by Amy Beashel
‘Please what, Izzy?’ Jacob’s voice is all game on for some bants, and his eyes are too bright, too lively, too much like what’s happening now – and whatever that was, there in his room on his bed – is a game. ‘Chill, yeah,’ he says, as if I should know that I obviously have no choice but to play. ‘Brought you this.’ And he’s waving what looks like a phone. ‘You must have dropped it when we…’ So Jacob doesn’t know what to call it either. ‘Whatever, eh. Sent you some nice mementos to keep on here, Fingers. You wanna be careful where you leave it. Prying eyes and all that. You gonna come down?’
‘Please.’ He’s too loud.
‘Aw, babe. You want me to come up, is that it?’ All those cocksure moves of his are as bold as his volume, which is too much. And I’m telling him no, but he didn’t hear it before and he doesn’t hear it now because there’s a flick and a thud thud thud, the front door is swinging open and, in the light of the moon, Daniel’s up in Jacob’s face, hand on his shoulder with a fix that’s all one wrong move, son…
‘Are you OK, Isabel?’ Daniel’s eyes are on Jacob, his voice level but spiked with that stay-away-from-my-daughter line dads always deliver in those Hollywood movies with those stone-throwing boys.
‘Sorry, Mr Chambers,’ Jacob says, ‘for disturbing you.’
Daniel remains steady, refusing to fill the gaps.
‘I was bringing this back for Izzy.’
My heart capsizes, any hope tipping out of it as Jacob shows him the phone.
‘Thought this –’ he bucks his chin at my window – ‘would be quieter than ringing the bell.’
Silence.
‘Obviously not though, eh? Sorry.’
‘Just go,’ I want to tell Jacob. ‘Please. Just stop talking and go.’
Daniel removes his hand from Jacob’s shoulder, takes my phone, the mementos, whatever they are, folded into his palm as he tells Jacob, ‘Off you trot then, mate’, his Ts like his smile, which is like paper, flat but with those edges that can be painfully sharp.
‘You stay where you are, Isabel,’ Daniel says.
And Jacob, whose back is to Daniel now, practically glows in the white of the streetlight as he drops his sorry-Mr-Chambers face and quickly presses his tongue in and out of his cheek. ‘See you soon, Izzy!’
‘Shut that window,’ Daniel says to me. ‘Now!’
The room shrinks when I close it. And then again when I hear him on the stairs.
I don’t take it down, but I touch it, the Jar of Sunshine, fingers slipping from its lid as Daniel comes into my room.
‘Jesus, Isabel, it’s eleven thirty. Do you not have any consideration for your mother? For me? Here,’ he says, a softer tone as he moves to where I’m standing by the wardrobe, his hand on my back a gentle press towards my bed.
Don’t make me sit, I think. The give of the mattress always feels too easy when Daniel kisses me goodnight.
‘You’d better have this, I suppose.’ He holds out my phone.
But I don’t want it, not really. Not the mementos anyway. I can’t let him keep it though, so I reach across and his fingers brush mine and he tells me, ‘You need to be careful, Isabel. Remember what I said about saving yourself for someone special.’
When my stepdad’s lips press a little too long on my cheek, there’s some sick part of me that’s relieved Jacob took what he did. That it’s done. That it’s no longer yet another thing Daniel can take or do. That whatever he does, he’s too late for that at least.
Cos that’s gone.
EIGHT
The morning sunshine stabbing at the dark of my bedroom is wrong. It doesn’t fit with the cold that hit me when I woke. When I remembered.
‘Isabel,’ Daniel calls, and it’s clear from his voice it’s a sergeant major’s summons, that he’s not coming to me, so I go down to the kitchen, where he points at the seat at the breakfast bar next to Mum, saying he wasn’t going to do this now, but he doesn’t see what choice he has. ‘Given the circumstances,’ he says.
And I wonder if he knows – if, in the time it took for him to come in from the street and go up to my room, he somehow saw the mementos on my phone.
I’ve deleted them obviously. But they’re stuck. In my head. This kaleidoscope of images that just keeps turning and turning, this permanent feed of Jacob and me, Jacob and me, Jacob and me. All on his monument bed. Starting with us sitting on it, his mouth totally ‘cheese’ while mine is totally straight. That picture I could cope with. But the others. It was one thing being there, but seeing it like that, from this different perspective, seeing me there, laid down, eyes closed, legs open – well, it’s another opinion, isn’t it? A third-party view. And even to me, who was there, who felt it so much I had to stop feeling at all, even to me, in those kaleidoscopic pictures, it looks like I could be game on. There’s no battle is what I mean. That Izzy Chambers in the picture? She is flat. Passive. Scum.
Daniel’s staring, his chest staying puffed out despite the long exhale of frustration as he makes his way round to the kitchen-counter side of the breakfast bar, his left slipper squeaking with every step. He removes and examines it, takes some superglue from the drawer and squeezes the liquid carefully between the upper and the sole, pinching the two parts together while whistling ‘Bring Me Sunshine’. And I swear I loathe him more than ever because that song belongs to me and Grace. She sang it as she filled my jar with the beads of my torn-apart necklace and promised with the lyrics and her heart that there would always be light in the broken pieces, and said that I should never, ever doubt that I was loved.
Daniel whistling our tune feels like theft. Or like he knows somehow that Grace’s friendship is as fragile as everything else in my life right now.
‘I was going to chat to you about this later,’ he says, ‘but now seems as good a time as any. What with that boy turning up late last night.’ He looks at Mum, like, you see? You see what your daughter’s become? And the kaleidoscope of images from last night keeps turning as Daniel keeps staring and I keep sinking into this soiled cauldron of hate.
Turning.
Staring.
Sinking.
Turning.
Staring.
Sinking.
The wait is a needle drawing blood, my head whirling like I’m gonna pass out.
‘It wasn’t even the same boy, was it, Isabel? As the one I saw you with the other day?’ He turns to Mum, who’s reaching for a second piece of toast when Daniel slaps her hand away. ‘What is it with you, Stephanie? You’ve been eating like a horse. Good job you’ve got me to keep you in check, eh?’ He lifts her hand to his mouth, his lips pressing into the slap mark.
‘There’s a name for girls like you, Isabel.’ His face is a storm, like that one in The Wizard of Oz that lifts Dorothy right out of Kansas. Only, Daniel’s twister doesn’t drop anyone in Oz; it leaves you spinning in the dark, where the familiar sky turns to thin ice and you end up literally shaking.
And I look at Mum, who’ll only look at the wall.
He must have seen the pictures. He must somehow know what I’ve done.
‘I got you this,’ he says.
And if Mum’s been eating like a horse, she now looks as if she’s about to bolt like one. Daniel’s holding a pregnancy test. The way he holds it makes it look like a weapon.
‘Daniel, I —’ Mum starts but is cut off by her husband’s finger drawing a sharp stop line through the air, which must be too thin for breathing; Mum seems unable to exhale.
‘This is nothing to do with you, Stephanie,’ he says. ‘This is between Isabel and me.’
And out it comes then, all Mum’s held-in breath, Daniel too busy sliding the test towards me to notice the release in her.
‘I made this point only yesterday, Isabel: do you really want to end up a teenage mother like her?’ His voice has ratcheted up a notch, like one of those air-raid sirens in the war. ‘I got you this as a reminder.’ He’s so quiet now. So calm. ‘Of how terribly things can work out for silly litt
le girls who do silly little things.’ He looks from me to Mum. ‘Though I thought your own existence would be reminder enough.’ He laughs.
It’s not like Mum laughs too, but her face? And that sudden easing of her breath? There’s relief in it, I’m sure. And I get it, because I’ve felt the same when Jacob’s picked on Grace instead of me. But really? My own mum?
‘I’m just trying to help,’ he says in that same over-rehearsed voice he uses to run his lines.
‘I don’t need your help.’ I might be saying it to Daniel, but I’m staring at Mum. I need yours though, I shout, not aloud, obviously. But there’s something in her eyes that tells me she knows. Shit lot of good it does me, but she knows.
‘Oh, you need my help all right, Isabel.’
If Daniel knew how little he looks like George Clooney when he’s angry, I wonder whether he’d change.
‘You both do.’ He smiles then, cool and almost disinterested. ‘Where would you be without me?’ His arms make a cocoon around my mother. ‘Same place I’d be without you…’ His kisses on her neck so tender, so light. ‘Lost,’ he says with all that George Clooney charm.
And then he’s gone.
‘I love you,’ Mum mouths. Then, at a volume intended to reach Daniel where he’s now climbing the stairs, she says, ‘Right, crumpets for breakfast?’
If I thought it would make any difference, I would scream.
NINE
What the actual? Mum’s literally making crumpets. I can smell them from my room. Like crumpets are what we need right now. Seriously? Aren’t they just going to rile Daniel and make us fat? Make us hate ourselves even more than we do already? And I’d say all that, but I swear there’s no point. All I’d get is that wall. The one she makes of whispers. All that Not right now, Isabel. Later, Isabel. I’m really sorry, Isabel, but I know that’d be the end of it, cos Daniel would come in and the whispering would turn to silence and any hope of a proper conversation would turn to fear.
So, she’s making crumpets and surely she must know that I don’t need crumpets right now. I need her.
But you know what? In the absence of Mum I need Grace. You see, the thing with Grace is that she’s sound when I’m not. Because when the home stuff gets too much and I feel like I’m gonna lose my shit, she has this way, without even knowing what’s caused the explosion, of gathering it back in. She’s like a seventeen-year-old-girl-sized version of my Jar of Sunshine, only louder, more decisive and better on the phone.
Today though, she’s not picking up, not the first three times I call her at least, and when she does finally answer, it’s clear from the elongated, quiet-for-Grace ‘Iiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiizzzzzzzyyyyy’ that she’s priming me for bad news. ‘I know we were supposed to be meeting up this morning but…would you mind…’ she says.
I know that I will but I won’t say that obviously, because minding doesn’t change things; it just pisses people off.
‘I absolutely promise to make it up to you.’
Before she even has the chance to break my heart, I break it for her. ‘You’re spending the day with Nell, aren’t you?’
‘Not just the day, if you agree to cover,’ she says. ‘Plllllleeeeeeeeaaaasssse.’ And her voice when she asks me to help her have hours in bed with her girlfriend is really no different than it was when she was eight and talking me into lending her my singing and dancing Elmo. ‘Nell’s parents are away the entire weekend and she’s planning this amazing dinner with candles and one of those chocolate puddings they eat on First Dates – you know, those melty ones that literally look like sex on a plate.’
I know this morning’s shower will have got rid of them, but I swear I can still feel the greasy crumbs of Monster Munch on my skin. Totally un-amazing. Totally not sex on a plate.
‘I’ve spun Mum this line about an English project. You’ll do it, won’t you? Say I’m at yours? That we’re working on it together tonight if she calls?’
When do I ever say anything but yes to Grace?
‘Sure.’
‘Iz?’ And her voice is some kind of metal detector. ‘You are all right, aren’t you?’
I could tell her. About Daniel. Jacob. All of it. Everything I’ve never mentioned because revelations are like bodies, right? One thing leads to another and before you know it, you’re baring all. And I swear it’s getting too much, all of this keeping stuff in. Like one more secret and, seriously, I’m gonna go bang.
‘The thing is —’ I say.
But Grace is all hold that thought. And she’s really, really sorry, but Nell’s on the other line and she’s gotta go, but she’ll call me back when she can, and I mustn’t forget that if her mum phones, she’s with me, yeah?
‘Wish me luck! ’ she says, even though we both know she doesn’t need it.
Will I see you tomorrow? I message her after she’s hung up.
And she replies with a thumbs-up and a heart emoji, which is cool, but I know how time tempers things, how all those moments with Mum and Daniel which have been top of my Must Tell Grace pile have slipped into Can’t Tell Grace because every normal hour in their aftermath weighs down the idea of talking with this colossal sense of betrayal or shame.
And then there’s a fear of Grace disbelieving me too. About Jacob. Cos I walked into his house. I went up to his bedroom. I lay down. Those pictures are proof, right, and I may have deleted them, but he has copies too.
And Daniel? Would Grace believe what I could tell her about him? Because Daniel isn’t the kind of man to do these things. Not George-Clooney Daniel who proposed to my mum with a flash-mob dance to Bruno Mars’s ‘Marry You’ in the thrum of Whitstable harbour. I was in on it, carried the roses while he carried the ring. ‘It was so perfect,’ Mum’s best mate Becky gushed in the months after, before she stopped being invited over for coffee or wine.
I tried to speak with Becky once, when I saw her in town and she asked how Mum was doing. I tried to explain how Daniel buys all of Mum’s clothes and insists on driving her everywhere, but it didn’t sound like anything when I put it like that.
‘He’s always been considerate,’ Becky said. ‘They’re so loved up.’ And she looked kind of sad then. ‘That’s why we see so much less of her these days, I s’pose. She can’t bear to be away from him. Don’t blame her really.’ She winked. ‘Why would you want to look at any other face if you had George Clooney at home?’
She smiled, and I smiled and wondered if it wasn’t so awful really. Because that was before the worst of it, when I’d still convince myself that maybe it was a misunderstanding, cos Daniel isn’t the kind of man who…And Mum would leave him, wouldn’t she, if he was?
TEN
You’d think we’d get used to how Daniel shifts, flipping from sunshine to thunder and back again without giving us a chance to look up at the sky. He’s all teeth when he comes into my bedroom, no longer the fairy-tale wolf with a pregnancy test but poster-boy Hollywood, whiter than white, holding a pack of cards, asking if I fancy some rummy, or another game perhaps, if I prefer.
‘Later maybe,’ I say, waving my phone like it’s about to ring, which it isn’t, obviously, cos Grace is busy, and these days she’s literally the only one who ever calls. Her new voice-mail’s gone so giggly I felt like I was interrupting a kiss when I tried her just now, so I hung up without saying a word.
Then, miraculously, my phone does beep, and Daniel, still with that smile Mum and I both fell in love with, tells me he’ll leave me be, and thank god, because the message is from Jacob, only it’s not just words he’s sent me, but a whole load of flesh too.
Again. Tonight…
It’s written in red across a photo of his naked chest, which looks pumped. There may even be oil too.
How do I reply to that? Grace would know. But…
I could ask Hannah and Rosa, only things are still off since one of them screenshotted our conversation about Grace and Nell, the one where I wondered too loudly if they’d ever remove their tongues from each other’s mouths for l
ong enough to do anything other than Snapchat their loved-up faces to the rest of us loveless no-hopes. Luckily Grace hadn’t been bothered. ‘Cos it’s probably true,’ she’d said. ‘I can’t help it – Nell’s like crack.’ And her eyes had dilated at just the thought of her.
I want it. That irresistible urge, I mean. That pull towards someone and the way it lights you up after, how Grace glows as bright as the screen of her phone when a message comes through from Nell. But it’s terrifying too, how easily love swallows you and then how easily it can swing the other way.
So with no Grace and no clue, I ignore Jacob and search for some escape in the stranded: in the Desert Island Discs Mum listened to on the morning she brought me home from the hospital, sticking on Radio 4 in the hope, she’s said in the years since, that those very wise and very adult voices would feed her as she fed me, that their calm would grow her beyond her sixteen years.
I can’t imagine Mum that young, a year younger than I am now, shuttled, like some 1950s-shame-on-her-family kind of girl, to the country when her parents discovered she was – how did she say they put it? – Sixteen And With Child. But it wasn’t the 1950s – it was the 1990s, very almost the noughties, when Beyoncé was just kicking off with Destiny’s Child and Geri Halliwell had already quit the Spice Girls.
She always said the programme’s theme tune was enough to take her somewhere that wasn’t her grandmother’s spare bedroom, somewhere she could stroke my face without someone more adult than her worrying she was being too clumsy or, worse, too motherly, when the hope was she’d still give in to their pleas to hand her baby over to strangers.
‘I’d never have given you up,’ Mum says, when I ask her to tell me the story for the millionth time in the kitchen later, when I’m fetching the bread and the margarine for lunch, when we’re obviously avoiding talking about Daniel’s pregnancy-test threat before. ‘They couldn’t tell me what to do. It was my body,’ she says. ‘My choice.’ And her voice right now is a warning or a weapon – whatever it is, it’s something fiercer than I’ve ever heard from her. And in that there’s hope that maybe the defences she built to protect me when I was a baby are still there. But Daniel must’ve sensed her sudden bolt of backbone too, cos he’s like Harry Potter, or Voldemort maybe, apparating from the dining room where he was running through lines to lay a hand on her shoulder and remind her, very gently, of his callback this evening, of his need for quiet, and then, like always, of how he rescued her from that ‘bad, bad past’.
