by Sarah Lawton
As the minutes ticked by Rachel felt her nerves getting tighter. Where were they? What was her mother thinking, keeping Vivian out like this? She had a swimming lesson in the morning, she needed to be at home in bed. Then the voice again, not so snide this time: What if she can’t come home? What if he’s come? Taken them? Her stomach clenched around the wine she had drunk, and she sat down, put her glass down. She was being ridiculous. Breathe, she told herself. There was an explanation, they were together somewhere. Carol had probably taken her out for some tea, a Friday night treat. She stood back up, forced herself to go upstairs and get changed. They’d be back any minute.
Wrapped up in her dressing gown, in her most cosy pyjamas, soft fabric comforting against her skin, she had just flicked off the light to her bedroom when she heard the front door go. She ran to the top of the stairs, and to her horror felt her slipper catch against the carpet runner and felt entirely weightless for a second, falling, before managing to grab the banister with a lurch, her heart hammering. How many times would she have to tell her mum it needed re-pinning? She could have broken her neck. The door rattled as she found her feet and her mother came in, shutting it behind her.
‘Mum! Where have you been? Where’s Vivian?’
Carol looked up and smiled beatifically. ‘Hello, my lovely!’ she said, before walking suspiciously steadily down the hall. Legs still shaking from the near-miss on the staircase, Rachel followed. ‘Mum! Where’s Vivian?’
‘Oh,’ said Carol. ‘She’s at Lexie’s. She’s having an over sleep. Sleep in over. Sleepover.’ She laughed.
‘Mum! Are you pissed?’ said Rachel, worry swiftly being replaced with acute crossness. ‘Where have you been? Where’s all her school stuff?’
‘At Lexie’s. We went after school, for a quick cup of wine. Tea. And wine.’
‘It’s nearly nine o’clock! I was getting frantic!’
‘Didn’t think you’d be home yet, love, have you been here long?’ Carol had found the wine that Rachel had left on the side and poured the rest into a glass, before pulling open a drawer and tugging out a sheaf of takeaway leaflets. ‘D’you fancy a pizza? Starving.’
‘No, I don’t! Mum, you have to take your mobile, you could have sent me a message to let me know – I was so worried! I thought something had happened to you. I thought…’ She trailed off: Carol was paying her no attention at all, her narrow focus now on choices of toppings on the leaflet which she was holding almost to her nose. Rachel put her hands to her face and sighed heavily through her fingers, letting the fear ebb away with her breath. She couldn’t let it take control of her again, everything was fine. ‘Actually, Mum, I could murder a pepperoni passion. You have to phone them, though.’
Later on, in front of the TV and full of pizza and garlic bread, she thought to ask her mum how Vivian had been at school, but Carol had fallen asleep on the other chair, her glasses slipping down her nose, and she was starting to snore. Laughing softly, Rachel covered her up with the throw, gently took off her glasses and put them on the coffee table, and went to bed.
Vivian
‘I can’t stop thinking about him,’ says Molly, who has managed to drag herself to school today looking suitably miserable.
‘Yes, it’s very sad,’ I tell her, trying not to sound bored. She’s sitting next to me at our lunch table, moving food around on her plate with the tip of her fork. I have already eaten all mine. ‘Try and eat something, Molls.’
‘I haven’t been able to eat anything since Monday. I’m just not hungry.’
‘Well, you’ll have to force yourself, then. You’re as bad as my mother.’
‘What’s that supposed to mean?’ She looks up at me, a line between her eyebrows.
‘My mum. She’s been a complete nightmare this week. She didn’t even know Tristan that well. He was my friend’s brother. I don’t know why she has to be all fucked up about it.’
‘It’s called empathy, Vivian. Do you know how bad you sound right now? It’s probably making her think about her dad’s accident. You know, your granddad, who never got to see her grow up, or meet you? Your nan was only in her fifties, too, wasn’t she, when she died? That was another accident, wasn’t it? It’s bringing it all back for her. You’re such a bitch sometimes, I don’t know how you came out of her.’ Molly’s face has gone white; it makes her eyes really stand out. She’s beautiful even when she’s furious. ‘You must know how scarred she is by her past – you went mad at me for asking her about it that time.’
Well, it’s private. It’s none of Molly’s business, our past. I wonder if she’s ever noticed my mother’s literal scars, nosy cow that she is. I’m picturing the thin white line that runs along the edge of my mother’s scalp (‘Oh, I don’t remember, darling, I think I did it when I was little’) and about the crooked fingers on her left hand (‘I shut them in the car door and I didn’t get them fixed because I was pregnant with you, and then I just never did. They don’t bother me.’) There’s a crescent moon where her neck meets her shoulder too, but you can only see it when she’s tanned. I wonder what it feels like to bite someone that hard, feel their flesh split between your teeth. What it tastes like, that much hate.
Molly is still wanging on when I refocus on her. I lose track sometimes.
‘You’re so lucky to have a mum like her, and you just treat her like shit. It’s not fair!’ Oh, great, here we go with the Molly sob story. My mummy doesn’t love me, boo hoo hoo.
‘I don’t treat her like shit, Molly. Where’s Serena, anyway? I thought I saw her this morning.’ I can tell that Molly doesn’t really want to change the subject, but I’m bored of it.
‘No, I haven’t seen her at all, she must be hiding somewhere.’ She starts poking at her lunch again.
This is just another symptom of how messed up everything is. This is Molly’s fault. If she’d kept her legs shut none of this would have happened.
‘It’s our anniversary soon,’ mumbles Molly through a mouthful of food that she’s finally put in her face.
‘What?’ I hate it when she talks while she’s eating.
‘Our anniversary. Six years since you moved here.’
‘Oh, right. I didn’t know you kept count.’
‘It’s not hard to remember, really. We should do something, with Tilly and Serena too. I think we should all do something soon anyway – we need to do something for Tilly.’
‘Yeah, definitely.’ I can’t imagine anything worse. ‘Have you got your history mock now?’
‘Yeah. I’ll see you later.’
I watch her as she stands up with her tray and walks away from me, slim and light-footed. People move out of the way to let her past without even realising it. I can see that her whole life will be like that, people stepping aside while she gets everything she wants. I wish she hadn’t mentioned the anniversary. It means that this time six years ago, I was in the hospital.
That’s not something I want to remember.
* * *
I’m walking past the college’s common room after my exam when I see Alex bound out, turning away up the corridor. He doesn’t see me, and I’m about to call out to him when I see Molly come out too. Her shirt is half-undone, and she goes after him.
If she thinks she’s going to do to me what she did to Serena then she’s got another think coming, and it won’t be a good one. Rage bubbles up and heats every part of me as I follow them.
Rachel
I woke up with a start, and a headache. It was later than usual, and the sun shining on the side of the house had turned my room into a sauna. I had to get up and change the bed clothes, they were grimy with the sweat of a restless night of fretting and nightmares.
I managed to shower and choke down some breakfast, clearing away the remains of Vivian’s morning meal. I didn’t understand why she was so anal about tidiness everywhere else but refused to do the bloody washing up. My conversation with Steve was playing on my mind and once more I started to dwell on my relationship with my daug
hter. Was I too controlling of her? Did I trust her? It was all so hard. I’ve always felt that there’s this monumental lie that people tell you about motherhood. They tell you that you will love your child beyond anything in existence, that the moment you set eyes on them, you will be swept away on this sea of everlasting joy and adoration. The agonies of birth brushed under the carpet, forgotten in an instant. Rubbish.
My whole pregnancy had been difficult. Recovery from the beating Ciaran had given me was stifled by crippling morning sickness. My mother, horrified by the state I had shown up in, wanted me to get an abortion. (‘He did this to you? Ciaran? Rachel, there are options these days, love, you don’t need this reminder of him your whole life. Nothing comes of a bad seed except poisoned fruit – you are still young, there will be time.’) I ignored her of course, revelling in the suffering I so deserved.
And if I’d thought the pregnancy was rough, it was nothing compared to the birth.
Two days and nights of contractions, painful enough to keep me awake, but not to bring her. Six hours of fruitless pushing, I could feel her moving down, and then up, down and then up. Like the world didn’t want her. The midwife had no choice really, but to cut me. I can still hear the snap my skin made. The low cry from Mum as the blood came. That agonising rush, pushing involuntarily when I wasn’t supposed to, the great splitting pain of it and then she was there, on my chest. This skinny, slimy, purple creature with staring, filmy eyes, rolling wildly. Gasping. We both gasped for air, fought for it, looking at each other.
I felt nothing.
There is a photo somewhere, that the midwife took for me. I am on my back, naked, with Vivian on my chest, slick against me, no space between us. I am staring lifelessly at the ceiling, limp, exhausted beyond all feeling. I looked decayed. Where was that joy I had been promised? That light in my face? It wasn’t there. When you are broken, utterly, there are no spaces for love to crawl in, just a vacuum where nothing can live.
I had to have surgery to mend the damage the birth had caused me; had to have, in the end, the epidural that I’d refused out of fear during the labour itself. By the time I was wheeled out of the operating theatre and back up to the ward, Mum had bathed and dressed Vivian. She looked like an actual baby, tiny pink and perfect. I still didn’t love her, but I marvelled at that perfection, had some weird pride in her creation, that small miracle women perform every day. I searched her face for Ciaran’s, but I never saw him. Not on her face.
It did get easier, I suppose. She was difficult those first few months, screaming for hours on end while I rocked her and shushed her, fed her biting mouth, frantic that she might be ill, that I was failing again. It took Mum storming in one night, knackered from the screeching echoing around the house (‘For goodness’ sake, give her here’) and taking her away from me, just plonking her in her crib, holding me back while she screamed in a back-arching, kicking temper until finally she just settled, fist in her mouth, gumming it angrily, panting. Then she slept.
(‘Some babies just don’t want to be held.’)
After that, she was an easy baby and toddler. Self-contained, content to play by herself for hours. I was so happy and proud to have such a perfect little girl, it was such a relief after the traumatic years of my relationship with Ciaran, the pregnancy, birth. She healed me. I finally fell in love with her, felt the tendrils of that all-encompassing adoration I’d been told was mine by right.
It wasn’t until she went to nursery that the problems started to occur.
There was an incident with a little boy. They’d had a childish falling out over a toy and both been ticked off. Later on, Vivian had gone over to him while they were all supposed to be having a nap, taken off her pants and deliberately urinated on him. A nursery worker had seen her do it, and she’d laughed it off, so I told myself it was meaningless. I carried that conviction for years. It doesn’t mean anything. She’s her own person. There’s not a problem.
All the niggling issues at school that I was called in for, I dismissed as nothing. I ignored it all. And I knew that if I ever told anyone about how I had felt about her those first years, they would think I was a terrible mother, an awful person. Who doesn’t love their baby? They would blame me. And at least I loved her now, I told myself again. I was fixing things, making them right.
I rubbed my face, trying to dispel the crowding thoughts as I went out into the garden, and then almost screamed as someone came at me from my studio – Alex, again. Cross at him for frightening me, full of painful recollections, I was harsh.
‘Alex! Do you not remember me specifically asking you to text me if you wanted a lesson? I don’t want you creeping around in my garden when I’m not here!’
‘I’m sorry, I didn’t want a lesson, I just wanted to pick up my picture. I was going to work on it at home, I just thought maybe you were out here.’
‘Well, I wasn’t!’
‘I can see that. I’m really sorry,’ and he turned sharply and left, leaving me feeling even worse than before for shouting at him when he hadn’t actually done anything wrong, except look for me where I’d told him I could usually be found.
I spent the rest of the afternoon indoors, watching rubbish on TV and playing stupid games on my phone. I didn’t have the energy for anything else.
* * *
‘Prosecco’s on me tonight, my darling. I fancied a change,’ said Steve, popping the cork with an efficiency born of many years’ practice. I watched the liquid bubble and froth in the tall glasses. We raised them silently, clinking them together, our thoughts a few houses away, where the oppressive sadness of the shut and silent chip shop pervaded the little high road like the weather, heavy, smothering. Even sitting as motionless as possible I could feel sweat tickling my hairline and pooling beneath my breasts.
‘Do you know it’s cooler in Barcelona than it is here?’ said Steve, taking a long sip of his drink. He paused, waiting for the inevitable burp from the fizz. ‘It looks like this weather is in for the long haul. The green will be a brown by the time I get back. Everything is baking to death.’
‘What do you mean, “get back”? Where are you going?’
‘I got a last-minute deal on a trip to Gran Can, darling. I’m going with Bill.’
‘Bill? Bill “onions” Bill, who is about seventy, Bill?’
‘Yes, what of it? I’d rather be going with you, boring only-going-to-Dorset-this-year girl.’ He picked up his drink and stared into it. ‘To be honest, we were chatting in the bar about everything, and both of us wanted to get away for a while.’
‘Oh god, Steve! You’ll give him a heart attack!’
‘Rubbish! We’ll have an amazing time. We’re only going for a week, anyway. I’m assuming you can keep yourself alive for that long without me?’
‘I guess I’ll have to! I can’t believe you’re deserting me though…’
Steve gave me a sly look. ‘Well, I’m sure your boy-toy will keep you occupied!’
I didn’t even grace that with an answer. He just laughed.
‘When are you going?’
‘First thing tomorrow. Can’t wait. You’ll have to come next time – you can ditch Vivian with Abi and Gavin for a change. It’s about time you gave the poor girl some space.’
‘Yeah, yeah, I know. Over-protective mother, can’t help it.’ That again. I forced a smile and sipped my drink, trying not to wince at the taste, acid on my tongue.
We spent the rest of the evening like we usually did, chatting about anything and everything, the easy and comforting company I’d come to take for granted.
If I’d known it would be the last time I would ever see him, I would never have let him go.
Vivian
When I get home from school I go straight to my room and I lie on the bed. The window is open, but it just lets in more heat. It presses down on me, as heavy as sand, burying me alive. I let my mother bury me on the beach once; it was supposed to be fun but I have never felt so terrified. I don’t feel frightened now. I
am trying to sort through many different emotions, but fear is not one of them. How I feel about Alex. How I feel about Molly. Alex and Molly. Molly and Alex. What they were doing, together, in that room. I let different images, scenarios, run through my head, to try and detach myself from them. I don’t want to think what I am thinking – I don’t want to think about a room with no windows. My phone buzzes insistently with messages from Molly but I ignore it. She has betrayed me, she has hurt me like Lexie hurt me. She wants what is mine.
Nothing else happened when I followed them. Alex disappeared, so I just ended up behind Molly as she was looking for him, trying to sniff him out like the bitch that she is. I tailed her back round to the school entrance, where she stood, waiting for me. I watched for a while, saw her texting me, saw her get cross that I wasn’t there for her at the exact moment she decided to remember me. She’s a hypocrite. Tells me he likes me, that I should like him, then goes after him. I am starting to think that I hate her.
When Mum leaves to go to the pub yet a-bloody-gain I quickly get changed, because I have a feeling that Alex isn’t going to be far away. Since the first night he came over – the day Tristan died, I suppose – we’ve been meeting up every day after school, or at night when Mum has gone to sleep. We haven’t really done anything except talk a lot and kiss, but I have decided that I want to do more. I don’t know for sure what he was doing with Molly in that room earlier, if he was reciprocating (because I have no doubt about what she was trying to do), but I want to put my mark on him before I deal with her. He’s mine.