by Amy Beashel
I’ve done it myself, wondered what I’d do, whether I’d see it through like Mum did or go down the route her parents had wanted for her. She’s always avoided the A word, as if saying it aloud might make me disappear. Daniel said it once, though, about a year in, not long after my twelfth birthday when he’d whisked us away on the Eurostar to Paris. It’d been freezing but they’d kept each other warm with their held hands and arms wrapped around each other’s middles, Mum beckoning at me to keep up cos Daniel had so much planned.
It was on the train journey home. ‘Why didn’t you have an abortion?’ he asked her, and it was kind of weird because we weren’t even talking about me – we weren’t really talking at all. The focus, for all three of us, was on the game. Daniel had been teaching us rummy and, struggling to get a second run, I’d bought too many extra cards, so my hand was spilling into my lap and to the floor, where Daniel, without even looking down to where I was scrabbling, slid my ace of hearts further away with his foot. Twice.
‘Why didn’t you have an abortion?’ he’d asked.
Even from under the table, I could tell the question was a vacuum, audibly sucking the breath from Mum, who, as I clambered to my seat, shook her head, like, what?, but couldn’t seem to form actual words for her shock.
‘Here, Isabel, you missed one.’ Daniel stretched down for the ace and passed it over, kissing my knuckles and winking. ‘Let me sort those for you, darling,’ he said, taking the mass of cards and arranging the perfect fan. ‘There you go: you’ll be able to see them all more easily now. Who’s for a chocolate button?’ he asked and pulled two packets from his pocket. ‘For my favourite girls.’ He opened one for each of us, occasionally feeding a chocolate to Mum, who’d left hers otherwise untouched on the table.
‘Why didn’t you have an abortion?’ I asked her that afternoon as we unpacked the suitcase while Daniel popped out for some milk.
‘I couldn’t,’ she said. ‘It was never an option for me, Isabel.’
Because I wasn’t as tall as her back then, my ear fell on her chest when she hugged me, her heart thumping like mine when Daniel cajoled me into running on Sundays.
I’m not sure it would never be an option for me. If I were pregnant, I mean. I’ve seen it from the inside, how hard it was for Mum, even before the Daniel thing, how much of the ‘normal’ she had to give up for herself by not giving up on me. But for me the choice had only ever been theoretical, clearly, cos, despite what they told me in RS, you don’t get pregnant if you’re a virgin. Which obviously I was until Jacob Mansfield.
I’ve had sex.
Only ‘had’ isn’t the right word. Not really. Cos it sounds like I’ve gained something or at the very least like I was actually involved.
And that thought drills through everything else, which is stupid, right, because there’s so much other crap happening now, but I can’t help it, this thought that if Mum hadn’t stayed, or just hadn’t stayed so long, if she’d made this decision to up and leave a few days earlier, or if she’d even just told me that this was the plan…If any of those things had been true, then maybe I wouldn’t have done the worst thing to my body in some stupid attempt to stop Jacob exposing something he never had. Only now he has it. And the further we drive from Whitstable, the louder ‘Tomorrow, Izzy. Finish what we started, yeah’ gets in my head. Louder and louder and louder. Because what Mum doesn’t know is, in freeing me from Daniel’s trap, she’s pushing me further into Jacob’s. I won’t be there tomorrow. I can’t finish what he started.
I’m screwed.
‘Isabel,’ Mum says, but it’s too late. All this leaving and sharing and protecting.
I grab my headphones from my bag, plug them into my phone and put them in my ears, casting Mum as far away from my island as is possible in this bloody car, looking at her, like, you haven’t learnt, have you? That patience is not a virtue; it’s a risk.
RU OK, Izzy?
Unlike Mum, Max’s timing is bang on.
No. You called Jacob a nob but he’s so much more.
I know. Can we talk?
Grace isn’t interested.
This isn’t about Grace.
Well then, I’ve nothing to say. Leave me alone, Max. You and Jacob and all you lot. Just leave me the hell alone.
EIGHTEEN
Where RU?
Call me.
U OK?
Earth to Izzy…RU hearing me?
Pick up your phone.
Seriously, Iz, I need 2 talk 2 u.
NOW!!!!!!!!!!
It sounds awful, doesn’t it, that in the midst of all this, I get this buzz from Grace wanting me, from that ping of her messages as they come through in quick succession when I finally get some reception. And at nine o’clock too. Bang in the middle of her perfect night with Nell. And I am tempted to call her, partly to put her mind at rest but mostly just to hear her voice, to get her take on this hurried escape, which has paused with us at another service station, just half an hour from the last, Mum drinking another coffee, one minute saying she’s ready but then she’s not, drumming her index finger on the handle of the car door like she’s all set for making a different kind of run for it.
‘Can you just turn that off,’ she says when she eyes my phone on my lap.
‘But Grace —’ I say.
‘Not even Grace can know where we’re going.’
I start dialling anyway.
‘I mean it,’ she says.
And I nod, like, yeah, yeah, and Mum takes my free hand in hers and squeezes it super hard, like so hard I wince, and her eyes are totally repentant but she doesn’t stop, like, this is it, until I give her an answer.
‘I get it,’ I bark at Mum, just as Grace starts in my ear, all high tones swooping into low tones so I can’t pick out her emphasis cos it all sounds like a jumble of panic and glee. That’s the thing with Grace: she loves a drama. Her mum calls us chalk and cheese. I’m the chalk, I guess; I mean, anyone will tell you that Grace isn’t easily wiped away.
‘Goddamn it, Izzy. Where are you? You are still covering for me, yeah?’
And I nod even though she can’t see me, and even though I can’t possibly cover from however many hundreds of miles away.
‘Mum’s on her way over to yours. Now! She left a message about ten minutes ago. I told her about us working on that stupid English project and she saw I left my college bag at home. Duh! And now she’s not picking up her goddamn phone. Must be driving. Crap. She must almost be at yours, Iz. Just tell her I’m in the bath or something, yeah?’
I did promise.
‘Izzy? You there?’
There’s Nell in the background then, asking if I’ll do it, and it’s not that her voice is harsh or anything – she just wants to know – but I swear it makes it worse. That she’s the one checking, I mean. That my Grace will be shaking her head, like, Izzy’s gone AWOL, and Nell will be totally chill, which will just make my mess look like even more of a shitstorm.
‘Izzy! Have you lost your goddamn voice?’ And Grace is still kind of joking, but there’s an edge to it.
‘I can’t.’ My confession hangs there on the line like a stalactite. Or a stalagmite. Whichever one it is that’s just a big old deadly spike pointing down. Like any moment now it might drop and split you in two.
‘What do you mean you can’t?’
I picture Grace, her jaw literally dropped, and Nell, who I can tell is still too close to the phone, still too close to Grace, asking her why I’m not at home now, when I promised I would be. And Nell’s voice will be all yoga, just curious in that listening, head-tilted way she has. But Grace. Grace is another story.
‘Izzy?’
‘I’m sorry.’ And I say it maybe three or four times. ‘I’m not at home.’
Mum’s eyeballing me a warning not to say a word, not releasing that grip, which is starting to feel like a full-on burn.
‘Izzy? You OK? Are you with Jacob? Cos someone told me something’s going on between you two.’ And I can he
ar it, that break in Grace’s rage, the hurt that I’ve kept a secret, but, more than that, the motherly tone she takes with me when I need her, which is, like, all the time, I know.
‘I’m not with Jacob.’
Mum’s eyes are practically bleeding with the fix she has on me.
‘Izzy?’ Grace says, but it’s half word, half sigh. ‘God. When did you start keeping things from me?’
‘I’m not with Jacob,’ I repeat. ‘Promise.’
‘Well, how quickly can you get back home then?’
‘I’m nowhere close,’ I tell Grace, who, with a sharp intake of her breath, sucks in the disbelief and the anger, which get stuck, puffing her up in that way she has of exploding. Nell will have a calming hand on her back, I bet, miming some kind of pranayama exhale, this picture of serenity while smoke practically pours from Grace’s ears as she fumes. ‘I’m so sorr—’
But before I have the chance to even apologise, let alone explain, Mum – not risking any more, I guess – snatches the phone from me and puts an end to the call.
‘If she phones back —’
Before Mum can finish, it’s already ringing again. She holds it away from me, tucks it down between her seat and the door.
‘You can’t tell Grace anything.’ And I’m nodding, but she goes on anyway. ‘I’ve never been more serious, Izzy.’
She hasn’t called me Izzy for years. I don’t know when exactly I became permanently Isabel, but it was sometime after Daniel arrived, when he said how beautiful our names were. Wasn’t it a shame, he said, that people couldn’t be bothered to say them in full? Would we mind, he asked, if he made us Stephanie and Isabel? Because the last thing he wanted was to cut the two of us in half.
Mum’s friends persisted with ‘Steph’, but only while they were still on the scene, which became less and less often as Daniel found reasonable excuse after reasonable excuse why dinner with Claire couldn’t work that night, why the cinema with Becky just wouldn’t do. Sociable Steph gradually became unsociable Stephanie until Claire and Becky had dropped away and Steph was lost, cast on a desert island shaped like another time.
‘OK,’ I say to Mum, and that look on her face! Like it’s not my phone she’s putting in my hands but her life.
‘Grace.’ I take the call and the fire that comes with it.
‘You promised me, Iz. Seriously, everything I do for you and you can’t do this! Are you sure you’re not with Jacob? Cos if you’ve let me down for that prick, I swear…’
‘I’m not with Jacob,’ I repeat, comforted by the truth of it.
‘So where are you?’
‘I can’t tell you. I’m sor—’
‘Can’t or won’t?’ And her voice is a mind made up. ‘You know what I reckon? I reckon you’re so jealous of my relationship with Nell that you’ve done this on purpose.’
‘That’s not true. I promise, I —’
‘So you’re not jealous then?’
‘No.’
‘Liar,’ she says. ‘I can hear it in that pathetic little voice of yours. You can’t hide anything, Izzy.’
And if only she knew, right? Cos Grace thinks she’s got this sixth sense or whatever, but what kind of friend is she when… yeah, I may not have said anything out loud, but what about all those other ways I’ve tried to let her know I need her? Like when Jacob Mansfield had me pinned to a radiator with his hands in my knickers and all she said was sorry. Not even to me but to him. For interrupting. What about that?
‘You know what, Grace? I didn’t do this on purpose. But I’m glad you’re getting caught. Serves you right.’
And she’s not the only one with gut feeling cos I’m pretty sure her hanging up means she’s sending me to goddamn hell.
‘What’s happened?’ Mum’s hands are cold when she tries to shake out an answer from me.
The cover of that feelings book flickers in my mind, the same little girl repeated to make a circle of little girls, her different moods drawn on her otherwise identical faces. One second I’m the one with downturned lips and tears, the next I’m all clenched fists and a mouth so wide and so fierce I’m breathing fire.
‘I let her down,’ I spit the flames, ‘and I’ve no chance of making any of it better because of this.’ I point at the suitcases on the back seat. ‘Because of you!’ And my stare’s as hard as a slap, I reckon, cos Mum recoils the same way she does when Daniel snaps.
And despite the shame of it – of being like him, I mean – I’d go on. Honestly, I would. But Mum bites her lip, starts the engine and rejoins the motorway, taking me further and further away.
NINETEEN
When I close my eyes, I’m the furthest away from everything. Mum included.
This blind darkness with flashes of headlights. Just me. On my own.
Time was, I was never alone; Mum or Grace were always beside me, like stabilisers. And I know stabilisers are only supposed to be temporary, that they’re meant to come away when you’re ready to ride independently, but I’d never expected them to disappear completely, had assumed they’d remain either side of me, each propping me up when I was at risk of a fall.
I can’t remember the specific moment I lost the first one, maybe because as Mum gradually became less able to prop me up, Grace stepped in and supported me from both sides: as Mum went out less, Grace came over more; and as Mum’s voice grew softer, Grace filled my own quiet with her nonstop talking. Not that we ever talked about that because there wasn’t really much I could say, nothing in particular I could point out that was hurting Mum. Cos it’s not like there were bruises, not then.
And I hadn’t even noticed what Grace was doing. That she was being a double prop, I mean. It was only when her mum said something last year, when we were taking our GCSEs and Grace was calling me each morning to remind me what exam I had that day, meeting me at the school gates to check I had the right stationery and waiting afterwards to reassure me I’d done OK.
‘You’ll make an excellent mother one day, Grace,’ her mum, Marion, had said when we were done with exams, eating jam-drippy scones and filling in the online form for our celebratory change of name. ‘Izzy, how on earth will you get yourself through a degree if you and Grace opt for different unis?’
And we’d just laughed, cos like that was ever gonna happen.
‘You know, I think Grace has been a better parent to you, Izzy, than I’ve been to her the last few years!’
I’m not even sure Marion was joking. She was smiling though, shaking her head as she pulled up a chair next to us, twisting Grace’s laptop round so she could take a proper look. ‘Are you girls really going through with this?’
‘Yep!’ we said in perfect unison.
‘We’ve been practising our new signatures!’ Grace slid the A4 sheets scrawled with Grace Izzy Ashdown and Izzy Grace Chambers across to her mum. ‘Cool, right?’
Marion and Grace didn’t pick up on the legal change of Isabel to Izzy too. And I mentioned none of it to Mum, cos it’s not like she was ever gonna remember the promise Grace and I made when we were, like, ten, that we’d give each other our names, proof that we’re as good as family. Better even. So Grace is me and I am Grace. She is my rock with my name running right through her middle.
But rock’s not totally indestructible, right?
If the fall of my first stabiliser went almost unnoticed, the second? Well, its retreat was much more of a bang. 4:37P.M. on 13 February 2017, the minute Grace first swiped right on Nell. ‘Take note of the time, Izzy,’ she called down the phone. ‘I’ve just clocked the love of my life.’ I should’ve known it was trouble when not just the odd word but her whole sentences were inflected.
It’s not like she just disappeared, and Grace probably doesn’t even realise anything’s changed, but something has definitely changed, and not because of tonight’s phone call. Before then. Because a few months back I’d have had no hesitation in telling her what happened with Jacob and, by this stage, maybe I’d have even told her what’s happening wit
h Mum. But for some reason now I’m freewheeling.
I wonder how different it would be if I’d really known my dad, if he’d been someone I could call when Mum and Grace’s lines were otherwise engaged, whether he’d have offered me a home when Daniel’s turned into a prison, whether he’d have been happy that it was never an option for Mum or if he’d ever have asked the same question as Daniel in the hope that saying the A word aloud might just make me disappear.
When the Desert Island episode ends and ‘By the Sleepy Lagoon’ swoops in once more, I close my eyes and imagine myself on the island, drifting away from everyone and everything I know.
When I open them again, it occurs to me that I don’t have to close my eyes and imagine. Because with this car, this journey, this mystery destination, Mum’s already created an exile of her own.
TWENTY
If things had been different, maybe I could have told Mum, ‘Screw you and your too-late worry.’ ‘See you in a day or so,’ I’d have said, when things had calmed down. ‘I’m off to Dad’s now,’ I’d have told her, and headed south to Brighton instead of north to Location X.
And if things had been different, maybe my dad would’ve opened his door and his arms, and my half-brothers and -sisters would’ve come running to see me, pulling at my legs and my hands, wanting to show me their Lego sheep or a fairy they’d made from leaves, or the headstand they’d been mastering since they saw me that last time at the woods when, if things had been different, maybe we’d have enjoyed the tastiest picnic in the warmest sunshine and chased butterflies and played hide-and-seek in the trees. If things had been different, maybe Mum could have been there too, and the half-brothers and -sisters could be whole, and other picnickers could have commented on our red hair and our pale skin and said weren’t we a picture, how we all looked so much like our mother but sang just like our dad. Because if things had been different, maybe he could have brought his guitar and let us all take a turn and we’d play our top tracks or sing a family favourite not quite in harmony, but it’d feel like magic with our voices so together, so aloud.
