Heartstream

by Tom Pollock

  I crash through the emergency exit at the bottom level. A hacking, wheezing sound emerges from his crumpled form. I’m two steps away, 999 already punched into the phone in my hand, when I realize he’s laughing. I crouch beside him. His face is the pale green of over-diluted Fairy Liquid and his arm is bent in one too many places, but he’s laughing.

  “Tell me…” he begins, and then winces and gasps for breath, reaching for the phone with his good arm. “Tell me you got that.”

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Amy

  It was our ritual, our stolen half-hour before Dad and Charlie were awake. Before the early morning hush was broken by the clunk of the pipes, the stomps on the floorboards and the volleys of sleepy shouts – “Honey, where are my keys?” “What did I do with that file?” “Charles Michael Becker, have you showered? Well? Have you? No, just deodorant doesn’t count; and no, you can’t have chocolate for breakfast” – Mum and I would have tea.

  “What is it?” she asked, dropping into her chair while I, like always, perched on the edge of the table, chewing the split ends of my hair.

  “What’s what?”

  “Whatever’s had you looking like a family of hedgehogs has taken up residence in your underwear for the past week.”

  “Mum, don’t talk about my underwear; it’s weird.”

  “Up until two years ago, I still bought your underwear.”

  “Those two years make a difference.”

  “I was the alpha and omega of your lingerie world.”

  “Not getting any less weird.”

  “And you’re not getting any closer to answering my question. What’s up?”

  I hesitated. “Someone at school.”

  Mum blew the steam off her tea. “I see. And is your relationship with this person administrative, amorous or purely adversarial?”

  “A little from column b; a little from column c.”

  She perked up; she liked hearing about my love life. “What’s his name?”

  I squirmed; every muscle south of my solar plexus tensed up. But if I chickened out, I’d have to lie, and where the fuck would that end? I sucked in a breath, let it stream out of me and, trying to ignore the way my toes were tingling, said, “Christina.”

  “Oh.” She blinked, sipped her tea. “I guess those two years really do make a difference.”

  “Mum…”

  She looked baffled, lost.

  I could feel the backs of my ears heating up. I knew it would go like this. I battled the urge to shout. “It’s my—”

  “What about Bradley? And wasn’t there a Timmy?”

  “Jimmy, Mum. No one called Timmy has ever been more than eight years old.”

  “Ah, well, there was no point in me learning his name, was there? Scruffy boy, pimples, clearly wasn’t right for you.”

  She lapsed into an expectant silence. Waiting for me to fill it.

  “Christina kissed me,” I said. “Well, I kissed her. We both sort of kissed each other.”

  “So, what’s the problem with that?”

  I didn’t realize it at the time, but her asking that question was the moment when everything in me relaxed ever so slightly. “She’s decided she likes boys.”

  “Well, so do you. Or at least if you don’t, I imagine it would come as news to young Johnny.”

  “Jimmy, Mum.”

  “Ah yes, of course.”

  “And Christina’s decided she only likes boys.”

  “I see. And you?”

  I stared down into my Hufflepuff mug, closed my eyes and let the steam wash over my face. “I kinda think I only like Christina.”

  And I started crying into my tea, as much out of relief as sadness, and she hugged me and told me that I only liked Christina right now, but there “were plenty more boys and girls in the playground” (her words – I honestly think she thought of us as eternal eight year olds), and then Dad woke up and stomped downstairs in his shirt and pants, and I told him, and he just looked confused until Mum said very loudly and slowly that if Christina ever came to her senses they’d love to meet her, and he shrugged and asked Mum where his trousers were and that was it.

  I was out.

  “How do you take it?” the interloper in the bomb vest asks, as she boils my family’s kettle and sets out two of my Hogwarts mugs.

  She pauses for a moment, considering, and then selects the Mad Hatter teapot that I gave Mum one birthday. Mum loved Alice in Wonderland. We used to squabble over whether that or Potter was better. I gave her the teapot as a kind of peace offering, and the Hogwarts mugs arrived on my birthday in kind. The stranger pours hot water into the pot and then studies the wall clock in intent silence until three minutes have ticked around. All the while the sirens shriek in through the window glass.

  “Sugar?” she asks. “Or just milk?” I don’t answer. “Just milk,” she guesses, and adds it. She passes the Hufflepuff mug across to me, keeping the Ravenclaw one for herself.

  She sits down in Mum’s chair. I want to tear out her fucking eyes.

  “Would you mind if I had a sandwich?” she asks.

  “You’re the one with the detonator.”

  She makes a face, as though reminding her of that was in bad taste. “Fair point.” She takes a crustless cheese and tomato triangle from the food for my mother’s wake, and carefully reseals the cling film. She bites, chews, swallows. Brightens. “Did you make these?” she asks. “They’re delicious. What’s the recipe?”

  “Cheese. Tomatoes. Bread.” I glare at her, but if she notices my sarcasm, she doesn’t seem to care.

  “I forgot to have breakfast,” she goes on. “It’s always the small details that trip you up, isn’t it? The plan for today looked good on paper, but you don’t know until you try it.”

  “So this is your first time threatening innocent people with a bomb?” I ask, flatly.

  “Oh, I wouldn’t quite say that. But I’ve never done it like this before.” She finishes her sandwich and carefully reseals the cling film. “Do sit down,” she says. “Please.”

  I shuffle over and drop into the chair opposite her. My legs are numb. My sweat-soaked dress sticks to my stomach where the table edge presses it into me.

  “Now, tell me, how’s school?”

  “You want to talk about school?” My voice is flat, but I’m unbalanced, teetering between fear, fury and bafflement.

  “Of course I want to talk about school. I want to talk about everything!” She looks at me like she’s the luckiest human being on earth. “How’s Charlie?”

  I feel my gut cramp up. Charlie? “He’s OK.” He’s not in here with you.

  “Do you like it? Having a brother?”

  I curl my fingers into the wood of the table. Her tone is as pleasant and vague as an afternoon nap. I start to shiver; I can’t help it. Her expression comes over concerned.

  “Here,” she says, pulling one of Charlie’s silk scarves from the back of his chair where he’d left it. “Or, if you show me how, I can turn the heating on.”

  “I’m not cold,” I say, but I accept the scarf anyway; slung around my neck it covers the patches better than my collar does. My teeth are starting to chatter and I have to grit them to get the words out. “I … I … I’m scared.”

  For a moment she looks confused, then she follows my gaze to her bomb vest like she’s forgotten it’s there.

  “Of course,” she says. “Of course you are. I know exactly how you feel. I’m sorry about this.” She gestures to the vest. “But you understand, I know you do. I’m sure all your fans tell you this, but I see so much of myself in you.” She squeezes her mug between her palms and hugs it to herself. “I’m scared too,” she confides.

  My leaden guts sink a little further. I think of the woman’s nervous prattling, the spoon’s out-of-control rattle against the inside of the mugs as she stirred in the milk.

  The fact that she’s sealed up every exit, not just for me, but for herself.

  I’m scared too.

 
; I stare at her bomb vest. Her suicide vest. The wires on it curl like nooses.

  I’m loath to generalize, of course, but I’d be lying if I said that self-destructive feelings weren’t a little more widespread among my Heartstream followers than in the general population. And I’d be a hypocrite if I pretended I didn’t understand why.

  “Did you…” I ask the question in spite of myself. “Did you lose someone?”

  Her voice is very solemn as she answers. “Oh yes.”

  “Do you…” I stammer. I’m not sure if it’s fear or fury that makes the words tangle in my teeth. “Do you want t-t-to talk about it?”

  She looks astonished, then delighted. “That is so, so kind of you! I’d be thrilled to. Later. When we’ve got to know each other better.”

  “Got to know each other? I don’t even know your name.”

  She smacks her forehead. “What a numbskull I am! See, like I told you, small details.” And then, ridiculously, she’s seized my hand and is pumping it up and down like she’s a small child who’s expecting chocolate milk to squirt out of my nose. “I’m Polly!” she announces. “It’s a delight to formally make your acquaintance.”

  My phone starts to buzz and skitter across the tabletop. A withheld number is calling.

  “That’ll be the police.” She lifts the phone and answers it in one movement. “You can wait,” she snaps into the mic with a voice like a whip crack and hangs up. It starts to buzz again, immediately, like an angry electronic hornet. She rolls her eyes conspiratorially, mouths honestly, switches the ringer off and stashes the phone in one of the pockets of her high-explosive outerwear.

  She stands up, smooths out her front and offers me a hand, beaming at me like I’m a mischievous Austrian schoolchild and she’s a singing fucking nun.

  “Do you know, Amy, I’ve read everything there is to read about you, but I don’t know you half as well as I’d like. It’s such a thrill to be in your home, I don’t mind telling you. Would you mind giving me the tour?”

  I don’t take her hand. She looks crestfallen, but she goes to the door anyway, and beckons me after with the pistol. My reluctance evident in every muscle, I rise.

  “That’s it!” she says delightedly. She turns and exposes her back to me with deliberate care. “Now, I’m trusting you, because I want you to trust me. But please don’t do anything, you know, cinematic, like trying to hit me with a vase, or tampering with the tape on the windows. I’m wearing what I’m reliably informed by the best reviewed bomb-making site I could find is enough explosive to level Big Ben, and I only need to press a very tiny button. So even if the blast didn’t get you, the falling masonry would. And I’d hate that.” She turns to face the wall, and in exactly the same tone says, “Ooh, this is a gorgeous picture: do tell me about it!”

  Polly passes through the house like the Queen on a state tour, taking the same polite interest in the pile of crusty, ancient wellington boots in the downstairs loo as the grand bookcases in Dad’s study, or the figurine of a belly dancer on the hall table that he bought from a junk shop on Portobello to keep me quiet when I was five. Any time she encounters a piece of paper – insurance quotes, medical bills, even old birthday cards – she studies it intently before putting it back down with a small sigh that could just as easily be contentment or disappointment. We pass through the small study where Mum ran her IT consultancy before she got too sick. Polly doesn’t say a word, but tucks Mum’s old laptop under her arm. She’s put the gun back into her pocket, and it stays there, but the bulk of her bomb vest is all the threat she needs. The little green light taunts me from by her breastbone.

  When we reach my room upstairs, her demeanour changes. She pauses in the doorway, then enters with very small, eager steps, like a pilgrim, hesitating to enter the sanctum that is the culmination of her journey. I feel a greasy unease, like I’m being pressed up against a sweaty body on the Tube, as she runs her fingers over my early charcoal cartoons of Nicky the Sticky Crow, and then rubs her fingertips together, savouring the residue. “These are extraordinary,” she gushes encouragingly. “I’ve loved them since I first saw them on your Instagram. Are you going to go to art school?”

  “I hope so,” I say quietly, eyeing her bomb vest. And then, in the hope that reminding her I’m a living breathing human being with a family might encourage her to not, you know, kill me, I add, “Charlie’s the really talented one, though; he barely even needs to practise. We always hoped we’d get a chance to be there together. Me as a final year and him as a fresher.”

  “Right.” She looks awkward. “Well, I hope so too.”

  She takes my books off the shelves and comments approvingly on the Terry Pratchett and the Frances Hardinge. I feel myself tense as she rifles through my drawers, and pulls out a thin black pair of knickers.

  “Racy,” she says, and frowns. “You mustn’t let them rush you into it, you know.”

  “What makes you think I need rushing?”

  She flushes, drops the pants back in the drawer and bustles past me, her ear passing close enough to me that my breath stirs the tiny hairs. I glance at the empty wine bottle with a candle shoved in it by the bed, and for the briefest of seconds I think I might be able to smash it over her head.

  But then I think I only need to press a very tiny button, and how could I guarantee, in the split second between waking and unconsciousness, that she couldn’t?

  And she’s out on the landing again, and the moment’s gone.

  “Your parents are across the hall?” she asks. I nod. She makes a happy noise in the back of her throat. “I’d be delighted to get to know them. Amy Becker’s mum and dad, imagine!”

  I’d be delighted to get to know them. This creepy woman says it like she’s my girlfriend and I’ve invited her home for tea.

  She ambles into Mum and Dad’s room and rifles through the closet. She paws through the contents of the old box files on top of the wardrobe. She runs my grandmother’s pearls through her fingers, picks up the little scrap of red fabric I clung to for comfort as a baby. Mum spent years trying to wean me off that; she just casts it aside like a dirty tissue. With each new fragment of my family’s life she handles, I can feel the anger building hot and violent in my chest. Weirdly, I can see the same emotions flitting over her face. Her nostrils pinch, her skin tight around her skull. It’s almost like she’s still streaming off me, but she can’t be – her stubbled scalp is bare.

  She lifts another handful of Mum’s jewellery, and alongside my anger a stitch of something else snags my chest – hope.

  Revealed from underneath the tangle of beads and chains is a black oblong: Mum’s old phone.

  We never cancelled the contract, I think, my heart suddenly beating faster. It’s probably dead, but there are chargers all over the house.

  Polly freezes, and I freeze too, belatedly staring at my hands in case my eyes have given me away. Polly’s fingers go limp, dumping the jewellery back on the dressing table, hiding the phone. Her gaze is fixed on my parents’ wedding pictures. She holds up a shot of Mum, smiling and radiant, backed by soft-focus summer trees.

  She hesitates, an almost mischievous expression on her face, then she crosses the room in three quick strides to the wardrobe, flings a bunch of Dad’s suits onto the bed and with a bark of triumph comes up with the ivory bolero Mum wore to her wedding. She tries to tug it on, over the bomb vest. A smouldering coal in my stomach explodes into flame as I hear the seams rip.

  “STOP IT!” I yell at her. “JUST STOP IT!”

  She freezes guiltily, like an animal that’s been caught going through the bins, and I freeze too, watching for any sign of her hand twitching for the bomb trigger.

  “Oh … sorry,” she mumbles. “I just… Sorry.”

  She replaces the torn bolero on the hanger, and even tries to pull the dry-cleaning plastic back over it, but gives up when it gets tangled in the wire.

  “Sorry,” she says again. She’s blushing, hard. Head ducked, avoiding my gaze, she bus
tles out of the room.

  I wait for a call, a threat, a demand that I follow and show her the tourist highlights of the fucking attic, but none comes.

  She’s left me alone.

  I scramble over to the dressing table and claw the jewellery and photo frames out of the way. I’ve probably only got a few seconds, but if I can just hide the handset somewhere on me, then the next time her guard drops I can…

  But I falter, my hands slowing as they pick through the pearls, moving the perfume bottles out of the way. I peer into the dusty ravine of cobwebs between the dressing table and the wall, in case it’s got knocked down there, but it hasn’t.

  I stand, blinking and swallowing, my stomach hollowing out. I search one last time, but in vain. I was sure. I was so sure I saw it.

  But Mum’s phone is no longer there.

  CHAPTER SIX

  Cat

  Like always, I check my reflection in Evie’s fancy brass door knocker before I press the bell. I changed out of my school uniform in the loo of the McDonald’s on the high street, and while my outfit doesn’t make me glamorous exactly (it’s a denim skirt and a vest top, not eye of newt and the finger of a birth-strangled babe), I do at least look a little more mature, more presentable. Even now, three years after I was first summoned by Evie to her four-bed mansion on the edge of Clapham Common, this still feels like an audience.

  Back then I only knew her as Teenage Petrolhead, at once world-renowned and anonymous. She’d linked to a fic of mine on her Tumblr, the main one, with over half a million followers, and my dash had erupted, like unpronounceable-Icelandic-volcano-ground-all-aircraft erupted. I was elated. I felt like my future had finally arrived.

  I was still responding to comments at breakfast when I got her DM and I’d barely slept. I read it and sprayed milk and Frosties halfway across the table. She’d invited me round for tea.

  It’s surprising how little has changed since. Back then, maybe my throat was a little drier, maybe I trembled at a slightly higher frequency, but the sweat’s still slick on my hand and I’ve still skipped a lesson to be here. Biology. I’m barely keeping my head above water in it at the moment, but I’ve never refused an invitation from Evie. I’m terrified they’ll stop coming.