How to Play Dead

by Jacqueline Ward

  I can feel the weight of the threat, the pain of hair bursting from my scalp. The cold, cold water as my head is pushed under. My lips pressing together to keep the icy water out and being too scared to utter a single word about this. I shake my head. I shake out any thought of ever letting go of my secret, because if any time would have been right, it would have been now. But I can’t. I am Sheila, too horrified to admit what her husband has done. I am Sally, running as fast as she can and chancing her life before she reports Jim’s violence. I am every woman who has passed through SafeMe. I only told a tiny fraction of the story back then, keeping the bigger part inside because it’s too much for another person to bear. So, even now, I don’t tell her any of it.

  ‘I went with him because I believed in love. That kind of love where someone cares about you, has your best interests at heart. Understands what you want and helps you to get it. You know?’

  She looks puzzled. Of course she doesn’t know. She’s been tiptoeing around Dad, making him pies in her flowery apron as she looked out at the possibility of the Manchester horizon. The city laid bare before her, a city she could never explore or even know because Dad might want a cup of tea. We sip our coffee and suddenly it’s as if the preceding conversation hasn’t happened. But I need to seal it.

  ‘So if anyone asks, that’s what happened. Right? It was nothing to do with me. She left with him. He made her. Like I said back then. No one believed me and in the end I didn’t believe it myself. I was fifteen, Mum. Remember? And he was fucking twenty-five. I was very different then. Soft. Quiet. But now I know the score and while I was happy enough to try to forget about everything that happened to me, if it comes up again I’ll be telling the truth. About everything.’ I can already see her considering how this will affect Dad, and consequently her, and not me. My temper rises again. ‘I don’t blame you. Or Dad. I blame the person who was responsible for this. Bloody hell. I thought this was gone.’

  She nods.

  ‘Yes. I expect you did.’

  I lean forward.

  ‘It had nothing to do with me. We were kids.’

  She looks directly at me and I see her fear. I see it in her eyes. Does she know what happened? I tried to tell her at the time but in the end I just left.

  ‘I know. But I can only speak for myself. Let’s hope your dad and Dougie Peters see it that way, though.’

  Dougie Peters. I shudder with the sudden memory. He always blamed me for what happened. That day I went round, after she had left, he was weird. He called the police when there was no need. She left. I tried to tell them all what happened, but they wouldn’t listen. So I left too. That’s when I met Danny.

  I knew where she had gone because she told me. I tried to tell them. And when I tried to tell them something had happened to me it was worse. But this was so long ago, and although it all had a huge effect on me, I erased it with Danny then the kids. Now, though, I picture Dougie and his dogged determination that Alice was dead. His eyes fixed on me. Watching me as I walked up and down the road to school.

  I summon Jennifer and Simon and we all settle down to a sandwich. Normality reigns on the outside, but on the inside I am in turmoil. Why are the police up there? I am sweating and trembling and Jennifer is telling Mum about how Danny is buying us a house and how Mummy is Superwoman. Simon is watching and laughing in his quiet way and, out of everyone, he would suffer most. He is sensitive and intelligent and so like Danny that it hurts.

  The afternoon is nearly over and the kids run off again to play. Mum picks at a jam and cream scone and leans in, towards me.

  ‘I know you resent me. And I wish some things had turned out differently, but I’ve done my best. I’ve always kept up contact with the children and tried with you.’

  I think about Sheila and how she would have loved a daughter, not simply endured one, and I wonder if, deep down, my mum has ever allowed herself to feel love. We’re all doing our best and the struggle is real.

  ‘Yeah, well, I have done the right thing. I might not be smart and pretty like you wanted, or have a good job or a husband you approve of, but at least I have integrity.’

  We leave her at the door of the cafe. Jennifer and Simon hug her and kiss her and there are lots of ‘see you next weeks’, which throws more doubt into my mind as she stands stiffly in the doorway, hardly responding to my hug.

  I sense her watching us as we skip away, me instinctively bending to kiss Jennifer, Simon holding my hand even though he is almost grown. But when I look around she is gone. I told her part of the truth. The part of the truth that I told her back then in my awkward, petulant teenage stroppy tones, which she dismissed as hormonal or inventive or daydreaming.

  I don’t blame her. I don’t blame Dad. Not for that, anyway. Yes, they should have stopped it. They should have objected to an older boy (read: man) taking out a child in a car to who knows where. But they didn’t and what happened happened and I moved on.

  Incredibly, I find myself sitting on a bus with my children going over the ground I played on as a child in my head. Where the police would be, what they might find. It was nothing to do with me. Not directly. I imagine the police reopening the case and knocking on my door, questioning me again about Alice. I can’t even remember what I told them back then. But I know I can never tell them about him raping me. I just can’t. I am almost at breaking point. Pressure piled on pressure. It swirls around in my head until Simon nudges me.

  ‘Mum, it’s our stop.’

  I ring the bell quickly and we hurry off the bus and down the road towards our flat. Once inside, I text Danny.

  I love you, Dan x

  He responds almost immediately.

  Everything OK?x

  I stand in the messy hallway with my phone in my hands, staring at it. This all looks so normal. A tangle of coats and trainers, a scooter and two footballs. A pile of books behind the door that I had dropped there months ago and never moved, along with winter wellies that would live there all summer, just in case of a rainy day. Danny’s love of hats evident on the coat hooks, my love of scarves wrapped around the wrought-iron hooks. Kids’ school bags, gym pumps and football boots. A huge wired heart of white fake roses, hung about the door but slightly offset with the constant slamming in and out. The detritus of family life. Yet nothing is normal. Not any more. It’s all skewed, the colours distorted by the terrible anxiety I feel as this situation deepens. Eventually I type.

  Absolutely fine x

  He sends a smiley back and I stand there, hands in pockets, chilled to the bone, and realise that my stalker doesn’t even need to email me or text me now.

  Tanya

  Diary Entry: Saturday

  He has been gone for one day. My face has swollen badly and I think something might be broken. Add this to my other injuries and I am in a pretty bad way. But my body will heal. I am not sure that my mind will after what he has done.

  I can’t stop thinking about what he said about Ria. He made me think my best friend had betrayed me. She tried to tell me. She warned me about him. I can hear her voice now. He’s too old for you, Alice. Lovely, kind Ria. All those years we were together, from junior school to secondary school. Sleepovers at weekends. Plaiting each other’s hair. Borrowing each other’s clothes. Running through the heather on the moor, arms outstretched.

  I was sure she liked him. I saw her looking at him. Or did I just conjure it up in my stupid teenage imagination? Was I jealous and territorial? He raped my friend. And it was my fault.

  I’d abandoned her to be with him. I was obsessed, mesmerised. In love, I thought. He pushed me into sex, telling me that everyone was doing it. I liked it. Then. I liked everything about our relationship. He was attentive, always around, all over me. His arm around me as he picked me up and dropped me off. Ria watched and waited. She came round to my house when he wasn’t there but I was too busy getting ready or doing my hair. She eventually gave up and I wanted her to. I wanted rid of her. I just wanted to be with him.

&nbs
p; But then she was back. I don’t know what happened — at the time I assumed it was to poach my man — but she was around me, warning me, her eyes flashing. Ria was brave. I knew it really and I loved her for it. But I loved Alan more. Or what I thought was love. I can see now that it was a childish infatuation coupled with him making me into a princess. His princess.

  I suppose I was a bit jealous of her. Jealous of her normal life. Her mum and dad. She was pretty and smart and level-headed. Attractive. I did not want anyone attractive around Alan. I wanted him all to myself. And that is what I got.

  I spent today sleeping. It’s all been a shock. My life has collapsed in on itself. Nothing I thought was real is true. I agreed to leave because getting Alan away from Ria was my ultimate goal. He made me think that he had chosen me. That I was special. That he wanted to spend the rest of his life with me. It was all a lie.

  He is completely evil. I thought it was me. I thought that I was lacking in some way. That I was annoying and irritating. I stupidly thought that he had made a bad choice, picked the loser, and, in my weakest moments, that he was noble for putting up with me. But I was the fool. I put a teenage crush before a lifelong friendship.

  I am writing this in the lounge, lying on the sofa. The house is perpetually dark now and I am relying on the clock on the lounge wall to tell me if it is day or night. During the day I have to put on the stark white light until bedtime. There is no in between. I cannot turn on the heating as he has the code for boiler timer. There is enough food in the cupboards to last until he gets back from the conference. On Monday. I have time to make a plan.

  Earlier I poured myself a huge bowl of cornflakes and milk — with sugar — and ate it on the sofa. This is banned. But I don’t care. I don’t care if he walks back in right now because I have had it. I’m done with it all now. I am going to do what I want to and take the consequences. He might kill me. He might hurt me. But I am going to take my chances. And when I get back to work I am going to walk away at lunchtime and never come back.

  Chapter Twenty

  Day 10

  I wake up thinking about how working at SafeMe has brought me into contact with a wide range of women. I am learning all the time. But one thing I see every day is what I saw in Sally: the well-practised ability to hold it down in the most difficult and dangerous situations. For their kids, for their jobs, for their parents, friends, always, always, always for someone else.

  It was almost as if they rose out of their bodies and monitored every expression, every tick and movement for fear it would give away what was really happening to them. Sheila, brassing it out, cigarette in hand, a hard look on her face. Karen Green, a capable mum of three, who wore leggings and long sleeves all summer long to hide the cigarette burn scars from her children and, at the start, from us. Paula Bell, who sat silently, staring ahead, because every time she had looked away her husband had accused her of looking at other men and had beaten her for it.

  I already know the truth: that it was easier for them to get through if they showed no sign of there being the slightest thing wrong. They become Oscar-standard actors, playing the role of normal people, when really they were deeply traumatised and, in some cases, badly injured. But, like Sally, they would crumble, usually when their kids were elsewhere, and we would find out the extent of what had happened to them. Paula once put it in a nutshell: it’s the only way I can stay alive. To play dead. If I start to cry, I will never stop.

  I thought I understood this. I thought my teenage experiences had positioned me perfectly to understand these women. Yet I had never fully experienced it myself: a whole other life of fear going on inside me whilst, on the surface, I maintained an oasis of calm. Sure, I’d kept stuff to myself. Buried it deep, sealed it in. I thought that was enough experience to know what it is like to live, day in, day out, under disproportionate pressure. But I had escaped. I had got out.

  Now I am back in and, this Sunday morning, as I get dressed, Danny texts me about how this is day ten, yes, just ten days left until we can have a full bank account and start house-hunting. I push it to the back of my mind like I have so many things, until my eyes are focused on Donelle. She tells me that this guy did ring after all and it was all a big mistake. That he’s only pissed off because she is away so much. She’s going to take part-time hours and that, yes, he is right. And I am constantly smiling. I am somehow externally monitoring myself for any tiny sign I might give away.

  We sit down for breakfast and I smile as I set the table. Donelle pours coffee and the kids play on their tablets on the sofa.

  ‘So how did it go yesterday with your mum?’

  I pour and smile.

  ‘Yep. She was the same. Had coffee with her. Bit more uptight but—’

  Jennifer interrupts without taking her eyes from the screen.

  ‘Mummy shouted at Grandma.’

  She says it in a baby voice and I glare at her. Donelle sees it and I revert to my fixed smile.

  ‘Oh, did she? What’s that about, Ria?’

  I laugh. ‘Oh, you know what she’s like!’

  It’s all a bit too bright and breezy and she frowns.

  ‘Come on. Shouting in a cafe? Bloody hell. This isn’t like you, Ri. Are you OK? What did she do?’

  Jennifer parrots her, again without looking up.

  ‘Bloody hell.’

  I see Simon redden and hold it down. Donelle looks to me for guidance and when I carry on sipping, she tuts and steps up.

  ‘Jenni. What’ve I told you? No swearing.’

  She sulks.

  ‘Mummy said a bad word. Mummy said “fucking” to Grandma.’

  Donelle stares at me, eyebrows raised. I am calm. On the outside. Controlled.

  ‘Jennifer. What’s got into you? What would Grandma Vi say? Go to your room until you can behave. I’ve explained before that Mummy and Grandma sometimes have a little argument. We’re adults. Adults sometimes say naughty words. I’m sorry for shouting and swearing. Grandma was just a little bit annoyed.’

  It comes out like I am reading a shopping list and Donelle intervenes.

  ‘Right, kids, go and wash your hands before big breakfast. Go on.’

  They hurry into the bathroom and she listens for the tap to run. When it does, she puts her arms around me.

  ‘Ri, Ri, Ri. What’s up? And don’t say nothing. Is it the guy that’s pestering you? Have work dealt with it?’

  I don’t say anything but she has already made the assumption that someone else will deal with this. I pull my hair back and tie it up, and she pulls me close. I want to tell her but how can I explain it now?

  ‘It’s all got on top of me. Work and you know …’

  She kisses my forehead.

  ‘Danny being away? It’s only for another week and a bit. I can put Ian off, go to me mam’s with you and the kids. Oh yeah. And that flat I went for. I knew there’d be a fucking catch.’

  I smile at her.

  ‘Aunty Donelle said a naughty word.’

  She laughs and we listen for the kids.

  ‘Massive service charge. But …’ She looks down at her shoes. ‘Ian says move in with him.’

  I look at her. She’s searching my face for … what? Approval? Agreement? Permission? When Danny and I knew the time was right, wild horses wouldn’t have stopped us shacking up together.

  ‘Is that what you want, Donelle?’

  I’m glad she’s gone off the subject of me, though. It releases a bit of the tension.

  ‘Yeah. I think so. It’s just that he seems a bit … possessive? I don’t know. Wanting to know where I am and all that. I’m not used to it. But it might just be me.’

  Alarm bells. Blaming herself.

  ‘Don’t move in unless you are sure, love; if he’s worth it he’ll wait.’

  She hugs me tight.

  ‘Aw, Ria, just talking to you helps. Thanks.’

  Two hours and one big breakfast later, we are sitting in Vi’s kitchen. Danny Snr is getting his backgammon s
et out in the lounge and Simon is waiting eagerly. Jennifer is colouring in and Vi is peeling potatoes. Danny Snr shouts through to the kitchen.

  ‘No Donelle? Where is she?’

  I laugh. Vi wipes her hands on her apron.

  ‘Working. She wants to move out. Got a new man.’

  I smile widely.

  ‘What’s he like? Have you met him? Dad approve, does he?’

  Danny Snr repeatedly proclaims loudly that no one is good enough for Donelle. Vi laughs.

  ‘Only glimpsed him. Outside, picking her up. Took her to a fancy restaurant. All dressed up, she was. Seems nice. Works at the council. Good job. Own house.’

  She pulls a satisfied face and I laugh.

  ‘Own house, eh? That’ll be us soon.’

  I see her stir the gravy faster, her annoyance showing on her face.

  ‘You could have it now. If you took the money. Danny wouldn’t need to stay away all hours. Leaving you alone.’

  I interrupt. I dare not even hint at the debt we have racked up. Vi and Danny Snr don’t even have a credit card.

  ‘It’s OK, Vi. I’m fine. It’s only for ten more days, then he’s done. I did ask him. He won’t take it. Keep it for the kids. And Donelle’s kids.’

  Vi makes a harrumph sound.

  ‘She won’t have kids …’ And suddenly something else gets my attention as she talks about Donelle and children and how she and Danny Snr got their money. I see, out of the corner of my eye, a picture of some moorland on the TV on the kitchen counter. I sidestep to get a little closer so I can hear it. Danny Snr is engaged in a heated argument with Simon about backgammon so I listen harder, watching the screen flick to Dougie talking.

  ‘… and then there were the accusations against me, which, I can say with full confidence, were completely false …’