All the Little Things

by Sarah Lawton

  ‘Viv, do you want a cup of tea, babe?’ her voice echoes up the stairs as she hears me come out of my room.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Have you got time for breakfast? I’ve made some porridge if you want some?’

  Porridge? Is she mental? It’s about eighty degrees already; I don’t want bloody tea and porridge. I walk into the kitchen and grab cereal instead, to have with icy cold milk like any normal person. I can feel my mother’s eyes on me, tracking my movements. I sit opposite her at the table, our actions in tandem, spoon to mouth to bowl to mouth. Her brain is ticking over, I can see it. I’ve been too moody this weekend, she’s going all suspicious.

  ‘You feeling a bit better today?’

  ‘I was fine yesterday.’

  ‘It’s hard to tell when you ignore me so thoroughly.’

  ‘Whatever.’ I know I shouldn’t wind her up because she could really make things difficult for me if she wanted to, like she used to; demanding all my passwords, searching my room, just watching me all the time, but I can’t help it when she’s just so bloody annoying. I’ll be nice to her later and she’ll forget about it with any luck. I never understand why the girls always row with their parents – all you need to do is pretend you like them and you’ll get away with everything. It’s not hard. Well, usually it’s not hard, but I am in a bad mood today. Just want to have finished school already so I can go to university and leave her here and never come back. She picks up the breakfast things and plonks them noisily in the sink. I leave without saying goodbye.

  Molly is usually waiting for me by the back gate in our garden, but I sent her a message this morning telling her I was going in early so I didn’t have to see her straight away. I’m not particularly early but I’d rather walk on my own today. The air is buzzing with bugs and light is streaming through the trees, striping the air and making my eyes water. It feels damp already, like the inside of a lung or something, spongy. Humid. Horrid.

  As I make my way through the trees I catch sight of a couple ahead of me through the leaves so I slow down enough to not catch up with them. I don’t want to speak to anyone, and I think it might be Molly, but I can’t see who she is with so I move off the path and behind the big bramble bushes that line the way so I can eavesdrop on her from the side. It’s fun creeping through the forest to spy, though I’m worried about getting snagged up in all the thorns.

  I see a shaft of sunlight beam off a golden head. That is Molly, but I can’t make out who she’s with yet – is it Matthew? He’s on the other side of her but there are too many leaves here. Is she talking about Serena? Maybe she’s trying to fix things. Then I see him through a gap, his clear profile. It’s not Matthew. It’s Alex.

  I hear her laugh, loudly, an incredulous laugh. I know all of Molly’s laughs and that one means that someone is telling her lies. I’m so caught up in trying to listen without being heard myself that I get caught on a bramble branch, and it whips around onto my face as I try and pull it off, leaving a scratch. I can feel spots of blood raising themselves along it like fire beacons. Fuck! It really stings. I’m lucky it didn’t go in my eye. That would have been karma, wouldn’t it? By the time I have extracted myself from the stupid blackberry bush I’ve lost them.

  After a quick trip to the bathroom to wash the painful scratch on my cheek, I go and find the girls. I don’t want to act like there is anything wrong, but it’s difficult for me not to be stiff and uptight at the best of times, let alone when everything might be blowing up. This is all salvageable as long as Molly doesn’t keep being a freak. They are standing in a huddle in the hall, our usual spot. Serena looks angry, hissing at Molly, who is doing a remarkable job of looking bewildered. She’s trying to brazen it out, the liar.

  Then everything goes into a painful slow motion as Matthew walks past me, towards them. I’ve never noticed before but he walks with a funny kind of bounce on his heels. With his springy hair, it makes him seem like a puppy. Serena spots him coming and goes rigid like a mannequin, Tilly’s knuckles turn white on the strap of her bag and she turns her face to let her hair fall between her and the scene that’s about to happen. She hates confrontation. Molly hasn’t seen him yet, and his hand reaches for her shoulder, to tap, stroke almost.

  ‘Hey, Molly!’ He sounds so happy. Idiot.

  Molly just turns around to face him, raising an immaculately arched eyebrow, with what looks like a practised sneer on her perfectly made-up mouth. A pale pink dagger. I’ve never seen her look at someone like that before. I resolve to practise it in the mirror, because if a look could kill, it would be that one. I can almost see Matthew withering on the spot with embarrassment.

  ‘Can I help you with something?’ She tilts her head slightly, points her sharp chin.

  Matt just stands there. I can’t see his face, but I see his hands: his fingers twitch and then compress and clamp together, make fists. A hot red flush creeps up the back of his neck above the white collar of his shirt. Molly is still looking at him like she’s just found him on the bottom of her shoe. Serena and Tilly don’t say anything; their eyes flick between the two of them like they are playing tennis and they are the spectators watching the ball ping back and forth.

  Matthew doesn’t say anything else; he turns sharply on his heel and walks back toward me. His face is pale but there are high spots of colour on his cheeks and he looks like he’s going to be sick. His eyes meet mine for a moment but then slide away, ashamed. Did he see me on Saturday, watching them through the door? Watching him? He steps around me, leaving me with a citrusy scent to follow back to Molly, who has turned back to the girls with a flick of her hair.

  ‘See? I told you nothing happened. He was just trying it on with me, grabbing me and stuff. You didn’t see it right, Serena – if you hadn’t run off like a kid you would have seen it, too. Wouldn’t she, Viv?’

  She looks at me now, blue eyes telling me to toe the line. I could break her right here, if I wanted to. For a second I taste domination, bittersweet, addictive, but then I spit it away. Not yet.

  ‘Yep. Nothing happened, Ser. He’s a dick.’

  Serena looks at me for a long moment, like she’s making her mind up about something, then plasters on a thin smile, glossy but false, teeth behind it.

  ‘Yeah. He’s a dick. Come on, Tills, we’re going to be late.’ She grabs Tilly and drags her away to registration without waiting for us to follow. Molly is still looking at me with a small, pleased smile on her face. She doesn’t thank me for saving her slutty arse and I realise with a sinking feeling that I’m stuck. I can’t now tell anyone what really happened without looking bad myself for lying in the first place; I’m caught in the spiderweb of her untruth. Hopefully it will all just blow over. I don’t like change. I want things the way they are.

  ‘What on earth have you done to your face, Viv? It looks like a cat has scratched you.’ She raises a hand and gently touches my cheek. I manage to not lean away.

  ‘I caught it on a bramble in the garden. Mum has been letting the blackberries run wild. Can I borrow some concealer for it at break?’

  She drops her hand and frowns, briefly, then changes the subject.

  ‘Sorry I had to go early on Saturday, I didn’t want to wake you up. You were snoring like a hippo.’

  ‘I do not snore!’

  We laugh and I feel a bubbly relief that maybe it’s going to be okay and that nothing is going to change. I decide not to ask her what she was talking about with Alex; I try to tell myself it probably wasn’t anything interesting and I don’t want her to think I was sneaking around following her and I don’t care what he says, anyway. It doesn’t stop suspicion from joining those jagged thoughts in my brain, though, the new niggling lack of trust I have in who she is, and what she might do. Were they talking about me?

  ‘I’ll put some make-up on it later for you; let it dry a bit first. Let’s go.’

  The rest of the day seems pretty normal. We all sit together on our table at lunch – it’s the best tabl
e, where you can see everything that’s going on, no one else would dare sit here – and we all laugh and chat like usual. The girls are concerned about my ‘poor face’ but Molly has done a pretty good job of covering it up.

  ‘OMG, guys, I’ve got the best gossip,’ says Tilly, in between shovelling bites of limp orange pasta into her big mouth.

  ‘What?’

  She just chews, trying her best to look mysterious.

  ‘Tilly! Spill!’

  She looks around quickly and then leans in, as do we, three blonde heads and my mousey one.

  ‘I heard Chloe crying in the bathroom to Becky that her period was late.’

  There’s a collective intake of breath, with a delighted undertone.

  ‘No! I thought condoms were vegan-friendly?’ I say, and to my great satisfaction the other three start honking with laughter. I don’t always get it right humour-wise, but that was a good one.

  ‘She’s a fucking idiot if she is pregnant,’ says Molly, picking the salad out of her sandwich. ‘We all had to do that horror show of a sex-ed lesson trying to put those rank minty condoms on bananas. My hands stank for ages. So, it’s not like she doesn’t know.’

  Tilly and Serena look at each other, just for a second, but it’s a loaded look. Molly obviously knows what to do, doesn’t she?

  ‘Didn’t Daniel break his?’ I try and distract them. ‘I remember one of the boys definitely broke theirs being stupid.’

  ‘Yeah, it was him,’ said Tilly, turning her attention back to us. ‘I bet it was him – I bet he broke one putting it on and just didn’t tell her and now she’s going to have his vegan baby.’

  ‘But babies drink milk, so how can a baby be vegan?’ says Serena, looking a bit confused, which isn’t unusual.

  ‘I think you can drink human milk okay, just not milk from other animals,’ I tell her.

  ‘Urgh!’

  We all look a bit revolted at the idea. I don’t like the thought of pendulous breasts full of milk, leaking everywhere. Imagine the mess and the nasty sour smell. Disgusting. I can’t imagine anything worse than having a screaming baby stuck on you all the time, sucking the life out of you.

  ‘Well, who cares if she is or she isn’t. Chloe is a stuck-up cow who doesn’t even live in the village,’ finishes Serena, which is a bit rich as she’s only just counted as village as her house is way out, but none of us mention that. She’s right about Chloe, though, she is stuck up.

  We have PE at the end of the day – as if Mondays couldn’t suck any harder – and have to play rounders. Serena is pitching the ball and it’s my turn to bat. Instead of throwing the ball underarm like she’s supposed to, she looks at me for a second and then lunges, lobbing it hard, straight at me. I try and jump out of the way, but I jump into it instead, and it cracks right on the bony part of my hip, and I scream.

  ‘Sorry, Viv!’ she shouts, with a laugh in her voice. ‘Was that a bit hard?’

  I have tears in my eyes, because it really bloody hurt. I look around to Molly, who is watching from the side lines. She isn’t doing PE because her mum always writes her a note to get her out of it because she hates getting all sweaty. All sweaty doing PE, anyway – she didn’t seem to mind the sweaty exercise she was doing with Matt the other night. She doesn’t say anything, but her mouth is a thin line. The ball gets thrown back to Serena, who throws it properly underarm this time, so that I can hit the ball and run.

  Maybe everything isn’t going to go back to normal after all. Maybe I’ll need to fix it.

  London

  Was there anything more boring than watching your kid play on the park? Rachel was itching to get out her BlackBerry and check her emails, but it wasn’t in her bag. She’d left it on charge in the kitchen and forgotten to bring it. She looked around instead at the other families in the park, faces in the crowd. Sometimes, even now, she’d see one like his, and feel her stomach drop, or imagine eyes on her back, like the unwelcome weight of a palm between the shoulder blades.

  ‘Mummy!’ commanded an imperious little voice from the top of the slide. ‘Mummy, watch me!’ To Rachel’s horror, Vivian twisted at the top and threw herself down it backward, ending up sprawled on the tarmac.

  ‘Vivian!’ she shouted, running over to scoop her off the ground. ‘You aren’t supposed to go down the slide like that!’

  ‘Why not?’ asked her daughter, seeming unperturbed by the nasty graze on her shoulder, which Rachel was inspecting as she pulled her away. ‘It doesn’t hurt. It’s boring doing it the normal way.’

  ‘Well, we’ll have to go home now so I can clean this. You’re bleeding.’

  ‘No! I don’t want to go home yet!’ Vivian began to tug at Rachel’s hand, leaning away and letting her legs go limp so all her weight was on her arm. She screamed, ‘You’re hurting me!’ Several faces turned their way and Rachel could feel heat creeping up the back of her neck and into her cheeks.

  ‘You’re hurting yourself!’ she hissed, mortified by her suddenly kicking and screaming child. ‘Stand up properly!’ As suddenly as the tantrum had started, it stopped. Vivian stood up and pulled her hand away with a sharp jerk, her features stony, her mouth in a distinct pout. Rachel picked up her hand again. ‘We can come back later, or Nana will bring you, okay? I might need to do a bit of work this afternoon.’

  Vivian didn’t say anything; she was silent the short walk home, not even asking for a Mr Whippy as they passed the ice-cream van that had pulled up by the gates to the park and was already surrounded by a gaggle of excited children and harassed parents digging into their pockets and bags. Suit yourself, thought Rachel. Always cutting your nose off to spite your face.

  Back at home, and as soon as Rachel had finished cleaning the nasty scuff on her shoulder with an antiseptic wipe, which she accepted without even a murmur though it must have been sore, Vivian jumped down from the kitchen counter she’d been lifted onto and ran out and up the stairs to her room, shutting the door just too loudly behind her.

  ‘What’s all that about?’ asked Carol, coming out of the front room where she’d been watching her soaps. ‘Is she okay? I wasn’t expecting you back yet.’

  ‘She scraped her shoulder and didn’t want to come home to clean it,’ said Rachel. ‘She had a right shit fit in the park. Have you seen my phone? I need to check something.’

  ‘What happened to your free weekends?’ asked Carol, turning away with a sniff. ‘I’ll go and check on her. And no, I haven’t seen your phone.’

  ‘It was on charge,’ Rachel said to her retreating back, looking at the wire which was still plugged in, but was devoid of her phone on the end. She looked around the kitchen, lifting and moving various magazines and other detritus. It wasn’t there, and flipping all the cushions in the front room didn’t reveal it either. She’d put it on charge last night, she knew she had. It had been almost dead. She tried calling it from the landline, listening for vibrations, but there was no sign of it and it went straight to voicemail, her own voice asking her to leave a message.

  Running up the stairs herself she went into Vivian’s room, where her mother and daughter were sitting on the bed. Vivian was still in her silent sulk, sitting stiffly on Carol’s lap as she fussed over her shoulder and stroked her hair.

  ‘Vivian, have you seen Mummy’s work phone?’

  Pale grey eyes just looked at her coldly, her face unmoving.

  ‘No? Not been playing with it? You know you aren’t supposed to touch my work phone.’

  Vivian just turned her face into Carol’s chest, refusing to look at her mother any more.

  Stamping back down the stairs into the kitchen, Rachel looked around again, rooting through drawers and opening child-height cupboards. No sign of the phone. As she stood, a thought occurred to her, and she moved to the back door and tried the handle. It was open.

  ‘Mum!’ she shouted, ‘did you leave the back door open again?’

  Carol came down, Vivian trailing silently behind her.

  ‘Did you ope
n it this morning or has it been open all night again?’

  Carol had the decency to look guilty rather than deny it outright. ‘Rachel, I’m sure—’

  ‘Sure what? That some crackhead has run in and nicked my phone? Like last time, when my bag went? And your sunglasses? It’s probably the same person! They probably think this house is a guaranteed mark! Mum, for god’s sake, anyone could have come in.’

  ‘I thought I locked it… I was sure I did… I had to open it when I was cooking dinner, but I thought I locked it…’ Carol trailed off, put her hand to her mouth.

  ‘Silly Nana,’ said Vivian, smiling.

  Rachel

  ‘Vivian! Are you awake yet, darling?’

  I heard movement from her bedroom, so despite the lack of a reply I decided she must be awake. I set some breakfast stuff out for her, cereal and the juice she liked, and then went upstairs to get my bag together for London. I really didn’t want to go, but the author of Prince of Dark Wings was really keen to meet with me in person and talk through the draft sketches I was doing. The publisher had paid for my train tickets, and I could be there and back by tonight.

  I hadn’t been back to London in almost six years. I could almost taste it in my mouth, that dirty, grey city-slick over everything, cigarettes and traffic. I’d found it so enticing once, the city pulse. Not any more.

  Vivian mooched into the kitchen and winced as she sat down.

  ‘Are you okay, Viv?’

  ‘Yeah. I just banged my hip at school yesterday.’

  ‘Ouch. Let’s have a look?’

  She unwillingly slid down the side of her skirt and untucked her school shirt to show me a nasty green and purple bruise. There was so little to her that she often bruised badly, from even small knocks. When she was little her shins had always been so mottled with bruises of varying ages that they looked like storm clouds.