The Exclusives

by Rebecca Thornton

  ‘No worries.’ He still looks concerned. ‘Your flight leaves in five hours. Sorry, I couldn’t get one earlier. Here, your passport and there’s two hundred dinars in there too.’ He hands me the wallet.

  ‘Thank you again.’ I wish I could start crying like a normal person but, instead, I feel totally disconnected. All I can think about is whether the plane will be cold and if I should change into my trainers. And then I realise, if I’m going back to London, I might very well bump into Freya. The thought brings me back into myself. Terrifies me. I clamp my mouth shut to try to stop the shivering. And then I wonder what kind of person I am to be thinking about Freya at a time like this.

  ‘Right,’ I say, forcing myself to speak. ‘I’ll email you when I’m in London. Could you let me know how the next few days go? And you and Mia can be in charge of things. I’ll tell the big bosses. Mark’s kind, he’ll be fine with it, as long as he knows you guys are on it. If you just give me a brief rundown of what’s gone on during the day, I’ll write back with instructions.’

  ‘Listen, don’t worry. We’ve already done the timetable rota for the next three weeks at our last meeting so we’re all up to speed. Just go, have a quick shower and I’ll meet you in fifteen minutes outside your room and we’ll get a cab.’

  ‘We?’

  ‘Yes. I’m coming with you to the airport.’ I’m both annoyed that he thinks I’m incapable of getting there myself and secretly pleased he’s making an effort.

  ‘Thank you,’ I say softly, ‘I appreciate it.’

  1996. THE MORNING AFTER . . .

  I haven’t slept properly. Floated in and out of dreams, flashes of the club. Despite my vows to stay off them, the drugs are still in effect – I didn’t take much so I could stay in control, but they must have been strong, or maybe I was a lot drunker than I thought. I can feel my heartbeat somewhere near the base of my throat, echoing up to my brain.

  When I open my eyes, something doesn’t feel quite right, even though Freya seems to be sleeping soundly on the bed. It’s not just the comedown. It’s a feeling of dread and change. I’m untethered, my spirit floating aimlessly somewhere in the universe with my twitching, restless body left behind. I remember snatches of what was only a few hours ago, and I start to shiver. Normality, I think. That’s what I need, so I go to the kitchen and pull on my school jumper, which is hanging up next to my coat in the hall. My Head Girl badge catches in my ponytail and my hair elastic snaps undone. I curse and then I feel the huge lump on the back of my head. It stings and, as I gingerly touch it, I can feel crusted blood. Where did that come from? I touch it some more and, when I pull away my fingers, they are warm and red. I feel the rest of my head and then look down my arms, legs and feet. My breath keeps catching but an inner voice tells me to pull myself together. What is a Head Girl meant to do in this situation? I ask myself. I am Head Girl and so I’ve got to take control.

  I set about cleaning every single surface I can find: the insides of cupboards, the fridge, the oven, shelves. The kitchen is already clean – Amy keeps a tight ship – but there is something gratifying about the mechanical nature of my movements. Whenever I stop, I get weird little lights creeping into my mind. Are they real? I try to bat them out of the way but it doesn’t work. I clean some more and as I buff the surfaces over and over, urging my mind into repression, I begin to think of Freya: Freya who is always so open, who always says what she thinks, an open book in every way, unable to conceal her feelings. My mind tries to draw back to the memories of the previous night but nothing specific surfaces. Just a lurch in my stomach and an impending fear that something awful has happened. If Freya remembers, though, she will tell, I think. Freya will tell. The drugs, the booze. She will let it all out.

  At first, it’s a thought that doesn’t gather weight but then I think about the school finding out. And Father, Mother, Rollo, Leon. My mind leads on to the consequences of this happening. We would no doubt be expelled. No Head Girl badge, no university, no future, no nothing. And even worse, if all of that happens, if I lose the perfect facade I’ve created, then I’ll have lost everything and I have an image of me, years down the line, just like Mother – she had been the perfect wife before it all fell apart; the look of absolute terror at the things she’s seen, heard, the cocktail of medicines and then the slump of her eyes as the drugs blend with her soul – and I know now that my mission, my overriding mission, on top of school, on top of the scholarship, on top of everything else, is to get Freya to keep her mouth shut, so that everything can be as it was: she a Prefect and me on track to get to Oxford.

  The kitchen looks perfect now. I go over the surfaces once more with a new, yellow dishcloth I find under the sink. If everything is perfect, glistening, clean, nothing else can go wrong. This is the true face of the world.

  But it’s another hour before Freya comes down. Hair brushed, she’s wearing one of Mother’s grey cardigans, which stops just above her knees. It’s covered in burrs and, more strangely, what looks like white party popper string. She’s put on mascara, concealer and blusher although it’s not enough to hide the light grazes that scatter her cheek and chin. Her nose is rimmed with a bloody crust. Her legs are shaking and she’s hunched over. She looks so frail. Her neck is still filthy, streaked black all over. She sees me looking and opens her arms, waiting for her to take me into them.

  ‘You look nice. I’m cooking breakfast for us, though technically it’s not exactly morning but still a first meal is a first meal,’ I say, not moving from the hobs. I am serene; even when bacon fat spits on my cheek.

  ‘J?’ she says uncertainly. Her eyes are tearing up.

  ‘OK so let’s eat. How many eggs?’ I cook and serve without waiting for a response. The white gelatinous wobble on my plate is making me feel a bit sick but I force it down anyway, in great lumps. Freya is still standing in the same position, watching me eat.

  ‘Last night,’ I say as the silence hangs thick between us. ‘What happened at the club . . . Just try and forget about it, OK?’ I’m shaking the ketchup bottle and nothing’s coming out. I feel like smashing it on the floor, lying on the broken glass. Instead, I calmly poke my knife down the bottle-neck. The sauce trickles out, along with a drop of blood that slides its way down from my neck to my arm. I catch Freya watching and quickly wipe it away.

  ‘Josephine.’ She’s talking but her teeth are chattering and I can’t make out what she’s saying. The dirt on her neck makes her look like a tramp and her hair needs a wash.

  ‘No buts . . . Just try and forget about it.’ The sauce relents, splurging all over my plate. ‘Remember, I’m Head Girl, you are a Prefect. We are both taking our Oxbridge entries soon and we’ve got to get on with things.’ I’m sure this will work. I know how important Oxford is to Freya. It’s an obsession of hers – in living memory of her mother, who also went there. But then she sinks onto her knees, holding her hands up in what looks like prayer. ‘Please,’ she says. ‘Please.’ She curls herself up on the floor so I can’t see her face and lies there whilst I calmly eat my food. At least Amy and Father are not due to return soon, I think.

  ‘Like Mrs Allen always says –’ I watch her, trying to work out if she’s even breathing ‘– I know it might be tricky but just, “onwards and upwards”. So carry on as if nothing happened, alright? If they find out what we were up to, what we were doing, it’ll be an instant expulsion. I don’t know about you but . . . I only did half a pill. And what the fuck was in it anyway?’ For a moment I feel my composure slipping. Rein it back, Josephine, keep it together. I take a breath and continue, ‘It’s not worth the mess we’d get into.’

  ‘But it wasn’t . . .’ She lifts her head, then goes silent, gazing off into a distance far beyond the walls of my kitchen.

  ‘Stop thinking about it,’ I order.

  ‘But . . . J, I’ve got to tell you . . .’

  ‘Just don’t . . . I don’t want to hear another word. Do you hear me?’

>   She rests her head back down and neither of us speak. The ‘mornings-after-the-night-before’ are usually spent dissecting every detail of our night out. Flirtations (who had the hottest guy after them), the music (was it too heavy?), the people (did we bump into the usual crew?). They’re normally washed down with Diet Coke and laughter but this time we are quiet, absorbed in the excruciating treadmill of our own thoughts.

  ‘But . . .’ Freya turns her head up and looks at me, desperate, and her legs are making little jerky movements, although the rest of her is still. I tell myself it’s the after-effects of all the drinking and the pills, nothing else.

  ‘No buts. Are you seriously telling me you want to destroy all of our successes so far? Everything that we’ve worked for? We can’t let it all go down the drain. For what? For one night? One night, Freya? Years of hard work? And you were the one that pushed me into it. Remember? I said I wasn’t going to take anything. And if anyone finds out about the pills . . . So, please, just stop bloody thinking about it.’ I’m talking, yet barely aware of what I’m saying. My mind keeps pulling back to the glare of those eyes.

  ‘Think of our school motto. Remember? Per Asperrimus ad Parnassum.’ I realise I sound like Verity but it’s too late. Freya sobs and tears spill out of her eyes at the same time and her legs start stiffening and jerking again and she’s crying. I slowly close and reopen my eyes as if she’s a difficult toddler throwing a fit in a supermarket aisle. ‘Come on,’ I say.

  Per Asperrimus ad Parnassum. Through great difficulties to the heights of success. Head Girl. I’m Head Girl now and I have a responsibility to lead and guide. Make things right. Head Girl. My duty to show courage and be of great, great success.

  Boom. Doof. Boom. Doof.

  I push the noise of the club out of my head, but it comes back again, louder and more insistent. I let it stay there for a bit and then pick up our plates and take them to the bin. My head feels like it’s being smashed from one wall to another. Drink. The half a pill. And then I remember the lump on my head. I try to change tack. I put the plates and cutlery in the huge silver dishwasher, and walk over to where she’s lying. ‘It’s OK.’ I lie down beside her and smooth her hair. It feels stiff and then I see bits of dirt and other things nestling between the strands. ‘It’s OK. Look, don’t worry. It’s OK.’ Freya looks up at me, hand resting on her stomach. She’s stopped crying.

  ‘Really? Do you really think so? I mean . . .’ Freya’s eyes search mine but I can’t tell if she’s engaging with me.

  ‘Yes of course, of course.’ I don’t know how I’m managing to sound so calm, when my head is feeling the way it is. ‘It’s all going to be OK,’ I say.

  She gets up. ‘So that means we can tell someone? I don’t think I can go on if we don’t. I can’t. I just can’t.’

  I bite down on the inside of my cheek to stop myself screaming at her. I’m finding it difficult to keep my patience.

  ‘No, no, Frey. We can’t tell anyone. Just trust me on this one. We can’t. We’d probably be sent to rehab of some kind.’

  Her eyes finally focus, and she looks like she’s listening. ‘Really?’ she says, disbelieving.

  ‘Yes. Really. So remember. Nothing.’

  She is silent, thoughtful and I think finally this is starting to sink in. I feel a bubble of relief.

  ‘OK,’ she says. Come on, Freya. Stick with me on this one. But she starts up again. ‘What about . . . I mean . . . what if? Last night? Surely we need to . . .’ She’s digging around in one of the kitchen drawers, where we keep all of our phone books. She throws a Yellow Pages onto the counter and starts flicking through it. ‘Here,’ she says. Her finger can’t meet the page but I’m looking at her, willing her to stop.

  ‘It’s fine.’ I grab the book and put it back in the drawer. ‘I don’t know what you are thinking. But it’s fine. Honestly. Alright?’

  ‘But . . . I need your help. Will you? I mean . . . practical things too.’ I have no idea what she’s talking about and then she’s pointing to something in her pocket and I can’t see exactly what it is but I think I know what she’s getting at, and I wonder how I could be so stupid as not to have thought about that myself. And so I tell her to stay where she is. I go upstairs, remembering something I saw in Amy’s room and I explain how it’s going to work and Freya says are you sure that’s the right thing to do and I say yes of course and she says thank you. She seems to accept what I’ve said and, when I think she’s finally pulling it together, her face crumples and she starts to plead with me again if we can talk to someone, even tell her father. ‘Anyone, just anyone,’ she is saying, her voice desperate and I want to slap her because she’s talking absolute gibberish now and I can’t really make anything out so I stand up and clap my hands instead of stinging them on her tear-stained cheek.

  ‘Right,’ I say brightly, ‘I know what will make us feel better. Shall we watch The Sound of Music?’ It’s one of our favourite morning-after films. We always end up singing and talking about Nazi rule, then singing again. Freya dresses up sometimes, white handkerchief pulled tight around her head like a bonnet.

  ‘Adieu, adieu to ye and ye and ye,’ she usually sings. This time, however, we both sit in front of the whirring video, too tired to blink. Freya’s pulling a thread from Mother’s jumper, winding it through her fingers.

  ‘So what do you think about the scholarship?’ Freya asks, as Julie Andrews is breaking out into another song. She sounds nearly normal, if a little flat, and for the first time I am relieved she is bringing up something ordinary, even if the notion of conversation right now is excruciating.

  ‘What about it?’

  ‘Who else do you think they’re going to put forward?’

  ‘Dunno.’

  ‘Melody Swaffham? What if you don’t get put forward?’ I laugh but my stomach’s niggling. It’s nothing too obvious, like someone is gently flicking it from the inside, just the after-effect of the drugs, I suppose. And then, thoughts start ricocheting around my head, pinballing their way through the flailing network of post-night-out brain cells. No scholarship, no automatic entry to Oxford. What if I don’t get the scholarship and then don’t get into Oxford either? The flicking starts pulsating, growing, until it feels like someone is grabbing my insides and shifting them around. Mother’s face keeps appearing. Snarly and misshapen.

  ‘What about you?’ I force myself to say.

  ‘What about me?’ And then she loses it. The tears. She’s shaking so violently I think she’s fitting.

  ‘Come on, Freya. For goodness sake! Seriously. It’s OK.’ I don’t know, though, if it is, and I catch myself wondering if it might have been better if, last night, both of us had died. But we didn’t. And so . . . ‘It’s your fault, you got all those pills in. Who would believe us anyway?’ I say, hoping this will pull her together and shut her up once and for all. She leaves the sofa and I make a half-attempt at shouting after her. Five minutes later she comes back with a coat she’s borrowed from my room.

  ‘May I?’ She starts to put it on. It’s an old grey duffel that Father bought me from Switzerland. She keeps getting her arm stuck in the wrong sleeve. Over and over. I grab it from her and drape it around her shoulders.

  ‘Here. Let me do it.’ She’s putting on a pair of her old Converse trainers that she left at my house the last time we went out. She leaves the laces undone, stuffing them under the tongue.

  ‘I don’t want to wear those boots,’ she says. ‘The ones I was wearing last night. I’m taking them. I’ll shove them in a skip somewhere. And the skirt. I’ve thrown it away.’

  The thought of her staying is too suffocating, I’d like nothing better than to just be on my own but the pragmatist in me is terrified that if she leaves in this state, she’ll go and tell Rollo. So I use my last card.

  ‘Freya, listen, don’t go quite yet.’ She turns her head, going to the gilt-edged mirror on the other side of the room. She’s looking at her neck.
r />   ‘Look at me.’ She turns and stares. Blank eyes.

  ‘Your mother. You have to stay silent for your mother. Alright? She’s looking out for you, wherever she is.’ Her eyes start flickering. Burning right through me and, for a minute, I wonder if she’s going to hit me.

  ‘Freya, your mother loved you so much. She’ll make sure you can deal with this, wherever she is now. But if you tell anyone, if you tell a soul, seriously – one soul – then you won’t get into Oxford. Do you get that? You won’t be able to make her proud. You won’t be able to make your dad proud. He needs this, Freya. He needs this just as much as you do. He needs to be able to tell himself he did a good job on you and Leon, without her being there. He loves you so much too, Freya. He loves you. Don’t let him down. Don’t let your mother down. So do you promise? You promise not to say anything?’

  She regards me carefully for a moment, through narrowed eyes, and I realise I am holding my breath.

  ‘My mother. You’re right.’

  I breathe out and she’s looking skywards now. ‘Mother. I’ve got to make her proud, don’t I? Get into Oxford. That’s what she would have wanted for me. More than absolutely anything in the entire world.’ She bends down as though she’s trying to catch her breath, and comes up again.

  ‘Yes. More than anything in the world,’ I echo. ‘She wanted you to follow in her footsteps. Be brave like her. She would want to look at you now and say you have had the best opportunity you could have had. Lived the best life you could. Make her proud.’

  The window’s open and a breeze brings in a sweet smell of flowers. Freya seems to take this as a sign. Robotically she says, ‘I’ve got to make her proud. Of course. No, I won’t say anything. I promise you. But you’ll help me get through this, though, won’t you? We’ll help each other?’ I give her a small nod and a smile and I’m hoping to God she can’t see through me but it’s too late. She takes a step backwards and the trust evaporates.

  ‘Bye then,’ I say lightly, ‘see you at school tomorrow.’ The space between us unfurls as she waits for me to break the silence. I don’t. I want to leave it on a striking note, so that she thinks about her mother and what it would mean if she told anyone. She moves her hand, slowly, from the doorknob and turns towards the stairs. A moment later I can still hear her feet, whispering on the carpet. I go back into the room and turn up the volume on the television.