Praise for Sarah Crossan
MOONRISE
SHORTLISTED FOR THE COSTA CHILDREN’S BOOK AWARD
SHORTLISTED FOR THE YA BOOK PRIZE
‘Any reader with a heart will weep buckets’
Sunday Times Book of the Week
‘Impossible to put down’
The Times
‘Outstanding and daring’
Irish Examiner
One
WINNER OF THE CILIP CARNEGIE MEDAL 2016
WINNER OF THE YA BOOK PRIZE
WINNER OF THE CBI BOOK OF THE YEAR AWARD
‘One broke my heart and mended it’
Cecilia Ahern
‘An achingly sad and beautiful story’
Telegraph
‘It will shake up preconceptions and move
readers to tears’
Sunday Times Book of the Week
APPLE
AND
RAIN
SHORTLISTED FOR THE CILIP CARNEGIE MEDAL 2015
‘An inspiring tale’
Irish Examiner
‘A poignant, realistic tale about learning to love’
Sunday Times
The Weight
of Water
WINNER OF THE EILÍS DILLON AWARD
SHORTLISTED FOR THE CILIP CARNEGIE MEDAL 2013
‘A compellingly beautiful, utterly seductive debut novel’
Scotsman
‘Poignant, powerful, just perfect’
Cathy Cassidy
Toffee
Books by
SARAH
CROSSAN
The Weight of Water
Apple and Rain
One
Moonrise
Toffee
Breathe
Resist
For Aoife
They may forget what you said,
but they will never forget
how you made them feel
– Carl W. Buehner
Contents
Her Name Is Marla
At the Bus Station
The Ruby Ring
M5
Bude
Forever
The Mark
Shed
Nothing
During the Night
Popcorn
Bruised
Cover Up
Breakfast on the Beach
The Empty House
An Invitation
Overflowing
Hot Cross Buns
I Am Marla
I Am Toffee
Bacon
Hobnobs
Victory
Alarm Bell
Who Did That to Your Face?
No One Did Anything to Me
Home Help
I Check My Phone
Laters
Birdbrain
Lipstick
Sweetness
Dawdle
Rattle
Birthday
Disregard
A Companion
Forgotten
Back
Fruit
The System
Moon Tiger
Too Long
Cleaner
Caught
Beach Hut Number 13
Friends
Waiting
Crosswords
Tired
During the Ad Break
Marla Has Moves
Routine
Strictly
The Hunt
Toffee
Scars
Out
Fictional
Research
Good Girl
How Long?
And How Long?
Transparent
OK So
Miscalculations
A Great Place for Kissing
Unkissed
Bloody
Eggshells
When the Sun Comes Out
Clearing Up
What Is Left Over
Mercy
Love
Washing-Up
Rolling Smokes
Scabby
Allowed
Conkers
Stinging Nettles
Babyish
Carol and Lee
Loss
Sometimes I Forget
A Father Too
I Did Not Kill My Mother Immediately
Are You My Daughter?
Giant Rock Dummy
Screaming
Mashed Potato
Slam
Frozen
Should Have
Two Hours Later
Planning
Make-Up
Homework
Jobs
Hiding
I Tell Lucy
Well Dodge
Normals
The Beginning of Burns
Funny Thing Is
Hot Bread
Out There
One Thing
Sexier
Not Lost
Trick or Treat
Whatever
Fireworks
Phobia
Before Kelly-Anne
The Missing Girl
When to Leave
Distrust
Slippers
Who Did That to Your Face?
No One Did Anything to Me
Memories
Witchy
I Sort of Do, Yeah
In Sainsbury’s
Alone
Old Enough
Smash
Gin Is Tonic
Single Ladies
Hangover
Any Jewels?
Have You Seen?
Where’s the Remote?
The White House
Marla’s Tiny Terraced House
Meeting Marla
People
Bath Time
Unlocked
Reading the Meter
Pneumatic
Can I Owe You?
Fairy Cakes
Chats Over Tea and Fairy Cakes
You Could Make Anyone Love You
Valentine’s Day
Romeo and Juliet
What I Wanted
Before Bed
Behind the Butcher’s
Darkness
Betrayal
Space
Pointless
Lion Bar
The Blackbird
Stuff
Concern
In Knots
What John Lennon Does
After Donal
Police
Loitering
Small Talk
Wasted
Bra Shopping
Tweeting
Recycling
Scabby
Power
Beach Day
Brief Encounter
Captured
You Are Mine
After the Summer Fete
Iris
Birthday
Soothing
So Maybe
Still My Mother
How Worried?
Breakfast
Imbalance
What I Don’t Know
A Consolation
Assault
In the Daylight
Bad Weather
Who Did That to Your Face?
My Dad Did It
Sulking
Get Up
Understanding
Thing Is
Acceptance
Different Lessons
Advent
Hamless
The Beach
Please
Grease
I Am Allison
The Sea
Fallen
This Time
Paramedics
Passing On
Mine
Keeping Busy
Asleep
Peggy Appear
s by the Bed Too
The Call
No Answer
The Fire
Intruder
Packing
Free-Falling
Jazz
I Am Allison
She Will Know
The Other Side
Boxing Day
Kelly-Anne Calls
The Sun-Up Bakery
Bedsit
In Marla’s House
Always
Demi-Sister
Louise
Forever
Marla Is Home
Blank
In and Out
You Owe Me
Doughnuts
Calling Dad
In Need
Enrolment
What Happened to Toffee?
Final Act
Leaving
Tail Lights
About the Author
Her Name Is Marla
Her name is Marla,
and to her I am Toffee,
though my parents named me Allison.
Actually
it was Mum who made that decision;
Dad didn’t care about a bawling baby
and her name
the day I showed up.
He had more important things on his mind.
And now,
Marla sleeps in a bedroom next to mine
with forget-me-nots
climbing the papered walls,
snoring,
lying on her back, lips
parted.
Sometimes, at night,
she wakes,
wails,
flails and begs the air to
leave her alone, leave her alone.
I scuttle in,
stroke her arm with my fingertips.
I’m here. It’s OK.
You’re just having a bad dream.
That usually settles her:
she’ll look up
like I’m the very person she expected to see,
shut her eyes and
float away again.
The mattress on my bed is so soft I sink.
The cotton sheets are paper thin
from too much washing.
Nets, not curtains, cover my window:
streetlights blare in.
This is not my home.
This is not my room.
This is not my bed.
I am not who I say I am.
Marla isn’t who she thinks she is.
I am a girl trying to forget.
Marla is a woman trying to remember.
Sometimes I am sad.
Sometimes she is angry.
And yet.
Here,
in this house,
I am so much happier
than I have ever been.
At the Bus Station
A bearded man sits
by me on the bench
in the bus station.
His nails are broken, dirty.
His trainers have holes in the toes.
Want a Pringle?
He conjures a red tube from his khaki coat.
I edge away,
focus on the backpack by my feet
stuffed with clothes, bread rolls.
I couldn’t carry much –
hadn’t much to take anyway.
What the hell happened to your face?
The man squints, crunches on the Pringles,
slides towards me.
There are crumbs on his coat,
in his beard.
Looks like someone got you good.
I turn away
hoping
he’ll think I don’t understand,
mistake me for a foreigner.
And I feel it today,
an alien far from home already,
the world all noise and nonsense.
A bus pulls up. I hand the driver my ticket,
a yellow square to Elsewhere
paid for with Dad’s contactless card.
Runaway.
Liar.
Thief.
In a seat near the back
I press my forehead against the
cold, sweating window.
I am heading west –
to Kelly-Anne,
who never wanted to go –
never wanted to go without me anyway.
The bus revs and judders.
I am leaving.
The Ruby Ring
Her suitcase bulged in the middle
like it had overeaten.
She must have packed the day before – planned it.
Sorry, Allie, I gotta get out.
He’s getting worse.
Kelly-Anne took off the dull ruby ring Dad had given her.
Her face was bloated and pale.
No smile in weeks.
Still.
Don’t go.
I yanked at her jacket.
Come with me.
Her eyes were on the wall clock,
feet in her boots.
We’ll get somewhere cheap and
work it out, yeah?
Go and throw some stuff into a bag.
Do it quickly.
Come on. Quick!
I let go.
Don’t you love him?
He’s a bastard, Allie.
She had a plummy bruise on her arm to prove it.
Don’t you love me?
I can’t stay. And I can’t explain.
She eyed the ring.
Surely you above all people can understand.
I do but …
My forehead felt hot.
My knees locked.
He isn’t all bad, is he?
He works so hard.
He’s tired.
Allie –
We could make him happier together.
Both of us.
We could try again.
I can’t try any more, she snapped.
She twisted my wrist.
She’d never
hurt me before,
yet here she was
stacking it up.
You don’t need to stay here.
She unintentionally gestured to the mirror –
to herself.
The reflection stared back,
broken and
unconvinced.
What she didn’t realise was that
I didn’t have any choice.
I had to stay.
He was my dad, not my boyfriend.
You can’t just walk out on your parents.
Who else did I have apart from him?
Who did he have but me?
I sobbed in the hallway.
Kelly-Anne pulled a scrunched-up tenner from her bag,
a pound hidden inside like a present.
Here, she said,
as though money might make it all right.
I’ll get settled and call you.
Be strong and don’t piss him off.
Tell him you didn’t see me leave.
Make him believe I’ll be back
so he doesn’t look for me.
And that was that.
I watched her from the window,
worrying about what would happen when Dad got home
and discovered his fiancée was gone,
the engagement ring left on the hall table,
the same red ruby that had belonged to my mum
back when he loved her
best.
M5
This road must be the longest in the universe.
Concrete and concrete and concrete.
I fiddle with my phone,
follow the jagged blue line to Bude.
A few months ago I would have spent the journey
sending Jacq crude emojis
and taking sly photos
of losers on the bus,
their mouths gaping open in sleep.
Now I have no one to message
and nothing to go back to.
I hope Kell
y-Anne still has space for me
in her life.
Concrete and concrete and concrete.
The longest road in the universe.
Bude
Buckets and spades
hang from an awning.
Titan white gulls yap overhead.
A gaggle of girls slurp ice cream from waffle cones
despite a slight drizzle.
One girl pauses
then suddenly skips after the others:
Wait up!
I lug my bag after me
down the
steps of the bus
and on the pavement,
inhale salty air.
I have an address on a scrap of paper,
a map on my phone.
It is two miles to Kelly-Anne’s place.
Forever
A man in a chequered football shirt
opens the door. Yeah?
He unashamedly stares at my cheek.
Is Kelly-Anne home?
My shoulders are burning.
I put down my backpack.
Kels? Nah.
I doubt we’ll see her again.
She buggered off, didn’t she?
He lifts junk mail from the mat,
flicks through it,
steps outside
and bungs it into a wheelie bin.
She’s in Aberdeen.
Got a job in sales. Owes me rent.
He picks his ear, stares at his finger
like he might discover something fascinating.
Try her phone. Not that she’ll answer.
I’ll try.
I don’t tell him
she hasn’t replied to my messages recently either,
or that it seems pointless
if she’s in Aberdeen and
I’ve come to Cornwall.
We are a whole country apart.
You all right?
The man examines my backpack.
I better go, I say.
Do you have somewhere to go?
His expression has softened.
A cat is nudging his trainers.
I don’t know.
But not home,
I know that for sure.
The Mark
I tap
my cheek
with the tips
of my fingers.
Toffee Page 1
