by Joanna Nadin
Mum’s door is still closed. And I should go to bed. But I’m too wired. I know I won’t sleep. Not like this. So instead I get my paper and pencils, and I draw.
I draw Finn and Luka. Draw Mum, in her sundress, in her own March summer. I draw Danny. His soft smile, his lean chest, his long fingers. I draw until my blood stops singing, till my eyes ache and my hands are stiff. Then I let sleep take me away, too.
HET LOATHES Christmas. The enforced jollity. The baubles and tinsel and wrapping paper, promising the earth but delivering disappointment in the shape of another hat and scarf and thin, insipid gravy.
But worse is Boxing Day. Every year her parents insist on having half of Seaton around for cocktails. Or rather, her father does. Het can see the weariness in her mother’s red-rimmed eyes; weariness she chases away with eyedrops and sherry.
This year Het is dressed in some absurd taffeta thing her mother has bought from Dingles in Plymouth. The boned emerald silk squashes Het’s breasts and digs into her back, leaving welts on the faded tan of her skin. She can feel the lace underskirt rubbing against her bare legs. At least she won the battle of the panty hose.
“You look a delight, dear.” Carol Lister kisses her on both cheeks while blowing out a thin seam of Pall Mall smoke.
I look like a Christmas fairy, thinks Het. But she doesn’t say so. She smiles thinly and murmurs her thanks.
Carol arches an overplucked eyebrow, giving her the strange air of an emaciated drag queen. “Jonty’s here, you know,” she whispers conspiratorially.
“Oh,” says Het. “Well, I’ll be sure to look out for him.”
“You do that.” Carol draws slowly on her cigarette.
But Het forgets to. Instead he finds her.
Het takes a Twiglet from a crystal bowl on the dining table and sucks off the salty coating and with it a memory of Christmases past. She wishes she were seven not seventeen. Wishes she were small enough to see the world through a sea of panty-hosed and navy-serged legs, small enough to drink sugary Ribena instead of the sour claret her father has pushed into her hand, small enough to slip under the table still. Away from the smoke and the sound and the silent hating, hidden by a curtain of white linen in her own small world.
But is she so big? She doesn’t feel it. Feels like she’s playing dress-up. Her feet sliding around in her mother’s pumps, a dress she would never have chosen, will never wear again. She looks around. No one is watching. The doctors and dentists, the great and the good of the county, are absorbed in themselves and soused in festive spirit. So, quickly, quietly, Het drops the Twiglet on the floor, crouches as if to retrieve it, then slides neatly along the carpet to the safety of the table.
She sits cross-legged on the sage green, the white tablecloth trailing around her, cocooning her. Too tall now to lie on her tummy, her ear against the floor, listening to the thud of footsteps and hum of conversation. Instead she hears the clunk of glasses above her. The pop of a champagne cork and the ripple of a cheer at the extravagance of it, the indulgence. Hears the murmur of small talk, of golf and gardening. Then a change in tone, and her father’s restrained anger, his “Why is that man Shaw here?” Her mother’s gritted-teeth reply, that it would look worse if he had not been invited.
She hears all of it, from the safety of her hiding place. Smells it, too. A distant haze of Nina Ricci and sweat and cigars. And something else. Aftershave and money. But close, overpoweringly close. It is the smell of an intruder.
“Still playing hide-and-seek, Hetty?”
She feels her stomach leap. “Jonty.”
She doesn’t look at him. His breath is hot and whiskey-sour on her neck. His lips so close she can feel the vibration against her when he speaks.
“God, you’re gorgeous.”
Then his lips are on her neck, his tongue warm and wet, leaving slug trails of saliva on her skin. Like a Labrador, Het thinks. She pushes him off.
“Stop it.”
“What’s the matter? Scared Daddy might see? He’d be over the bloody moon if he knew it was me.”
“No. It’s . . . I just . . . I don’t want to.”
“Frigid little cow,” he hisses.
Maybe I am, Het thinks. Maybe that’s why she feels like this. Empty. Dead.
It’s not the first time he’s kissed her. That was aged thirteen, in a game of sardines that she had begged to be excused from. But Eleanor insisted, and so Jonty squeezed into her mother’s wardrobe, among the silk and the jacquard and the fox-fur coats. Het made a wish that this were Narnia and she could disappear into the snow behind and run away. But there was no lion, no witch, just hard oak against her spine.
“Want to play blue murder?” he whispered in the dark.
“What’s that?” she asked.
“This,” he said. And then she felt him. His fat lips on her mouth. His body pressing against hers.
But Het felt nothing. Not then. Not when he pulled her behind a bush during a game of French cricket. Or in the cinema, when he pushed his hand up her skirt, his fingers gripping her bare thigh, possessing her, trapping her in a place where she couldn’t scream.
Each time Het lets him. Hoping this will be the moment the earth moves, that life lives up to its Judy Blume promise.
But it never does.
“Come on,” he says. “Old times’ sake.”
“Not here.”
“Upstairs, then.”
And she lets him. Lets him lead her up to her bedroom. Lets him kiss her.
Not because she wants him. But because she wants to feel something, anything.
But ten minutes later, when he’s bored of her unresponsive arms, when he’s back downstairs braying with Will and her father about some rugby match, when she’s lying on her bed, wiping the wet from her neck, she still feels nothing. And she wonders then if she ever will.
“TAKE FINN with you.”
Mum slams a cup of coffee down on the counter, its contents slopping over the Formica and dripping a steady brown trickle onto the floor.
“What?” I say. I’m standing at the door, swimming kit in my hand. I’m late already and now she lays this on me.
She’s been like this all morning. Finn set her off. Asking for Luka. Asking when his daddy was coming. And she starts banging around in the kitchen, looking for something, some plate that she has to have and none of the others will do. Then she decides she wants butterscotch pudding for lunch and sends Finn down to the corner shop, shouting at me when he comes back with crisps and a packet of Chewits instead. Like it’s my fault.
She’s letting it buzz around her like an angry bee. That phone call. Luka. She can’t think straight. The banging, the busy stuff, is to block it out. I know that now. But it doesn’t work.
“You heard me. Take Finn swimming.”
“Yes.” Finn punches the air.
And part of me wants to say yes. Because of the way she is. The way she might be going. But then I think of Danny. Of his hand on mine. And I can’t. I just can’t.
“No,” I say.
“Why? What are you planning on doing?” Mum brushes a pool of coffee onto the floor with her hand.
“Nothing,” I say quickly.
“Then take him. I want some peace.”
So when I show up at the pool I have an eight-year-old in tow, swinging his goggles like a lasso.
“I’m so sorry,” I say to Danny. “It’s just that Mum’s . . .” What? Having one of her moments? One of her days, weeks, months? I can’t tell him that. “She’s busy in the kitchen and she can’t watch Finn and do that at the same time and I . . .”
“Hey, hey. Slow down,” he says. Then turns. “I’m Danny,” he says, holding out a hand.
“Finn,” says Finn, shaking it.
“Come on.” I tug at Finn’s jacket. “We should change.” I’ve done it before, taken him into girls’ toilets and stuff. It’s fine. But Danny steps in.
“No, Billie. He can come with me.”
“Cool,” says Finn, noncha
lant. Though I can see he’s anything but.
“Er. Well, I’ll see you in the pool, then,” I say.
“You will,” Danny says, and grins.
“You have to kick harder,” Finn tells me.
“I know,” I protest.
“It’s easy, look.” He dives underwater, arcing around me like a seal, then bursting through the surface, laughing. And me? I’m just trying to keep my head above the water.
“Ignore him,” Danny says. “He’ll soon get bored.”
And he does. Bored of the big sister who can barely get three strokes without swallowing then coughing up half a pint of chlorine. Bored of Danny, who’s too busy helping her to race him.
So Finn huffs off to the deep end to dive, leaving Danny and me floundering in a yard of water.
“Your neck’s too stiff,” he says.
“I know that,” I snap. “How else am I meant to breathe, though? I don’t want to drown.”
“Hey,” he says, his voice like Luka’s, when he’s trying to calm Mum, make her see reason. “You won’t drown.”
“How do you know?”
“Because I won’t let you,” he replies. “You have to trust me, Billie.”
“I do.” I relent. “It’s just, with Finn —”
“I know. But he’s gone now.”
I look down to the deep end. See Finn standing on the edge, fingers pointed, face pure concentration. He leaps, a perfect curve, the water barely moving as he plunges beneath the surface. He’s a natural. And I am out of my depth.
“There’s nothing to be scared of,” Danny says.
“I’m not scared,” I lie.
“OK. Here’s what we’re going to do. You’re going to hold my hands. And we’re going to go underwater. We’re not going to swim. We’re just going to float. And it doesn’t matter if it gets in your eyes or in your mouth. It’s water, Billie. Just water.”
He’s so controlled, so clear, that I don’t say anything, just let him take my hands. And on the count of three, he pulls me down.
I thought it would be silent down there. That I would be wrapped in some kind of cocoon, my senses blocked. But I can hear the swirl of water rippling in and out of my ears, the muffled splash of Finn diving, then Danny’s voice, a strange alien sound.
I can’t work out what he’s saying. I open my eyes automatically to lip-read, but the chlorine stings and I squeeze them shut again. Should have worn goggles, but I was too vain.
My throat is tight. I’m not used to holding my breath like this. I need to surface. But then I feel something against my mouth. Something soft. But alive. It is a kiss. Danny is kissing me.
I don’t open my eyes. I don’t move. I just let him push his lips onto mine. Let him release a hand so he can touch my face. And it’s not how I imagined. Because believe me, I have imagined this now for days: the way he would feel, taste, move; what he would say before and after. It’s nothing like any of the pictures I drew in my head. And my lungs are burning because I really need air. But that’s not how it feels. It feels right. It feels perfect.
Then he pulls me up, his mouth on mine until the last second. And my feet are on the bottom. And I can breathe.
“What were you doing?” Finn has appeared next to us.
Danny says, “Nothing.” But as he holds my gaze, I know it’s a lie. It wasn’t nothing. It was something. Everything.
FOUR YEARS ago Eleanor thought he had died. Hoped he had, she remembers with only slight shame. But it was a false alarm. Instead he was retired early on medical grounds, and then it was the two of them. Every day she feeds him, washes him. Reads to him. She remembers Het and Will as babies. Their helplessness. And her responsibility. The day in, day out of it all. Is this what we become? she thinks to herself. Babies again?
Every day for four years she nurses him, until one morning she takes him a glass of water and he is gone, his face as pale as the sheets he is lying on, the skin already cold. And her heart soars. And when she cries it is not for the loss of him, but for what he has taken from her. She cries for an hour. Then she blows her nose, stands, and calmly calls the hospital.
He is buried a week later. The cemetery chapel is packed. Colleagues cram the pews with their suits and their staidness and their sympathy.
“Whatever will you do without him?” sobs Carol Lister into her monogrammed handkerchief.
Eleanor has an idea.
She wears black for seven days. Then on the eighth, she puts on a yellow sundress, dabs Chanel on her collarbone, and walks down Camborne Hill to the gallery.
“YOU CAN come in.”
Finn is looking up at Danny expectantly while my hand hovers with the key half in, half out of the lock.
“You don’t have to,” I say quickly. Don’t want to spoil things. Don’t want him to see Mum and run. God knows what she’s doing now. Or wearing. It could be anything.
But then the door swings open, disappears from under my fingers, and Mum is standing there. And I can see she’s not in a summer dress or her underwear. She’s in jeans, red lipstick, and a Cheshire cat smile. She stares at him for a second, as if she’s forgotten who I was with. Then she comes to. “You must be Danny,” she says. “Come in.”
She sounds normal. Looks normal. But I can tell she’s just wearing it. And it doesn’t quite fit. It pinches. And I’m scared she’ll burst out of it, or take it off.
“No,” I say.
But Mum’s not taking no for an answer, and before I even get inside she’s grabbed his hand and virtually yanked him down the hallway, firing questions at him, scattergun style.
“So where do you live? How old are you? Would you like cream soda? Or Coke? I have both.”
Danny looks back at me, but there’s nothing I can do except shrug and follow them in.
Mum makes us Coke floats, the vanilla clouding the syrupy black until it turns to coffee-color slush. I say nothing. Can’t get a word in anyway. Mum is talking nineteen to the dozen. Danny nods, like he knows what she’s saying. But he doesn’t. Even she doesn’t know. And I want to interrupt, to take him upstairs, away from this, from her. But I can’t do it now. Because he’s made some comment about the piano. About how it’s a nice one, and Mum’s telling him how she nearly sold it but changed her mind, because every house should have a piano.
And I’m thinking, That’s rich, remembering Call-Me-Ken saying we’d have to pay him to take it away, when Danny says, “I play.”
And I know it’s just polite conversation, that he’s just trying to make her feel at ease, but Mum’s black-kohl‑rimmed eyes light up, and “Then you must,” she says. “You must play now, for us.”
“I —” he begins.
“Can I?” asks Finn. “I can play ‘Chopsticks.’ Dad taught me.”
“Later, bunny,” says Mum. And she’s practically shoving Danny onto the stool.
Please, God, I think to myself. Please let him be at least a little bit good, because I don’t know what she’ll say if he just does “Chopsticks” or something. Don’t know what I’ll say.
And Finn’s still begging to have a go, and there’s all this noise inside and outside my head, when he silences me, silences us all. Because it turns out Danny can play.
It was his secret, I think. And I wonder why he never told me. Because he’s not just Grade 8 good, or school-concert good, he’s should-be-going-to-Guildhall-or-the-Royal‑Academy good. I listen as the notes pour out of him, watch his fingers tense and relax and tense again, the bones outlined as he spans the keyboard.
And when I look at Mum, I can see her eyes are unfocused and a tear is running black Rimmel down her cheek. She’s gone.
“Oh, I’m sorry,” she says at last. When he’s stopped. When I’ve whispered, “Mum?” pulled at her arm, trying to bring her back from wherever it is she’s been.
“You play beautifully, Danny,” she says. “I was just . . . lost in it. The music.”
“My turn,” Finn demands.
Danny stands to let F
inn take his place.
“Mum, watch me,” he says, and begins to hammer out the idiotic up-and-down cheeriness of “Chopsticks.”
“Are you watching?” he asks.
“What?” She looks over, sees his concentration, like it’s Beethoven’s Fifth he’s playing, not some nursery Grade 1 practice piece. “Later,” she says. “I’m just a bit tired.”
She reaches out to the door handle, as if to go. But as she clutches the cut crystal, I can see she is shaking, that the handle is the only thing holding her up.
“I think I need to lie down.”
“It was nice to meet you,” Danny says.
She turns to him, dazed and confused. “Yes,” she says.
“Mum?” I try again.
She clicks back into focus. “I’m just tired,” she insists. “I’ll be fine in a bit.”
But I’m not so sure. Because under the streaks of eyeliner, the sticky pink dust of blusher, her face is white. She looks like a ghost. Or as if she’s seen one.
“Who taught you?” I ask.
We’ve left Finn working his way through a bad rendition of some TV theme tune and are sitting on the edge of my bed. Not because I want us to do anything. At least not right now. But because there’s nowhere else to go.
“People,” he says. “I mean, my stepdad got me a keyboard. Then I had lessons here and there, when we could afford it.”
“You have to do something with it.”
“When I have the money, maybe.” He looks up at a crack in the plaster, then turns back. “Anyway, why can’t I just do this?”
“Because it’s a waste,” I say. And I mean it.
“Why do people always say that? Like I’m breaking some law.”
“Because you are,” I say. “It’s wrong to waste stuff.”
“Is it?”
I nod.
But he doesn’t argue. Instead he kisses me for the second time that day.
This time his lips are warm. And I can taste him now. He is chlorine and Coke and vanilla ice cream. Sweet.
