by Cat Clarke
Thomas’s breathing is getting faster and noisier in my left ear. Hopefully it won’t be long now. I’m completely silent, unlike the last time. I run my fingers up and down his spine, and it reminds me of the bumpy back of a dinosaur I saw in the Natural History Museum on a school trip. How old was I then? Eleven? Twelve? No, definitely eleven.
I don’t know what makes me open my eyes. I didn’t hear anything. But I look over to the door, and it’s open—just a few inches. I’m sure I closed it behind us.
She’s there, watching. A scream rises in my throat but lodges there like a thorn before it can escape from my mouth. My body jolts in shock and I gasp, but Thomas is too close to coming to notice.
My gaze catches Laurel’s and she doesn’t even flinch at being caught. I expect the door to slam shut, but it doesn’t. I don’t know what to do. I want to look away, but I can’t. Any second now.
Thomas’s orgasm seems to take an age. Then he lies perfectly still on top of me and the whole weight of him is on me, and I feel like I’m being crushed even though he hardly weighs anything at all—certainly less than I do.
Eventually he raises himself up on his arms and kisses me; his face has a fine sheen of sweat and a couple of red blotches have appeared on his cheeks. I look back toward the door. It’s closed. She’s gone.
—
I let Thomas lie next to me for a few minutes. He asks me what I’m thinking. Nothing, I say. He asks me if I’m happy. I say yes. He gets dressed and tells me he loves me. I say that I love him. He leaves.
I lie in bed, naked. I clutch the comforter with my fingers and pull it right up to my neck. I’m acutely aware of her presence next door, just as she must be aware of mine. I feel hot with embarrassment, cold with confusion. Why didn’t I push him off me the second I noticed her? Why didn’t I tell him afterward?
What the hell was she thinking, spying on us like that? What am I going to say to her? Should I go and talk to her now?
I don’t move. I watch the door and hope and pray that it doesn’t open again.
I get up early after a restless night. If I slept, I don’t remember. I get dressed in jeans and a hoodie, careful not to make a sound. I open my bedroom door and stand and listen. I hear cars passing outside, the gurgling from the radiator on the landing, a dog barking. No sounds from Laurel’s room.
I don’t risk brushing my teeth, because the noise from the pipes will almost certainly wake her. I go downstairs and out the front door. I end up in a café, rushing to use the restroom before I join the line at the counter.
I sit in a corner, facing the door. I drink two cups of dreadful, swill-colored tea and check the time on my phone every couple of minutes. I can’t stay away forever; Mom will be back at lunchtime.
Just before nine I get a text from Martha asking if I want to do something when she’s back this afternoon. She doesn’t specify what that something might be, so it’s probably nothing, but we’d be doing nothing together, at least. I reply and say I’ll go over to her place at three. Anything to get out of the house.
Another text arrives, from Laurel this time. She wants to know where I am; she’s made breakfast. I reply and say I’ll be home soon, that I just went out to buy some milk. She texts again: OK, I’ll get the coffee on!
—
I forget the milk, but Laurel doesn’t say anything when I walk into the kitchen empty-handed. But there’s plenty in the fridge—Mom stocked up before she went, buying enough groceries for us to endure a three-month siege even though she was only going to be gone for twenty-four hours.
Laurel’s trying her hand at scrambled eggs today. “I figured they would be the easiest to do on my own.” She smiles warmly. Her hair is tied up in a ponytail. She hasn’t showered yet, either.
I look in the pan that she’s stirring; the eggs have been seriously scrambled. The toast pops up from the toaster, and Laurel asks me to butter it. She’s put our matching mugs out on the counter.
I concentrate hard on the task at hand. The scraping sound of the knife on the toast scratches at my nerves; I wonder which one of us is going to be the first to crack. Someone has to bring up the subject, and I don’t think it should be me. Laurel pours the coffee.
We sit down at the table—she’s already put out the cutlery, and even a couple of sheets of paper towel to use as napkins. The eggs are rubbery and weirdly crusty in places. I don’t want to eat them, but I don’t want to hurt Laurel’s feelings. Cooking is one of the things she seems to really enjoy. I blame Michel—he keeps going on about her being a natural and saying maybe she should look into a career that involves food. Dad always shuts down this kind of talk; he thinks she has no chance of having a normal job like that.
I eat a corner of toast with the tiniest bit of egg I can get away with. I realize that Laurel’s looking at me, eyebrows raised in expectation. “Delicious,” I say, talking with my mouth full because Mom’s not around to moan about it.
“Liar. But that’s okay. They’ll be better next time.”
We eat in silence for a couple of minutes. The toast is hard to choke down, so I start eating more eggs to aid in the process.
“So…did you sleep well?” she asks.
That’s when I realize how we’re going to play this. In true Logan style, we are not going to talk about it. We are going to bury it, hope that a cement mixer comes along and pours concrete over the issue so that it will never see the light again.
“Fine, thank you,” I say with a smile. “How about you?”
“Like a baby,” she says. “That’s a weird saying, isn’t it? Slept like a baby. Babies are always crying.”
I smile again and agree that it is a weird saying. Then I ask Laurel about her plans for the day.
All the time we’re talking I’m wondering what she’s really thinking. She knows that I saw her, so she must be scared that I’m going to say something—accuse her of spying on Thomas and me. She saw me notice her. There was eye contact—prolonged eye contact. But I suddenly remember something Martha once said about her mom’s eyesight, that she can’t see more than a few inches in front of her face without her glasses. I rack my brain to remember if Laurel’s had an eye test since she’s been back. I’m not sure. Being kept in a basement for all those years would surely have an effect on your eyesight. How could it not? So maybe—just maybe—Laurel doesn’t realize that I caught her watching us. And I’m not sure whether that’s a good thing or not. Perhaps she’s blind as a bat and no one’s bothered to check? Maybe there’s a chance her eyesight is so bad she didn’t even realize what Thomas and I were doing. (Nice try—of course she knew what we were doing.)
It’s a relief, in a way. Not to have to talk about it. Not to have to stutter and stumble over my words as I try to explain why I’d been so secretive about Thomas coming over. I’d have to beg her not to tell Mom, too. Mom would not be happy to find out that Thomas and I are having sex. It doesn’t matter to her that it’s legal, or that we’re in a serious, long-term relationship, or that we’re using protection. What matters to her is that she doesn’t like Thomas and never will. If she found out, she’d never leave Laurel and me alone in the house again. I’m sure that Laurel would agree to keep it a secret from Mom, but now I can’t ask. She won’t tell her; I’m almost certain of that. Because if she did, then she’d have to admit that she was watching us, and that would just be awkward.
It’s better this way, brushing it under the carpet, pretending nothing odd—nothing excruciatingly, embarrassingly weird—has happened. Now I just have to try to erase the memory from my head. If only it were that easy. I have a funny feeling I will never be able to forget the shock of seeing her standing there, watching. Judging.
—
Mom comes home sporting a pair of sunglasses, accompanied by a vaguely winey vapor. “Never again,” she says. “She’s a bad influence on me, you know.”
Laurel says she’ll make Mom a sandwich, but Mom winces at the mention of food. “Thanks, love, maybe later. I thin
k I’ll have a little nap first. Anyway, did you two have fun last night?”
“We had a lovely time, thanks. A really nice, girly night,” says Laurel. I’m almost sure that she puts a slight emphasis on the word girly. And if I’m right, then Laurel is toying with me. Perhaps it amuses her to see me squirm.
Mom trudges toward the stairs with her overnight bag, taking careful steps as if she’s on a boat in a storm. Laurel catches my eye and shakes her head, smiling. This is supposed to translate as something like Parents, huh? or What is she like? I’m supposed to return the look in kind, or maybe roll my eyes and laugh. Instead, I ignore it completely. My eyes pass over her as if she’s not even there.
Mom stops on the third stair. “Oh, I nearly forgot! How could I forget?” I refrain from remarking on the obvious correlation between alcohol consumption and memory loss. “You’ll never guess who called me last night! Well, she called, but I didn’t answer because I was…Anyway, she left a voice mail, and when I listened to it this morning, I could hardly believe it. Talk about a blast from the past!”
“Who was it?” I hate guessing games.
“Dana Fairlie!” Mom looks at me expectantly. I have no idea who Dana Fairlie is, which is quite obvious from the confused look on my face. “The Fairlies? Number Twenty-Four?” Nope. Not a clue.
Mom heaves a big sigh as if I’m being deliberately dense. She comes back down the stairs. “Laurel, you remember little Bryony? The two of you used to be inseparable. Always in and out of each other’s houses, making mischief.”
Laurel nods, vaguely at first and then more decisively. “Yeah. Yes. I remember.”
It turns out that the Fairlies used to live a couple of doors down from us on Stanley Street. They had two daughters around the same age as Laurel and me, so they became friends with Mom and Dad. They moved to Australia a month before Laurel was taken. I remember now, but the memory is of a photograph I saw a long time ago. Laurel and another girl. Two little blond girls, as alike as sisters (real sisters). Their hair in matching pigtails, heads together, faces tilted at an angle, big smiles. I remember what I thought when I saw that picture. Why couldn’t the other little girl have been taken away instead of my sister? And now I know why: because she was thousands and thousands of miles away. Safe, on the other side of the world.
“Anyway, they’re back! Well, they’re not back back, but they’re here for a month or so. Kirsty wants to go to college over here—just think of that, little Kirsty, all grown up and off to college! It’s hard to believe….”
In typical Mom fashion, she’s arranged for us all to meet up tomorrow without bothering to check with us first. I mean, it’s one thing to do that to Laurel—she never has any plans—but I actually have a life. I agree to it, though, because I’m curious to see these people who could have so easily been us. Say the paperwork for the emigration hadn’t come through yet, or Mr. or Mrs. Fairlie had to stay in the country for an extra month to finish some big project at work; they would have still been on Stanley Street that day when our lives fell apart. Bryony and Kirsty could have been playing in their front yard, and maybe Laurel and I would have been inside because one of us wasn’t feeling very well. We would have been snuggled together on the sofa watching a Disney film when the shadow passed our house. Bryony Fairlie’s face would be on the front page of every newspaper, and my parents would feel terrible about it and do everything they could to help the Fairlies through their ordeal, taking care of Kirsty and making lasagnas that Mrs. Fairlie could reheat after yet another press conference. Mom and Dad would join the search party and put up posters that read HAVE YOU SEEN THIS GIRL? and try their hardest to remember in case they might have noticed something significant that day. A car that didn’t belong on the street or a man acting suspiciously. And all the while, as Mom hugged Mrs. Fairlie and told her everything was going to be okay, and Dad exchanged grim looks with Mr. Fairlie, they would be thinking the same thing. Over and over again. Thank god it wasn’t one of our daughters. Thank god.
Every surface in Martha’s kitchen is covered with jars. There are two huge pots bubbling away on the stove, and Martha’s mom is dipping a metal thermometer into one of them. She looks happier than the last time I saw her. Being unemployed seems to suit her.
Martha drags me away from the kitchen and upstairs to her room. “The jam-making is completely out of control! She thinks she can make a business out of it, even though I told her it’s a stupid idea.”
I shrug. It seems like an okay idea to me. Customers at the farmers’ market think nothing of spending a crazy amount on a jar of artisanal jam. But I let Martha rant and moan, because that’s what best friends do.
I almost tell her about what happened last night, but it’s all too complicated. Plus, I don’t want Martha thinking I’m weird. She wouldn’t understand why I didn’t confront Laurel for spying on Thomas and me. I don’t even tell Martha about the shoplifting, but I do talk about Laurel. I tell Martha about the dress, and she agrees that it’s an obscene amount of money to spend on one item of clothing. I moan about the book deal and the fact that I have to go and meet the ghostwriter next week. They’ve decided that I should be the first one to be interviewed, probably because I have so little to say. At least I got to choose the meeting place; the editor (Zara Double-Barreled) told Mom it should be somewhere I feel comfortable. Mom said I should do it at home, thinking I would be reassured by her presence. I suggested a café bar near the canal—where it’s highly unlikely I’ll see anyone I know.
It starts with the dress and the book deal, and before I know it I’m telling Martha (almost) every little thing that Laurel’s done to annoy me over the past couple of weeks. “She’s just always there, you know?” Because that’s what it really comes down to: Laurel is around all the time. Unless you count her twice-weekly visits to the psychologist and random sessions with Penny. But other than that, there’s no respite, no escape.
“So having a big sister isn’t all it’s cracked up to be, then?” Martha says with a smirk.
And there it is again: the guilt. It’s always there, too, shadowing me, just like Laurel. I feel like I have to be grateful all the time, that any negative feelings—no matter how small—are not allowed. Sometimes, late at night when sleep eludes me, I worry that something awful will happen to Laurel. That she’ll get run over by a car or choke to death on a fish bone or drown in the bath, all because of me. Because I haven’t been grateful enough to have her back. I worry that Laurel is going to be taken away again just to punish me.
I tell Martha that I didn’t mean it, that I do like having a big sister, honestly. She laughs and says, “It’s okay, you know. You don’t have to pretend with me.” She leans over and squeezes my knee. “This is a safe place,” she says with a fake sympathetic expression on her face.
I know she’s making fun of me, but I’m so grateful I could cry. Just knowing that she doesn’t mind listening to me whine, and that she doesn’t think I’m a terrible person, makes me feel a whole lot better.
I tell Martha about the Fairlies and how weird it’s going to be. Martha reassures me that however weird it is for me, it’s going to be ten times weirder for Laurel. Everyone will be focused on her anyway; they always are.
—
“What are you going to wear to the party?” Martha’s sitting at her desk with her back to me. She always sits up straight, like a character in a costume drama. People her height usually slouch.
“What party?” I’m sitting on the floor with my back against the bed, deleting old messages from my phone. It’s been a bit of a waste of an afternoon. We could have at least gone to the movies, but Martha said there was nothing she wanted to see. Still, it’s been good to get away from home for a few hours. God knows how I’ll get through the rest of the week with my sanity intact.
“Thomas’s party.” She doesn’t turn and look at me, and I’m not sure whether it’s because she’s worried about my reaction or because she doesn’t realize that I have no idea what sh
e’s talking about.
“I’ll say it again: What. Party?”
Now she turns, unable to ignore my frostiness. She looks confused. “His surprise party? For his eighteenth? How can you not…? Hasn’t his mom…? She said she was going to get in touch with you last week.”
There are so many things wrong with what Martha’s saying that I really don’t know where to start. First of all, Thomas hates parties and surprises. Put the two together and you pretty much have his worst nightmare. Second of all, how come Martha knows about this before I do? Last, but by no means least, what the hell was she doing talking to Thomas’s mother?
Martha rushes to explain, trying to get the words out as quickly as possible—the words that will remove the look on my face. “Oh…wow…okay, I was sure she’d have talked to you by now. Anyway, I can fill you in. So she’s planning a surprise party. She’s already invited all the family. She knows that it’s not really Thomas’s thing at all, but she said this was her last chance to throw a party for ‘her little baby,’ and he hasn’t let her do much to celebrate his birthday for the past couple of years, so she decided to just go for it. I did say it might not be the best idea, but she thinks he’ll probably secretly love the attention. She said that he might pretend to be all cool and intellectual, but underneath he’s just a little boy whose favorite food is jelly and ice cream. Did you know that? I thought his favorite food was sashimi.” Finally, she pauses to check how she’s doing. Is the look on my face still unimpressed, or has it morphed into something friendlier?
It has not. “When were you talking to his mom?”
Martha shrugs. “Last week? Or maybe the week before. I can’t remember exactly.” She’s going to have to do better than that, and she knows it. “I needed to borrow a textbook. Thomas went upstairs to get it, and she cornered me in the kitchen.” Thomas’s house is nowhere near Martha’s. For her to get there, she would have to get a bus that passes right by the end of my street. There are no textbooks that Martha would need to borrow from Thomas that she wouldn’t be able to borrow from me. “You were out,” she says, answering a question I didn’t ask.
