On My Life

by Angela Clarke

  A baby. She said there was a baby.

  She stares at my bump. ‘I thought the social would take you away for sure if they found out.’

  My stomach hollows out. She didn’t want me to be next. She didn’t want me taken away. Twelve years old and she was wrestling with all this. Younger than Emily. Emily. A thread begins to draw between these two children, Ness damaged and young, Emily privileged and gone.

  With a shaking hand Ness pushes her hair off her wet face. ‘There was a woman three blocks down who said she could help. There was a man. A doctor, apparently. But he was a crook. It went wrong. The people at the hospital said it was an infection. Or the stuff he used. Something. I’ve tried again since then, but they all say the same thing: I can’t have children.’

  ‘Oh Ness. I’m so sorry.’

  She half laughs. ‘Sorry? You’ve never even asked if I wanted kids, have you? You only care about yourself.’

  The words sting. ‘I didn’t know . . .’

  ‘It’s all about you.’ She pulls her hand away from me. Her words hardening. ‘Jenna and her university place, Jenna and her brilliant job, Jenna and her rich boyfriend. I should have had all that. Would have if I’d not been looking after you.’

  ‘I was just a kid.’

  ‘Even Mum.’ She shakes her head. ‘She was so gutted when you left the Orchard she followed you up here. She left me. After everything!’

  Bitterness explodes around me. I think of Mum, desperate to make up for how she was, trying to give us money she doesn’t have, hugs, love. ‘Mum would be devastated if she knew what had happened.’

  ‘She knows!’ Ness’s words detonate between us. ‘You took it all. You took him.’

  Him? Who? And then I see. Ness and Robert on the sofa in front of the fire. Ness hugging Robert in the kitchen. All those texts, trying to meet up. She didn’t want to spend more time with me, she wanted to spend more time with him. Ness is in love with Robert. No. ‘Where is he?’ My voice shakes. I force myself to repeat it. My throat cracking with tears, pain, heat. ‘Please, where is he, Ness? Tell me?’

  Her hair is wild about her face, her eyes black smears of mascara, and she looks at me with such hatred it hurts more than the kick. ‘It’s always about you. Clever little fucking Jenna.’

  No. I shake my head, back away. The door cold against my bare arms, the smoke thicker now.

  Bang! Someone else is banging on the door. On the other side!

  ‘In here!’ I shout.

  Vina’s face, bloodied and half-masked by a torn sheet, appears at the hatch.

  ‘Stand back!’ she shouts. And I see in her hands the big red key – the battering ram!

  ‘How did you get that . . .’ But then I remember the open offices – the inmates running around with riot helmets on. And I can see a strip of sharpened metal, wrenched from the bottom of the frame, tucked into Vina’s pocket.

  ‘Get back!’ she yells.

  I jump clear as there’s a huge clang. And another. And on the third, the door busts inwards.

  Smoke rolls into the room. Red flashes of heat behind it.

  ‘We need to go!’ Vina’s eyes are streaming. ‘Up onto the roof.’

  But Ness grabs hold of my other wrist, hard.

  ‘What are you doing?’ I try to shake her off.

  Her face is calm now, still in the smoke. ‘It’s over, Jenna. I’m not going back.’

  ‘What the hell are you doing – we have to get out,’ cries Vina.

  Ness shakes her head, her hand surprisingly cool against my skin. ‘No. She’s not going anywhere.’ There’s a flash of silver. And before I can stop her, Ness has the makeshift blade from Vina’s pocket.

  I feel the sharp edge press against my neck.

  Now

  ‘You hate me.’ My words are free from emotion. It’s all about you. A growing acceptance is flowing through me, warming me with the flames.

  The whites of Vina’s eyes are reddening. She looks between Ness, the metal, me.

  ‘I love you,’ Ness says. ‘You’re my little sister.’

  But I’m not listening any more. My mind is wading through each sharp object that’s been thrown at me. ‘It can’t have been an accident,’ I say.

  Ness’s hand squeezes my arm tighter. ‘I told you it was. She attacked me.’

  But there was the jumper and the knife in the dishwasher. ‘You were wearing gloves. You put that stuff on my computer.’

  My fingers begin to tingle.

  A flaming cabinet slips from the netting and erupts as it crashes onto the ground below.

  Vina starts. ‘We have to get out of here!’

  But Ness isn’t listening to her. It’s like there’s just two of us now, seeing each other for the first time. ‘I should have been his girlfriend, not you,’ she says.

  ‘But you aren’t,’ I say.

  I feel my pulse push against the metal at my neck.

  ‘I just needed him to see me,’ she said. ‘I didn’t mean for all this to happen. But if he’d seen those photos on your computer he wouldn’t have been able to look at you. And I would have helped him grieve. Helped him recover.’

  ‘You’d do that to me?’ My Ness. My sister. My protector.

  ‘You had money, you’d get a good lawyer. You’d have been fine. You always land on your feet.’

  Vina stares at us transfixed. The battering ram is limp in her hands. My bump, my baby between me and Ness.

  ‘What about Emily? That doesn’t explain what you did to her.’

  ‘I was checking your laptop. Some of the photos were open when she came in. I didn’t think anyone would be there.’

  Oh god, Emily saw the child porn. I feel sick. ‘But you didn’t have to hurt her.’

  ‘She went off on one. Started screaming about calling the police.’ Ness’s voice rises. ‘She had the phone.’

  Emily with her strong sense of right and wrong. Emily with the confidence that comes of private education. I remember the phone socket hanging, ripped from the wall in the kitchen.

  ‘I had to stop her,’ Ness says. ‘She wouldn’t stop screaming. I just needed her to calm down. I just meant to frighten her but she struggled.’

  She fought back. Emily, you were so brave.

  The metal digs in. Stings. Something dribbles down my neck. I can’t tell if it’s blood or sweat. I don’t care any more. Everything I thought I knew is gone. And I feel so tired. So heavy.

  I close my eyes. ‘And Robert?’

  Ness flinches. ‘He’s fine.’

  She’s got him. Alive. My arms feel heavy. My body too.

  ‘We need to get her outside.’ Vina is talking over me.

  ‘No.’ Ness swipes forward with the metal blade. ‘I was going to have the baby. I was going to raise it with Robert. He was going to love me.’

  ‘You’re fucking mental.’ Vina coughs.

  There’s no point fighting. I just want to sit down. Lie down. Close my eyes. The air feels like it is pushing down on me.

  ‘She’s going to pass out! You’re going to die!’ Vina shouts.

  ‘Leave us alone!’ Ness shouts.

  And she’s shouting at the barricaded door of my bedroom. Carl is on the other side, grunting, crashing about. But it’s okay because we’re in here together and nothing can hurt us.

  The contraction starts low, and tightens fast, up and over my stomach like a vice. I scream. Buckle forward. Ness drops the metal. Vina swings at her. Ness lets go of my arm. Stumbles backwards. Internally I’m shifting, pushing down. My baby. My baby.

  I gulp in air. Smoke makes me cough. And I’m awake. Everything sharp. The pain makes me whole. Strong. Powerful.

  ‘Run!’ I scream.

  Vina is already on her way. Me too. We sprint down the landing, arms up against the smoke and the heat. Toward a pile of furniture. A makeshift ladder. A square of light flickers down from above. Something sparks to our left.

  Vina is there first; she scrambles up onto a large filing cabinet
, reaches down for me.

  I turn.

  Ness is behind me. Running. There’s a snapping sound as the last of the metal netting between the landings gives and tumbles its prey down into a fiery ball. The struts buckle. Ness grabs for the edge of the walkway as the section she’s on tips and slides.

  ‘Ness!’

  Then she’s falling.

  ‘No!’ I strain against Vina’s hold.

  I feel the vacuum. Ness twists like she’s turning in water.

  Our eyes meet.

  Then the backdraught explodes upwards.

  ‘Ness!’ I scream. As Vina pulls me by my arm, up into the daylight.

  Beneath us everything is engulfed in flames.

  Coughing. Coughing. Can’t breathe.

  ‘Ness! Ness!’ Vina’s whole body is stopping me. Sliding on the roof tiles. ‘I’ve got to help her!’ I scream.

  ‘She’s gone, she’s gone,’ Vina says.

  ‘No!’ I love her. I have to help her. ‘Ness!’ I scream. ‘Ness!’

  ‘She’s gone.’ Vina holds me tight.

  I feel my knees buckle. But she can’t be gone. She’s my sister. She raised me. She . . . she . . .

  I see Ness’s face smiling as she produces paper-wrapped chips from behind her back. She’s brushing my hair for school. Telling the lads on the corner to do one. Singing to me when Mummy is sick. Turning the telly up in my room so we can’t hear the men. Sharing a fag with me out her bedroom window. Running alongside me through the blocks, laughing, running, running, we’re going to make it. We’re going to get out. We’re going to be free.

  Tears pour down my face. She can’t be gone. I grip my stomach. She was going to raise my baby. She loved me. She loved me.

  Smoke puffs from the hole behind us. ‘We need to move, go! This could collapse.’ Vina is pushing against me.

  I can’t. I want to stay with her. I want to go back. I reach for the hole. Ness. My Ness.

  Vina hangs onto my shoulder, pulls.

  ‘No!’ I scream, and fall to my knees as a howl punches up out of me. Oh Ness – what did you do?

  Tiles skid from under my hands and disappear into the furnace below. My baby kicks.

  ‘Move.’ Vina yanks me, hard.

  I turn, stagger. I don’t want to leave her.

  My baby kicks again. Frantic jerks inside.

  Ahead we can see women, chanting and cheering. More are huddled in groups. They’ve unfurled banners. A helicopter is overhead. And – a long way down – a crowd of journalists, officers and the police peer up at us. Shouting, pointing to the flames that are coming from the hole behind us.

  Oh Ness, I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I didn’t know.

  ‘That way.’ Vina points and I see the roof steps up, there’s a separate section, beyond where the wing must end.

  We scramble across the tiles.

  Every step a step further away.

  Women, with their faces covered, see us coming. How far apart are my contractions? Because there’s no denying now. I’m in labour. I scream as another one punts me forwards. I want Ness.

  Vina’s hands are on my hips, steadying me. A roof tile skids from under my foot, slides down and off the side. A distant smash. I do not want to be here. I do not want to be giving birth now.

  Someone reaches down for us – Ness? But no, it’s someone else’s red hair in the sunshine. Abi. We climb up onto the next section. It’s flatter up here. The hills of Gloucestershire rolling away from us. Green trees, yellow oilseed rape fields. Clean air. Blue sky. Breathe. Breathe. Breathe.

  ‘Well, well, well, look who decided to show up.’ Gould’s voice is smooth as honey. ‘The Blonde Slayer.’

  My whole body freezes. The women stop chanting. Eyes over bandanas, watching. The wind whistles over the roof and ruffles Gould’s hair. She smiles a sickly evil smile.

  ‘She’s in labour.’ Vina steps forward. In front of me.

  A murmur goes through the crowd.

  From below we hear a voice from a loudhailer. ‘All prisoners that move to the opposite side of the building will be helped down.’

  If I could just get there. If I could just get down. But the vice is back. My insides moving, realigning, squeezing. I scream.

  ‘She’s in labour!’ someone says.

  ‘We need hot water,’ says a voice that sounds like Abi.

  ‘She’s the Blonde Slay—’ Gould’s voice is buried under my scream.

  No time. Another one. This is it. Must push. Why did you leave me, Ness? Why did you do this? I needed you.

  ‘She needs to lie down.’

  ‘Anyone got a blanket?’

  And women are around me, helping me onto my back. Lifting my knees.

  ‘Breathe, honey.’ Vina has hold of my hand as I squeeze. A noise comes out of me that I don’t recognise.

  ‘Ten centimetres, I’d say.’ Rhianna’s mum is between my knees.

  The helicopter looms into view, a TV camera visible. Oh god. Oh god.

  Vina follows my gaze. ‘Fucking hell! Can we get some privacy!’

  The noise comes out of me again. I want Ness. I want my mum. Breathe. Breathe. Breathe.

  There’s a rustling around me, in my peripheral vision. I can barely focus. The pain is like nothing on earth. I can’t do it. You can. I hear Ness’s voice in my head. You can. Pant. Pant. Like the midwife told you. You can do it, Jenna. A canopy of bottle-green jumpers are stretched between me and the blue sky, a ring of women holding them up.

  ‘I can see his head!’ Rhianna’s mum calls.

  Her. Her. My daughter. Ness should have been here. ‘Argh!’ I scream.

  ‘Push!’ yells Rhianna’s mum.

  The loudhailer drifts from below: ‘Paramedics are on their way up. Stand clear.’

  But it’s too late.

  ‘It’s a girl!’ screams Rhianna’s mum. ‘A girl!’

  Eight Weeks Later

  The church is cool and dark and, stepping through the door, I panic for a moment that I can’t see the sky. But then I hear the organist practising ‘Ave Maria’ upstairs, and my shoulders relax a little. Though they haven’t loosened completely in the last two months. I’m not sure they ever will again. I was so scared when my daughter was born. I was only thirty-three weeks pregnant. She’d come early, and during a riot. I’d inhaled smoke, I’d been running, I’d been attacked, and all those emotions. I touch my neck where Ness pressed the metal. The slight rise of scar tissue still present. My daughter had cried to begin with, her tiny lungs yelling on the top of the roof. But then she started caving – making this frantic coughing noise as she fought to breathe. The paramedics were on her in minutes. They had a mask over her face, blowing air into her tiny lungs. All the women stood back in silence. Some started to pray. Then they took her and me to hospital. Blue lights flashing. She was in an incubator, an intravenous line feeding her fluids.

  Mum is sitting on one of the front pews. She comes here most days. I don’t understand it. If there is a god, how can you be anything but angry at him for what happened? For allowing a twelve-year-old to be raped. For making her pregnant, then taking away her baby, and her ability to have further children. How can you not be furious at that awful, devastating, hateful act which led to the destruction of so many lives. But it helps her. And if it keeps her away from the drugs, I’ll support it.

  She doesn’t see me until I’m almost upon her, so there’s no time to wipe her tears away, though she tries. ‘Oh, hello love,’ she says. ‘Didn’t see you there.’

  Poor Mum. I lost a sister. She lost a child. I sit down and take Mum’s hand. We stare at the altar for a moment, the sun illuminating the stained glass behind into a dancing jigsaw of colour at our feet.

  ‘I lit a candle for her,’ Mum says quietly, as if I might be cross.

  I am. Furious at what Ness did. She planted child pornography on my computer to try and split me and Robert up. And when Emily came home unexpectedly and saw Ness with those images open on my laptop, they fo
ught. Emily who was headstrong, who knew right from wrong, who would round on you with her hands on her hips and call you on your bullshit. Emily who saw through her grandfather long before I did. Ness killed an innocent fourteen-year-old child. I pause to take in the enormity of it all again. I believe she didn’t set out to hurt anyone but me. But things escalated. Who would believe some kid from the Orchard estate? That’s what she’d said, and that’s what she’d believed. I think her development froze at twelve in many ways. She died the day that man assaulted her.

  Then Robert came home. He saw Emily lying there on the floor. He ran to her, didn’t even see Ness. She hit him over the head and dragged his bleeding body to the car. Drove him to the gym she worked at and locked him in an old weights cage in the disused basement. Her boss only realised the key was missing from his desk drawer when the police raided the place. She sedated Robert with ground-up diazepam she’d sourced from an old Orchard pal, mixing it into blueberry yoghurts. For five months he too was incarcerated. But he was out of it most of the time.

  Ness torched her car to destroy the evidence. Except the police found it partially burnt out, and DI Langton thought it odd that a person linked to an active crime case didn’t report their car stolen. She started digging. Forensics found traces of Robert’s blood in the car. And DI Langton realised Ness was spending all her time, and most of her money, within a one-mile radius of her workplace. In fact, she didn’t seem to be going home at all. She started following Ness. And as Fallenbrook went up in flames, she broke down the door of Star Gym’s basement. They found the white Ikea cot set up down there, ready.

  I don’t know what Ness thought would happen. That she could win Robert over after everything that she did? That by bringing him a new daughter she could make up for the loss of another? Maybe she didn’t think at all. Maybe she just kept going down the one fatal track she’d started on. A tear rolls down my cheek and onto my lap.

  ‘Why didn’t you tell me, Mum? About Carl. About the baby,’ I say. I could have helped her if I’d just known.

  Mum keeps staring ahead. ‘When I think of what he did to her . . . My poor little girl.’ She swallows. Steadies herself. ‘I didn’t find out until later. You was nine, and you’d just started your period. First in your class, Ness said.’