by L. V. Hay
Gingerly, I crawl across the joists. I don’t know how well built these coach houses are; I’m afraid I might stick an arm straight through the ceiling of the room below. Reaching the box of toys, I pull out more teddies and dolls; a troll doll with rainbow hair; half a dozen coloured ponies with neon-coloured manes. A couple of action figures: Batman and the Joker, locked forever in an embrace. A plastic house in the shape of a mushroom. A giant teapot, with round figurines inside. An old bath toy, with a swimmer who would dive out again if you filled it full of water.
I reach the bottom of the box. Thwarted, I sit back on my haunches. I squint in the gloom. Having shifted my vantage point, I note something directly in front of me. Balanced on a rafter, held together by a good amount of Sellotape, is the house my sister references in her Sleeping Beauty blog post.
In my excitement, I crawl towards it. The joist beneath me groans in an ominous fashion. I stop, but nothing happens. I cross the rest of the distance with caution and take the house down as if it were made of delicate china. It’s not survived the test of time well. Much of our carefully chosen felt-tip, sweet-wrapper and foil décor has faded. But more than that, the house has been resurrected at least once: it looks like it has been crushed.
I don’t know how I know this, but I can feel it: India was the last person to touch the dolls’ house. She was the one who’d retrieved it from the toy box. She had placed it, out of harm’s way, on the rafter. I open the front, sure the plastic frog India references in the post will be in there. My heart lifts in anticipation: A message for me, from my sister beyond the grave.
But there’s nothing inside. My heart plummets again. Even our carefully made furniture is gone. I turn it upside down, just in case the plastic frog is caught inside it somewhere. Nothing falls, or even rattles.
I’m confused. Why would India write about the frog in this dolls’ house? What did it matter? It’s obvious there is some connection to the Frog King she references, too, in another post. But what? She must have felt it was as obvious to me as it was to her, but I am no closer to understanding what my sister is trying to tell me.
My eyes blur. I wipe away the tears with dusty fingers. I’ve let India down, all over again.
Twenty
At a loss, I return to the blog. Thanks to Mike, I’m no longer locked out of India’s laptop, and all her passwords have been retrieved. He’s even stored them for me. His technogeekery Kung Fu is strong. Guilt prickles at me again, but I tamp it down. Having access to my sister’s own machine will help my search. It has to.
I click on an icon at the top of India’s blog. I’m taken into the workings of the site, which calls itself ‘the dashboard’, like it’s a car. I feel like I’ve moved inside my sister’s mind.
I discover there are no more posts in the queue, waiting to be published, and no drafts. There are, however, comments pending, so I click on the comments icon. A dialogue box comes up right away. Again, mostly spam, entreating India to buy gold, watches or Viagra.
My eye drifts towards another comments column: ‘approved’. Here there is a large variety of usernames. I’ve already noted that India’s blog is popular. Its insights – likes, shares, comments and so on – regularly hit the thousands.
Who are these people? Where would I even start?
As I cast my eye down the list, I realise one name appears at the bottom of every single post, sometimes several times: Blithefancy.
I click on the user profile and am transported to a web page: www.blithefancy.com. There is no blog or writing. Instead there is a picture of a ‘sugar skull’ as made popular by the Mexican public holiday, the Day of The Dead, our All Saints’ Day.
In the skull’s mouth: a contact button. I click on it. Another pop-up appears so I rattle a short message off: ‘How did you know my sister, India?’
Before I can back out, I press ‘send’. I hope for a reply straight away, but I don’t get one. I decide to wait.
Not sure what else to do, I gravitate back towards India’s Facebook page, but there have been no auto-updates; it looks exactly the same.
Matthew’s Facebook profile is just a click away, and I can’t resist looking. His account is neglected; the last status dates back six months. If the Internet had tumbleweed, Matthew’s digital space would be full of it.
I scroll backwards through his page anyway. He has been tagged in a few photos of nights out, an arm around one of his boys. Matthew always did like a party. I recognise the blue-neon décor of Elemental in a couple of them.
Ana is a different matter: Facebook and Twitter are her platforms of choice. Every event in her life, major and minor, is catalogued and commentated on in real time, with added hashtags and likes. I wonder where she gets the time.
I pause on a picture of Ana in a birthing pool, bright-eyed and triumphant. A grizzly newborn rests on her cleavage. So, my old friend is a mother now. I look at the date of the picture: about eighteen months ago. To the side, Maggie Temple kisses the side of Ana’s head, eyes closed, a beatific smile on her face.
There follows a stream of proud-parent pictures: baby’s first smile; first steps; first taste of ice cream. The child is a little girl with a strong resemblance to the Temple twins. I note her skin tone is much lighter than her mother’s.
Ana’s relationship status is noted as ‘complicated’. I tap on it. I am taken to a picture of Ana about six months pregnant, with a white guy. Figures. Ana always idolised Alan, so it stands to reason she would try and find a man just like him.
Ana has a huge, ready smile for the camera and is pointing to her swollen belly with both index fingers, as if to say, ‘OMG!’ Her joy seems at odds with the Ana I saw just days earlier, but then it was my sister’s funeral.
My attention turns to Ana’s beau. He has a mop of curly hair and a fuzzy beard, and he is tagged as ‘Jayden Spence’. In the Facebook picture, Jayden has an arm draped around Ana’s shoulders. His head is turned away from her. He’s staring to the side of the picture, towards something just out of frame, a look of unbridled irritation on his face.
I recognise him, of course. Jayden is the only son and heir of Gordon Spence, owner of The Obelisk resort. He’s a playboy and Z-List celebrity, even appearing in the nationals from time to time, falling drunk out of clubs where he was attending various passé stars’ birthdays. There was even a rumour Jayden would be appearing on some game show where they bury sleb wannabes and has-beens up to their necks in ants and cockroaches. For a price, of course. Jayden loves money just like the rest of the Spence family.
But it’s more than that. Taking in his unruly mop of hair, his broad shoulders and slim waist, I feel even more certain it was Jayden at the cemetery on the day of India’s funeral. Though he was in the distance and wearing shades, Jayden was tall, striking. He dug one hand in his trouser pocket, held a cigarette with the long, tapered fingers of the other. But why would Jayden have been there?
I sit back in my sister’s chair as I consider this revelation. Alan Temple is a property magnate in Brighton, making his fortune buying up social housing and even building new developments. Alan has every reason to want to see his firm, Temple Construction, strongly linked to The Obelisk’s first family. Could Alan have engineered this romantic partnership between his daughter and Spence?
I look through the rest of Ana’s photo albums, but there are no more pictures of her and Jayden. Jayden is well known in the city; it would take a lot to make him settle down. And Ana’s relationship status – ‘complicated’ – perhaps indicates that a child has not prompted him to do so. Maybe this has made Alan’s life difficult, too?
It seems the baby is not Ana’s only photographic obsession on Facebook. She’s taken photo after photo of her twin brother, too. There are portraits of Matthew at Christmas; plus Matthew on their birthday, the fourth of April. Here’s a picture of both of them as kids, arms around each other, like one person. There’s Matthew laughing and putting his hand up, attempting to block the lens as if his siste
r is paparazzi.
I stop on one. In this, he is somehow diminished in comparison to the other photos. His skin waxy, Matthew sits on a hospital bed, next to Maggie. His eyes are closed, his shoulders slumped. His body language screams despair. Matthew leans his head towards his mother and she attempts to wrap her arms around him as if he is a little child, even though he is twice her size.
Maggie Temple is the type of mother I always wished I had. Warm, caring, dependable, she seemed so different to our reserved, yet mercurial mother. Though the twins would sometimes complain of Maggie’s interference, they always knew there was nothing she would not do for her family. She left them in no doubt of that.
That day baby India came home from the hospital, when everyone had eyes only for my sister, it was me Maggie had sought out. She found me slumped on the stairs. She sat next to me on the second to last step, her face a picture of commiseration. Maggie Temple seemed to be the only person in the universe who understood – or cared! – how I felt on that first day.
Underneath the Facebook photo, Ana has added, ‘You can do it little bro xxx’. Ana never lets Matthew forget she is three minutes older than him. Underneath the photo, there are over two hundred likes and probably half as many comments, echoing her. I click away from the album hurriedly, turning my attention back to my search.
I scroll through the statuses and comments on India’s Facebook profile again, looking for JoJo’s name, but she is conspicuous by her absence, both in the threads and in India’s photo albums. I attempt to call up JoJo’s name, to no avail, so I Google her full name and ‘Facebook’. Her profile pops up immediately.
That’s when it dawns on me: India is blocked! But why?
I close the laptop, grab India’s phone and scroll through the contacts. As I suspected, JoJo is not listed.
So they must have fallen out. Perhaps that’s all JoJo meant when she said she shouldn’t have come to the funeral.
I have to ask JoJo herself.
Twenty-one
The Musgrave family home is a low-rise flat in Whitehawk, only two or three streets away from the Coach House. People are back at work, though the anticipation of New Year’s Eve celebrations and tomorrow’s holiday hangs in the air. The sun retreats behind a low band of grey cloud. It gives the green outside the flats an ominous look.
JoJo’s mother, Cerise, stands at the fence by the bus stop outside the block. A rotund woman with a short, apple-shaped body and freakishly skinny legs, Cerise Musgrave is a Rottweiler of a woman: primed and ready to go, any time of the day or night. Behind her, three of her younger kids play on the green. They hang off graffitied play equipment, dressed in coats and scarves. Underneath, a mangy-looking dog barks happily at them.
I make my way towards Cerise. I am apprehensive. Cerise grabs the label ‘chav’ and wears it as a badge of honour. She considers attack the best form of defence. And her potential for violence is matched only by her fierce cunning. I can recall a time Cerise turned up at the the Coach House to ‘talk’ to my mother when India and JoJo were about eight. The two girls had had a falling-out about something at school. My sister and JoJo made up within minutes, yet Tim still had to drag Cerise off my mother. Ever since, Mum has always sent Tim to the door first.
Cerise’s round, pasty face is more wrinkled than when I last saw her. For the first time, I realise with a thud that she is closer to my age than my mother’s. I can smell she is smoking a joint, right out there in the open, but downwind from her kids. Whatever I might think of her, Cerise prides herself on being a good mother.
She doesn’t even look up at me. ‘You can jog right on.’
‘I want to see JoJo.’
‘Well, she don’t wanna see you.’
Cerise does not move. The cherry on the end of her joint glowers at me. The dog seems to sense the hostility emanating from his mistress and he barrels across the frosty green to her side, ears pricked up, awaiting instruction.
I choose my words with care. ‘I just want to ask her something.’
Cerise throws her finished joint down. She whistles. I think it’s some sort of bizarre tactic to unnerve me, but seconds later, her kids come running. Two boys and another girl. They glare at me, arms folded, picking up on the vibe straight away.
It takes me a moment to place them. I’m shocked to see Kelly-Anne, JoJo’s younger sister. She’s about eleven or twelve now, with the underdeveloped, lithe form of a gymnast. Her two younger brothers, Robbie and Mickey, were just babies when I left, born in quick succession in the same year; ‘Irish twins’, Tim would call them (slang; offensive). Now they’re a tough-looking twosome. I recall there’s another couple of older lads, too. They’re hard nuts, like Cerise, so I’m glad they’re not here right now. JoJo is the eldest. She’s always seemed softer than the rest of the Musgraves, somehow.
Now I wonder if there’s something to that.
‘OK, how about I ask you?’ Before Cerise rejects the idea outright, I add: ‘It’s for India.’
Something changes between us, I’m not sure what. It’s like someone lets the air out of the older woman. Cerise meets my gaze, one pierced eyebrow raised, as if she appreciates my chutzpah, even if I am otherwise pathetic to her. Go on, her gesture seems to say.
‘You call JoJo by a different name these days?’
Cerise’s expression sours. She rolls her eyes at me. The answer in her mind is clearly in the negative, followed by a few expletives, but the kids are with her so she says nothing.
I continue. ‘Does JoJo like to be called Jenny?’
Cerise takes a sharp intake of breath, which descends into a hacking cough. I take this as an affirmative. But seconds later, the older woman dashes my hopes.
‘No.’ Cerise clicks her fingers at the kids and the dog. They all turn, grumbling, towards the block of flats. ‘Look, JoJo don’t need the trouble, alright?’
‘So there was trouble. Between my sister and JoJo?’ I confirm. ‘What was it about? Please, let me talk to her.’
Cerise looks at me, puzzled and irritated. ‘She ain’t here.’
I persist. ‘When will she be back?’
‘She won’t. She’s too good for us now.’ There’s a faraway look in Cerise’s eyes, suggesting pain. Cerise dampens it quickly, not the type to show vulnerability. Just like my mother.
‘Where does she live now?’
Cerise watches her kids file into the block. ‘JoJo’s made something of herself. She don’t need you digging around what’s past, especially when she’s worked so hard to distance herself from all … that.’
‘…All what? Cerise, please!’
But Cerise turns her back on me. She shuffles across the green, ignoring my shouts after her. I give up, watch her disappear inside. As she goes, I realise with a start what I saw flitter across her rigid features as she regarded me, possibly for the first time in her ferocious life.
Pity.
Twenty-two
The Coach House is quiet as I let myself in, bar the noise of Tim loading the dishwasher. I can’t see Mum anywhere. I hover on the kitchen threshold. Tim stares out the window. His expression is glassy, like he could shatter any second. He snaps to attention as I amble in, wipes the sink, spraying it with antibacterial cleaner, even though I’ve done it only that morning.
He offers me a too-wide smile. ‘Hello, love.’
He’ll ask me in a moment if there’s anything I want, anything he can do for me. He could cook me some eggs; fetch me a glass of water? Men like Tim want to look after women, help them, comfort them. It’s how they feel useful, needed. Even as a rebellious teenager, angry at the world, I loved how safe Tim made me feel. He was always just there, ready to make tea or dispense hugs.
Right on cue: ‘So, when’s term starting? Next week? Do you need me to drop you at the station?’
‘About that.’ Embarrassment makes the room grow warm. I’ve managed to avoid the subject before now; it hardly seemed important. Another flash of that night I was out drowning my
sorrows while my sister lay dying pierces through me.
Tim’s gaze settles on my face, and he understands immediately.
‘You lost your job?’ His brow furrows. ‘But I thought you were at that school until Easter?’
Yes, me, too. I shrug. ‘Cutbacks, I guess. Last in, first out.’
Now Tim sighs, his hands massaging his forehead. ‘You should sue them, it must be breach of contract or something.’
‘Doesn’t work that way for supply teachers.’ I keep my voice light, trying to change the subject. ‘Anyway … I’ve managed to get into India’s laptop.’
But Tim’s glum demeanour deepens. He sits down in a chair, eyes screwed shut. His body is rigid with stress. I’ve never seen him respond in such a fashion. He stays quiet, so I break the silence.
‘I’m going to find out what happened to India.’
Tim speaks through gritted teeth. ‘We know what happened to India.’
I can feel the hard edge in his voice but still feel compelled to make him understand. ‘No. We don’t. India wouldn’t kill herself, she—!’
Tim jumps up from his chair as I say this. He takes the two or three steps across the small kitchen, invading my body-space. I flinch away from him, shocked. My stepfather has never laid a hand on me in the twenty-five years I’ve known him; he’s barely even shouted. Yet in that instant I feel certain he is going to grab me by the shoulders. Is he going to shake some sense into me??
Then, at the last possible moment, he stops himself. His voice drops several notes with shame. But he still makes his appeal.
‘Poppy, please. Think of your mother.’
I recover my nerve. ‘I am thinking of my mother. We all deserve the truth!’
