Heart-Shaped Bruise

by Byrne, Tanya

  ‘Here are the trees,’ she said, pointing to the brown lines with the green scribbled blobs on top of them. ‘And the wild flowers and the babbling brook.’

  ‘Hey non nonny,’ I sang, but they ignored me.

  ‘. . . and here’s the treehouse where you can sleep.’

  Naomi blinked at her as she handed over the drawing. ‘Me?’

  ‘Yeah. You’ve been so sad. I thought you might like to borrow it.’

  I have to remind myself that Lily is sixteen sometimes. Regression, Doctor Gilyard calls it. It’s a defence mechanism, she says. A lot of the girls in here do it to avoid dealing with whatever landed them here. Me, I’ve gone the other way; I feel ancient sometimes, like an old woman sitting in her favourite chair telling tales of her misspent youth.

  ‘Don’t get too close to the babbling brook,’ I warned Naomi with a wink.

  I expected her to laugh, but she burst into tears.

  I turned to Lily, horrified. ‘Wait. What? What’s that?’ I asked, pointing my roll-up at Naomi. ‘What’s she doing? Has she gone woo-woo?’

  ‘She’s crying, Emily,’ Lily said, stroking Naomi’s hair.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because I’m not dead inside!’ Naomi roared. ‘Comfort me!’

  I tried to take the drawing from Naomi, but she wouldn’t give it to me. ‘Stop it, Emily!’ she hissed. ‘No mocking the happy place.’

  ‘I’m not going to mock it, I just want to show you something. See?’ I pointed at a space between the trees. ‘Look who’s in the happy place?’ They both leaned forward, peering at the drawing. ‘It’s Jake Gyllenhaal.’

  Naomi pressed the drawing to her chest. ‘I need some alone time in the happy place.’

  I turned to Lily to ask if she would mind if I borrowed her happy place next when her eyes widened. ‘Who’s that?’ she asked, nodding down the corridor.

  Naomi and I turned to look over our shoulders to find one of the nurses leading a tall girl with pink cheeks towards the office.

  ‘That’s Cara,’ Naomi said, lowering her voice.

  I stared at her. ‘You’re having an existential crisis and you still know about the new inmates?’

  She tapped her temple with her finger. ‘Knowledge is power, my friend.’

  ‘Who is she?’ Lily asked, lowering her voice too.

  ‘Eighteen. Schizophrenic. On remand for stabbing her mum, apparently.’

  I tutted. ‘You schizos are so stabby.’

  ‘You can talk.’

  ‘Touché.’ I nodded slowly.

  ‘She’s looking this way,’ Lily said, blushing like a schoolgirl.

  ‘She’s looking at Emily.’

  She was, so I smiled sweetly and waved. The new girl looked at her feet, mortified.

  ‘You’re a rock star, Ems,’ Naomi snorted.

  ‘Yeah. I’m the Kurt Cobain of the criminally insane.’

  Naomi winked at me. ‘Courtney Love, more like.’

  I kicked the leg of her chair.

  ‘She looks so scared. We should let her sit with us tomorrow at breakfast,’ Lily suggested, and I rolled my eyes.

  ‘Let’s see how she goes. She might be a complete nutter.’

  Turns out I was right to be wary, because an hour ago she just woke us all up doing . . . okay, I’m not going to tell you what she did because that’s not fair. Honour among thieves, and all that. Let’s just say she won’t be around to sit with us at breakfast tomorrow morning.

  I haven’t spoken to Doctor Gilyard since the happy place incident. I thought our session this week was going to be painful, but she was feeling particularly brave. I don’t know if she does that to you, too, but she leaves me alone for a week – sometimes two – then BANG, she hits me with a question that would be enough to knock me off my feet if I wasn’t already sitting down.

  Like today, she opened with: ‘I’d like to talk about your decision to befriend Juliet.’

  The audacity of it made me forget that I was ignoring her. ‘I’m sure you would.’

  ‘Why didn’t you just kill her?’

  The audacity of that made me smile. ‘Should I have?’

  ‘Your uncle went to great lengths to find where the Witness Protection team had sent her to live,’ she said, not missing a step. ‘Then finally he found her—’

  I interrupted with a snort. ‘Yeah, the bloke he paid to find her was the same bloke the Witness Protection team paid to hide her. And they question my morals.’

  She ignored me. ‘He finally found her, living with foster parents in Islington – on his doorstep, in his manor—’

  I interrupted again. ‘Did you just say manor?’

  ‘Why did he send you to get her?’

  I laughed. ‘Who do you think my uncle is? Don Corleone? He didn’t send me to do anything. I overheard what was going on and went.’

  ‘He didn’t know?’

  ‘Of course not.’

  ‘So how did you get away from him? From Puerto Banus?’

  ‘I just left,’ I told her with a shrug. ‘Every Sunday we went for lunch at this seafood restaurant on the front line, right by the beach. I told Uncle Alex I wasn’t feeling well, then waited for him and Nanna Koll to go, packed a bag and left. Daddy gave me a credit card for emergencies so I put it all – the flight, the hotel in London, everything – on that. I was getting off the plane by the time they got back to the villa.’

  ‘Okay.’ She nodded. ‘But why wait? You were obviously as desperate to find her as your uncle, so why didn’t you just end it then, the day you found her?’

  I shrugged. ‘What was I supposed to do?’

  ‘What would your father have done?’

  ‘I’m not my father,’ I said before I could stop myself, and she wrote it down.

  That fucking notebook. I’m going to set fire to it.

  ‘Why the theatrics, Emily?’ She took her glasses off to look at me. I turned my face away. ‘Why pretend to be someone else, befriend her, endear yourself to her foster parents, go to her college? It’s a tremendous amount of effort.’

  I had had the same argument with Uncle Alex. He said I was out of my mind when I told him what I wanted to do, that I was nuts, that I was doing what Dad did and making it more complicated than it needed to be.

  ‘This is easy,’ he told me when I called asking for his help. ‘In, stab-stab-stab, out. Done. Danny’s on his way there now. I’d do it myself if the police weren’t on me.’

  I remember the panic, how it bubbled up in my stomach. I can feel it now, as I’m writing this, like milk boiling over in a pan.

  ‘No. Don’t,’ I told him. ‘It has to be me.’

  ‘You know her foster dad is ex-CID, right? That isn’t a coincidence, Em. He won’t let you near her.’

  ‘Exactly. This is the only way, by being her friend.’

  ‘Forget it, Emily.’

  ‘I have a better chance of getting to her than Danny.’

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous. Just come home and let me handle this.’

  ‘This is nothing to do with you, Uncle Alex!’

  ‘Except you’re ringing me asking for money and a flat and a fake identity and fake GCSE results so you can get into her college, on to the same courses, and be her friend.’

  ‘I’m sorry!’ I said, dripping contempt into the phone. ‘Is that a problem? Or are you too busy shooting people and selling drugs to half of London?’

  I thought he was going to roar back, but he just waited for my breathing to settle, then sighed. ‘Ems, listen to me. Leave it. Just leave it.’ I shook my head even though he couldn’t see me doing it. ‘We have to be careful. That little bitch told them everything. As soon as they get something on me, too, they’ll be on the next flight out.’

  ‘It’s fine – they think I’m in Spain with you and Nanna Koll.’

  ‘Exactly. Let’s keep it that way.’

  ‘The police aren’t watching me, Uncle Alex. They’re watching you.’

  ‘Which is why I’m
not there now. You’d be halfway to Stansted with me if I was.’

  I bristled at that. ‘I’m seventeen. Stop treating me like a kid.’

  ‘Stop behaving like one, then.’

  ‘I don’t expect you to understand.’

  ‘You don’t think I understand?’ he said tightly. ‘Juliet Shaw is a fucking grass. She stabbed my brother and destroyed everything we’ve ever worked for. I want her dead, too, but I’m not stupid enough to do it myself.’

  ‘Then you don’t understand.’

  ‘What is it with the Shaws? First your dad, now you. They’ll lead you both to hell.’ He sighed and I remember thinking he sounded exhausted, but I still bit back.

  ‘I’ll see you down there.’

  ‘Don’t do that, Emily. Don’t take the piss. This isn’t funny,’ he said and it made my cheeks sting. ‘I told your dad not to go after Jason Shaw. He was a detective superintendent, for fuck’s sake. What did he think would happen?’

  He never swore in front of me so I knew he was livid. The tops of my ears burned.

  Dad and Uncle Alex and their ‘rules’. They never swore in front of me, never raised their voices, never talked about work at the dinner table. I used to think it was because they were old fashioned, but it was because they didn’t want me to find out who they really were.

  I guess Uncle Alex didn’t have to bother any more.

  I waited for his breathing to settle this time. ‘Please. I know you’re trying to protect me, but you have to let me do this my way.’

  He wouldn’t listen. ‘Do you want to end up in the cell next to your dad’s?’

  ‘Of course not.’

  ‘Then listen to me. Hear what I’m saying: This will eat you up if you let it.’

  I shut up then because it already had. But I couldn’t tell him that, could I? I couldn’t tell him that every day I felt it eroding my insides like rust because he’d make me go back to Spain while Juliet was in London, going to college and living her life like nothing had happened. Like the world didn’t have a dirty great crack down it.

  ‘You’re doing what your dad did, Emily,’ he told me. ‘Just stop. Don’t get involved. I’ll handle it, I swear. In a few hours this will all be over.’

  ‘That’s not enough, Uncle Alex.’

  ‘How? How is her death not enough?’

  ‘Because I want to break her, like she broke me!’

  That was the first time I’d said it, out loud like that. It felt like I screamed it from a hole inside of me, a filthy black hole. Even writing it now is making my hands shake; then it scared me so much I started to cry. I put my hand over my mouth so he wouldn’t hear me, but I know he did. Alex Koll hears everything.

  ‘She took my dad away from me,’ I told him with a small sob.

  ‘He isn’t dead, Ems, he’s in prison. He’ll be back. You’ll get him back.’

  I wiped my cheek with my fingers. ‘That’s not what I mean.’

  ‘What do you mean, then?’

  ‘There are things I’m not supposed to know about,’ I said, stopping to suck in a breath. ‘Things Dad wouldn’t tell me. Things I couldn’t even ask about, like what happened to Mum. And that was fine because I trusted him. But now.’

  I stopped to suck in another breath, but I couldn’t say it. So Alex waited – waited and waited – as I thought about what Dad had done. I fell asleep most nights thinking about it, about gunshots and blood on white sheets.

  ‘I don’t know who he is any more, Uncle Alex.’

  I remember the silence that followed after I said it, that week-long silence as I waited for Uncle Alex to say something, to defend Dad like he always did. When he didn’t, it was worse. He didn’t tell me that it would be okay and he didn’t ask me to trust him like he did the night it happened, when he called me at St Jude’s and told me to pack a bag. And I did trust him; I packed a bag and waited for him in the House Mistress’s office like he told me to. And when I climbed into the back seat of his car to find Nanna Koll sitting there, a scarf over her curlers and her blue leather vanity case on her lap, I didn’t say a word, even though a voice in my head screamed and screamed all the way to Folkestone.

  But when we got off at Calais and he finally told me that Dad had been stabbed, I was hysterical. I begged him to take us home, to Dad, but he just drove, drove and drove while I cried myself to sleep in the back seat, my head in Nanna Koll’s lap as she stroked my hair.

  I don’t know if that’s ever happened to you, if you’ve loved someone, loved who they are, then found out they’re not that person after all. It doesn’t just break your heart, does it? It breaks you. Then you’re not who you thought you were, either.

  ‘Did he go in there?’ I finally asked. The thought had been like a splinter in my heart since it happened.

  ‘In where?’

  ‘Into Juliet’s bedroom?’

  ‘Of course not.’ Something in the universe realigned and I let go of a breath. ‘She wasn’t supposed to be there. She was out with her boyfriend but they had a row or something and she came home early. She heard her dad and Harry rowing, that’s how she could give evidence like that; she heard everything. So she called the police and they told her to get out of the house, but she took a bread knife from the kitchen and went upstairs. Your dad didn’t hear her. She stabbed him in the back.’

  I laughed at that, loud and bright. I hated her. I still do. I probably shouldn’t say that if I want to endear myself to you, but I’m not trying to endear myself to you. Like me, don’t like me, I don’t give a shit. So yeah, I hate her. I hate her so much that every time I think about her, I can feel the white peeling off my bones. But the truth is, if that was me, and I came home to find someone hurting my father, I would have done the same thing.

  I had to give her that.

  ‘Do you know what’s funny?’ I told Uncle Alex with another laugh.

  ‘What, Ems?’

  ‘I get it now, why Dad did it. I never understood how he could want to hurt someone like that, but I do now.’ When Uncle Alex didn’t respond, I shook my head. ‘But he never wanted that, did he? He did all of this – God knows what he did – so I could go to a good school, be whatever I wanted to be. But now I’m the one thing he never wanted me to be.’

  ‘What’s that, Emily?’

  I closed my eyes. ‘Him.’

  I’d love to say that being in here without the distraction of the Internet and mobile phones elevates each of us to some heightened state of awareness where we can see the error of our ways and repair ourselves, but we just talk about rubbish. Nothing real, like who we are and how we got here and why we do the things we do. I suppose it’s the only time we don’t have to talk about those things, when we’re together.

  ‘When I get out of here, I’m getting a tattoo,’ Naomi announced today while we were having our post-dinner cigarette.

  I snorted. ‘Why?’

  She ignored me. ‘Right here.’ She showed us her wrist.

  ‘What of?’ Lily asked, wide eyed as always.

  ‘Not your boyfriend’s name, I hope.’

  She ignored me again. ‘A bird flying out of a cage.’

  I rolled my eyes.

  ‘Better than Hello Kitty on my arse!’ she snapped.

  I almost choked on my fag. ‘Who has Hello Kitty tattooed on their arse?’

  Lily looked confused. ‘Who’s Hello Kitty?’

  Naomi and I stared at her for a moment, then Naomi sighed. ‘At least it means something.’

  ‘True.’ I nodded. ‘I like my dad’s tattoo. That means something.’

  Naomi sat forward. ‘What is it of?’

  ‘Just words: Ou Theoi, monon Anthropoi.’

  ‘What’s that, like Latin or something?’

  ‘It’s ancient Greek,’ Lily interrupted.

  We stared at her again, then Naomi looked at me. ‘What does it mean?’

  ‘No gods, only men.’

  Naomi sat back in her chair. ‘That’s deep.’

&
nbsp; ‘My dad is pretty deep,’ I told them. ‘When he’s not shooting people.’

  I don’t know how much longer I can do this. Doctor Gilyard is finding a way in. The threat of it is like a storm – I can feel the nearness of it. So I’ve been running around closing windows and locking doors but she’s getting closer and closer and I don’t know what to do.

  Today, she put something on the coffee table between us, but I wouldn’t look down at it to see what it was.

  ‘What’s that?’

  Silence.

  ‘Is it another letter from Juliet?’

  Silence.

  ‘I told you, I don’t care what she has to say. Why did you bring it?’

  Silence.

  ‘Fine.’ I sat back in my chair and crossed my arms. ‘You want to do this?’

  Silence.

  ‘I can do this.’

  Silence.

  ‘I invented this.’

  I stared at the crack in the wall so that I wouldn’t look at the coffee table, but my gaze kept flicking back and forth – back and forth, back and forth, back and forth – between the crack and the coffee table, like the pendulum in the grandfather clock at St Jude’s.

  I’ve only tried to give up smoking once, after my friend Olivia’s grandmother died of lung cancer. I didn’t think I smoked that much, but I only lasted three days before I broke and bought a box of cigarettes from the girl who used to sell them out of her room. I felt useless as I locked myself in the bathroom and smoked one, and that’s how I felt today when my gaze finally settled on the coffee table – useless.

  It was just for a moment, but it was long enough to see that it wasn’t a letter; it was a photograph. It was folded in half and when I saw the curve of Juliet’s smile, her cinnamon-coloured cheek pressed to a paler one, my heart began to ring like a bell.

  I knew that photo. I was there when it was taken.

  I stared at Doctor Gilyard. ‘Don’t,’ I warned, my hands balling into fists.

  She knows. That’s the first thing I told her when I got here. I told her that she could ask me anything – anything – but she couldn’t ask about him. And I’ll give her that, she hasn’t; she’s poked and prodded me for months, but she’s never even said his name.