off, a mixture of cinnamon and sugar and grease on our fingertips and our tongues burning from eating them before they are cool. They are so good. Dad is trying to work his way through an over-large hotdog, getting mustard on the corner of his mouth. Mum points at the mustard and he wipes it off, pointing at the sugar she has on her chin and cheek. She laughs a little bit, then they smile at each other, and I feel good.
Children, grandparents, mums, dads and teenagers are all around us. How many of them will even remember the details of this day by tomorrow? I will. I want to take everything in, so that it might somehow help me feel ‘full’. I tell myself that it won’t be so bad being dead, if I’m full of life. Like being convinced you’re never going to want to eat again after stuffing yourself with a huge meal.
We decide to leave, and as we go we talk about the day and revel in its feel-good factor. If my return can prevent my family from falling through the gaps in the pavement, I have done a good thing.
Dad turns the sound up as a track they both love comes on the radio and I watch the back of their heads knowing what is about to happen. Nodding in time with each other, they begin to sing. I roll my eyeballs and pretend to groan, but my mouth is grinning, and my heart soars as we snatch at some pre-misery madness. Their horrendous singing reaches fever pitch, until they both start headbanging like teenagers from the seventies. I find myself laughing, and the car is full of precious joy. I become strong, and as the music dies I take the plunge. As it turns out, a desperately wrong move.
‘Why don’t you talk much about me …? I mean, Lily?’ I add hastily. They didn’t hear my slip-up, but they sure heard my question, because the rainbow-coloured atmosphere in the car changes abruptly back to grey.
‘Leave it, Ben,’ orders Dad. ‘Your mum finds it difficult at the moment, that’s all. Give her time.’
I’ve torn the fragile skin that was forming over my delicately healing family, and I feel my shoulders slump at my fail, while Mum turns her head and stares out of the window and Dad’s knuckles whiten against the blackness of his steering wheel. But I don’t want to leave it. ‘She wouldn’t like it you know … she would want to be a part of all this. She would want to still be included in your lives … In fact …’ I continue frantically ‘I know she’s right here with us … right now.’ My insistence is too much. Dad slaps his hands down on the steering wheel, making both me and Mum jump.
‘Why do people always say that?’ he barks at me, his eyes catching mine in the rear-view mirror, his voice creating a crack in his fortress. ‘What the hell do we know? How would anyone know what people would “want” once they’ve … they’ve … gone?’ I can tell he is really angry; his words come out in staccato bursts.
The conversation stops abruptly and the ugly face of guilt enters the car. I’m pretty sure Dad still blames himself for not keeping me safe, and Mum blames herself for saying that she wouldn’t pick me up from town. My parents can no longer talk about me without releasing the sourness of their own conscience.
If I find myself back in limbo soon, I’ll want them to talk about me, to make me still feel part of them, to keep me ‘alive’ as a happy memory, not one that provokes their own guilt. I really don’t want to feel more alone than I already do. I want to watch people talk about me, and to do things because they ‘know’ I’d like it.
‘I just know she would … trust me!’ I add several minutes later to the back of their heads.
Twenty minutes later and the scenery is rushing past us, darkening rapidly with the winter evening. Although my eyes are looking out of the window, my mind stays fixated on the fact that they refuse to talk about me. I want them to understand that my death was not the end of me. Ben could be back tonight, or tomorrow night, and then it will all be too late.
‘Umm, while we are talking about Lily …’ I start, but I get no further.
Mum lets out a choking sob. There I go. I have succeeded in actually tipping her off that fragile place.
‘Can’t you just stop?’ Dad demands, but I can’t … and I won’t.
‘I need to tell you things,’ I continue. ‘I need you to know things …’
But Mum finds her voice. ‘Your dad has asked you to stop, and so … am … I!’ She looks over her shoulder, staring me in the eye. She means it … but I don’t care.
‘You need to stop taking flowers to King’s Lane. I’m not … she isn’t still in that ditch; she isn’t THERE!’ I rush the words out and they increase in volume and they can’t understand my desperation, but Mum screams back at me.
‘If I want to take BLOODY flowers to BLOODY King’s Lane then I BLOODY well will because Lily was my daughter and I BLOODY miss her every single second of every single minute of every single BLOODY FUCKING DAY!’
Dad stares furiously at me through the rear-view mirror. ‘Happy?’ he asks, before putting his foot down on the throttle, allowing his anger to flow through the engine at breakneck speed. I look out of the window and at the scenery that is now going much faster than it was before.
As soon as we’re home, I go to my own bedroom and shut the door.
I was right about how I would feel in my own room. My heart feels ripped open and exposed by everything in here, everything that once defined me.
My ashes on the dressing table taunt me … whispering of my stupidity as I walk around examining everything. My room still smells of me, and my perfume; my make-up is still lying on the dressing table; my collection of cuddly toys still lined up on a shelf; photos in frames; and my string of fairy-light lanterns over the headboard. I sit on my blue satin bed cover and run my hands through the black fake fur of my heart-shaped bed cushions. My pyjamas are folded neatly on my pillow. I look at the cute little grey T-shirt and shorts with little white sheep all over them and I so want to put them on and climb into my own bed.
But then I see my phone.
I plug in the charger and press my phone into life and there, on the screen, are lists of people who have sent my phone RIP texts. As I scroll through each and every one of them, tears in my eyes, I remember how yesterday Beth thought that I (Lily) had gone online, and an idea suddenly hits me.
I wipe the blur from my eyes, and, phone still in my hand, I complete my mission, until I’m filled with a delicious sense of revenge that feels so wrong and so right at the same time.
Nathan’s mum woke in the morning to find that her phone had a message alert across the screen telling her someone had contacted her through her Facebook site.
‘Can you take me to school, Mum?’ Nathan called up the stairs before she could read it. ‘I’m really late.’
His mum appeared at the top of the stairs looking crumpled and unkempt. Trying to hide her shaking hands and the blinding he
adache that threatened to pull her eyeballs straight out of their sockets, she croaked, ‘No. You’re going to have to get your bike out … or run, or something, Nathan. I’m not feeling too good at the moment.’ Her shift didn’t start for another four hours but she couldn’t seem to gather herself together in the mornings any more.
‘Thanks!’ Nathan shouted sarcastically back, and she heard the front door slam angrily behind him, convincing herself that just because she always used to drive him when he was late, didn’t mean she should carry on doing it. He is sixteen for God’s sake.
After sitting in her dressing gown through three cups of coffee and two hours of breakfast television, she remembered the message and picked up her phone to check it. Spotting her reading glasses on the coffee table she put them on, and the words on her screen came into focus.
Lily Richardson: I know what you did.
A foul bitter taste filled her mouth and her fingers dropped the phone as if it was hot, then she picked it up quickly again and erased the message as if that would mean it had never been there.
It’s a cruel trick, she thought. It can’t possibly be her. It’s him; it must be. She pictured Ben standing outside her house on Friday, saying the same thing through the gap in the door.
But … what if Lily Richardson really is communicating from the other side?
Nathan’s mum had never been so terrified in all her life.
No sign of Ben in the night yet again, just the vague impression that he’s up to something.
Ben was always up to something! Hiding under the bed, or leaping out of the wardrobe after I’d watched a horror film. Or the time he made a body out of his clothes and hung it from my light fitting, which made me almost scream my uvula out. His most favourite thing, however, was to send me cryptic messages that I’d have to decipher to give me a fighting chance before I was pranked. His most recent was when he texted a picture of a honey bee, which I discovered too late was a clue to the honey he’d replaced my shampoo with.
I get dressed in Ben’s school uniform and study him in the mirror. ‘What are you planning?’ I ask him, smoothing his eyebrows into a better shape, but he simply stares quietly back at me through the mirror.
I feel physically sick at the thought of coping with a school day, not the slightest bit confident after the fiasco that was Saturday about how I’ll cope around everyone who knows Ben. I’m going to have to put a restraining order on my emotions because I already want to cry at the thought of seeing Nathan and Beth. How am I going to be able to stand back and act all casual, like I’m not that bothered about seeing them? I feel like I’ll be looking at my old life through the prison bars of Ben’s body. I just want to be set free and spend the day being Lily.
I give Mum a kiss good morning when I go into the kitchen, and her obvious pleasure at this makes me feel as if I’ve just thrown a scrap of food to a dog.
Why didn’t I do this more often before?
I’m sure she’s felt hollow since yesterday when the argument in the car drained the traces of her fragile happiness away. The smoky smell of her hair invades my nose and I don’t like it. I blame Uncle Roger once again for denying me the scent of my mother.
Mum can see that I am jittery and she’s visibly worried about me.
I lie. ‘I’ve got a revision test today and I haven’t studied for it.’
‘Like that’s ever bothered you before.’ She smiles, trailing a hand gently over my shoulder, forgiving me for yesterday at the same time.
*
Walking to the school bus stop, my heart thumps all the way until I think I’m going to pass out with the anticipation. The bus arrives, just as I round the corner, and everyone piles on as I run to catch up with it. My space next to Beth is filled with a new girl chatting and laughing with my best friend, and the sight of her causes jealousy to join the resentment that’s festering inside me.
That’s where I should be.
One of Ben’s friends raises his hand when I get on, and I feel I have no option but to go and sit with him, but I’d rather sit with the girls. Not wanting to get involved in more boy-based banter I hunt in Ben’s bag for his earphones and I put them in my ears so I can pretend that I’m listening to music instead of eavesdropping on the conversation that my friends are having. They’re mainly talking about a party that a girl called Milly is having soon. It’s going to be the best one of the year so far apparently and everyone is discussing what they’re going to wear. The new girl passes her phone around showing a photo of the dress she’s going to wear and I have to physically stop myself leaning over and having a look too. I want to go to the party. I want to choose a dress. I want to be one of them again.
I only realise I’m staring at them when one of them catches my eye. ‘Ben?’ she calls out. ‘What are you looking at?’ but I turn and look casually out of the window as if I can’t hear her, doing a bit of head-dancing in time to my non-existent music. As their conversation dies down, several kids start sniggering, until my curiosity gets the better of me. I turn round to see what it’s all about to find them all staring at me, hiding their laughter behind their hands. ‘What?’ I mouth, as if I can’t hear anything, still moving my head to the not-music, until one of them leans over and holds up the jack end of the headphones, where it was never attached to the phone.
First fail of the day! Here we go again.
*
When the bus reaches school, we push our way through the doors onto the path and make our way inside as one loud, untidy bundle. There is jostling and yelling and laughing and I am right back in the middle of this living, breathing mass of kids, twisting and turning as each familiar face passes me. I feel as if I am in one of those weird dreams where you’re completely naked, walking down the middle of the high street, and you’re convinced that everyone can see that you are naked, but no one seems to.
… I am Lily, and I’m back!
But, in truth, I am still just as invisible as I was when I was in limbo, and my heart aches with the need to shake off Ben’s skin and be me. Beth heads off to our form room with all the kids from my class, yet I can’t follow because Ben is in a different form from mine. I watch her go, Ben’s rucksack slung over my shoulder, his blazer and trousers and shoes an uncomfortable reminder that nothing is the same. Nothing can ever be the same.
I arrive deliberately ‘just on time’ to Ben’s class, when the bell is already ringing so I don’t have to participate in any post-weekend chat with his mates and risk exposing my true self. Matthew is already in his seat when I walk in and I hope he’s forgiven Ben for the strange Saturday he spent with me, but then it hits me that I don’t actually know where Ben sits, because he’s in a different tutor group from me. I indulge in a few delaying tactics – examining my bag and searching my pockets for nothing in particular except time – until most of the seats are taken up.
The seat next to Matthew is empty and I slide in next to him; it’s a safe bet. He looks oddly at me but moves some of his stuff off the desk to make room. The teacher is calling the register and I feel sick when she calls my name because she’s peering at a seat near the back of the class.
‘No Ben Richardson again?’ she questions, gazing around the rest of the class. ‘Do we know why he wasn’t here on Friday?’ I slowly put my hand up to show where I am, on the wrong side of the room. While she continues calling out names to vaguely disinterested people, I apologise to Matthew for ruining the game on Saturday and acting like a little girl at the swimming pool. ‘Sorry, Matt … I … um … haven’t been myself lately.’ I grin, but the joke, of course, is lost on him.
‘You were pretty crap,’ he answers, and I wait for something else, some banter or conversation like Beth and I would have. But tumbleweed floats invisibly around us when he doesn’t say anything else. He clearly has nothing much to say to Ben any more.
Have I destroyed the friendship between my brother and his absolute best friend?
I rummage in Ben’s bag for his timetable, my f
ingers finding all sorts of revolting things that have possibly been in here forever: crisp crumbs, various coins, empty packets of sweets and something really mouldy. There is even a lump of chewed gum clinging to his ruler. His timetable is fixed, like mine, on the inside of his homework book, tattered, highlighted and no doubt memorised by him months ago. Not all of Ben’s classes are the same as mine, which is concerning because it presents many more opportunities to, basically … fuck up! Ben is in a lower set than me for maths and English, because he is, as I used to tell him often, mathematically mediocre and verbally variant.
I make my way to his class, which is maths, already panicking again about where to sit. I know that in maths both our teachers like everyone to sit boy, girl, boy, girl, but they move us about from time to time. This means that I have to pick the right girl to sit next to. Could be awkward. I try more delaying tactics – how many times can I tuck my shirt in and examine my bag? – but thankfully the class is full, apart from one empty desk next to a girl with blonde hair that’s been dip-dyed dark brown all along the bottom. It’s Hayley or Molly or something like that. I recognise her as one of the girls who hangs around in a bitchy clique of girls, being overconfident in their perfect bitching world, tossing their hair and laughing at the assumed lowlifes around them. On cue she tosses her hair over her shoulder as I sit down and looks at me through heavily made-up eyes.
‘Hi,’ she says.
‘Hi,’ I say back, getting my books out, but I can see out of the corner of my eye that she’s still looking at me, like she’s expecting something.
‘You haven’t answered any of my texts,’ she accuses. I think about Ben’s phone and how it must still be in his bedroom with a million messages and missed calls by now.
‘I lost my charger. I’m getting another one tonight. Sorry … er …’ I glance quickly at her book where she has printed ‘Holly Watts’ on the front. ‘Holly.’
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