by Ali Land
‘She’s getting up, she’s going to have a shower.’
‘Well done, you had better luck than me.’
‘I want to do anything I can to help.’
‘And you are, you’ve been keeping us going. If it was just me and Sas I’m not sure where we’d be.’
Tiny trumpets raised in salute, this time for me.
A couple of hours later a knock on my bedroom door. Saskia, doing her best. In her hands she carries a bag. Cosmetic.
‘I’d like to do your make-up, would that be okay?’
I nod, we sit down together on the bed, she talks as she sweeps. Powder and bronze. Each time her wrist passes near to my nose I’m hit with a scent so feminine extra blush arrives on my face. It’s hardly touch what she does to me now but it’s intimate. Eye contact this close, still uncomfortable for me.
‘Phoebe never let me do her make-up, said I didn’t do it right, am I doing yours right?’
I nod, and say, of course, you’re doing a great job, though I have no idea if it’s true.
‘You’re very beautiful, Milly, I don’t think you know that.’
She talks and talks, tells me Phoebe was a mistake, she’d had the flu and forgotten to take her contraceptive pill for a few days. A shock. A difficult baby, not easy to soothe.
I’m tempted to ask her about Benji – a secret when handled carefully can be useful – gives a person leverage. Gives me leverage if Saskia thinks we’re bonding, keeping each other’s secrets, but for once, she’s ahead of me.
‘I’d like us to spend more time together, Milly. Would you like that?’
‘Yes, very much, but I might be leaving soon.’
‘Mike and I have been talking, the house is already so empty.’
‘Does that mean I –’
‘What?’
‘It doesn’t matter, it’s just I really like it here with you guys.’
She nods and smiles a little, says, ‘Mike said you bought a dress, shall I help you into it?’
‘No, thank you.’
I ask her to get a camera, I’d like a photo of me and her if it’s okay.
My dress. Black, long-sleeved velvet, a skater-style skirt attached, puffs out a bit, lands on my knees. I wear tights and a pair of black heeled boots I bought with my allowance from Topshop similar to the ones I’ve seen the other girls wear. I wish I could finish the outfit with my gold name necklace but I know it’s the wrong thing to do so I put on the necklace Morgan bought me instead and the watch from Mike and Saskia, and I can’t help but feel loved.
She comes back with the camera, Mike at her side. She’s barefoot, childlike. More like a sister than a mother.
‘Stunning,’ Mike says.
He puts his arm round Saskia’s waist and even though she moves away from him, I know they will fuck tonight. A new beginning.
For my birthday meal we eat Chinese in the kitchen. Mike says I look too fancy for takeaway, the first joke I’ve heard him attempt since Phoebe’s death. Sorry we haven’t gone out for dinner, he said, but we can’t really face it at the moment.
There’s a fortune cookie for each of us but neither Mike nor Saskia want to open theirs. I save mine for later, to open alone when we’re finished. Mike says he got an email from Joe’s dad asking if Joe could see me some time. Saskia nods, says, he’s a nice boy, I’ve met him before.
‘Is that okay with you, Milly?’
‘Yeah.’
I imagine him taking me to the cinema, his freckles turning pink as he kisses me goodnight, but then I remember what kisses lead to and I don’t like the thought very much any more.
I offer to clear up, tell Mike and Saskia to go and relax in the snug. I look in as I pass, they’re sitting on the same sofa. Saskia’s body is turned, her back against the arm, her feet tucked down the gap between the cushions in the middle. Mike sits beside her, his hand on her shin.
‘We should light the fire soon, Sas, we usually do in December.’
‘I can’t believe it’s December already,’ she replies.
They stare at the unlit fire, both thinking about the same thing, the same person. I leave them like that, go up to my room and call Morgan. I haven’t seen her much since Phoebe’s accident, I’ve been focusing on Mike and Saskia, on filling their void and making friends at school. I’m doing okay, I think. Offering to help fundraise for the senior common room was a wise move, instantly elevated me. A phoenix. Messy. But rising.
When she answers she tells me she has to be quiet, her little sister’s asleep next to her, asks me what I’ve been up to. Not much, I tell her, just school and helping out at home. I miss you, Mil, she says, can you tell me a story. Okay, close your eyes first though. I tell her the names of the stars, the planets. There’s water on Mars. I tell her about the catacombs in Paris, a cemetery of skulls underground. Sounds amazing, she says, I’d like to go, maybe we can go one day. Maybe, yes. We arrange to see each other next weekend and after I hang up I open the fortune cookie. The message reads: IF YOU HAVE SOMETHING GOOD IN YOUR LIFE, DON’T LET IT GO.
I look at the watch on my wrist and think, I don’t plan to, whatever it takes.
39
We receive a standing ovation for our performance of Lord of the Flies. I played Phoebe’s part, the narrator, am pushed forward by the girls at the end of the show. You were amazing, take another bow, go on. I look out into the audience, see Mike and Saskia clapping. Mike’s looking at me strangely, doesn’t take his eyes off me. Doesn’t smile either.
After the play’s over I offer to help tidy away the props. Clondine and I leave at the same time. She stops and looks up at the sky.
‘It’s so sad.’
‘What is?’
‘It’s the Christmas dance this Friday, it was Phoebe’s favourite. She loved all the fancy dresses and wearing Saskia’s fur.’
I say it’s sad too, because it is.
Walking home, I look on my phone at the BBC news page. Nothing about you for weeks but this evening, a headline. Our house is to be demolished, a community garden planted. Nine trees. You don’t come to me in my bed any more, you shed your skin. ‘It’s time,’ you said. I understand now what you meant, that I didn’t need you any more. A mixture of happy and sad. Mostly I’m coming to terms with the things I’ve done. I did them to be good, I promise, even though they were bad.
I’ve been practising what to say, in case you ever come back.
This is what I’d say.
I never asked for a mother who wolf-whistled at me, who laughed in my face when I tried to say no. I’d tell you, you were wrong when you used to stand behind me at the mirror in your bedroom and say nobody will ever love me but you, because I think Mike and Saskia might grow to. I’d tell you, you were right, my insides do look different to everybody else’s.
A curious, twisted shape.
The shape you made me. The shape I’m learning to live with.
The night of your arrest, I nodded at you. You knew what I meant. I was telling you I was leaving you. I was ready. But you weren’t, were you? You never liked it when a game ended, you always wanted to keep playing. The game you made me play, going to court, more public than we’d ever done before. A last fire of the gun, a parade of how well you’d taught me. It wasn’t a walk in the park, no, nor was it checkmate. It was like turning my face to the sun. Blinding. No shade.
Your voice, to me, was a morphine drip. Sullied, not able to provide relief and comfort, but fear and temptation instead. I’m glad I no longer hear you or see you in places I know you can’t be, like standing at the bus stop by school.
The things you did, the things you made me do, broke my heart.
You broke my heart.
You broke my.
You broke.
You.
And me.
Because of that, I have secrets, so many secrets.
I am not who I say I am.
Folie à deux – a madness shared by two.
Deny.
Manipu
late.
Lie.
Mummy, I thought I could choose.
It turns out, I’m just like you.
Only better.
Being good doesn’t interest me any more.
Not
Getting
Caught
Does
40
I know something’s wrong as soon as I open the front door. It’s where Mike’s standing, in the middle of the tiles where she landed. Why is he standing there when for the past week or so he hasn’t been able to look at them, never mind stand on them.
‘I need you to come to the study. Right now,’ he says.
He doesn’t ask me to sit down when we get there, he stands closer to me than normal, looks into my eyes. I don’t think he likes what he sees because he walks away, sits down at his desk, mutters to himself. There’s a bottle of whisky, over a third empty, a glass on his desk. He drains the measure already poured, pours another one right away. I sit down in silence on the armchair that has become mine over the past few months. And wait.
His words, when they come, hurt me.
‘I was warned about you. People said I was stupid. Reckless even. Having you here would only cause trouble, but I didn’t listen, I thought I could handle it.’
The piranhas are back. The fortune fish too, a new trial beginning.
‘I thought I knew everything about you – maybe not everything, but most things. I thought you trusted me. I trusted you, I took you in for god’s sake.’
‘I do trust you, Mike.’
His fist crashes down on his desk, I jump. It’s nothing compared to what you used to do but from Mike, gentle, understanding Mike, it feels savage. Brutal. He’s angry with me. His head’s starting to clear, grief is a fog, a mist. Hangs low, obscures the landscape. Obscures what’s really there.
‘Don’t lie to me,’ he says. ‘If you trusted me, you would have told me.’
‘Told you what?’
He pauses, downs a mouthful of whisky, arches his fingers on the desk. Twin tarantulas, ready to pounce.
‘In our sessions, the things you said. Jumbled. Inconsistent. You were so hard to guide. You hated me asking you about it, tried hard not to say his name, but I knew something about the night Daniel died troubled you more than I thought it should. But when I asked you, kept asking you, the story was the same and I believed you. I wanted to at some level, you’d been through so much, but now I’m not sure any more. I’m not sure of anything.’
His fingers relax on the desk, more pianist than spider. Whisky is also a mist, one that confuses the mind until you’re not sure what to believe any more. Drink some more, please, Mike.
‘What you told the court, about what happened that night, was it true, Milly? Did your mother kill Daniel? Did she?’
‘Why do you think I’m lying?’
‘Because you do, don’t you? You lie. You lied to me, didn’t you? You lied to me about Phoebe when you said you were getting on fine.’
‘We were.’
He swipes a glass paperweight off his desk, it collides with the wall, doesn’t break, leaves a dent in the paintwork, lands on the ground with a thud.
‘You’re scaring me, Mike.’
‘Well you scare me, do you know that?’
There it is. The truth. His. He feels the same about me as everyone else does. As I do about myself. I lower my gaze.
‘I’m sorry, that was unnecessary, Milly.’
He drinks another whisky, adjusts the photo frame that sits on the right-hand side of his desk. I felt jealous and lonely when I first saw the pictures in the frame. A collage of Phoebe, all different ages. Blonde and perfect and beautiful, not contaminated like me. He shakes his head, smiles at his daughter. Not fondly, but with regret perhaps. Regret about what? She’s gone but she’s everywhere still, in the spaces and gaps that are supposed to be mine now.
The phone on his desk rings, he looks over at it but doesn’t pick it up.
‘It’ll be June,’ he says. ‘I called her while I was waiting for you to come back but she didn’t answer. She’ll know something’s up though, I wouldn’t normally call this late.’
‘Why did you?’
‘I’m writing a book about you, did you know that? No. Well, I am. It was all I was able to think about. How stupid and arrogant of me.’
He doesn’t tell me why he called June but I can feel the place in this family I’ve been carving, manipulating, since Phoebe’s death, start to dissolve in front of me. Quicksand. Sinking. Me.
‘You can stop pretending now, Milly. I know.’
And all the king’s horses and all the king’s men.
‘It had been going on for months, hadn’t it? Facebook, the school forum. Text messages. The police returned Phoebe’s phone yesterday. She’d been bullying you for months, hadn’t she?’
I know what he’s thinking, that all roads lead to me.
‘Why didn’t you tell me? Christ, we spent enough time together.’
‘I didn’t want to worry you or cause any trouble. I thought Phoebe and I might become friends – sisters, even.’
He opens one of the drawers in his desk, removes something, looks down at it then lifts it up and places it in front of him.
Phoebe’s laptop, Mike had it.
‘She didn’t think I knew,’ he says.
‘Knew what?’
‘About Sam.’
‘Sam who?’
‘You’re telling me you didn’t know, hadn’t heard anything about it at school?’
‘No, nothing.’
He asks me if I’m lying. I don’t answer because I am but only because I’m too scared to tell the truth. The flashes of what could be a new life for me here in this house stop me. So close. If I can just ride this next storm, if I can persuade him.
‘His dad and I go way back. We studied together years ago, stayed in touch when they moved to Italy, we saw them this summer. We’d all been having a bit of a laugh about it behind their backs, a long-distance romance. Sam’s mum had seen some of the emails but not all of them. Not the ones where Phoebe told him her suspicions about you.’
‘But I thought she didn’t know about me?’
‘Well she did,’ he replies.
His fists clench, open. Clench. He reaches for the bottle of whisky, pours a measure, drains it again but doesn’t pour another. I wish he would, his edges and ability to reason are starting to soften with the warmth of the alcohol, I can see it.
‘She came to me a while ago, said she’d seen some notes about you in my study while looking for a book. I tried to tell her it wasn’t true but she got so upset, said I was always putting my patients first. I couldn’t lie to her any more, I didn’t want to, so I told her but we agreed she wouldn’t say anything and she didn’t, not to anyone at school anyway, only to Sam.’
‘I’m sorry, Mike.’
‘You’ve said that a lot since I’ve known you. What exactly is it you’re sorry for?’
He doesn’t wait for me to answer, the conversation he’s having is more with himself than me. He’s trying to put things in the right place in his head. Tidy up, file them away. Reassure himself he didn’t get it wrong, so horribly wrong.
‘She had plans to expose you, you know. It’s there, written in an email to Sam, the last one she sent after school on the day she died. She’d bought a pay-as-you-go phone, was going to send out anonymous text messages, tell everybody who you were. Goddamn it, how did I miss how unhappy she was?’
‘It’s not your fault, Mike.’
Small nods of his head, but somehow it feels like it is, he replies. He stares at Phoebe’s laptop, looks at the photo frame of her again. I start to cry, it hurts me to see it up close. The damage I’ve caused, a terrorist in his family, shape-shifting each time.
When he notices I’m crying, he says, ‘You’re usually very good at hiding your feelings.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘The bullying must ha
ve hurt, made you upset. Angry. Yet you never showed it. I knew you and Phoebe weren’t close but I never noticed any major animosity, any major concerns.’
He’s lying to himself. He noticed, in the same way he notices Saskia swimming through the motions. Drunk, high, depressed. Repeat. Drunk, high, depressed. His emerald city at home, fucked up. If he was honest with himself, if he was brave enough, he’d admit that it suited him not to notice, not to acknowledge the tension between Phoebe and me. He wanted me here, needed me. Access to my mind, a golden opportunity, one that would likely never come around again. Female killers, like I said, are rare.
‘We hid it from you, both of us.’
‘I should have been able to see it. So bloody absorbed with work, and –’
‘Writing about me.’
He nods, replies, yes, but at what cost.
‘Is that why you feel bad, you feel like you should have spent less time with me and more with Phoebe?’
He leans back in his chair, pushes his body against the leather. I know how it feels when you don’t want to talk about things but you’re still being asked. Nobody wants to talk about the things they feel guilty about.
‘Phoebe loved you so much, Mike. I could see that.’
He shakes his head, his turn for the tears to come.
‘She did, Clondine told me the night of Matty’s party at half-term that Phoebe idolized you, thought you were the best dad in the world.’
‘How could I have been, I was too busy, too busy involving myself with other people’s problems.’
‘That’s what she loved about you. The fact you care and try to help.’
My words anoint, rub soothing oil and balm into his loss, his guilt. I can see the game beginning to change in front of my eyes. I stand up, walk over to his desk, pour him another whisky. Drink it, I tell him, it’ll help. He does, he’s used to me helping. I’ve worked hard recently to make it so him and Saskia couldn’t be without me. Wouldn’t want to be. He watches me as I sit back down. I pick up the blue velvet cushion he placed on the chair in our first session together. I hold it, pull it into my chest. It’ll trigger a response, remind him I’m still a child, someone who needs love and care. Guidance. It’ll activate his desire, his need to be needed. A hero complex hidden underneath expensive shirts. Pride. A long way to fall if you get things like me wrong.
