My Box-Shaped Heart

by Rachael Lucas

  Round the corner and past the gardens.

  Our house is the second in a long white terrace, the walls spiky with stone harling. I press the flat of my hand against it for a second, feeling the way each little stone jabs into my palm.

  When I was little, I fell on my roller skates and crashed into it, head first. I’ve still got a constellation of scars on my forehead left over from the accident.

  I try the door, but it’s locked. I fish my key out of my pocket and try to shove it in the keyhole, but the key’s in the other side, so I can’t do that either. I think about yelling through the letterbox, but decide it’s just as easy to go round the back. Our house is so small that when I peer through the dappled glass, I can see straight through it to the fuzzy green of the back garden. I pocket the key and head round the back.

  The passage is crammed with a heap of bikes, which makes me smile. Mine used to be one of them. Before the Academy – before the gang we used to be was divided by some unknown criteria into the cool, the uncool and the unspeakable – we all used to hang out together. We’d hurtle around the pavements, playing football and rounders, and doing bike races and speed skating on the big green along the way. And then it all stopped. These bikes belong to the little kids who used to tag along begging to join in with us – they were four then.

  Now they’re freckle-nosed nine-year-olds, and I half wish I could join in with their games. It’s funny, but growing up isn’t anywhere near as much fun as it looks on the Disney Channel.

  We don’t have a back garden so much as a sort of patch. The grass is a bit long and shaggy, and there are dandelions sprouting up in the corners. I take a handful and shove them in the side of Courtney Love’s cage. She hops out, twitching her nose in approval. I like to think the actual Courtney would be pleased to discover there’s a rabbit named after her. We used to have a guinea pig too, called Kurt Cobain – but he died. We probably could have predicted that.

  The back door’s open. I push it – hard – and manage to squeeze through the gap. We’ve got a sort of little back room – I think maybe it was meant to be for bikes and stuff. But it’s not full of bikes and stuff. It’s full of . . . everything.

  There’s a tower of kitchen rolls balanced on top of a stack of newspapers, which were going for recycling until they weren’t because they were being saved for something. There’s a pile of bags full of bags, because they’re going to go out some day but we might just keep them in case they come in handy. The bookshelf is overflowing, the shelves double-stacked with books, and covered in dust. There’s some sort of cross trainer under a heap of black bags, which are full of clothes from when I was little, which are going to be a patchwork quilt. One day. Everything in this house is going to happen on a mythical future date when the planets align, and in the meantime it’s as far removed from my tasteful, white-painted Scandinavian dream escape as it’s possible to be. I step over a huge crate of Avon catalogues and the kit that came with them. They’re dated September 2015. The catalogues weren’t handed out. The make-up samples are still encased in their shrink-wrap. One day, I’m sure, they’ll make their way to wherever they’re supposed to be. In the meantime, they’re just another might-have-been, boxed up – just in case – and lying in a pile of all the other stuff that makes up the chaos of our house.

  It’s not just a bit untidy. It’s more than that. We used to live – when there were four of us, and life wasn’t unravelling – in a sort of happy muddle. Paintings on the walls, and piles of coats on the end of the banister in the hall. Shoes heaped up under the stairs, and stuff that was going to be tidied up (but never quite made it) in piles on the kitchen worktop.

  But that was before. Now it’s just the two of us, and the walls are closing in. I thought when Cressi found out what the house was like it might make things change – that Mum would be embarrassed out of her torpor and into action. But no. And as time passes, and Mum spends more and more of her time shopping online in a dressing gown and watching Friends on repeat, it’s like the fuller the house gets the emptier it feels. It doesn’t make sense.

  I try to tidy it up when she’s not looking, stacking stuff in piles and filtering through out-of-date stuff. But it causes arguments and she gets stressed out and it’s easier to escape to the pool on the bus, or catch a lift with Cressi. And when Cressi asks how things are, or why she hasn’t seen Mum for a few weeks, I manage to gloss over it by saying she hasn’t been feeling well. Cressi’s busy managing the swimming school, and I think she’s worked out there’s not much point trying to get through to Mum any more. It’s happened before with the woman who used to live across the road. Eventually, if you don’t get anything back, you stop trying to be friends with someone.

  As I walk through the back-room door, I can hear the television on in the sitting room.

  ‘Hi, darling,’ calls Mum.

  I go inside and find her sitting on the sofa, hands wrapped round a mug of tea, her feet curled up under a blanket despite the fact that it’s June and sunny outside.

  ‘D’you want to watch this with me?’

  She’s watching repeats of Friends on one of the Freeview channels. Her hair’s tied up in a scruffy sort of bun, and she’s still in her dressing gown. I shake my head and reverse out of the room, making an excuse about having to have a shower to wash the chlorine out of my hair. I’ll grab something to eat on the way.

  I wake up before the alarm goes off and head downstairs.

  I step carefully through the minefield of plastic bags and cardboard boxes, piles of washing and unopened letters. I put the kettle on and pick my school jumper up from the drying rack, sniffing it as I do so – I’m paranoid it smells weird, but I can’t smell anything but the acrylic of the fabric and a faint odour of Fairy Liquid. I had to wash it by hand last night in the kitchen sink because we’ve run out of washing powder.

  I half hope as I open the fridge that a miracle might have happened overnight, but when I look inside there’s still only a dried-up lemon, a piece of cheese that has cracked and gone dry, and the milk carton in the door. I really need to go to the shop.

  I shake the milk and realize there’s only enough for one cup of tea, so I put the teabag from the second mug back in the jar and pour the water into one. There’s the end of the loaf in the bread bin, so I toast it, spread it with butter, and put it on a plate.

  When the tea’s ready, I take it upstairs with the toast, repeating the precarious journey. I slop some on to a heap of papers in a shoe box and pull a face, but there’s nobody there to see it. Whatever it is, it’ll dry out. I hope.

  ‘Mum?’ I push open the bedroom door with my foot. It resists, and I transfer the mug to my other hand and lean my bodyweight against it. There’s a crackle of plastic bags and a slithering noise as the objects behind the door shift, making space for me to tiptoe into the room.

  All I can see is a lock of faded henna-red hair sticking up from under the naked duvet. The clean covers I left there the other day are still folded up on the floor, and she’s sleeping on the bare mattress.

  ‘Mum.’ I lift the corner of the duvet and shift her alarm clock round so the red numbers are shining in her face.

  ‘Off,’ she mumbles.

  ‘It’s eight o’clock,’ I say. I shove an empty box of paracetamol off the bedside table to make space for the mug, balancing the plate with the toast on top.

  ‘I’ll get up in a minute.’

  I’ll be going in a minute. I don’t let the feelings in. The only way to cope is to take a deep breath and just let it go over my head. She can’t do mornings – she never could. But especially not now. I turn to leave.

  ‘Holly?’

  I have my hand on the door. I lift my head and tuck my hair behind my ear.

  ‘Mmm?’

  ‘Love you, darling.’

  ‘I know.’ I make my way back across the room and kiss my fingers and put them on the duvet, approximately where her head should be.

  ‘I’ll be up later, I prom
ise. I just need to have a bit more sleep, then I’m going to get things sorted.’

  ‘OK.’

  I’ve heard that a million times. Sometimes I get home and there’s a pile of black bin bags by the front door where she’s started clearing up, but inevitably I find her, slumped on the sofa with a cup of tea watching the shopping channel, or dozing. She starts off with good intentions, but she just gets tired halfway through. It’s as if she can’t quite work out what to throw away and what to keep, and it’s too tiring to figure out. So she just gives up.

  And we live on in this house, as it silts up slowly with layer after layer of random stuff.

  ‘Mum?’

  I call up the stairs. There’s no sound.

  ‘I’m leaving now.’

  There’s a vague mumbling.

  ‘Try and eat something,’ I say, and pull the door closed behind me.

  School is . . . school. I hover around the edges of it. I’m basically invisible, which is better than it sounds. I don’t get into trouble. I don’t get picked on by anyone. Teachers don’t single me out to read aloud in class. In fact, sometimes I wonder if I’m there at all. I swear it’s like I wear an invisibility cloak. I was standing in the corridor last week when Lauren and her friends walked past, talking about Jamie’s party. She didn’t even acknowledge my presence. As time passed after our parents split up, she drifted further and further away, snared by the sharp-edged cool-girls gang, who were impressed by the big house she lived in and the expensive car Neil drives now.

  And so these days Lauren and I don’t really talk to each other at school. I’d say we’re not in the same social group, but my social group is the weird collection of misfit people who end up sitting at the same table at lunch every day, not really saying anything. I sometimes wonder if I went somewhere else and started again, would I still end up sitting at the same table, just in a different school?

  There’s one thing different about today. Halfway through maths, I feel myself grinning, and I look down at the page before anyone notices. I remember the look on the boy’s face as I turned round to look at him, surprised.

  I wasn’t waiting for the bus.

  CHAPTER THREE

  I get home from school and the house is silent.

  ‘Mum?’

  She must be asleep. Again. I got up to go to the loo at three am, and the light was still on in the hall downstairs, so I bet she’s either gone back to bed for a nap or she hasn’t been up since. I look up at the clock on the wall – no, she can’t still be asleep. She must be . . .

  ‘Holly, honey, is that you?’

  Her voice is small.

  ‘Mum?’

  I make my way through the hall and up the stairs, and she’s lying there in the doorway of her room. Her leg is twisted at a weird angle, and her face is tiny and pinched with pain.

  ‘I couldn’t reach the phone.’

  I feel a sickening wave of guilt wash over me, right through my whole body.

  ‘What have you done? How long have you been here?’

  She exhales, her breath making a shaky sound in the silence. ‘Maybe an hour or two. I think I bumped my head.’

  I dart a look at her, leaning in close to peer into her eyes. They look normal, but . . .

  ‘I need to call you an ambulance.’

  ‘No.’

  Her nostrils flare – I’m not sure if it’s pain or anger, or maybe it’s both. She tries to shift herself sideways, but her hip knocks against the bottom of a stack of shoeboxes and they start to topple. I reach out and steady them before they fall on top of her, and the lid of one of them dislodges, revealing its contents. It’s full of ancient-looking pieces of paper; something to do with the bank – I can see the familiar logo at the top. The date says August 2009.

  ‘I’ve been meaning to sort them,’ she says, giving me the look I recognize. It’s the look that says please let’s not have that conversation now. In other houses, it’s the other way round – the parents telling the children to clear up – and I feel a wash of shame and something uncomfortable passing over me. Our life is locked away in boxes. I shove the lid back on the box and I know my cheeks are stinging red with the awkwardness of it all.

  ‘It’s fine,’ I say.

  ‘Give me a hand up. I’m going to get this place sorted. This is the final straw.’

  She reaches out a hand for me to pull her up but, although I’m tall and pretty strong, she’s taller still – and she’s heavy. My pulling isn’t doing much because her body is protesting instead of cooperating.

  ‘Mum, seriously, you can’t move.’

  ‘No.’

  If I was the grown-up, I’d pick up the phone and call for help. But I’m not. I’m in a sort of half-state where I’m not one thing or the other. I have to be responsible for stuff, but she gets the final say, and there’s nothing I can do.

  And I know what’s wrong. If an ambulance comes and sees the state of our house, she’s worried that I’ll be taken away. But I don’t think it works like that. I don’t think they just take you away because the walls are lined with things for a rainy day and emergency tea bags and enough stuff to keep a family of six going for a year.

  ‘If I can just . . .’ She rolls herself over the other way this time, away from the precariously balanced shoeboxes of stuff, her body sliding on the papers that are lying on the floor. ‘There.’

  She lifts her good leg up so she can press her foot down and reaches her hand up again to me where I’m standing in the hall, surrounded by years of assorted things that might be useful one day. I heave and she pushes against the floor, and there’s a sickening moment when her face goes a horrible whitish-green with pain and she lets out a gasp involuntarily. Seeing it makes me feel sick, so I can’t imagine how she feels.

  Mum leans against the white-painted banister, her head bowed. Her forehead is beaded with sweat, and her hands are curled into fists, nails digging into her palms.

  I know she needs help, and I know she’s going to resist every way she can.

  ‘What about if we get a taxi?’

  Her ankle must be broken. She’s standing on one leg, the other one held up in the air slightly like an injured animal.

  ‘I haven’t got any money on me.’

  ‘It’s fine. I’ve got that twenty pounds Neil gave me in my room.’

  I’d hidden it away ages ago, planning to spend it on something nice. But when you don’t have money there’s something about getting some that leaves you frozen and indecisive.

  I can hear Mum’s breath coming in tight little puffs. I slip past her and into my room. I don’t have lots of stuff. My dressing table is as neat as the rest of the house is chaotic. I lift up the china horse and take the money out from underneath – there’s a little hole where I’ve stuffed the note, folded and folded over again until it’s a bulky little square. I shake it out and brandish it at Mum.

  ‘I don’t know how you’re going to make it down the stairs.’

  ‘Just ring the taxi,’ she says, and her jaw is set tightly. ‘I’ll work that out.’

  I know the number off by heart – we don’t have a car – and ring it from the home phone, which is, miraculously, sitting on the windowsill in the hall. Sometimes it goes missing for weeks on end, lost in the maelstrom of random stuff that fills every surface.

  When I look up, I see that Mum is shuffling down the stairs on her bum, her leg sticking out in front of her, mouth twisted up in pain.

  ‘Can I help?’

  She shakes her head.

  I shove the coats from the end of the banister on to the chair under the stairs, where they slide off and fall in a heap. They’ll have to wait. When we get back, I’m going to sort this place out properly.

  The taxi arrives just as Mum hits the bottom step. I stick my head out and hold up two fingers, mouthing ‘two minutes’ at the driver.

  ‘I don’t want him coming in here and helping,’ says Mum unnecessarily.

  There’s not much chance of
that. He’s on his phone, scrolling with one hand, his other arm out of the window holding a cigarette. The cab is going to stink, and the smell of cigarette smoke makes me heave.

  We make a sort of tripod shape. Mum leans heavily on me, and we make it to the taxi, where she hops and shuffles on to the front seat. I slide it back, ignoring the taxi driver’s raised eyebrows, and pass her the seatbelt before closing the door and getting in the back.

  The taxi driver’s clearly decided it’s an emergency. We hurtle along the shore road towards the hospital, past the weird, otherworldly shapes of the oil refinery. The air is thick with the chemical smell from the thick plumes of smoke that belch from massive chimneys. And then we’re at A&E, and for a second I feel anxious because he’s parked us right outside the door. We’re not meant to be there and someone’s going to say something and I can feel a wave of anxiety building.

  ‘Here you are, hen.’ The driver’s found a wheelchair, and, clearly feeling important now, he’s hefting Mum out of the seat and into the chair. ‘Just pull that lever – that’s the brake – and you’ll be sorted.’

  I pull the twenty-pound note out of my pocket, and he gives me a tenner back.

  ‘Give me a ring when you’re done, and I’ll see you’s back – if my shift’s no’ over, that is.’ He shakes his head and looks inside. The waiting area is crowded with people. ‘Mind you, by the looks o’ that, you’ll be a wee while.’

  But we’re not. The triage nurse takes one look at Mum’s face and wheels her through to a room where he takes some details. Mum’s henna-red hair flops forward over her eyes. I twist the hem of my T-shirt absent-mindedly while the nurse taps some details into the computer.

  ‘You might have a bit of a wait at X-ray, but the shifts have just changed, so we’ll see what they say.’

  He looks up at me.

  ‘Your mum’s lucky to have such a sensible girl.’

  I don’t say anything. I just duck my head and let go of the twisted hem of my T-shirt that’s now been stretched out of shape. I pull the band out of my hair, shaking it out so I catch a sudden whiff of the chlorine from the pool, and tie it back in a ponytail. And I remember the boy and the bus stop. It feels like a million years ago, and I look up at the clock on the wall. It’s half seven. I’ve got a mountain of revision to do for a science test and literally no idea when we’re going to get out of here.