Cross Her Heart

by Sarah Pinborough

  But still, she gave me great birthday presents. An iPad mini and an underwater MP3 player, way more expensive than the one I wanted. I love the necklace Marilyn’s given me too – thick silver coil with a dark purple glass centrepiece. It’s chunky and cool and perfect for me. Sometimes I wish Mum was a bit more like Marilyn. She’s relaxed and fun. If Mum was more easygoing maybe I would talk to her about stuff. Not everything, I think, as I try not to rush up the path to the house. But some stuff. I couldn’t talk to her about this. She’d go crazy.

  ‘Up for a chat tonight, Birthday Girl? I’ll be around for an hour or so if you’re not out having fun!’ The Facebook message had come in when I’d checked my phone in the loo before the puddings arrived. I said I’d get home as soon as I could and to please wait. I hadn’t realised how needy I sounded when I sent it, but it does sound a bit lamely desperate and that makes me worry I’m turning into my mum. But God, why can’t people just install Messenger on their phones? Like everyone’s data isn’t already out there in one way or another? Anyone under twenty-five has made their peace with it. It’s only adults who think anyone cares. What’s the point of having a message service you only use from your computer?

  A different kind of privacy.

  The thought worms into my head. It’s the kind of privacy you need when keeping secrets from those closest to you. A wife maybe? Whatever his reasons it’s the kind of privacy that has made me turn off notifications.

  We all have secrets.

  I’m beginning to realise maybe secrets are great.

  I’m trying not to be disappointed when I come downstairs for a drink twenty minutes later. Our chat was brief and all his replies were short. Distracted and not really answering my questions. I don’t want to be upset – at least we had some time – but I guess I’m mainly frustrated. Courtney is all over my WhatsApp now. But I know what he wants. Funny how he’s pissing me off with it a bit. A few weeks ago I’d have been so happy to have him chasing me and making me feel pretty and sexy. Now, he’s simply another irritation.

  I’m quiet on the stairs in my socks and when I turn the corner to head to the kitchen, I stop. Mum’s there. She’s standing by the kitchen table, staring at nothing, and there’s a stiffness to her that’s all wrong. The whole thing looks weird and I’m not sure why, but my heart is racing and my stomach churns. After a moment she reaches into her bag for the small bottle of Prosecco Marilyn gave her, twists the lid off and drinks it straight from the bottle.

  I freeze where I am, confused and alarmed. Is this my fault? Is this because I’ve been so shitty? I hover in the hallway, unsure of what to do. Do I ask her what’s wrong? I feel small again. I go to take a step forward, but then hesitate. There’s something about the way she’s standing – the stillness – which makes me feel as if I’m watching something private. Something where I don’t belong. Are the cracks in our relationship coming from her side too? Does she have secrets she’s not sharing? I find it hard to believe. She’s an open book, my mum.

  It’s unsettling though. Those little bottles only hold one glass or so, but who doesn’t pour wine before drinking? What would make you drain it in basically one swallow? In the end, my stomach in knots, I creep back upstairs. I can live without a cup of tea.

  6

  LISA

  It’s pitch-dark outside, no hint of a comforting grainy dawn grey yet, but I sit, wide awake, with my knees up under my chin and stare out at the bleak night, my stomach in terrible knots. It wasn’t Peter Rabbit. I know that. Peter Rabbit is long gone. It would be impossible for it to have been Peter Rabbit, the Peter Rabbit, but I want to run down to the recycle bins at the end of the road and root it out again to be sure. I take a deep breath. It’s not Peter Rabbit. It’s just a coincidence.

  When I’d seen the soft toy out there in the rain, slumped dejected against Mrs Goldman’s gate, my heart had almost stopped. It was grubby and sodden, dropped maybe hours before, but the bright blue trousers stood out against the greying white fur. It wasn’t the same bunny, that was clear when I’d picked it up with trembling hands and a scream trapped in my throat, but it was close. So close. I wanted to hold it against my chest and wail, but the front door opened and Mrs Goldman appeared and instead I forced an air of idle curiosity as I asked if she knew whose it was. She didn’t, of course. Why would she? Her hearing isn’t great and her days are spent staring at the TV, not out of the window.

  I gave her the bag of shopping and tried to smile and chat but the bunny was heavy and wet in my hand and the soft fur was cold, and all I could think was how the blue dungar-ees were exactly the same shade and style as those dungarees and those dungarees had been hand-made, and my head started to swim and I felt sick. Once Mrs Goldman had finally gone back inside, I forced a confident walk down the path and then, out of sight of both her house and mine, I finally held the toy close as if it were a dead animal my body heat could somehow bring back to life.

  I took several deep breaths, years of therapy having drummed the technique into me as if steady oxygen could make anything better when most of the time I wished I didn’t have to breathe any more at all, and walked swiftly to the big bank of recycling bins at the end of the road and threw it inside. I could still feel the ghost of damp fur against my fingertips though, and I wasn’t sure my legs would carry me home without crumpling.

  In the kitchen, for once grateful my daughter was finally becoming the kind of surly teenager who hides in her room, I grabbed the small bottle of Prosecco Marilyn had given me from my handbag and twisted the lid off, drinking it straight from the bottle in two goes. The acid bubbles made my chest burn and my eyes sting but I didn’t care. Anything was better than the awful pain and fear at the core of me, in the place I try hard to pretend is at best empty now, until something like this happens and the scab is ripped away and all the terrible terrible hurt crammed inside is exposed once more and I want to curl up and die.

  I gasped and choked as I swallowed the last of the wine, leaning on the breakfast bar and using the physical discomfort as a distraction to calm my thinking. Slowly the buzzing in my ears faded. It was a coincidence, it had to be. Lots of children have toy bunnies. Some poor toddler was probably crying for the one I’d so ruthlessly tossed away at the end of the street. So what if it was wearing blue dungarees? There were probably thousands of soft toys in dungarees. It wasn’t Peter Rabbit.

  I repeated that one sentence over and over in my head, glad I’d thrown the bunny away in the communal bins rather than the ones in our garden, too far to keep running to look at it without drawing attention to myself. It wasn’t Peter Rabbit. Yes, it had upset me, but it hadn’t been put there on purpose. It was harder to reconcile myself with the second sentence. It isn’t a statement of fact. It’s highly unlikely it’s been put there on purpose, but I can’t for definite know it in the way my sensible brain knows the toy I found wasn’t Peter Rabbit.

  It’s this unease I’ve felt recently. The sense something isn’t quite right. What if it’s more than my usual paranoia? What if I’m wrong to steer away from it? I get up and creep down the corridor to Ava’s room. The lights are all off and the house is silent and I twist the handle as carefully and slowly as I can, not wanting to make any noise.

  I watch her from the doorway, my perfect girl. She’s on her side, facing away from me, curled up small, exactly how she slept as a toddler. She is so precious. So wonderful, and looking at her calms me and reminds me that I have to stay alive, I have to keep breathing. For her. She gave me back my desire to live, and I will always protect her. She will never know what I keep inside. Not if I can help it. I want her to be blissfully free. It must be a wonderful thing to be blissfully free.

  I stay for a few minutes more, the sight of Ava far better for me than any amount of deep yoga breathing, and then reluctantly leave her to sleep in private. It’s nearly three a.m. Taking sleeping pills now is a bad idea, but so is facing the day with no rest at all, and so I compromise and only swallow one instead of th
e usual two I need when these fearful, sad moods have me gripped tight. I’ll feel terrible all morning tomorrow but at the moment two or three hours of oblivion is what I need. I can’t keep going round in circles of fear and grief. I’ll go mad by dawn if I do, I’m sure of it. The bad feeling is only my anxiety. The bunny wasn’t Peter Rabbit. The words bang at my skull, trying to knock sense into me as I crawl back under my covers.

  I want oblivion, but instead I dream. It’s the dream, in glorious, vivid technicolour, and while I’m there, it’s wonderful.

  In the dream, I’m holding Daniel’s hand. It’s soft and small and warm and his fingers grip tight in the way toddlers do as he looks up at me and smiles. My heart bursts in rainbow showers of joy and I bend over to kiss him. His chubby cheeks are all smooth, creamy skin, tinged pink from the outside air, and he giggles in surprise as my lips smack loudly against his face, but his eyes are lit up by love. His eyes are like mine, blue flecked with grey and green and in them I can see how I am his everything.

  Peter Rabbit is in his other hand, and he holds him maybe even more tightly than he holds on to me. He cannot imagine me not being there, but he’s had some near misses with Peter Rabbit. Once left on a bus but remembered in the nick of time. Another time, on a counter in the corner shop. Daniel has the fear that Peter Rabbit might one day not be there and the thought alone is enough to make him cry. He’s two and a half years old and Peter Rabbit is his best friend.

  I feel something tapping against my subconscious, a dark truth which won’t be ignored, not even in a dream – It is not Peter Rabbit who will one day not be there. This little hand in mine will be cold and still and will never reach for me again – but I push it away and take Daniel to the small park with the tatty swings and roundabouts where the paint is so chipped the rust from the metal below stains clothes on a damp day, but he squeals with joy at the sight of it. He’s two and a half and he doesn’t see rust and decay and something unloved. He only sees the good things. He is the good thing.

  His hand is out of mine and he and Peter Rabbit run to the swings. I run after him, staying slightly behind because I love watching the way Daniel’s small body moves, so cute and clumsy, bound up in the constraints of his coat. He looks over his shoulder at me and I want to hold this picture of sweetness forever to remember when he is grown into a boy and then a man and this everything I am is gone.

  It is a perfect dream. An afternoon in the park. The love is overwhelming. It’s pure. It’s so strong it almost suffocates me, bubbling out through my pores there’s so much of it. It’s unrestrained. No barriers are up around it. There is nothing wicked in the world in that moment and I think, if I let the love take me, I shall transform into a pure beam of light shining on Daniel.

  I wake up, gasping painful breaths into my pillow and clutching at fragments of fading images, hoping in vain to grasp one and follow it back and hold his small hand forever. It’s always the same after the dream. It hurts so much I want to die, the aching need to go back and save him. I try to think of Ava, my perfect girl, the child who came after, oblivious, free and wonderful and untarnished by the world. She is here and alive and I love her with all of what’s left of my heart.

  Perhaps my love for Ava makes it all worse, if it’s at all possible. I think of the bunny rabbit in the bin. It is not Peter Rabbit. I know that. I know where Peter Rabbit is.

  Peter Rabbit was buried with Daniel.

  7

  AVA

  I’m not sure exactly what’s in the punch but it’s some crazy mix of shit. Fruit juice, lemonade, the vodka Ange brought and a bottle of Bacardi Jodie added from her mum’s booze cupboard. Jodie reckons her mum won’t miss it, but I’m not so sure. There was a fierce look on Jodie’s face when she poured it all in that made me think her mum would definitely notice when she gets back from France. Like Jodie wanted to get in some shit. So weird, how our mums are such opposites. Jodie’s is never here and mine is becoming way too clingy. Weird mums club, is what we call it. We haven’t told the others. They wouldn’t understand.

  My head buzzes. We had cider in the pub earlier and this is my second glass of punch. I’m well on my way to getting wasted, which is probably the best way for doing it. Losing it.

  I lean back on the bed, half-lying down, my head resting against the wall. My mum would lose it if she could see me now, on my friend’s bed with my sort-of boyfriend. She’s already texted once to check we’re all at the house. I’ve put my phone on silent. Imagine if she texted right in the middle? At least she’s gone out tonight. She doesn’t go out much which makes me feel more guilty about wanting my own life, but I’ve been stretching the umbilical cord for the past year or so and I want it to snap, even though I can feel her constantly trying to pull me back.

  I’m still a bit freaked out by the other night. The weird drinking in the kitchen thing was bad enough, but then she came into my room in the middle of the night and watched me while I pretended to sleep. Why would she do that? It’s made me uncomfortable, as if the world is suddenly unsteady.

  I take a long swallow of my punch as, down the corridor, the toilet flushes. My heart speeds up a little. Fuck. I’m actually going to fuck. For a moment, I have a totally irrational longing for my mum. It makes me drink some more. She’s the last person I need. I’m not a kid any more. I’m a woman. He always says so.

  ‘You all right?’ Courtney asks, as he comes back into Jodie’s spare bedroom and starts fiddling with his phone to play some tunes. I smile at him, nod, and drink some more. It’s too sweet but I don’t care. I want to get smashed, and the booze and lack of food is obliging. I wonder if he’s nervous. Probably not. If all the stories are true, Courtney’s done it loads.

  I’m not as anxious as I thought I would be. It’s been a busy day, I’m tired, and I could happily curl up and go to sleep. I started at the gym early this morning, and then, once my legs and shoulders were trembling and aching, I forced myself to swim for an hour. I’d met Ange at ten so she could buy something new to wear. Something skin-tight, obviously. Angela’s been served in pubs since she was about twelve. With her tits and all dressed up Angela often looks older than Jodie.

  Courtney’s mouth is hot and wet on my neck and his hand slides on to my hip. This is it. I feel detached, here but not here. My body’s in the moment, but my mind isn’t, like I’m watching us from above and thinking, just get on with it. I can hear my breath getting heavier, although I’m not really turned on. It’s a mechanical reaction. Being with Courtney means I can’t help thinking about him. I’ve heard nothing today. He said he was going to be busy, but surely everyone has time to send one little ‘hello’? Something so I’d know he was thinking about me.

  Courtney’s mouth meets mine and I obligingly part my lips and let our tongues explore each other. He’s a good kisser compared with most of the other boys I’ve been out with, but tonight it feels like an invasion.

  Why hasn’t he messaged me?

  He’s grinding hard against my thigh. I have to do it. I haven’t got a choice – everyone’s expecting it. They’ll be laughing and chatting and dancing downstairs, but inside they’re all wondering if we’ve done it yet. Is it going to hurt? Am I going to be different after?

  I’d thought about backing out somehow, but then that woman in the pub knocked my bag off the table and sent all my stuff flying everywhere. The girls saw the condoms and Ange went all weird American for a while. Once the laughter and teasing had died down, she said black boys don’t use condoms, and we’d all called her a racist, but she insisted it was true before Lizzie said it wasn’t only black boys, it was all boys if they could get away with it, which is why she’s on the pill. I laughed with them, but Jodie must have seen how uncomfortable I was feeling because when we went to the loo she whispered that there are only a couple of days in the month you can get pregnant in anyway and so not to worry.

  ‘You okay with this?’ Courtney’s got my bra hitched up over my boobs and his eyes look all funny and the words
are breathless. Needy.

  I nod, even though I am not all right with this any more. He’s already pushing my skirt up. Everything’s clumsy. Not like it was when I imagined it.

  What would he think if he knew what I was about to do? Would he be jealous?

  The condom is still in my bag on the other side of the room. A continent away. How am I supposed to mention it? I should have said about it before. His jeans are undone and yanked down and he grabs my hand and pushes it into his crotch. He groans as I touch him, and his shaking hands yank at my knickers but we get caught up in a tangle and our teeth clash together. I take control and there’s a pause as I wriggle my pants off, and as I do, he looks at me properly.

  ‘You know I really like you, don’t you?’ he says. ‘I’ve never gone out with a girl like you before.’

  It makes me feel slightly better about all this, and so I take the moment to tug my top off too. He might not be naked, but I am. If I’m doing this, I’m not doing it being half choked by my own bra.

  ‘You’re beautiful.’

  This time when he kisses me, I try to be in the moment even though beautiful is his word, not Courtney’s. Courtney normally calls me hot despite the fact I know I’m not. Not really. I think of the condom again but it’s too late to mention it now. He’s poking and prodding and nudging, trying to get it in, and I realise that maybe he’s not quite so experienced at this either.