Outside a car horn beeps impatiently at ten-second intervals. The next-door neighbour’s kids are fighting in the garden. I hear her shout: ‘Do it, Rachel. NOW.’
Leaving the kitchen to go outside, I pick up the watering can, fill it with the hose and take it to my patch of the garden. There are sunflowers and peonies and irises, my lovely irises. The flowers provide the only flash of colour in an otherwise barren space. And they are mine, I think with pride. They exist and stand tall because of the care and attention I give them every day. Niamh must be watching me admiring them because I hear her bellow, so loud the neighbours must hear too, ‘The chairs, Rachel, leave the bloody flowers alone for once and do something useful.’
I ignore her, concentrating instead on the flow of the water to the plants. There’s a certain rhythm to be found in it. You do it slowly and methodically, letting the water sink in a little before giving them some more, watching as the light-brown soil turns dark and moist. I’m almost finished when I hear footsteps on the dry grass and then the watering can is being yanked out of my hand.
‘What is it with you?’ she asks too close to my face. ‘Why are you doing this?’
‘They’re thirsty, you of all people should understand that.’
Her hands are still holding the watering can but so are mine. There’s something in the air today, in the heat of the sun, that emboldens me. That’s when it occurs to me the easiest way to win is to do the unexpected. So I pull hard and wait for her to use all her force to pull it off me. When she does I let go of it completely and she’s sent flying back on to the grass. The water from the can sloshes over her new teal-blue sundress.
‘You little bitch.’
I leave her lying on the ground, swearing and shouting to herself, the adrenalin pulsing through me. Once inside I head to my room and switch on the radio. It’s the Spice Girls, ‘Who Do You Think You Are?’ I’m not a fan but I turn the volume up to drown out Niamh’s voice and the whirring in my head. I grab my
More!
magazine from the floor. Leonardo DiCaprio is on the front, a snatched photograph of him walking on a beach with a girl with honey hair and model-long legs. I’m looking at my own legs, white and mottled, comparing them with the model’s, when the door swings open and Niamh comes charging towards me. She rips the magazine from my hands, grabs hold of my arm and wrenches it so hard I feel it tug on the socket.
‘I asked you to do one fucking thing … one thing and you couldn’t even do that. All morning I’ve been working to get everything ready and you … you go out and water the fucking plants. She’s not even here and you’ve spoilt it all, totally spoilt it, just like you spoil everything.’ Our noses are almost touching we’re so close. I reel back but my head hits the wall, there’s nowhere to go, I can’t create space between us. The vodka fumes from her breath are turning my stomach. ‘What’s the matter, lost for words are you?’ she says.
There’s a fly buzzing close to me. Half of the window is open but it keeps flinging itself at the glass making tiny little
dunk
sounds on impact before flying round the room again to gear up for another shot at freedom. Zzzzzz, the noise vibrates through my head. ZZZZZZ.
It’s easy to escape, so easy
.
All it has to do is go through the open window. But it keeps being fooled by the glass, by the trick of it.
Stupid, stupid fly.
‘Well,’ she says, shouting now, ‘Say something for fuck’s sake.’
I hear myself sigh. My head is turned away from her so I am looking out of the window when finally I speak.
‘I’ll do the chairs when I’m ready. Right now I’m not ready.’ My voice surprises me, so even and measured. I’m like a swan, pumped up and frantic below the surface but calm on top. But I’m troubled that I haven’t found the guts to look into her eyes and say it.
I need to face up to her. The adrenalin is making my shoulders tight, there is a heartbeat in my throat, my breaths are shallow. I have to look her in the eye, I can’t keep running away, avoiding confrontation forever.
Today is different
.
It takes sheer force of will to turn and square up to her. But when I do, when my eyes finally meet hers, I am surprised by what I find. It’s been so long since I saw her properly and studied her face. All this time I have been avoiding her, scared of confronting her, but the woman who is sitting before me is pitiful. All the disgust and bitterness she’s directed at me over the years, the withering looks and hard, empty stares seem to have set in her face. And she’s let her frustration with life eat away at her to the point where there’s little left. She’s only a shell. For a moment I think what it would have been like if she had smiled more, opened up, let me in. It could have been different. But not now. It’s too late. It’s all set in stone.
I watch as her eyes grow glassy. I think it’s anger and rage that are welling up inside her.
Then I see it. It’s such a surprising thing that everything freezes for a moment. A single tear slides down her face. And for a second, beautiful, warm, unexpected doubt ripples through me.
Maybe it doesn’t have to be like this after all.
I am still drunk on that thought when there’s a flash of heat on my face and the sound of a slap landing on my cheek breaks the silence. When I look at her again the tear has been wiped away and her cold empty eyes are looking through me. I fall back on the bed. There is a ringing in my ears. My rage is hotter than the sun outside. It is volcanic. And watching her march out of my room, I scream: ‘You will never do that again ever, I promise you.’
Half an hour or so later I hear the doorbell and Niamh is there before I even move from my bed to answer it. ‘The birthday girl,’ she shrills, a different person to the one who slapped me thirty minutes before. Those words, saccharine-sweet, float up the stairs and reach me. I feel the bile rising in my throat. I listen to her talking too much, too fast, her voice trying too hard. ‘Eighteen and all grown up. Look at you. You’re beautiful.’ It’s just creepy, the way she’s going on. There is no end and no beginning to her sentences, just babble. I wonder how many Pimm’s and vodkas she’s had already. ‘And since you are eighteen I thought you could have a special birthday drink, it’s only Pimm’s, not that your dad would approve.’
You tell her your birthday isn’t until tomorrow. ‘I’m still seventeen today, Niamh.’
‘Twice the celebration then.’ She laughs like she’s said something hilarious. I hear your footsteps heavy on the wooden floors. You must be wearing something harder than flip-flops, I think. And a dress too? Have you made an effort for the occasion? There is laughter underneath me now. Yours is melodic, hers is louder and more manic. I imagine Niamh is pouring you a Pimm’s. A chink of glasses. Collusion. Cheers, you must be saying, although I don’t hear that. Aren’t you going to ask where I am? Have you even noticed I’m not there?
I lie on my bed and push my face into the pillow so I feel the cold of it on my skin, against my burning cheek. When I sit up I look at the photos on my wall. Me and you, you and me. On the pier, on the beach, up at Devil’s Dyke. At school camp in Shropshire, smiling in front of the lake which we thought was a happy place before Lucy Redfern went and drowned and it became creepy and dark. A shared past that binds us together. I get up and look at myself in the mirror. My left cheek is redder than the right but you can’t see her hand mark. It still stings. My eyes are red. It is anger, not tears, that makes them bloodshot. More laughter seeps up through the floorboards and penetrates my head. I stir. My body feels like it is twenty stone at that moment; it takes all my effort to heave myself from the bed. But I do. I am coming down to see you, to celebrate with you. It’s always just been the two of us. I won’t let Niamh get in the way.
She is fanning the flames of the barbecue, or trying to without much success. They are leaping out at her, licking her hands, caressing her face. ‘FUUck,’ she says in that posh gravelly voice of hers and she turns to look at me. I am a solid mass. My outline must be visible even through the smoke. But she looks through me, beyond me. I do not exist. Her face, distorted by the heat haze coming from the barbecue and the smoke, is crumpled and the mascara she wears religiously is melting on her eyes. She looks like she has just stepped out of hell.
Then I sense there is someone behind me.
‘Trust you to keep us waiting, Rach.’ You thrust a glass of Pimm’s in my hand. ‘Have this, I topped it up with vodka when she wasn’t looking. Aren’t you going to wish me happy birthday?’ You are wearing a short orange sundress with a halter neck and at the end of your tanned legs are brown wedges. You’ve painted your toes orange too. Your hair is tied back loosely in a ponytail so strands of it fall over your face.
‘You’re not eighteen yet.’
‘Two celebrations though, just like the Queen.’ You are repeating her words now.
‘You look nice,’ I say, trying to get that thought out of my head.
‘And you look …’ You take a step back to survey me, wobbling slightly which makes me think the Pimm’s has got to you already. I see myself as you see me: baggy linen trousers that are creased and out of shape, legs too fat to show off in a dress, pale skin translucent in the sun. ‘You look as good as you always do.’ I want to ask you what you mean by that,
as good as I always do
, because I always look fat, Clara. But you teeter off into the garden in your wedges to put the chairs out under Niamh’s gaze before I get a chance.
All afternoon the words spin in my head, weaving in and out of the recesses of my brain. I am rehearsing and refining arguments, everything I want to say to you and Niamh, but they stay there, inside my head. There is no opportunity for me to speak, no pause in the conversation for a third person to join in. The only time Niamh acknowledges me is when she thrusts a camera into my hands and demands I take a photograph of you and her smiling into the sun. Apart from that it’s just the two of you, talking and joking and drinking, and me the spectator up in the stands watching and listening.
The Pretenders are playing on the stereo (Niamh’s playlist) which sounds too heavy in the heat. I don’t drink my Pimm’s but my head is still throbbing. I focus on my sunflowers, faces raised to the sun, marvelling at their ability to stand tall in the searing heat.
You are on your third jug of Pimm’s when I slope off unnoticed. The sounds of the day are giving way to adult chat which drifts through the gardens of our street. The light is dying now; purple and orange have replaced the pale blue of the day. I go upstairs to my room, close my eyes and sink into the bed. My body is swallowed up by its softness. I sit there for a while, trying to read
One Hundred Years of Solitude
. It is my favourite book ever. I’ve read it twice before but even though I know the story I can’t concentrate on the words. All I can hear is your laughter mixing with Niamh’s, loud and raucous. You’re not used to drinking, Clara, not like this. I wonder if you’ll throw up. What a pleasant book end to Niamh’s party that would be. The alcohol has also had another, more worrying effect: you seem to be morphing into my mother. I think she is polluting you. If only I could protect you from her.
I want to close my window to block you out but there’s no air as it is, so I’m forced to listen. I keep telling myself I don’t care if you’re having fun without me but finally my curiosity wins and I find myself peeking out from behind my curtain to see what you are doing that is so hilarious.
It looks like a game of charades, each of you taking turns to wave your arms around and pull strange faces in that theatrical way you do, Clara, but Niamh? I’ve never seen her like this before, carried away by the moment, doubled over when the laughter is too much for her, wiping tears from her eyes, begging you to ‘
stop, Clara, please,
’ as a child might beg for mercy when they’re being tickled by a parent. Even in the dimming light I am startled by the change in her, the undiluted happiness that seems to have relaxed her face, softened it, breathed life into it. And never once do you take your eyes off each other. I am still concealed behind my bedroom curtains but it would not matter if I was standing naked in the middle of the garden: neither of you would even see me.
I fall back on to the bed, tears stinging my cheeks. The picture of Niamh’s face, transformed, is too cruel a reminder of what is now being stolen from me.
Your attention.
Your love.
Ever since that first day at school, when I sat down next to you and the electricity fizzed through me, I knew you had the power to bring people to life, Clara. It’s like an energy that radiates from you, a magic that draws people in and makes them never want to let you go. I used to watch other kids try to work their way into your affections and without exception you’d turn away from each one of them and they’d shuffle off, dejected. It made our friendship all the more special. You’d chosen me to bask in your glow. And only once did I contemplate, in a brief chemical-induced moment the night we dabbled with Ecstasy, what life would be like if you turned away from me.
If I lost you, I would lose myself.
Finally the laughter dies and I hear her voice, the tone different, harsh, through the slurred words. ‘Rachel, for fuck’s sake Rachel, come out here.’
When I don’t answer she tries again; this time her words are softer. ‘Rachel, where are you? Come and join the party.’
I know I should stay in bed. What does she want from me? But I am propelled by a tiny, pitiful grain of hope that maybe both of you really do want me to join in. So I go down to see you, sprawled on the deckchairs, glasses by your side on the grass. Your eyes are closed. But Niamh’s are open. She sees me and sits up.
‘I gave Clara a little birthday present from you?’ she says, giggling, as she waves her hand in the direction of Clara’s deckchair. I follow it and find a pool of yellow on the grass next to you. My sunflowers, each one ripped from the ground. Next to them are the irises, my lovely irises, now wilting and shrivelling in the heat. And the peonies have suffered a similar fate, torn out of the earth and dumped next to the others. Those flowers that I watered and tended and looked after so carefully have been destroyed. I look over to the flowerbed, a riot of colour this morning, now only a few stalks remaining.