Call Me Star Girl

by Louise Beech

  I didn’t answer. Fury simmered in my stomach, rising like the bubbling fat when Sandra made us a Sunday fry-up.

  ‘Freaky weird fucker with perfume that she never wears!’ Kylie edged closer to me, her eyes glittering. ‘What if I poured it all out?’

  The bubbling fat rose from my stomach, into my throat. I felt like I might vomit, and they would all dissolve in my acid.

  Kylie tipped the bottle a fraction and then stopped, a cruel smile ruining her pretty face. ‘What if I did, eh? All over this crappy floor. What you gonna do about that then?’

  ‘I’ll rip every bit of your hair right out of your head,’ I said.

  Instinctively, she touched her blonde locks as though it might protect them. The other girls looked at one another.

  ‘Oh, will you now?’ Kylie tipped the bottle so far again. The liquid edged towards the rim. ‘Do I look scared?’

  ‘You should be,’ I said, trying to control my words so I didn’t scream, ‘because if you spill any, I’ll smash the bottle and use it to rip your fucking throat wide open, you cunt. I’ll cut through your windpipe and your bone and watch you choking on the floor in agony in your own blood.’

  Kylie’s face paled. Those pearly-pink-tipped hands fluttered by her throat as though she imagined it happening. I even saw it for a moment. Blood spilling over her fingers.

  Her friends stepped back, and I moved closer.

  ‘Give it to me.’

  I held out my hand.

  She wordlessly put the bottle in it, and then the star stopper. I popped it back in the hole, my eyes never leaving hers. Then I put the bottle back in my bag and left them all, mouths open like a row of Os.

  I went back to Sandra’s. I often walked out of school when I felt like it. She frequently came in to see the headmaster, trying to defend my absences, to explain that my mum had gone, and the school should have some compassion. That day she made me a sausage sandwich and sat with me as I ate it.

  ‘Stella, I do understand, I really do, but only you lose out if you miss too much school,’ she said. ‘The better your exam results, the better your chance at getting a good job one day. Have you thought what you’d like to do?’

  I shook my head. All I knew was that I wasn’t going to be dull. I didn’t want an ordinary life. And I wouldn’t need anyone.

  ‘What happened today?’ Sandra asked.

  I wondered if she’d still let me stay with her if I told her I’d threatened to cut a girl open with my perfume bottle. Now, I felt calm again. The girl who’d done that was another person. A hot, angry person. But I was sure that, had Kylie poured her scent away, in that moment she’d have carried out her threat.

  ‘Just some stupid girls,’ I said. ‘Bullying this other girl. I hate bullies.’

  For the rest of the term, Kylie and her gang mostly avoided me. Kids whispered about me as I passed in the corridor, looking the other way when I turned to confront them. I liked that they now held me in high regard. My friends Shauna and Clare even viewed me differently.

  ‘Me too,’ said Sandra. ‘Nothing worse than picking on those less fortunate.’

  ‘Hate that phrase,’ I said.

  ‘What? Less fortunate?’

  ‘Yeah. Bloody insulting.’

  ‘I suppose,’ she mused.

  ‘We shouldn’t judge, should we?’

  ‘No. I guess we shouldn’t.’

  She hadn’t mentioned my mum for ages. What was there to say? A year on and no phone call or visit; it must have shocked Sandra. Sometimes I caught her looking at me, tears of pity in her eyes. I hated it. No need to feel sorry for me; I was not ‘less fortunate’. If I could freeze my hurt with an open window, then no one needed to help me. There was nothing to comfort.

  So, I went to bed that night. Slept under my stars. Embraced the chill. I took the perfume bottle from my school bag and stood it on the bedside table. I liked how it flashed in the orange streetlight outside my window. It should never be hidden away. Never be taken away. I’d kill anyone who destroyed it.

  Once again, I didn’t whisper aloud the welcome-home speech for my mum. Not then, and not any other night, ever again. It tried to find its way into my mouth sometimes though.

  Mum, I’m happy you’re back. I’ve wished for this. Every day. But you—

  No. I won’t think it.

  —don’t need to stay. I talk to you at night. See you in the stars. And that’s—

  I said no.

  —enough. You’re better up there where the light never goes. If I let you back into my daytime world you might leave again. So I’ll be with you in the sky.

  No. I am the sky.

  23

  STELLA

  NOW

  Back at the desk, I take deep breaths. Was it stupid to invite a man I don’t even know to come to the studio with God only knows what kind of photographs when I’m here alone? When Maeve is still missing and Victoria Valbon’s killer has not been caught? When someone left me a book about an enigmatic murderer.

  I notice my phone flashing the name that is always on the tip of my tongue: Tom. I don’t care how much time I have. I must answer. I line a song up for after the ads, in case we’re still talking.

  ‘Hey.’ He sounds sleepy. I can picture him, sticky hot, hair mussed. I ache for him. Always the ache.

  ‘I tried ringing you back,’ I say.

  ‘I fell asleep.’ I hear the soft whoosh of flame as he lights a cigarette. ‘Kept the radio on, now I know it’s your last show. You lulled me to sleep.’

  ‘Charming.’

  ‘When I woke just now and saw it was after one, I couldn’t understand how your voice was still there. Thought I was dreaming. What’s going on, Stella?’

  ‘Maeve Lynch is missing,’ I say, the words hurting more each time I say them. I should ring Stephen, check he hasn’t heard anything more. ‘She just didn’t turn up tonight.’

  ‘That’s odd.’ Tom pauses. ‘What do you think happened?’

  ‘No idea. I’m very worried. Her husband is too. I said I’d cover her show, so I’ll be here until three, and probably not home until four.’ Depends if The Man Who Knows turns up, I want to add.

  ‘And you thought you were leaving the place.’ He inhales. ‘Maybe you’re not meant to. Maybe it’s one of those things that you would call a sign. Have you rethought leaving?’

  ‘Why would I?’ I might make rash choices, but they are absolute when I make them.

  ‘It’s just not what I expected from you,’ he says.

  ‘Good. Bloody good. I thought you liked the unexpected!’ Then I realise our important talk could be imminent and I regret being so harsh.

  ‘Are you okay?’

  ‘What do you think?’

  We pause. This is our caesura. I want to ask what it is we need to talk about. It’s unspoken between us. But I’m afraid. Afraid that he’s going to leave. Going to tell me he’s bored, that he’s packed his things, and he’s going.

  ‘So should we talk?’ I say softly.

  ‘Not on the phone.’

  ‘Do we have any choice?’ I say. ‘Tom, I can’t wait until tomorrow. I have so much on my mind. Maeve, you, my father…’

  ‘Your father?’

  ‘My mum rang. Brought him up. I think she’s going to tell me who he is.’

  ‘Oh, Stella.’ Tom’s words are gentle.

  ‘So if you don’t love me anymore … well, I just need to know now.’

  ‘Of course I love you. Is that what you think it is? God no.’

  ‘Oh.’ I close my eyes, relieved. ‘What is it then?’

  ‘I was interviewed by the police.’

  My eyes widen reflexively. My mouth drops open. This is not at all what I expected him to say. This is a song I’ve never heard. For a moment, I think I’ve misheard. But the words are clear. He isn’t leaving me. That’s all I can think initially. He still loves me. Then I refocus. Realise what he has said. The police. He was interviewed by the police.

  ‘T
he police?’ I repeat.

  ‘A week ago.’

  ‘About what?’ I ask carefully.

  ‘Look, I don’t want you to get upset. I really should have told you. I would have done, but then … with what happened … well, it would have just seemed so … much darker. It changed everything.’

  ‘Tom,’ I say firmly. ‘You know I’m not some hysterical woman. You know that. So just spit it out.’

  ‘Victoria Valbon was my girlfriend.’

  I don’t speak. The room holds its breath with me. I realise the silence needs filling so quickly cue in another song, the first I can find. I hope Stephen isn’t listening. I should be speaking again. Listeners will have to wait.

  ‘Your—’

  ‘Not just my girlfriend,’ he says. ‘My fiancée.’

  There are many things I want to say. Many things I want to ask. I turn to my window. To my stars. The clouds have stolen them again.

  ‘We were only together a year,’ he says.

  ‘A year? And you never thought to…’

  ‘I did, oh, I did. I just…’

  ‘And you were engaged to her?’ Jealousy rips through me.

  ‘We were too young to get engaged so fast, I know that now. It was nothing compared with what we have.’ These are clichés and I’m momentarily disappointed in Tom – my lover, whose mouth follows his heart more than anyone I know, whose words are usually like nothing else anyone ever said. ‘Remember when I first told you I loved you? Said I’d never felt that way? It’s true. I never felt that way wi—’

  ‘And the police?’ I ask, to stop him saying her name.

  ‘Okay. They called me two weeks back. Not long after she was … you know.’ Tom can’t seem to say the word ‘killed’.

  I say it for him. My jealousy says it for him.

  ‘I finally went in to speak to them a week ago,’ he continues. ‘Her family had given them my name. I guess I understand why they needed to question me. I was the last man she went out with. But, Stella, our relationship ended amicably. It did. We had grown apart. There was no fall-out or anything. We haven’t spoken since we split.’

  More clichés.

  ‘What kind of questions did the police ask then?’

  ‘How it ended,’ he says. ‘Why it ended. When I last saw her. All of that.’

  ‘When did you last see her?’

  Tom doesn’t answer.

  ‘I’m not the police,’ I say. ‘You can tell me the truth.’

  ‘I last saw her when we split up,’ says Tom. ‘That’s what I told them, and that’s the truth.’

  The phone buzzes in my ear, disrupting his passionless words. A message. I move the device from my ear and hit the home button. It’s from Jim. I feel sick. The text blurs.

  ‘I have to go,’ I tell Tom. ‘I’m working. And Maeve’s husband has sent a message. I need to read it.’

  ‘Are you angry?’

  ‘What about?’ I ask.

  ‘Victoria. The police. All of it.’ I can tell he is shocked at my calmness. That he didn’t expect it. He doesn’t know how worried I was about losing him. He doesn’t know that this is easier to deal with. What’s wrong with me?

  ‘I’m not happy you lied,’ I say. I have not been completely honest with him, but that part is truthful. ‘Tom. She was pregnant.’ I feel sick. Like I often do. But I can’t let it rise. Not here, not now.

  ‘I know,’ he says softly. ‘And yes, I suppose it could have been mine.’

  ‘You suppose?’ I repeat with ill-hidden disbelief. ‘I’m not angry about the fact that the police saw fit to speak to you. Or that you went out with her. But I can’t stand being lied to. So just fucking tell me.’

  ‘Okay. It was my baby.’

  I close my eyes.

  Victoria’s poor baby.

  Only a coat wrapped around her mother.

  ‘But she only found out about that after we had split up,’ he adds. ‘I’m not some awful absent dad.’ I know he’s thinking of me. Me and my poor lack of a father. Me and the father who I now know died before I could meet him. ‘I found out from a friend that she was pregnant,’ continues Tom. ‘She told him it was mine. But I figured that, if she needed me, she would get in touch. Then she never did. And now…’

  ‘You never thought to tell me you’d fathered a child?’

  He doesn’t speak.

  ‘I have to go,’ I insist. ‘We can talk about this when I get home, if you’re still awake. If not, in the morning.’

  ‘Are you okay?’

  ‘I suppose.’ I pause. ‘You can hardly give me grief that I kept it from you about leaving here.’

  ‘I guess not.’

  ‘Goodbye, Tom,’ I say.

  ‘That sounds so … final.’

  ‘Does it? I didn’t mean it to.’

  ‘You’re coming home then?’

  ‘Why wouldn’t I?’ I wonder who I’m asking.

  ‘I don’t know.’ I picture him frowning; the small line between his brows like a single no-parking line. ‘I just suddenly felt … like you might not. I’ll try and stay awake. If not, wake me when you get in…’

  I’m glad he seems edgy. Means I’m keeping him interested.

  ‘Have you got your key?’ he asks.

  ‘I have. It’s you that doesn’t.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Nothing,’ I say.

  ‘You’re still pissed off that I lost our special key, aren’t you?’

  I suppose I am. Having our initials engraved on each one cemented the way I felt about Tom. That he could have let it go seems careless. Cruel.

  ‘See you later,’ I say and hang up.

  Then I turn to read Jim’s message.

  24

  ELIZABETH

  THEN

  It’s difficult being sad and happy at the same time. It pulls you apart. I was still so sad about my first client, Sarah, losing her tiny daughter Jade – it was on my mind all the time; it woke me in the night. But then I’d turn on the radio and my Stella’s voice would filter into the bedroom. And that made me happy. Which made me sad again. Because I could have her voice anytime. I could listen to her on the radio website’s playback feature. Yet I’d left her without mine for many years. I never even rang her once. I could lie now and say I’d wanted to. But if I’d really wanted to I’d have found a way, wouldn’t I? We all find a way to do the things we really want to do. I found a way to be with the man I loved.

  Luckily, Stella seemed happy now. She had met a young man called Tom. It was all she could talk about. How they’d met, what he did, where they’d been. And I was glad to listen because this was something I understood. She spoke my language. The language of adoration. She kept reminding me that she didn’t need Tom, not really. That she could live without him. Like all of us with an addiction, she insisted she could end it any time.

  She just didn’t want to.

  Tom sounded a lot like Stella’s dad. How powerful must genetics be if we seek out the familiar without even knowing it. She said he was a bit of a loner. Had a lot of friends but no one close, just like her. That he had his own special way of looking at things. I hadn’t met him then, and I’ve only met him a few times since, but I had to agree – he sounded special.

  In our favourite café, at the table we always chose, she showed me a picture of him on her phone. It was hard to hide my emotion. He looked so like her father that I couldn’t speak for a moment. Black hair. Very short because he had recently shaved his head for charity. Dark eyes simmering with intensity. Handsome in an ugly way. A scar above his eyebrow. Shadows beneath his eyes. These flaws added to his beauty.

  Pain ripped through my heart. God, I missed my love. I wished I could smell him, kiss him, one last time.

  Stella asked what I thought.

  Nice, I said. Very nice.

  And I sipped my coffee.

  I was never sure if meeting Tom just a month after our reunion was what prevented Stella from asking me the questions she must have wanted t
o – about our time apart. About her childhood. About her dad. She must have had them. But once she fell in love, I guess her joy quashed that curiosity. If one man had torn us apart it seemed another would now join us.

  I finished my coffee. Wanted to ask why she never invited me to her house. I had hinted at it a few times. Asked questions about what kind of colours she had painted the walls, what the street was like. But I didn’t say it. I knew I had no right. I was lucky Stella even saw me.

  Stella then asked how my doula role was going.

  It was a few days after I’d last waved goodbye to young Sarah. I almost told Stella I’d decided to give it up. That it didn’t ease my guilt about leaving her as a child. That I was going to call the agency at the end of the week. Seeing that tiny baby dying in her mother’s arms only highlighted how little I deserved to be a mum, and each birth I witnessed was likely to do the same.

  Instead I said, It’s going okay. I’m between clients. The first was tough.

  Stella said the first one was never the right one.

  I asked what she meant. She said the first time we do anything is just the practice run. Like when she first did a show at WLCR and it all went wrong. None of the faders worked, she missed the news and no one called in. Then, when she came back the second time, it was like she had earned her position there. Everything fell into place.

  When I got back to my empty house, those words stayed with me. I wondered if I should see who the agency would ask me to help next, then decide. I didn’t have to wait long. They called the following morning and said they had a woman who was quite early on in her pregnancy – only twelve weeks along. And she had indicated that she only wanted a doula who had been a single parent, who had done the whole pregnancy alone.

  I was apparently perfect.

  It was a freezing late-March afternoon when we first met. I hadn’t slept a wink the night before. Even listening to Stella’s show hadn’t helped. It seemed again that somehow she was perfectly in tune with my life. She asked listeners to call in with their experiences of being a lone mother or father as it had just been National Single Parents’ Day. Most people had positive stories to share. Or maybe Stella kept the negative ones off the airwaves. She had often grumbled to me that Stephen Sainty wanted things to be permanently upbeat there.