by Joanna Nadin
Or maybe they haven’t even done it. Maybe they’ve just kissed. I don’t know. Don’t want to know. Whatever, it’s the same in the end. Means the same thing. That he wants her more than he wants me. And that she wants him. Because he’s the one thing I’ve got that she doesn’t. And she thinks he’s the one thing keeping us apart, me and her. Because I wouldn’t be able to do it by myself. Poor little Jude. Jude the Obscure.
I retch again, but there’s nothing left but bile. I flush the toilet. Go back to my room. Put on some music. And wait.
Ed comes around in his Land Rover, ready to leave. He wants to get there before rush hour and the Land Rover only does sixty at a push. I can hear him talking to Dad downstairs. About his plans. And the house. We still haven’t told him. No need now, I think.
I hear the familiar footsteps on the stairs. Then he’s in my room. Wearing a faded T-shirt and jeans. Classic Adidas he bought off eBay, the same day I got my fake fur coat. For London winters. Like Anita Pallenberg, he said. Like Stella, I thought. Like my mum. Before she wanted to ban the fur trade and started sticking chewing gum on mink coats at Harrods.
“Ready?” Ed looks around. “Where’s your bag?”
I haven’t packed. I’m not going. Can’t go. Not now.
“What’s up?” He sits down. Touches my leg.
“Don’t.” I pull it away.
“Jude? What’s going on?”
I look at the floor, willing it to swallow me. So I don’t have to do this.
It doesn’t oblige, so I’m forced to speak, before he touches me again.
“Why are you here?”
His forehead creases, not understanding. “What?”
“You don’t have to pretend, you know.”
“Jude, I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
He is lying.
“I saw you,” I say, my insides churning with the memory. “The way you looked at her.”
“Who?”
I laugh. Hollow. Bitter. “You know who.”
But he won’t say it. Won’t admit it. “Look, I don’t know what this is about. Or who this is about.” His voice is patient. But I hear patronizing. “I don’t care about anyone else. It’s you I want. You, Jude.”
“I don’t believe you. I saw you,” I repeat. I can feel my face wet with tears now.
“What? I’ve got no idea what you’re talking about.” Patience gone, he is angry now. “I can’t believe I’m defending myself. What is wrong with you, Jude? I thought all this . . . self-esteem stuff, or whatever it is, was sorted out.”
“It’s not about self-esteem, is it?” I cry. “It’s about you.”
“Jude, just tell me what’s wrong. Tell me and I can help.”
I say nothing. Just wipe my face, defiant. But the tears keep on coming.
“I can’t do this.” He looks out the window. Away from me shaking on the bed, staring at the floor.
He turns back. “Jude, I have to leave. Are you coming?”
I shake my head.
“Fine.”
Silence. I wait for him to go.
But he doesn’t.
“I love you, Jude. No one else. Never have.”
I say nothing.
“I’ll be back tomorrow night. I’ll come around.”
I shrug. “Don’t bother.”
“Have it your way.” Then, softer, “Call me, then. Please.” He pauses. “You have to sort this out. And I can help you if you want. But you have to trust me.”
I’m still looking at the floor. Waiting. Willing him to go.
He does. The back door slams shut and the Land Rover chokes into life, revs, his foot pushing hard on the accelerator. Then it trails off, out of the village. Heading to London.
Dad shouts up the stairs. “Jude, you all right?”
I wipe my face again. Shout back, making sure my voice doesn’t crack. “Yeah.”
“Thought you were going to London.”
“Not this time.” I smile through the tears. Because if I sound happy, he’ll go.
“OK. Well, I’ve got to go out. Mrs. Hickman is here. I’ll be back by midday.”
I say nothing. Can’t speak.
“Bye, Dad,” he says to himself. I hear him smiling. Like he’s told the funniest joke in the world.
The door shuts and I’m alone. The sobs rack through me again, because however much I want to trust Ed, I know I can’t. Because I know what she’s like. She never gives up. She always gets what she wants. There’s nothing he can do.
Not that she really wants him. She’s never loved him. She’s always said he was a loser. Someone who followed. Who would never do anything to astound the world. That he was a small-town boy. That even if he went to London, he’d never stay. He’d always end up in Churchtown. Like Dad. Give up on the life he thought he wanted and settle for this one.
She said that I was different. That I would leave my life and never come back. That I would shimmer and glitter and be loved. And I smiled. Because I wanted to shine alongside her. Because I thought she was helping me. But she was just helping herself.
I cry. Harder than I have ever cried before. Because that life is in reach, the life I wanted. Glittering. But to get it, I have to lose them both. Ed and Stella. My best friends. The emptiness is overwhelming. A gaping hole in me. But then something creeps into the gap. Anger at what she’s done and what I’ve let her do to me. All that “There’s no me without you” stuff.
My fingers ache. And I realize they are clenched tight. My stomach, too. I need to find her. To tell her to stop. To end it. I don’t want to be us anymore. I just want to be me.
I KNOW she hasn’t gone with him. Doesn’t need to now that she’s gotten what she wanted. To break us up. So she can keep me to herself. I can feel her, feel that she’s nearby. Like those TV psychics who can see ghosts. I can see Stella.
She’s not in the village. Just tourists buying bread and newspapers, making sure they haven’t missed anything in the outside world, the real world. I’m coming with you, I think. I’m getting closer. Warmer. If I can just do this one last thing. I leave the cool granite shade behind me and head for the dunes.
The beach is packed. High season, every bit of sand decorated with beach towels and tents. The sea full of surfers, bodyboarders, and squealing children, shocked by the Atlantic cold and the undertow. I walk along the water’s edge. Easier here where the sand’s wetter, harder. In the sand-sinking dunes, Duchy girls are stretched out in SPF 8, ignoring every cancer warning. Too young and too vain to take it seriously. I look for Emily and the Plastics. For Blair. But it’s too early. They’ll be sleeping off whatever excesses they enjoyed last night.
I reach the rocks at the foot of the Point. No one on the ledges now. Too many lifeguards to shout warnings. Dog walkers to report them, note down their license plates.
Only one more place to try. Her home. My old one. I turn on to the cliff path and start the long walk to the farm.
It smells different. That’s the first thing I notice. Not the power-washed stone, or the new tarmac of the car park, once our yard, with its chalked hopscotch and tricycles, a playground for me and the chickens. Not even the curtains in the windows of the old calving barn; people walking, sleeping, eating in a room that has seen pints of blood and shit over its floor, heard the bellows of birth, the first breath of the newborn, and the last of the runts. No, what hits me first is that the sweet, warm smell of cows, of life and death, has been built over, scrubbed away, taking generations of Polmears with it.
There are five cottages now: the farmhouse in the middle and the others squeezed into the barns and outhouses around the yard. Seaview is on the end, part of the milking shed. Stella is right: there’s no way you can see the sea from there. Not unless you stand on the roof. Which we did, of course, before Dad screamed at us to get down and I swung around to see him and slipped anyway. Scraping my arms and legs on the tiles. But not falling. Because Stella held on to my arm. Dad said it was the gutter that d
id it, jamming my foot just in time. But I knew it was her.
There’s no car in the parking space. I look through the window and see rough burlap carpets, a white Shaker table and chairs, checkered cushions. Some London designer’s idea of beach-hut chic. Not like the homes in the village, all swirly carpets, brass fittings, and porcelain dairymaids on the mantelpiece.
I strain to see the detritus of life with Stella. Bottles of nail varnish, tops left off. Coke cans. Half-smoked cigarettes. But all I can see are empty coffee cups. A Times. And books. A John Grisham on the table, dog-eared halfway through. A Marian Keyes, glittery blue with pink lettering. So not Stella. No On the Road or Prozac Nation. No Shelley or Keats. I don’t bother to knock. I’ve seen enough to know that no one is home.
I’ll come again, I think. Try later. Maybe they’re in town. Her dad’s exhibition must have started by now. So I’m walking away, past the wall, rough wood sanded now, the chalk lines that measured my upside-down handstand height painted over. And I think, One last time. No one around to see me now. I step forward, hands in front of me and push down.
That’s when she shows up. Walks into my sight line. Enter villainess, stage right, eating an ice-cream bar.
“Nice knickers. Bet Ed loves them.”
I drop down and turn to face her.
She picks off a piece of chocolate, licks vanilla ice cream off her fingers. “Want a bite?”
I wanted to hear her say it. Admit it. Needed to ask her. When. Why. But now that I’m here, the words won’t come out.
I shake my head.
“Suit yourself.” She shrugs. “Thought you were going to London.”
“Thought you were,” I counter.
Stella ignores me. “You and Ed fallen out? Did he pull your pigtails when you were playing chase-and-kiss?”
“We’re not kids.”
“Yeah, right.” She picks off another piece of chocolate. Puts it in her mouth, closing her lips over her fingers.
I think of her touching him. Doing the things I have done. And things I haven’t. Blood rushes to my head and I lurch against the wall.
Stella watches me with detached interest. “You need to stay off the drink.”
“You bitch.” The words are quiet. Deliberate.
“Pardon?”
“You heard me.”
Stella laughs. “Let me get this straight. Is this about me? Or Ed? Because, believe me, I didn’t have to try too hard.”
I put my hand out and clutch at the wall to stop myself from falling. Any hope that she would convince me somehow that I was wrong, that I was overreacting, was now gone.
“But why?” The words are barely audible. “You know how I feel about him.”
“You know why. I did it for you. Because if it weren’t me, it would have been some first-year undergrad. Then you’d have been stuck in London without either of us. Better to find out now.” She closes her mouth around the end of the vanilla. Sucks hard.
“You are unbelievable,” I manage to spit out.
“That’s why you love me.” She pouts.
I look at her, standing there in her secondhand sundress and Ray-Bans, wedge heels on her feet. And I think, I did love you, at first. When you curled your finger and beckoned me out of the shell I had built around myself. When you made me stronger, brighter than I ever thought I could be. But now you’ve made me into this person, into this version of you, and you want to destroy it. Or keep it for yourself. So I don’t love you. Not anymore.
“I can’t do this,” I say out loud.
“What?” Stella frowns.
I drop my head, finding the strength, breathing the warm air in lungfuls. My heart pounding. Because this will be it. This will be the end of it all.
I look up. “Us,” I say.
She pauses, weighing the word up, eyes never moving from mine. Then she smiles. But it’s not happy. It’s not kind. It’s the smile of someone who knows they have already won. “But there is no me without you,” she says.
“Stella, I’m being serious.”
“So am I.”
I lose it. “I don’t need you anymore. Get it?”
She takes the ice cream out of her mouth. Looks at me hard. “God, you’re an ungrateful little cow.”
“Ungrateful?” The word hits me like a sucker punch. “What have you done for me? Except dye my hair and steal my boyfriend.”
“Yeah? Before me you were nobody. Jude the Obscure. You looked like a loser. And acted like one. Christ, you were still doing handstands and playing board games with your little brother on Saturday nights.” She drops the ice cream on the ground.
I feel my fists clench and my eyes sting with salt water and truth. “So why’d you pick me, then? Some kind of charity project?”
“Something like that.” She pulls a pack of cigarettes from under her bra strap. Lights one. The smell of her lighter turns my stomach.
“Yeah? Well, I didn’t need it.”
Stella blows a smoke ring. Watches it expand and disappear against the blue sky. Snaps the lighter shut and looks at me again. For the first time I see pity in her eyes. Disgust.
“I gave you an identity,” she says.
“Yeah, whose? You turned me into someone else.”
She shakes her head. “I turned you into who you wanted to be.”
“What, you?”
“Yeah. And don’t pretend you didn’t love it.” Her eyes narrow. “Why do you think Ed wanted you all of a sudden?”
“That’s not true.”
“Whatever.” She folds her arms.
Tears run down my face. I wipe them away. “I don’t know who I am anymore, Stella. I don’t even know who you are. I mean, who are you? You disappear. You’re not living in Seaview — unless you’ve turned into some thirty-something chick-lit fan.”
Stella is silent, never one to miss a chance to milk a dramatic pause. Then she drops the cigarette, watches it smolder on the burned, yellowed grass. “You know who I am.” She pauses. Then she looks me straight in the eyes. “I’m you, Jude.”
“What?” I stare at her, not understanding.
“I’m you,” Stella repeats slowly. “We’re the same person. See?”
She takes my hand and puts it on her face. I can feel her, but it’s not like when I touch Ed or he touches me. It’s as if I’m touching myself. I can feel the hand and the cheek. I am entranced. Lost in the surreality. Then she smiles. The smile is mine.
I snatch my hand away. My chest constricts and I struggle to speak. “You’re lying.”
“Really? So it wasn’t you who took money out of the till to pay for that dress?”
I shake my head. This is a mass-market paperback plot line. Some big-money Hollywood thriller. This isn’t real. It isn’t happening.
“No? What about the audition, then? That photo. It was taken inside the audition room, Jude. Inside it. Because it wasn’t someone else in there. It was you.”
“But . . . you’re here. Standing in front of me. I’m talking to you.”
“Everyone talks to themselves. You get an answer back as well. Double the fun.”
“No.” I shake my head.
“Yes.” Stella grabs my hand again. Holds it down on her cheek. On my cheek. “I am you. I look how you want to look. I talk how you want to talk. All the ways you wish you could be, that’s me.”
I recognize that line. And I feel nausea rise again. Because I realize what she’s done. What I’ve done. And my head is full of images. Stella at the beach that first day back. Stella in my bedroom. Stella on the field at school, fiddling with her bra in front of Hughsie. Oh, God, Hughsie. I hold the wall. It wasn’t Stella at the beach, kissing him, putting his hand on her. It was me. And the guy on the train. In the bathroom. And that night, Matt’s party . . .
I turn to her. “Blair?”
Stella nods.
And I am back there. In Matt’s room. Lying on the bed. I feel him again. Pushing inside me. And I remember the dull ache. The sting. The b
lood the next day. And I can’t stop it then. I throw up, yellow spattering the wall. But it’s not fear. Not vodka, or low blood sugar or shock or any other excuse I’ve passed off for the last week. I’m pregnant. And it’s not Ed’s. We’ve been too careful. It’s Blair’s.
She knows what I’m thinking. Of course she does. She is me. She’s thinking it too.
“I did it for you, Jude. Because of Emily. I couldn’t let her treat you like that. We couldn’t . . .”
I crouch down, one hand on my belly, trying to feel it inside me. This alien. I feel dirty. How could she? How could I? How could I do this to me, to Ed?
“You’re only a few weeks in. You can have an abortion.” She crouches down next to me. Puts her hand on my arm. “We’ll be fine.”
“We?”
“Yeah. I’ll come with you. Hold your hand.”
“No.” I throw her arm off. She staggers backward. “Don’t you get it? You have to go now. This has to stop.”
“Just like that?”
“Yes.” I nod.
Stella laughs. “But I can’t.”
“You can. Go . . . please,” I beg. “Leave me alone.”
“I’m not real, though, am I? You made me. I can’t just walk away.”
I shut my eyes. If she’s just in my head, I can make her disappear. Can’t I?
I open my eyes. She’s still there, watching me crouched in my own vomit. She smiles. Holds out her hand to pull me up. My fairy godmother. “I’m everything you want to be. You said it yourself.”
I look at her hand. Candy-pink nail varnish. Costume rings, my mum’s, on the fingers. My hand. But this time I don’t take it. I push myself up. And walk past her, back along the path. Home. And not once do I look back.
IT’S TWO in the morning. I’m lying in bed. Alone. Well, almost. Me and the thing inside me. I can’t sleep. Not with it there. Part of me. And of him. I cringe as I see his face. At the fridge, his eyes following the trickle of water as it ran down my chest. Then again as he stared at me with Ed. Just days after I’d slept with him. I hear Blair saying my name. Not Stella. Jude.
