The Taming of Lilah May

by Vanessa Curtis

  ‘What do you want?’ I say.

  Mum is making faces at me. Big, encouraging smiles and dramatic nodding of her head. She knows all about what’s happened with Bindi.

  ‘To say sorry,’ whispers Bindi. ‘I really am. And now I’m in such a mess, Lilah. I don’t know what to do.’

  I walk out of the shop and leave Mum holding up a black cardigan and screwing up her mouth in concentration in front of the mirror.

  There’s a wall outside in the car park and I sit on it and swivel my legs up into the sun, hugging my knees.

  ‘Spill,’ I say. Bindi gives a small laugh.

  ‘Stop using my expressions, Lilah May,’ she says, and for a moment it’s like the sun just got a bit brighter.

  ‘Adam’s going to stick by me,’ she says, and it feels like the sun’s gone straight back in again, to be replaced by a thundering black sky.

  My heart misses a beat and then makes a deep twang.

  Heartache, I think. This is really what it feels like.

  ‘Yeah?’ I say. ‘That’s big of him.’

  I curse myself for being snappy and angry yet again, but it’s too late to pull back what I’ve just said, so I don’t even try.

  Bindi’s trying not to cry.

  ‘My mum and dad are going to support me and we’re going to bring up the baby together at home,’ she says.

  I laugh. It’s not exactly what Bindi’s mother had planned for her daughter.

  ‘It’s not funny, actually,’ says Bindi. Her voice has taken on an edge that I’ve never heard before. ‘When I first told Mum, she screamed at me and shut herself in the bedroom and cried for hours. Dad wasn’t exactly over the moon either. He said that I had let the entire family down.’

  I’ve never seen Bindi’s mother, Reeta, look anything other than calm and smiley.

  ‘So no more arranged marriages,’ I say. ‘You must be pleased about that.’

  Bindi sniffles and gives a small hiccup.

  ‘Pleased?’ she says. ‘How can I be pleased? My parents say that they’ve wasted money on my education. I’ve upset everybody and ruined my life. And now I’ve ruined our friendship too, haven’t I?’

  I know that at this point I am supposed to be calm and reassuring and say that of course I’ll stick with her to the ends of time, no matter what.

  But then Adam’s lovely face and punk hair shoot in front of my eyes and I get that pang again. Adam Carter. He was supposed to be mine.

  ‘I don’t know,’ I say. ‘I need some time to think about all this. Sorry.’

  Then I press the red button on my phone and go back to join Mum.

  The next few days are kind of odd.

  There’s a really weird feeling in the air at the moment.

  I feel like I’m on the brink of something and I don’t know what.

  Something has shifted in the air inside the house, too.

  The atmosphere feels less heavy and flat, and more charged up with something.

  ‘Are you premenstrual, love?’ says Mum, when I try to explain.

  Helpful. Not.

  Dad comes home all excited after a rare white tiger gives birth at the zoo.

  He takes me to see the cubs and lets me inside their pen to stroke their soft white fur.

  The cubs have giant floppy paws that seem nearly as big as their heads, and they lurch from side to side and flop over into furry balls from time to time.

  For about an hour I forget about everything at home and school, and I’m just transfixed by the cubs as they roll about and play with each other. I watch my dad handle them and I feel kind of proud, but I can’t tell him, of course, because that’s soppy and embarrassing. I used to be really fed up that Dad loved animals more than me, and I’m better at anger than lovely sentiments, so I don’t say anything, but it’s a really good Father-Daughter day, and we drive home in a calm sort of mood, with Dad whistling and me sucking on a bag of strawberry liquorice strings and idly wondering if I should go shopping at the weekend and buy the black leather buckle boots I’ve been craving for weeks.

  And when we get home, Mum’s made a huge lasagne from scratch and she lets me have a small glass of red wine with it, and for once, the three of us manage to stay in the same room for a whole evening and have something almost like a normal conversation, with some laughter too. And because of the laughter, I don’t hear the buzz of my mobile phone at first, not until it gets louder and starts to leap around in my pocket.

  I excuse myself and go off into another room, because I’m pretty sure it’s Bindi again and she’ll want to speak to me in private, and all I can do is ask her to give me more time to think about our friendship. So I whip out the phone and answer it in a silly voice so that she’ll feel encouraged to speak to me, and there’s a long silence and a few crackles on the other end, so I say, ‘Hello? Bind?’ again.

  And then it comes.

  It comes at me out of the past.

  Out of the dark.

  Out of a time I thought I’d lost.

  Out of two years of grief. Anger. Hopelessness.

  ‘Liles?’ says the voice. ‘Is that you?’

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  I fall.

  My legs just give way underneath me, and I’m sprawled on the floor with my hands shaking so hard that I drop the phone and have to pick it up again.

  ‘Yes,’ I say in the tiniest whisper. ‘It’s me.’

  Oh.

  Oh.

  Please let this not be a cruel trick.

  ‘Where are you?’ I say. ‘Are you OK?’

  There’s another short silence.

  ‘I’m OK,’ he says. ‘I’m not coming home. I just wanted to tell you that I’m OK.’

  His voice sounds thin and tired. Older.

  My tears are starting to come. At last.

  I wipe my nose and grip the handset so hard that it hurts.

  ‘Jay,’ I say. ‘Oh Jay. Do you forgive me?’

  There’s a series of beeping noises on the line and then a click and a dead sort of humming noise.

  He’s gone.

  ‘No,’ I whisper. ‘No, no, no, you can’t go yet, don’t go, don’t go.’

  I press the call button on my mobile but it says Number Withheld.

  I make it into the downstairs loo just in time.

  I vomit for what seems like an age, and when I lift my head, all damp with sweat and tears, Mum and Dad are standing there with faces like ghosts. I lurch up and stagger into their arms, and I cry out two year’s worth of pent-up tears, and all my anger leaves my body like a flood.

  I’d forgotten what tears felt like. Great big fat ones roll down my face and drip off my chin onto the floor like some sort of tear production line in a factory, while I hiccup and gasp for breath, and feel my nostrils getting blocked and my eyes puffing into little swollen slits, but I can’t stop crying.

  My anger just melts away. I swear I feel it flood out of my body, slink along the floor in a watery line and squeeze itself under the door before making its way down the hall and out of the front door.

  It’s nearly an hour before I can speak properly, so I just whisper his name over and over and wave my mobile around in front of me, and they go pale and sink to their knees. The three of us hug and cry right by the rim of the toilet and we don’t even care.

  Jay.

  My big brother.

  It’s OK.

  I heard his voice.

  He’s alive.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  I’ve got hope now. Jay might come home.

  Mum and Dad are being really cool at last. Not that I’m going to tell them that! We have a Family Day every Saturday, and the three of us go out somewhere and try not to kill each other.

  Mum’s now doing a tai chi class as well as yoga to reduce her stress levels more, and Dad and I have ‘an understanding’. We don’t have Taming Lilah sessions any more, but if I start kicking off, he just puts his hands on my shoulders again and uses the calm voice he uses on Lazarus,
and he tells me it’s enough. And it kind of works, ‘cos I’m not so angry any more.

  I’m dreaming.

  It’s an Indian summer September, many years ago.

  We’re on a beach and the sand is so hot, it burns the soles of our feet and clings to our wet legs when we run away from the frothy waves, screaming with delight.

  I’ve spent the whole afternoon crouched over a rock-pool. There are rough-shelled limpets clinging to the rocks and little orange spider crabs scuttling sideways, trying to get away from my childish fingers and tiny green fishing-net.

  I’ve got a jar full of water-snails clutched in my hands, and I’m treading on the wiggly worm casts in the damp brown sand that always reminds me of Dad’s special sugar for putting on porridge.

  Dad’s lying half-buried, pretending to groan in agony as Jay piles on more sand with a red plastic spade.

  Mum’s eating a choc-ice with a faraway look in her eyes, but whenever she sees me, she grabs me and rubs sticky coconut gunk into my skin to protect me from the sun, and all the sand gets rubbed in with it so that I make a face and a squeal of protest.

  ‘Look,’ I say, displaying my bounty of snails.

  ‘Horrible, Lilah,’ says Mum, but she’s smiling. ‘Why don’t you both go for one more dip in the sea? We’ve got to pack up soon.’

  She glances up at the sky. The sun’s still hot, but in an hour it will begin to get chilly on the beach. Most people are already packing up their windbreaks and picnics and heading towards the small ramp that leads up from the white beach to the car park beyond.

  ‘Jay?’ I say, in my high, six-year-old voice. ‘Please will you paddle with me?’

  I’m not allowed to go in on my own. It’s big sea here, with real white horses on the tips of the waves, and they just might ride off with a small girl.

  My brother groans and rolls his eyes, but he stabs his red spade into the damp sand and ignores Dad’s cries of protest at being left half-buried.

  We skip down to the edge of the water, just like we’ve done a thousand times before, and yet this time feels kind of different, more special. And my own voice in the dream, older, says, ‘You’ll remember this,’ and so I grip Jay’s hand a bit tighter and look up at my nine-year-old brother as we race over the froth and plunge into the waters.

  His curly brown hair catches the light and I can see freckles forming over the bridge of his nose.

  ‘Jay?’ I say. He’s kicking at the waves now, splashing me on purpose.

  I squeal and jump about in my blue swimsuit with the little white skirt.

  ‘We’ll always be together, won’t we?’ I say, shielding my eyes against the sun.

  ‘Yeah, course we will, Liles,’ comes a voice, but it doesn’t sound like Jay.

  I squint against the brightness of the sun.

  There’s his shadow looming over me.

  We’re so close that I can smell his suntan lotion.

  I try really hard, but it’s impossible.

  I just can’t see his face.

  ‘Lilah, Jay,’ calls Mum. ‘We’re going now.’

  I give her the thumbs up, and then I turn back to my brother.

  I wait.

  I reckon the clouds will pass.

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  Read on for an exclusive preview of the follow-up,

  CHAPTER ONE

  ‘You should ring Bindi, love,’ Mum says. ‘It’s the right thing to do. You two were such good friends!’

  I sigh. It’s nearly the half-term holiday and I don’t know what’s right or wrong any more

  I’m not even sure who I am.

  It’s been a rubbish start to autumn. Mum and Dad are a bit stressed at the moment and, although I know why, it’s starting to make me angry. I have a slight problem with anger, you see. It doesn’t take much for me to flare up into a rage or to start snapping at Mum or sulking with Dad.

  My parents are not, and never have been, exactly ‘normal’.

  My mother is a clown. Yes, really. She entertains kids at children’s parties and she used to be good at it until our family kind of fell to pieces. Then recently she decided to spend more time with me and go to extra yoga classes to keep herself calm, but over the last few weeks I can see that she’s getting restless and really wants to go back full-time to her job as a clown. My dad tames lions and he’s quite good at ‘taming’ me when I get angry but he spends most of his waking hours obsessing about big cats. Sometimes I wish I had a furry mane and a big set of teeth and claws because then he might pay me more attention.

  We kind of got a bit hopeful because my brother – Jay – rang up after two years of us not knowing whether he was alive or dead.

  I asked him if he forgave me for what I did and the line made this loud humming noise and he wasn’t there any more.

  We couldn’t call him back but the police have been trying to trace the phone box he called from.

  Jay still hasn’t come home.

  And Bindi?

  She let me down.

  Big time.

  Imagine the worst thing that a best friend could do to you, and then triple it. Well, that’s what Bindi did to me.

  Groo.

  ***

  Vanessa Curtis

  spent the best part of a decade playing

  in very loud rock bands which is why

  she can’t remember much about her twenties.

  However, these days her brother plays in a band,

  so she can leave the wild partying to him and

  concentrate on writing books for children instead.

  She lives near Chichester Harbour with her

  husband and cat and still likes to crank up Planet

  Rock to full volume when there’s nobody in.

  Vanessa is the award-winning author

  of Zelah Green and Zelah Green:

  One More Little Problem.

  Vist Vanessa’s website at

  www.vanessacurtis.com