Suspicious Minds

by David Mark

  Liz feels as though her mouth is full of tissue paper. She takes a swig of tea and rinses her mouth. She can feel her heart, banging off her ribs like the foot pedal of a bass drum. A flurry of emotions spin inside her; a blizzard of conflicting feelings. She feels defensive for Jude. Sad, for Maeve. Angry at her family for turning a tragedy into something ugly. She’s at once energized and slightly fearful. The reporter has all but accused him of being somehow complicit in the death. She feels other questions begin to slither in to her consciousness. Different surnames. And his quotes. He’d hardly dripped with love, had he? Sounded almost sick of her stubbornness; her pig-headedness.

  She picks up her phone. Taps out the message slowly, savouring every letter.

  Hey. Still up? Confession time. I Googled you. Can’t find the words to do it justice but I’m so sorry for what you’ve been through. She sounded like a good person. No offence, but your in-laws sound horrible.

  She finishes her tea. Pours another. Feels a frisson of excitement as she witnesses the little tick symbol turn grey. He’s seen it. Read it. Now three little dots, an ellipsis signifying pleasures to come.

  Hey yourself. You aren’t running screaming for the hills, then? It’s not like the way it was made out. Her mum couldn’t stand me. Still can’t, though I’m not missing out. Sorry you’ve had to wade through that to decide if you want us to be friends. Modern life, isn’t it? I’m not a fan of most of it. Anyway, how’s your neck?

  Liz makes herself comfortable. She can hear his words being whispered against her skin. Reads his messages in his accent.

  Sounds like a bitch. No offence. I can’t even blame the alcohol now. Horribly sober. In the kitchen, drinking tea, thinking hard. I do that. World-class over-thinker. Ruin everything for myself. Can’t leave stuff alone.

  Nothing wrong with having a big brain. A muscle unused is a muscle wasted. And anyway, you’ve got an excuse (sorry, an explanation!) – this BPD malarkey sounds like a barrel of laughs.

  Oh, you did see the leaflet then? Yeah, I’m clinically impossible. Always feels good to be diagnosed as unmanageable, paranoid and emotionally unstable. Totally what I’d put on my dating profile if I could be bothered.

  That’s one way to read it. Another is that you’re always going to be the most fascinating person in the room. All sounds a lot like monochrome people telling you off for being multi-coloured. All the people I admire are a little bit out there. It’s more exciting trying to cling on to a racehorse than to plod along on a donkey, don’t you think?

  Ha! At least I’m not a donkey – despite my great ass. OMG that was so cringe. Forget that.

  Did you read anything else about me? There’s not much there any more. I think you’d have to go as far back as MySpace to see that I existed.

  What’s that?

  Man that makes me feel old. Was a place for people who were into music. They uploaded songs and stuff and some people did well. I was a session saxophone player. The jazz quartet I was in did quite well. Not well enough, but y’know. I’ll dig out a link and you can listen, if you want.

  Liz doesn’t wait for the link. Her thumb dances over the screen. In moments she is looking at an impossibly outdated attempt at a website: purple and green letters on a black screen. She scrolls down. Grins, wildly, at Jude as a younger man. White shirt, unfastened bow tie, braces, waistcoat, trilby. Cool, in a dated kind of way.

  The surge of self-consciousness, the prickly heat of jealousy …

  She wonders how many groupies he worked his way through. Remembers him telling her how her singing reminded him of a singer in Dublin. She feels a heave of hatred for her. Has no doubt that whoever she was, he’d been there, done that. She feels too hot again. Doesn’t know where she wants to steer things now. It’s too much. All that’s happened, all she feels. Too much. She needs to shut down before the wires in her head start going out. Wonders if stress can bring on a seizure. Sees herself, dead on the rocks beside a pretty little waterfall, her blood dripping slowly into the murky depths, flowering like waterlilies, drip after drip after drip.

  Suddenly exhausted. Going to hit the hay. Why do people say that? Anyway, aching suddenly. Speak soon, maybe. See ya, bye. x

  She sends the message and then pushes the phone away from herself. It skitters away like a hockey puck. She drops her face to her hands, convinced that she has done the right thing and the wrong thing; been kooky and cool and a weird cold bitch all at once, and that he’s probably sitting there wondering what just happened. She should message him again. Make another pot of tea. Maybe send a picture of herself looking suitably abashed. Yeah, that would work. Get a laugh, start again …

  She looks up. Jay is standing over her, holding out the phone as if it’s a dead rodent; a look of absolute superiority twisting his features.

  ‘Say hello from me,’ he says, and turns away. His white T-shirt, neatly ironed, hangs off his frame like a flag of surrender.

  ‘Jay, I was just talking to some people in the forum …’

  He’s gone.

  She looks at her phone.

  So has Jude.

  She makes a pillow of her arms and lays her head on the table. She is asleep in moments. Her last thought is that she has forgotten to take her anti-depressants.

  You don’t need them, Betsy. You feel alive. Good. On fire. Tomorrow, let’s change the world.

  ELEVEN

  She dreams of smashed glass and the dark, slimy earth beneath old trees. She dreams of red blood on green moss. She dreams of Mum.

  Betsy? Fucking Betsy?! Ha! You’re too big for your boots, my girl! Think you’re something special, don’t you – nose up in the air like your top lip smells of shit. I’d be something if it wasn’t for being lumbered with you. The mess you made of me. Never even wanted to be born, did you? Hung on to me with your fucking claws and tore me up. Imagine what I’d be if I was free, eh? Betsy! You’re disgusting. Come here: come here and let me show you what you are …

  The name a sneer, a grunting pig-faced snort; Mum’s face up against her own.

  Who do you think you are? You’re no better than any of us. Do you know what I’d have been if not for you? You’re my curse, girl. A curse. And you still haven’t learned your lesson. I’ll have to show you again …

  When she wakes, her skin feels aflame. The crack of muscle on muscle, bone on bone, is still echoing in her ears.

  She can still feel the foot on her throat, slowly closing off her trachea.

  She can still hear Carly, too young to understand, hugging herself, sobbing and telling Mum to stop, please stop, you’re killing her …

  She sees herself, perverse in her refusal to surrender; snarling up at the woman who beats her, snarling back, telling her to bring it on, to hit harder: steel-eyed in her determination to take whatever she can give and not let the hurt show. She wonders, dazedly, if it was that beating which the neighbours heard. That beating which led to the final call to the social services. That call which led to them finally, blessedly, being taken away. She doesn’t think that it was. Something came after, she’s sure. Something worse. Something she doesn’t think about and which turns her to stone whenever her thoughts threaten to rattle at the locked door in her skull.

  ‘Did you do my packed lunch?’

  Jay behind her, crisp and clean, a small piece of paper stuck to a scab on his freshly-shaved cheek.

  ‘Shit, sorry, overslept, I’ll …’

  He shakes his head. ‘Make sure she’s not late for school.’

  ‘What? No, the car … Jay, I swear I was just on the forum …’

  ‘I don’t doubt it. That’s what sickens me. Your little sycophants, all falling over each other to tell you you’re ill, you’re a victim, that the world doesn’t understand that you’re trying your best … I’m sure it does you the world of good. Just remember, when every single other person is telling you you’re the problem, what are the chances they’re wrong?’

  He walks out without another word.

&
nbsp; Anya, muzzy-headed, pads in from the living room, already dressed in her posh school uniform. She smiles in greeting; still too much her father’s daughter to offer a hug. ‘You were crying in your sleep. Are you OK?’

  Yes, decides Liz. Yes I bloody am.

  She looks at her phone and sees the message that’s waiting for her.

  You were in my dreams last night.

  She replies at once, more than content to lie.

  OMG – You were in mine …

  TWELVE

  Liz has been growing steadily more agitated for the last half hour. Anya is due at school on the far side of Durham by 8.50 a.m. ‘at the absolute latest’.

  It’s now 8.05.

  Liz has never been a punctual person. School, for her, started around nine-ish and the best she can offer when making plans is a firm commitment to ‘be there on Tuesday’. Yesterday’s failed attempt to reach the psychiatrist on time has shown that whatever she is, she is destined to arrive at every appointment in a state of panic: red-faced, sweaty, gasping for water and hoping that whoever she has been meeting will extend her the courtesy of not buggering off after a mere ten minutes. It feels worse when she has responsibility for somebody else. Anya isn’t used to being late. Her mother, Marie, is a very organized person. Organized to the same degree that Liz is scatterbrained. She’s a far better fit for Jay: a true zealot in her devotion to straight lines, neatness and bleach. At first, Liz had thought Jay had fallen for her because she was in every way the reverse of the woman he married while too young to know what he had let himself in for. It was only later that she realized he actually held her up as the ideal partner, and expected Liz to use her as a role model. She has battled, daily, ever since; trying to outdo her in terms of domestic magnificence, before outright rebelling at the notion of wifely servitude and challenging herself to see how slovenly and chaotic she can be.

  Liz feels herself growing hot and twitchy with each syllable that Anya’s mum breathes down the phone. If she weren’t trying to pull on socks, eat a piece of toast and tie up Anya’s hair, she would be able to focus all her energy on hating the snooty cow. She realizes she has a crumb on her nose. Tries to lick it off.

  ‘And you told him?’ says Marie, her irritation morphing into outright peevishness. ‘He knew you had no means of transport? I find that rather hard to swallow, Liz, if you don’t mind me saying so.’

  Liz can’t seem to swallow the toast. Her tongue feels fat, her mouth dry. She has the phone tucked painfully between ear and chin, a triangle of bread and Nutella clamped between her teeth, one sock dangling from her toes like a used condom, a hair bobble splayed around her fingers. Anya, standing by the mirror in the hall, is watching it all in the reflection. She and Anya get on well. Liz doesn’t try to be a mother and Anya enjoys having somebody ditzy and endlessly inappropriate in her life. If it weren’t for Liz, life would be nothing but homework and healthy meals, swimming club and chores. Thanks to her almost-stepmum, she knows an impressive amount of swear words and is able to treat the bullies at her school the way a confident comedian treats hecklers.

  ‘What can I tell you, Marie? I’m sort of going a bit doolally here. Is that a word you know? Sorry, I never know whether something’s an actual word, or just something I’ve made up. Like, I thought if it was cold, everybody said “brrrskarooni”, but apparently not … sorry, I’m rambling … I don’t have a car – I was in an accident. I’m aching all over. I’m sure he just forgot, or I dunno, maybe it was a test …’

  ‘Please, Liz, don’t say “dunno” around Anya. A lot of time and money has gone into her elocution.’

  ‘Soz,’ growls Liz, petulantly, and is rewarded with a proper grin from Anya. ‘My bad.’

  ‘The reason she’s there, Elizabeth – as I carefully explained to him yesterday – is that I am not presently available. I am in London. At this exact moment I am walking to the lift that will take me to breakfast and by nine a.m. I will be in an Uber heading to a meeting in Hoxton, so quite how you expect me to solve this problem is beyond me. Why can’t you just call a taxi and accompany her on the journey?’

  Liz has read up on Dialectical Behaviour Therapy. She knows there are ways to train oneself to stop temper flaring. She hopes one day to master the art. But here, now, she is still a novice.

  ‘Because I don’t have any money to pay for it!’

  ‘What do you mean you don’t have any money?’ asks Marie, as if the very idea is preposterous.

  Liz screws up her eyes. ‘I’m not working, am I? And I don’t get any benefits because Jay says it’s not necessary and that I don’t deserve them because I’ve paid so little in to the system. He leaves me envelopes for what we need and sorts out the bills himself online. He won’t put my name on the account and won’t let me have one of my own and if I want something I have to persuade him of the merits …’

  Marie’s tone softens as she tries to calm her down, but Liz is on a roll now, her voice speeding up.

  ‘I don’t want to point the finger but he’s like this because you went off with his money! And it’s messed me up so fucking much that I can’t hold down a job long enough to be self-sufficient, which means I’m trapped in this excuse for a life!’

  There is silence at the other end of the phone. Liz glances at herself. She’s pale and clammy, her skin like a wild mushroom at dawn. She jerks herself away from the mirror as if her reflection were about to reach out and throttle her.

  ‘I’m sorry, I didn’t realize it was like that,’ says Marie, quietly. ‘Is Anya there with you? Now?’

  Liz is gulping, sucking in air. The room is spinning. She knows she’s gone too far. There will be hell to pay for this. ‘I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have––’

  ‘Call the school and say she’s ill,’ says Marie, without preamble. ‘An unspecified infection works best. Don’t say she has a stomach bug or they will insist on her staying off for a full forty-eight hours. She has a pretty good attendance record, so let’s not make a habit of it.’ She pauses, catches her breath. ‘Is that how he treats you? He holds the purse strings?’

  ‘I shouldn’t have––’

  ‘That bastard. I’m sorry. I can’t believe he’s had you thinking I took the money when we split, Liz. Do you know how hard I had to fight just to get the most basic child support? He took the house. Both cars. Fought tooth and claw to make sure I didn’t get his pension or any spousal support – all because I dared to tell him I didn’t love him the way people should be loved. He was the one who couldn’t deal with money. I paid off more credit card debts for him than I can count. Things are a bit more cordial now but he still pays the absolute minimum – not that I need his help. Seriously, Liz, Anya thinks the world of you but you have to do what’s best for you. We’ve never really chatted, have we? Perhaps when I’m back we could talk?’

  Liz holds the phone away from her face, tears pricking her eyes. Why now? Why finally start talking to her like a functioning human being? She doesn’t know how to react when people are nice to her. And could she possibly be right about Jay? He’s always been so steadfast in his assertion that she took everything he had. That it was him who gave her the start-up cash for her blossoming PR business. He who did everything to look after Anya before she decided she could do better and walked out on him with barely a backward glance. It feels like there is a battle raging inside her skull. How can she know who to believe when her very nature dictates that she cannot trust her own impulses?

  ‘If you’re sure,’ mumbles Liz. ‘I’m sorry I swore like that. I’m probably exaggerating. He does his best. I’m not an easy person … I’m sorry we’ve never talked properly …’

  ‘Am I staying off?’ whispers Anya, in the mirror. She looks excited, grinning out from under her mop of curls. Liz nods, and a stab of pain shoots down to her fingers.

  ‘I’ll call later on, chat with Anya,’ says Marie, her usual clipped tones returning. ‘And if there’s money in an envelope for goodness’ sake spend it on something
fun.’

  Liz hangs up. Risks a glance in the mirror. There is colour in her cheeks again. A strange jingle-jangle sound in her head, as if somebody is dangling a gaoler’s keys just behind her eyes. She knows the feeling. The medication she takes is hard to come off. The BPD forums are full of first-hand accounts of feeling nauseous, strung out, dizzy. She just has to push through it. Keep drinking water and wait for her chemical levels to stabilize. She’s sure she was right to miss her dose yesterday. She doesn’t like the way they make her feel numb one moment and weirdly high the next: a combination which she founds rather ironic, given that they were prescribed to battle those very complaints.

  ‘Duvet day?’ asks Liz, watching Anya in the mirror. She grins up at her and Liz feels the overwhelming urge to put a hand on her head and ruffle her hair as if she were a Labrador. Mum used to do that to her and Carly, on her good days. She’d scratch her behind the ear and she’d play-act that she was a happy dog, her leg jerking up and down in satisfaction, letting out contented woofs. Mum always said she was a proper little actress. The words came to mean something else when she grew a little older and a little less cute. By ten, ‘actress’ became a synonym for ‘whore’. Then it disappeared from her mum’s vocabulary altogether, replaced by straightforwardly poisonous invective: the syncopated thud-thud-thud of ‘slut-bitch-whore’, and the slash of leather on her skin.

  ‘Duvet day,’ confirms Anya, delighted, and reaches up to wipe away a smudge of Nutella from Liz’s cheek.

  Liz freezes at the touch. Jerks back. Tries to make up for it with a hug that feels more like a stiff headlock. Feels so guilty about the whole bungled affair that by mid-morning she is baking scones by way of apology; the house filling with a scent that would make Jay tumescent with satisfaction.

  She doesn’t hear from Jude until nearly lunchtime. He’d told her in his early-morning texts that he would be in a bad signal area for a good chunk of the day. She’d said she would try and struggle on without him, and then sent half a dozen sad-faced emojis followed by a ‘ha-ha-ha’.