by Ciara Smyth
I mentally made a note to murder Dad. At least it would be a good distraction.
Mum was still her in her jammies when I got there with my bag of supplies. I’d noticed a couple of days ago that she was fussing with her hair. She opened the door and I could see her bed was unmade and her TV was on.
“What are you watching?” I asked, thinking it was probably something terrible, but it was a broadcast of a classical music festival. Something my mother would actually have liked a lot, once upon a time.
“Looks dead boring,” I said approvingly, but I turned it off because it’s harder for her to concentrate on conversation with background noise like that.
“That fringe is so long I don’t know how you see out of it,” I said. “Come on, let’s give you a trim.” I fetched a towel from her bathroom and wrapped it around her neck, tucking it in at the collar. She relaxed and closed her eyes.
“Ruby and I broke up,” I said. “It’s OK, though. I mean, we were going to break up soon anyway,” I said, snipping at the ends of her hair.
Mum said that was terrible and asked me if I was OK, but I realized I didn’t want to talk about it, even with her. I changed the subject quickly, asking about her day. I couldn’t follow her train of thought all the time but I made the appropriate noises and responses when I could.
Afterward, Mum’s hair looked bouncy and neat again. Maybe I should be a hairstylist. I winced at my own thought. I squeezed my eyes shut, blocking out the words that made me think of Ruby.
Mum brought me her memory book. It had been sitting on the coffee table like someone had used it recently. I knew it wasn’t Dad because although he’d never admit it, I knew he hated going through the old pictures. It must have been one of the staff. That was kind of nice, I thought, that someone was taking time with her like that.
“I want to show you something,” she said.
“OK then,” I said reluctantly, rubbing my palm scar absently. If it made her happy.
Mum showed me a photo of her and Claire and told me a story I’d heard seven thousand times. I didn’t mind, though, because I didn’t concentrate on the words. I looked at her face, which was shining and happy, and a horrible hot, aching feeling in my throat threatened tears. In a few weeks I was supposed to leave the country and I hadn’t told Dad I didn’t want to. I was afraid I’d end up going by default, swept along by the momentum of his expectations, following a plan I’d made when I was heartbroken and looking to escape. And now I felt that itch to escape my life again. But if I did that I wouldn’t be able to come here every day, or even every week or month. When I arrived that morning Mum wasn’t surprised or distressed by me turning up at her door. She let me in and she was relaxed as we talked. What if all that went away when I couldn’t keep up the routine? I knew she didn’t really remember she had a daughter, but most of the time she knew I was someone she was familiar with. That was something. It was a pathetic scrap of something, but it meant everything to me. If I didn’t turn up every morning, would I become a complete stranger? How come abandoning my mother still felt like she was abandoning me?
The thought made me feel achingly lonely. Then I thought of Dad wrapping presents for himself and I wondered if he felt the same thing. If we were two people feeling lonely in the exact same way. Was it so hard to see him leave her because I knew that if I was ever going to be free to make my own life, I might have to do the same thing?
“Who’s this?” I asked Mum, pointing at a picture of her with Claire. They were sitting in front of a mirror, putting makeup on. Mum looked like she was trying to refuse having her picture taken, Claire was preening for the camera.
“That’s me,” Mum said, pointing at herself and laughing.
“Who’s that?” I asked, indicating Claire.
Mum inspected the photograph. She held the book closer to her face and her forehead wrinkled in concentration. She looked at me, a bit lost.
“That’s you?” she asked.
The picture was from about 1985. It was a party. Claire wore a horrible shiny dress and had little lace gloves on. Not exactly my style.
I put my arm around her and pulled her into a hug. “That’s you and Claire,” I said, and I kissed her on the head, which smelled of apple shampoo.
She tried to turn the page, but I closed it over. Dad wasn’t the only person who didn’t exactly love poring over old photos. I knew this album by heart. I’d helped make it.
“That’s enough for today.”
29.
For two weeks I didn’t think about Ruby. I didn’t think about Ruby when I got spam email from that karaoke place we never actually went to. I didn’t think about Ruby when I walked past the Ferris wheel or the cove or the pedalos. I didn’t think about Ruby when I ate dinner or washed my hair or clipped my toenails either. I stopped watching stupid romantic comedies, not because the happily ever afters made my heart ache, but because I don’t like romantic comedies. They’re stupid and sexist and perpetuate the idea that we only matter as people if someone is in love with us. I ignored Oliver’s texts, not because I was afraid he would mention Ruby but because he was a pain in my ass and he always had been.
So what did I do if I wasn’t doing those things? I watched a lot of horror movies. I watched people die in a variety of gruesome ways. Impaled on spikes, decapitated and defenestrated, driven to madness by ghosts and changelings and creepy forest demons. Some died slowly, others by surprise. They all soothed my soul. I even helped with the wedding. Yes, hell truly had frozen over, but Beth kept piling on menial tasks for me to do and I wasn’t exactly busy with anything else. It’s not like I was starting to think she was OK or anything.
All right, all right. Shut up.
On exam result day, I woke nauseated and numb. The lavender bridesmaid monstrosity was the only thing in my wardrobe because I hadn’t unpacked yet. I couldn’t bring myself to put everything in the wardrobe if I had to move again in six weeks. That might sound like a long time, but the pain of packing was very fresh in my mind. But I hadn’t put anything in my suitcase either. I picked a pair of jeans and T-shirt out of a box.
I refused to go to school to pick up my results at the crack of dawn because everyone else would be there like puppies panting outside the exam hall, waiting for their slips of paper. If I could hold off for an hour I would miss seeing everyone. I didn’t even go to see Mum that morning; I was too anxious and she picks up on that kind of thing. I figured I’d go after lunch. So I spent an uncomfortable morning pottering around the house with Dad asking me if I was quite sure I didn’t want to go yet. He was more invested in the results than I was. He and Beth even took the morning off work so we could all have a celebratory lunch after.
In spite of my ambivalent feelings about Oxford, I couldn’t help but worry about what I would get. I had studied so much and I worked so hard, but what if my memory wasn’t as good as I thought? What if it had failed already and I couldn’t actually remember that I’d done badly, or I thought I’d answered the questions fully, but it was only because I couldn’t remember that there was all this other stuff I was supposed to include? Getting the results I wanted seemed like it was more a test of whether or not I’d succumb to the dementia. As if getting all As would somehow prevent it.
At ten, Dad and I pulled up to the school gate and sure enough, I couldn’t see anyone around. With a swaying seasick feeling in my stomach, I left Dad in the car, drumming his fingers on the steering wheel, trying to act cool.
When I was halfway up the stairs that led to the front door, he shouted frantically out his car window.
“I love you no matter what.”
I looked around, pretending to see who he was shouting to, because I obviously did not know this weirdo, just in case anyone was passing by.
“Saoirse!” Louise, the school secretary, had a big smile for me when I walked through the doors. “Don’t tell me you slept in?”
I did my best impression of “sheepish,” as if I was so embarrassed I’d slept
in on exam results day. Oh shucks.
“Hold on—I took the rest of the results into the office for you stragglers.”
She had a stack of about ten envelopes on her desk. She sorted through them and handed me one from the middle of the pack. A grin on her face told me she definitely wanted me to open it in front of her. I smiled politely and put it in my bag. Her face dropped.
“Nice to see you,” I said, waving on my way out the office door.
“Ooof,” I grunted as the door hit me. Someone had tried to come in just as I was trying to get out.
“Oh my God, I’m so sorry,” the person said. Then, “Saoirse.”
“Izzy.” I was surprised to see her but I recovered, rearranging my open mouth into a polite but empty smile. “We have to stop nearly concussing each other like this.”
Rom-com, tragedy, slapstick. All I needed now was to meet a guy with knives for hands in the abandoned quarry and I could really round out my life-as-a-movie metaphor.
Izzy returned a small smile. I let a whole second of uncomfortable silence pass and then I tried to scurry out the door. She turned and put her hand on my shoulder.
“Wait a minute, will you?”
“Um . . . my dad is . . .” I gestured toward the car park.
“Please?” she said, a pleading note in her voice. “Just a second.”
It would be beyond rude to refuse. I eyed the door, considering a quick getaway anyway. My head said that was childish, but my legs were getting ready to spring into action. But damnit, I was just too nice to do that, so I waited while Izzy went into the office to collect her envelope. I took a seat on the bottom of the stairs that led to the art room and thought about how polite I was.
Then Izzy emerged from the office. She smiled shyly at me and took a seat on the stair next to me. Neither of us said anything for a second. She had new highlights in her hair from the last time we collided on the street. It looked really pretty. She also had a deep tan and I wondered if she’d got the lifeguard job she’d been applying for, unsuccessfully, for the last two years.
“I’m so mad at you,” she said finally.
“Wait, what? You’re mad at me?”
She nodded. She didn’t seem mad. She seemed really calm and collected.
“I’m really mad.”
“What do you have to be mad about?” I said, indignant.
“You ditched me, Saoirse,” she said.
“You—” I started to remind her of her gross betrayal of trust.
“Yes, I know I didn’t tell you that Hannah was thinking of breaking up with you. I know. You told me that. I heard you. I apologized a bunch of times. And I thought about it a lot and I get it. I know why you were mad, I do.”
I tried to interrupt again, but she held her hand up.
“Let me finish. I know why you were angry, but I don’t know why you couldn’t forgive me and I’m mad at you for that. We were friends for ten years and you decided I was nothing to you because I hurt you once.”
My mouth opened and closed like a goldfish as I scrambled for a defense.
“It wasn’t like that. You picked Hannah over me. The ten years we were friends obviously didn’t mean as much to you as the twelve years you were friends with Hannah.”
“That is such bullshit. I was stuck in between my two best friends. If I told you what Hannah told me in confidence, I’d have betrayed her. Not telling you, I betrayed you. She put me in a crappy position.”
“Tell that to Hannah, then.”
“I did. I was cross with her too. I told her I was pissed she put me in position where I had to lie to you or tell on her.”
I didn’t know what to say. I didn’t have to, though. Izzy wasn’t done yet.
“You know, maybe I should have told you. At least I think Hannah would have forgiven me. At least I mattered to her enough for that.”
In Izzy’s version of events, I sounded selfish and petty.
Maybe she was right.
“I didn’t really think of it like that.” I struggled to get the next words out. They would expose me and leave me vulnerable. I was starting to think I hated emotional conversations as much as my dad. Maybe that’s what made me say it, finally.
“I thought I didn’t matter to you. All I saw was you putting her first when she broke my heart and it felt like you didn’t care about me,” I said. “I was protecting myself.”
Izzy looked like she wanted to argue, but she paused before speaking.
“I can see why it looked that way,” she said.
“I can see why it looked like I didn’t care about you too.”
We fell silent. My feet begged to run out the door.
“Do you remember when you met me?” Izzy asked after a moment.
“First day of first class?” I guessed.
“No.” She shook her head. “I thought you’d say that. But all that summer we’d been friends. You lived up the street and you hadn’t started school yet.”
I’d forgotten. Mum and Dad and I lived in a rented place before they bought our old house. Mum dragged me up the street to a neighbor’s house because she’d met another mother and they arranged for us to play.
“I remember now. I didn’t want to go to your house, but then when I met you, you took me into that old tree house, the one that wasn’t—”
“Actually in a tree, I know.”
“You gave me an ice lolly and then we were friends.”
“Simpler times.” Izzy laughed. “Then when we started school, you met Hannah. She was my best friend at school and you were my best friend at home, and then as soon as you met each other you became best friends and I was the odd one out.”
“It wasn’t like that,” I said automatically.
“It was. But that’s OK. We were all still friends. Until you started going out and I was the third wheel.”
There was too much truth in that to deny. Hannah and I spent a lot more time together without Izzy after that. We were a couple, that was normal. But then every time Izzy was with us it felt a bit like she was crashing a date, even if it wasn’t actually a date. I got kind of annoyed with her sometimes even though I knew it wasn’t her fault. I’d thought I’d hidden it better because she’d never mentioned it.
“We both loved you, though,” I offered, and I immediately wondered if love or loved was the right tense.
Izzy bit her lip. “What if part of me was happy, then, when Hannah told me she wanted to end it? I didn’t think I was, but what if I was?”
“You weren’t.” I shook my head.
“How do you know?” she said.
“Well, what if you were? So you had a selfish feeling. I know you, you have a lot fewer of them than most people.”
We sat for a couple of seconds in silence and I thought about how I really did know the person next to me. I knew the contours of her face more than I knew my own. I knew her so well I could pick her out of a crowd at the funfair, in a sea of people. And I knew what kind of person she was. Even if things changed, if she took up knitting or deep-sea diving or she got married or she adopted fourteen cats and lived in a lighthouse, some things would never change. The years of petty squabbles and sleepovers, first loves dissected, notes passed and secrets shared. It hadn’t disappeared because they were over, and it couldn’t be undone.
“What now?” Izzy asked.
I didn’t know if we could be friends again after one conversation. Had too much time passed or did a few months mean nothing in the grand scheme of things?
“Now we open these envelopes,” I said, unsticking the seal and pulling out a sheet of paper.
30.
“Beth, we have a genius in our midst,” Dad boomed as soon as he got in the door. He waved my exam results like they were a trophy he’d won.
Beth was holding a bottle of bleach and the house smelled like she had disinfected it entirely. In the last couple of weeks of living together, I’d discovered Beth’s nervous habit was cleaning. It was also what she did when she w
as angry or upset about anything ranging from not being able to find her late father’s watch to running out of tea bags after the shops were closed.
“Let me see it.” She tossed aside a pair of rubber gloves, and reached for the certificate. “Eight H1s, what does that mean?” Beth asked, reminding us she was English.
“As,” I said. “Only six really count. But you know, some people are gifted with good looks and brains. Sometimes it’s more of a burden than anything else.”
Beth hugged me tight, pulling me in without thinking. She smelled of Dettol and citrus perfume. We’d never hugged before. She started to pull back, uncertainty on her face, in case she’d done the wrong thing. I hugged her tight. It was a special occasion, after all.
She’d better not get used to it, though.
“Will you have got your firm offer yet then?” she asked.
I shook my head. I’d checked the application tracking on the way home. “It’ll probably take a couple of hours to show up.”
“But you met the requirements of your conditional offer, right?”
“Yeah . . . ,” I said, feeling uncomfortable. I had to say something soon. I thought maybe when I got my results I’d change my mind. Maybe I’d want to go. Everyone was so sure it was an offer you don’t refuse.
“Your mum would be so proud,” Dad said, smothering me with another hug.
Maybe my mature conversation with Izzy had gone to my head. It’s the only reason I could think that I chose that moment of parental elation to voice my doubts.
“What if I didn’t go to university?”
Dad pushed me away and gaped at me. Beth shifted uncomfortably.
“What are you talking about? You got eight H1s,” Dad said, like good grades meant you absolutely must go to uni and of course pick the degree with the highest entry requirements you can possibly meet. I felt my phone vibrate in my back pocket, but I thought this would be a bad time to answer it.
“Rob, hold on.” Beth held up her hand in a stop sign. “Maybe she wants to take a gap year. That’s OK. Or do a different kind of course. Not everyone has to go to university.” She put her hand on Dad’s arm.