by Sarah Lawton
‘How… how can she be dead? She emailed me… she emailed me yesterday… she can’t be dead.’
I could barely make out her mumbles. I didn’t know what to say to her; I just kept on massaging her cold, stiff hand between mine. ‘Who would hurt her? She wouldn’t hurt herself, I know she wouldn’t.’ Her voice sounded like it was coming from somewhere else, mechanical, forced. She began to rock, almost imperceptibly, back and forth. She pulled her hand away from mine and put both to her face. ‘This isn’t happening. This isn’t happening. I’m dreaming.’ She took her hands away from her face and stared at her delicate pink palms, rubbed one over the other, washing them in the air.
‘Darling, I’m so sorry, you aren’t dreaming. We need to get up – we can’t stay here now.’ Thoughts of a vengeful Alex – no, Liam – surged back into my mind. Did he know where we were? Vivian could have told him where we were staying. He could have been anywhere. ‘Vivian, we need to get back to the cottage, my love, I have to tell you something, we need to talk about something…’
She ignored me, still staring at her hands.
The weather was about to explode, I could feel it juddering in the air, static. A low, aching rumble of thunder spread out over the sea and the wind dropped away to nothing. The water went still, like everything was being sucked into the storm clouds on the horizon. I felt like my mind was fracturing: misery, anger, fear; a maelstrom of emotion that matched the brewing storm, that I couldn’t get a handle on. I had to warn Vivian about the danger we were in. I opened my mouth to try and catch the right words to tell her, I tried to put my arm around her, but she pushed me off.
And then it was too late and there was no time left for us.
‘Rachel! Rachel! Get away from her!’ The faint shout, the familiar voice, it rang in my ears, blending with the whine of shock. Then he was there, the mysterious boy who had so absorbed the last few weeks of our lives.
I was so angry at him. I jumped up, put myself between him and my daughter. ‘What do you want, Liam? Haven’t you already done enough? Go away!’
‘Alex?’ This from Vivian, eyes huge in her white face as she looked up at us both. ‘Mum, how do you… what, wait… Liam?’ Her incredulous words seemed to ring in the air. Alex – Liam, Alex, so many lies – stood in front of us, between us and the drop, and swung toward her, knuckles yellow on the clenched fists of his hands.
‘You remember me, then? You fucking remember, now?’ he hissed, raw and vicious.
‘Please calm down, we can talk about this,’ I said, trying so hard to be firm, calm.
‘I don’t understand. You aren’t him. You aren’t. You’re Alex. You’re my Alex.’ Vivian’s trembling voice as she used it sounded dry and afraid. Despite her denial, I could almost see her clever mind clicking everything together, so much faster than mine. I could still barely process the little blond boy of my memory and the dark almost-man before me. Lexie’s brother. Lucy’s son.
Here to hurt us.
‘You ruined our lives!’ he shouted, making small, jerky movements, shifting his weight from foot to foot. I had no idea what he was about to do, what he was capable of. Had he hurt Molly? Who else but him?
Vivian spoke again, more decisively than before. ‘I didn’t mean it, with Lexie. Is that why you’re here? It was an accident, please, I’m so sorry!’ Her face was crumpling, threatening tears, but her calculating eyes didn’t move from his face.
‘You are a fucking liar.’ Frothing spit gathered at the corners of his mouth. ‘You knew exactly what you were doing, you planned it, I know you did. You plan everything!’ I put myself between them again, shielding Vivian. I had to protect her; I had failed her before, I couldn’t again.
‘Please come away from the edge, Liam.’ I deliberately said his name again, forcing it past the fear in my throat. My mind was frantically trying to think of how to get us both away from him. I could barely take my eyes off the sharp drop, not five feet away. Why wasn’t there a fence? The waves had started again in earnest, smashing against the beach below, their power reverberating up the cliff to our feet.
He stepped toward me, and I saw some of the tension leave his body: his shoulders drooped. ‘I just wanted the truth. Even if it was an accident, it ruined everything, everything. I don’t know what I’m doing any more.’ He was shaking his head, glancing between us, anguished now, unsure. He suddenly just looked young, lost. ‘Rachel, it’s not just that, there’s more you don’t know—’
I interrupted him, trying to calm him further, my hands spread out between us like fans. ‘It was an accident, Liam. That is the truth. Vivian didn’t mean to hurt Lexie. She was just a little girl.’ I tried to inject a consoling note into my voice, talking down a panicked animal with soothing tones. It didn’t work. He shook his head.
‘No. You’re wrong. It wasn’t an accident, Rachel. She did it on purpose. I know that now.’ I saw him take a deep breath, tears starting in his eyes. ‘And I think you need to ask her about your mum. Do you honestly believe she just fell down the stairs? That she wasn’t pushed? You told me, you told me that she knew there was a problem with Vivian, that you didn’t listen. What did she know? What did she know about Vivian?’
The accusation hit me like a hammer, another piece of a horrific, bloodstained puzzle. No. No. I didn’t want to believe him. He was a liar, a cheat. He had found us to do exactly this, to lie, to hurt us, to break us apart. But I couldn’t block out the whispering, the voice in my subconscious that I had so firmly repressed for years.
Vivian just stared at him, eyes like coals. I could almost feel the wrath inside her, pulsating. Was it ever not there, that secret fury? My mother, falling.
‘She’s dead.’ His voice cracked. I snapped back to him, my attention wrenched away from my daughter, who was still sitting on the ground, her arms wrapped around her knees, so tiny and frail, a doll.
‘What? My mother? You know she is – I told you she was.’
‘No. My sister. My sister is dead.’ Tears spilling now, running down his face. ‘She killed herself. She couldn’t go outside, she wouldn’t eat. She had panic attacks if we left her alone. Her face… how could you not know your own daughter was sick in the head?’
Hearing it from someone else, the painful idea that something was wrong with Vivian, churned everything up. It had never really gone away, however deeply I had tried to bury it, bury us, in a place where I thought I could watch her every move.
Her silence was deafening.
‘Please, Liam, please don’t do this to yourself.’ I tried to touch him, but he reared back, so close now to the edge that it made me nauseous. The sky moaned as the wind picked up, the first droplets of rain spattering the hard soil underneath our feet, the smell of the earth filling my head.
‘Rachel, you don’t understand. I know you don’t believe me.’ The pain in his breaking voice lashed me. This wasn’t happening. Then something in his face changed, and a small strange smile appeared through the tears. ‘I have to make you see her.’ He looked down. Another breath. ‘I wasn’t in London last week, Vivian. I was fucking your mother.’
He watched her, waiting.
‘No!’ she screamed.
I felt the colour of shame suffuse my cheeks as Vivian sprang up. There was no denying what had happened, she wasn’t stupid. It was obvious he was telling the truth, and I knew my guilt was written all over my face. And her reaction was every bit as awful as I had feared it might be, from the second I found the drawing of her naked body.
London
The days had been passing in an awful haze since the funeral. It was the first day that she’d come back to work, to stilted smiles and uncomfortable how-are-you’s. No one ever seemed to know what to do with grief. It was too big.
Rachel had spent the morning ploughing through the emails that had accumulated in her absence, her thoughts straying constantly to Vivian on her own first day back in school. Even in all the time they had been together these past weeks, she had barely se
t eyes on her little girl except for when she remembered to feed her and put her to bed. She had tried to speak to her about her Nana, but her own heartbreak had got in the way, resulting in her sobbing and clutching at her daughter until the poor thing wriggled away and ran up to her room. She was too young to understand.
She was just thinking about getting herself a coffee to keep herself going when her phone began to vibrate in her handbag. It was the school number. Feeling nauseous – Vivian must have got upset, it was too soon to have gone back – she tapped the screen to answer. The word ‘accident’ wiped out every thought in her head; she couldn’t hear what the person on the other end of the line was saying. Accident. Hospital.
Dropping everything, she grabbed her bag and ran from the office, not even stopping to explain where she was going. The journey seemed to take for ever, each stop on the tube an agony of waiting. All the other people, just sitting there, oblivious to the panic that was swamping her.
By the time she reached Whipps Cross hospital, shoving money at the taxi driver who had been outside the station, she was drenched in sweat. What had happened to Vivian? Where was she? She ran into the A&E, scanning the crowd. The man at the door tried to stop her, to speak to her, but she saw Miss Avon sitting on a chair at the back of the waiting room and brushed him aside, and ran to her.
‘What’s happened? Where’s Vivian? Oh, my god!’ As she reached her daughter’s teacher she realised that the whey-faced woman was covered in blood, streaks of it down her skirt, a perfect, small bloody handprint above the waistband, glaring against the pale material of her shirt. ‘Where is she?’ She felt her stomach contract with terror. Not again, not her daughter. She’d just lost her mother, she couldn’t lose Vivian too. I promise, I promise, she thought, I’ll do anything if she’s okay, anything at all to keep her safe.
Miss Avon looked up at her, her eyes glittering.
‘It’s not Vivian’s,’ she whispered, clenching her fists in her lap, looking down at the bloodstains.
‘What? I don’t understand, what’s happened?’
‘It’s not Vivian’s blood. It’s Lexie Coleman’s. Vivian attacked her. She stabbed her face with my scissors – she took them when I wasn’t looking… her little face…’ Her own face crumpled, and she looked like she was about to vomit. ‘She stabbed her in her eye. She’s blinded her, she could have killed her. What is wrong with her?’
The look of disgust on the teacher’s face turned Rachel’s world upside down. Her own blood was ringing in her ears, she was barely aware of a nurse appearing at her side and pulling her gently away, leading her down a gleaming corridor, light bouncing off the floor, into a curtained-off cubicle where her small daughter sat on a blue blanketed bed, looking down at her little red hands.
‘Vivian,’ she whispered, sitting beside her on the bed, not able to bring herself to touch her. ‘Vivian, what did you do?’
Her daughter’s blank face turned up to hers.
‘It wasn’t my fault, Mummy,’ she said calmly, blood on her cheek, on her clothes, everywhere. ‘It wasn’t my fault. She deserved it.’
Vivian
I can’t process what I am seeing. His face, as he looks back at her. At her. And my mother, she’s looking at me, somehow flushed and sick-yellow at the same time. All that time, when he was ignoring me, when I was wanting him, needing him, he was with her! My mother! I picture them writhing together, talking about me, laughing at me, and something snaps in my head.
‘You are supposed to love me! Me, not her!’ The words scream out of my throat, hurting, and before I realise it I am in front of him, hammering my useless fists against his chest. ‘You liar! How could you do all those things with me and her too?’
He shoves me backwards easily, overpowering me with one hand. I nearly knock Mum over, feel her clutch at me, keep me upright.
‘I just wanted to get the truth about what you are! You’re a monster! Lexie knew you were evil, but no one believed her. Everyone said it was an accident, everyone. You don’t care about anything, you’re incapable.’
I cannot cope with the disgust in his voice. It’s not true, what he’s saying to me – I do care! Then my mother pushes in front of me again, trying to pull him away from the cliff edge, to talk him down, and every fibre of me screams, How dare she touch what belongs to me! Her focus is on him, and I see again the way he is looking at her as her hair whips around her face: he has never looked at me like that, never.
She isn’t taking any notice of me at all, and I realise that if she believes him then I have nothing left to lose. I don’t have to pretend any more. ‘You whore! You disgusting, old whore. How could you? He was mine!’
She turns to me, looking so tragic that I almost smile, and then I throw out my arms, as hard as I can. The air whistles from her lungs as she staggers backwards toward the brink, and falls.
Rachel
I stumbled and landed painfully on the rough, stony ground, winded by the shove, pain blooming in my chest. Vivian’s eyes were wild, her teeth small and white and sharp in her screaming mouth. Her fingers clawed, and she went for my face, her nails scraping burning furrows in my cheeks.
Liam lunged. He grabbed her by her hair, making her shriek with anger and pain, and pulled her away from where I was curled, defenceless, on the ground. But they were too close to the edge; fear and vertigo spun my head and I couldn’t catch my breath.
‘You’re blind, Rachel! Look at her! You’re not safe, why can’t you see that?’ Liam had her by the neck, choking her.
I got to my knees and I tried to reach out and hold her and pull her away from him, but she kicked me, smashed at me with her feet, knocking me down yet again in her struggle, in her blind wrath.
‘Tell her the truth, Vivian! Tell her the truth about why you hurt my sister! Tell her what you did to your own grandmother! Rachel, Lexie told me that Vivian was walking alone, the morning your mother died. She must have pushed her, then gone to school as if nothing had happened! No one listened, but it was true, I know it was.’
Trapped in Liam’s brutal embrace, looking down at me, her familiar mask slipped back into place, but it was too late. I had seen her true face now and I could not unsee it.
Molly in the woods, my mother falling.
‘I didn’t do anything! I didn’t hurt Nana! He’s lying! He’s trying to turn you against me! Mum, you have to believe me!’ I could see her nails digging into his arm, scratching him like she had scratched me, and her eyes, her colourless eyes, caught mine as they so rarely did, and something broke apart inside me. I didn’t believe her, not this time. Not again.
The world was black, roaring. A flash of lightening scored the sky and the rain beat down.
Vivian
Everything is white hot: the pain of his fist in my hair, the hate. How could this have happened to me? How did I let myself be tricked, by that bitch’s brother of all people! Liam Coleman, a background boy, a nothing boy! Fury in my mouth, searing and bitter as blood. I remember now what his sister’s blood felt like rushing over my hand, that perfect colour. I fight the arm that is pinned across my neck. I want to hurt him.
‘Stop lying!’ He uses his arms to shake me like a dog. My mother is just collapsed on the grass, holding her hands to her cheeks, then looking at her bloody fingers. ‘You’re insane!’ he shouts, making my ears ring.
‘It’s not true, it’s not! I’m so sorry, please don’t hurt me, I love you, please! I loved my Nana, I didn’t hurt her. It wasn’t me!’ I spit out the lies like bullets, anything to get him off me.
‘You don’t love me, you want to control me and own me like you do with everyone you decide you want! I found Molly, Vivian! I wanted to go back, back to the woods to think, to the place you took me: it was special, and she was there. You left her there! I was actually beginning to think that maybe Lexie was wrong about you, but she wasn’t, was she? You almost had me fooled too. I know everything now, what you’re really like, you heartless bitch. I won’t let you hurt
anyone else. I know what you did. Just tell me the truth! You did it on purpose, you blinded my sister on purpose because she saw you for what you are! She was afraid of you.’
I cringe at his words as they fall about us. Molly’s hair, black-blood drenched in the light from the moon, running and twisting in the stream. Lexie’s eyes. My mother is gaping, looking from face to face – does she believe him? She can’t. I need her to believe that I haven’t done any of this. She always believes me! I scratch and writhe trying to get away. We’re so close to the edge, but I don’t think he even realises. I can hear the sea smashing the cliff beneath us. I pull, and kick, but I can’t get him anywhere it will hurt him.
‘Mum, help me!’ She’s just sitting there like a fucking idiot, her hair slick wet from the pouring rain, pasted in ribbons on her cheeks alongside the scarlet marks I shouldn’t have made. I kick and twist again, waiting for a chance.
Then his grip loosens, slippery now, just for a heartbeat.
I get my chin down and I bite his arm as hard as I can, so hard it hurts, and now I really taste blood, iron in my mouth as his skin splits, tears beneath my teeth. I don’t let go, and he cries out in pain. I love the sound.
He lets go of my hair to try and prise me off his arm, and as soon as I feel his hold on my neck slacken enough I let go and I wriggle down, and I’m free. I turn and I push him as hard as I can. I want to kill him. I want to see him fall. He has ruined everything, this is all his fault.
‘Vivian!’ My mother’s voice above the shrieking wind reaches me, but doesn’t. ‘Vivian, stop!’ I shove him again; he’s hurt and off-balance, holding his injured arm, and it’s my turn now. I put my shoulder into it. Admittedly, it’s not as easy as pushing an interfering old bitch down the stairs, but maybe I’m stronger than I thought. He slips and falls to the wet ground, blood pumping through his fingers. I am the last one standing.