Watching Edie

by Camilla Way

  We’re still laughing as we leave the shop. When the alarms go off, the sudden, shrill racket makes us both stop guiltily and look around us in confusion. It’s only when the security guard bears down on us and puts his hand on my shoulder that the cold horror hits me. As other shoppers stop and stare he takes my bag and begins searching through it. Waves of fear wash over me, my mouth filling with water as though I’m about to be sick. When he eventually, triumphantly, pulls out Edie’s blue dress I watch as the realization dawns on her face. Her jaw drops. ‘Oh, Heather, you didn’t.’ She shuts her eyes. ‘Christ. You bloody idiot!’

  We’re taken to a small room at the back of the shop, where we wait in silence until a man with a badge that says ‘Keith Liddle, Manager’ comes in, followed by the girl who’d collected our clothes in the changing room before. I feel myself begin to shake. He’s short and bald with pockmarked skin and he draws himself up and thrusts his face forward until it’s an inch from mine. ‘You make a habit of taking things that don’t belong to you?’ he asks, then glances back at the assistant, who smirks and twirls her hair. Tears fill my eyes. I look at my feet and shake my head. ‘Oi!’ he bellows. ‘I’m talking to you!’ and I jump and begin to cry. I’m too scared to meet his gaze so instead I focus on a faint brown stain on his pink tie. I can smell cheese-and-onion crisps on his breath. He folds his arms. ‘Let’s see what the police have to say about it, shall we?’

  ‘Stop your mithering and get on with it then,’ Edie mutters.

  He eyes her with a level of dislike that I sense is somehow connected to how pretty she is, and how short and bald he is. ‘You won’t be so lippy when your mate ends up in prison, will you?’ he says to her nastily.

  Edie rolls her eyes. ‘She’s sixteen. She’s not going to prison for nicking a crappy fucking dress. Heather, stop crying, for God’s sake. You’re not going to prison.’

  The following hour has the sickening unreality of a nightmare. I hadn’t thought I could be more frightened than I already was, but when the two policemen turn up, tall and brutal in their dark uniforms and with their hard, unforgiving stares, I feel my panic deepen. They lead us back out through the mall, amidst the watching crowds, to a door marked ‘Security’ next to the car park lifts. Even Edie is silent now, her mouth set grimly as we’re shown into a low-lit office with a bank of TV screens on the wall. We’re left on our own in the corner while the police are joined by Keith and the security guard, and together they watch the screens. Through a gap between their heads I see grainy black-and-white film showing the shop we’d just left, the footage spooling rapidly between different angles and perspectives, while the men confer between themselves.

  I’m barely listening, my mind too full of panic to grasp what they’re saying, and when I hear the words ‘black spot’ I can’t take it in until Edie nudges me in the ribs and whispers, ‘Did you hear that? It means they didn’t film it, they haven’t got you on tape,’ and she smiles triumphantly.

  A desperate hope begins to swell within me until the manager turns and snaps, ‘We still found the dress in your bag though, didn’t we, so don’t get too cocky.’

  And through it all, the knowledge that we are coming closer and closer to the thing I dread most of all: the moment when my mother finds out what I’ve done. Soon it’s the only thing I can think of, and I feel almost that I would prefer to go to prison than have to face her. By the time one of the policemen asks me to write down my address and phone number, I’m shaking so much it’s all I can do to hold the pen. I listen in a sort of daze as he picks up the phone and dials the number. ‘Mrs Wilcox?’ he says, and the world seems to stop.

  Edie touches my hand. ‘Are you OK?’ But I don’t answer, just listen to the flatly authoritative voice explaining to my mother what I’ve done. I imagine her on the other end of the line, the disgust on her face. At last he puts the phone down and, glancing at his colleague, says, ‘On her way.’

  The manager, one of the policemen and the security guard have all left again before, forty endless minutes later, she arrives. In the seconds before she looks at me, I have the peculiar sensation of seeing her through a stranger’s eyes and I’m shocked at how ordinary she looks, like anyone’s mum, her expression a little fearful, a little vulnerable and I feel a sad, desperate flare of love. And then her gaze finds mine and in that second before she has time to alter it, the look in her eyes transports me back instantly to a moment ten summers ago. I feel a crushing pressure in the centre of my chest and a second later she turns away.

  ‘What exactly is this about?’ she asks the policeman.

  ‘Your daughter was found trying to leave a shop with an item of clothing she hadn’t paid for,’ he tells her.

  Mum presses her lips together. ‘Well, there must be some mistake.’

  ‘It appears that the item was put into her bag in an area not covered by CCTV,’ he goes on. ‘But security personnel were alerted by the alarm system and the item was found on your daughter’s person.’

  I’m so dizzy with fear that I don’t hear properly at first when Edie begins to speak. And then I notice that everyone has turned to look at her. She sniffs and folds her arms, levelling her eyes at the policeman. ‘It was me,’ she says. ‘I put it in her bag when she wasn’t looking.’

  I shake my head. ‘N—’ but the look Edie shoots me stops me in my tracks. Her voice is very clear and sure. ‘I did it,’ she says.

  My mum snorts. ‘There!’ she says triumphantly. ‘You see? My daughter is not a thief.’ She gathers up my bag and coat. ‘I don’t think you need to keep us any longer, do you? Come on, Heather. We’re going home.’

  The officer considers her, then shrugs and nods. ‘As long as you’re aware of the seriousness of the situation she can go, but we will need to speak to her at a later date. We’ll be in touch.’

  Mum pulls me by the arm but I don’t move. I look at Edie, sitting there in the office all alone with the policeman and I want to stay and shout that it’s not true, that it wasn’t her, that it was me. But my mother yanks my arm so hard that we are back in the busy mall with the door swinging shut behind us before I can even draw breath. ‘No!’ I say, shaking my head frantically. ‘No.’

  She narrows her eyes at me, her icy fury instantly silencing me. ‘Don’t. Heather,’ she hisses. ‘Just don’t.’

  On the drive home she doesn’t say a word, except once, through gritted teeth, as we pull out of the car park, ‘You are never seeing that girl again. Do you hear me?’ I lean my head against the window and I drift away inside myself, thinking about Edie all alone in that horrible room with no one to come for her, and of how she’d rescued me.

  After

  It’s slow, the rising out of the blackness, but it’s steady and it’s sure. I awake one bright, cold morning to a gust of rain scattering against the window and for a while I stare out at the empty white sky and struggle to remember what time of year it is, or how many days or weeks have passed since I’ve been lying here, unable to get up. Could it be autumn, or even winter now?

  A piercing cry slices through the silence. Maya. I stay where I am, waiting anxiously for Heather to come, but still she cries and cries. I put my hands over my ears and close my eyes, feeling the familiar panic rising in my chest. Thirty seconds pass, then another, and Maya’s screams become more and more urgent, edging ever nearer towards hysteria. Has Heather gone out? Has she left me? At last I pull myself up from under my duvet, and I force myself to go to the cot.

  Maya stops mid wail when she sees me and we watch each other silently, warily, for a long moment or two. I take in her angry red face, her thick black hair, her pursed little mouth, her balled fists and furrowed brow and then, without any warning, she smiles. It spreads across her face like sunlight and I’m barely aware of what I’m doing as I slowly reach out my hand. I hold my breath as she curls her fingers around my thumb. Time stops, the world waits. Silently I lift her from her bed and hold her to me, her head tucked beneath my chin, her breath warm agains
t my neck. We stay like that for a long moment, and I breathe in the sweet warm scent of her, as the realization hits me that this is the first time I have touched her for many, many weeks. She stirs gently in my arms as the tears roll down my cheeks, and she sighs, softly, against my chest.

  ‘Maya!’ Heather’s voice makes us both jump and the baby’s face instantly crumples. Guiltily, I begin to lower her back to her cot while Heather, wrapped in my dressing gown, wet hair plastered across her face, crosses the room and snatches her from me so roughly that I stumble backwards in alarm. I watch, my heart pounding in shock as she takes her away with her to the window. ‘Did you have a fright?’ Heather is cooing softly, ‘Poor little girl, I’m here, don’t you worry, I’m here now.’

  And so I go, leaving them alone, closing the door behind me. But something, something has changed.

  I’m aware of myself and my surroundings for the first time in weeks – of my grimy skin and hair, the stale thick taste in my mouth, the airlessness of the flat. And finally I wake one morning and know that I can’t lie here any longer, here on this dirty sheet in my own stink with my memories and my nightmares, for one moment more. I listen to the flat for a while until I’m sure that Heather and Maya are out before I haul myself from my bed and stumble towards the bathroom.

  It’s only when I’m standing under the shower that I realize how much weight I’ve lost; my ribs jut out beneath grey skin, my arms and legs are puny, stick-like. I close my eyes against the scorching water, letting it wash over me while I stand motionless, trying not to think. When I emerge, smelling of soap and wearing clean clothes, I feel oddly raw and frail, as though the dirt and grease had been protective armour against a too-bright, too-cold world. My mind feels foggy and slow. I stand at the window for a while, looking out at the rainy streets below, the roofs and cars and lampposts, the dogs and people and pigeons pecking in the gutters.

  Heather has made us beans on toast and for the first time since she moved in we sit together in the kitchen to eat. I feel almost as though I’m sleeping, dreaming still, my mind unable to fully process the reality of the two of us sitting here together like this, after all this time.

  ‘Are your mum and dad doing all right?’ I ask and the words hang in the air, absurdly polite.

  She nods. ‘Yes thanks,’ she says. ‘They’re OK.’

  A silence. ‘What is it they do in Birmingham again?’

  She shrugs. ‘Dad teaches there,’ she says vaguely.

  I remember that she had told me, when she first turned up on my doorstep all those weeks ago, that she worked in a newsagent’s, and I leap on this eagerly. ‘And you work in a …’

  ‘Library,’ she finishes for me, brightly. ‘Yes. That’s right.’

  ‘But—’ I stare at her in confusion. However there’s something about her unblinking gaze that makes any further questions die on my lips, and we continue to eat in silence for a while.

  I can only hear the sound of myself chewing and swallowing, the food sticking to the roof of my mouth. I sneak glances at her, trying to gauge what she’s thinking, but her face once again has the same mild, cheerful expression I remember so well, apparently entirely content not to speak, oblivious to the strangeness of the situation we have found ourselves in.

  Suddenly, a fly that had been buzzing sluggishly around the room lands on the table between us. Heather considers it for a moment or two before calmly raising her hand and squashing the insect beneath her palm. She wipes her hand absent-mindedly on her jumper, before continuing with her meal.

  I put down my knife and fork. ‘I’m so sorry, Heather, to have lumbered you with all this.’ She looks up at me, still chewing, her expression unchanged. ‘I got a bit overwhelmed by it all, I suppose. I felt so …’ I shake my head, trying to put into words how desperate I’d felt, how little I’d cared about Maya or whether I’d lived or died, how total the darkness had been. And how frightened I am that this small reprieve is only temporary; that whatever it was is waiting to claim me again, and that there’s nothing I’ll be able to do to stop it. ‘I’m so grateful for all your help, especially as we haven’t been in touch for … such a long time.’

  At this Heather blinks and smiles. ‘Don’t be silly, Edie,’ she says. ‘I’m your best friend. I’m glad we found each other again, glad I could help. Don’t worry, I won’t go anywhere, I won’t leave you.’ She reaches across the table and takes my hand in hers. ‘We’ll be all right, the three of us, you’ll see.’

  I stare down at the large white fingers clasping mine. I’m about to ask her why she came to find me now, after all these years, when I notice that her sleeve has pulled back to reveal the skin on her forearm. The underside is covered in scars, some so old that they are silver, faint; but most darker, more recent, a mess of raised bumpy redness that covers her lower arm up to her elbow. A second later her eyes follow mine and she pulls her hand away, the scars disappearing once more beneath her sleeve while shock pulses through me.

  At that moment Maya begins to cry in the next room, and I half stand. ‘What does she want …?’ I ask anxiously. ‘Should I …?’

  But Heather smiles and gets to her feet. ‘She wants her bottle, that’s all,’ she says. ‘Don’t worry, I’ll get it.’

  And so I find myself in this most bizarre of predicaments, living here with Heather, someone I’d once hoped I’d never see again for the rest of my life. I make myself get up each morning, forcing myself to wash and dress and eat breakfast with her in the kitchen. I find that I can keep the waves of anxiety at bay if I try not to think further than the next hour ahead. Heather and I squeeze past each other in the cramped flat as she tends to Maya; washing and changing and feeding her with such assurance that my tentative, fearful attempts to help are useless almost before I’ve begun. ‘It’s OK,’ she says, each time I reach for a nappy or a bottle, ‘I can do it.’

  ‘You’re good at this,’ I tell her.

  She beams at me. ‘I like looking after you both,’ she says. ‘You and Maya. She’s so beautiful, I love her so much.’ Heather reaches over and pats my hand, her fleshy fingers surprisingly hot. I try my best to smile back at her, and silently count to four before I pull my hand from hers.

  ‘You do so much for us,’ I say later, gazing at the fridge full of food, the bags of nappies and wipes and tins of formula. I dimly remember handing her my debit card at some point during those dark and desperate early weeks, so she could access my child benefit. ‘I’ll do the next big shop, I promise.’ But even as I say it, the thought of leaving this flat is terrifying.

  Instead I spend my days sitting in front of the TV, or staring out of the window or watching Heather as she moves busily about, taking in the familiar size and shape and feel of her, the frizzy yellow hair that has strands of grey in it now, the wide round face that’s exactly as it was but for the fine lines around her mouth and eyes. And as I watch her, I wonder what life has been like for her since leaving Fremton, where she has been and what she has done in the years between then and now.

  I try to imagine what somebody who’d never met her before would think of her, what sort of person they’d see. A plain, heavyset woman, entirely ordinary; the kind you’d see anywhere, on any day. And yet there is something – has always been something – off-kilter about Heather, something you only notice after you’ve known her for a while. An indefinable thing missing somehow. It’s there, in the too-eager smile that never falters, in that fixed, hazel stare. The way she is so large and clumsy yet can creep up behind you so silently that you don’t realize she’s there until you turn and find her right behind you, just inches away.

  I think about our early friendship, how lost and lonely I’d been when Mum had first moved us to Fremton. Heather had been so sweet to me, so loving, so endlessly supportive. She’d listen to me complain about my mother and I knew she understood; it was something we had in common after all, the feeling that our parents didn’t care. And I suppose I even liked that she was a bit out of step with the wor
ld, because it meant she looked up to me and gave me her endless attention. I liked the person I was in her eyes – so much more impressive than the person I felt I actually was. But before long, I’d become wrapped up in Connor and his world. Perhaps she’d felt abandoned, then. Perhaps that’s why, later, she betrayed me the way she did.

  In the evenings, when Maya sleeps, we sit side by side on the narrow sofa, eating our dinners off our laps. She likes to watch reruns of Friends, four or five episodes back to back, and she sits in the flickering darkness with her microwaved ready meal wobbling on her lap, chuckling along with the canned laughter, entirely absorbed, her thigh or her arm rubbing against mine as she eats.

  Finally I wake one morning with another long, empty day stretching ahead and realize that if I stay inside these three cramped rooms for very much longer, I will go back to bed and stay there for ever, not moving until I have disappeared entirely, until there’s nothing left of me. And though the desire to give into that is almost impossible to resist, nonetheless there is something that stops me, something that began to stir within me the day Maya smiled and I held her to me. A quiet little voice that won’t go away telling me to pull myself together, to take care of my daughter, to at least try.

  I wait until Heather has gone to the bathroom and I hear the shower running and then, my hands shaking, not quite believing what I’m about to do, I make up a bottle of formula, gather Maya’s outdoor clothes and blanket together, lift her from her cot, and ignoring the banging in my chest, the tightness in my throat, slip out of the door.

  The outside world feels too big, too bright, the everyday noise and rush too loud and frantic after the stuffy, reassuring prison of my flat. I hurry along the street without any real idea of where I’m going or what I’m doing. At first it’s as though I’m walking in a dream, my legs not seeming to work properly, the sycamore trees, traffic, lampposts and paving stones swimming behind a haze of light autumnal rain. I walk with my face turned away from passers-by, expecting them to stop me, to ask me what I think I’m doing; a kidnapper, a criminal. A bus pulls in at a stop ahead of me, letting a stream of jostling passengers on and off, and after hesitating for just a moment I jump through the doors a second before they close.