by Julie Cohen
‘Of course, but we’re obviously concerned about today’s exam as well. And for Lydia’s welfare, of course.’
‘Today’s?’
‘Yes. It would be helpful if you would ring us if you knew she was going to miss an exam, so the other students don’t suffer unnecessary delays.’
‘She …’ Jo leaned against the car. ‘She hasn’t turned up for this morning’s exam?’
‘No.’
‘But she …’ Jo swallowed. ‘I have to go.’
‘Mrs Merrifield—’
Jo rang off and immediately rang Lydia. The phone went straight to voicemail. She’d started the car and disengaged the handbrake before noticing that the cake box was still on the bonnet.
Her route home took her past the school. She searched the pavements as she drove, looking for Lydia, and when she arrived at home she jumped out of the car and ran inside. ‘Is Lydia here?’ she asked Honor, who was wiping down the breakfast table.
‘She left,’ said Honor, a frown beginning.
‘But where did she go? Did she say she was going to her exams?’
‘I don’t think so, she—’
Jo ran up the two flights of stairs to Lydia’s room. The door was open and the room was empty: bed made, clothes hung up, books and pens arranged neatly on the desk. A smell of burning hung in the air. Even though she knew Lydia wasn’t here, Jo stepped into the room, as if it could tell her where her daughter had gone. On the purple bedspread lay a notebook: a blue composition book, the kind she used to use in school. It had a yellow Post-it note attached to the cover, one of the ones Jo had bought her to help with her revision.
Sorry, it said in Lydia’s rounded handwriting. Cold flooded Jo’s body.
Nearly all the pages were full of Lydia’s writing. She skimmed the first page – It started with yoghurt – but it was too much of a violation to read any more. She shoved it under her arm and hurried back down the stairs, to Honor.
‘What did she tell you?’ she demanded, her voice too high. ‘What did she tell you this morning, before she left?’
She had never seen Honor flustered. ‘She … she just said she was off. And then she kissed me. And said she was sorry.’
‘Sorry. Like this?’ Jo shoved the book with its Post-it message into Honor’s hands.
She ran her thumbs over the cover. ‘What is it?’
‘I think it’s a diary. She left it in the middle of her bed. Honor – she didn’t turn up for her exam this morning.’
‘Where would she go?’
‘Will you read it?’ Jo asked her. ‘I don’t want to read her diary. I don’t want – it’s her private thing, and I don’t want to make her any more angry at me than she already is. But if you read it, she wouldn’t mind so much. Please. Just tell me if it says where she’s gone.’
Honor put the diary back into Jo’s hands.
‘You will have to read it,’ she said calmly. ‘I am blind.’
Jo stared at her. Her unwavering gaze. ‘You’re—’
‘Read it. Time may be of the essence.’
There was page after page, undated, but if there were any clues, they would probably be near the end. Jo flipped through the pages of writing, catching a word here and there – Avril, but also Harry, Bailey, Darren, who were these people? – before she settled on the last entries. It was written in biro, the handwriting messier than Lydia’s normally was, so much so that Jo had to work to decipher some of the words.
The messages just keep on coming. One after another, relentless.
She couldn’t take it in. Avril, lying, Facebook. I deserve it. Burning the paper cranes.
I know what I have to do to make it stop.
And then the last part, on a separate page, written carefully, the biro pressing the words into the paper like embossing. I think about it all the time, Lydia had written. Deliberately, as if she had made up her mind. As if she were just marking time, doing this one last thing. I wasn’t there, but I know this was how it happened.
‘She’s written about Stephen,’ gasped Jo. ‘The last thing she’s written, she’s written about Stephen. Oh my God. I know where she is.’
She dropped the book and turned for the door, but Honor grasped her arm. ‘I’m coming with you,’ she said.
‘But you’re—’
‘I’m blind and I’m useless. I’m coming with you. You may need some help.’
‘We’ll go in the car,’ said Jo. ‘It’s not far, it will be faster.’
Her hands shook on the keys and were slick on the wheel. She backed out of the drive, spraying gravel.
‘What did you learn?’ Honor asked, buckling her seatbelt – by feel, how had Jo not noticed that she did everything by feel? ‘In the diary? What had she written?’
Jo floored the accelerator. ‘She’s fallen out with Avril. And she’s being bullied. At school and online, for being gay. She’s gay. Why didn’t she tell me?’
‘She wasn’t ready for you to know.’
A turn, taken too quickly, sliding both Jo and Honor on their seats. ‘How do you know that?’
‘Because she told me. And before you say anything about that, no, I did not tell you, because I respected her secrets. Just as I did not tell Lydia about your secret.’
‘Or any of us about yours,’ said Jo bitterly. ‘How long have you been blind?’
‘For some months. Before my fall.’
Another turn, and then a straight, past houses and fences, mothers walking with children, an elderly man with two terriers. A car going the other way sounded its horn, warning them of their speed.
She never drove down this road. She would go miles out of her way to avoid it. Yet she knew the exact place where the road turned, and the houses stopped, and the trees began, forming a shield from the noise and the drop. The branches bent over the road, making a tunnel of green, and then the car was on the bridge.
Jo saw Lydia right away: just her head and shoulders, her hair gleaming coppery against the green leaves. She was near the middle of the bridge, and she was on the wrong side of the railing. The falling side. The jumping side.
Jo cried out and braked the car with a squealing of tyres. ‘Stay here,’ she gasped to Honor; ‘call 999. My phone’s in my bag.’ She leaped out of the car, engine still running, and ran to Lydia, arms outstretched. Before she could reach her, she had a sudden thought and stopped. She didn’t want to frighten her, to make her lose her footing on whatever ledge was on the other side. Slowly, not taking her eyes off her daughter, she crept forward until she was at the railing. She put her hands on it; her left hand rested on the plaque in Stephen’s memory. The words pressed against her palm.
‘Lydia?’ she said softly, carefully, using the tone she had used when she tucked Lydia into bed, the tenderness she had used when her little girl came to her in the middle of the night from a bad dream. ‘Lydia, it’s Mum.’
Lydia didn’t appear to hear her. She gazed out, not downwards into the railway cutting: out towards the bridge about half a mile away, which was a twin to this one, but her eyes seemed unfocused, as if she were looking at blank air. Her face had no expression. She wore her school jumper and her hair was pulled back into that messy bun, tendrils escaping. But her body was trembling as if she were cold or afraid, trembling hard when everything else was so still.
Someone had to come. Someone had to be here soon. Honor was ringing 999, and someone must have noticed what was happening, seen the girl standing ready to jump off the bridge. Jo looked around and saw no one. Just the Range Rover, skewed, with its door open. No houses were visible from here. All she could see was her daughter and the bridges and the trees and the drop, with the railway tracks an impossible distance below.
Jo hardly dared to look away from Lydia’s face, but she risked a glance over the railing at the ledge where she stood. It was about five inches wide, not quite the length of a full brick. Lydia was wearing her running shoes, she saw. Not her school shoes. They had better grips, thank God. She was
n’t holding on to anything; her back was against the railing. Her body shook violently. She was so slender, colt-legged in her short school skirt. A breeze could blow her off. The railing was over waist-height. Jo could grab her and try to haul her over, but would Lydia anticipate what she was doing and jump?
Jo didn’t pause to think. She stood on tiptoe, raised her leg and swung herself over the wall. Her toes touched the narrow ledge and she let herself down onto it, first one leg and then the other. She wore rubber-soled flats, sensible shoes for running after children. And for climbing bridges. Hanging on to the railing, never taking her gaze from Lydia, she said again, ‘Lydia. Lyddie. It’s Mum.’
Lydia’s eyes focused. ‘You shouldn’t be here,’ she said. Her teeth chattered as she said it, and Jo had to fight not to reach out and grab her. Steady her.
‘Sweetheart,’ said Jo right away, ‘I am so, so sorry. I never meant to hurt you, or to not be there for you.’
‘This isn’t about you, Mum. This has nothing to do with you.’
‘I know. I read your diary, sweetheart. I’m sorry but I found it on your bed and I was worried about you. I know what’s been going on with you, and it breaks my heart that people can be so cruel. But it’s not worth this, Lydia. It’s not worth jumping.’
‘Daddy didn’t jump,’ said Lydia.
‘He was trying to save someone else,’ said Jo. ‘I don’t want you to fall. I don’t want to lose you, too.’
‘I don’t want to cope with it any more, Mum.’ Lydia’s voice was high and weak, almost the voice of a little girl. ‘I’ve been pretending for so long, and I’m tired. Maybe if I hadn’t pretended, this would all be all right, but I don’t think it would be. Avril never would have loved me. That’s all I can think of, over and over.’
Lydia hung her head. A tear welled up in her eye and fell into the void below.
‘Even if I hadn’t lied,’ she said, ‘I still would have lost her. I was always going to lose her, except this way, I’ve lost her in every way, for ever.’
‘Lydia—’
‘Don’t say it,’ said Lydia, turning her head so suddenly towards Jo that Jo reached out with her left hand, afraid that her daughter would lurch off the ledge. ‘Don’t say it’s all going to be all right. Because it isn’t. I’ve fucked it up! You don’t understand. It isn’t ever going to be all right again.’
‘I was going to say,’ said Jo softly, ‘that I’ve lost a person I loved. I’ve lost a few. And I understand. I might not feel it exactly the same way you do, but I understand. You feel … especially at first, you feel that there’s nothing left. No good things in this world.’
‘You’re going to say to me that there are good things. It’s what you always say.’
Yes, good things like you. Jo bit it back. Lydia had told her not to say everything was going to be all right. Her daughter didn’t want optimism, now. She didn’t want to be looking on the bright side, or soldiering on. She wanted a reason to live. And that was quite different.
‘You always tell me how to feel,’ said Lydia. ‘You’re always trying to make me feel better. But I’m not you, Mum, I’m myself, and I’m not the same as you. I never have been.’
Lydia’s hands were in fists, holding on to nothing. The knuckles were white. Her knees were trembling. Jo shouldn’t be looking at her knees, she should be keeping eye contact, but Lydia’s knees were naked, pale. There were goosebumps on her legs. They looked like the legs of a child.
She remembered that whole autumn when Lydia was four – a skinny, flyaway four – and insisted on wearing her favourite summer dress every day, without tights, even in the frost.
She looked back up into Lydia’s face, saw the faint mascara trails under her eyes. Saw the shadow of her little girl’s face overlaid on the face of this young desperate woman.
‘It doesn’t matter how different we are,’ Jo said. ‘I love you, Lydia. I love nothing and nobody more than I love you.’
Lydia shook her head. ‘It doesn’t matter.’
‘It might not matter to you. But it matters to me. And to Oscar, and to Iris, and—’
‘And to me,’ said Honor. Jo glanced over her shoulder just long enough to see that Honor had left the car and was standing behind them. ‘Even though I can’t climb over this damn rail and risk my life, like your foolish mother. I love you, Lydia. You’re the only relative I have left in this world, did you know that? The only one. And I very much hope you’re not going to leave me the last of the Levinson line. Especially as I have only just begun to get to know you.’
‘I just want it to be over,’ said Lydia. ‘I want it all to be over, don’t you understand? I don’t want to feel this way any more!’
‘Lyddie—’
‘And don’t tell me it won’t last, that things will get better! That I’ll look back on this and laugh. You don’t come to a fucking bridge about to jump off it and look back on it and laugh. You do it. You do it! You jump.’
Lydia lifted her foot and Jo’s heart stopped.
‘I met a young man who came to a bridge to jump off it,’ said Honor, suddenly, ‘a fucking bridge as you say, and he looks back on it and is grateful that he didn’t.’
Lydia’s hair fluttered around her face. A breeze blew from the railway cutting, bringing the scent of leaves and grease. She was so beautiful, Jo’s daughter.
‘I remember when you were born,’ Jo told her, hardly knowing what she was saying. ‘It was the middle of the night, did I tell you that? And the ward was quiet, even though they say a maternity ward never is. I’d been in labour for hours. Your father was there, holding my hand and singing to me. He was a lot of things, your father, a lot of wonderful things, but he was a horrible singer. I was in between pushes and I was so tired, I didn’t think I could make it. I was ready to call it off, just tell the midwife that you could stay inside me, don’t bother, I needed to sleep, and Stephen started singing “Isn’t She Lovely”. He did a Stevie Wonder impression and it was awful. Awful. I started laughing, and then the contraction came, and there you were. Born in laughter. Your eyes were wide open and you were the most beautiful, beautiful thing I had ever seen.’
‘This is how you know she loves you,’ added Honor. ‘Because babies are universally ugly. Except for your father.’
Lydia’s lips tightened. It wasn’t a smile, but it was something, an emotion other than fear.
‘When people ask me who I am,’ said Jo, ‘I tell them I’m just a mother. And that’s true, but you know what? It’s not true, too. I’m not just a mother. I’m your mother, and I’m Oscar’s and Iris’s mother. And having you, and loving you, has been the most important and wonderful thing in my life. You are so precious to me, Lydia. Nothing and nobody could ever replace you. Never. And you might think that isn’t much to be, but to me, you are my everything.’
She was entirely focused on Lydia. Lydia’s hair as it blew, light as gossamer. Lydia’s skirt ruffling, the rapid pulse that beat in Lydia’s neck. Lydia’s eyes, hazel, the same as Stephen’s, with the long lashes, staring out over the void. Look at me, Jo thought with every fibre of her being. Look at me, see how much I love you, see how precious you are. Look at me, and leave this bridge and come home.
‘Daddy was right here when he fell,’ said Lydia. ‘Right here where we’re standing now. I always thought that Daddy could fly.’
‘Don’t fall,’ said Jo. She wanted to reach out for Lydia, to take her hand, to hold her, but she didn’t dare. ‘Don’t fall, Lydia. We would miss you.’
Lydia closed her eyes. Jo tensed, certain she was about to jump, ready to try to catch her, grab her hand, snag her jumper, anything. She would jump with her if she had to, tangle their bodies together to try to get underneath her to break her fall. Because she could not watch her child die.
She could carry on after anything else, but not that.
‘Lydia,’ she whispered and the name was blown away from her.
Lydia opened her eyes. She looked at Jo.
&nb
sp; ‘OK,’ she said. ‘OK. I won’t do it. I love you, too.’
She reached out her hand to Jo and Jo leaned over and hugged her, one-armed, their foreheads together.
‘I love you so much,’ whispered Jo. ‘Please, let’s get off this bridge.’
Lydia nodded. Jo helped her turn around and she saw Lydia’s damp palms slipping on the railing. Her grip looked fragile, and she was still shaking, breathing hard in little sobs. Jo steadied her as she lifted her leg to climb over. Lydia on tiptoe on the ledge, impossibly slender, poised above the drop, for a moment held there only by the thinnest pull of gravity.
Then Lydia swung herself over and into her grandmother’s arms.
Jo breathed out a shuddering sigh of relief. She closed her eyes, tried to process it, to believe it. Her daughter was safe.
Oh Stephen, she thought, balanced above where Stephen had died. I’ve saved her. She’s all right.
Out of nothing the train came.
An explosion below them, a wind and a rush, a streak of black and yellow shaking the bridge. Jo started, her foot slipped on the ledge, her hand scrabbled for the railing and missed it. And then Jo fell.
Chapter Forty
Lydia
I THINK ABOUT it all the time. I wasn’t there, but I know this was how it happened.
Dad could run for ever and ever, and nothing could stop him. He had long strides, a beautiful rhythm. You only had to look at him to know that he could do anything.
When he stood on that bridge next to that man, near the place where they later put that plaque to his memory, he didn’t feel any fear. He stood on the ledge – it’s a little ledge, I’ve seen it, about four or five inches wide – and he looked out into clear air. From that high, you must feel as if you could take off and fly: spread your arms and soar, like a paper crane.
He wasn’t afraid. He was confident, sure-footed, full of power and grace. He was saving someone’s life, a stranger’s life. And when he stepped off that ledge, running in air, he must have known what it felt like to be free.
