Sunflowers in February

by Phyllida Shrimpton

  ‘All right, Ben?’ he asks, looking down at me. ‘You not playing?’

  ‘Foot,’ I answer, pointing at both feet, unable to actually remember which foot I had limped on when I came in and trying at the same time not to smile flirtatiously at him.

  He still looks strained and sad, but to me he is beautiful. He’s a bigger build than most of the other boys, stronger and absolutely gorgeous, and I watch him with full admiration as he straightens his back, spins his badminton racquet in his hand and places the bottle back on the bench. I can smell an intoxicating mixture of his sweat and deodorant and I like it. I let my eyes take him all in, and I can’t stop a powerful desire creeping up inside me, to be a normal girl going out with a boy like him again … being in love, perhaps even having sex one day. I smile wistfully, running my fingers along my hair through habit, as he calls ‘Later’ from his beautiful lips, before running back onto the court.

  Something brushes against me and I look down to see what it is. Oh My GOD. I can hardly breathe. My heart is rushing and I can feel the redness of acute embarrassment flooding up my chest to my throat and across my face. Something is going on … down below, stirring and moving and feeling very odd. I am having … an erection … I think I am going to die at the total, absolute, one hundred per cent awfulness of this moment in time and I leave the gym as quickly as my legs will take me.

  This is wrong. On many, many levels, this is wrong.

  *

  At the end of the day, exhausted from trying to hide from Joe and Graham and still flushing repeatedly at my awful experience in the gym, I let myself into an empty house, take off my coat and make a mug of tea before making my way upstairs. I just about coped with PE this afternoon, but I’m not convinced I did Ben any favours again. Basically the whole day was fraught with another catalogue of disasters from start to finish. My head, my body and my heart are all tired … so tired.

  I just want to live.

  I just want to be.

  I run the taps in the bath and watch the steam rise upwards from the tub, beckoning me into the water and pouring a generous amount of emerald green bath foam into the flow of water. I study the bubbles doubling and mounting and spreading their shiny little bodies across the surface. When I lower myself in, breathing deeply the mixture of herbal essence and steam, the heat of the water does nothing to relax the argument going on in my head.

  What am I doing to Ben? What am I doing to me?

  I think about the moment Nathan’s mother killed me, and how this whole awful situation would never have happened if she hadn’t had that wine, or driven down King’s Lane. The regret that that moment ever happened hurts so much I can hardly bear it. She might be having a hard time, and Nathan might be a bit stressed over it, but frankly they have got the rest of their lives to get over it, while I’m hitch-hiking my brother’s body just so that I can spend a few more precious moments on the planet.

  ‘I hate you!’ I scream at the top of my lungs to Nathan’s mum. ‘I fucking hate you!’

  I grab my phone and send another message to her on her Facebook account. ‘I’m still watching you …’

  She deserves it, because she should suffer. I spend a moment revelling at the thought of her reading my messages and a cruel satisfaction comes over me. I take a sip of the warm sweet tea, then swap my phone for Ben’s.

  ‘I don’t know where you are, and I don’t know what you’re doing, Ben Richardson,’ I say out loud, hoping he can hear me having a go at him, ‘but if I’m still here tomorrow then I need to know what you’ve been up to! Something’s definitely going on with you, the group … Joe and Graham … and OMG Holly Watts, really?’

  I read all the messages on Ben’s phone.

  Several are from Holly, and despite the warm water I shiver at the thought of her sending them, not to mention feel a little bit sick.

  Thursday: Holly – Wanna do ‘that’ again baby?

  Friday: Holly – Let’s sext

  Friday evening: Holly – Going to the park tomorrow?

  There’s an emoji with a winking face and I think I’m actually going to have to vomit, but her last text after I told her she was chaverage makes me feel instantly revived.

  Monday: Holly – You’re dumped!

  ‘Good, you’re revolting,’ I say to the message on the screen, as I text back on behalf of Ben. Ben – Too slow. I’d dumped you by Friday

  Several messages are from Matthew asking if he could come round to the house and other mundane stuff about football and badminton, plus his last-ditch attempt to invite Ben swimming on Saturday, before they completely peter out to nothing when Ben stopped replying.

  I find myself tutting loudly at Ben and grasping at the notion that I could quite possibly make a much better go of his life at the moment than he is. I take another sip of my sweet, satisfying tea.

  Then I see one from Joe.

  Thursday: Joe – Hey you good?

  Thursday: Ben – Yeah good 2moro lunchtime. As I was in Ben’s body by that particular lunchtime and wasn’t at school, Joe and Ben hadn’t made their transaction.

  ‘Do you think Mum and Dad would be proud of you getting involved with drugs, Ben?’ I ask him out loud again, waiting for an answer that I know he can’t give. ‘Do you think they need that in their lives right now?’

  I’m cross with him for doing this to himself and to Mum and Dad, and clearly the fact that I found my way into Ben’s body was a gift waiting to happen even if I now have a bruise on my back in the shape of some size elevens.

  I’m doing a good thing.

  I put his phone on the toilet seat then sink a little lower in the bath to allow the water to warm my shoulders, but my knees poke out into the cool air. As Ben is taller than I was, it is difficult to fit all of me in the bath and I wish he would stop reminding me that I am not in my own Lily body any more. If I had had a twin sister rather than a twin brother, this would have been so much easier. I twist the hot water tap with my toes, allowing more hot water to mingle with the now slightly tepid water, and it warms the bath again. The dying bubbles spring to life and push their way back towards my chest and I hear them snapping and popping around me.

  People are surprising me. Their lives are taking ugly turns and my death is responsible. Everything that’s happened since then has become so difficult, as if I’m the missing piece in a large and complicated puzzle, and a puzzle with a missing piece is ruined.

  A door bangs downstairs and Mum calls out, ‘I’m home, Ben!’

  ‘I’m in the bathroom,’ I shout back quickly, so that she isn’t worried about me, like she was on Friday, and stepping out of the bath I dry myself, feeling the roughness of the cotton towel massaging my squeaky clean skin. I decide that I will never get complacent again about the wonderful sensation of touch, but at that moment I catch sight of Ben’s reflection through the steam in the shaving mirror and it spooks me out. For a moment I thought it was actually him. Peering at me from limbo, judging me for casting him aside. Even then I have to take a second glance to make sure it isn’t actually him. ‘Are you angry?’ I ask him, but worryingly, even though it is only a reflection, I am left with the awful realisation that for the first time in my life I have absolutely no idea what Ben thinks.

  With damp hair, a loose T-shirt and some shapeless boys’ track pants on, I grab some juice from the fridge and chat to Mum, telling her all about my day … well, the bits that I want her to hear. If she is surprised Ben is willingly starting a cosy after-school conversation, more like Lily might have done, she doesn’t show it. I tell her about school and what Joe said to Beth and how I pushed him off his seat. The school will ring her anyway about my behaviour, so I might as well give my side of the story first.

  But she doesn’t find any of it funny. ‘Well done, Ben, that’s at least four behavioural issues in the last few weeks. What are you playing at?’ Then as if any annoyance she may have had is draining completely away she sighs. ‘I miss Beth … I miss her coming round.’ Her eye
s lower and focus somewhere unremarkable on the carpet, and I realise that Beth is one more person in Mum’s life who has left.

  That missing piece really does ruin the overall picture of the puzzle. That’s for sure.

  It’s a white world.

  It is almost as if snow has come quietly in the night, just for my pleasure and it brings with it a kind of child-like excitement.

  Still no Ben in the night, but my concern for him today will have to wait. I need to get outside and touch that snow. I get ready for school quickly and keep looking out of the window to make sure it’s still there. All the muddy colours of the street have left and been replaced by millions of icy crystals reflecting light and its brightness makes me feel happy.

  Mum and Dad are in the kitchen when I dive in there to grab some breakfast. Dad takes the final sips of his coffee and then walks over to the sink, putting his cup in the bowl before stepping towards Mum, his tall strong body stooping a little to kiss her goodbye. As Mum goes up on her toes to kiss him back, Dad gives her a hug, swooping her feet right off the ground. She pretends to get annoyed, her hands trying to push him away but he is too strong, her legs are dangling and it looks funny.

  This is what he used to do before I died. I smile at them both, as I push my way past to the toaster, mumbling ‘Get a room’ as I reach for some bread.

  I’ve decided to walk the three miles to school, listening to the snow squeak beneath my feet, the icy flakes softly landing on my cold face … packing my virtual suitcase with memories of this unseasonably Christmassy world. It’s not very thick, and it won’t last, but it’s here now and thanks to Ben I am really going to enjoy it.

  Running my hand along a wall, I scoop up a handful of cold, which sparkles in my palm before slowly dissolving, leaving my skin wet and red, and my fingers numb. Then I scoop another handful and eat some, licking at its frosty crystals with the tip of my tongue, tasting nothing but its coldness, while admiring how each leaf and little twig can carry the weight of such a thick burden of snow.

  I examine a large spider’s web hanging between a high iron gate and a bush. Each thread is thick with tiny shards of white ice; each delicate line is joined to each other to look like little white ladders. It is so strong, so beautiful and so clever. I’m aware that I could tear down the spider’s world in an instant, that if I break it, he will eat the web and rebuild it, maybe not exactly the same but just as beautiful.

  Nathan’s mum tore down my world, breaking the web that belonged to my family and friends, and we haven’t managed to rebuild it like the spider can. I want to do the same to her in return. Why should she carry on with life without blame, while I am trapped outside everything, while my parents try desperately to cling to a fragile normality, and my brother messes his life up, and my friendship group falls apart? But what about Nathan if she ever gets to pay penance? Would Nathan heal once his family was broken or would he be like Ben? Finding a new but ugly kind of life?

  Is there a difference for our families between accidently dying and accidently killing?

  Nathan’s mum was, at that moment, driving to the supermarket.

  In the boot of her car in a bag were six empty bottles of wine. She was telling herself that she was OK to drive because she had stopped drinking by ten. She would, by now, be under the limit, she was sure, and her shift at the old people’s home started at ten in the morning, giving her just enough time to visit the bottle bank and pop into the supermarket. If the Merlot was still on offer, she could get six bottles for the price of four. She would put four in the wine rack and keep two in the garage. She’d run out of wine last night and that wouldn’t do!

  She had received another message yesterday evening, simply saying ‘I’m watching you.’ As a result she’d instantly disabled her Facebook account, switched her phone off and buried it in the back of a drawer.

  Yesterday she finally had the courage to replace the smashed terracotta pot on King’s Lane. Another large pot in which she planted some sturdy blubs, which were just beginning to push through. And yet, later that same day she got another text. The fear that Lily or her brother or someone knew her secret and could really be watching her, had been too much. After consuming all the wine left in the house, she had resorted to the spirits until she’d had to crawl up the stairs on her hands and knees.

  Before she got out of the car she turned the collar of her coat up and pulled a brimmed hat low over her brow in the hope that no one would recognise her. Who was watching her?

  As she returned to her car with an embarrassingly loudly clinking shopping bag, the man in the next car along got out, and she instantly recognised the swollen belly and the dirty overalls of the guy who often washed her car.

  ‘Need another wash, love?’ He pointed to her car. ‘It’s a beauty, this one.’ And his head bobbed up and down, causing his glasses to slide down his nose before he pushed them back up, while he ran his fat, dirty hand over the front passenger-side wing of her car.

  ‘Maybe, Fred –’ she forced a smile – ‘when it’s a bit dirtier.’

  ‘Like the last time you came in to have it washed,’ he said. ‘That was a day that was. The police and everyone was there that day … I’ve been told to look out for anything suspicious … to do with that little dead girl … you know, the one that was killed down King’s Lane. Bloody hit-and-run. I’ve told the police about every car that could have done it … but …’

  Fred’s constant stream of words only faded out when he realised that the lady had closed the door of her beautiful blue Morris Minor and was reversing at speed out of the parking bay.

  He squinted through his glasses as she left. ‘Nice car,’ he called, as he waved goodbye.

  I take a photo of the spider’s web with Ben’s phone, so fragile, so strong, so simple, so vital, and continue on my way to school.

  My hood is up again and my hands are shoved deep into my pockets but I wish for a while that I could have put on my own grey hat with its overlarge pompom, and my really big dusky pink woolly scarf.

  Stop wishing, Lily. Just enjoy.

  The day may be unremarkable for many people, but for me it’s a wonder world of enjoyment. I stop and buy sweets on the way to school again: different ones, fruity and chewy. I put them in my mouth, one after the other, barely finishing before unwrapping the next, when Matthew skids beside me on his bike, slowing to meet my walking pace.

  ‘Coming to basketball at lunch … or joining the Kray twins?’ He asks.

  I think of Joe and Graham and shudder. ‘I told you, I’m done with them.’ I rotate my arm stiffly. ‘And I’d love to go to basketball, but I’ve hurt my elbow.’

  When I see Matthew’s frown, I realise too late that yesterday I said it was my foot that hurt.

  ‘You’ll be drawing your pension next,’ he scoffs, and cycles off.

  Of course, vermin like Joe and Graham are not always easy to get rid of.

  I think about this fact when my nose gets a snowball smacked into it, which has been packed so hard it has turned to ice. I was too busy enjoying my morning; I forgot to look out for them. I also think about it at lunchtime on my way to the sports hall to watch the basketball, when they find me again, and attempt to push my head down the toilet. And I think about it after lunch while recovering from being shoved face first into the lockers. No one saw, and it can’t be proved, but my face hurts all the same. And I really think about it when they corner me round the side of one of the school buildings. ‘We’re not done with you yet, Richardson,’ they hiss in menacing tones, their faces so close to mine that I can smell the cheese and onion crisps they’ve both been eating.

  I find myself rushing for the bus after school so I don’t get caught by them. ‘You’d better watch yourself, Richardson. We’re coming to get you …’ was the last thing Joe had said quietly into my ear as the final class finished, his breath hot against my ear.

  This is how it feels to be bullied.

  Shit scared.

  The snow, no
w just dirty slush, melting into dark puddles and running off everything in polluted drops makes me slip, twice, in my hurry, finally catapulting me against two girls who fall over at my feet.

  ‘Oh God, I’m sorry,’ I apologise, reaching to help them while they shriek obscenities at me, and the Krays laugh from their vantage point by the school gates.

  I need to get rid of those two, for good, for both me and Ben, and I need to do it soon.

  The green and white kit is still muddy.

  I wanted to get out of football practice, but Dad still isn’t having any of it. I forgot to put Ben’s kit in the laundry and Mum forgot to ask as she normally does. It also smells horrible, like dirty water from a drain. With a sinking feeling, I wipe it desperately with a flannel and spray it with deodorant. It smells better but looks worse. Resignedly I put it on, and tap-tap my way downstairs in Ben’s football boots again.

  Matthew’s dad is already outside, his engine running and I shut the front door behind me, my mind going over all the football information that I’ve crammed inside it, which can save me from another nightmare session. As I climb into their car my mouth goes dry and I can feel the first wasp stings of panic yet again; Matthew is not wearing green and white.

  ‘It’s not a game tonight,’ he says, looking down his nose. ‘It’s training!’

  My eyes gloss over Matthew’s attire, normal sports shorts and some kind of top under a black hoodie. Now I’m sitting in dirty, smelly team kit looking like a prize loser … again.

  ‘Mum’s put all my gear in the washing machine,’ I mumble.

  ‘What, all of it?’ he asks me, surprised, and I think of the numerous sports gear Ben’s got.

  ‘All of it,’ I repeat.