All the Little Things

by Sarah Lawton

  I have to fiddle with the handle of the door to get it to open before jumping in the passenger seat and just sitting there stiffly, giving Alex as cold a look as I can muster, even though my insides are tying themselves in knots about seeing him again. A low heat sparks in the bottom of my belly, a tight, stretching kind of feeling that makes me want to squeeze my legs together. He looks exhausted: he has dark rings under his eyes and his hair looks a bit funny, like it needs a wash, but he’s still gorgeous. We don’t say anything for a while. The car smells like him, slightly smoky, salted almost. Like the sea, even though we live so far away from it. He doesn’t look like he knows what to say, so I talk, break the quiet.

  ‘I have to be home soon. My mum wants to leave as soon as I get back to try and beat the traffic down to the coast.’

  ‘Where are you going?’

  ‘Dorset.’

  ‘That’s not very specific.’

  ‘Why do you care?’

  I’m completely mesmerised by his eyes, which are getting darker with every word we speak. I wonder if he’s angry with me, but why would he be? I’ve not done anything to him; he’s the one who buggered off to London and didn’t even say goodbye. He puts a hand out – I notice he has bitten down his nails, they weren’t like that before – and puts it on my shoulder, a thumb reaching into the gap between my neck and the collar of my shirt, scuffing up and down against the soft skin where I can feel my blood throbbing. His hand twitches, thumb still moving back and forth. Eyes even darker still, he bites his lip and I wish it was my lip.

  ‘We’re going to where those big rocks are in the sea. The arch. It’s famous. A painting holiday, we go every year for a couple of days. We’ll be back next week.’

  ‘Durdle Door. I went there once, when I was a kid.’

  ‘Isn’t it so boring?’ I reach out now myself and touch the skin of his knee. He has jean shorts on and the hairs on his leg tangle with the loose threads of the cut denim. I smooth them away, run the tip of my finger underneath the edge of the material and he shifts in his seat.

  I have him, I know I do.

  ‘No. It’s beautiful. We had a lovely time. We were all happy then.’

  His voice catches and he looks angry again when he says this; he flinches, and while part of me wonders why he was happy then but not now, another, bigger part of me doesn’t really care. I have other things on my mind. I move my hand higher up. I don’t want to quiz him about anything, I just want him. He shifts again, looks away out of the window.

  ‘The police were at college this week, asking about Molly,’ he tells me, and I bite my teeth together, try not to groan at her intrusion, again. ‘Where do you think she is?’ He’s antsy, squirming, his thumb brushing back and forth, back and forth on my neck. I can feel tension in it.

  ‘She’s fine, she emailed me. She’s just gone somewhere to hide for a few days because Serena was pissed at her for sleeping with Matt. She always runs off. She’s probably embarrassed about last week too – you know, I told you. What she did to me.’

  ‘I know what you told me.’ He turns back to me, looks into my face, his hand moves to cup my cheek and I lean into it. ‘She’s okay? Honestly? Where is she?’ I look back at him. I don’t want to think about Molly or about where she is.

  ‘Yes, she’s fine. I promise. Now, do you want to drive this rust bucket somewhere more private?’

  Rachel

  I was not sure what the parenting procedure was for finding a naked drawing of your fifteen-year-old daughter, which was quite possibly – well, definitely, if I’m honest – drawn by your erstwhile teenage lover. The shock of seeing it pulled me out of my dream state back to where I should have been. Awake. Observant. I had been so caught up in trying to forget what had happened years before that I took my eye off what was actually happening in front of me – how could I have been so unutterably stupid? That horrid, soulless boy – there were photos of Vivian all over my house and there was absolutely no way he couldn’t have seen them. His eyes – damn them – were far too sharp.

  I went into my bedroom and pulled out the bottom drawer of my bedside table, opening the notebook at the bottom and sliding out another sketch he had done, of me. An ink drawing of me looking down at him, my hair in shining Raphaelite curls around my face, an intent gleam in my eyes and a hard-bitten lip. He’d used just one wash of colour, high pink on the cheekbones. I could feel my face burning with that same colour. Oh, god, I couldn’t bear it. How could he? What did he want? What was wrong with him that he would sleep with us both? Draw us both? I took the drawings down into the kitchen and I burnt them in the sink and rinsed away the black ashes, the bitter stench of smoke stinging my eyes.

  I couldn’t believe Vivian had just left it in her book. She was so secretive by nature that I couldn’t understand why she hadn’t squirrelled it away somewhere I wouldn’t find it. I used to obsessively rifle through all her things, check her phone, insist on social media passwords, but I’d relented somewhat the past few years. Everything had been so normal. There were no odd antics, no uncontrolled raging and screaming. I had put her previous behaviour down to the trauma of going through an early puberty and losing her grandmother. The accident with Lexie had come so soon after my mother’s death that it all seemed inextricably bound up together, and gave me a reason to excuse her horrific actions, her little red hands. She was only nine, a confused, emotionally conflicted little girl who had just lost her nan. She lashed out. It wasn’t her fault.

  And it had genuinely been fine since we moved to the village and started afresh: she’d made friends, clearly she’d been experimenting with her sexuality – she was growing up – just like I did. I felt sick suddenly at what I was doing. What was wrong with me? Why was I blaming Vivian? She’d done nothing at all to warrant this. Nothing. She was a victim in some sick game Alex was playing. She – like her idiot, idiot mother – had been taken in by a budding psychopath. I couldn’t understand what his game plan was: did he get kicks out of hurting people like this? Trying to wreck families? I was an adult; I could step back and understand my own horrible behaviour – that’s what six months of authorities-mandated family and solo therapy will do for you – but this would crush Vi. A boy she might think she was in love with, possibly sleeping with, carrying on with her own mother? Fuck.

  A dark thought writhed in my head – was he involved in Molly’s disappearance somehow, Tristan’s accident? If betrayal as bad as this came so easily, what else might he be capable of?

  I thought of all the strange questions he had asked me about Viv that I had blithely answered; the way he had turned up only when she was out. He must have been watching us, watching the house. Had I felt his eyes on us? Was he the reason I had felt a dark cloud of threat hanging over us in past days? Who was he? Where had he come from? He had fooled me so entirely that I felt ill.

  I decided to head out into the garden for half an hour before Vivian got back; I needed the respite that the small industrious insect sounds and the scents of the flowers gave me. I was not overjoyed to realise that I’d been neglecting it like I’d been neglecting Vivian. The earth was scorched, almost powdery in its dryness. Leaves were coarse, parchment-like – they would crumble if I touched them. My flowers had drooped and the colours had faded like they do in old photographs, a garden in sepia tones. It was all turning to dust in front of me.

  Vivian

  I’m not sure that was one of my better ideas. I don’t think I have ever been so hot and sweaty in my life. Alex’s hands are shaking as he does up his shorts, and we are both gasping for air. My knee hurts from banging it on the handbrake. I manage to clamber back into the passenger seat, tug my skirt back down, and we both sit for a while, breathing heavily. There was something missing this time – he was distracted, it wasn’t as intense or good as the first time. He couldn’t finish. He wasn’t here, he was somewhere else, not with me.

  I’m trying to think of something to say when I see Alex’s wallet on the dashboard, and I r
each out to grab it.

  ‘What’s your licence photo like, then? Does it make you look like a convict?’

  Before I can pick it up he swipes it, rising up off the seat to stuff it in his back pocket. ‘Don’t.’

  ‘What? Is it that bad?’ I try to laugh it off, brushing away the discomfort I’m feeling at his behaviour.

  ‘We should have gone back to the woods,’ he says, sweeping his hair back off his forehead, craning his neck and back into a stretch. I watch the muscles in his arms tense and relax and tense again. ‘I don’t understand why you didn’t want to.’

  ‘I just didn’t.’

  ‘You don’t have to be so weird about it. I just liked it there.’

  ‘I’m not being weird about it! I just don’t have time, and it’s not an everyday sort of place, okay? Leave it alone!’ My voice is too sharp, needle-like in the tight atmosphere we’ve created in the car. I bite my lip, hard.

  He stares out into the trees and I don’t know what he is thinking about. This is not going how I thought it would. He is supposed to be grovelling at my feet and begging for my forgiveness. I am not impressed. I attack.

  ‘Alex, do you know my mother?’

  The way he freezes, just for a split second, is enough to make all the suspicions I had come roaring back into my head. The picture of him I found in her studio, with great black raven wings. The eyes were all wrong, but I knew it was him.

  ‘Who is your mother?’ he asks, swallowing. Smooth neck, rippling.

  ‘Rachel Sanders. Short, curly hair, stupid hippy clothes.’ I can almost see his mind ticking, then he relaxes, shoulders leaning back against the seat.

  ‘Does she teach the life drawing class in the village hall? I went a couple of weeks ago, but I never spoke to her. I thought she might have been your mum when I met you but I forgot to mention it. You look a bit like her, your bone structure maybe. Why are you asking?’ He smiles and turns his attention back to me, lifting my hair away from my face and tucking it behind my ear. He strokes his thumb over my cheekbone before leaning in and kissing me gently at first, but then firmly, and I almost forget to answer him, swept up on the rush of his returning affection.

  ‘She’s stolen your face.’ I tell him between kisses, laughing, relieved. ‘She’s a nightmare.’

  He doesn’t reply, but I feel him relax further, tension leaving.

  ‘Stolen my face?’

  ‘In her illustrations. I found a drawing of you with big raven wings; it freaked me out for a minute. But she always steals people’s faces – it’s not the first time I’ve recognised someone.’

  ‘She sounds like a witch, stealing faces.’

  ‘You have no idea. She’s such a nightmare. What’s your mum like?’

  All the tension rushes back into his body and face, and he moves away from me, pretending to adjust the mirrors in the car, and reclipping his seatbelt.

  ‘You okay to walk from here?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Are you okay to walk home? I need to go the other way.’ He leans past me to open the glove box and digs out a pair of knock-off aviators. Half the gilt is missing off the arms.

  After a second of shock has passed, I don’t reply to him; I just climb out of the car and slam the door, walking off without looking back, ignoring his wave as he drives past me down the road. He could have dropped me off a bit closer! Every bone in my body is telling me that something is very off about Alex’s hot and cold behaviour.

  There is something delicious about secrets that you can wheedle out of people, or just uncover through snooping, because then you have influence over them. Really good secrets mean they will do quite a lot for you, and I wonder if Alex has secrets like that. I wonder if he’s just… bad. The thought of plucking them all out of him, using them, is delicious.

  Mum is in the garden when I get home, looking miserable as usual and clipping the heads off all her manky-looking flowers, letting them fall to the ground. Everything is dead – the weather has murdered all her plants. She should have looked after them better.

  ‘Is the car loaded?’ I ask her. ‘Have I got time for a quick shower?’

  ‘Not really,’ she replies. ‘I only need to put your bag in and we’re ready to go. Pack up your wires and washbag.’

  I go into the house and run up the stairs. There’s a weird smell in the air, like burning. God knows what she’s been up to today; she’s definitely losing it. I decide to have a very quick shower anyway, to wash Alex off me, and then I get everything together and drag my suitcase bump, bump down the stairs. The hollow noise reminds me of something and makes me smile.

  Mum is already waiting in the car, tuning the radio as I lock the door. I hope I don’t have to listen to her nineties crap all the way to bloody Dorset. I squeeze my suitcase in the boot and then get in the car.

  I hate these road trips. Mum always tries to talk to me in the car. Apparently, it’s easier to talk to people when they aren’t directly looking at you. I don’t like looking at anyone much, so maybe it’s true. I don’t really like talking to anyone either, unless I want something, so this is a losing situation for me. I can’t wait until I’m old enough to leave home. I might never speak again.

  She’s fiddling with the sat nav, trying to get it to stick to the inside of the windscreen. Its electronic voice is already demanding we perform a u-turn when possible. I suspect it won’t be the last time it asks us to do that.

  ‘I meant to ask you – how are you getting on with your pill? Did you go back to the doctor? What did she say?’

  What? Oh, for god’s sake. ‘The same as when we went. She asked me if my period was less painful. She said I can take them back to back if I want so I don’t have to have any periods at all if I don’t want to.’

  ‘So, you’re still using them?’

  ‘Yeah, she gave me another three-month prescription and told me to look out for any weird hormonal stuff, headaches, DVT… you know.’

  ‘Do you take them properly, Vi? You have to take them at the same time every day for them to be really effective.’

  ‘Effective for what? Not having a period? I didn’t know that, but I take one as soon as I wake up if you must know, not that it’s any of your business. You should just be glad I’m not crippled in pain all the time, like I have been since I was ten!’

  I’m pretty bitter about having inherited Mum’s stupid early development. Puberty made me act on my worst feelings, do things nobody liked, have rages. Things have been better since then admittedly, because I know how to control myself now, but it was bad for a time. That thing with Lexie, it was too public. I just lost it. That’s why they put me in the hospital and therapy afterwards. They thought I was mad, but it was just because of all my hormones and stuff. Ugh, that was even worse than fucking periods. The stuff I had to make up so they’d stop looking at me like I was an insect: the apologies, the crying. I didn’t mean it. It wasn’t my fault.

  ‘You know the pill isn’t as effective as condoms, Vi. It won’t protect you from STDs. Remember we talked about that?’

  This comment sideswipes me – was that what she was getting at all the time? I pretend to look for something in my bag and then sneak a look at her face. It looks like it usually does – she’s concentrating on the road. Does she know about Alex? How would she know? She doesn’t have any friends here except Steve because he feels sorry for her, the sad loser, so no one to have seen us and reported back, surely? I wonder if that bitch Molly said something to her when they were having one of their cosy little moments and I’m raging at her all over again.

  ‘I was checking your packing earlier,’ she says, and I get a sinking feeling in my stomach that I’ve slipped up somewhere. ‘I found the drawing of the girl under the tree. It looks just like you.’

  ‘What!’ I say, trying to think on my feet, panicking. ‘It hasn’t even got a face. Why would you say it was me? I found it at school, I don’t know who drew it. I was going to show you because it was good, but I fo
rgot. Everything is going wrong recently, I keep forgetting to do things.’ I look at her face, does she believe me? It’s hard to tell. Maybe I should cry. That usually works.

  ‘It was an odd thing to find, Viv. You know you can talk to me about anything, don’t you? That you’re supposed to talk to me?’

  ‘Yes, Mum. You know I would, I promised I would.’

  She doesn’t look entirely convinced, but maybe I can work on that later. I don’t want her interfering with things. As I’m thinking about how I can convince her it isn’t me, my phone buzzes. It makes me jump as the girls’ chat has gone dead since Molly isn’t texting us, and Serena and Tilly aren’t texting me, the bitches, but it’s Alex. He asks if we’re nearly there yet – very funny. Without really thinking about it I tell him Mum found the drawing he did of me, but that I told her it was of someone else and that she believed me because she’s such an idiot, but he doesn’t reply. I’ll call him later and reassure him that she definitely believed me – why wouldn’t she? She believes everything I tell her. She always has.

  Rachel

  My daughter thought I was stupid. That drawing was quite clearly her, and I knew exactly who had drawn it. I didn’t know how I could get her to admit it without revealing that I knew Alex too, knew his talents. I couldn’t let her have a relationship with him. There was something wrong with the boy. I decided that when we got to Dorset and she was asleep I would research how to report underage sex to the police. Maybe I could text that policewoman who spoke to Vi about Molly running off? I had her card in my purse. I wanted so badly to call him, to scream my anger and frustration and betrayal down the line at him, let him know that I knew what he was up to, but that wasn’t possible since I had deleted all his messages and his number in that misguided attempt to not be tempted to contact him in a weak moment. I wasn’t weak any more. I was incandescent.