The Argument (ARC)

by Victoria Jenkins

  ‘I went to a party too,’ she confesses, remembering the night she managed to sneak from the house when her mother was asleep. ‘I was just like you Olivia, although I know you probably think we’ve never had anything in common. I always wanted more than I had, I was always fantasising about some other, better life. I used to look at other girls and think about how much more exciting their lives were than mine. I got dressed up, too dressed up, and I went out, even though I’d been told not to.’

  ‘What do you mean “too dressed up”?’

  ‘Well, not dressed enough, really. Showing too much, like the other girls did.’

  ‘And that night was when…’

  Hannah nods. ‘I was on my way home. I’d had too much to drink and I decided to take a shortcut through the park. I was only three streets from home. I was hit over the back of the head with something. It knocked me out for a while, but it wasn’t for long enough.’

  She stops; she can’t talk about this anymore. What happened that night is as blurred now as it was then, her senses impaired by the alcohol she had consumed and the injury she sustained. She remembers shadows, noises, her mind slipping in and out of consciousness as her body endured what she was powerless to stop. He was behind her, on top of her, and it was all over so quickly. Yet it seemed that it would never end, and in so many ways it hadn’t.

  Hannah stands from the bed. ‘I’ll bring you up a cup of tea and something to eat,’ she says, as though the conversation that has just been had didn’t happen.

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  Hannah turns at the words, not believing that they have come from Olivia’s mouth. Her daughter is never sorry for anything, not even when she should be. She rarely shows anyone an ounce of empathy, usually too busy caught up in feeling sorry for herself or thinking about her own needs.

  ‘I’m sorry that happened to you,’ Olivia says, and for a moment she sounds as though she means it, but when she speaks again, the sentiment is snatched away. ‘But it doesn’t justify how you treat me.’

  Hannah studies her daughter’s face: the defiance in her jawline; the rage that rests behind her tired eyes. She isn’t sorry at all, Hannah thinks; she is still only sorry for herself, still consumed with her own selfish desires.

  ‘How old were you?’

  Hannah holds her daughter’s stare, knowing that this moment is likely to change everything. She should hold this information back, keep it stored where it has been buried for so long. There are repercussions, and yet Hannah realises that everything is falling around their heads already. Olivia won’t give up until she gets what she wants. If the truth is what she really wants, Hannah is now prepared to offer it to her.

  ‘I was seventeen.’

  She watches as Olivia does the mental maths, her face changing instantly. In a moment – one so brief yet so life-shattering – she seems to realise that in pushing for the truth she is opening a nightmare. Hannah knows she should feel sympathy for her, and yet she can’t. Olivia has asked for this, always prying into things that don’t concern her; always wanting more than she has, needing to know more than her young brain can handle. Perhaps she deserves to know, so she will realise just how much her parents have given her. She and Michael have done everything they can to give Olivia the kind of life Hannah as a child would have given anything for, and yet nothing has ever been good enough for her and she has taken and taken, always pushing and pushing, never satisfied with anything she has.

  Olivia opens her mouth to say something, but nothing comes out. She has worked it out or is beginning to, at least. She knows that this is where she began, that this act of violence took the form of her conception. Her already pale face whitens further, and she shakes her head, looking at Hannah as though her presence alone has managed to burn her.

  ‘Was I…?’ But she can’t finish the sentence, can’t bring herself to find the words.

  Hannah nods, the gesture all she can offer her.

  Olivia gulps down a sob, fighting herself from showing tears. ‘This is why you hate me, isn’t it? This is why you’ve always loved Rosie so much more than you love me and sometimes you can’t even bring yourself to look at me. Everything makes sense now. You shouldn’t have gone through with the pregnancy. I would have been better off dead.’

  Hannah has felt so often in recent times that she doesn’t know who her own daughter is, but she has always known why this is; deep down, she has always understood the reason why she remains a stranger to her. She isn’t like them. She never could be. There has always been some darkness in her, something that longs to cause chaos and wreak destruction. Hannah isn’t responsible for any of it. It is in Olivia, this sickness; it is a part of him, the man who attacked her.

  ‘You father and I are sending you away,’ Hannah says flatly, her voice numbed of any kind of emotion. ‘I think he’s already discussed it with you.’

  Olivia shakes her head. ‘You can’t do this,’ she objects. ‘My exams are starting in a few weeks - you can’t just send me away now.’

  ‘We are your parents,’ Hannah says, as though Olivia needs any reminding of the fact. ‘It is our responsibility to do what’s best for you, and at the moment you’re a danger to yourself. Where does this stop, Olivia? You seem intent on doing everything you can to ruin things for yourself and for this family. We have a responsibility to protect Rosie as well and do what’s best for her.’

  ‘Separating us isn’t what’s best for her!’ Olivia shouts.

  ‘And turning out like you…would that be best for her? I have to think of both of you, Olivia, and this is what’s best for everyone.’

  ‘Best for you, you mean. Send me away before anyone finds out what a psychopath you are!’

  Hannah’s hand swings forward, her palm held open. But it doesn’t make contact with Olivia’s face as her daughter so obviously expects it to. Instead, it stops just centimetres from her, held there with the threat of what might have happened. She won’t hit her; she won’t ever hit her. This is what Olivia wants, what she has always wanted, just so that she can appear the troubled one and Olivia can prove that she is right. She cannot allow herself to lose control. Once that happens, Hannah knows she has lost, and Michael will never forgive her.

  * * *

  Twenty

  Olivia

  * * *

  Olivia lies in bed, her eyes open, staring into the darkness that surrounds her. Even if there was any chance of her being able to find sleep, she knows it would be shattered by nightmares, by all the things she doesn’t want to have to think about but can’t escape from gathering like the imagined monsters of her childhood, this time real. The monsters are with her now, standing by her bedside. They take different forms, each faceless, and she doesn’t want to have to believe that one of them is her father. Her real father.

  She has never seen her mother as she saw her this evening; she is usually so composed and in control, as though nothing ever makes her uneasy or is capable of sending her perfect world off balance. Just a few weeks earlier, Olivia might have believed that seeing her mother so vulnerable would have been something she would relish, but she has seen a different side to her over this past week – yet another version of the woman who seems to wear so many faces – and Olivia can take no pleasure in it, not when it has been created by something so unspeakable.

  She wonders why her mother kept her. So much makes sense to Olivia now – the coldness, the distance, the lack of love her mother so often showed her. It makes sense to her now why Rosie has always been the child favoured by both her mother and her father, and yet it occurs to her too that none of this was her fault. She didn’t ask to be brought into this world. Her mother could have got rid of her if she had wanted to, and perhaps that would have been better for them all. They have made her an outsider, and now she doesn’t know how to be anything else.

  She doesn’t want to believe that any of what her mother has said is true, least of all that she was conceived in such a way and that her father isn’t her
father at all. This is the part that is hardest for Olivia, because if Michael isn’t her father then some stranger is, some stranger capable of the worst kind of violence, a kind that until now she has only heard about and has never had to believe exists in her own world. She thinks of her mother as she might have been at seventeen, not much older than Olivia is now. She does understand her mother’s behaviour, why she is so overprotective towards her, though she would never admit so to her. She understands why she doesn’t want Olivia to go to parties and be around people who might turn out to be the wrong kind of people, but at the same time her mother can’t keep her wrapped in cotton wool forever. What happened to her mother is now responsible for ruining Olivia’s life too, and like so much else, it just doesn’t seem fair that she is being made to suffer for the actions of someone else, someone she has never even met and someone who, regardless of genetics, is nothing to do with her in any way.

  Olivia cannot get past the thought of just how much she looks like her father. Where Rosie has always been like their mother, long-limbed and slim, Olivia has always been more like Michael, shorter and naturally heavier, with the same hair colouring as her father, a kind of mousey brown that in him is now succumbing to the early signs of grey where he hasn’t started balding. She looks like him around the eyes. They have the same shaped face. But it is easy to see what you expect to be seen, she thinks, particularly when you have no reason to be looking for anything other.

  Her mother will try to use what happened to her years ago as justification for everything that she does now, and though Olivia knows that what happened to Hannah is appalling, it doesn’t make right what she has done or how she behaves. Olivia assumes it was her own mother who told Hannah not to go to that party, and after what happened, she now looks back at that night and feels she should have listened. Her own mother may have been right on one occasion, but that doesn’t mean Hannah is right about everything now.

  The way she spoke about what happened to her isn’t normal, Olivia feels certain of that. It sounded almost as though her mother was blaming herself, as though by not listening she had deserved to be made to suffer, and got what was coming to her. The way she talked about what she wore – some comment about not being dressed enough – didn’t seem right to Olivia either. She knows she has a lot to learn and that in many ways she is still so young, despite no longer wanting to be. But her mother underestimates her. She has a greater understanding of things than Hannah gives her credit for, and one thing she feels certain of is that an attack such as the one her mother endured is never justified, irrespective of what she might or might not have been wearing.

  Olivia thinks a lot about injustice and how much of it exists around her, both in her own world and the wider one being experienced by everybody else. The time spent in this room, prone in her bed, gives her plenty of time to think, whether she wants to or not. As far as she can tell, it is the quiet people who suffer, the ones who fade into the background whether willingly or otherwise and allow themselves to be overshadowed by larger, louder characters. She loves to people-watch though she doesn’t get to do it often, but she has witnessed enough evidence of this type of injustice plenty of times at school. She has seen the quiet ones in her class disappear behind the loud-mouths and the look-at-mes, gradually fading until they become invisible, until even the best teachers stop seeing them. Olivia can identify this type of victim of injustice because she is one of them. For too long she has allowed herself to fade, but not anymore. People are noticing her now.

  She is due to start her GCSE exams in little over three weeks’ time. She has worked hard for them – not as well as she might have under different circumstances, but she has done her best and couldn’t have given it any more than she has – but now she wonders whether the effort that has been put in has all been for nothing. If she were to sail through with a bunch of straight A* grades, what use would they be to her anyway? Where would they take her?

  The thought brings everything flooding back, the threat that both her mother and her father have now made hitting her with a force that feels almost physical. Days ago, Olivia wondered at first whether her father was trying to scare her, his words delivered in that hushed tone he only uses to let her know that she is in the worst kind of trouble, but now – now that the threat has been echoed by her mother, also – she realises that they mean it, and perhaps she has pushed them too far this time. She has considered what it might mean for her, as well as what it could possibly mean for Rosie, but she knows it isn’t as straightforward as her brain is trying to make it. Her parents have thought this through in meticulous detail; they will have considered every possible scenario and each potential outcome. They won’t leave anything to chance; in Olivia’s experience, they rarely do. Where her mind has tried to reassure her that maybe this will all be for the best in the end, she cannot bring herself to believe that’s true. For the first time in her life, Olivia wants to stay exactly where she is. She needs to be here.

  Above all else that scares Olivia, brings tears back to her tired eyes, it is being separated from Rosie that fills her with the greatest fear. Despite all the times her sister has driven her to distraction, and on all the occasions Olivia has felt herself belittled by her, jealous of the relationship Rosie had with their mother, she knows that theirs is her best friendship, and she doesn’t want to be torn from it. She feels sorry for what she did now, sorry that she behaved the way she did at school and sorry that those videos of her are now all over the internet, but she still doesn’t believe this is all her fault, not really, because if her parents didn’t treat her the way they do then none of this would have happened. She doesn’t deserve to be punished for it, and Rosie shouldn’t be made to suffer.

  She is filled with remorse that Rosie may have to suffer the consequences of what she’s done. People at her primary school will be aware of what happened; they will remember Olivia from her time there and they will know what she has done. She doesn’t want Rosie to be ridiculed or embarrassed by what is now displayed of her across the internet, but Olivia believes now more than ever that her sister understands things better than she has ever given her credit for. They need each other. Perhaps this once, Olivia needs Rosie more than Rosie needs her.

  Her parents may have their plans, she thinks, but she is capable of making her own. If she doesn’t act quickly, it will be too late, and life will be changed beyond recognition, perhaps irreversibly so. She must do something, and she has to do it soon, and whether either of them likes it or not, she is going to need Rosie’s help.

  * * *

  Twenty-One

  Hannah

  * * *

  Being forced into a confession by her fifteen-year-old daughter was never the way in which Hannah envisaged her secret might one day be released into the world. As soon as the words had left her mouth, Hannah regretted them, though she is sure Olivia wouldn’t have stopped until she had got to the truth one way or another. She needs to speak to her again now, to get her to promise that she will keep the secret to herself, but just how much this can be relied upon she can’t be sure. She has no confidence left in Olivia, and Michael doesn’t deserve to have his world ripped from beneath him. He has done everything for Olivia, bringing her up as his own and treating her no differently to Rosie. It is she who is guilty of that, though she has never been able to do anything about it. Perhaps she hasn’t tried hard enough, but it has been difficult when sometimes merely looking at her daughter takes her back to that place and to that night.

  Now all she can do is pray that Olivia does the right thing and doesn’t tell Michael what she knows. If he finds out, it will break him.

  Hannah isn’t expecting the knock at the door that comes at around 3.40pm. She feels tired and fraught and the last thing she needs is to speak to any outsiders, but when she peers through the living room window at the people on the doorstep, she recognises Olivia’s head of year. She doesn’t know the young woman standing beside him.

  She pushes her
hair behind her ears and wipes a careful finger under each eye, trying to hide any evidence of her exhaustion.

  ‘Mrs Walters,’ the head of year says, extending his hand in greeting. ‘I hope we’re not interrupting anything. This is Miss Johnson, Olivia’s English teacher.’

  Hannah smiles, but the look is not reciprocated. She takes an immediate dislike to this woman; she doesn’t know why, but there is something about the way the woman glances furtively around her as though searching for something that makes Hannah feel uneasy. ‘House visits are unusual,’ she says, trying to make the comment sound as casual as possible.

  ‘We know you’re busy,’ Mr Lewis said. ‘We thought we’d save you the bother of having to come back to us.’ He smiles and gestures to the hallway. ‘Okay if we come in? We won’t keep you long.’

  Hannah pauses before stepping aside and ushering them into the house. She notices the way Miss Johnson glances up the staircase. ‘Everything okay?’ she asks, but the woman doesn’t even have the decency to appear embarrassed by her obvious nosiness.

  ‘Fine.’

  Miss Johnson and Mr Lewis follow Hannah into the kitchen, where she gestures for them to take a seat. ‘What can I do for you then?’

  ‘Is Olivia home?’ Miss Johnson asks.

  ‘No. I know it’s probably wrong, what with her on suspension and everything, but she’s gone out with her father and her sister. What is it they say – children deserve your love the most when they deserve it the least? Something like that, isn’t it. We thought it might do Olivia some good to spend some time with Rosie. We’re hoping she’ll have a calming effect on her.’

  ‘Where have they gone?’

  ‘The beach. It’s a lovely day, seemed sensible to make the most of it.’

  ‘A three-month heatwave is on the cards, so I’ve heard,’ Mr Lewis says conversationally. ‘Save a bit of money on a holiday abroad, won’t it?’