Beside me, Ava’s eyes are wide. ‘What are you doing?’
I’ve come to a stop halfway on to the roundabout, and in my daze, all I can see is the anger and road-rage hatred in other drivers’ contorted faces as they go by.
‘Weren’t you looking?’ Ava barks.
‘I … I didn’t … I thought it was clear.’
Frankie Vein is still singing and making my head throb. I want to turn it off but I can’t let Ava see my shaking hands.
‘I should have got the bloody bus,’ she mutters. There she is, my surly teenager. Her disdain kick-starts me into action, and I force myself to turn the key again and move on, watching each exit this time, thankful that we’re so close to the school. The song finally fades out.
‘Great song,’ Steve’s disembodied voice says. ‘Whatever happened to Frankie Vein?’ he asks. ‘Where is she now?’
I can’t turn it off quickly enough. Where is she now? The question makes my face hot and I press my back into the seat as if I can hide inside the fabric.
‘Good luck,’ I say, the words thick in my mouth, as Ava gets out. She looks back at me, and I expect some form of reproach, but instead she looks concerned.
‘Drive carefully, okay?’
I nod and give her a weak smile. My daughter is worried about me. Worried or fearful? Did I frighten her? Of course I did. I nearly crashed the car. For all my secret terrors, I could have been the one to harm her. As soon as she closes the door, I pull away, trying not to race over the speed bumps. I turn a corner and keep going until I’m away from the prying eyes of other parents and then stop at the kerb. I lean out of my door and retch violently as the rain soaks me. My vomit is hot and burns my chest as I expel my breakfast and coffee and stomach acid and I wait until I feel entirely empty before flopping back in the car.
My whole body aches and trembles. I’m purged but it’s a false emptiness. I can’t get my fear out by vomiting. My terror will never leave me. Nor the grief I keep hidden like a precious jewel, a hard diamond made from the black carbon of my burnt-up heart.
The toy rabbit.
The song.
The feeling I’ve had of something being just a little bit wrong.
How much of it can be coincidence? Random events? None of it? All of it? Am I going mad?
I stare out of the window at the ordinary world and wonder how much of my make-up has run. I have to look presentable for work. I’ve got a jacket on, so my blouse is relatively dry, and my hair doesn’t have enough life to get wayward after some rain. I can always stick it under the hand-drier at the office and put it up in a bun.
Eventually I push all thoughts of the past aside – not away though, never that – and check my reflection in the rear-view mirror. It’s not as bad as I thought. I won’t have to go home and re-do it all.
At least I’m not a crier, I think as I start the car again. I’ve never been a crier. In the silence the song lyrics echo in my head and I know they’ll stay there all day. I can’t wait to get to work. I don’t care about Julia and the money. I don’t care about Simon Manning. I only want to be somewhere I feel safe.
12
AVA
My bedroom is more like a bedsit really. I’ve got my double bed, my desk with a little drinks fridge under it, and there’s even a sofa up against the wall – one of those reclining ones you can slob on and watch TV. It all came as part of my bedroom revamp last year. We only got mine done, not Mum’s. She said it was because she loved her room and didn’t want to change it and I was growing up and needed something different. I was young and I believed her. Now I know she could probably only afford to do one room, and by making mine so cool I might spend more time at home. It was around the time I started going out more on my own. Being a proper teenager. It’s kind of backfired because recently we spend most of our time at Jodie’s rather than here.
‘Thank fuck no exams tomorrow.’ Lizzie is stretched out on the sofa, Ange is lounging on the bed with me, on her side, all hips and curves, and Jodie’s sitting against the wall on the old beanbag I had when I was little. Coke cans and crisp wrappers are strewn across the coffee table.
‘But we’re nearly done,’ I say. ‘And then freedom.’
It’s not only the long hot summer holidays waiting for me this time, it’s a sense of a new future. Even though Ange and I are staying at KEGS for sixth form, it’s still going to be like going somewhere new. Different rules and freedoms. Being above everyone else. Crossing a new boundary. Another step towards the adult world. It makes me think of Saturday night. I crossed a boundary then. In some ways, staying at KEGS feels a bit lame, but the college is too far and our A-level pass rate is high.
‘Swimming tomorrow?’ Ange says. ‘We should train even if we don’t have any proper meets coming up.’
‘It’s so lame they won’t let us race during exams.’
My phone pings. Courtney. Again. Do I want to meet up tonight?
‘Him again?’ Lizzie asks, and I nod, chewing my bottom lip, trying to think how to respond.
The lethargy in the group evaporates and I’m sure Angela purrs. We’re on heat all the time. Sex is everywhere in the summer, and we’re like dogs waking up to it, sniffing it in the air. We’re nearly adult. Sex is part of that. It’s what adult is in many ways. I hadn’t wanted to do it with Courtney on Saturday, but I had wanted to do it, and I get a strange thrill remembering the feeling of him inside me and the sounds he made when he came, and it all seemed so different to the things we’d done before, even though I liked that stuff better. I spend so much time thinking about sex. Just not sex with Courtney. Sex with him.
‘He loves you, he wants to kiss you …’ Ange mocks.
‘Oh, shut up.’
‘When are you going to do it again?’ Lizzie says, blunt. She’s always so direct. ‘It’s better the second time.’
‘Like you’d know,’ Ange says.
‘Better than you.’
It’s probably true. Lizzie is a year older and is on the pill. Ange figures it’s only to regulate her periods, but at Christmas when Lizzie went out with Chris or whatever his name was for a couple of months, she swore blind they’d done it. She went into pretty graphic detail, and Lizzie isn’t a liar. Maybe I should talk to her about what pill she’s on. Just in case. Not that I’m worried. My period is due soon and my boobs are getting sore like they always do, so I’m sure it’s fine.
‘I can’t see him tonight. My mum won’t let me out in the week while the exams are on.’
‘Your mum never wants to let you out past eight,’ Ange says. ‘Like primary school.’
‘She’s got better,’ I answer. It’s true, she has. And as much as she drives me mad, I still have pangs of loyalty to her. It’s always been just us and now I’m growing up and abandoning her. I don’t mind slagging her off myself but it bothers me when Ange does it.
‘Ava!’ The voice sounds distant through the door but instantly recognisable.
‘Jesus, what is she, psychic?’ Jodie says and smiles. It’s not malicious like Ange was. She gets it. Weird mums club.
‘Ava! Can you come down here for a second?’
I groan and roll my eyes as if this is the biggest pain in the arse, but actually I’m pleased to get off the topic of Courtney. I know I’m not behaving as they expect so I’m trying to cover my tracks. I made some comment to Ange at lunch about him being needy, so while I’m out of the room she can share that snippet with the others. We’re best friends. We talk about each other almost as much as we talk to each other. MyBitches. Sometimes the WhatsApp group name is too true. The group is like a hub, but then we splinter off to discuss the things one of the others says that pisses us off.
As I slouch down the stairs I wonder if boys’ friendships are the same as girls’. Do they give a shit about the minutiae – a look or comment or a pound of weight or two put on – the stuff we so obsess about and judge each other on? I don’t think so. I don’t think they have the same high expectations of eac
h other that girls do. We demand everything of each other and it’s impossible to deliver.
Still, when it comes to the crunch we may be bitchy at times, but we have each other’s backs.
‘Did you knock this off?’ She’s standing by the hall table holding a broken photo – it’s a picture of the two of us from a few years ago. Alton Towers? Marilyn took it, I think. The glass is smashed in the frame.
‘Nope.’ I’d forgotten it was even there.
‘What about the other one?’
‘What other one?’ She looks angry, her soft, doughy face pinched and tight, and I feel suddenly defensive. She never gets angry. Disappointed and hurt and all that shit, but rarely angry. My loyalty of moments ago fades.
‘There was another picture here. Of you. Your first day of Year Eight. It’s gone.’
‘You must have moved it.’ I don’t know what the big deal is. They’re just old photos.
‘I didn’t,’ she snaps.
‘Well it’s nothing to do with me!’ I bite back; it doesn’t take much to light the touchpaper between us.
‘What about your friends? Could they have done it? By accident? Maybe thrown the other one away?’
‘No. They’d have said. They’re not idiots.’
She’s looking down at our younger faces through the broken glass as if this is some major deal.
‘Can I go now?’ I’m surly. All my guilt, the sex, him, bubbling out in moodiness. He tells me she’s too clingy. She should let me be free. He’s right. He understands me. She wants me to stay a little girl.
‘If it was you, tell me. I won’t be angry.’
And there it is. The pleading tone along with the pathetic facial expression that makes all the fine lines on her forehead and around her mouth crease and deepen.
‘For God’s sake!’ I explode, as if she’s accused me of stealing or something. My jaw tightens as rage surges through me. My fingers curl into claws. I feel more animal than human. ‘I’ve already told you! No! Anyway, they’re just stupid old photos, so who cares! Maybe it’s a poltergeist or something!’ I don’t wait for her response but turn and stomp back up the stairs.
‘Oh, and my exams went fine – thank you for asking!’ I send the words down to her with enough venom to make them poison arrows in the heart and leave her there, clinging to the old photo frame. Maybe that’s why I’m so angry. She misses those days. I know she does. And I do too. Life was simpler then, with no tits and no sex and no becoming something new, but I can’t help growing up – I want to grow up – and she needs to let me get on with it.
‘Everything okay?’ Ange asks when I close the bedroom door firmly behind me.
‘Yeah. Exam stuff. You know.’ I force a smile. It’s a lie, and I have a feeling Jodie knows it because as I pass her she flashes me a sympathetic look the others can’t see. Weird mums club. That, or they all heard me shouting.
‘Jodie was telling us how she likes old men.’ Lizzie snorts as I flop on my bed. ‘So gross.’
‘I said older, not old.’
‘I don’t think it’s gross.’ I try to sound nonchalant. ‘A lot of older guys are hot.’
‘I don’t think she means like thirty.’
‘Neither do I. Brad Pitt’s still hot and he’s fifty or something.’
‘I don’t care what you say,’ Jodie lets their mocking disgust wash over her. ‘It’s true. Older men have something.’
‘Experience,’ Lizzie says and giggles. ‘And cash.’
‘Your dad’s pretty hot, Lizzie.’ Jodie leans forward, enjoying the conversation. ‘How old is he? Forty-four? Forty-five?’
‘God, you’re disgusting!’ Lizzie shrieks.
‘He’s in shape though.’ Jodie wiggles an eyebrow. ‘I bet he looks good naked!’
Lizzie looks so appalled we all lose it and soon we’re trying to outgross each other with how Jodie could fuck Lizzie’s dad until our sides ache with the kind of laughter that makes your eyes water and your breath catch. We’re laughing so hard I forget to text Courtney back and I don’t care. I don’t need anyone but these girls. MyBitches. The Fabulous Four.
13
LISA
This has not been my day.
The thought is so comical I let out a snort of a hysterical giggle. It’s the kind of thing the old me would say. Before all this. Before Daniel. Back when I was funny. The laugh turns to a choked sob and although it’s still hot, I pull my duvet up to my chin like a child scared in the night.
You and me together, stealing into the night.
Is that a deal, is that a deal? We can make it all right.
Round and round in my head all day.
There was no respite at work either. Marilyn was off sick with one of her migraines and didn’t text back when I checked on her, which left me with more unease – something’s going on with her she’s not telling me about – and then Julia had gone out this afternoon for a first client meeting and come back smug and flushed and with cakes for everyone. It made me think of the money again and I missed Marilyn.
I had a meeting with Simon to finalise some job specifications, and found myself saying yes to having dinner with him when Ava’s exams are over, because I was too weak – too weak at the knees – to say no. It was easier to say yes. Less confrontational. That’s what I told myself. It was easier. It’s not true though. I said yes because I wanted to. Because I’m lonely. Because he makes me throb in ways I thought were lost to memory. Because being near him is like peeling back layers of delicate crepe paper wrapped around a treasure you’ve packed away somewhere to keep safe and forgotten about.
Alive. He makes me feel alive again.
But I got home and there was the broken picture and the missing photo and my first thought was That will teach me to try to be happy and my stomach cramped in that way from then. Sharp, acid pains as if two sides of my gut have been glued together and someone is trying to tear them apart again. I’d had to wait five minutes, doubled over, before I could call Ava down because I could barely breathe, let alone speak.
Above me, in the grey of the night, the ceiling swirls like dangerous eddies in a river. I want it to suck me up and drown me and break me into nothing.
It wasn’t Ava or her friends who smashed the picture of us and took the other of her. After I confronted her and she stormed upstairs, I feverishly searched all the bags the girls had dumped in the kitchen, no doubt while ransacking the cupboards for snacks. There was no glass, no picture frame, nothing. Neither did I find anything in the kitchen bin or the larger ones in the garden. I even forced myself to check the recycling container where I’d thrown the not-Peter Rabbit. Though I knew it had been emptied days ago, I still half-expected to see the sodden, dirty toy looking balefully back up at me. He wasn’t there. Neither was any hastily hidden evidence of broken or stolen pictures.
Drive away with me, drive away, baby, let’s take flight …
Maybe I am going mad.
When the girls were leaving – all tight clothing, nothing hidden there – I asked Jodie if she wanted to stay for tea. She’s the one I know least, and although she’s older I didn’t like the thought of her going back to an empty house and a microwave meal. Also I didn’t want to fight with Ava any more. I thought maybe my edginess was what was making her moody and if I showed willing with her friends she’d calm down. But as it was Jodie scurried out fast, head down, and I felt worse about whatever Ava must have been saying about me.
I made us dinner, my hands on autopilot and my mind numb, but my gaze kept stealing off down the corridor to the empty spaces on the hall table and so we sat in near silence, her still rankled at my accusation, and me in the grip of some paranoid fear. It was, in the end, a relief when Ava took her plate and went to the sitting room to watch something on MTV and I was left to sit staring at my own reflection in the kitchen windows.
One photo missing, one broken. Was one left broken to draw attention to the missing one? Is it a message of some kind? A picture of my little
girl taken, and the one of the two of us looking happy, smashed. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out what that means, does it?
Ava. My baby. I must keep her safe.
My breath is hot and sour against the covers as I try to stay the right side of hysteria. I checked all the doors and windows. There was no sign of anyone breaking in. The kitchen door was locked. How could someone have got in and out without leaving a trace?
Maybe it was Ava. The thought is a tiny buoy to cling to in the dark ocean of fear. Maybe the evidence is hidden in her room somewhere. It’s the only place I haven’t been able to search. Maybe it was Ava, I repeat over and over but I’m not convincing myself. I keep seeing her face on the stairs. She was confused. She didn’t know what I was talking about.
My eyes burn, tired, despite my racing mind. They want to close, to rest, to sleep, but I can’t allow it. I dread the dreams. I can’t face Daniel, not tonight.
And I know he’ll come, because I can’t let him go. How can I ever let him go?
You have to learn to live in the present. Focus on every day. On Ava.
I thought it was crazy bullshit the first time a therapist said it to me, and I’ve tried, God knows I’ve tried, but it remains impossible. The past is my shadow, always there, clinging to me.
Maybe I should ring Alison. She’d listen to me. Listen to what? my inner voice sneers. I have an odd feeling? A photo has gone missing? I heard a song on the radio? I know what she’d say. I’ve rung her too many times recently. She probably thinks I’m crazy. It’s only my imagination. Take deep breaths. Let it go. I should cancel dinner with Simon. Maybe then all this will stop. It was stupid to think I could go on a date. I should know better.
I’m withdrawing, a snail pulling back into its shell.
We’re gonna live wild and free, on the road, you and me,