Heartstream

by Tom Pollock

  To my borderline astonishment, his reply swoops in immediately, and its brusqueness makes me cold.

  Do nothing. Say nothing. Stay indoors.

  Jesus, Ry, I text back.

  Don’t let them see you.

  That’s it. The exchange might be as brief as a series of drill sergeant barks, but it’s the most I’ve had out of him in a fortnight. I flick back up the message chain. Rereading it is like probing a sore tooth with my tongue.

  For one thing, the ratio just looks bad. Three sky-blue boxes for every grey one, the little seam of anxiety in them growing more and more obvious with each.

  Hiya, it’s been about a week. Just wondering if you’d had a chance to talk to your guys yet.

  Hey, Ry, hope all good in Tokyo. Just checking in. Bump’s definitely bumping now. Wondered if we were any closer to a plan?

  ’Allo, me again. I know you’re crazy busy with the tour and all, but time’s ticking on and junior’s making me look more and more like a minivan with each passing day. The girls at school all want to know who the father is, and it would be a real relief to know when I can tell them…

  I wince at the winsomeness of the girls at school all want to know who the father is. I made it sound like we were all flocking together eagerly gossiping like something out of Grease. In reality it’s more like a maths lesson with Mrs Chen asking, “As x tends towards zero, what tends towards infinity?” and Lauren Cole answering: “Is it the number of men who’ve been in Cat’s pants, miss?” With everyone laughing, and Mrs Chen just sternly eyeing my bump and not saying anything, like I deserved it.

  A little spider of anger crawls up into my throat. I cannot wait to rub all of their spiteful faces in the fact that the number of men is one, and he’s been Elle’s sexiest man alive for two years running.

  Ryan’s replies always come when I most need them, when my feet feel ready to fall off just from the short walk home from school, or when I’m lurching around in the morning like a concussed foal because it took me three quarters of the night to find a comfortable position to sleep in. I treasure them, and reread them, again and again, crouching over my phone screen in the dark of my bedroom like its light is a candle flame, a source of warmth as well as light.

  Every message from him reassures me. His media guy was off sick, but he’s back now. We’re almost there, just fixing the final details. Something’s come up and they need to rethink, but it’ll be fine. The time difference is making it tricky while they’re in Asia, but he’ll call him to finalize as soon as he’s back. Every message ends the same way.

  I love you. I can’t wait to meet our baby.

  Our baby. I wonder if he knows how every time I read those words, it feels like a sip of a hot drink on a freezing night.

  Of course, my belly is expanding so fast it’s like it has plans to conquer Western Europe, so he’s likely to get his wish soon enough.

  It’s not that fast, a nagging voice in me keeps pointing out. It’s been four months, and he still hasn’t gone public with it.

  He will, I keep pushing back. He has to, because soon either word or the baby will get out, and if it’s the latter then the news will follow anyhow.

  A hubbub outside drags my attention off the phone screen.

  “Mrs Canczuk! Mrs Canczuk! Laurie!”

  “Who the hell are all of you?”

  I peek through the curtain. Mum’s struggling up the path, trying to manoeuvre the bulging Tesco bags around the paps. They’re not making it easy for her.

  “Mrs Canczuk, is your daughter dating Ryan Richards?”

  “Get away from my front door, you pack of hyenas!”

  “Is it true they’ve been meeting in secret for months?”

  “I’ll tell you what’s true: if you don’t get off my property and leave my daughter the hell alone, you’ll find that camera in a very surprising place; and no, I don’t care what turd rag you work for.”

  The pap she’s talking to, by coincidence the man with greasy-spoon eyes who leaned on the doorbell, makes no effort to get out of her way. He’s sneering. Mum sighs. She puts the shopping down, careful not to disturb the eggs sitting on top of the right-hand bag. Then she straightens up and slowly, deliberately, ties her hair back, before taking a step so that she’s less than a foot from Mr Eyeball Grease.

  “I know what you’re thinking,” she says, loud enough for me and all the paps in the little front garden to hear. “I’m a big tough man, and it’s kind of adorable that this little woman is threatening me. What’s more, I’ve faced down the meanest professional security the rich and famous can hire – what could I possibly have to fear from a middle-aged insurance saleswoman from Dorking?”

  Mr Eyeball Grease is still grinning, but there’s a glimmer on his pate that might be sweat. I don’t blame him, because that sweet, reasonable tone Mum is using is a sign that the gates of hell are hanging off their hinges.

  “But,” Mum goes on, “there are a few things you haven’t considered.” She counts them off on her fingers. “One: at least half of the training those professional crushers you’re so proud of going head to head with get is actually in how not to hurt you too badly. It’s their job, after all, and they’re going to do a lot of enforcing; they don’t want to be getting sued all the time.

  “Two.” The greasy eyeballs flick nervously towards Mum’s hand as a second finger extends. “While I might only go once a week on Tuesdays, I have been doing Krav Maga for long enough to get my black belt. No training in how not to hurt people unfortunately, just in how to dislocate joints and break bones. You don’t want to know what they teach us to do with genitals.

  “Three.” The final finger extends and then the hand falls like a guillotine blade. Mum closes the remaining distance fast. Eyeball Grease visibly flinches. “It’s not my boss I’m protecting; it’s my daughter,” she hisses at him. “Which means if you try to test me on this, I will fucking own you.”

  Eyeball Grease isn’t smiling any more. He tries to back away from Mum and tips backwards into our rose bush. He scrambles up, his face webbed with scratches. She watches him impassively as he edges his way around her.

  I exhale slowly, feeling my heartbeat gradually calm. My window’s open a crack at the bottom, so I hear him quite clearly when he mutters, “Whatever. Your little slut’s time is coming, whatever you do.”

  Mum’s expression doesn’t change, but she moves like a snake. She seizes the pap’s wrist and spins it into a lock against his back, forcing him to his knees with a sound like a kicked pig. With her free hand she snatches up his heavy camera by the lens and raises it like she’s going to bring it down on his head.

  The air fills with the buzzing clicks of shutters snapping. Mum stands frozen with every lens levelled on her like a gun barrel firing over and over again. She looks confused now, and frightened, and I can see that photo going up all over the Internet and no no no no NO!

  Before I know it I’m at the front door, wrestling with the latch, dragging it open, screaming “LEAVE HER ALONE!” at the very top of my lungs.

  There’s a single second of shocked silence, and then the click storm of cameras returns, redoubled, like a rainstorm repelled by a gust of wind before flying back with full force, and this time they’re all aimed at me. Mum’s forgotten. Even Eyeball Grease has somehow retrieved his camera and is frantically snapping.

  “Cat!” they yell. “Cat Cat Cat Cat Cat Cat Cat!” I’m drenched in my own name.

  “Cat, is it true you’re dating Ryan Richards?”

  I just gaze back at them, dumbstruck. Mum runs to me, trying to herd me back inside, but I’m rooted to the spot.

  One of them, a girl in a headscarf, barely older than me, walks right up to me and takes a photo of my bump right under Mum’s arm.

  “Cat! How far along are you?”

  “Cat! Is Ryan the father?”

  Don’t answer, I think. Don’t answer. He said not to speak to them. But all of the nerves and frustration and the months and mo
nths of waiting and hiding break in me like a wave.

  “Why don’t you ask him?” I say.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  Amy

  It happens in the space of two ragged breaths.

  Suddenly unrestrained, the mass of bodies boils out over the road. One figure, a muscly boy in a crow T-shirt, outpaces the rest. His eyes gleam in the street lights. He crouches without breaking step, gathers something from the road: a chunk of broken asphalt. He’s making straight for this window, for me. I can taste my own fear in my throat as my voice rises uselessly to meet him.

  “Stop!”

  I blink and another figure has separated itself from the crowd. Shaved head down, arms pumping. I can’t see his face, but I don’t need to. I did up the cufflinks on the white shirt he’s wearing this morning.

  Charlie.

  I’ve never seen him move so fast. He looks up and his face is dark with effort. He’s arrowing towards the boy at the front of the crowd. I can feel his desperation just by looking at him. I see his lips shape the words as he bellows.

  “DON’T TOUCH THE WINDOW!”

  The thud-thud-thud of the helicopter chops time into pieces. Shaved-headed streamers charge the house, their white T-shirts like the crest of a wave. The trampled policeman’s back on his feet, his face bloody. He looks like a horror film extra. He’s waving his arms, yelling, but not at the muscly boy, not at my brother either, but at another policeman, the one in the flak jacket rising to his feet on the bonnet of his patrol car with a look of panic on his face, lifting a rifle to his shoulder.

  Ten metres, nine, eight, the muscly boy jumps the low wall; he’s so close now I can hear his boots on the gravel through the glass. There’s no thought at all on his face. Charlie’s just behind, one hand outstretched almost close enough to snare the boy’s crow T-shirt.

  “STOP!” I scream, but whether it’s to my follower, my brother or the man with the gun, in that moment, I can’t tell.

  Three metres, two metres. I’m looking the boy dead in the eye. In the window, the ghost of my own reflection surrounds him. His arm coils back, the chunk of road clenched in his fist.

  The shot sounds like the world breaking in half.

  The glass in front of me dissolves into a blizzard. Both Charlie and the boy in black fall. I jump between them and Polly, instinctively trying to make myself as big as I can, trying hopelessly to shield my brother from the blast I know is coming.

  The floor slams into my body like a train, shoving the air out of me. Prickles run over my face, then heat. Not the piercing heat of fire, but the gentle warm throb of blood. Shaking, I push myself to my knees. Fragments of glass glitter on the carpet in front of me like tiny rubies. Judging by the searing sensation in my cheek, some are embedded in my face.

  No blast, I think, frantically. There was no blast.

  An arm curls around my throat and locks in place. My head is wrestled back hard, and I see the window. The middle of it – all but a few fragments of glass – is gone; the cold night wind rushes in and stings my slashed cheek, but the frame, and the precious, vicious silver tape that seals it, is undisturbed. Polly hauls on my neck and I feel the unexploded bottles on her vest an instant before the cold circle of her gun barrel presses into my head.

  Charlie, I think frantically. Where’s Charlie?

  I try to struggle, but her skinny arm might as well be an iron bar. The patches on the back of my head are burning hot under the load of my fear. She takes the gun from my head, points it over my shoulder and fires. It’s like someone slamming a knitting needle into my ear.

  “GET BACK!” She yells it, but I can barely hear her. Her order is redundant. The tight-packed mass of bodies has broken. Figures in crow T-shirts scramble in all directions, mouths working like they’re screaming, wrestling and tangling and pushing each other, panicked by the shots, their terror amplified by my own.

  The shots. Charlie. Where’s Charlie?

  I try to say the words but all I hear is a static whine, like a TV that’s just been switched off. My heart trips in my chest. My eye falls on the shattered window. The few bits of glass still clinging to the frame are clear at the top, but at the bottom they’re red, like bloodied fangs.

  “CHARLIE!” I shriek it loud enough this time that I can hear it, loud enough to tear my throat. I slam my head backwards and feel a crunch as something meaty and cartilaginous gives way. Polly’s arm goes slack and I spring forward towards the window, the flower bed beneath it coming into view.

  The boy in black, the one who broke the cordon, lies tangled in the flowers. His eyes are open, pupils dilated. His chest rises and falls in time with my own; his face is a mask of my terror. I read the shape his lips make.

  Charlie.

  But Charlie doesn’t answer either of us. Charlie doesn’t move. He’s sprawled face down across the boy in black’s chest, red smeared all over his forehead, matting into his fringe, soaking into the other boy’s T-shirt.

  Hot breath hits the back of my neck. Polly’s arm locks around me and drags me back. I go limply. I want to struggle but my legs and arms just won’t answer. Turns out I’m not the strongest person you know after all, kiddo. A pair of black-clad men in flak jackets jump the wall, rifles aimed in our direction. Their gun barrels weave like snakes looking for a strike, but there’s no shot, except through me, and that’s one chance these stupid bastards won’t take.

  My patches are searing hot. I can hear them humming. They vibrate against my skull as the charge in them builds.

  The marksmen stop at the window, but we keep retreating, and they get smaller. One keeps his gun levelled at us while his mate stoops, grunts and lifts. Charlie appears, sagging, hoisted by his armpits. I glimpse the bloody mess of his face for a fraction of an instant before the living-room door slams.

  Polly casts me aside like a rag doll and I fall like one, my injured cheek smacking into the hall floorboards. I try to get back up but there’s nothing in my legs. Nothing in my arms. She’s pressing silver tape to the door jamb. The pain from my patches is blazing. They’re overloading, I think. I can smell smoke, but I can’t even lift my hand to them.

  “Charlie,” I whisper. Still face down on the floor, I find the only muscles I can move are those in my jaw. “Charlie…”

  Black spots fill my vision; a whine fills my ears. The world vanishes.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  Cat

  Why don’t you ask him?

  Even now, my voice, carrying over the storm of firing shutters, haunts me. The question spins round and around my head:

  Why don’t you ask him? Why don’t you ask him? Why don’t you ask him? Why don’t you ask him?

  “Why don’t you ask him?” I whisper it to my phone, to all the music journos and fatuous beautiful TV anchors who post new interviews with the boys to their YouTube channels every other day in the run-up to the Everlasting’s new album, because none of them do ask. I watch video after video, listen to clip after clip, pore over transcripts and in-depth embedded features with the boys, my boys. There are lots of questions for Ryan about the music, his new hairstyle, who won the bet between him and Nick for the most viral video and whether breaking his arm was worth it (totally worth it, says Ryan), even a couple about whether “Rick” is real, but no one mentions a girlfriend, let alone a baby. It’s like they’ve all signed some kind of secret contract not to ask about it, in exchange for this flood of access.

  We have people who handle this kind of thing, he’d told me, back in the Dance Hall what feels like a century ago.

  I slump over the phone. I’m sitting at the corner table of the Starbucks opposite the Tube station. Mum didn’t want me to go out – after Papgate she likes to keep me close – but it’s been weeks, and I couldn’t stay cooped up in the house any longer. The paper cup at my elbow on the faux-pine tabletop has the word Hippo scrawled on it in magic marker. I tried to give my name as Hippolyta to the barista, just in case my real name pricked up any unfriendly ears, but sh
e just stared at me.

  “How do you spell that?” she asked.

  “H–I–P–P… You know what? Just put Hippo,” I told her.

  She eyed me sceptically. “’Ippo?” she said. “You sure?”

  I opened my coat and gestured to the geological immensity that my midsection has become. I smiled. “Don’t you think it fits?” She laughed, and congratulated me.

  I take a sip and make a face; the coffee’s long since gone cold. Feels like a waste, but it’s not like I could have drunk the whole thing anyway. You could bail out the North Sea in three scoops using this cup. Given the way junior’s leaning on my bladder, I’d be having to pee on every other lamp post like a dog if I put away even a quarter of it, and knowing my luck someone would film me, and wouldn’t that be a gift to the fandom?

  Oh yes, because while respectable journalists might not want to mention the baby, the inhabitants of RickResource have been nowhere near as restrained.

  My thumb hovers over the app button on my phone. Don’t do it, I tell myself. There’s nothing good there. But it’s like having an infected spot: sometimes squeezing is just too tempting. So I squeeze, and watch the pus come flooding out.

  Ahahahahaha delusional cow

  Do you think she’s actually crazy or just lying for attention? #Rick4Eva

  She goes to my school and every guy here has had their in her, so there’s no way she can possibly even know who the father is

  Half of the people discussing it have bright purple drawing-pin ribbons on their avatars, because there’s a theory going around that in the pap shots of me standing in my front doorway my bump is a balloon shoved up my top, and they want to pop it.

  The only small mercy is that Evie has so far refrained from weighing in. In fact, all of the Teenage Petrolhead accounts, across all platforms, have been dark since the news broke. This must really have shaken up her sense of order; I guess she doesn’t know what to say.