Beside Myself

by Ann Morgan

  The panic was beginning to grip her now, making the walls of the room loom in at her as though they were speakers shuddered by an impossibly loud sound. The effort of the conversation, of following its looping thread, was too much.

  ‘Look, I think it might be better if—’

  ‘Lucky you could stay in Mummy’s place while she’s not using it,’ said Heloise.

  Smudge gave a start. She looked behind her as though suddenly Hellie might be there. ‘What do you mean, Mummy’s place?’

  ‘This is where Mummy always comes when she needs quiet time away from everyone else,’ said Heloise. ‘Away from us.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Smudge, blinking. ‘I see.’

  ‘She comes up here most afternoons,’ said Heloise, going over to the bookshelf and running her fingers along the shelves. ‘Before, I mean. Not now she’s sleeping all the time. Sometimes in the night she comes here too. It is like her room. Except if I was a grown-up lady and I had a room, I’d make it more exciting than this.’

  ‘But—’ said Smudge.

  ‘Heloise?’ came a voice up the stairs. ‘Heloise?’

  Heloise froze. Fear mingled with guilt trickled over her features.

  ‘I’m not supposed to be in here,’ she whispered.

  Smudge frowned. ‘What do you mean, you’re not supposed to be in here?’

  ‘Granny said,’ said Heloise, shifting from foot to foot. ‘Because of you.’

  ‘Because of me?’ said Smudge.

  ‘Because you’re sick. And you might make us all sick. And then we might all be like Mummy lying down in beds all day. And then we might die.’

  ‘Heloise!’ came Mother’s voice again, accompanied by the sound of footsteps starting the climb from the entrance hall. ‘Where are you?’

  ‘And she said you tell lies,’ said Heloise hurriedly. ‘And that you’re not a nice lady. Even though you look nice to me, apart from the writing on your head and the wonky bit next to your eye.’

  ‘Heloise!’ called Mother again from the landing below, her voice cracking. ‘Come with me this instant. We’re making cupcakes.’

  ‘Coming!’ shouted Heloise, and she scuttled out of the room and thumped down the stairs.

  ‘What were you doing up there?’ came Mother’s voice.

  ‘Just seeing,’ said Heloise.

  ‘You didn’t go into the visitor’s room, did you?’ said Mother as the pair of them started off down the lower flight.

  ‘No,’ said Heloise.

  ‘Because I’ve told you about that,’ drifted up Mother’s voice. ‘Curiosity killed the cat.’

  Smudge shut the door and went to sit on the bed, breathing hard. Panic fizzed within her, the gash on her temple seared and burned. To think she’d nearly come face to face with the old witch! Trembling, she jerked open the drawer in the bedside table and fumbled for the fag packet. But it was not there: instead, her fingers met something hard and smooth and cold. She drew it out: a photograph frame, decorated with shells, some of which had dropped off leaving yellow blobs of glue to mark their places. ‘Love and friendship’ it read in rope letters along the top. And there they were, in the picture: two little girls in coloured raincoats, faded yellow with time, standing on a blustery cliff top with the sea behind. Horror hoofed her in the heart and she flung the frame away, sending it clattering to the floor. She glanced around Hellie’s room – her place – taking in the ceiling, the skylight, the bookshelf, the door. There was nothing for it: she had to get out.

  22

  Christmas Day: Richard running around draped in sheets of wrapping paper, Hellie listening to the Walkman she got for having a good report from school, Akela starting a new model with 1,500 separate parts that will need to go on two bits of cardboard spread over the dining-room table and makes Mother purse her lips and tap her fingers on her arm. After lunch, she goes upstairs to lie down and I let myself out of the front door.

  It is a green day and not that cold. The wind gusts down the street frisking up leaves and crisp packets now and then, but for the most part everything is still. The garden gate groans when I open it. I know how it feels. I’ve only walked down the path and already my feet are hurting from the new Start-rite shoes that were my Christmas present, along with a red top and a tartan skirt. ‘Kilt,’ said Mother, frowning like she is cross I didn’t know that before. And like somehow the kilt is spoilt by my not knowing, and no longer as good. She made me put them on and said they were very elegant and made me look older and not like a schoolgirl at all, but I know that now she is also pleased that she won’t have to take me shopping for more school shoes after I dropped paint on my old ones when the angry feeling came one day.

  The street is quiet. All the houses shut up tight with Merry Christmas inside. You can see the blue light from the televisions flickering in the windows: the Queen and then Noel’s Christmas Presents. No one is out and about, which means the world belongs to me, and my feelings soar like a balloon tugging me along on a string at the thought of all the hours and hours that lie ahead of not having to be polite and mind my Ps and Qs and be pleased at Richard driving his tricycle into my legs.

  When I get to the park there is a woman there walking a brown dog, which ruins things a bit. I stand by the swings, kicking at the metal frame, until she goes, taking the dog with her. Then it is like the sky yawns and the park swells and everything is mine alone.

  I stand for a while, breathing in the Christmas air, seeing how much of the day I can suck in in one go. Then with a hop and a skip I barrel across the grass to my place: the upside-down tree. I push through the branches, putting my hands up to stop the twigs scratching my face.

  It is gloomy inside the tree, so I don’t see him at first, sitting on the log. Then he looks up and his face is white in the half-light, the whiskers shadowy: Mary’s brother.

  ‘Oh, hello,’ he says in his flat, Manchester voice. ‘Fancy seeing you here.’

  I take a step back.

  ‘Nah,’ he says. ‘Don’t go. Stay and enjoy the Christmas cheer. I brought you a drink ’specially.’ He waves a hand at a bag by his feet where a bottle glints.

  I look over my shoulder at the park, but the thought of going back up the road to the house and Hellie and Akela makes me tired. I give a shrug.

  ‘All right,’ I say.

  ‘Good girl,’ he says. ‘Come and sit down here with me.’

  He pats the log beside him and I go over, tucking my kilt round me so the bark doesn’t dig into my thighs. He hands me the bottle.

  ‘Get that down you,’ he says. ‘Pure magic.’

  The liquid in the bottle is brown and smells sour. I tip it and take a sip. Burning seeps down my throat and I cough.

  ‘Not like that. Take a proper pull,’ he says, and he tilts the bottle against my lips so a flood of it pours into my mouth and out down my neck over the new top and kilt. I swallow and gasp.

  ‘There she goes,’ he says, and he puts a hand on my knee to steady me. It stays there after the bottle comes away.

  ‘So,’ he says. ‘Have a good Christmas?’

  I shrug. ‘All right,’ I say in the husky, don’t-care voice teenagers use on the bus. ‘You?’

  He shakes his head.

  ‘Nah, it was shit,’ he says. He locks his gaze on mine and I have to swallow a gasp at the deadness in his eyes. I look away to the far side of the upside-down tree where the dry leaves are swirling around in the breeze.

  ‘How’s Mary?’ I say quickly.

  Then it’s his turn to shrug. ‘Dunno,’ he says. ‘Probably off somewhere getting fucked, the little slut.’

  He looks down and we both watch as his hand slips up under the folds of the kilt.

  ‘The little slut,’ he says again, slowly this time, so that the ‘s’ gets all messy and frayed and tangles with the letters coming after. In my head, it makes a picture of an ice-cream dropped on the pavement, sweetness mixing with dirt.

  ‘I haven’t seen Mary for ages,’ I say in the bright v
oice Mother uses when Akela’s farted and no one’s allowed to say.

  He looks at me again and his eyes feel greedy, running down over the new red top.

  ‘How old are you?’ he says.

  ‘I’m eleven-twelve-in-April,’ I say.

  ‘Eleven, eh?’ he says and his hand creeps higher. ‘A big girl then. A really big girl.’

  His other hand starts to fiddle with something in his lap and there is a click and the rasp of a zip, but I don’t look down. I just keep looking at his face, at the pasty skin between his eyes where his tufty eyebrows start, and I think if I can only keep talking about normal things everything will be OK.

  ‘I’m in Class 7B at school and art is my favourite subject,’ I say, even though it isn’t really; it’s just the one where there is no special work that I have to sit separately to do and everyone is too busy messing around to pay any attention to me.

  ‘Uh-huh,’ he says, his voice taking on a breathy tone. ‘Are there lots of boys in your class?’

  ‘It’s about half-half,’ I say.

  Under the kilt, his hand reaches the top of my thigh, making me jump, but I keep looking at him.

  ‘This term we did a still-life of fruit and vegetables arranged to look like a face,’ I say.

  ‘Uhuh,’ he says again. ‘I bet they fucking love you, don’t they, the boys? You and your sister. I bet they queue up at breaktime to take turns. First one, then the other.’

  His thumb starts to slide round the elastic at the top of my leg and I shuffle backwards.

  ‘I—’ I say.

  ‘And you love it too, don’t you?’ he says, sliding closer, his breath hot on my face. ‘I mean, you say you don’t, but secretly, underneath, you’re gagging for it.’

  His hand plunges in under the fabric and I jump up.

  ‘I think I’d better go home now,’ I say.

  ‘Oh, no you don’t,’ he says, leaping up and grabbing my shoulder. ‘You’re not going anywhere before you finish what you’ve started. This is your fault. I was here minding my own business and you just barged in, getting me all excited, remember? Now it’s up to you to make it right. You can’t just have it all your own way.’

  I look up at the black shape of him topped by his wolfish face, pale in the gathering dusk. And in my mind I see Mother’s face, grim with disappointment, and Hellie wagging her finger.

  ‘I’m sorry, but I don’t know what you want,’ I say.

  He laughs and a rook joins in.

  ‘Oh, don’t you worry about that,’ he says. ‘I’ll show you. You just lie down quietly like a good girl. It won’t take long. Trust me, the way you’ve got me, it won’t take long at all.’

  His hand presses on my shoulder and I sink down into the dirt and leaves until he is above me, fumbling. Then a sharp pain comes and he is plunging and jerking above me, his face twisted with fury.

  And that is when I learn the secret: that you don’t have to be anyone. You don’t have to be Helen or Ellie. You don’t have to be any kind of person. You can just float up through the branches into the sky like a balloon, until you are far away looking down on the people scurrying about their Christmases like ants and no one can touch you at all.

  23

  She waited until the middle of the night, sitting hunched on Hellie’s bed long after the last thud of footsteps on the staircase and the final closing click of a door. Then, shrugging on her stained coat with the pocket hanging off one side, she let herself out of the room. Her body protested as she walked down the corridor and she moved slowly, as if wading through water, past a doorway on the right to the head of the stairs.

  At the top, she paused to listen: nothing, only the sound of a siren in a nearby street. She walked down the stairs, her knees aching with each step. On the landing below, she heard the gentle sound of breathing eman-ating from one of the rooms and the snort and whistle of Akela’s snore. She hugged her coat round her and hurried on down, grateful for the thick carpets.

  In the hall, she went to the front door and pulled down the handle of the snib, but the door refused to budge when she tried to pull it, held fast by some sort of heavy-duty lock further down. She looked around. Where would they keep the keys?

  The rest of the house yawned behind her, stretching into blackness. There was the doorway to the living room where she’d sat with Akela that awkward first night. Beyond it was another, giving on to darkness, and then there were more stairs leading down and round a corner. There were no coat hooks or stands that she could see for jackets that might have keys in the pockets and the bookshelf with the telephone on it was otherwise bare.

  She tiptoed across the wooden floor and peered into the other doorway. Dim, orange light spilled in through a tall, French window that looked out on to a patio above the garden. The light picked out silver in a cabinet, a long, gleaming table and the cellophane over a collection of presentation sets spread across its surface. She went over to one – a basket of fruit, garnished with exotic flowers and tied with a bow – and squinted at the tag attached to it. To Helen, she made out, from all the team at ITV.

  There were no jackets hanging on the backs of the chairs around the table, but a long, low sideboard caught her eye. The first door she opened proved to be a non-starter – just revealing plates and cups. But behind the second she discovered ranks of bottle and decanters, jostling and winking up at her. Her brain’s clamour for the keys muffled itself as a new urge took hold. She reached in and selected a bottle of vodka. The label was for a brand she didn’t recognise, but when she unscrewed the top and breathed in it smelled rich and smooth. None of the rough edges of the value range here. This was the good stuff.

  She closed her eyes and put the bottle to her lips, anticipating the feeling of it spreading through her – peace, deadening the machinations of her mind. Just a nip or two to help get her across London. Just a taste to take the edge off the miserable creaking of her bones. She readied her arm to tilt the bottle, took a deep breath and—

  ‘I knew I didn’t dream it,’ said a voice.

  Smudge spun around. Heloise was standing in the doorway in her SpongeBob SquarePants pyjamas, rubbing her eyes. ‘Oh,’ she said. ‘I thought you were Mummy coming back.’

  She blinked, looking small and young all of a sudden.

  ‘Sorry,’ said Smudge.

  ‘What are you doing?’ said Heloise.

  Smudge looked at the bottle. ‘I’m just… checking this.’

  ‘You weren’t,’ said Heloise, advancing into the room. ‘You were going to drink it. I saw you.’

  ‘Shhh,’ said Smudge, waving her arms in an effort to tamp down the little girl’s indignation. ‘You’ll wake everyone up.’

  ‘It’s naughty to drink out of the bottle,’ continued Heloise. ‘It spoils it for everyone else.’ She turned and pulled out a tea cup from the first door in the sideboard. ‘Here,’ she said, holding it out, pleased.

  Smudge looked at the tea cup in Heloise’s tiny hand. The handle was the perfect size for her fingers. ‘No, thank you,’ she said firmly. ‘I’m not thirsty any more.’

  She put the bottle back in the cupboard.

  Heloise scuffed at the Persian carpet with the toe of her Shaun the Sheep slipper. ‘What are we going to do now then?’

  ‘Now?’ said Smudge. ‘Go back to bed. It’s the middle of the night.’

  Heloise looked at her with narrowed eyes. ‘You’re not going back to bed. You’re just saying that to make me go.’

  ‘I’m not.’

  ‘Are too.’

  ‘Am not.’

  ‘Are too. You’re even wearing your coat.’

  They stood staring at each other for a moment. Then Heloise shifted abruptly and whirled around in a pirouette. ‘Why don’t you come and see Emily instead?’ she said.

  Smudge frowned. ‘Emily?’

  ‘My sister,’ said Heloise.

  ‘But—’ said Smudge. The horrible thought resurfaced of another girl living in the shadow of this precoc
ious child, following half a step behind. Surely Nick had told her there was only one? She cast her mind back. The memory of the conversation hovered, just out of reach. What if she was wrong? What if she’d misheard? Or what if a voice had said it and tricked her into thinking it was the truth?

  She shook her head. ‘I don’t think that’s a good idea,’ she said. ‘Not tonight. Anyway, it would wake everyone up.’

  ‘It won’t,’ said Heloise, coming over and taking her hand. ‘We’ll do it quietly and nicely and it won’t wake anyone at all.’

  The little girl led her out into the hall, but instead of making for the staircase, she turned and started down the steps to the basement. Smudge followed her, as if in a dream, mesmerised at the thought of the other little girl, Emily, cowering somewhere in the bowels of the house as part of a cruel game.

  The steps rounded a corner and gave on to the generous kitchen. At the far end, she saw the dim lines of the table with the massive bowl of irises throwing out sharp shadows in the light coming through the glass ceiling. In between, a stainless-steel island glimmered beneath a hoard of implements hanging from a rack. Everywhere was clean and minimalist. When she turned and looked behind her, she saw a doorway to a utility room containing a large washing machine with a red light blinking like a malevolent eye.

  She peered through the gloom, searching for the hunched figure, her ears primed for the sound of snuffling, the dying whimpers of a storm of sobs, but there was nothing: the stools at the island sheltered empty air beneath them, the table covered vacancy.

  ‘So where’s Emily?’ she said at last, unable to bear the thought of the other child hidden in some miserable corner any longer.

  Heloise giggled. ‘Emily in the kitchen?’ she said, shaking her head. ‘What would she be doing in here, you silly?’

  She went to a cupboard tucked under the stairs and opened it to reveal a rack of keys fixed inside the door. After groping among them, she pulled out a set on a silver fob with a triumphant squawk. Then she scampered across the room to the glass doors at the far end of the dome.