“I’m sorry about your books,” I said in a tiny voice. “I just went, like, crazy when I found those brochures and . . .”
For someone who was practically on his knees in front of me, he could still do the dour papa like no one else. “Do you have any idea quite how angry I am with you?”
This was familiar ground for us. I knew my lines perfectly.
“So what else is new? Even if I hadn’t got medieval on your stupid books or got myself half killed, you’d still be angry with me. You’re always angry with me!” My lips settled into that tight line where they felt most comfortable. “I bet you wish I had been killed, that would have sorted out the Isabel problem in one fell swoop, wouldn’t it?”
“Shut up!” he shouted at me, standing and snatching up one of the cushions and throwing it across the room because he couldn’t do that to me. “Shut the hell up!”
I was trying to get to my feet, but it was proving impossible; my hand kept sinking into the sofa and I was putting too much weight on my bruised leg. Smith looked warily at my father, who was clenching his fists at his side and doing the stary thing again.
“You wanted to know the truth?” I said to Smith, because no one had asked him to come in here and watch Act Four, Scene Five of my miserable existence. “All my terrible secrets, yeah?”
“Is . . . don’t,” he begged me, finally holding out his hand so I could yank myself up. “You’re really tired and freaked out and you don’t know what you’re saying.”
“No! You were the one who was obsessed with the truth,” I insisted, jabbing him in the chest with my finger. “I thought it was so terribly important to you.”
“You’re incapable of telling the truth,” said my father from somewhere behind me, poison dripping from each word. “You’ve destroyed this family with all your lies and your dirty little secrets.”
I wobbled precariously in Smith’s hold. There was this strange prickling at the back of my eyes and I couldn’t see too well. I held up a hand to my face and it came away wet because the tears were coursing down my face, getting into all those cuts and scrapes and making them sting. Guess I could cry, after all.
“He wishes it had been me, not her,” I choked, slapping Smith’s hands away from me. “That’s why he really hates me.”
“I’m sure it’s not like that,” he said helplessly. “It’s not your fault that your mum died.”
“That remains to be seen,” my father bit out, running his finger over the picture of her on the mantelpiece. “Isabel has been remarkably unforthcoming about what happened or didn’t.”
Smith shook his head. “I’m sorry about your wife, but it’s not fair to blame Is when she wasn’t . . . you didn’t have to sign the form but . . .”
“You don’t get it!” I shouted, and it was like a dam bursting in my chest because these sobs were coming up from the bottom, and I suddenly slid to the floor because my legs decided that they didn’t want to hold me up anymore. “You don’t get it. I didn’t tell you because I don’t want to remember . . .”
“What the . . . ?” Smith exclaimed, and I had to say it because none of it would make sense until I did.
“I was with her, you idiot! I was in the car with her when she crashed!” And I was crumpling in on myself, curling into a little ball, and someone was picking me up, cradling me against crumpled cotton as he sat down and rocked me back and forth, rubbing circles on my back, like he used to when I was little. “Ssshhh, Belle, don’t cry,” he said, brushing my wet cheeks with the pads of his fingers. “It doesn’t matter.”
I buried my face into the crook of his neck and wept harder. “I’m so sorry. I’m sorry it wasn’t me. I wish it had been.”
“It wasn’t your fault, Belle,” he murmured soothingly, kissing the top of my head. “She was going too fast and she didn’t have her seat belt on, and I told her a million times, didn’t I? And you always put your belt on because I drummed it into you and that’s why you only had a few scratches. Not like now.”
I rested my aching head against his shoulder and let him settle me more comfortably on his lap. “We had a fight, a horrible fight, and she wasn’t looking and I told her to . . . And, like, if I’d got out of bed earlier or if I’d packed my bag the night before, it would have been different and that lorry wouldn’t have come out when it did and . . .”
Let'sGetLost
Let's Get Lost
28
She was a major pain in the arse when Dad was away at one of his boring old conferences on the importance of the novel in the computer age. They were always about stuff like that. She’d embark on these little projects, like painting the front room eau de nil, then decide that she hated it, so Felix and I would have to breathe in paint fumes while it got restored back to white with hint of a tint of rose pink. Then there’d be the hours spent calling him and having what sounded like completely inappropriate phone sex, judging from her end of the conversation. “Oh, David,” she’d simper, sitting on the stairs and giggling. “You’re being very naughty.”
What was even worse was that she’d try to be my new best friend. I didn’t need a new best friend, I already had three old best friends who worked my last nerve without her barging into my room and asking me what music I was listening to and wouldn’t it be the best fun ever if we watched DVDs, ate ice cream, and painted each other’s toenails? Actually, no, it wouldn’t.
That’s when she wasn’t getting riled up about me staying out late and coming home with love bites dotted over my neck. She was worried that I’d get myself knocked up before I hit my twenties—just like her, pregnant at nineteen. She’d been the bright-eyed first year who wore a lot of black and too much red lipstick, and Dad had been the dashing postgraduate student teaching her twentieth-century poetry, and before you could say Sylvia Plath, she’d had to drop out because the morning sickness was really getting in the way of all those essays she was meant to be writing.
Never let me forget that. She’d sigh in this really annoying way when Dad was helping me with my homework and say, “You know, he’s not the only one who’s got smarts. I do have four A-levels.”
He’d immediately push me and my books away so he could take her in his arms and murmur sickly sweet nothings in her ear. “You’ve got smarts, too, my darling girl. You picked me after all.”
“I thought you picked me,” she’d say with this tiny little frown like they didn’t have this conversation every fricking week. “I was just the shy, innocent waif . . .”
“You were neither shy nor innocent,” he’d say throatily, and then they’d disappear upstairs, and it’s no wonder I learned to cook from an early age.
But this time he’d gone away just as the shit hit the fan, and Mrs. Greenwood and Lily’s mum were baying for my blood and we had to schedule in a meeting so they could slowly pull off my fingernails and make me confess or whatever.
She’d loved to scream. Not like Dad, who’d wait for an explanation, then make me fall over my perfectly crafted alibi. Like that last afternoon, when she’d heard my key in the lock and tripped over her feet in my pink Birkenstocks, so she could start in on me.
“I’m going to kill you!” As opening lines went, that one was pretty predictable. “Give me your phone, now!”
I’d slowly unbuttoned my cardigan and made her wait while I hung it up and admired my blonde highlights in the hall mirror, then turned to her with the innocent expression I’d had years to perfect.
“Say ‘please.’ ”
It was easy to send her free-falling into a hissy fit. She said that I was more like a bratty little sister than a daughter, but that was just to make her feel good about herself. You should have seen her preen when someone in Topshop asked her if we were sisters.
“I will not bloody say please,” she’d shrieked, going from zero to ear-splitting in nanoseconds. “I want to see the picture and how do you even know what a blowjob is?”
“Wouldn’t you like to know?” I’d smirked, holding out my phon
e so she could snatch it up and start fumbling with the buttons. “Do you actually know how to use that?”
She’d thrust it back at me. “Show me the picture!”
But there was no picture because I wasn’t stupid enough to have incriminating evidence on my phone. So I’d stood there, scrolling through my photos until even she had to admit defeat.
“I’ve had to cancel my Pilates class so I can have your headmistress imply that I’m a bad mother,” she’d wailed, following me up the stairs. “And just wait until I speak to your father tonight.”
By now we’d reached my bedroom, so I could get one parting shot in before I slammed the door in her face. “I have to review for my Maths GCSE. Unlike some people, I actually plan on having a career.”
She’d sidled into my room later as I was trying to cram as much trigonometry into my head as possible.
“Belle, c’mon, don’t be such a cow,” she’d wheedled, sitting down on my bed and picking up a copy of my textbook. “We do we always end up bickering when we should be friends?”
I’d put down my notebook with an angry little huff. “You’re not my friend, you’re my mother.”
She’d tried to stroke my hair then, but thought better of it when I yanked my head back. “You never talk to me anymore, you just do your angry teen queen act and it’s getting really tired.”
“It’s not an act. I am an angry teen queen, it’s like, this whole phase I’m going through.”
I have such a vivid memory of her sitting cross-legged on my bed, in jeans and one of Dad’s shirts, the sleeves rolled up and her hair long and loose cascading down her back. She was really pretty, maybe she was even beautiful with her creamy skin and her wide mouth, which usually quirked upward into a smile, but not now. Not when she looked at me and I gave her my blankest expression and pointed at the door with an imperious finger. Then her mouth drooped down and her shoulders slumped because I didn’t want to be her bestest friend anymore.
“Get out, Mum! Go and bug Felix or phone Dad and bitch about what a disappointment I am, just leave me alone,” I gritted out, and I didn’t see her until the next morning, when I’d fallen asleep over my textbooks (I used to be able to drop off standing up in those days), and she was tugging and yelling at me.
“I’m not going to tell you again,” she’d shouted right in my ear. “Get up! We’re going to be late!”
And because she’d distracted me and because I’d stayed up too late cramming, I didn’t have my stuff packed for school. I had to have a running commentary on how utterly useless I was.
“Why do you always leave everything to the last moment? Why do we have to go through this every morning? It’s not enough that you’re already on Mrs. Greenwood’s shit list, now I’m going to have to listen to a lecture on my shoddy timekeeping.”
We were only five minutes late when she’d shepherded me and Felix into the car. I’d munched a piece of toast with peanut butter, went over my notes, and told Felix I was going to rip him limb from limb if he kept kicking the back of my seat—just another normal morning chez Clarke. We’d dropped off Felix and she’d switched on the radio, so I had to listen to not only her inane chatter but the inane chatter of the DJ while I tried to memorize algebraic formulas.
“Turn it off!” I’d snapped, hand reaching forward to hit the button, and she’d slapped it away, not even taking her eyes off the road.
“I’m listening to it,” she’d mumbled. “You managed to study last night with your stereo going full blast.”
“That was good music, not this crap,” I’d sneered over the drone of Mum-rock.
“I’ll have you know that I’m the authority on good music,” she’d hissed. “In fact, I took you to see Nirvana when you were in utero, before they ever got famous.” She’d sighed dreamily. “Four months pregnant and in the mosh pit. God, your Dad was furious.”
“Yeah, well I’d never be so stupid as to get myself pregnant,” I’d said witheringly, rustling my notes for emphasis. “And if I did, I wouldn’t even tell you, I’d just go and have an abortion.”
I was just talking crap because it’s what I did. It was practically in my job description, but she gave this tiny, angry hiss and glared at me.
“You really are horrible sometimes, Belle . . .”
“Maybe you should have had an abortion yourself then,” I’d flung back at her. “And then you wouldn’t be wasting away as some stay-at-home mum who’s got nothing better to do than relive her fucking glory days and make my life a misery.”
I don’t think I’d even realized that we were picking up speed as we hit the Lewes Road. I had this sense memory of running my hand along my seat belt, adjusting it slightly because it was digging into my neck.
“I nearly did,” she’d suddenly snarled, quirking her eyebrow at me as I nearly dropped my toast. “You didn’t know that, did you? I was eighteen and the last thing I wanted was some squalling brat who was going to grow up and hate me . . .”
“Oh, shut up!” But deep down, I’d always known that that was how she really felt. I’d known it every time I’d caught her looking at me out of the cornerof my eye with this malcontent expression. “And you’re going too fast.”
“I’d even made the appointment, but he came around the night before and asked me to marry him,” she’d recalled with a bitter little laugh, beeping the horn furiously at someone she’d overtaken who wasn’t too happy about it. “Said he loved me and promised me we’d be happy.”
“Well, I never asked to be born!” I screeched like every teen cliché wrapped into a one-size-fits-all sentence. “And I know that you wish that you’d had the abortion . . .”
“When you’re acting like this, then yeah, I do,” she’d hurled back at me, and she’d started to spew out something else that I’d totally asked for but she’d never said it because this truck had suddenly pulled into our lane and she was slamming on the brakes and swerving to avoid him.
Everything went slo-mo, so I could see the back of the lorry coming toward us in minute detail, see her hands gripping the wheel as she wrenched it to the right and then the bonnet of our car crumpling up like a concertina as we plowed into it.
It made a terrible noise. Like someone crunching ice or running their nails down a blackboard but amplified a million times. I’d put my hands up as the windshield shattered, showering us in a cascade of broken glass, and we were both screaming and the car was still moving forward, then we’d stopped.
All the wind was knocked out of me as I was yanked back by my belt, the air bags exploding into life so I was struggling not to black out. Then everything was still and she’d let out a shaky breath.
“Jesus, Belle, are you okay?” she’d asked me, but there was another screech of brakes and the car behind slammed into us, pushing us further forward into that unrelenting wall of metal.
I did pass out then. Like, I’d willed it to happen because I couldn’t cope with the here and now of being shoved against the billowing plastic of the air bag so hard that I could feel the edge of the dashboard knocking into my chest. She was screaming, and it was such an awful sound that I didn’t want to hear it.
It was only for a few seconds, and then I’d opened my eyes and the whole world had changed. There were people gathering around the car and she was caught in the gap between our seats, lying on her side so I could see her face, if it hadn’t been covered in blood.
They’d got my door open, but I wouldn’t leave her. She was still there, then. She’d moaned faintly, and I’d unbuckled my belt so I could touch her, have my fingers come away sticky.
“It hurts,” she’d whispered. “Belle, hurts so much.”
“Mum? Are you all right?” I’d asked even though she’d looked like a broken doll, limbs arranged in a crooked pattern. “Mummy?”
“I’m so scared . . . want David . . . don’t want to go,” she’d mumbled, and I figured it was good that she was talking. Wasn’t that what they said? In accidents they always treat the silent
ones first because the people that are moaning and yelling are well enough to moan and yell. “Don’t leave me.”
So I didn’t. Even though she’d stopped talking, stopped moving, I stayed there, stroking her hair and saying her name, while they hosed down the car with this foamy stuff so the smoking engine wouldn’t catch fire. And I’d stayed there through every awful vibration of the cutting machine they’d used to cut through her door and get to her.
I had this theory that if I was touching her, connecting her to this world then she’d know, on some level she’d know, and it would keep her here.
“But it didn’t work, did it?” I sobbed and his arms tightened around me so he could pepper my face with frantic kisses. “And she didn’t want to go, Dad! I promise you, she wanted to stay with us.”
“Sshhh, shhhh,” he soothed, hands jerky as he kept rubbing those comforting circles against my back. “I know, Belle, I know.”