by Amy Lloyd
‘What are you smiling about?’ Dani asks.
‘Is it your new bloke?’ someone asks.
‘What?’ I say.
‘Whoever you were giggling to on the phone on the fire escape for hours yesterday,’ the blonde woman says, rolling her eyes.
‘Ooh, is it the guy who dropped you off the other night?’ someone else says. ‘He was fit!’
How do they know all this? I feel a rising panic.
‘He looked like fucking trouble, he did,’ another says.
‘How …’ I ask. They all laugh.
‘Can’t hide anything around here!’ Dani says. ‘Especially not from them lot.’
‘We were out having a sneaky fag and we saw you in the taxi,’ one says, laughing with a rasp. ‘Go on then, what’s he like?’
‘Um,’ I say.
‘That doesn’t sound good,’ Dani says.
‘Where did you meet him?’ the one who thinks Jack’s fit asks.
‘Watch out, she’s after your man!’ another says. They all laugh again.
‘Work,’ I say. ‘He works on security.’
There’s an intake of breath.
‘What?’ I ask.
‘Don’t shit where you eat,’ someone says. More laughter.
‘It was only one date,’ I say.
‘Not into it?’ Dani says.
‘It sounds like she’s into it,’ someone says. ‘Heard her flirting for hours yesterday evening.’
‘Then what’s the problem?’ someone else asks.
‘I just …’ I say.
‘He looked keen,’ one of the smokers says.
‘Maybe he’s too keen,’ someone else says.
‘Yeah,’ I say. ‘It’s a bit like that.’
They all laugh.
‘I wish I had that problem!’ Dani says. ‘Too keen! Fuck skinny girls!’ Everyone laughs again and Dani elbows me to make sure I know she’s joking.
‘He looked like a player,’ one of the smokers says.
‘How could you tell from there?’ someone says.
‘Too much gel in his hair. A pretty boy,’ she says.
‘I like them rough,’ someone says. ‘I don’t want my man to spend more time in front of the mirror than I do.’ Everyone murmurs in agreement.
‘So are you seeing him again?’ Dani asks.
‘I have to,’ I say. ‘At work.’
More laughing.
‘Charl, you are so funny, babe,’ Dani says.
‘Thanks,’ I tell her. I sip my tea. The smokers push back the long bench they’re sat on together and grip their cigarettes and lighters in their hands. Others start to get up, too, saying things about viewing potential properties and meetings at the job centre and the council. The life seems to drain from the room.
As they leave they put their dirty mugs in the sink and leave them there without washing up. Instead of complaining, Dani gets up and fills the sink, smiling. She brushes crumbs off the counter into her hand and puts them in the bin.
‘Don’t you mind?’ I ask.
‘Mind what?’ Dani says, beginning to wash the mugs.
‘Being left with all the washing up,’ I say. Already I feel embarrassed and wish I hadn’t said it. But Dani shrugs.
‘I like looking after people,’ she says. ‘They’re not bad sorts,’ she adds after a pause. ‘They’ve just got a lot on their minds, that’s all.’
I help Dani wash up and then force myself to go out for a walk. I do a couple of laps of the lake and then go to Kelly’s Café for beans and cheese on toast. It is mid-morning and I realise that this means I’m having brunch. In the unit there was only breakfast, lunch and dinner, all at the same time each day. I used to daydream about the meals between meals: brunches, afternoon teas, midnight snacks. Then once I got out I stopped being hungry almost at all.
Today, though, I feel almost normal.
The battery of the phone runs down quickly when I look at Dr Isherwood on the map, so I try to stop looking at it as much. When I get to the supermarket, I can’t resist one more peek before I put the phone in my locker. Dr Isherwood has left home but she isn’t at work, or shopping. I zoom in on the street and see the only thing there is a doctor’s surgery. Worry starts to creep in. Maybe she is unwell and that’s why she’s so distracted and why she has to take phone calls even during our session and why she’s been taking time off?
‘Hello, stranger,’ says a voice behind me. I jump; I hold the phone against my chest so they can’t see what I’m looking at. ‘You avoiding me or what?’ Jack says when I turn around.
‘No,’ I say, though I have been.
‘And what have you got there? New phone?’ He grins with all his white teeth.
‘I only just got it,’ I say.
‘Give it here and I’ll put my number in so you can text me for that second date,’ he says, reaching for the phone. I give it to him reluctantly and without knowing how to say no again without being rude. But I tell myself that if I don’t want to call him I don’t have to. I hold my hand out waiting to get my phone back but instead of handing it over he puts it to his ear and pulls his own phone out of his pocket. His own phone lights up and he taps it and gives my phone back. ‘There,’ he says. ‘Now I have your number, just in case you forget to give me a call.’ He winks.
I wipe my phone on my trousers because his face has left a smear on the screen.
‘I have to go now,’ I say. ‘My shift is starting.’
‘Text me,’ he says.
I realise I will have to. And I wonder, how far will I have to go to get rid of him?
26
Her: Then
There were three birthday cards on the windowsill in my room at the unit: one from Dr Isherwood, one from Miss and one big one signed by all the other girls in the unit. Each card had the number 18 in big, bright print on the front.
Eighteen. My sentence of eight years was almost over and I was legally an adult, which meant I would finally be leaving the unit. More and more lately the social workers had been taking me out, trying to get me used to the everyday things that I had dreamed about: shopping, eating in cafés, walking and walking and walking. Sometimes it was overwhelming and we had to stop and come back in a taxi. Dr Isherwood said it would pass and that I just had to focus on how exciting it would be. All that time stretching out in front of me. I read the cards again, one by one.
‘This is it!’ Dr Isherwood’s card read. ‘I will be here for you every step of the way.’
Dr Isherwood got me a book about positive thinking, a diary and Now That’s What I Call Music! I put the CD in my white ghetto blaster and looked at the diary: ‘To record all the wonderful new experiences you’ll have xxx’, it said.
I peeled off the plastic. There was a pen tucked into the side. I scribbled on the back of some of the wrapping paper to test it. Blue ink. I put it into a drawer and found a black pen instead. At the top of the first page I wrote the day’s date, then paused, unable to think of anything else.
‘Today I am 18’, I wrote. Someone knocked on the door and I looked up. The doors were always open there during the day because that was the rule. Oliver was standing in the open doorway.
‘Is my music too loud?’ I asked, though I didn’t think it was. Oliver was one of the youngest members of staff and all the girls fancied him like mad. His hair was brown and floppy and parted in the middle and he had lips that were red and pouty.
‘Just saying hello,’ he said, inviting himself in. ‘How’s it going?’ He leaned against my dresser and looked at the back of the Now CD.
‘OK,’ I said, folding my diary shut and slipping it under the pillows. Oliver put the CD back and wandered over to the windowsill. ‘Birthday girl, are we?’ he asked. One by one he picked up the cards and read them and I bristled.
‘Yes,’ I said, wanting to take the cards away. As he read them he smiled and I wasn’t sure whether he was laughing at me. It felt like he was opening me up and looking inside.
‘No
way are you eighteen,’ he said, looking from the cards to me. I nodded. ‘No way. I thought you were, like, fifteen. Fourteen, even.’
I shrugged. ‘People always say things like that,’ I say.
‘Are you seriously eighteen?’ he said again, laughing.
‘Yes. Seriously.’
‘I like this one,’ he said, pointing to the CD player and nodding his head in time to the music.
‘Me too,’ I said. I looked at the open door, hoping he would walk out of it.
Oliver followed my gaze and seemed to understand. He made his way towards the door. But there he stopped and looked up and down the corridor, then he pulled the door until it was almost closed.
‘So you’ll be leaving us, then?’ he asked. He turned his mouth downwards and pretended to be sad. ‘But you’re one of my favourites.’
This confused me because until then Oliver and I had never spoken much before. And I was not like the girls who begged him to play pool or table tennis with them, who pulled him along by the arm, twisted their long hair around a finger and bit their bottom lips when he smiled at them.
Oliver sat next to me on the bed, close enough that our thighs were touching. He put a hand on my knee. His eyes over my body felt like a tongue.
‘I think I’ll miss you when you’re gone. Are you going to miss me?’ he asked. His hand slid further up my thigh; there was a burning in my stomach and lower, my face was hot and I wanted to pull away.
I didn’t know what to say. I wanted to say no but somehow I felt I couldn’t.
Oliver’s breathing got heavier. He closed his eyes and put his forehead against my temple. I hated the way his breath felt, hot inside my ear.
‘You’re so cute,’ he said.
‘Thank you,’ I said, even though I wished he hadn’t said it. Go away, leave me alone.
Someone knocked on my door and Oliver stood quickly, my mattress sprang back up like a pair of lungs filling with air. It was Miss, opening the door slowly in case I was changing my shirt or something.
‘Are we decent?’ she asked, her head tilted away.
‘Yeah,’ I said. Miss turned back, smiling, but her eyes went dark when she saw Oliver leaning against my dresser.
‘Everything all right?’ she asked me, looking back and forth between us both.
I nodded.
‘Just chatting birthday stuff,’ Oliver said. Miss narrowed her eyes.
‘Why was the door closed?’ she asked, pushing it all the way open and wedging the doorstop underneath with her foot.
‘I didn’t notice it was,’ Oliver said.
‘Sorry,’ I said.
‘Oliver, can you go and supervise the rec room please?’ Miss said. It wasn’t really a question but an order.
‘No problem,’ Oliver said. Then, to me, ‘Catch you later!’ He held up his palm and I high fived him even though touching his hot, moist hand meant I would have to wash mine again as soon as possible.
‘Everything OK?’ Miss said, standing over the bed.
‘Fine,’ I said.
She studied my face to see if I was lying. ‘Are you sure?’ she asked one last time.
‘Yeah,’ I said. It was too embarrassing to tell her the truth.
After staring at me for what felt like five full minutes, Miss finally left, telling me she would see me later.
Whenever it was someone’s birthday on the unit we all had a party where we were allowed to stay up an hour later and have music and a buffet and games for the younger girls. The older girls liked getting dressed up, swiping their lips with gooey, sugary lip gloss and spraying their hair with a fixant that gave me a headache between my eyes.
Lisa had lent me a tube of hair glitter for my party: like a mascara for your hair. But I didn’t want to put glitter in my hair or dress up or go to the party at all any more. Instead, I turned off my music and lay down on my bed, facing the wall. I felt the hard edge of my diary under the pillow and pulled it out.
I thought about writing in there about Oliver but it wasn’t the kind of thing I wanted to remember, so I didn’t. I put the diary into the drawer and closed my eyes, hoping I would forget it all when I was released.
Miss knocked on the door and woke me up from my half-sleep in the evening. ‘Aren’t you coming to your party?’ she asked me.
‘I have a headache,’ I lied.
Miss came over and put the back of her hand against my forehead. ‘Shall I get you some tablets?’ she asked, pushing my fringe aside.
‘Yes please.’
‘What drink do you want?’ she asked.
I said I wanted a cherry pop.
‘Shall I get you a plate of food from the buffet?’
I shook my head.
‘Not even for later? What about a slice of birthday cake?’
I shook my head again.
‘I’ll only ask one more time,’ she said. ‘Has anything happened that you want to talk to me about?’
There was nothing I wanted to talk to her about so I shook my head again. Miss sighed and told me she’d bring me a cherry pop and some tablets. I closed my eyes and listened to the music thumping from the rec room. Miss came back and left the drink and the tablets on the bedside table and closed the curtains.
‘Am I allowed to have the door closed?’ I asked her. ‘I want to go to sleep.’
Miss agreed and closed it against the music but I still couldn’t fully drift off. I was waiting for Oliver to open it, just enough to squeeze in, to slide into bed next to me. Because somehow I knew that Oliver wouldn’t leave me alone until he got what he wanted, whatever it was, or until I left the unit. And I knew that out there it was going to be much, much harder to be left alone.
27
Her: Now
My shift goes slowly that afternoon. I am on the checkouts and the queue of people never seems to go down. My mood is low and I can’t face smiling and making small talk with every person who comes to my till. It feels unfair that I can remember all the worst things with vivid clarity, while the memories of my mum become paler, more watered down day by day. Did I think of her too much, so that the image wore out like an old videotape played too often? Or, worse, did I not think of her enough?
Customers lose their patience with me when I’m not concentrating, and a woman taps her card against the reader again and again, sighing, tutting.
‘Oh, it’s not contactless,’ I say eventually. She rolls her eyes and stabs the card into the reader reluctantly, punching in the four numbers like it’s a herculean effort. I’ve noticed that customers will tap their cards indefinitely until you tell them the reader isn’t contactless. Dr Isherwood once told me about rats trained to press a button for a treat, how they would press it compulsively until they were obese and you had to take it away. Enough is never enough, I guess.
When the shift finally ends it is dark and cold outside. I check my phone and see that Dr Isherwood has gone home. I buy a bag of chips and a battered sausage from the chip shop, a can of cherry 7up and a Creme Egg. By the time I get back to the home it will be getting cold but it doesn’t matter. Sean said he would call at nine and I need to get back and eat before then.
As I walk I swing the carrier bag with the chips in, sweating and steaming in the paper, wafting the amazing smell back and forth. It reminds me of the way the vicar used to swing the incense in church. But that smelled heavy and thick, like it was a smell designed to make you sad.
The women smoking at the gates of the unit all smile and say hello as I pass and I smile back. Even though I don’t have time to chat I almost hope that Dani is in the kitchen but she’s not. I eat my chips out of the bag, enjoying the sting of vinegar, the crunch of salt. The sausage I eat with my hands, knowing it isn’t polite but not wanting to wash up a knife and fork. When I’m finished I screw up all the paper and put it in the bin. I take my can and my Creme Egg up to my room and wait for Sean to call.
I’ll keep my phone plugged in until he calls so that we can talk as long as possible. I
can’t help checking on Dr Isherwood (still at home) and wondering if she’s OK. Now that I think of it I remember that she looked very tired at our last appointment. She wasn’t as smart as she normally is, either.
I think of the worst thing it could be: cancer. I imagine her getting thinner and thinner, her hair falling out. Maybe she would wear a paisley silk scarf tied around her head like I saw someone with before. It seemed more stylish and more dignified than a wig, I thought. Would she let me visit her in hospital, or would she disappear completely? Maybe she would insist I visit her but the courts would try to stop her because they would say it crosses the boundaries of the patient–doctor relationship. But she would fight because she cares about me and I would hold her hand sitting next to the hospital bed and read to her when she was too weak. I would tell her that I loved her and it wouldn’t matter if she didn’t say it back because I know that it is true.
The phone buzzes in my hand, a notification appears at the top of the screen but disappears too quickly for me to see what it is. Worried that my signal disconnected the call, I unplug my phone and crawl out on to the fire escape again. It is cold enough to see my breath. When I check my phone I see there’s a text message but I don’t recognise the name. It says Bae. There’s a picture that I click on but I don’t recognise instantly what it is. It is dark but I can see the colour of flesh, a finger and a thumb holding it at the base. I tilt my head trying to match the strange angle of the photograph. Suddenly I see it: a penis. I laugh, though it also feels like an intrusion of some kind, even if it’s a ridiculous one. I wrinkle my nose and examine the picture further. There is no pubic hair, as if it belonged to a child, but it is obviously a man’s erect penis. I text back: ?
The reply is a picture of a winking face sticking its tongue out and an aubergine.
Who is this? I write back.
Cold! How many men you texting? When we going on a second date then? Jx.
Jack? I ask.
You ducking with me babe? Yeah it’s Jack, who else? While I try and work out what he means by ducking he texts again: *fucking. Xxx.
