Heart-Shaped Bruise

by Byrne, Tanya

  I shook my head as she leaned forward to pick up the photograph. ‘Don’t,’ I told her as she began to unfold it. ‘Don’t. I’m not ready.’

  If I had any control over myself, I would have snatched it from her, ripped it into a million pieces. But my hands don’t do as they’re told any more – my hands, my head, my heart – so I could only watch as she put it back down on the coffee table.

  Fear licked my palms, and when I was brave enough to look at it, I almost collapsed into a boneless heap on the floor.

  It wasn’t him in the photo with Juliet – it was me.

  If I could still cry, I would have.

  The photograph was Doctor Gilyard holding a gun to my head and telling me to talk.

  So when she asked to see me again today I talked.

  ‘Tell me about the day you first approached her, Emily.’

  I started to shift in my chair and told myself to stop. ‘It was September third.’

  There are only a few dates I remember for sure; everything else is a mess. Weeks knot together and some days feel like tiny holes in my memory. But I remember that day – 3 September – the day I met Juliet Shaw.

  ‘They had a freshers’ thing at the college the week before classes started, so I met her then.’ I tugged on the loose thread on my chair. ‘We applied late so we missed enrolment and had to enrol then. I went up to her while we were waiting to have our photo IDs done.’

  ‘Had the Witness Protection team done anything to change her appearance?’

  I nodded. I only had one photo of her that I used to take everywhere like a prayer card. In it, her hair was straight and smooth and it spilled over her shoulders like Lyle’s black treacle. But the first time I saw her in London, it was curly and just brushed the line of her jaw. I hope she cried when they cut it. Reading that back, that sounds awful, but it’s true; as I picture her sitting on a chair with chunks of it at her feet I smile. It’s those little things that kept me going. It’s like every time she broke, I got a bit stronger.

  ‘What did you think when you saw her?’

  ‘She was prettier than expected,’ I admitted. ‘And her skin was browner. I know she’s mixed, but it looked like she’d caught the sun.’

  ‘Why did that bother you?’

  I bristled. ‘I didn’t say it did.’

  Doctor Gilyard didn’t respond; she just looked at me, and after a few minutes, I gave up and said, ‘It pissed me off a bit that she had a tan, that’s all.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because I could just see her, sitting in the garden reading a magazine like she didn’t have a care in the world, while I—’ I stopped.

  Doctor Gilyard finished my thought. ‘While you were alone.’

  I shook my head. ‘Don’t.’

  ‘Don’t what, Emily?’

  ‘Don’t feel sorry for me.’

  ‘Why shouldn’t I feel sorry for you, Emily?’

  I turned my face away. ‘Will you just stop?’

  ‘Stop what, Emily?’

  ‘Just stop!’ I slapped the arms of the chair with my hands. ‘I keep drawing these lines, and you keep pulling me across them.’

  She wrote that down and if my hands weren’t shaking so much, I would have grabbed the pencil from her and snapped it in half.

  ‘Okay. Let’s go back to the morning at the college: what did you say to her?’

  ‘Nothing,’ I told her with a huff. ‘I just stood behind her in the queue and said hello.’

  ‘What did she tell you her name was?’

  ‘Dad Stabber.’

  I smirked, but she didn’t miss a beat. ‘What did she tell you her name was?’

  ‘Nancy Wells. Stupid, huh?’

  Doctor Gilyard frowned. ‘Stupid how?’

  ‘Nancy. It’s a stupid name. Nancy’s an old lady’s name.’

  ‘Does it matter?’

  ‘Of course it does,’ I scoffed. ‘Why didn’t the witness protection team give her something normal? Like Jo or Sarah or something?’

  Doctor Gilyard wrote that down and I groaned. ‘What now?’

  ‘I just think it’s interesting that you’re so fixated on her name.’

  ‘God, you’re so melodramatic sometimes. I’m not fixated, I’m just saying.’

  Doctor Gilyard looked up at me with a smile. ‘If you say so.’

  I knew what she was getting at, but I refused to take the bait.

  So she carried on. ‘What did you tell her your name was, Emily?’

  ‘Rose Glass.’

  ‘Why Rose Glass?’

  I shrugged. ‘I don’t know. Uncle Alex sorted all that.’

  ‘What did he sort?’

  ‘Everything. A name, a flat, everything.’

  ‘Like what?’

  I groaned and tipped my head back. ‘You’re worse than the police.’

  ‘Humour me, Emily.’

  ‘A passport, birth certificate, GCSE results, references.’

  ‘That’s very thorough.’

  ‘Uncle Alex used to be a Scout.’

  ‘You said you were a year younger, right? So you’d be sixteen like Juliet.’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘How did it feel to start again? You were halfway through your A levels when your father was arrested and you went to Spain, right? Was it strange, studying again?’

  ‘I guess.’

  Realising that she wasn’t getting anything out of me, she moved on. ‘What was Juliet like?’

  I turned my face away. ‘She was fearless.’ It came out as a whisper. ‘It was the first time she had to be Nancy Wells; you’d think she would have been nervous.’

  ‘Were you nervous, Emily?’

  I smiled to myself. ‘A bit.’

  When I looked at Doctor Gilyard again, I could tell that she was trying not to smile too. Given that I now tell the most epic, Tolkien-esque lies, the irony was kind of beautiful. ‘Do you think she was just being brave?’

  I shook my head. ‘No. No way.’

  Anyone else would have been terrified. Not Juliet. She held her head up. I’ve always loved and hated that about her – how, even after everything she’d done, she could still look the world in the eye.

  ‘So what did she say?’ Doctor Gilyard asked, looking up from her notebook.

  ‘Nothing. I said hello, and she said hello back.’

  I remember how hard my heart was beating as I sat next to her. I felt each beat like a punch. I was sure I’d find a heart-shaped bruise the next morning. But she didn’t even hesitate. And that’s another thing I’d come to love and hate about her: she’s a beautiful liar.

  Who do you think I learned it from?

  One of the girls who was in my room before me scratched LET IT BE into the wall next to my bed. I lie here staring at it sometimes and at night, when I can’t sleep, I search it out with my fingers, tracing the letters over and over until sleep finally pulls me under.

  That’s how I fell asleep last night and today, in Doctor Gilyard’s office, I kept writing it in the palm of my hand with my finger. Over and over.

  LET IT BE. LET IT BE. LET IT BE.

  ‘Are you ready to talk about—’ she said, finally.

  I looked away before she finished the sentence.

  ‘I know we’re edging towards when he—’

  I had to say it out loud then. ‘No.’

  She nodded and opened her notebook. ‘Last week, we spoke a little about the day you met Juliet. I’d like to go back to what you said about her not being what you expected.’

  I groaned. ‘Can’t we just go back to talking about my cat?’

  ‘In what way was she different?’

  ‘I don’t know. She was just different.’

  ‘Emily.’

  I groaned again. ‘She was quiet.’

  ‘Quiet?’

  ‘Yeah, quiet. She didn’t say much.’

  When I looked up again, Doctor Gilyard was writing something in her notebook and I rolled my eyes. ‘What are you writing now?�
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  ‘I just think it’s interesting that you expected her to be more amiable, Emily, given everything that had happened to her.’ She looked up from her notebook. ‘She was in Witness Protection and you were a stranger; I think her reaction to you was entirely appropriate. But you seem disappointed.’

  I snorted. ‘I wasn’t disappointed. I knew she wouldn’t be all over me.’

  And I did, I knew she wasn’t going to be one of those chatty, chatty girls like Lily and Naomi who have to tell you everything in endless, breathless detail. But I didn’t think she’d be so quiet, so sweet. And there was a fragility to her that I wasn’t expecting, either. Her hands were small, the bones in her wrists delicate.

  ‘What were you expecting, Emily?’

  She stabbed my father. I expected nothing but sharp edges and swagger.

  When I didn’t respond, she moved on. ‘When did you approach her again?’

  ‘The Monday classes started, in English Lit.’

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘Nothing. I just said hello and sat next to her.’

  ‘Did she remember you?’

  I smiled to myself. ‘Not straight away.’

  ‘Your hair?’

  I nodded. I went to touch it, but told myself not to in case Doctor Gilyard saw my hand shaking.

  ‘Why did you dye it, Emily? Granted, Juliet wouldn’t have known what you looked like; you were under eighteen when your father was arrested so the newspapers couldn’t print your photograph.’ Unlike now, I thought when she said it. Now my picture is on the front fucking page. Emily Koll: Schoolgirl Psycho. ‘But you were still trying not to draw attention to yourself,’ Doctor Gilyard went on. ‘So why dye your hair red?’

  She was being kind; it wasn’t just red, it was red red. Skittles red. The sort of red that ruins towels and bathroom tiles.

  Juliet gasped when I approached her that morning. The way her face lit up made me wonder if she’d always been that quiet. Maybe she wasn’t as okay as I thought she was. I like to think so because that would mean something had changed. Something real, not just her name and where she went to school and whatever else the Witness Protection team changed, but something about her. Some small part of her that would never be the same again.

  I needed that. She stabbed my father and ripped up my world as though it was a letter she didn’t want to read. I needed her to not be okay with that.

  ‘I don’t know,’ I told Doctor Gilyard with a shrug. ‘A moment of madness, I guess.’

  ‘Did it make you feel more like Rose, having red hair?’

  I guess it did. I guess that’s why I wasn’t worried that Juliet would find out who I was, because I wasn’t me any more – I was Rose Glass. That’s the only way I could do it, if I took Emily Koll, wrapped her in tissue and left her in a drawer somewhere for a while.

  It was easier that way.

  ‘New start, new me,’ I’d goaded Juliet that morning as I twirled a strand of red hair around my finger with a wicked smile.

  It worked, because as soon as I said it, I saw a tiny tremor in her chin. Everything went quiet then. I couldn’t hear the chatter in the classroom any more or the buses rolling by outside, all I remember is white noise. I can’t even remember what the classroom looked like. There were windows along one side, I think. The desks were grey. White, maybe. That’s all I remember. It’s as though my whole world narrowed to that one point, to that tremor.

  That’s when he walked in.

  ‘Can we stop?’ I asked Doctor Gilyard, standing up and looking at the door. My heart was beating so hard I thought it was trying to come through my ribs.

  She nodded and closed her notebook. ‘If you’d like to, Emily.’

  But I was gone before she finished the sentence.

  Lily has been giving me her laxatives so I missed my session with Doctor Gilyard this week. My ‘tummy bug’ should have given me a reprieve until next week, but Doctor Gilyard just swept into my room with a chair. She didn’t say anything, just sat by my bed.

  I considered pulling the blanket over my head, but I sat up with a sullen sigh and crossed my legs. ‘I’m fine,’ I told her, but my voice sounded old. Rusty.

  ‘Glad to hear it,’ she said with a tight smile. ‘Where were we?’

  I blinked at her. ‘Excuse me?’

  She reached into her bag for her notebook and it made the hair on my arms prickle with panic. ‘Can’t this wait until our next session?’

  ‘When will that be, Emily?’

  ‘I told you, I’m fine.’

  ‘You’d rather take laxatives than say his name. That isn’t fine.’

  I turned my face away and looked at the lines scratched into the wall by bed.

  ‘Look at me, Emily.’

  I shook my head. Everything in my skull felt loose. ‘I can’t. It’s too hard.’

  ‘Who said it would be easy?’

  ‘I don’t get this.’ I looked down at the blanket and started tracing the weave of the cheap wool with my finger. ‘It’s done. Why do we have to keep talking about it?’

  ‘This is what the judge decided, to send you here.’

  I looked up at her then. ‘But you can tell them. You can tell them I’m okay.’

  ‘So you’d rather go to prison than say his name?’

  I looked back down at the blanket. When I didn’t respond, I heard her sigh. ‘You can’t go into the main wing, Emily. You’re too vulnerable.’

  I scoffed at that. ‘I’m Harry Koll’s daughter. No one would touch me.’

  ‘Prison isn’t just about surviving, Emily, it’s about rehabilitation. You won’t get better there.’

  ‘I’m evil,’ I told her with a slow smile. ‘There’s no pill for evil.’

  ‘You’re not evil, Emily, and you will get better.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘By talking about it.’

  ‘I can talk. I can talk about Juliet until my last breath.’ I lifted my chin defiantly. ‘She’s a fucking bitch and I hate her. I hate her. She ruined my life. And I’m not sorry. I’d do it all again if I could. I’d burn everything she has.’

  Doctor Gilyard waited for me to stop and take a breath, then nodded. ‘You’ll talk about the bad things you’ve done, Emily. But you won’t talk about the good things.’

  I held my arms out. ‘There’s no good here.’

  ‘You can talk about her because you hate her. But you can’t talk about him because you love him.’

  I glared at her and shook my head.

  ‘And that’s understandable; you’re happy to get rid of your feelings for Juliet because they’re a burden, but you hold on to your feelings for him because they’re what make you human. What make you more than Emily Koll the gangster’s daughter.’

  I continued to shake my head as though if I did it enough, I’d shake her away.

  ‘He makes you want to be a better person but you don’t think you can be.’

  I put my hands in my hair and pulled. ‘Stop!’

  ‘This is it, Emily,’ she told me. ‘This is the line. You have to follow me across it.’

  ‘Will you just go!’ I roared. ‘Get out!’

  I didn’t think she would, but she stood up. Before she left, she reached into her bag and pulled out a piece of chalk. She held it up to me and I watched as she drew a line on the floor between my bed and the door.

  ‘When you’re ready,’ she said, closing the door behind her.

  I’ve been crying since Doctor Gilyard left.

  I can’t remember the last time I cried. I used to cry all the time – at films and those ads on the telly for animal shelters, the ones with the big-eyed, shivering dogs – but I didn’t think I could cry now, yet, as soon as Doctor Gilyard walked out, something in me buckled and I cried until I couldn’t breathe. Until I thought I was dying.

  I don’t think I would have stopped if Naomi and Lily hadn’t tried to pull me out. I’d been crying for a day, a week, a year, I don’t know. I just remember hearing footsteps
, then someone lying on my bed next to me. I knew it was Lily because the mattress barely registered the weight of her. Then Naomi climbed on top of me, like Olivia used to when we were at St Jude’s and she was trying to get me out of bed.

  ‘Get off!’ I barked.

  Naomi buried her nose in my hair. ‘Not until you come for a fag.’

  ‘I don’t want a fag.’

  ‘Oh, my God. She’s dying! Nurse!’ She lifted her head and called out while Lily giggled next to me. ‘Nurse! Call an ambulance!’

  ‘Fuck off!’

  ‘Ladies don’t say fuck, they say pardon,’ she gasped.

  She rolled off me giggling and I don’t know how the three of us fitted on my narrow bed, but we did. Good thing Lily takes up less space than my blanket.

  ‘What’s his name?’ Naomi asked when I rolled on to my back with a surly sigh.

  ‘Who’s name?’

  Lily sat up. ‘Is it Sid?’

  I stared at her. ‘What?’

  ‘Don’t wind her up, Lil!’ Naomi huffed. ‘She hasn’t had a cigarette for six hours.’

  Lily gave me her best lost-little-girl look. ‘I’m sorry. It’s just that you said his name the other day while you were sleeping so I thought he was the he.’

  ‘You been watching me sleep, Edward Cullen?’

  ‘Of course not! It was when you fell asleep while we were watching that episode of Murder She Wrote—’

  ‘Lily, stop talking,’ Naomi interrupted, rolling her eyes.

  ‘Yes, stop talking. Both of you. There’s no he.’

  ‘There’s always a he,’ Naomi told me with another sigh.

  I scoffed. ‘So every time a girl falls apart, it’s because of a boy?’

  Naomi raised an eyebrow at me and I huffed. ‘I don’t want to talk about it.’

  ‘You still love him!’ Lily gasped, all big eyes and hair.

  ‘I don’t.’

  ‘You do!’ they said in unison.

  They’re turning into quite the double act.

  ‘I don’t! It was nothing. We didn’t even—’

  I couldn’t finish the sentence, but I didn’t need to because Lily was already shaking her head. ‘That’s worse.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘Because you’ll never get over it.’