My Box-Shaped Heart

by Rachael Lucas

  The zebra darts away from the water’s edge and somehow confuses the lion, which keeps going for a second too long. The camera pans out, and we see the zebra galloping away to safety. There’s probably a message in there, somewhere. I pass the remote control to Mum and head upstairs.

  Hello.

  I tap the words on my phone and look at them for a moment. Too formal and weird-looking.

  Hi.

  Capitals or no capitals?

  hi!

  Do I sound like a children’s television presenter? I think I do. I’m perched on the edge of the bath watching the bubbles frothing up under the stream of the tap, and the mirror is steaming up. And I don’t know what to say.

  It’s Holly.

  I look at it for a moment. No, that looks even weirder, I think, but at the same moment my foot shoots out from underneath me because I’m balancing and the towel on the floor has slid on the lino, which is gleamingly spotless and shiny, thanks to Cressi. And there’s a zzzooomp noise, because I’ve accidentally hit send.

  Bloody hell.

  Sorry, I didn’t mean to send that.

  I really need to get my act together. This is tragic.

  I’m trying to compose a sensible third-time-lucky text, when a reply flashes up on the screen.

  You’re not Holly?

  No, I am. I just meant I didn’t mean to send that particular message.

  Ah. I often send the wrong messages too.

  Glad we’ve sorted that out! I type, and I feel my insides fizzing again. It’s a weird feeling, but I don’t want it to stop. Also, he’s the only person I’ve ever known to type ‘ah’ in a text message, which is more evidence of his poshness.

  What’re you up to?

  I start to type Running a bath, but it makes me feel a bit shy, as if somehow Ed can see through the screen of the phone to me sitting here on the bathroom floor in a dressing gown.

  Just reading, I reply. That’s the sort of thing people do on a Friday night (if they’ve got no life, that is, which I guess there’s no point trying to conceal).

  Anything interesting?

  Oh, brilliant. I turn the hot tap off and cast my eyes around the bathroom looking for inspiration.

  Lord of the Flies, I write, with a flash of inspiration. It’s been sitting on my bookshelf forever. I love reading, and I have literally no idea why I didn’t just say that I’m re-reading The Hunger Games for the millionth time, or that I’ve borrowed so many new books from the library that I can’t even remember the titles. Instead I’ve said that because it makes me sound clever and Ed’s really posh.

  Did you know that Stephen King uses Castle Rock as the town name for lots of his books? Another text follows straight afterwards: You probably did. I’m showing my geek side, right?

  I didn’t know that, I reply.

  I don’t know what Castle Rock is, and now I’m going to have to read the book to find out. I clamber up from the floor and head through to the bedroom with the phone in my hand. There’s no reply. I feel a bit deflated and get into the bath with the book. Just as I set down my phone, it buzzes on the edge of the basin.

  Are you doing anything on Sunday?

  Ohhhhhh. I sit up in the bath and look at the phone.

  Not really.

  D’you want to come on a dog walk with me?

  Just like that.

  And my brain starts running at about a million miles an hour. Does he mean a dog walk, or a dog walk? What do you wear on a dog walk? I’ve got nothing except my black jeans, and I lent Allie my favourite T-shirt and –

  Calm down, Holly. It’s a dog walk.

  OK, I type, and my stomach does something really weird and I feel tongue-tied all of a sudden like I don’t know what to say, except I’m looking at a screen and not expected to say anything.

  Excellent.

  I look at the one-word reply and can’t think what I’m supposed to say to that.

  ‘Holly!’ Cressi’s voice calls up the stairs.

  ‘I’m in the bath!’

  ‘I’m not planning on joining you in there; I was just letting you know I’ve been in to check on Fiona. I’ve dropped off some shopping.’

  She’s like a foghorn. I can hear every word as clearly as if she was standing next to me. Thankfully she’s not.

  I look down at the phone again.

  I’m trying to compose a reply when Ed beats me to it.

  Meet you at the bus stop again?

  OK, I message back. When?

  Half one?

  See you then.

  I almost add, I’ll bring some Oreos, but then I change my mind. It sounds a bit like I’m expecting something . . . like I feel like we’ve got some sort of shared thing in common. I look down at the blue numbers scrawled on my hand – his writing isn’t tidy – and I realize that there’s no way I’m going to get it off without scrubbing.

  CHAPTER TEN

  The back room that used to belong to Lauren has been tidied by Cressi, but there’s still loads of my stuff on the shelves: boxes full of mementos from summers spent in England; old notebooks full of the stories I used to write in the holidays. I don’t want Lauren’s friends going through them and finding ammunition to make my life at school worse than it already is, so I’m clearing it properly before she moves in.

  I can hear the clunk and shuffle of Mum on crutches, making her way from the sitting room through to the kitchen. She’s getting a lot more mobile now she’s used to them, and so far the house has stayed tidy. She seems much more like she used to be too – I don’t know how long it’ll last. She’s been playing music when she hasn’t for ages, and it’s like she’s waking up from hibernation.

  ‘Do you want tea?’

  ‘Can you make it one-handed?’

  ‘I’m fine.’

  She’s learned to balance on one crutch and sort of shuffle from the kettle to the kitchen sink and back again.

  I stack up a pile of old books and look at Lord of the Flies. For a second I contemplate doing a speed read so I sound like I know what I’m talking about. I shove it back on the shelf instead.

  I trundle back and forth between the back room and my bookshelf, which is overflowing. One of the only advantages of Mum’s obsession with cluttering up the house with random stuff over the last few years is that she’s never said no to books . . . I think I’ve got more than most people I know (not that I know many).

  ‘Tea!’ Mum shouts.

  She’s sitting at the kitchen table in the little alcove bit of the kitchen. I pull out a chair and join her, reaching across and taking my favourite mug in my hands.

  ‘It looks a bit weird, this place, doesn’t it?’ Mum motions to the tidy kitchen. The wooden shelves that Granny used to keep her ornaments on, which for the last few years have been stacked with random crap, are now empty.

  ‘You mean organized?’

  ‘Mmm.’ She takes a sip of tea. ‘I wanted to have a chat with you about that.’

  I shift in my seat.

  ‘Look, darling,’ she says, and I realize that we’re about to have One of Those Talks, and I feel a bit awkward. It’s like she’s woken up from being half asleep and realized the state of the place. ‘I have been pretty crap, and I’m sorry.’

  ‘You haven’t.’

  She looks at me and raises an eyebrow, pulling a face I haven’t seen in years. ‘I have.’

  ‘You’ve not been well.’

  ‘No.’ She picks up a teaspoon and twirls it in her fingers, looking thoughtful. ‘I haven’t. And to be honest I hadn’t realized how unwell I’d been. But the house – and my leg—’

  ‘It’s OK.’

  I twist the hem of my T-shirt, wrapping it round my finger and then spinning it out again so the fabric is all creased in the pattern of one of Mum’s old tie-dye tops.

  ‘When I went to the doctor the other day, we had a bit of a chat,’ she carries on. ‘And she asked me lots of questions, and I filled in some questionnaires and things.’

  She
puts the spoon down on the table and picks up her mug, looking down into it as if expecting to find the answers in there.

  ‘We agreed that I’ve been in a bit of a muddle, and the main problem is that I have depression.’

  I look around at the house and try to find the words to say, Is that why we live in chaos? But I don’t think it would help.

  ‘Do you think that’s why we have all this –’ I wave my hands around the tidy kitchen, motioning to the surfaces, which until last week had been choked with papers and washing baskets, books and boxes and things for a rainy day, Amazon orders that weren’t even opened, and shopping-channel impulse purchases – ‘s-stuff?’

  I stumble over the word. All these years – as the house has silted up with layers upon layers of things she’s piled up and accumulated when she was working – the irony of her working online for a shopping channel isn’t lost on me.

  ‘I didn’t buy it because I was saving it for a rainy day.’ Mum takes a sip of tea and looks at me directly. ‘More like I bought it, then I didn’t know what to do with it, and trying to work that out in my head made me feel even worse, so I just let it pile up.’

  ‘So the house ended up being stacked up with stuff because you were depressed?’

  ‘Basically.’ She smiles at me, and she looks hopeful. ‘I’ve arranged to see a counsellor for something called CBT, and apparently they’re really good at helping you sort out your head.’

  ‘I’ve heard of it. We talked about it in PSHE.’

  ‘And I’ve got medication too.’

  I’m still trying to get my head round the new improving-if-not-improved Mum. It all seems to have happened so fast. She shuffles on the chair and lifts up her cast to make it more comfortable on the cushion.

  I allow myself a moment where I picture the house staying like this, and my old mum back: the one who used to sing and bake and grow herbs in the little pots outside the back door – the ones that are choked with dead weeds right now.

  ‘That’s the idea. We’ve been living like this for far too long, honey, and I want you to have your childhood back.’

  I realize as she says this that she’s got tears in her eyes. I climb out of the chair and kneel down on the floor and hug her round the middle, trying not to squish her cast as I do so. She smells warm and familiar, and she feels smaller. It’s as if the last few years have made her shrink, but then I am six inches taller than her, I suppose. I’m six inches taller than everyone. Apart from Ed. I feel my cheeks stinging pink just thinking about him, and bury my face into the side of her cardigan.

  ‘You’re pretty bloody amazing, as kids go,’ she says over the top of my head.

  ‘I’m really not.’ Inside, from out of nowhere, I feel a stab of resentment that Lauren’s going to swan into our house just as everything is getting better and take up the whole space with her perfectness, and I’m going to be in the background being awkward and uncomfortable.

  I feel like I spend my whole life thinking one thing and saying another and constantly juggling them, and I wonder for a moment if other people feel like that. And then I feel bad that I resent Lauren, because she’s got her own crap to deal with.

  ‘Well, we’ll have to agree to differ on that one.’ She drops a kiss on the top of my head, reminding me of being little. ‘Deal?’

  ‘OK.’ I nod.

  ‘Up you get,’ she says. ‘Your tea’s going to go cold. What exactly is it you’re doing upstairs, anyway?’

  ‘Sorting out the box room for Lauren.’

  ‘Oh, Holly.’ She beams at me. It’s been so long since she was this smiley that I’d forgotten what her face looks like when she’s happy. My mum is actually really pretty. On the band poster that hangs in the hall, she’s wearing her long hair down with daisies woven into it, and she’s got a dress that looks like a nightie on and bare feet, and she’s the one – there’s always one person in a band, or in a group of friends – that everyone’s eyes are drawn to. In that picture, it’s Mum. I think it always was, but I don’t think she ever really knew it. But whenever we go to England and see her old friends, they tell me how amazing she was and that they wish she’d join them or do something with her music.

  The house has been so muffled with stuff and heavy with silence.

  I get up to go and finish upstairs, and as I do I realize that Mum’s flicked on the radio in the sitting room again.

  When we were a family, the house was always full of music. From the moment we got up, it was on in the kitchen – and at night, when I went to sleep, I’d hear her downstairs, playing old CDs or her keyboard. It had been hidden under a pile of laundry for so long that I’d forgotten it existed, but it was polished and shiny now, under the window of the sitting room looking out over the fields. Maybe she’d start playing. Then I’d know she was really feeling better.

  ‘You don’t have to worry about making the bed,’ her voice calls up the stairs.

  I look down at the little single bed where Lauren’s going to sleep and realize that Cressi’s put fresh sheets on, and there’s the faded flowery duvet cover on that used to be mine. It looks neat, but shabby. I feel a bit nervous at the idea of Lauren coming in, judging the way we live now. When she and Neil lived with us, we had more money, and the place didn’t look so . . . battered. Even tidied up, it still looks nothing like her posh house. Just like I look nothing like her, with her expensive clothes and neatly cut hair. I catch a glimpse of my hair, which has dried after the bath into a tangle of red curls, and realize with a yawn I’m completely exhausted. This week feels like it’s lasted a year.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  I feel so sick. It’s not just nerves (but they are definitely not helping).

  I’m on a bus, which is apparently being driven by a maniac, because we’re hurtling round the bends on the narrow road to Hopetoun so fast that I’m jolting against the window. I check my phone again – it’s quarter past one. At this rate, the ten minutes I was planning to spend at the bus stop gathering my thoughts and trying not to be nervous are going to be spent trying not to throw up on my shoes.

  We sail over the hill into Hopetoun and slow down with a jerk as the sign saying thirty comes into view. I take a deep breath and look across the loch and the castle, watching the boats bobbing on the water as we judder to a halt at the first bus stop. We used to walk around there at the weekends, taking a picnic and dabbling our toes in the water. I watch a mum and dad and two little girls – one red-haired, one blonde, just like me and Lauren – as they set off along the path towards the woods. The bus pulls away, and I turn my head to try to see them again – but they’ve gone.

  The high street is busy with the usual tourists – the castle brings visitors here from all over the world, partly because it was used as a film set in several different Hollywood movies. A group of American tourists flock to the bus as we stop outside the castle entrance. They’re festooned with huge cameras and wearing brightly coloured raincoats, despite the sunshine.

  ‘Does this go to Edin-boro?’

  I smile to myself at the pronunciation, catching the eye of the old man sitting opposite. He raises his eyes to the sky and shakes his head in amusement.

  ‘Afraid no’. This is for Kilmuir and Stonehouses.’

  ‘Thanks so much,’ says the tourist, and steps back.

  I watch him pulling out a map and shaking it out as we drive on to the end of the street.

  I can feel my heart thudding as the bus pulls to a standstill. It’s a walk with a friend, that’s all, I tell myself. I pull myself up, the metal of the rail cold against my hands, which are clammy with sweat and nerves. For a second I contemplate just sitting back down, letting the bus turn round, ducking out of sight as we head down the high street again. I could text Ed and tell him I couldn’t make it. I can’t think of a thing to say. I have no idea how people do this. I think I might be the most boring human alive.

  ‘Cheers, hen,’ says the driver.

  ‘Thanks – bye,’ I say. And as I s
tep off the bus I realize that – a head taller than anyone else surrounding him – I can see Ed walking down the pavement towards me with his loping walk, which looks casual, but covers the ground incredibly fast. He’s got a dark brown Labrador trotting beside him.

  He raises a hand in greeting, and I feel my stomach dropping through the floor.

  We are only walking a dog, I tell myself, and I lift my hand in a shy sort of wave.

  He raises his hand again, and I realize he’s grinning, and somehow it makes me feel better. I hitch my bag over my shoulder.

  I’ve shoved some lunch things in my rucksack – I wasn’t sure what to bring, but when I stopped at the shop this morning I picked up a pack of Oreos, because they made me smile.

  ‘Hey.’ He smiles.

  ‘Hi.’

  We both stand there for a moment. I bend down to stroke his dog.

  ‘Meg,’ he says, ‘meet Holly.’

  Meg sits down obediently on hearing her name. She looks up at me, her dark brown eyes gentle, and I rub behind her ears. She lifts a paw and I shake it.

  ‘Hello, Meg.’

  ‘She’s very well brought up, as you can see.’

  ‘Of course she is.’ I look up at Ed, who is smiling broadly.

  ‘Naturally.’

  ‘So,’ I straighten up. ‘What d’you want to do?’

  Ed rubs his chin. ‘Country park?’

  There’s a path through the woods that leads up to the back of the country park. It’s owned by the Laird of Hopetoun, but the land is for everyone to use.

  ‘OK.’ I feel another flutter of nerves in my stomach.

  ‘Can you just hold this for a sec?’ He passes me Meg’s red leather lead, shrugs off the green plaid shirt he’s wearing, and ties it round his waist.