by Amy Beashel
THIRTY
‘You all right?’
A week ago, an hour or so ago even, the kindness in Rower Boy’s voice would have been enough to put a lid on the inferno in my belly. His smile would have cut off the oxygen at source, replacing it instead with weak knees and butterflies. That literal swoon. But right now, that rap, those boys, my stepdad, Jacob’s photos, his ‘deal’, my entire bloody life, is all the heat, fuel and oxygen my anger needs to burn, burn, burn. And so despite Rower Boy’s gentle hand on my shoulder, maybe even a little because of it, I shout No, my temper coming at him fast and furious, the sparks of my outrage searing his concern and turning him a flustered kind of red.
‘Sorry,’ he says, backing off a little. ‘I was only trying to help.’
And I’m sure he is and I’m sure he was, but he’s one of them, isn’t he? One of the fifty percent. And a stranger. I couldn’t even trust the man who married my mum. How could I trust this boy? His smile may be bright, and his words may be right, but Daniel was a true Prince Charming who scorched that fairy-tale rescue of his princesses to dust.
Across the river, the lads are still at it.
‘I’d steer clear if I were you, mate,’ one of them bawls.
But when I turn around to go at them again, the girls are thrusting the boys’ T-shirts at their bared pecs, pulling at their arms, like they’ve finally had enough. It’s the girls’ heads that are hanging though, as if they’re the ones who should feel ashamed. ‘Good riddance,’ I want to shout at all of them as they climb the hill and merge into the trees, but it seems old Izzy, quiet Izzy, wouldn’t-say-boo-to-a-goose Izzy is back, so instead I just watch as the flames die down to a smoulder.
Because it turns out, the one thing sure to dampen the fire is my own tears. I hadn’t even realised they were falling, but by the time I’ve dropped to the ground, head in my hands, my top is already wet from the stream of them.
Rower Boy doesn’t say anything, but I know he’s still there. Years of not seeing Daniel, of purposefully looking the other way, have given me that heightened sense of someone’s breathing, of someone’s stare.
We stay like this for a while, until a woman’s voice cuts into his silence and my heaving mess of a cry. ‘Everything OK?’ she asks. ‘I can wait with you while this young man leaves if you want.’
And I see what this must look like, as if Rower Boy’s the one who’s done this to me, cos maybe the kind female stranger is aware of the cutting up and connecting things too. But I can’t let Rower Boy take the blame for the Rapper Boys’ assault, and so I lift my head and tell her, honestly, everything will be OK.
‘If you’re sure then,’ she says, walking away but swinging her head round to check on me three times before she disappears from view.
‘I’m sorry,’ I say without really thinking about it, because apologies are what Mum and I do when the temperature’s chilled and we’re brushing the ashes beneath the carpet so we can move on.
But Rower Boy looks at me like, cool, like it’s not unusual for a girl to scream then collapse into tears at his hey. Like it really doesn’t matter that, after days of definitely not waiting and definitely not looking but definitely waving and definitely smiling, in our first up-close encounter, I burst into a great ball of flames.
‘They’re dicks,’ he says.
And I nod, relieved not to be shouting but wondering what happens next, not with Rower Boy – though, yeah, if I’m honest, I guess there’s a part of me thinking about that too – but, with that all-body anger fading, what happens next with my life?
I hadn’t known she was in me, that girl who won’t stand for it, that girl who won’t sit quietly on the sidelines while those boys flaunt their god-given ‘right’ to say and do what they want with our bodies. Where’s she been all these years? All those times Daniel trampled, emotionally and literally, on my mum – where was she then? Where was her not-afraid-to-use-it voice? That strength to say stop when something is wrong? Because those things weren’t there when I really needed them, when it was personal, when Jacob Mansfield thrust me against a radiator, threatened me into lying down on his monument bed, playing that hardcore and assuming I was up for whatever those men did to those women because everyone knows you can do anything, ‘grab ’em by the pussy’ if you want, cos that’s what we’re here for, right? For them. Why has it taken this long for her to bust through my timid little shell?
But better late than never, I reckon, going easy on myself for the first time in, like, years, because maybe this isn’t all on me, maybe I’m not the one who needs to say sorry. And though she’s no longer raging, I can feel her, this galvanised Izzy, twisting and turning like a new kind of river is running through my blood.
‘They are,’ I say. ‘Dicks, I mean. Mega dicks.’
And Rower Boy smiles that smile and I smile too, cos after weeks, months, years of keeping quiet, it’s good to be saying things aloud.
‘That song,’ he says, ‘is it for real?’
When I Google the lyrics on my phone, it literally is. ‘Some twelve-year-old,’ I tell him.
And we stand, breath-on-the-neck close, watching the YouTube video of this kid whose head is shaking as he stumbles through – and sometimes forgets – the words, like he totally gets the offence in them, but screw it, he’ll rap and record them anyway, cos what harm can it do? It’s just YouTube. It’s just words. It’s just rape. Sticks and stones, yeah?
‘Like you said.’ Rower Boy turns to face me when it’s played. ‘A mega dick.’
‘I’ve discovered they’re not so rare,’ I say, and for once I know exactly what I’m doing, challenging Rower Boy to prove he’s not one of their kind.
THIRTY-ONE
‘So if you’re tough enough to take on the mega dicks, I reckon you’re tough enough to take on the water.’ We’re approaching the bridge, Rower Boy nods at the river below.
It feels kind of odd, to be standing with him on the exact same spot where I’ve been definitely not looking and definitely not waiting for him each morning.
‘Tough? Me?’
‘Mega tough!’ he says, brows raised, like, why would you even question it? ‘I went to school with a couple of those mega dicks and no one ever really stood up to them. We could do with a few more of your kind round here.’
‘My kind?’
‘Yeah,’ he says, voice like a round of applause, ‘you know, the kind that don’t take any shit.’
‘You mean, the kind that don’t take any shit and then burst into tears!’
‘True. They did issue a flood warning when you really got going!’
‘Ha ha.’ I try not to smile too much, cos I’m an island, remember, and anyway, Rower Boy’s on trial.
We stand side by side, shoulders touching, and all the time I’m telling myself the only reason for feeling so wobbly is the other people walking across the bridge, nothing to do with Rower Boy, who asks in a voice which is all soft and whirly and not totally unlike the Mr Whippy ice creams those kids are stuffing into their faces in the park, ‘What’s with your accent? You’re not from round here then?…Where are you staying?…How long are you here for?…What are you up to tomorrow?’
That last one is the chocolate flake! I try not to bite too soon.
‘A few things planned.’ I’m as vague as I was with his other questions, figuring as I already bared so much when I screamed wildfire at the rappers on the riverbank, maybe I should hold back on the finest of my mixed-up family. But seriously, there must be a train chugging through my chest or something, cos, what with the thump and the rumble, I swear I can hardly breathe.
‘How about it then?’ Rower Boy says, and I must look at him, like, what?, cos he points at the river. ‘You know, that thing you’re obviously so obsessed with! I mean, that’s why you’ve been here on the bridge every morning, isn’t it? To watch me.’ He smiles this wicked smile. ‘I mean, to watch people row?!’
‘Actually, it’s the quiet I’m obsessed with. You rowers tend to
ruin that.’
‘I can only apologise,’ he says. ‘And the only way to make it up to you is to give you a lesson. Six A.M. tomorrow, yeah? It’ll be nice and quiet then. Just how you like it.’
He’s almost back on solid ground before I think to ask where we should meet.
‘Right here.’ He gestures with both hands first at the bridge and then at me. ‘Actually, right there. That exact spot you’re in now. Where it all began!’
And I can’t help it, I smile so hard my head might literally explode into tiny pellets of sunshine.
‘I don’t even know your name,’ I shout as he makes to run up the hill.
‘Harry. Like Styles, but without the tats.’ He raises his arms to declare his un-inked skin. ‘Or the millions,’ he says, pulling out his empty pockets. ‘Or the looks.’ And I’ve never seen anyone pull off such a good impression of a sad-face emoji.
‘Story of my life,’ I call out, imagining Grace’s face if she ever gets to hear about the time I pulled out a One Direction pun in my feeble efforts at flirting.
THIRTY-TWO
I know, this rowing thing is, like, the worst idea ever. It’s only going to end badly, right? For medicine, I listen to a sad songs playlist on Spotify, all this light-quenching Tom Odell, Damien Rice, Amy Winehouse and Joni Mitchell to suppress my ridiculous flutterings to the concept of love. Because if my heart, like the rest of me, is already broken, isn’t it safer, less painful, to keep all my broken pieces in the dark?
So before I’m even back at the refuge, I’m totally cured of all those inappropriate feels. Love is totally, one hundred percent, absolutely not on my to-do list. And never, ever will be. Romantically anyway. What I am more open to, love wise, is Mum. I dunno, maybe it’ll fade like it usually does when I see her, but I’m not so sure. Because that river rage, it let something out or switched something inside me, opened my eyes to this bigger picture. And it’s not like I’ve suddenly got it all figured out, but maybe this rock thing’s not so wise. Maybe we’re better fighting together and against than fighting alone and between. And Mum did leave. She may have waited a while, but she did leave – despite everything he said and did, she left. She took me from that house and that man and led me towards the sky.
It’s Kate I see first when I return. Kate and her bruises, which have turned from purple to green. I wonder if it hurts when the lines that form round her eyes as she gives me this big grin cut into the puffiness, but she’s all ‘Steph! Izzy’s here’. No wincing, just this nervy excitement that makes me want to bolt back out the door and wait all night by the river for Harry.
‘Baldy baldy bandicoot,’ sings this little girl – Ava, I think her name is – running into the kitchen, holding up her hands for this clapping game she taught me at the crack of dawn this morning.
Mum comes in after, beaming, with her head held high, more oval than I’ve ever seen it.
‘Izzy,’ Ava says, ‘pleaaaaaaaaase.’ She pushes my arms up into the start position, but they stay there, in jazz hands, incapable of clapping, cos god forbid Mum mistakes the noise for a round of applause.
‘What the —’
‘Izzy, Ava’s right here.’ Kate shoots me a stop-right-there warning to censor whatever inappropriate words might spew from my dropped jaw.
‘But seriously, what the actual …’
Mum runs her hand over the smooth skin of her head, no self-consciousness in it, just this, like, appreciation of its newness or something. ‘You hate it,’ she says, but in a voice that clearly doesn’t give a shit if I do.
‘You’ve shaved it!’
‘Yep.’ Her face is like Grace’s whenever she bunks off college to spend an afternoon kissing Nell at the beach huts. Like, what of it?
I so want to be cool with this. It’s only hair, right? It’s still my mum, there’s just a bit less of her; she’s just a bit shinier around the edges is all. But it’s so extreme. It’s so bald.
‘You want to feel?’ She comes closer, reaching out for my hand, raising it gently to her crown. I wonder what the hell is going on beneath the skin.
‘I can’t go back,’ she says, and I shrug my shoulders, shake my head, like, what? And she takes both my hands in hers then gives a quick glance at Ava, who Kate coaxes from the room with the promise of Connect Four. ‘This means I can’t go back.’
And maybe I’m stupid, but I still don’t get it, so Mum sits me down at the table, face like when she told me about the birds and the bees.
‘He’d kill me.’ Her voice is a newsreader’s, serious and matter of fact. ‘You know what he’s like.’ And I nod because, well, Mum and me, we’re the only ones who do. ‘Before, when we left the last time, I made you promises, Izzy. This time, I’m determined to keep them. This,’ she says, pointing at her naked skull, ‘it’s my promise. Can you imagine what he’d do if he saw me like this?’ She can’t stop touching it. ‘He’d go crazy, Izzy.’ And there’s no hesitation in my name, which seems to come naturally now that her voice is more like her own, not her recent own, but her green-chair-days own, her run-the-world own. ‘You know how he liked my hair a certain length, a certain colour. Anything else was – how did he put it? Unacceptable.’
‘You could’ve got a perm.’ And I’m trying to be funny, obviously, but neither of us laughs.
‘I think this is more of a statement, don’t you!’ And she gives me this smile I hadn’t realised I’d missed. ‘I actually quite like it. How it makes me look so different. Kind of strong.’ She looks younger, and those windows to her soul, they’re brighter and more fixed on me too. None of these head-down, not-now, shame-filled glances in another direction. Like me by the river, she’s standing her ground. ‘You know what he’d call it?’
‘What?’
‘Disobedient.’
She’s right. He’d take one look and ask her why she felt the need to disobey him. God knows what he’d do then.
We sit like this, kind of basking in her rebellion, my hand holding hers, me looking at her head but not really seeing it, seeing instead the last six years that led us here: a margherita pizza, a table of cake, a card filled with promises, the Eiffel Tower, dancing at the harbour while bearing a ring, the torn arm of a wedding dress, the whispered apologies, the kisses and a necklace of sunshine scattered on the floor. The raised voices, the hushed voices, the I-love-you-more-than-anything voices. The tea in bed, the festival at home, the holding gently, the pulling roughly, the whispered apologies and the sobbing that was his and not hers. The gifts for no reason, the raised hands for no reason, the leaving, the returning, the whispered apologies, the shame and the hate. She’s come through it all.
‘It’s actually pretty badass,’ I say. ‘And brave.’
Mum holds me tight.
In my head, there’s Grace: ‘You don’t even have to say anything – just let your goddamn body do the talking.’ And so I hold Mum even tighter back, letting her know exactly what I think of her and that shiny head of hers. What’s done is done and this is the new her. The new us. We might not know exactly where we’re going, but it’s not backwards. It’s not to him. Wherever it is, I think, our love will take us there. The love that makes us strong.
THIRTY-THREE
‘You grab that end.’
‘But this is huge. It’s gotta be for two people, right? Can’t I go out on my own?’
‘You’re kidding? You know how much trouble I’d get into if I let a novice out on a single. Sorry, but this morning you’re stuck in a double with me!’ And he actually winks. Like, proper shuts his left eye, cocks his head and makes that weird clicking sound people who wink make when they’re actually winking.
‘Can you not?’
‘Can I not what? Wink?’ And he winks again. ‘What?’ Harry’s voice is an oar in the water, stirring things up. ‘You don’t like that?’ So he does it again, obviously. And again. And then all the way down to the jetty, which is good, really, cos maybe if he’s got one eye closed most of the way he’ll be less likely to
notice how puffed I am just lugging the bloody thing, and I haven’t even started rowing yet.
‘It’s sculling, actually,’ Harry says when I ask when he first started rowing.
‘Huh?’
‘What we’re doing – it’s sculling.’
‘Oh, that’s what we’re doing, is it? Sculling?’
‘What else would we be doing, Izzy?’ And he can’t help it, can he? He winks again, silently this time, with this giant grin across his face which I know he’d say isn’t as cute as Harry Styles’s but…
‘Nothing. Like you said, we’re just sculling.’ I’m glad for the fact that my back’s to him as I climb into the boat – it makes me bolder, I guess. ‘Definitely not flirting.’
‘God, no,’ Harry says, his voice like those lines people get round their eyes when they smile. ‘Definitely not that. And definitely not wondering whether you’re single.’
‘No. That’d be awful, right? But I am, even though you’re definitely not wondering. I am. Single, I mean.’
‘Good to know. Had I been wondering, which I definitely wasn’t. But if I was, that would definitely be good because I’m definitely single too.’
‘I wasn’t wondering.’
‘Obviously.’
‘But if I were.’ And maybe this not facing someone is the answer. I swear this kind of talk’s never come so easily. Or maybe it’s the river – like yesterday, when it released that wild tongue in me.
Do not even think about wild tongue right now, Izzy.
‘Woaaaahhhh!’ And Harry’s hands are in full body contact with my shoulders as he climbs in and the boat rocks and I’m one hundred percent sure we’re going in. ‘Sorry ’bout that,’ he says, when the boat comes to a wobbly kind of peace on the water.
‘Should I be worried, Harry? I mean, you’re supposed to be the expert here, and yet I – the “novice”, I think it was you called me – managed to get in the boat without nearly drowning us in the process.’
