by Camilla Way
I pull my arm away and kneel in front of her, staring at her fiercely. ‘I can stop it,’ I tell her. ‘I can make it stop. You just have to listen to what I say. You have to do what I say, and it can all be over.’
She stares at me. ‘What are you talking about?’
‘Think about how you wanted to go to art school and move to London. Think of the life you could have. You’re scared of him. I know you are. Well, aren’t you?’
Through her tears, Edie nods.
Tentatively I move closer to her. I take her in my arms and hold her, breathing in the dirty, greasy smell of her hair, feeling her thin body limp against mine. ‘I can make it all stop.’
She sniffs. ‘How?’
So I take a deep breath and I tell her. At first her eyes widen in disbelief. ‘Are you mad? No way!’
‘Listen to me,’ I say. ‘I can do it. You just have to leave it all to me. Think about it. Is there any other way? Do you want him to be doing this to you in a year’s time? In two years’ time? This is the only way out. I’ll take care of it all.’
She leans forwards, her head on her knees. ‘Oh God. Oh God oh God oh God.’
She begins to cry, great heaving sobs, and I wait. When she’s finished, she sits up, her eyes fastened upon the three towers. After a long time I finally hear her say it. ‘OK,’ she whispers. ‘OK.’
‘Good,’ I say, my heart pounding, my thoughts racing. ‘OK. Good. You need to go home now, go home and get some sleep. And then you call me. You call me when you’re ready. OK?’
She nods.
‘OK?’ I say. I grab hold of her hands and look deeply into her face. ‘I’ll be waiting.’
‘Yes,’ she says, and the expression in her eyes as she stares back at me is half terror, half hope.
After
I lie on the hospital bed as the doctor examines me. A short, cheerful Australian, he smiles happily at me as he peers at my cracked ribs, split lip and black eye, nodding sympathetically when I wince at his gently probing fingers. I wonder what he thinks about how I ended up here – I have clearly had the living daylights beaten out of me – but if he passes any judgement, he doesn’t let on.
It seems I’ve been lucky. The police had been here earlier, informing me gravely that they’d got to me just in time. Closing my eyes against the pain, I manage to sit myself up in the bed. ‘So I can go?’ I ask the doctor.
He nods. ‘There’s not much else we can do for you here now the concussion’s gone. Just take it easy and continue with the painkillers and you’ll pretty much heal yourself.’
At that moment the door opens and Monica appears, holding Maya in her arms, and there’s something about the sight of my daughter, with her outstretched arms and little cry of recognition, that totally undoes me. I clasp her to me and finally allow myself to cry. After a few moments Monica puts her arms around me too, and I feel overwhelming comfort to smell her familiar scent of shampoo and cigarettes.
When we release each other she sits on my bed and gives me a tentative, anxious smile. ‘How much do you remember?’ she asks.
I stroke Maya’s hair. ‘Everything until I shouted out to you. What happened? I guess you called the police?’
She nods. ‘Yeah, but one of the neighbours already had, apparently, some couple up the road. So they arrived pretty quickly, thank God.’ I stare at her, trying to take it all in and see that she’s struggling not to cry. ‘Christ, Edie, it was so awful. Standing there on the other side of the door, listening to him do that to you.’ She reaches over and takes my hand. ‘I’m so sorry.’
‘It’s not your fault.’ I squeeze her fingers. After a silence I ask, ‘So what’s happened to Phil?’
‘The police have him. I just got off the phone to them.’ She shakes her head as if she can’t quite believe it. ‘This time they’ve got witnesses, Edie. They’ve got GBH, they’ve got a weapon with intent. They reckon they’ve got enough on him to lock him up again.’ She pauses and looks at me searchingly. ‘Edie, they went through his phone and he had your number on it, must have got it when he stole mine from the flat. Apparently he’d been calling you. Why didn’t you say anything?’ She waits for me to answer.
‘I don’t know,’ I say at last. ‘I guess I … I guess I didn’t know it was him.’
‘I’m so sorry you got mixed up in all this. You’ll never know how grateful I am for doing what you did,’ and then she puts her arms around me and holds me tightly again.
After the cab has dropped us home from the hospital, Monica fusses around me, settling me on to the sofa, making lunch for the three of us, and asking me repeatedly how I am. It’s something of a relief when at last she goes to her own flat. My ribs and jaw ache horribly and I feel fragile and raw, but more than anything I just want to be alone with Maya, to let it sink in, finally, what happened to me.
At first I drift around the flat in a sort of daze and it’s not until I’ve settled Maya down for her nap and I’m washing up the lunch things that it hits me all at once what happened. I see again Phil’s small dark eyes, feel the pressure of his grip on my arm, the moment outside Monica’s door when he’d knocked me to the ground. Without realizing it, I’ve drifted back into the living room, and I’m staring unseeing out of the window when a woman’s laughter from the street scatters across the silence and I jump nervously. Gingerly I put my fingers to my ribs and wince. I go to the sofa and lie down, closing my eyes and gradually, like silt rising to a river’s surface, through all the dark murky pain and shock of Phil’s attack, I recall the single, amazing fact that it had been Phil, not Heather, who’d been in my flat, who’d smashed up Monica’s flat and made all the phone calls to my mobile. It hadn’t been Heather.
Before
Edie phones the next afternoon. ‘Are you OK?’ I say, relief flooding me when I hear her voice. ‘I’m so glad you rang.’
‘Yeah,’ she says, but her voice is strange and flat.
‘Are you …’ I hesitate. ‘Are you ready?’
‘Yes,’ she says. ‘I’m ready.’
‘Where shall I—’
‘At the quarry. Meet me at the quarry. Tonight, at eight.’
I think fast. ‘The quarry? But—’ I stop, I don’t want to say anything that might make her change her mind. And if meeting at the quarry is the only way she can arrange things, then that’s where it’ll be. ‘OK,’ I say. ‘The quarry. That’s fine. I’ll see you there.’ She falls silent and I listen to her breathing. ‘Edie?’ I say. ‘You’re doing the right thing. This is the right thing to do. You’ll see. It’s all going to be OK.’
Later, I sit in my bedroom and wait. From out of the silence, all around the house, the clocks strike five. Three hours to go. I glance around my room, at everything so familiar, every object and piece of furniture seeming to take on new significance now that I know that this time tomorrow the world will be so very different. With shaking hands I pull out the black cloth bag I’d hidden beneath my mattress. Through its fabric I feel the outline of what’s inside and my courage nearly leaves me. Perhaps it’s not too late, I think wildly. Perhaps it’s not too late! I could stay here, call it off, I could retake this year of school and start again. But I know that I’m fooling myself. I have to do what needs to be done and afterwards Edie and I will be together, just the two of us, we’ll be together for always.
At seven o’clock I tell Dad I’m meeting a school friend and, my heart in my mouth, the black bag under my arm, I set off. From the high street I catch the first bus to Wrexham and when it drops me off twenty minutes later I begin the walk towards the quarry. The heat is ferocious, on either side of me empty fields vibrate with grasshoppers, my thighs rub together with each step, the bag bounces against my hip, my own breath is loud in my ears.
When I come to the familiar turning I check my watch: a quarter to eight. My insides fizz with nerves. I begin to walk up the dirt track, climbing higher and higher, my chest tightening and tightening, until, at last, here I am. The quarry. On the far side o
f the still green water the local kids are packing up their cars and calling their goodbyes. The sun is swollen and pale in the darkening sky that’s streaked with red and gold. I round the corner and there she is, waiting for me. Edie. My heart leaps. She’s here. It’s happening, it’s really happening. ‘Edie,’ I call out to her, raising my arm to wave, and then, suddenly, I stop. Because behind her, stepping out from the copse, are Connor and his friends. All of them. Fear like a knife cutting through the centre of me. I look back to Edie, to the expression on her face, and my heart breaks.
After
Monica scrapes the last of our Christmas lunch into the bin before returning to the table and flopping down next to me. ‘I’ve never eaten so much turkey in my life,’ I tell her. ‘You’ll have to roll me out of here.’ She smiles and lights a cigarette and we sit in peaceful silence for a moment or two, drinking our wine while Maya, in her high chair, throws pieces of food down to the waiting dog, laughing gleefully each time he catches something in his mouth.
‘Thanks for today, it’s been so great,’ I tell her.
‘It’s the least I can do, you know that. After what you did—’
I roll my eyes, ‘Oh God, don’t start all that again!’
She laughs but then asks anxiously, ‘You sure you’re OK, though? Are your ribs still sore?’
‘I’m fine,’ I tell her firmly. ‘Honestly. Stop worrying.’ A second later, Billy and Ryan appear.
‘Look at you two winos,’ Billy says. ‘Are we ever going to have our Christmas pud?’
Monica throws a cracker at him. ‘Get it yourself, lazy arse!’
He shakes his head sorrowfully and turns to me. ‘See the crap we have to put up with, Edie?’
I laugh, silently marvelling at the change in Monica and her sons. Since the moment Phil was put back in custody it’s as though they stand taller, surer somehow, a lightness and energy in their eyes that had not been there before. I want to tell Monica that this is the best Christmas I’ve had for a long time, that being here, included in her family like this, means more to me than I can put into words, but at that moment Monica turns to me and smiles and I realize there’s no need, that somehow she’s already guessed. ‘Come on,’ I say instead, getting to my feet and lifting Maya from her chair. ‘I want to give you your present.’
In the living room I kneel down by the tree and retrieve the parcel I’d put there earlier. I sit with the boys while Monica unwraps it. Once she’s pulled it free from its red shiny paper she stares down at the drawing I’d had framed for her. ‘You did this?’ she asks, stroking the glass. ‘Seriously, you did this yourself?’
I laugh, embarrassed. ‘Yeah.’
She crosses the room and places it carefully on the mantelpiece before coming back to the sofa where the four of us look at it in silence. It’s of Monica and the two boys and I’d worked on it for days. ‘You should do this for a living,’ Monica tells me.
‘Yeah, right,’ I say.
‘No, seriously! Bugger waitressing.’
I feel myself blush and remember how James had reacted a few nights before, when I’d shown him the pictures I’d been working on over the last few weeks. He’d examined them intently before turning to me and saying, ‘You could make a career out of this, you know.’ When I’d protested, he’d said, ‘Why not? I’m sure you’d get work as an illustrator.’ And even though I knew he was being ridiculous, that people like me don’t do things like that, nevertheless for a moment I’d let myself imagine a future very different from the one I’d long resigned myself to.
It’s late afternoon when the intercom buzzes and I jump up to answer it, knowing it will be James come to have a drink with us after spending the day with Stan. I find him on the doorstep holding a bottle of Champagne under each arm, smiling back at me. When I go to him he puts his arms around me, the bottles clunking together behind my back as we kiss. As I lead him into the flat and introduce him to the others, happiness flips and somersaults behind my ribs.
I’m impressed and a little envious of how easily James manages it, this business of meeting new people. He’s chatting now to Ryan about his motorbike and I watch how attentively he listens and asks questions, and when Billy makes a joke, his laugh, deep and sudden, fills the room. I see with a shock of clarity the possibility of falling in love with him, not right this minute, but some time, the days and weeks ahead tumbling inevitably towards it, something shimmering and indistinct yet unmistakably there in the future, and the old voice inside me that would normally tell me to run as far away as possible is silent for once.
I’m shaken from my thoughts by Monica nudging me and handing me my drink. ‘It’s nice to see you so happy, love,’ she says, and I put an arm around her waist and smile.
We’re settling down to watch a film an hour or so later when James grimaces and brings Maya over to me. ‘Think this one might have an extra Christmas present for you.’
I take her from him and laugh. ‘Lucky me.’ Gathering up my bag I head for the door. ‘I left the nappies upstairs. Might as well change her there, won’t be a tick.’
And then there they are, those last few moments after leaving Monica’s flat, as I run up the stairs with Maya in my arms, carelessly passing all those familiar doors with their scuffed, white paintwork, their brass letters, the sounds and silences seeping from beneath each one. I will replay them so many times in the weeks and months to come, those final brief minutes before everything changes. And I notice nothing different when I push open my door, the flat in the same disarray I’d left it in as I’d rushed to get ready for Monica’s Christmas lunch only a few hours before. I suppose I’m too busy seeing to Maya, my mind too full of James to register the closed kitchen door.
The nappies and mat are already out from this morning’s change, and I lie Maya down and do what I have to do on autopilot. When I’ve finished I leave her sitting on the floor. ‘Just going to wash my hands,’ I tell her. ‘Don’t you crawl off anywhere, I’ll be right back.’
Later I will estimate that I spent less than thirty seconds in the bathroom: rinsing my hands under the tap, running my fingers through my hair and quickly checking my make-up before turning off the light and leaving again.
And yet when I return to the living room, Maya is gone.
In confusion I walk into the kitchen and what I find there makes my blood freeze. A sensation of falling, the world rushing away. The window is wide open and, standing out on the flat roof of the bedsit below, at its furthest edge, looking down over the gardens and houses and streets, is Heather, with Maya in her arms.
For a long moment my shock is so absolute that I can neither think nor move. It’s only when Maya turns and peers at me over Heather’s shoulder that I am at last jolted into action, crossing the room and climbing out on to the roof, senseless with panic. Every instinct tells me to run to Heather and snatch my daughter from her, but instead I force myself to walk very slowly towards them.
Heather seems unaware of my presence, continuing to stare out across the rooftops below and though I feel as though my heart is in my throat I make myself speak. ‘Heather,’ I say.
When she doesn’t reply I take a step and then another towards her, until I’m only a few metres from her and she turns and we regard each other at last. Even through my panic I can see that she looks terrible, as though she’s been sleeping rough for weeks. Her face and clothes are filthy, her hair lank and matted, and there are deep shadows beneath her eyes. But it’s the eyes themselves that frighten me the most, the way they stare at me so dully, as though she barely knows where she is or who I am.
Now that I’m closer I see with fresh horror how near she is to the edge of the roof. Behind her is a sheer drop, the ground at least seventy feet below. I silently pray for Maya to remain still and dare not move a muscle myself. I force myself to speak in a low, calm voice. ‘Heather, please give her to me.’ I reach out my arms very slowly. ‘Give Maya to me please. Now.’
At that, she looks down at Maya and
finally speaks, her voice vague. ‘I missed her, I missed her so much.’
I keep my arms outstretched, fighting the impulse to run and grab my daughter. My heart thumps painfully. ‘Please, Heather. Give Maya to me and we can talk.’ When she doesn’t move I’m unable to hide my desperation. ‘We’ll talk, I promise. You and me. We’ll sit down and talk properly together – you can hold Maya as long as you like, but let’s please go back inside.’
She shakes her head. ‘No, I don’t want you to have her. It’s not right.’ She looks down at Maya and strokes her hair tenderly.
At this a sudden anger gets the better of my fear. ‘Heather, I’m her mother. She needs me! Give her to me now.’
She glances at me. ‘You? She doesn’t need you.’
I’m silent, terrified of saying the wrong thing, of making the wrong move and causing her to fall. A cold wind begins to pick up around us, the two of us so alone up here surrounded by this vast and empty sky. ‘Heather, please—’
‘Why did you do it?’ she asks suddenly. She looks at me directly then, and I find I cannot meet her gaze and have to look away. So here it is: here it is at last.
‘I don’t—’ I begin. I stare at the ground for a long moment, the words gathering in my throat are both too much and not enough. I notice that I’m crying, and wipe the tears away angrily.
‘Why, Edie?’ she says again.
‘Heather, don’t do this. Give me my daughter back. Give her to me!’ In desperation I step towards her so that I am as close to the edge as she is, only a metre between us now. I don’t dare to come any closer. In her arms, Maya, entirely unperturbed by her predicament, plays with Heather’s hair.
‘You were my friend. Why did you do it, Edie?’
I shake my head, and cannot answer her.
When I look back at that summer it’s with a sick sort of disbelief at the person I’d become. It had happened so gradually that I hadn’t even noticed how cleverly, how completely Connor had begun to destroy me. The drugs had gotten harder, more frequent – most of the time I was either high or crashing down, or drunk. I seemed to spend every second trying to keep him happy. Even towards the end, things could be OK: he could be loving and gentle, telling me I was the only good thing in his life, and at these times I’d be elated. And then from nowhere a thick black cloud would descend and it was as though a stranger appeared in his place.
