The Beauty of the End

by Debbie Howells

  “I think you must have dropped this,” I said, avoiding her eyes as I handed it to her. It was the closest we’d ever been. The effect was intoxicating.

  She looked at it, puzzled, as she took it from me. “I don’t think so—it must be someone else’s.”

  I shook my head. “It has your name on it.”

  She turned it over and read it, and I saw her genuine look of surprise. Then her eyes lifted to meet mine.

  “Thank you.” She said it softly. If she’d guessed, I couldn’t tell.

  * * *

  Term ended, Will went skiing with his parents, Christmas came and went. Usually I loved this time of year, but not seeing April for so long was making me restless. I’d never much liked walking for walking’s sake, but that winter I went for cold, meandering walks in the afternoons, hoping that I might randomly bump into her; that we’d fall into conversation, a meaningful one, of course. She’d have played my tape and really loved it, never for one second giving away that she’d guessed it was from me. Then I’d hold her hand and we’d carry on walking, together.

  I even checked out Reynard’s woods, seeking out the death tree, where, dusted with ice, the little bodies that still hung there had taken on a ghostly form. But there was no sign of her. Like the embers of the fire she’d made there, her presence had been washed away.

  Several times I went back. Once I even lit my own small fire, sitting crouched beside it, warming my hands over the damp, smoldering wood, just waiting. Not once did I see her. Then the new year came blasting in with a fall of snow that stopped the world in its tracks, before melting just as rapidly to slush. And before I knew it, we were back at school.

  The holiday had painfully magnified my feelings. I was condemned, it seemed at times, to drown in unrequited love. I consoled myself with the thought that I was in the company of many great lovers whose affections were unreturned, who must have suffered just as I was suffering. But comparisons with the likes of Romeo and Juliet, Tristan and Isolde, provided small comfort from my torture, which steadfastly refused to go away.

  It was about that time I started to notice April’s absences. A week, sometimes two, before she’d walk into school as if she’d never been away. A little pale, perhaps, which wasn’t surprising, if, as I guessed, she’d been ill. But she gave no explanation, simply borrowing books to catch up on what she’d missed and acting as though nothing had happened.

  Other than that, nothing changed. Another term passed. My fifteenth birthday arrived, a dull, unmemorable occasion, unlike the noisy parties my classmates bragged about. My parents bought me a camera—a little Kodak Instamatic, with several rolls of film, which I wasn’t to use up too fast, they cautioned, because of the price of developing them. My mother took me and Will to see The Naked Gun. And then I realized we’d been in Musgrove an entire year.

  * * *

  The summer holidays arrived, which I could see only as an unwanted barrier keeping me from April. Their unbearable endlessness was broken only by long, hot days, which I spent at Will’s, where the pool was a welcome distraction. Under the sun, my skin tanned, and as I set myself the goal of swimming an ever-increasing number of lengths, I imagined my body defined by the faint outline of muscle, which would transform my chances with the opposite sex.

  It appeared to work. By the following autumn, when we returned to school, occasionally, miraculously, April and I would talk. It was mostly about school and homework, it has to be said. If she’d missed classes, she knew I’d lend her my notes. I knew how these things worked. That girls like April didn’t go for boys called Noah. There were plenty of Daves, Johns, and Simons out there, with cool hair and cool clothes, who knew how to kiss without squashing your nose or cricking your neck. And, as it also turned out, there was a Pete.

  Right from the start, I didn’t like Pete. Not because he was older and smoked and wore leathers and gave April lifts on the back of his noisy motorbike, roaring off into the distance leaving a trail of noxious fumes. I’m sure he was a perfectly reasonable guy—if only he wasn’t seeing April.

  No matter that I never really had her; suddenly it was like I was losing her. I saw her out with him, once or twice—an extra shirt button undone to reveal the swell of pale skin beneath, her jeans skintight to her ankles, with black Cleopatra-style eyeliner that gave her a feline sexiness I was uncomfortable with. I wanted my schoolgirl goddess back, not this siren.

  “Forget it, buddy,” Will told me one day, as I stood defeatedly watching her walk past hand in hand with Pete. “She’s out of your league. I read somewhere that girls like guys they can look up to. Like Pete.”

  “I don’t know what you mean.” In my heart, I knew he was right but I couldn’t bear to think of April and Pete like that. I turned and stalked off. Even now, no one else was allowed into the fantasy.

  Early in the summer term as exams loomed, the atmosphere in our year changed, from one of false bravado to abject fear of failure. There was no more putting off the inevitable. The time had arrived. Heads were down, books were open, pockets were crammed with study notes.

  Out of the blue, April vanished. But this time, she didn’t come back.

  Ella

  I’m the beneficiary of my parents’ unrelenting wisdom. They know everything, from how to run the world to exactly what’s best for everyone. Including me.

  “Are you looking forward to meeting her?”

  She’s talking about the latest in the long line of therapists she believes will unlock the person I really am, somewhere inside. This one’s good. She has to be—why else would my mother spare the hour it takes along narrow East Sussex lanes before blasting round the M25 to get me there? Only my mother’s questions aren’t really questions. No Answers Required.

  “Abigail’s told me so much about her. She’s helped Toby terribly.”

  Twelve years old, six-foot-two, tidal waves of testosterone raging against his whiny, irritating mother. It’s always poor Abigail, never poor Toby, who has to live with her. Ten out of ten for her choice of word, though. Terribly.

  “Try not to be too long, though, darling, will you? I’ve an appointment at five.”

  That’ll be hair—or was that yesterday? Maybe it’s nails—but there’s always something far more important to her than I am.

  “It isn’t normally up to me.” Sarcastically polite, which she never gets.

  “You know what I mean. Just be straightforward. Answer her questions.”

  What she really means is no bullshitting—just tell the shrink what she wants to hear. Cool. Not like we’re wasting anyone’s time.

  “Hi. It’s Ella, isn’t it? Come and take a seat.”

  Therapists use a socially acceptable code. Out of a million ways to start a conversation, like let’s cut to the chase because we both know there’s something we need to talk about, they all use exactly the same words.

  “Nice to meet you.” I hold out my hand, firstly, because of my upbringing and, secondly, because there’s no reason not to be polite. Anyway, apart from the fact that she studied psychobabble at university, it’s hardly her fault she has to talk to me.

  She gestures toward a set of chairs arranged around a coffee table, which I kind of smile at, only in an ironic way, because it’s the modern-day version of the shrink’s couch. Her arm is really tanned—hasn’t anyone told her about skin cancer?

  She sits opposite me. Out of the corner of my eye, I notice she’s younger than they usually are, the edge of her left ear punched with sparkly studs.

  “So.” She picks up her notebook. “Why don’t you tell me a little about yourself.”

  I shrug. “I’m fifteen. I live with both parents. Big house with land. In Ditchling. I go to school at the Lester Academy.”

  I say “both parents” on purpose so she doesn’t have to ask. I don’t tell her it’s a stupidly big house, because she doesn’t need to know. I just watch the large silver ring on her right hand catch the light as she writes.

  “You’re into
drama?”

  Everyone’s heard of the Lester Academy, known forraising future megastars of the stage and screen—and uber-wealthy parents.

  I shake my head. “Music, mostly.”

  She looks interested. “Which instrument do you play?”

  “Guitar,” I tell her. “Electric and acoustic. I did keyboard for a bit. I dropped the saxophone last year.”

  Figuratively, you understand. I dropped the keyboard, too, which pissed my mother off, because she has her own vision of how my dazzling future’s supposed to blow practically the entire world away. I watch her pen hesitate, then write my words down, and I wait for the old joke about how I’m a regular one-girl band, but it doesn’t come.

  “Wow. I’d love to be able to play just one of those,” she says, looking wistful.

  I sit back and fold my arms when she says that, warding her off, because icebreaking I’m used to. The dancing politely round each other, like we’re on a first date. The walking on eggshells when it comes to the trickier stuff. Issues, you’d probably call them. But wistful makes her sound like a normal person.

  “Do your parents enjoy music?” she adds.

  I’m not sure how to answer that one. Actually enjoy? I don’t really know.

  I shrug. “I guess. My mother plays classical all the time. I don’t really know about my father.”

  She moves on. “So, tell me what else you like to do—when you’re not at school.”

  Okay. Only some of them ask this one, mostly because it’s not on the checklist they tick off, before totting up my final score and telling me there’s nothing wrong with me. Which I already know.

  “Swim.” I shrug again. “We have a pool. And I read.”

  Most of the books in the house are mine. My parents don’t read, except for Sunday papers or interior design brochures. “And I write.”

  That fell out without my meaning it to, because what happens then is people ask what I write.

  “What do you write?” she asks, right on cue.

  I look at my shoes. “Just stuff.”

  I could lie and tell her I write bleak, dark love songs, such as therapists’ dreams are made of, just to wind her up, but instead find myself gazing across her office at the large, abstract canvas hung on the wall. Trying to find something to like about it.

  She watches my gaze. “Are you interested in art?”

  “I don’t really know anything about it,” I say.

  “I think what matters is knowing what you like.” She glances at the canvas. “You like that?”

  I look her straight in the eye. “Not really my thing.”

  She bites her lip, says conspiratorially, “Not really mine, either.”

  I feel us connect, briefly, kind of like a needle prick, before I get it. She’s smart. She hangs the ugliest painting she can find to give her common ground with everyone but the guy who painted it.

  Then she really does surprise me. She puts down her pen and notebook.

  “Can I say something, Ella? I get the feeling you’ve done this before. Am I right?”

  By “this” I’m guessing she means therapy. So the dancing thing’s over already. I raise my eyebrows. “Quite a few times, actually.”

  She looks puzzled. “Can I ask you why you think you need to come here?”

  She says “you.” I sit back, hearing breath drawn out in a long sigh, wonder why she’s doing that. Then realize it’s mine.

  “Well . . . It’s complicated.”

  “I have time.”

  “Yeah . . .”

  I know she has time. They’re paid by the minute or something.

  “It’s like this. I don’t personally think I need to be here. My mother does. We don’t really get on. Mothers and daughters don’t always, do they?” I glance at her, but she doesn’t respond. “She thinks that a bit of psych-washing and I’ll turn into the daughter she wants me to be. No offense, by the way. But that’s about it.”

  Skipping the part about how my mother doesn’t get me because I don’t slot into her neat and tidy life; how her plans for my future take no account of what I want, how nothing I say interests her. How that is the measure of my worth. There’s more, like how even when I’m so tired my eyes close on their own, I can’t sleep, and when I do, I have these dreams. Dreams so vivid, when I wake up, it’s like they’re real. Like I said, it’s complicated.

  “I see.”

  She really doesn’t, but then I haven’t told the half of it. It’ll take more than a crap painting before I do that.

  “I ought to explain about my mother,” I add. Breaking the unwritten rule, answering questions she hasn’t asked. Deflecting her while I still can. “Because everything she and my father do is, like, a-maz-ing.”

  Giving it the full benefit of its three syllables, then rolling my eyes to make sure she gets it. “They have their amazing jobs, incredibly expensive clothes, and they’re always traveling. . . .”

  Only the problem is, I’m supposed to be amazing too and I’m not allowed to cut my hair and buy cool T-shirts from the market stall with Guns N’ Roses on them.

  “Really? Where do you go?”

  “I said they,” I point out, frowning. “They don’t take me with them. Half the time I’m in school, anyway. It kind of makes sense.”

  Wondering if she’ll work out the real reason, because it’s obvious. They don’t want me with them.

  She looks faintly shocked.

  “It’s fine,” I tell her. “It really is,” I add, because she looks as though she doesn’t believe me. “Anyway, they’re probably not the kind of holidays you’re picturing.”

  “Oh,” she says, like a question. Oh?

  “They go to cities, mostly. They like boutique hotels and shopping and art galleries and opera.” I add, shaking my head, “Boutique hotels . . .not my thing,” because if you’ve seen one of them, you’ve seen them all and because I’d rather be lying in our garden reading a book.

  “So who looks after you?”

  “Gabriela, our housekeeper.”

  Her face wears a confused expression. Clearly I’m not her regular fruitcake. “It’s cool. Actually, when my parents are away, I like it a lot.”

  That bit’s actually true, because I can wear shorts and the cheap clothes my mother doesn’t know I have; because when they heave suitcases in the car their demands and expectations go with them.

  She pauses, then looks at me again, quizzically. That’s when I know she’s sensed she’s missing something.

  “It sounds good.” She says it quietly, then puts her pen down. “Shall we leave it there? For now?”

  I look at my watch, then sit there, nonplussed, as she gets up, because we’ve got another ten minutes. Is she a cheapskate, or is this a new therapist thing I haven’t seen before?

  She notices my hesitation. Pauses. “Or was there something you wanted to talk about, before you go?”

  I shake my head. It’s one of the rules. I have to remember that. You give them what they’re expecting. Enough, that’s all. No more.

  On the way home, my mother plays Madame Butterfly turned up over the sound of the air con.

  “How did you get on?” she shouts.

  I reach forward to turn the volume down, just in case for once she actually listens.

  “Okay.”

  “Good,” says my mother. “We’ll tell your father it went well. And I’ll ask Gabriela to make another appointment . . .”

  She turns the music up even louder, so that her voice is lost. Music’s good for that. Gives her somewhere to hide.

  “. . . for next week.” Shouting again. “Abigail told me she’s supposed to be good.”

  I don’t know what good’s supposed to mean, but she’s okay. Different from the others. She really listens, to more than just my words.

  I turn my eyes away, thinking of Toby, with his thick, tufted hair. He throws things and yells a lot, so my mother says. Mostly at Abigail. Poor Abigail. She says that a lot, too, because she only ev
er talks to Abigail. Not poor Toby. But not everyone can do that. Imagine being other people.

  As we leave the motorway, I lean my head against the window, gazing through the trees at the iron-clad sky. I’m not sure what I’m feeling, or if I’m feeling anything at all. Then the trees clear and there are fields, fading into the distance until you can’t tell where they end and the clouds begin.

  “What is all this stuff?” she shouts. “You’d think they’d spray it. Don’t open the windows. I don’t want it all over the car.”

  I watch the stuff she’s talking about, the tiny, weightless willow seeds that float until they settle on the ground like beautiful, ethereal snowdrifts from another place. But in her orderly, designer world there is no room for such things.

  I lean my head against the window, blocking out her voice and the music and the cold air whooshing in my face, thinking how there’s so much I can never tell her, looking at the sky, which is heavy, muggy grey.

  Waiting for the rain.

  6

  2016

  My thoughts are interrupted by a familiar voice.

  “Noah? Hello? You’re in there, aren’t you?”

  Clara lives next door, a close friend of my late aunt. I’ve become used to her coming and going, once I got over the way she’d let herself in when it suited her and the way I’d turn round to find her standing there, just behind me, and then I’d be forced to listen while she regaled me with some screwy observation she’d made.

  * * *

  The first time it happened, I don’t know how long she’d been watching me. Lost in my work, I hadn’t noticed her until she spoke.

  “So you’re Noah. . . .”

  Startled, I’d glanced up to see a woman standing there, with long, greying hair and sharp eyes that looked me up and down.

  “So you’ve come to put Delilah’s things in order then?” She’d broke off, scrutinizing me, as I felt myself shrink under her gaze.

  “I suppose.” I’d frowned. I hadn’t really thought about things being put in order. “She left me the cottage. I thought I’d stay. Well, for now, at least.”