Heart-Shaped Bruise
Page 14
When Sid led me through the cemetery gates, I held my breath. It was bigger than I had expected; wide and flat and green with a road that cut down the middle. Sid and I didn’t speak as we walked down it, just looked out at the headstones studded across the grass. Most of them were simple; rectangles of moss-softened stone or Celtic crosses that were chewed around the edges. But every now and then we passed an angel standing over a grave, its wings spread, or a plump cherub sitting with its legs crossed.
I didn’t think too much about those graves; they were old and worn with ivy climbing up the sides as though they weren’t there. Maybe in a few years they wouldn’t be, they’d be swallowed completely. Earth to earth, and all that. I thought of Mum then, wondered whether she was lying somewhere under a tangle of brambles. It made my hands shake so much that I rolled up my sketchbook in case Sid saw.
The headstones towards the end of the road were newer, the flowers on them fresher. I passed one shaped like a teddy bear and when I read the dates on it, I had to look away before my brain could do the calculation. I ended up looking at a grave edged with plants instead. An old lady in a heavy wool coat was on her knees next to it, plucking away the dead heads and kneading the soil in each terracotta pot with her knuckles. She looked up and smiled at Sid and me as we passed and I must have stepped closer to him, because my hip knocked into his. The shock of it made me miss a step.
He asked me if I was alright and when I found my balance again, I nodded, I think. I don’t remember. I just remember staring at a grave with a single red rose on it. Not all of them had flowers on them, but those were the graves I couldn’t look at; the ones no one visited. They looked so empty next to the graves cluttered with wreaths and balloons and those coloured pinwheels you get on Brighton beach. You could tell who was missed. Those graves wailed, come back.
It was almost too much, seeing people’s grief like that. It made me wonder what my grave would look like. It wasn’t an unusual thing to think, I suppose, but I realised mine would be one of the empty ones. I decided then to be cremated, that way someone can climb the tree near our cottage in Brighton, throw me in the air and I can fly off on the wings of the seagulls.
I think Sid knew I was freaking out, because he kept turning his head to look at me as he led me towards the back of the cemetery, near the railway tracks. It’s a stupid thing to think, but as we walked past them, I hoped his dad wasn’t near there because it wasn’t a very peaceful place to spend eternity. But Sid stopped under a tree with crooked branches and a fat trunk. It was almost stripped bare, its leaves scattered across the grave like brown confetti. But they were the only things on it. There were no wreaths, no candles, just those leaves and a bunch of dead roses, their petals dried up and curling.
‘Sorry,’ he muttered when he saw them, reaching down and snatching them out of the vase as though I’d shown up at his flat unexpectedly and he hadn’t done the dishes.
‘It’s okay,’ I started to say, but when I looked at him standing there, the dead flowers dripping on to his trainers, my throat hurt so much that I couldn’t say any more.
Thankfully, I didn’t need to as a woman not much older than Dad approached us with a carrier bag. ‘Here you go, darling,’ she said, smiling at Sid as he put the flowers into it. Some of the petals dropped off as he did and they fell on top of the dead leaves already on the grave. It was actually kind of pretty.
We stood there for a moment, the three of us, me with my sketchbook, Sid with his hands in the pockets of his hoodie and her with a bag of dead roses hanging from her finger.
‘My dad,’ he said eventually, nodding at the grave.
Her face brightened. ‘You Gina’s boy?’ Sid smiled, but she frowned. ‘She alright? I ain’t seen in her weeks. She not well?’
‘She’ll be alright.’ He shrugged and looked down at the grave.
‘This your girlfriend?’ she asked, smiling at me.
Sid grinned. ‘This is Rose.’
‘Pleasure to meet you,’ I told her with a small wave.
‘Rose! What a pretty name.’
When I looked at Sid, he was still grinning and as soon as the woman looked down to tie up the plastic bag, he pulled my hair. I swatted his hand away so he did it again and we both giggled. But when I realised that she was watching us, I blushed.
‘It’s alright, sweetheart,’ she said, waving her hand at us. ‘Don’t worry. My son was your age so it’s nice to be around teenagers again.’
Was. The word dropped to the grass between us like a cannonball. I was sure I felt the ground shudder beneath my feet and the headstones rattle.
‘This is him,’ she said, nodding at the grave opposite.
She took Sid by the elbow and led him over to it with a wide smile, as though she couldn’t wait to introduce us to him. The grave was one of the ones that wailed, come back. There were teddy bears and roses and a red-and-white scarf tied around one of the vases.
I couldn’t look at it.
‘My Jamie,’ she said, squeezing Sid’s arm. ‘A right Jack the lad. Always had people around him. The weekend he died, he’d just come back from Ayia Napa. Seventeen of them went, all boys. I dread to think what they got up to!’
She smiled at Sid and he smiled back, smiled like he meant it, and I don’t know how; it felt like someone had punched me in the chest.
‘He didn’t wear enough sunscreen,’ she told him. ‘He came back bright red! His nose was starting to peel.’ She laughed and touched her own as she looked down at the grave. ‘Seems such a shame to leave him here by himself. He hated being on his own.’
She stopped laughing, then it was so quiet I could hear the faint rumble of a train rattling past the cemetery. I looked at Sid and we exchanged a pained look.
‘Dad was an Arsenal fan, too,’ he said, nodding at the scarf as though he was trying to distract a toddler from having a tantrum. ‘I haven’t been back to the Emirates since he died. I can’t even watch the games on the telly.’
I wanted to step forward then, tell them that I was an Arsenal fan, too, that I couldn’t go back to the Emirates without Dad, either. But the moment wasn’t about me.
We stood there, looking at Jamie’s grave, then she leaned down and scooped a handful of roses from one of the vases. I wasn’t sure what she was doing, but when she walked over and put them in the empty vase on Sid’s dad’s grave, my chest felt so tight, I couldn’t breathe. It made me think of Bean. I’d forgotten people could be so nice.
‘That was it,’ I told Doctor Gilyard, lifting my chin defiantly. ‘That was the day everything changed.’
‘How do you know?’
‘Because I reached for his hand and held it, just for a second.’
‘What did he do?’
‘When I let go, he reached for my hand again and squeezed.’
‘Why do you think he did that, Emily?’
I have to stop now before I say too much.
This is another of those things I need to hold on to. Before I got here, I strung each of my memories together – the good ones, the ones about Mum and Sid and the dad I knew, the dad who put me on his shoulders at Arsenal games and read me Goodnight Moon when I couldn’t sleep and came to all my cello recitals – and at night I would thumb through them like rosary beads.
I can’t do that any more. Now I have to lock them away where no one will find them so they can’t take them away from me. That’s it, isn’t it? It’s not that Doctor Gilyard can’t have them, it’s that I’m terrified she’ll say I can’t have them.
That I don’t deserve to keep them after everything I’ve done.
I’m in the bathroom again. I don’t know what time it is, but my brain is spinning. Tumbling, actually, like a ball down a hill. Why am I writing this? I should stop. I should close this notebook and never write another word, but here I am, in this bathtub – my toes curling, I’m shivering so much.
I’ve never told anyone my story before. I’ve never had to; everyone knows it. I thought that�
�s what this is – my side of the story. But the blackness that began to creep into the corners of my life after Juliet stabbed Dad is getting closer. I can feel it. Everything is greyer now. Memories that used to be as clean as glass are smudged. I think that’s why I’m writing it all down, in case the blackness wins. I can feel it sometimes, chewing at the edges of my brain. If it ever devours the rest of me, these are the things I’ll want to remember.
So I’d better keep going.
As soon as we left the cemetery, Sid announced that he was hungry. I think he was trying to ease the awkwardness of the moment, or he was hungry, which is equally likely. Whatever his reasons, we ended up getting chips and eating them in the park.
It was only 4 o’clock, but the day had started to dim. Winter was coming. A chill nipped at the tops of my ears and steam rose, thick and fast, from the bag of chips I was cupping in my hand. The heat of them warmed the bones in my fingers and the air smelt of salt and onion vinegar. I haven’t eaten chips since then, but even now, thinking of that smell reminds me of that afternoon, of how Sid and I just walked and walked.
‘Is that why you took a year out? Because of your dad?’ I asked, staring at my chips, too scared to look up in case I’d crossed a line he hadn’t invited me across.
‘A year out is a polite way of putting it. I fucked about,’ he told me with a laugh, and I thought about his tattoos. Sink. Swim.
‘Was it sudden?’
He nodded. That’s when he told me what happened, about his dad, about the fight. He called him a hero. He was looking at the benches that lined the path as he said it. Each one had a brass plate – In Loving Memory of Edna or For Albert Chapperton. His favourite walk, stuff like that. He said he wanted to do something like that for his dad. A bench or a tree. Something permanent. Something everyone would see.
‘What would you want?’ he asked me between mouthfuls of chips.
‘When I die?’
He nodded. ‘Do you want to be remembered?’
‘Of course. I want people to know I’m gone, to look up at the sky and think of me.’
‘You want someone to name a star after you or something?’
I shook my head. ‘When I go, I want to punch a hole in the sky.’
He stopped and looked at me. I think that was the first time he saw me, saw me as someone other than Juliet’s mate, the girl with the too-red hair and dirty laugh.
He nodded again and we carried on walking in silence for a while.
As we approached the bandstand, he frowned. ‘You only eat chips in twos.’
I forgot that I still had my sketchbook tucked under my arm and almost dropped it as I turned to blink at him. ‘What?’
‘You only eat chips two at a time.’
I stopped and looked at my hand. Sure enough, I was holding two chips and I dropped them as though they’d burned me. ‘I had no idea,’ I muttered.
There was a bin next to the bench we were walking past, so I dropped the white paper bag into it. When I turned to look at him again, he looked mortified.
‘Sorry,’ he said, throwing his chips in the bin, too. ‘I didn’t mean to embarrass you.’
I blinked at him again. ‘Embarrass me?’
‘That’s the most I’ve seen you eat since we met. I—’
‘I eat!’ I interrupted. I didn’t think I was being defensive, but I said it so loudly that a man walking his dog looked up as he passed us.
Sid smiled. ‘Sushi isn’t food, Ro.’
‘Yes it is!’
He shook his head. ‘No, it isn’t. Nance made me go to one of those restaurants last night, the ones with the conveyor belt where you have to pick the plates off as they go past and I can confirm that a bit of rice with a slice of salmon on top isn’t food.’
He laughed, but I didn’t. I crossed my arms and turned away. We – Juliet, Sid and me we, not Sid and Juliet we – were supposed to have gone to that restaurant together. I shouldn’t have cared, but knowing that Juliet either forgot or wanted to be alone with him made me feel tiny.
‘Here,’ he said. When I glanced over at him he was tugging at one of the bushes.
‘What are you doing?’ I murmured, but when he turned to me again, I felt a rush of blood flood my cheeks as he held out a rose. It was well past its best, its red petals bruised and weeping on our shoes as he handed it to me, but it was still the prettiest flower I’d ever seen.
He grinned when I took it. ‘Cheesy as fuck, right?’ he said, sweeping the hair out of his eyes with his hand. ‘I bet every boy you meet gives you one.’
I frowned. ‘Why?’
‘A rose for Rose.’
I brought it to my nose and smelt it with a slow smile. ‘You’re the first.’
‘Yeah, right. I bet—’ he started to say, but stopped as a boy on a BMX rode between us. The shock of it made me jump and I jumped again when the boy turned around and rode back towards us.
‘Safe, Sid,’ he said with a sniff, stopping at our feet.
Sid nodded at him. ‘Alright, Owen?’
‘Yeah. Yeah. Who’s this?’
I waved. ‘I’m Rose.’
Owen didn’t look at me. ‘What happened to that fit one?’
There was an awkward silence after he said it and I felt tiny again.
Sid kicked the wheel of his bike. ‘Where’d you get this?’
‘Borrowed it, innit.’
Sid rolled his eyes. ‘How’s school?’
He sniffed again and wiped his nose with his sleeve. ‘Shit.’
‘How’s your mum?’
‘Alright.’
‘How’s Patrick?’
‘Alright.’
My gaze flicked between them. I think it was a conversation. I’ve had conversations with the bloke at the Chinese takeaway that were more involved.
‘You’d better get home, O,’ Sid told him, ‘your mum’ll be waiting for you.’
‘Alright,’ he said, putting his foot back on the pedal of the bike. ‘Later.’
They nodded at each other again, but before Owen started to ride away, Sid grabbed something from the back pocket of his jeans.
Owen stopped and gasped. ‘Oi! What you doing?’
‘What are you doing, O?’ Sid held up a box of cigarettes. ‘You’re twelve.’
Owen lifted his little chin defiantly. ‘They ain’t mine, they’re Patrick’s.’
‘Well, tell him to come and get them off me, then.’
‘Ah, come on, Sid,’ he whined, trying to take them back.
Sid ignored him and slipped the thin gold box into the pocket of his hoodie. ‘Come on, Sid nothing. Don’t you know they’ll kill you? Someone’s got to save you from your stupid.’ He nodded towards the gates. ‘Now piss off home. Don’t keep your mum waiting.’
Owen huffed and said something I won’t repeat before riding off again.
‘Little shit,’ Sid muttered, pulling the box back out of the pocket of his hoodie and opening it. He lit one and I watched as he inhaled then exhaled with a long, contented sigh.
‘I didn’t know you smoked,’ I gasped. We’d known each other for three months, how did I not know that?
‘I gave up, but I started again recently.’ He winked at me. ‘Don’t tell Nance, she’ll do her nut. She hates smoking; her aunt died of breast cancer.’
Her mum, I wanted to correct, but I eyed the box instead. ‘Give me one.’
There were only four cigarettes in the box, but we smoked them all – two each – under the bandstand, sitting side by side on the ledge with my sketchbook and the rose between us. It was our first secret, those cigarettes. If I really wanted to hurt Juliet, I could have told her – should have told her, I suppose. That was another tipping point, I know now, the moment I realised I wanted to keep it for myself more than I wanted to hurt her.
‘Let’s do something,’ he said, when he finished his last one, his left leg bouncing.
I checked the clock on my phone. ‘Nance should be done with Sahil by now.’
‘Like what?’
He jumped down from the ledge. ‘I dunno. I just feel like –’ He threw his arms out, then turned to look at me again. ‘Do the muscles in your legs ever shake sometimes like they’re restless? Like you just want to run?’
‘You want to go for a run?’ I frowned and flicked my spent cigarette into the bushes.
‘No.’ He started to pace back and forth over the worn boards. ‘You know how in the olden days they thought that if you sailed a ship too far it’d fall off the edge of the earth?’ I nodded warily. ‘Well, that’s what I want to do, I want to run until I find the edge.’
He walked over to where I was sitting. ‘Come on, Ro,’ he said, looking at me from under his dark eyelashes. It made my heart throb. ‘Let’s do something.’
‘Like what?’
‘I dunno.’ He looked over my shoulder. ‘I mean, look at these people.’
I turned to see who he was looking at. It was almost dark so the park wasn’t busy. There were a few commuters cutting through on their way home from the station and a man in red shorts had been running laps since we got there, a heart-shaped patch of sweat in the middle of his grey T-shirt.
‘They’re all going somewhere, doing something. I want to do something.’ He looked at me again. ‘Do you ever feel like that, Ro? Like stuff is going on and you’re missing it?’
I thought about him and Juliet at that sushi restaurant, giggling as they tried to grab plates from the conveyor belt. ‘All the time.’
‘Let’s do something, then.’
‘Like what?’
‘Anything. Anything that isn’t sitting around waiting for Nancy.’
‘Okay,’ I said with a small smile, jumping down from the ledge. ‘I have an idea.’
His eyes lit up. ‘What?’
‘Just stay here, okay? Don’t move. I’ll be back.’