by Jane Brittan
THE EDGE
OF ME
JANE BRITTAN
First published in Great Britain in 2015
by Blowfish Books
Blowfish Books Ltd, 15 Bennerley Road,
London SW11 6DR
www.blowfishbooks.com
ISBN: 978-0-9932334-0-1
Also available as an ebook
Mobi ISBN: 978-0-9932334-1-8
Epub ISBN: 978-0-9932334-2-5
Copyright © Jane Brittan 2015
The right of Jane Brittan to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988
All rights reserved. No part of this work may be reproduced, stored in an information retrieval system (other than for purposes of review) or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the express permission of the publisher. Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.
The Edge of Me is a work of fiction. All incidents, dialogue and characters are products of the author’s imagination. Any resemblances to persons living or dead are entirely coincidental.
A catalogue record for this book is available
from the British Library.
Typeset by Chandler Book Design
Printed and bound by Finidr, s.r.o. Czech Republic
This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
For TB, Mouse, Roo and Stewie
You think you can leave me, forget about me?
You are wrong. I will never let you forget.
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Acknowledgements
1
It’s late but I’m still up.
I’m listening to them, listening to their voices rising and falling. I can hear them moving about the house, following each other, shouting.
My room’s at the top of the stairs on the right, and if I leave my door open, I can hear them. There’s a bolt on the outside but they don’t use it any more. I know I should put my headphones on, read a book. But it’s not that easy. Not when my name keeps coming up. And after my name, they’ll go quiet for a bit and I imagine them standing down there, looking up at the ceiling listening for me.
I don’t move a muscle. I’m a lizard on a rock.
In the morning, when I come down, it’s quiet and Mum’s sitting at the kitchen table in her coat, peeling an apple. A broken garden gnome lies on its side, watching her. She doesn’t look up when I come in.
‘Where’s Dad?’ I say.
She crunches into the apple and lets out a howl of pain. ‘Bloody, bloody teeth. Mirror! Mirror! Quick!’
I unhook the mirror from the wall and she snatches it from me and examines her mouth. The rack of dentures that runs along the top has detached itself on one side and hangs there, half in half out, with apple peel sandwiched in between. She takes it out and I watch as she tweezers out the bits. She doesn’t have any front teeth of her own and this happens a lot. But maybe not quite enough: like little shrimps in a rock pool, other pieces of food are hiding in there, a corner of toast, a curl of burnt bacon. Her face changes without teeth: dark pits under her cheek bones. She runs the dentures under the tap and makes me hold the mirror while she fits them back into place.
She smacks her jaws together to make good and a little web of spittle winds its way down her chin. She picks up the gnome.
Mum loves gnomes. She’s filled the garden, front and back, with gnomes of every shape and size. This one is lying back rather provocatively, smoking a little pipe. She’s squeezing the glue tube absent-mindedly when I say again, ‘Where’s Dad?’
‘You’re going to be late,’ she says in Serbian now.
‘Yeah, but where is he?’ I say.
More to herself than to me, she mutters, ‘Busy.’
On the table next to the gnome is a letter. The envelope’s been shredded along the top. There are greasy kisses where the butter knife did its work. It has, I think, a French stamp on it and careful handwriting. There’s no name, just our address.
I pick it up. ‘What’s in the letter?’
She grabs it, claws it up in her long fingers and pushes it into her pocket. ‘Nothing.’
‘Right,’ I shrug. I butter a piece of bread and go back to my room to get ready. I sit on the bed and hear the familiar symphony of flushing toilet, zipping and buttoning of coats, all building to the kettle-drum finale moment when the front door is snapped shut. Silence.
Mum likes to keep the communication to a minimum, unless it’s arguing with Dad. It’s like she saves it up. But there never seems to be much left over for me. I mean, she needs me, they both do – my Serbian’s not perfect, but it’s a lot better than their English even after all this time and I translate for them when they need it, but otherwise they don’t bother with me much. Most of the time I feel myself osmosing into the pattern on the curtains, leeching away into the carpet like a stain. Disappearing.
I think I get it now I’m older that what happens here isn’t exactly normal. My family isn’t like other families. In fact even the word family sounds a bit too cosy for what we’ve got going.
I know not everyone’s friends with their parents. I’m sure loads of people have a worse time than I do.
But, you know.
I never cried when I was small, there was never any point in it. I couldn’t reach her, I never could. You can’t reach someone who doesn’t want you to.
I guess part of it is that there isn’t really anyone else. It’s like we just got here, the three of us, and there was no one before us and no one around us. No history, no stories, no Uncle Engelbert or Nan or Auntie Minnie. I know. I’ve asked them. Over and over, in a kind of blank litany: about Serbia, their country, about the places they lived, what they did before I was born, before they came to England.
All they say, all they ever say is: ‘It’s past. It’s gone. It’s nothing.’
And I say then, ‘So what about your parents?’
And they answer, ‘Dead. All dead.’
‘When? When did they die? How?’ I say.
And they say: ‘The war.’
The War: it’s like a high wall that I can’t see over. It’s like the Great Wall of China and it runs all around us. And behind it, outside it, is everything I need to make sense of all this. It started in 1992 and went on until 1995. Like most wars, it was all about land and more land, and like most wars, hundreds of thousands of people were killed in it or lost their homes. I think my dad was a soldier then but he never talks about it.
I ask them why they came here and they look at each other and say, ‘To start again.’
But starting again should mean something good, shouldn’t it? Something brave and big but this isn’t, and
how do I know that? Because I know most other people don’t act this way. Other people fill their homes with photos and relatives and Sunday lunches. They go places and they talk to each other and argue and make up again.
Not here.
At quarter past eight, I’m downstairs looking in the fridge for something to take for lunch when I see Dad in his pyjama bottoms in the garden; which is weird because he’s never in the garden. But there he is making a fire in the bin and prodding at the contents with a sharp stick. The garden’s small and paved, and in every crack in the stones, weeds of every sort rear skywards like they’re trying to get away.
I open the door and he looks up.
‘What are you doing?’ I say.
He scratches at the scar on his neck and turns to face me. His eyes meet mine for a moment then flick away. They’re watering from the smoke.
‘Burning rubbish. Just rubbish,’ is all he says and he looks down and coughs. On the ground is a pile of box files I’ve never seen before. He’s pulling out papers, tearing them into strips and dropping them gingerly into the flames. Little scraps of black film fly up from the heat.
‘I’m going now,’ I say. ‘Do you have any money? I need five pounds for a trip.’
Without taking his eyes off the fire, he takes out his wallet and offers me a note. And then, while it’s still in his hand, he says, ‘You OK? School OK?’
I stare at him. ‘Um. Yeah. It’s OK. Why?’
He sighs and then tries to turn it into a cough. ‘You are a grown-up now.’
‘What? What do you mean?’
‘You will … you will leave us soon I think. Leave home.’
‘Well … I’m only sixteen. I mean – ’
‘When I was sixteen I was in the army.’
‘But, but things are different here, now. I mean – ‘
‘Maybe.’ He shifts from one foot to the other. ‘Maybe. Goodbye Sanda.’
Slowly I stow the money in the pocket of my jeans and go back into the house. I stop on the doorstep to tie my lace and behind me I can hear the crackle and hiss of the fire.
Lauren meets me on the corner.
She tugs at my sleeves and jumps up and down. ‘I love that coat. Seriously! Where d’you get it?’
‘Charity shop.’
‘Cool.’
I smile, ‘Maybe.’
‘Really,’ she says, ‘looks great on you.’
‘Thanks,’ is all I can think of.
Unlike Mum, I do have all my own teeth. Apart from that, I guess the only really interesting thing about me – if you can call it that – is that I have odd eyes. I mean, odd like they’re different colours: one green, one blue. It’s funny but I think because of it, I can never quite get used to my face in the mirror.
Lauren’s shorter than me and curvy. What’s more she has a boyfriend: a real, bona fide, six-months-and-counting boyfriend. He is called Derek but you can’t have everything in life. She has a laugh like bacon frying and five older brothers, all with red hair and freckles.
We met in the lunch queue in Year Seven. I was just eleven and fresh out of primary school, and it all felt so big, so sussed. I wasn’t ready for any of it. I wanted to be sitting on the carpet in a semi-circle with my thumb in my mouth listening to a fairy story. Anyway, there I was, staring down at the floor and shuffling forward with my tray, nibbling at my fingernails like some psychotic rabbit, and she started chatting to me in such an easy way that I felt myself loosen a bit. I said stuff back to her, even made her laugh once or twice.
That’s what’s so amazing about Lauren. If she wants to do something, she just does it. She doesn’t stop to think about it or wonder whether it mightn’t be better to wait until the rain stops or the next general election or whatever, she just does it. And more than that, she’s the only friend I’ve got.
‘What’s now?’ she says.
‘Double English.’
‘Wow. Double Joe. You going to talk to him today?’
I look sideways at her. ‘What do you think?’
She pretends to consider the question. ‘Umm, what do I think? Well. I would have to say … no. I would have to say that you will creep in early and sit at the back of the class and shove your head in Romeo and Juliet or whatever, until the lesson starts, by which time you’ll know it’s safe to look up and gaze adoringly at the back of his head, while dribbling onto the desk. Sound about right?’
I laugh and push her into a hedge.
‘Listen lover,’ she goes on, ‘he’s finished with whatshername. Everyone knows that. He’s officially on the market, and if you don’t get your act together soon, someone else will.’
Joe Mullins is gorgeous. Period. He started at our school a year ago and when I saw him it was like Christmas. I’d never been into boys before him. Not really. He has warm honey eyes and a surprised sort of smile. He’s tall and dark and broad-shouldered and he has to be pretty much the boy every girl in our year wants to get with. And not only is he gorgeous but he is actually in a band.
This gives me – and – let’s not kid ourselves here – practically every other sad sack in a mini-skirt and a pair of Ugg boots, the ideal and quite legitimate opportunity to ogle him from the safety of a crowd.
I think I’ve been in love with him ever since I saw him but as far as I’m concerned, people like me don’t go out with people like him. It’s like a dog with two heads. It’s just wrong.
But there it is. He’s in my head. Joe Mullins lives in my head, just behind my left ear.
It sounds stupid. I mean how can it be possible to feel so close to someone, like you know they’re in the room before you see them, and to have hardly said a single word to them? But it’s true, I do.
I turn to Lauren. ‘Ah. So that’s it? That’s all he’s waiting for? For me to ask him out? He’s been waiting and hoping all this time? That’s such a joke. He doesn’t even know I exist.’
‘Oooh! Jesus, Sanda. He’s just a person. Just talk to him. You don’t know – he might be a closet stamp collector or keep his scabs in a biscuit tin under the bed.’
‘You mean you don’t?’
‘Just talk to him. It doesn’t matter what about: coastal erosion, the Euro, anything. Just do it.’
I smile and shrug. We’re getting close to the school gates and the familiar panic is setting in. Did I say I hated school? You see, not only can I not bring myself to actually communicate with the boy I have been in love with since Year Ten, but I’m pretty lousy at it generally. It’s like someone dropped me off on the doorstep of Planet Earth without the Rule Book: the one that tells you how to get by in life and how to communicate with other people without getting a nosebleed or a hot flush. When Lauren spoke to me for the first time, it was the fourth of November. I’d been at school for two months and it was the first proper conversation I’d had.
She’s poking me in the ribs now and saying, ‘OK. Are you going to Rosie’s party?’
‘Er … no. Don’t think so.’
‘She says you can come if you want.’ Tactful. Basically, what that means is that Lauren’s got Rosie in a corner and talked her into saying that I can come if I absolutely have to.
‘It’s fine. I’m OK.’ I go for what feels like the right mix of regret and indignation. But we both know I don’t do parties. Ever. Because, in the unlikely event of someone actually inviting me, I’d find myself getting as far as the door, finger hovering over doorbell, and the mortifying, toe-curling embarrassment about what I was wearing, or what I would or wouldn’t say, would send me running for the hills.
We go through the gates and Lauren’s already waving to a couple of friends from her Art class. It’s always about now I feel myself disappearing.
And yes, it is English first, and yes, I do get there super early and open my book. Not Romeo and Juliet but The Wasteland which seems highly appropriate considering my current social life. Miss O’Brien is standing at the front with the book as people scuff in and spill onto chairs and desks.
> Joe comes in last and Miss wants to know why. I don’t look at him but out of the corner of my eye I see heads go up, ponytails being fiddled with. He sits down in the front row and takes out his book. His neck dips, he pushes his hair back and his hands rest on his head for a moment. Square hands. I breathe out quietly. I’m alone in the room with him. Cat Power’s playing ‘The Greatest’ and we’re slow dancing and he’s kissing me tenderly. I reach up and …
‘Sanda?’
‘Um … Sorry. I … what was the …?’ Muffled laughter from the rest of the class.
‘Quiet! What do you understand by a wasteland?’
Everyone turns to look at me. And I say without thinking, ‘Er … something neglected? Unattractive? Something nobody notices any more?’
For a split second I look at Joe. He returns my glance with a kind of puzzled smile.
The lesson pretty much curls up and dies for me after that. It lasts forever – it always does. When everyone’s left, I pack up as usual and I’m weaving through empty desks, head down with bag and coat under my arms, when something completely unexpected happens.
‘Hey.’
I look up.
It’s Joe. Just Joe. All the air in the room gets hoovered out under the door. There’s silence and somehow even the school noise stops and all the birds stop singing and hold their breath.
He’s half playing with his phone but when I stop, he looks up and sort of squeezes himself in between the chairs and the front desk, and folds then unfolds his arms.
‘Did you …? Were you …?’ I say.
He smiles then and I manage to smile back but my face is burning. He crosses his arms again and backs into a little tray of pens which leap out onto the floor like angry salmon and scatter themselves under the tables. I’m down there before he is, pinching them up, and there’s a red one that’s rolled out of reach and I’m grabbing for it, and he’s grabbing for it and then two things happen in quick succession. The first is that our hands brush and the touch of him, it’s like hot tea on my skin and although he pulls away, I know the feeling will stay with me for the rest of the day; and the second thing is that Miss comes back into the room and sees us on the floor.
