Jess frowned and started to swing her chair away so that her back was to Tilly, but Tilly jumped up and gaily clapped her hands together before seizing the back of Jess’s chair and spinning it.
“Oi, d’you still want to be able to do the things I can?”
Jess planted her feet on the floor so that she stayed still, checking TillyTilly’s expression to see if she was serious.
“Yeah,” she breathed, trying to work out whether this would mean that she too wasn’t going to be really really there anymore. That might not be so good.
“Only for a little, little while,” TillyTilly added, seeing Jess’s hesitation.
“Will it hurt?”
TillyTilly laughed.
“DUH! Of course not! This is what’ll happen: you’ll be me for a little bit, Jessy, and I’m going to be you!”
Jess giggled at the idea, wondering if her parents would notice.
“OK!”
TillyTilly crossed to the other side of the room and started jogging up and down on the spot, her plaits bobbing as she chuckled. Jess was overtaken by a wave of mirth, and had to press both hands over her mouth so that she didn’t laugh too loudly— her parents were now talking quietly downstairs. Oh, her stomach was hurting, and her eyes were watering; she needed to stop laughing and breathe a little, but she just couldn’t. She didn’t even know what was so funny.
“TillyTilly—what’re you going to do?” she managed to ask, and began to repeat her question when there was no reply, but stopped short when Tilly, still laughing, rippled towards her, her dress, ribbons and hair yanked backwards by some chill tunnel of billowing air.
It happened in the gap between the seconds. Realising that they were about to collide, Jess, mouth open in a silent yell of alarm, tried to step aside. But Tilly had already grabbed her by the wrists, spinning her around in a manic, icy dance, then—
hop,
skip,
jumped inside her,
and Jess, screaming now,
(YOU SAID IT WOULDN’T HURT!)
had changed her mind, and she
didn’t
want to be at all like TillyTilly. It was so cold inside that it was like heat, like the searing of the coal, and there was no TillyTilly, just this bursting, bubbling hotness, and, and, she couldn’t let this flame stay inside her because
it had to be put out—
But Jess wasn’t
there
anymore.
She was vaguely aware that she was still in the room, but it was now a frightening place: too big and broad a space, too full, sandwiching her between solids and colour. She felt as if she were—
being flung
, scattered in steady handfuls, every part of her literally thrown into things. She could sense the edges, the corners of her desk, the unyielding lines of her wardrobe.
Stunned, she recalled enough of herself to remember that she wanted, needed, to be Jess again. She had to get Tilly to swap back, she had to force herself to concentrate. It was difficult, like squeezing herself into box after brightly coloured box, each one a little smaller, until she was properly
here
and
now
, with Tilly who was now Jess. Jess’s mum was in the room now, talking to Tilly-who-was-Jess, saying,
What’s the matter, why did you scream?
She had to concentrate, she was being poured out, like a thin, sweet liquid that stuck to every surface it encountered . . .
Tilly-who-was-Jess was in the bed now, her face turned away from Jess’s mum because she was having trouble working Jess’s face; it was as if she found Jess’s features—her lips, her eyelids— too heavy, and the expressions came out too exaggerated and stiff; one eye seemed set in a permanent wink while the other was opened wide, staring.
Sorry, I was tired and I fell asleep, but I
had a bad dream, I’m all right now,
Tilly-who-was-Jess said, in a slow, funny voice. Her eyes flicked upwards, and Jess-whowasn’t-Jess sensed that Tilly had seen her, floating near the ceiling, because then she jerked the covers up over her head and wriggled down deeper in the bed.
(Oh no you don’t.)
Jess’s mum hesitated in the doorway, a strange expression crossing her face before she shrugged and went back downstairs.
Jess-who-wasn’t-Jess sank herself to bed level and pushed hard at the slope of Tilly’s shoulder through the covers, falling back stunned at the contact so that she was left bobbing in midair again. Tilly-who-was-Jess
screamed
at her touch, screamed and screamed and screamed as if she couldn’t help it. Jess could feel that she was scared, and distantly thought that it was odd for TillyTilly to be scared of her.
Jess-who-wasn’t-Jess watched her mother storm up the stairs, fly into the bedroom and drag her daughter right out of the bed. Her father was close behind her; both of them were arguing at the tops of their voices.
Tilly-who-was-Jess was being shaken. She didn’t stop screaming, though. It was as if the touch from above had opened a floodgate of sound in her.
Shake, shake, SHAKE.
The little girl’s head and legs bobbed alarmingly in every direction, as if she were some squalling rag doll. Tilly-who-was-Jess kept right on shrieking—
“Why are you SCREAMING?”
“Sarah, she’s hysterical, for God’s sake!” Jess’s dad strove to pull his wife away from his daughter, but some kind of last straw seemed to have snapped for Sarah.
“Shut up! Shut up! SHUT UP!” she snarled.
It was difficult to tell who she was shouting at; Jess-whowasn’t-Jess assumed that it must be the other Jess, but Sarah’s eyes were on Daniel. He flinched at the rawness of the sound, and in that second, Sarah began pulling the still-screaming Jessamy downstairs to the basement. They did not notice that Jess-who-wasn’t-Jess was desperately trying to wedge herself between them and into her mother’s arms.
“So you want to scream! Good, fine! Scream in there!” Sarah banged hard on the locked basement door in response to the frequent thumping and kicking noises coming from inside. Tilly-who-was-Jess was still screeching at the top of her voice.
“Oh, shit, shit, SHIT!” Sarah’s voice cracked as she cradled her wrist, which she had knocked whilst slamming the door. Jess-who-wasn’t-Jess slithered like a whisper over her skin, but she didn’t notice. Jess’s father, who was sitting on the bare steps leading down to the basement with his head in his hands, looked up distractedly. (
See me? Can you?)
Sarah was shaking her wrist out, her teeth gritted.
Jess felt the hairs on the back of Daniel’s neck rise as, from inside the basement, Tilly-who-was-Jess whispered, “
Daddy
.” His brow knitted in surprise, and they both heard.
“Sarah, let her out. You’ve made your point.”
“Dadddyyyy!” Tilly-who-was-Jess was screaming now. “Daddy
Daddy Daddy Daddy!
”
Sarah looked at him coolly.
“She hasn’t finished her tantrum,” she said. Then she leant against the wall and burst into tears, putting her hands over her face just a second after Jess and her father saw it crumple.
Daniel took off his glasses and fiddled with them awkwardly. He heaved a sigh and tipped his head back to stare at the bit of ceiling above him—Jess was weaving smoke patterns on it—that was actually the sitting-room floor, as if it would yield him a solution. From the basement, Tilly-who-was-Jess screamed on.
After a little while, Sarah rubbed at her face with both hands and looked at him. “I can’t do it,” she said, calmer now. “I can’t mother this girl. I try, but . . . I’m scared of her.”
Daniel held back his fringe so that he could better resettle his glasses, and raised his eyebrows at her.
Sarah gave a half laugh, exhaling hard.
“And then, and then I get angry with myself for being scared of her, and then I get angry with her for making me scared.”
She looked at him again, this time, it seemed, uncertainly.
Jess was inside the basement now, whirling around Tilly-who-was-Jess, threatening her with a touch.
(you will do more, more, more than scream, if I touch you just once)
and Tilly-who-was-Jess was prostrate on the floor with her hands over her head, her hands flopping at the wrists, her fingers splayed as she pawed at the dusty rug that was speckled with chipped plaster from the ceiling. Unsatisfied, but unsure how to approach her body when it looked so ugly and weak, Jess carefully gathered herself and settled in a mass on top of her old yellow high chair, by the box with silvered barbecue equipment peeking out of it.
Outside the basement, she heard her father ask, “What are you actually scared of?”
Jess knew when Sarah had dropped to her knees on the floor, pressing her ear to the basement door. She knew when Sarah turned to face Daniel again, leaning her back against the door. Jess knew everything. Everything was tearing her apart.
“I don’t
know
what I’m scared of! That’s why it doesn’t make sense, it’s stupid! I . . . I just feel like . . . like I should know her, but I don’t know anything. She’s not like me at all. I don’t think she’s like you, either. I can’t even tell who this girl is—”
“So you lock her in the basement.”
Sarah stood and folded her arms across her chest in a defensive gesture, but her next words were gentle. “Look, I don’t want to fight about this anymore.”
Daniel nodded. His tiredness was tangible to Jess. It tasted . . . brown.
Jess-who-wasn’t-Jess realised that something had changed. Tilly-who-was-Jess had gone quiet. She wobbled across the basement, walking so exaggeratedly that she touched her heel to the floor before putting her foot down, and with excruciating concentration on her face, began to snatch at the wisps of Jess-whowasn’t-Jess.
The monstrosity of a pink T-shirt and jeans on a thin little body that wasn’t working properly. A spatula with a wooden handle fell out of the barbecue box as Tilly-who-was-Jess’s heavy hand disturbed it. She was
swiping
as if at a fly, and it was clear that she couldn’t actually see. She was looking, but she couldn’t see. She didn’t seem to care; her gaze was fixed and serene as she alternately shuffled and tiptoed along the room as if compelled by some dragging magnet. Tilly was going to touch Jess.
Despite her most tearing, pulling effort, Jess couldn’t help but gather up like a ball of wool into Tilly’s arms.
Tilly-who-was-Jess looked blindly around the room with Jess’s eyes, and smiled.
(I’ll swap back now. I’m sorry.)
But all Jess could do once she was herself again, and in one place, and whole, was scream. It wasn’t proper screaming, but the result of a kind of pressure on her lungs so that she made a piercing noise like steam whistling out.
She felt bruised all over, but, steadily, she rubbed her hands together, wishing that she could get them so soft with sweat that the skin would come away all by itself, in gentle blood, the way tissue paper split and sagged in water.
(Dear God, please take my skin, take my feet, and my hips, because
she’s been in them and spoiled them and made them not work.)
Then she knelt down and prayed to be free from TillyTilly.
When Jess came out of the basement, she didn’t cry. She had no tear marks on her face, and was completely dry-eyed. She was all right. When she looked up at Sarah, she felt slightly bemused, without knowing why. It was a feeling of using borrowed eyes that she would soon have to return—her mother looked prettier, and more distinct. There was beauty in the unravelling wool coming from the shoulder of her grey jumper. She tried to step back and look some more, but Sarah immediately caught her up in a hug.
“Are you OK, Jess? Yeah? I’m sorry that I had to do that.”
Jess stood stiffly for a few moments in Sarah’s embrace, then her arms timidly crept around her mother. She was looking at her father over Sarah’s shoulder, and his encouraging smile in her direction was returned with a solemn one. She had to reassure him, so that he knew the difference between her and Tilly.
Later in the evening, when Jess and her father were sprawled on the sofa in the flickering darkness of the living room watching one of Jess’s SuperTed tapes, Jess poked at her pink fluffy slippers with her toes, then looked up at her father.
“Daddy?”
She’d thought, when they’d heard Tilly screaming it in the basement, that maybe he’d flinch or stir uneasily the next time she said it to him, but to her relief he smiled and flicked her nose affectionately.
“That’s meee . . .”
“I don’t want to be in Year Five.”
She was greatly surprised by her father’s response. He pulled her, elbows and all, into a hug, and whispered into her hair, “I know.”
FIFTEEN
“Jess, tell me a secret,” Colin McKenzie cajoled.
Sitting on the low, red-cushioned chair opposite him, Jess tried hard to think of a secret that wasn’t TillyTilly. She thoughtfully cast her eyes over the low table scattered with papers that stood a little away from them, then at the tiny, silver-framed and blue-tinted landscapes ranged across the cream wallpaper of his office. Her mother, sitting beside her, was not as overly attentive as she had been on the first session. She was scribbling away on her notepad, maybe even sneaking a glance at her watch every now and again.
“I get scared a lot,” Jess said, finally. She wasn’t sure whether that counted as a secret, but she hadn’t really mentioned it yet.
“A lot?” Dr. McKenzie probed, offering her a Jelly Baby with a slight smile, as if they both knew that it was also an excuse for him to have another one. It made sense: Shivs must have inherited her sweet tooth from someone. Jess shook her head, then drew in a breath and peered sideways at her mother, who was still writing industriously, apparently absorbed. It made her feel better that her mother was trying her best to make her feel that she could talk.
“I’m scared of everything—well, most things, I think. I’m always scared, for no reason. Sometimes I forget about it, but it’s still there, because then something happens and I remember.”
Sarah suddenly seemed to be paying attention. Though she hadn’t looked up from the pad, her pen had stopped moving, and there was a new stillness about her.