I hope Craig’s in tomorrow and that he talks to me again. If he does I need to make the most of it this time and show him I like him. Maybe he’ll ask me out on a date and take me somewhere nice, just the two of us.
The week drags though and he’s barely there at all. I take the plunge on Thursday and send a friend request on Facebook during study time. We’re not supposed to use the Internet in the sixth-form centre during study periods but nobody else takes any notice of the rule so I don’t see why I should. I wait for him to add me, fidgeting in my
chair, clicking the mouse every couple of seconds for the entire forty minutes, forty minutes which should have been spent trying to do my Physics homework. Our parents made us take these stupid subjects and I can’t follow a word of it. Nothing.
Nada
. It goes through my head like sand through a sieve and I know the teacher can see it too. I haven’t answered a single question right yet. I watch Rebecca struggling to understand, the concentration on her face makes her look odder than ever, and I want to scream at them that we hate it, that we
didn’t want to do it and that he made us. Instead I copy someone else’s answers and keep my fingers crossed the teacher will keep on letting me get away with it if I smile nicely and hand my homework in on time.
Every lesson is like that. What do Rebecca and I want with Maths and Physics and Chemistry? He chose our subjects, he thought they posed the fewest risks, and guessed we wouldn’t understand a thing. We might as well have been studying Martian. He gets a kick out of proving we’re useless. Him and his poxy Theology degree from Cambridge, which as far as I can tell has been the high point of his life so far. Ever since then he’s been chasing greatness, trying to prove he deserves the big time, but the Bishop doesn’t rate him, I guess, despite the hours he spends licking his boots, and the rest of his life has been a ride on the helter-skelter of anticlimax. He should face facts: we’re not going to be brain surgeons or scientists or Nobel Prize winners. Rebecca should be doing English,
every chance she gets she’s in the library like some timid little mouse, burrowing into a book,
and I could have done something fun like Photography or Drama. Daisy does both and laughs when she sees me trailing off to Chemistry with all the geeks, as she calls them. I’ve a good mind to swap classes, he would never know, not if I was clever, and I’d get to have a bit more fun. But Craig is in Physics, that is if he’s in at all, and Maths too. Daisy told me he wants to go to uni and that he got all As in his GCSEs. Never judge a book by its cover, Granny used to say. Looks like she was right there. But she’d disapprove of me hanging around, moping about Craig. She was always on about how we should make something of ourselves, not just get married and have kids, but do something proper, something to make her proud. Never rely on a man, she said. Silly old thing. We had fun with Granny though, until our parents found out and that was that.
After
After he found out about my job delivering papers, after he stole my money and beat me black and blue, I didn’t know what more I could do. He’d meant to put me back in my place and to prove again that he was the king and I a mere minion. Hephzi didn’t agree. She told me to get out, and to do it right then and there.
It’s the only way, Reb
, she says.
Like I’ve always said, we’ve got to get out. Please hurry though, don’t wait, you have to hurry because there isn’t time to spare
.
I promise we’ll go together this time, you and me, we’ll go together and be free
.
At last she’d begun to talk to me properly, not just little words here and there. She was back to making me laugh and acting the fool and I was glad to have her near. It had been so long since her funeral, so long since they’d put her in that box and piled earth on her head. Three whole months without her. And now that she was really here, with me whether I called her or not, it made the minutes I spent in the vicarage softer, almost bearable. But she was angry too; she thought people should know what had happened and that I ought to tell.
I didn’t want to die, Reb!
she tells me, crying, her head nestled beside mine on the pillow, just like when we were little.
Why didn’t they care?
she asks, and I have no answer good enough, my own mistakes clanging loud in my ears like the Sunday church bells. Her life had just been getting interesting, she said. She and Craig had made
plans. She wanted to know why no one was bothered enough to find out the truth, why Craig didn’t at least come to our window and call.
I’d given up asking those questions long ago. When we were little I’d thought about pasting a sign on Hephzi’s back for people to see as we tramped up the road.
Help us!
it would say.
Quick!
But I knew better than to bother, that the ink would be trick and would disappear on drying; no matter how fast I re-wrote the letters they would only melt away, dissolving like snow on water.
There had been a chance, just one. I don’t know what happened, that was time that I lost, but Hephzi says I had a fit when he hit me too hard at the top of the stairs and Mrs Sparks walked in and there I was writhing on the hall floor, jerking and twisting, spinning like a top. Before he could say the words ‘devil’ or ‘possession’ or strike up a prayer, she was on the phone for an ambulance – cool as a cucumber, Hephzi said later. I just remember waking up in the hospital and staring up at the lights. Whether it was heaven or not, I wasn’t sure, but I was almost hoping it would be, if Hephzi was there too.
A nurse came in.
‘Awake at last! What on earth have you been up to?
What a pickle you’re in.’ I read her lips. This was before my hearing aids and the sound of the world was just a faint sigh.
Of course I didn’t answer. But I felt that there was some sort of chance. She had something fine in her eyes.
She took my temperature and wrapped a tight band around my arm, pumping it up, then letting it down.
‘How about a drink?’ she asked and I nodded and sipped through a straw.
‘The doctor’ll be round soon. But don’t worry, you’re safe.’ She smoothed the hair from my forehead and that touch was so cool that I cried.
‘Hey, hey!’ she soothed. ‘It’s all OK. You’ll be fine. We mend people here! We don’t want tears.’ And then, almost as I opened my mouth to speak, she brought the sledgehammer down.
‘Your dad’s just outside. He’s been ever so worried. Well, haven’t we all? But I think you’ll be good as new, you’re a strong little thing, aren’t you? A proper little fighter. I’ll tell him he can come in, shall I, poppet?’ Off she went with a smile and in came The Father.
‘Don’t say a word,’ he breathed into my face, ‘or they’ll take you away.’
If they took me away I’d never see Granny or my sister again, so I sewed my mouth shut.
He didn’t leave me after that. He sat and held the hand of the arm that wasn’t in plaster up to my elbow and his nail dug a groove in my palm.
There was an answer for every question, an excuse for every word. I’d been mucking about and fallen down the stairs. (
You know, foolish horse play, they’ve been told to be careful, many a time.
) He didn’t mention that he’d hit me at the top or describe how I’d tumbled from stair to stair like the funny plastic Slinky toy we played with at Granny’s.
The day they let me go, sound booming everywhere around me now that I had the screws and the boxes to allow me to hear, he bought that nurse flowers and chocolates and a card. He held both her hands and she flushed pink as petals on a new summer rose.
That was when I was nine.
Most of all Hephzi wanted revenge. So far I didn’t dare spill her secret but maybe one day, if my soul ever found a place to breathe, I would.
As for leaving, well, how could I? I had no job, no money and still no idea if they’d fall for the summer-school plan. I was going to have to try again with The Mother but when I spoke, she pretended not to hear.
Hephzi could get The Mother to do almost anything. I don’t mean she could get her to set us free, unless the college debacle counts, or that she could make her call off The Father when he’d flipped. But The Mother would do other stuff if Hephzi nagged. Mainly she could get her to lie to him and cover for her. That’s how Hephzi managed to see Craig; if it hadn’t been for The Mother pretending not to
notice anything, then maybe my sister would still be alive. I’m sure she knew Hephzi was sneaking out, I’m sure she rumbled her and turned her vacant eyes the other way because she was afraid of what Hephzi might do or say, like she’s afraid of him. People are. Both of them have this way of looking at you which makes you wish you were invisible. Hephzi would do it to me all the time. If I disagreed with her or warned her or advised her she’d fix me with that stare, that
curled lip, which demanded,
Who are you to tell me anything?
Because I had warned her. Lots of times. When I’d found out about what she’d been doing with Craig I’d told her she was mad, asking for trouble and was bound to get found out, but she’d sneered and snarled until I climbed back into my box. I’d told her once, after one of her escapades with Craig, that it made her just like him.
‘What do you mean?’ She’d stared at me, wide-eyed. Little Miss Innocent.
‘When you bully me, when you won’t listen to me. When you treat me like I’m a nobody. That’s just like HIM.’ I mouthed the final word at her as loud as I could in the night-time of our room, silently shouting to be heard.
‘I’m not like that! Don’t say that, Reb!’ She cried and said she was sorry, but I knew she wouldn’t be able to help herself. Hephzi thought she’d learnt how to survive.
Even though I’d posted the application I knew the summer-school idea would have to go. It had been stupid to even think it was a possibility.
What are you going to do, then?
asks Hephzi, nudging me again. I tried to ignore her when she kept on and on at me but she was getting louder all the time.
‘I don’t know,’ I told her, trying to be firm. ‘Just be quiet and let me think.’
At this rate you’ll be leaving in a shitty cardboard box, just like me.
I took a deep breath and thought about it again. It couldn’t be that hard, I reasoned. All I’d need to do was pack a bag, raid The Parents’ wallets and head for the town. From there I could take a train or a bus and lose myself in some city far away. If they came looking for me I’d just run again, and anyway, it would probably be more trouble than it was worth for them to hunt me down. He could simply dress himself in his grief and sorrow as he’d done before, suck up the condolences of the village and go about his business as usual. The Mother could be his whipping boy for a change, it would serve her right. And then maybe when I was free and safe I could let the truth out. That would show them.
But how would I live? It wouldn’t be safe. And who would employ me? I had no skills or talents and who would want to look at me, day after day? I had nothing to offer.
Night after night these thoughts kept me awake, winding in my sheets. I hid under the blanket, playing invisible, while I planned and plotted, plotted and planned. Eventually I’d go to sleep and then the nightmares would begin.
The sound of the crying in the wall was getting louder too, just like Hephzi. The crying has been driving me crazy for years, since I was thirteen, but now all three of them are at it. I wished they’d be quiet, just for one single night.
In the morning when I awoke everything cleared again. I could see that none of my plans was possible; the shadowy light of the vicarage turned the future back to black. I would never trick them. Wherever I ran to they would find me. And so they knew that I would stay.
It was a Friday in April and almost the Easter holidays. I was dreading the break; for all I hated college, I hated the vicarage more. As usual I’d been keeping my head down, being careful not to sit beside anyone or to make myself known. Period six was Maths and my teacher was some new supply, covering for nice Mr Connor, who’d gone off sick. The supply teacher, Miss Peters, was what you would call officious; you could tell she thought we should count ourselves lucky to be in her esteemed presence by the way she mocked people who got answers wrong, as if it was all so simple and we were all so thick. She called on me today for answers again, having acquired some notion that I needed to speak up in class, as if ritual humiliation were character building. Usually I had some idea of an answer which I could hazard, but not today. In fact I hadn’t been listening at all, I dozed and daydreamed in my chair, thinking of
anything but the formula which glared at me, black and angry, from the whiteboard. And
so when she picked on me I couldn’t even manage a guess. I felt them all waiting, the air in the room thickening with expectation. My cheeks began to glow and I shrank into my jacket as I heard the sniggers start. I started to hum softly, hunching over my textbook; I didn’t need to hear the laughter and the taunts or feel the pellets of paper fired at my back to know they were enjoying my discomfort. Eventually Miss Peters cleared her throat and got on with the lesson, but the tense edge to her voice didn’t slacken and I knew she’d keep me behind. My lack of co-operation, she told me at the end of the class, was making her extremely frustrated. She saw no reason why I couldn’t at least try to make an effort like the rest of the class. She wasn’t going to pander to me and give me special treatment, either I bucked up or she would be
contacting my parents and would have to ask them in for a discussion of my progress. She stepped back, startled when I interrupted, my voice loud with sudden urgency.
‘No. Please don’t do that. I’ll do better. Please.’
For the first time I met her eye. She gazed levelly back.
‘What exactly is wrong with you, Rebecca?’
Her voice was soft and I understood at once what she was asking. She wanted to know all the gory details, to be let in on the secrets of my family and my face; for some reason she thought the fact that she was my teacher gave her the right to stare at me like I was an exhibit in a freak show. I picked up my bag, swallowing everything I wanted to say and had been waiting to say for years. Turning to go, I paused.