Heart-Shaped Bruise

by Byrne, Tanya

  ‘So what happened?’

  ‘She had a plan, but she said that if it didn’t work and I couldn’t get in, we’d sell the tickets and go get drunk.’

  ‘She was pretty determined, then?’

  She was adamant and I should have been beside myself; my plan was working, I was her friend, I was part of her life, but it made something in me curdle.

  ‘How did it make you feel, Emily?’ Doctor Gilyard asked, reading my mind.

  ‘I hated her more in that moment, than I ever have,’ I told her, my voice shaking.

  ‘Why?’

  Doctor Gilyard was right, Juliet and I do have a lot in common. She lost her mother, I lost my mother. She lost her father, I lost my father. She had to start again, I had to start again. She had to pretend to be someone else, I had to pretend to be someone else. But where she was better for it, I was worse. Where she used what happened to her to be stronger, I held on to it. I let it distil into something filthy and black. And I hated her for that.

  Hated her.

  ‘Why do you hate her, Emily?’

  ‘For reminding me that I did this to myself.’

  Monday. Tuesday. Wednesday. I don’t even know any more. I just know that I seem to be talking to Doctor Gilyard more. I don’t mean to, it just slips out, like I’m talking in my sleep.

  ‘It’s Reta’s birthday today,’ I told her this week.

  ‘Yes, it is.’

  ‘She’s eighteen.’

  ‘Yes, she is.’

  ‘It must be strange, having a birthday in here,’ I said. I thought Christmas Day in here was tragic, having to eat turkey and Brussels sprouts with a plastic knife and fork, but celebrating your birthday in here must be miserable.

  ‘How did you spend your last birthday, Emily?’

  I looked at her again, my nerves thrumming. I don’t know how she does it, how she always knows what I’m thinking. It’s moments like that when I think that I don’t hide it very well. I must want to tell her these things, to understand. But then I think: what’s to understand? I’m my father’s daughter. I am who I am. It’s in my DNA.

  ‘I went to a gig with Sid and Juliet.’

  She looked down at her notebook. ‘The gig you mentioned last time?’

  When I didn’t respond, she lifted her chin to look at me. ‘Are you thinking about Sid? Is that why you’re so fidgety this morning?’

  I crossed my legs and curled my fingers into fists. ‘Is fidgety even a word?’

  ‘Have you been sleeping?’

  ‘Not really,’ I told her with sigh, looking over her shoulder at the crack in the wall.

  This time she didn’t respond, so I sighed again. ‘I’ve been thinking about Dad.’

  She sat a little straighter. ‘Have you?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Do you miss him, Emily?’

  It was so brutal, I couldn’t look at her. I couldn’t even be near her in case she saw my chin trembling, so I got up and walked over to her desk. I was going to take a cigarette, but when I saw her swivel chair, I sat in it. I’ve never sat there before, I don’t know why.

  ‘Emily,’ Doctor Gilyard said as I began spinning in it, around and around.

  When I was dizzy I stopped, my palms flat on her desk. I heard myself laugh as my eyes swam back into focus, and it sounded strange, like it was coming from the next room.

  ‘Do you miss him, Emily?’ she asked again.

  I ignored her, picking up a pen and doodling on her blotter. I don’t know what I drew; hearts and flowers and butterflies and all that other crap girls draw.

  When I stopped, I looked down at the tangle of blue Biro.

  ‘I miss him today,’ I told her.

  That sounded like it was coming from the next room, too.

  ‘Because of the gig?’

  I nodded.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I wanted to go so bad. I don’t think I’ve ever wanted something so much in my life.’ I started doodling again. ‘I knew we only had two tickets so I was trying not to get too excited, but then, when we were on our way there, this group of lads got on to our carriage on the tube wearing white T-shirts with NO SLEEP TILL BRIXTON written across them in black felt tip.’ I smiled at the memory. ‘We spent the rest of the journey throwing shapes in the aisles while the commuters scowled at us over their copies of the Metro.’

  I looked up at Doctor Gilyard and she was writing something in her notebook. ‘When we got to Brixton, we ran up the escalators. I hadn’t run like that since I was a kid. My heart was beating so hard I was dizzy. But it was that good dizzy, excited dizzy, y’know?’

  She nodded.

  ‘When we got through the ticket barriers, the touts were waiting, pacing back and forth hollering “BUY OR SELL BEASTIE BOYS TICKETS” as though they were flogging apples at Chapel Market. And there was this buzz – this charge – in the air. I could feel it crackling off my bare arms. By the time we got to the Academy, I was almost in tears at the thought of not getting in.’

  I looked up then. ‘Have you ever been there?’ When she didn’t respond, I carried on. ‘It’s nothing special. There’s no tree-lined road, like at Wembley, no blocks or stands or tiers. You probably wouldn’t even notice it unless you were looking right at it.’

  Or the Beastie Boys were doing a gig there.

  Chaos is the only word I can think to describe it. Traffic was backed up and the pavement outside was a mess of people either waiting to get in, or trying to. Juliet, Sid and I stood across the road, watching them all. Everyone seemed to be shouting; bus drivers leaned out of their cabs to swear at people who stepped off the kerb to take photos of the red letters under the dome – BEASTIE BOYS SOLD OUT – while men in neon yellow vests shouted at everyone in the queue to stay behind the barriers.

  I don’t know how long the queue was, but it was long; there was a BBC truck parked in the narrow street next to the stage door and the queue went past it. It was too dark to see how far it stretched, but men in thick hooded coats with fur-lined collars walked up and down the length of it, handing out brightly coloured flyers for bands and club nights in Dalston.

  I overheard the group of girls standing near us say that people had been queuing all day. I don’t know how; it was so cold. We were only across the road for a few minutes before I started shaking. Apparently, the bloke in the Check Your Head T-shirt at the front of the queue had been there since dawn. He’d come all the way from Berlin and tried to sleep outside the Academy overnight, but a police officer had warned him that he’d either be pissed on or arrested, so he went back to his hotel and got the first tube back.

  Sid, Juliet and I had only travelled from Angel, which was no effort in comparison, but I was devoured by hysteria. I had to get in.

  ‘I missed Dad then,’ I told Doctor Gilyard.

  ‘Why, Emily?’

  ‘If he was around, we wouldn’t have had to do any of that; I would have just phoned him, told him that I needed tickets and he would have asked me how many.’

  ‘So what was the plan? How did three of you get in on two tickets?’

  ‘Sid didn’t get tickets, he got passes, so he and Juliet went in, then he took Juliet’s pass, came back out and got me.’

  ‘That’s quite clever, actually.’ She sounded impressed.

  I guess. But the wait was excruciating. I stood across the street and watched as Sid and Juliet joined the end of the queue. Watched as they waited. Watched them walk up the steps. Watched them go in. Five minutes turned into ten, then into fifteen.

  I waited, waited and waited. By then, I was so cold I couldn’t stand still. Wearing a coat would have helped, of course, but wearing a coat meant carrying a coat, or worse, paying to check it into the cloakroom. So, fortified by the quarter-bottle of vodka I’d shared with Sid and Juliet while we’d walked to the tube, I thought I’d be okay.

  ‘There was this bus,’ I told Doctor Gilyard, ‘waiting in the traffic outside the Academy, so I couldn’t see the doors any more. Th
ere was an ad on the side for this cheesy Christmas film. Something about a lost elf or penguin, I can’t remember. I just remember lighting a cigarette and staring at it.’

  ‘Then what happened?’

  ‘It rolled out of the way and there was Sid.’

  I smiled then. I don’t often smile in Doctor Gilyard’s office, but as soon as I thought of that moment, of Sid, on the other side of the road, grinning at me, some invisible lock at the corners of my mouth gave way and I smiled.

  It felt like an unbearable amount of time before there was a break in the traffic and Sid ran towards me. As soon as he did, I flew at him, wrapping my arms around his neck and sprinkling cigarette ash down the back of his T-shirt. He laughed and staggered back, his hands on my waist and his cheek against mine. His skin was warm and he smelt of, well, him. I love that smell. I still don’t know what it is, but whatever it is, that night, I pressed my nose into the curve of his neck and breathed him in.

  ‘Here,’ he said, when he put me back on my feet. He pressed a sticky guest pass with Sid King + 1 written on it to my chest. I grinned when I saw it. Then he took the cigarette out of my hand. ‘Give me that,’ he said with a loose smile. ‘I told Security I was coming out for a fag, so I’d better have one.’

  I couldn’t stop looking down at the pass. It was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen. I smoothed it down with my hand then looked up at him with a grin. ‘You did it!’

  He slung his arm across my shoulders and pulled me to him, kissing me on the top of the head. ‘Told you I would.’

  He handed me back the cigarette and the tip was wet. Ordinarily, I would have been appalled, but when I took a drag and handed it back to him, I made sure our fingers touched.

  I felt the shock run right down to my elbow.

  ‘Come on,’ he said with a grin, taking my hand and leading me across the road.

  We were almost hit by a bus, but when we got to the steps of the Academy, he took one last drag on the cigarette, then made a point of flicking it near the feet of the security guard. ‘We’re on the guest list,’ he told him. ‘We just went out for a fag.’

  The security guard nodded, but as we were about to go through the doors, he turned to us and my heart screeched to a cartoon halt. Sid squeezed my hand and I squeezed it back.

  ‘It’s murder tonight,’ he told us with a bored sigh. ‘Once the warm-up gets on, only people with crew passes and triple As will be readmitted.’

  I had no idea what a triple A was, but I assumed we didn’t have one.

  ‘Oh, alright,’ Sid said, running a hand through his hair. ‘No worries.’

  The security guard turned away again and as soon as he did, Sid literally pulled me through the circular entrance. We had to be patted down by more security guards, then we were in and when we got through the second set of doors, we started jumping up and down.

  Mid-jump, he hugged me again. I felt the BANGBANGBANG of his heart next to mine and my heart BANGBANGBANG-ed back as though it was responding, as though his heart and my heart were talking to one another. When he put me down, I heard the crowd roar as the warm-up took to the stage and we smiled at each other.

  ‘Let’s find Nance,’ he said, grabbing my hand.

  It wasn’t easy. The narrow lobby was cluttered with people who were in no hurry to get inside. They seemed quite content to hang around talking and drinking plastic cups of beer as we bumped, tripped and giggled our way through them.

  By the time we reached the merchandise stand, the back of my T-shirt was soaked. I could feel the cotton sticking to my skin and beer seeping through the canvas of my Chucks. I must have reeked, but I didn’t care, because as we approached the doors to the stalls, the warm-up band got louder and louder until I could feel the air rippling.

  I squeezed Sid’s hand and he looked at me over his shoulder. ‘It’s heaving in there, so don’t let go, okay?’

  I held my breath while a security guard checked our passes, then she opened the doors and we were greeted by a punch of heat and sound that almost knocked me off my feet.

  ‘Jesus, Sid,’ I gasped, but when the doors closed behind us, he wouldn’t have been able to hear me as we began working our way through the crowd towards the stage.

  It was so loud that everything was blurry. The floor turned to sponge, the walls to water, then all I could feel was his hand in mine, the lines of his palm, his calluses. As the crowd responded to the call of the band, everyone rose then fell like a wave that Sid and I were pulled along with, and I held on tighter, so tight that I could feel the bones in his fingers.

  The air had this tang of sweat and beer, which sounds disgusting, but I couldn’t stop smiling. I love it, I always have. The heat of a crowd, the buzz of a bassline. For a moment I was back at Glastonbury with my back-combed hair and too much eyeliner, shoving my way to the front of the Pyramid Stage with Olivia. So when Sid turned his head to look at me, I wanted him to stop so that we could stand there for ever, him and me, right there in the dark.

  I smiled at him and he smiled back and it was this perfect, perfect moment. But then my hand slipped from his as a blonde girl barged past us on her way to the bar. I turned to swear at her, but before I could finish the threat, Sid grabbed my hand again and yanked me away so suddenly, I thought he was going to pull my arm out of its socket.

  ‘This way!’ I heard him shout, as he led me to the side, where it wasn’t as busy.

  As we got deeper into the crowd, it got darker and the air felt thicker. It stuck to my skin as I stumbled behind him, stepping on people’s shoes. The closer we got to the stage, the more reluctant people were to move as they tried to hold on to their spots before the Beastie Boys came on. I could hear Sid apologising as we slid past them, and I don’t know whether it was because he was polite, or twice the size of most of them, but they shifted grudgingly. Not an inch more than they had to, though, so I felt damp T-shirts against my bare arms and at one point, I felt a girl’s hair drag across my cheek.

  I didn’t think we’d ever find Juliet, but finally – finally – there was a break in the crowd and there she was, waiting for us by the column to the left of the stage.

  When she saw me, she jumped on me. She’d never hugged me before and I was so surprised that I laughed and hugged her back. She smelt of daisies.

  ‘We did it!’ she said, stepping back with a grin.

  ‘I know!’ I shouted over the din, holding out my right hand. ‘My hands are shaking!’

  Sid smiled smugly. ‘I told you!’

  ‘Great spot! It’s so close to the stage. I usually stand on the other side.’

  ‘This side is better.’ Juliet pointed at the plinth at the bottom of the column. ‘We can take it in turns standing on this, otherwise we won’t see a thing!’

  ‘Who are LM and DM, do you reckon?’ Sid asked, reaching up and running his hand over the initials scratched into the column. ‘Do you think they’re still together?’

  Juliet pretended to gasp. ‘What if they’ve broken up?’

  ‘I bet they have!’ I said, already hoarse from shouting over the band. ‘I bet she can’t stand here any more because it hurts too much so she has to stand on the other side. I probably stood next to her the last time I was here.’

  Sid tipped his head back and laughed. ‘Your brain, Ro.’

  He pulled my hair and I grinned. ‘I very much need a drink! Beer?’

  They both nodded and I turned back towards the crowd.

  I remember thinking, once more unto the fray, as I started to make my way through it again. But then I realised that I hadn’t asked Sid and Juliet which beer they wanted and turned back. There were only a few people between us, and as they stepped out of the way to let me back through, I saw Sid smile at Juliet, then dip his head. His hair fell across his face, and when their mouths met, my heart caught in my throat.

  ‘Emily,’ Doctor Gilyard said then.

  I looked down at her desk and realised I’d been writing my name – EmilyEmilyEmilyEm
ilyEmilyEmily – over and over. The blotter was covered.

  ‘I saw them kiss,’ I whispered, like it was a secret.

  ‘Why did that upset you, Emily?’

  ‘I’d never seen them kiss.’

  Doctor Gilyard sounded surprised. ‘You’d never seen them kiss?’

  I had, of course, but not like that. It was always quick – a peck between classes or when she bought him a can of Coke at the canteen. I don’t know why. I guess the three of us were together so much they didn’t want to make me feel uncomfortable. I’d never thought of them as the type of couple who spent hours kissing, but as I watched them, his hands on her face and hers cupping his elbows, I saw that they were, they just didn’t do it in front of me.

  ‘How did it make you feel, Emily? Were you jealous?’

  I shook my head and stared at the blotter. ‘I was embarrassed.’

  ‘Why were you embarrassed?’

  I looked up. ‘They were waiting for me to walk away so that they could kiss, weren’t they?’ That’s why it took Sid so long to come out and get me. He wasn’t waiting for the right time; he was prolonging it for as long as he could. I imagined Juliet telling him to go, while he kissed her again and said, one more minute.

  I wondered how often they looked at me when we were together and thought, I wish she’d take the hint and leave us alone. How many times they’d lied to me about not being about to go out because they were tired or had too much reading so that they could snatch an evening alone to go to the cinema or eat sushi.

  The thought made my skin burn. I stared at them as they kissed, but when they stopped to giggle and Sid wound one of her curls around his finger, I had to turn away.

  ‘Make up your mind, love,’ a bloke muttered as I headed back to the bar. But I didn’t apologise. I didn’t apologise to anyone, just pushed my way through until I got there.

  As I waited behind a girl with a tattoo of a barcode on the back of her neck, I looked at the doors to the lobby and I wanted to run for them, to run and keep running until my legs gave way. I didn’t want to be there any more. I didn’t want to stand next to Sid and Juliet, pretending that I didn’t see them holding hands and snatching kisses when they thought I wasn’t looking. But when the girl stepped out of the way and the guy behind the bar asked me what I wanted, I didn’t want to run, I wanted beer.