Silence Is Goldfish

by Annabel Pitcher

  Except he isn’t my dad. And Mum isn’t the woman I thought she was. And I’m not Tess Turner because half of me, fifty percent of my genes, belong to some other man.

  I have to find him. Somewhere beneath my bed, the goldfish lifts up his little orange head as I chant the address of the HFEA, picturing Finsbury Tower on Bunhill Row where I’m going to march through the door maybe even this weekend, demanding to see my file.

  You should have written to us, the man on reception will no doubt say at first. You need to complete a form applying for information about your donor and then we can check the records to see what we’ve got.

  I know that from the website, I’ll reply. But I only turned fifteen in August. I can’t apply for information until my sixteenth birthday, but I thought if I turned up here and explained my situation then you might be able to help.

  If you’re not sixteen, I can’t help you, dear. I’m sorry. You have to be sixteen to access the basic details about your donor—what he looked like, hair color, height, that kind of thing—and eighteen to get any identifying information, if we have it.

  Like an address? I’ll ask, breathlessly.

  Like an address. But you have to be eighteen for that. Fifteen-year-olds get nothing, I am afraid. Though you can ask your parents to apply on your behalf? I’ll shake my head firmly because this just isn’t an option. Then I really can’t help you, dear. I’m sorry. Conservation over, he’ll turn his attention to a sudoku puzzle, no doubt looking baffled by it, gnawing the end of a pen.

  I’ll lean over the desk to point at the top of the grid. The three goes there, I’ll say, doing it upside down, working it out in a flash. And the five goes there. And the nine is at the bottom.

  I’ll take you up to the files, he’ll say, sounding awestruck. Anyone that good at sudoku is clearly mature enough to—

  “Tess?” Mr. Gledhill calls, snapping his fingers, and has my mouth been hanging half-open is my major concern as I shake off the daydream and glance at Anna, who sure enough is turning her head in my direction very, very slowly. “You’ve been quiet today. You can make an educated guess, at least.” He perches on top of a filing cabinet. “We’re all listening, Tess. We’re all ears.” I look him straight in the eye, but it’s Jack I am seeing as I shrug. “Well, that’s disappointing.”

  Every head swivels back to the front, apart from one. It sits, still as anything on a long pale neck, cool to the touch I imagine with a very slow pulse. It’s a beautiful neck, there’s no denying it, and I can’t help admiring its elegance, stretching out of a shirt more white than any in the class. My treacherous mind conjures an image of Jack, smiling in delight after the play that Isabel is desperate to see, even though I’ve tried to convince her it’s a waste of time.

  So this is the famous Anna, he’d say, and I would shrug like it was no big deal to be friends with the most popular girl in school. I’m so pleased Tess got you a ticket.

  In the real world, Anna takes in my tight skirt then blows out her cheeks. When the bell rings, she stands up, one foot hitting the floor then the other, her hands shaking either side of her legs to mimic the wobble of my thighs. I try to lose her in the hallway, but she follows me to the cafeteria where I am due to meet Isabel in our usual spot by the lunch menu. I can’t face her comments, not today of all days, so I swoop my hair forward, hiding behind the black curtain.

  I can still hear her though.

  “Man Skull’s wearing a skirt,” Anna says to her friends, just a statement of fact in a perfectly ordinary tone that blends into the background so no teacher would ever pick up on it. I sneak a look through the gap in my hair to see seven pairs of sleek ballet flats. The laces of my boots aren’t even done up in a bow, and it bothers me all of a sudden, like I actually have to fight the urge to bend down and turn the ugly knots into something prettier. “I didn’t know they made them in man sizes. How does she fit her fat legs inside it?”

  “Must have been an effort,” Tara replies. “Imagine her trying to do it up.”

  She acts it out, huffing and puffing, and the girls giggle, a light tinkle of laughter, this sprinkle of broken glass that cuts me to the core. I count to ten, trying not to cry, determined not to give them the satisfaction, but it’s harder than normal and I feel angry, so angry, at Jack for making me this vulnerable.

  “I hate you,” I whisper at the girls and at Jack and at myself most of all for standing here and taking it. Anna moves closer, hovering by my shoulder full of words she’s ready to drop like bombs in my very own World War II, but I am no England putting up a fight. I am a country with no clear boundaries, letting my enemy trample wherever she chooses.

  “She’s so fat she turns my stomach,” Anna says. Jack nods along as he types the words, making them bold on a screen that flashes in front of my eyes. “Really ugly. Especially in that skirt,” she murmurs, her mouth almost touching my ear. “Who does she think she is?”

  I couldn’t reply even if I wanted to. Thanks to Jack’s blog, I have absolutely no idea anymore.

  8

  “Sorry. Sorry. It took ages. They put pickle on it so I had to get another one.” Isabel holds up a baguette wrapped in a napkin. “It was the same lunch lady who screwed it up last week as well. How hard is it? No pickle. No pickle. I said it twice like that but she still got it wrong. Hey, are you okay? Was she bothering you again?” she asks as Anna disappears into the cafeteria. “She was, wasn’t she?” Her eyes glint dangerously as she takes in my forlorn expression. “Of all the cold-blooded savagery! A few Shakespearean words for you there, Tess. Some of my favorites out of all the great bard invented. Cold-blooded savagery. Describes her perfectly, don’t you think?”

  We head outside into a day drying up, just a few puddles left.

  “She’s creepy. Evil. I swear, if she was cast as one of Macbeth’s witches, she wouldn’t even have to act. I don’t see why everyone thinks she’s so pretty. It’s just makeup and false eyelashes, isn’t it? There’s nothing natural about it. We’re the real beauties.” I smile at this, catching sight of our reflection in the drama studio window—one fat girl with bad roots and one thin girl with limp hair. “Ha. We are, Tess. Honestly. We’re gorgeous.”

  “Yeah, total hot stuff,” I manage. “Absolute babes.”

  “You say it, sister. Say it loud and proud,” she hollers in the voice of a cheerleader, dropping my arm and starting to wiggle.

  “Isabel! Stop it! Someone will see!”

  “So? Shake your booty, shake your booty, shake your booty!” she chants, holding the baguette like a pole in a nightclub. “Dance with me, Tess.”

  “Oh my God. Stop it right now!” I grab her shoulder, so horrified I can’t help laughing.

  She shimmies. “Dance with me, beautiful. Shake your booty and shake your beauty. Shake your booty and shake your beauty. Ooh, wordplay,” she says in a sensual voice, rotating her hips round and round in a circle. “Nothing more arousing than a good pun.”

  “Was it a pun?”

  She bends over the baguette then bats her mousy eyelashes. “It can be a pun if you want it to be a pun.” That makes me shout with laughter, and I celebrate the surprising burst of happiness by drawing back the curtains of my hair and letting sunlight bathe my face. “Better? Good. Let’s eat. I’m starving.”

  We make ourselves comfortable on our usual bench by the science classrooms, covering it with our coats because it’s still wet. Isabel takes one look at my salad then offers me half her sandwich. The baguette is gloriously white and strictly forbidden and tastes better for being banned because it is ham and cheese seasoned with rebellion and just a pinch of Screw you, Jack.

  “So, are you going to tell me what’s going on? Oh that’s perfect,” she says, talking with her mouth full in some sort of sandwich heaven that is a spiritual experience, judging by her half-closed eyes. “It’s the onion that does it, Tess. It’s the onion.” She swallows. “So, do you want to talk? I can sit here and eat this beautiful, beautiful creation and you
can just go for it, if you like. Spill your heart out.” She takes another big bite. “I’m an excellent listener.”

  I know she is, and I want to tell her, but it would be easier to go back to the Big Bang and explain the history of the universe than talk about everything that has happened since Jack’s computer flickered into life.

  “There’s no pressure either way, Tess,” she goes on, cheeks bulging. “Honestly. You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to. I’m here whenever you’re ready to talk.” We fall silent for a while—probably not even ten seconds actually—before she blurts out, “Like now, for instance. Now would be a good time to talk, don’t you think? We have privacy. We have half an hour before class. We have chocolate.” She rummages in her coat pocket and pulls out a packet of malt balls. “The lighter way to enjoy chocolate, so naturally I bought twice as much.” She produces a second bag, which she chucks toward me. I open it and stuff three little balls into my right cheek, letting them melt there for a while. “The time is right, my friend. The time is so right. If ever there was a good opportunity to come out then this is it. If ever there was—”

  “I’m sorry, what?”

  “—an ideal situation in which to inform a dearly loved friend that you are gay and gorgeous and some other positive adjective beginning with the letter g then this is surely—”

  “I am not going to tell you I’m gay, Isabel.”

  “Aw, really?”

  “What about Mr. Holdsworth? Have you forgotten about him?”

  “Could be a cover-up. Or you could be bisexual.”

  I stare at her in disbelief. “You are joking, right? You don’t actually think that I’m—”

  “No. No.” She glances at my boots. “Maybe a little bit sometimes.”

  “Er, hello, do you want a side order of cliché with that stereotype? I thought you were supposed to be open-minded,” I say, pretending to be disappointed, hitting her where it hurts. The color rises in her cheeks, gloriously pink, and I hide a smile because this is part of the game.

  “Stop trying to piss me off.”

  “I’m not doing anything,” I reply innocently, in awe of myself and dazzled in general by the human spirit, how one minute it can be crushed and the next putting up a valiant fight. I cheer myself on and the roar sounds good, blocking out Jack’s words for the first time in hours. “I was simply stating the facts. You’re not open-minded, but that’s cool.” I add a shrug for good measure, just one casual shoulder up and down that turns her face from pink to red. “It doesn’t bother me either way.”

  “And your opinion doesn’t bother me because I know I am open-minded.”

  “Well, I think we’ve just established that you’re not, but like I say, it’s okay. It’s cool. No worries.”

  “But I am open-minded, Tess,” she says, getting annoyed now, these little flecks of spit appearing in the corners of her mouth. “I am the most open-minded person that I know.”

  “Prove it.”

  “Okay. I want you to be gay. How’s that? I’d love you to be gay. I’d wear a gay pride T-shirt on your behalf and dance around with a tambourine in the gay pride parade, chanting your name as I jangled my bells—which isn’t a euphemism, by the way.”

  “You’d wear a gay pride T-shirt for me?” I ask, all touched to the bottom of my heart, which I clutch with my hand. She nods enthusiastically. “That’s nice. That’s really nice.” She pops a malt ball into her mouth as if the problem has been solved. I let her relax, lulling her into a false sense of security, before saying really slowly, “I’m just wondering one thing, though.”

  “What’s that?”

  “I’m wondering why you’d wear a gay pride T-shirt for me but not a non–gay pride T-shirt. That’s not very politically correct.”

  “Shut up, Tess. I don’t mind you being straight as you very well know.”

  “Whoa. Whoa whoa whoa,” I say, holding out my hands. “You don’t mind me being straight. Is that what you just said? Oh”—I shake my head—“it’s worse than I thought.”

  She hits me. “Stop it!”

  “Let’s get this straight.” I take a deep breath, gathering all my pretend thoughts into a frown. “You, tremendously open-minded you, would only celebrate my sexuality if I was a lesbian. Is that what you’re telling me?”

  “No! That’s not what I am telling you. That’s not what I’m telling you at all.”

  “That’s what you just said though.”

  “I didn’t. I didn’t say—”

  “You don’t mind me being straight but you’d love me to be gay. Your words, Isabel.” I wave a finger in front of her face and she swats it like a fly. “Your words. Your prejudiced, heterophobic words.”

  “Argh! Tess! I’d celebrate your sexuality whatever it was, okay?” she shouts at the top of her voice, and we both start laughing because I’ve riled her up good and proper. It’s hysterical, the way she’s climbing to her feet, unable to resist the urge to defend herself, even now. “Do you want to know the truth? Here’s the truth. The truth is—”

  “You can’t stop saying truth?”

  “The truth is—”

  “You have an addiction to the word truth?”

  She snorts, making us both laugh even harder. “The truth is I’d wear a T-shirt to celebrate you whatever your sexuality, okay? I mean it, Tess. Man. Woman. Boy. Girl. Dog…”

  “Eww.” I grimace.

  “No. Not eww to me. Not eww at all. If you fell in love with a dog, I’d wear a My Friend Loves Bestiality and I Am Proud of It T-shirt because that’s how accepting and tolerant I am. So there.”

  The idea of that T-shirt makes me collapse in a good way. I hunch over my legs, laughing until my sides hurt, loving the achy feeling of joy in my lungs.

  “You can pay me later,” Isabel says when we’re still fizzing but the bubbles have died down, pretty much like soda five minutes after it’s been poured. It feels good, sort of sparkly. We grin at each other, and isn’t it amazing, the fact that my mood affects her mood, and her mood affects my mood because we are symbiotic creatures, let’s be clear about that. “For the therapy. It’ll be fifty quid for the laughter and one hundred pounds for the baguette pole dance. A bargain.”

  She falls serious, sucking her last malt ball as I look down at my boots, preparing myself for what I know is coming next.

  “What was it though, Tess? What did you want to tell me this morning? Come on. You would’ve spilled the beans in the library if I hadn’t gone on about Gandalf like some sort of Lord of the Rings freak.”

  “You are a Lord of the Rings freak. Didn’t you used to have an imaginary friend called Frodo?”

  Isabel sighs. “At least tell me you’re all right. If you say you’re okay, I won’t badger you, I promise.” She holds up three fingers on each hand like a Boy Scout then puts them behind her ears. “Elves’ honor.”

  “Is that a thing?”

  “It is now. And answer the question. Are you okay?”

  “I’m okay,” I lie because I want it to be true, and I don’t want to destroy this mini-moment of peace, here in the sunshine, with the pain in my chest more manageable than it was this morning.

  “You’re not upset?”

  “I’m not upset.”

  “And the crazy thing you did last night, whatever it was, you’re not going to do it again?” This time I pause, thinking about the goldfish waiting impatiently for our trip to London. “Tess?”

  “I’m not going to do it again.”

  “Elves’ honor?”

  “Don’t make me do—”

  “Elves’ honor?” she says again, looking at me with too much white around her eyes. “Isawynka won’t believe you unless you do it.”

  “Are you ever going to let me read the stuff in your notepad?” She stares me down. “Fine. Fine. Elves’ honor—Isawanka.” I copy the action by my ears for a split second only before changing the subject without meeting her gaze.

  9

  After school,
Isabel and I head toward Chorlton Park, not exactly the most exciting place to hang out, but there’s a kids’ play area where we can sit and talk and go on the swings, saying wooo with just enough irony to disguise that we’re loving it. Friday afternoons are my favorite. Isabel doesn’t have cello or clarinet or orchestra practice and for once I don’t have to be home at four on the dot.

  “It can wait until Saturday morning, can’t it?” Mum said when Jack was breathing down my neck to get my homework done one Friday evening. “What difference does it make?”

  “She’ll feel better if she gets it out of the way.”

  “Have you asked her that?” Mum laughed as I half-sprawled on the sofa. “She seems happy enough to me.”

  “Sit up, Tess.” I shuffled around at once. “And take off those ridiculous boots, will you? They’re filthy. How many times do I have to tell you?”

  I speed up, marching along the pavement, not even trying to avoid the mud. Home is behind me, the park up ahead, and I am rushing toward it like Jedi straining on his leash, his nose sniffing madly like maybe freedom has a smell. I breathe it in. The sky’s a purple line above a long, straight road. There are rows of identical red houses and a tram full of people, gliding smoothly on a solid track. Clack clack it says, in a repetitive, reassuring rhythm. Clack clack.

  It disappears around a corner as two planes fly majestically overhead. My dad is out there somewhere and I will find him is the sudden conviction in my heart as I scan passersby for a man with blond hair and brown eyes and a body big enough to have created mine.

  “Why are you staring at the Jehovah’s Witness?” Isabel asks as we approach the park.

  He’s standing on the other side of the road in front of a clothes shop, preaching through a megaphone and giving out leaflets with an over-energetic thrust of his hand that people are swerving to avoid. He’s the right size and has the right hair color and is the right sort of age, Praise the Lord, to have produced an abundant sperm sample sixteen years ago. Heart in my mouth, I watch him almost take out an elderly man with a pamphlet before apologizing profusely, running his fingers through his hair the way I do when I am nervous.