by Sarah Lawton
I wanted to get up and check on Vivian; she spent an awfully long time in the shower and I wondered if she’d fallen asleep in there, but eventually the water stopped and she padded into her room and I didn’t hear anything else. I didn’t even know what the time was because I had left my phone out in the studio, and hadn’t been out to get it.
I barely slept the rest of the night, imaging scenarios in which Vivian had come in to my room for some reason and caught me having sex with someone barely older than she was, or where Alex had bumped into her coming in the door, or any mixture of everything. I could feel my face burning with shame and the aftermath of a night of realising that all the needs and wants I’d suppressed for so long had never gone away; they were just waiting under the surface.
I got up when the dawn started to creep in, fingers of light reaching the bed, and I gave up on any pretence of sleep and went straight for coffee. I sat at the kitchen table drinking it as hot as I could bear it, scalding, and then I made another cup. I knew it would probably make me ill but I deserved to be ill. It felt like I sat there for hours, palms flat against the smooth wood. The table had come with the cottage and bore the marks of years. I loved it – I love all old things that are imbued with the past, which is funny considering how much I hate and fear my own. I traced for the thousandth time twin ruts in the wood that looked as if they had been made by a small child running an old metal toy car up and down, up and down. It had been sanded over and varnished again since then, but the scars remained. I’m not sure how long I sat there lost in that repetitive motion, in silence, thinking about scars.
Maybe it had been a mistake to close myself down to relationships for all those years, after Ciaran. It had been so intense with him, and now here I was with an equally unsuitable partner, having equally intense sex that I couldn’t stop thinking about, reliving it in detail. Not that I could let it happen again, I tried to tell myself: I mustn’t think any more of the slow drag of his fingers over flesh, the hidden promise of pleasure-pain in his gently biting teeth, his kiss.
I felt completely and utterly ashamed. I was aware of every place Alex had touched me, tender, used and even a little bruised on my shoulder where he must have nipped me. I pressed the sore spot, I dug my nail in. I deserved the pain.
I should have checked on Vivian.
London
Carol felt sick with anger when she found about what Vivian had done to Lexie. Lucy had been very good about it, unbelievably, astoundingly gracious in fact, but things weren’t the same any more. There hadn’t been any invites for tea after school in the weeks since, or a Friday afternoon glass of wine. She missed her friend, and couldn’t help a small part of her blaming her granddaughter. Why did she have to be so odd?
She found herself paying much closer attention to what Vivian was doing, and listing in her mind all the little things she had just dismissed over the years: that boy she had bitten, leaving a scar; the stolen phone (which had been found along with the missing handbag and sunglasses, stuffed behind Vivian’s wardrobe); locking that other boy in the cupboard and refusing to apologise or even admit it was her, even now. It was always someone else’s fault. It almost seemed like she didn’t understand how to be a child. She had tried and tried to speak to Rachel about it, but she refused to listen. Claimed it was Vivian attention-seeking, promised to cut back on work, nothing was wrong. She just wasn’t seeing.
There was no sign of Lucy in the playground at pick up. Vivian walked out of her classroom alone, her hands tucked behind the straps of her rucksack, head down. Carol felt a spurt of guilt at her earlier thoughts. She was just a little girl, and not a happy one. She needed support, not blame.
‘How was your day today?’ she asked, holding out the cereal bar she’d brought with her for a snack. Vivian looked at it and shook her head.
‘I’m not hungry.’ She was silent the rest of the way home, where she went straight up to her bedroom and shut the door.
Later Carol took a plate with a sandwich and some fruit up to her, moving lightly, and pushing open the door without knocking. Vivian, sitting at her mini writing desk, which was yet another guilt present from Rachel, startled. She pulled a book over onto the paper in front of her, the dark look on her face quickly smoothing away into its usual blankness.
‘What are you up to?’ said Carol, putting the plate down next to her. ‘What’s this—’ She moved a hand towards the paper underneath the book.
Vivian smacked her hand away. ‘Nothing! It’s private. It’s homework. It’s for school.’
‘Vivian! We do not hit! What’s wrong with you today?’
‘Nothing!’
Carol plonked down the plate next to the book and the hidden pages. ‘Suit yourself! And get changed please, jammies on. Bring your school shirt down and put it in the wash.’ As she came down the stairs the front door opened and Rachel came in, her phone pressed to her ear. Carol didn’t understand what was so important that her daughter had to be available at all hours, glued to that damned lump of metal and plastic. It was nearly seven o’clock! She opened her mouth to speak to her, but Rachel just raised a palm and went past her into the kitchen, leaving her stranded and gaping like a fish. Two generations of her family who didn’t think she was worth talking to.
The next morning after dropping Vivian at school – Rachel being long gone, as usual – Carol decided to spring clean. At least that was what she told herself. She ran a duster over all the furniture in Vivian’s room. Everything was as it always was – neat. Her books were aligned on the shelf by height. All her clothes were neatly folded in her drawers – refolded, in fact. Carol hadn’t put them in like that. Such an exacting child.
It was hard work, the cleaning. Tugging the drawers away from the walls to reach behind for anything that might have fallen. Nothing but a hair bobble and a lonely dust bunny. She changed the sheets, turning the mattress, even though it wasn’t the season.
It was when she pulled out the bed to hoover down the side that she noticed the threads in the box frame, where the fabric had been cut to create a hiding place.
Vivian
As soon as I get back I get straight in the shower. I want to wash tonight off me, rinse away the consuming anger that I’m still feeling – I can’t get rid of it. But it doesn’t work, it’s still there. We went through this so much in therapy: ways to get rid of these vicious feelings. It isn’t my fault, and what happened before wasn’t my fault, either. Our group is broken, Tristan’s stupid car crash didn’t bring us back together. It’s all broken apart and I can’t bear it any more. I can’t fix it now. It’s done.
The shower eventually gets cold and I step out and head for my room. I decide to text Alex, even though he’s probably dreaming. I tell him about what Molly did to me. He doesn’t reply, and I fall asleep looking at the empty screen. My own dreams fall into each other, Alex and Molly, I don’t know where one begins and the other ends. I feel pulled apart, like their hands have reached inside me. I hear the snick of the rat’s ribs breaking, only it’s my bones that break and my insides, thickly purple, meaty, that are exposed to their grasping, tugging fingers. I always dream of red hands, of bloody red hands. It wasn’t my fault!
I wake up late, sweating. The weather is insane this summer, it feels like it’s never going to be cool again. Memories from yesterday and last night crowd in like they do after that brief second of waking forgetfulness, and make me want to scratch at my skin, pull it right off, but I don’t. I just get up and shower, again. My arms are sore and aching and I struggle to lift them to wash my hair. I feel so heavy and exhausted.
All the lightness and excitement that I felt after my afternoon with Alex has just ebbed away, and I want to get it back as soon as I can. I want to smother the awful nothing I’m feeling.
As I get dressed I look at myself in the mirror that hangs in my wardrobe. I don’t look any different from yesterday morning, before Alex, before Molly. What is it that they see in me? Two people who could have anyone,
not wanting each other, but me instead. I open my hand, look at it, at the lines on it. I make a fist, angry again that I didn’t realise what was going on with Molly before. I could have stopped everything that went wrong, if I hadn’t been so blind. She would have done anything for me, I could have made her do anything. I understand it now, the power that comes from being wanted, the control it gives you. How weak she must have felt, being the one wanting for once. But even now, in the bright morning, I can’t see any way it could have been fixed. It’s too late to use her wanting, everything’s too broken. And besides, I have Alex now. I don’t need Molly any more.
Mum is sitting at the kitchen table nursing a cup of coffee. I hate coffee. I get myself juice from the fridge instead. It’s cold and sweet and I feel it sticking to my tongue. I sit opposite Mum but she doesn’t look up.
‘What’s wrong?’ I ask her, not actually caring but wanting a distraction from the pounding in my head.
‘Nothing, babe,’ she says, looking up but not at me, and plastering a weird smile on her face. ‘Just a bit tired. Work not going very well this week, what with everything that’s going on.’
As usual she’s commandeering other people’s drama and making it about her. She’s got a little purple mark on her shoulder and it matches the circles under her eyes.
‘Are you looking forward to Dorset next week?’
No. Our stupid annual painting holiday is the last thing I want to do; I want to stay here where Alex is, but then I think that getting away for a while could be a good thing, just in case.
‘Yeah, sort of.’
‘We can go straight from school on Friday if you get everything together. Have you got much washing that needs doing?’
‘No.’
The inanity. How can it be like this after the explosion of everything in my life? I can’t stand it. I can’t stand her. I force out words, brambles in my throat.
‘It will probably be cooler by the sea, if it’s not raining by then. It always rains when we go on holiday.’
She smiles and I know she’s thinking of the week we spent in Spain, near Valencia, when it rained so hard that everywhere flooded and people’s cars floated off down the street. One man actually drowned. Imagine drowning in your car, rain filling it up drop by drop, slowly stealing the air. I think I know how he must have felt.
‘Hopefully not as much as Spain, hey?’ She croaks out a laugh, and I feel a flicker of hope that at least she’s not going to be moody and annoying all day. She rubs at her shoulder and looks at me.
‘How did you get that bruise?’ she asks me, nodding her head at my shoulder. I reach up and realise I have a mark where Alex bit me yesterday, in the woods, when he came.
‘I just banged it on something,’ I lie, easily. Lies slip out so gracefully, so much softer than sharp truths. ‘It doesn’t hurt.’ I don’t ask her about hers as she tugs her T-shirt to cover it because, again, I don’t really care. I want to get out of the house and find Alex but he hasn’t texted me back yet. I’m pissed off, and starting to think he’s ignoring my messages. Is he angry about what happened with Molly? He doesn’t have to be, but boys are like that, I suppose. Jealous. I just want to see him and pick up where we left off. I want him to make me burn again.
Rachel
I didn’t leave the house on Sunday, except to go to the studio to retrieve my phone, which I found myself checking for messages from Alex, like a teenager. I claimed a migraine and hid in my room, not that Vivian cared. I knew I should ask her about why she had come home so late when she was supposed to be staying at Molly’s, but I couldn’t focus on anything. She slipped out of the house for school on Monday looking as exhausted as I felt, everything about her a little limp and jaded. I promised myself I would speak to her properly that night, thinking their petty drama would probably have resolved itself by then anyway.
I had been keeping such a close watch on her for so long that I had completely neglected myself, and I spent much of the morning trying to tell myself that what I had done was understandable in the circumstances. Who wouldn’t have been flattered? I was vulnerable, a bit broken. Maybe I deserved some pleasure for once, however brief and potentially damaging. I wouldn’t do it again, and I prayed he wouldn’t tell anyone. He hadn’t given me the impression he was the type, but that didn’t stop my imagination.
Eventually, I went back to the studio to face my shame. I leafed through my work, trying to trace the point at which I had started using Alex’s face as the inspiration for the faery prince. I had only known him for a week. A week, and I had fallen into bed with him like some idiot from a terrible movie, a Lolita in reverse. I couldn’t get to the bottom of the feelings that I had for him. I wasn’t sure I even had any; everything I was feeling was aimed at myself, arrows of guilt and disgust peppered with absolution. I hadn’t done anything illegal, obviously, but surely it was immoral. I was embarrassed, and afraid that if people found out I wouldn’t be able to live with it – not here. You couldn’t be anonymous in the village: your business was everyone’s business. Scandal was currency, and this would go a long way, especially at a time like this, when the whole place was swamped in grief for the Beaumont family, what was left of it. I tried to stop thinking.
The retro clock on the studio wall seemed to get louder and louder the more I tried to clear my head. The ticking turned into a whine of white noise in my ears and I thought I was going to pass out; I had to grip the desk as my vision swam in front of me. My focus came back as the hum passed, and I looked again at that picture, of Alex, of me, caught together and pulling away, the desperation, the struggle. I picked it up. It was good work, but I tore it slowly into strips and squares, ripping through our faces, dropping us like confetti into the waste bin.
* * *
I was making yet another cup of coffee when the doorbell went. My first worry was that it might be Alex, and I felt a fist of sudden anxiety worming up from my stomach to clutch at my throat. What would I say to him? What would he want, expect, from me now? I hadn’t heard anything from him since Saturday and had tentatively begun to hope that he had got his older woman conquest and would just leave me alone. I crept through the hall and looked through the spy hole in the door.
It wasn’t Alex, it was Abi, Molly’s mum. I opened the door.
‘Have the girls left yet?’ she said, in a cheerful voice. ‘Molly isn’t answering her phone and she wanted me to write her a note for PE but I didn’t get round to it so I thought I’d drop it in. I’ll take it up to the school if I’ve missed her.’
I was confused, clouded. ‘Molly hasn’t been here, Abi,’ I told her. ‘Viv came home late Saturday night and she’s been here on her own the rest of the weekend.’
Abi visibly paled at my words. I saw her swallow. ‘She texted me, Rachel. She said they had decided to stay here instead and revise, and that she was going to stay last night, too. We were out on Saturday, most of yesterday too. I didn’t think to check with you, as she’s here such a lot. Are you sure Vivian was on her own?’ I could see guilt slicing into her, lips pressed hard together, eyes widening and shining with worry. I remembered listening to Vivian coming up the stairs. I remembered Alex slowly moving inside me. She was alone.
‘Yes, I was still awake but it was late, pitch dark. I didn’t ask her why it was so late, why she came back, I just forgot. What are you going to do, do you want to come in? Shall we call the school and see if she’s turned up? I’m sure she was just at one of the other girls’ houses – shall we call Serena’s mum?’
‘I’m going to go home and call Gavin. I’ll do a ring around,’ Abi said. Her eyes were flicking between me and the path now, and I could see her fingers twisting in the loose, filmy material of her green skirt. I could almost feel the fear leaching from her skin like an oily mist, reaching for me, wrapping us both in its tendrils. Where the hell was Molly? Why didn’t I ask Vivian what had happened and why she’d come home so late? I’d been so wrapped up in my own head I’d missed what was going on
with my girl.
Abi turned and left me, almost running across the field and already on her phone, presumably trying Molly again, or Gavin. I had a sick feeling in my stomach and a writhing under my skin, like worms rooting to get out.
By the time Alex appeared at my door – like I knew, deep down, he would – I just pulled him inside, let him kiss me, while I tugged up handfuls of my dress; let him fuck me where we fell against the stairs, their edges digging into my back. The carpet was rough, burning on my skin, but I welcomed the pain.
It made me feel good. It made me forget.
London
Vivian had been delighted to see the cake Carol had baked waiting for them at home. It was her favourite, a plain sponge with a jammy filling. Guilt chewed at her as she watched the little girl tuck into a slice, while she made them a special hot chocolate dotted with little marshmallows. It wasn’t right to think so badly of your own flesh and blood, she told herself, as she watched them melt into the hot liquid, waiting for it to cool enough for Vivian.
‘Nana, can I go and play in my room now?’ asked her granddaughter, after she’d slurped the drink down loudly.
Carol swallowed painfully, and reached out to hold Vivian’s hand. ‘Actually, darling,’ she said, wondering if she was doing the right thing without speaking to Rachel first, ‘I wanted to speak to you about something.’ She lifted the magazine that she’d placed on the table earlier, and slid out the piece of paper hidden beneath. It was a drawing of small, broken figures, all scribbled over in red, each one named as a classmate, with Lexie in the centre. It had made Carol cry when she found it, realising how bad Vivian must be feeling about the situation she was in, the falling out. The rage in it had actually frightened her. It wasn’t normal.