Lies Like Love (13 page)

‘Where’ve you been?’

Mum was supposed to have been asleep, but the flat was full of choking cigarette smoke and I opened the windows, walking straight past her.

‘Where’ve you been, Aud?’ She followed me, lifted my hair, sniffed at my neck, my skin. I shrugged her off and pulled away. It was Leo I wanted. My mouth felt swollen. I closed my lips tight.

‘At Leo’s,’ Peter piped up. ‘We could have stayed too. But Aud said you’d be doing the tea. I wanted to stay.’

Mum stared at me, her mouth hanging open.

‘What do you think you’re playing at, Aud? I thought I said no more going round there, didn’t I?’ She was so rough, like sandpaper, scratching my skin with her words.

‘What do you mean?’

‘I mean, you and Leo. Forget it.’ She had her hands on her hips. Mrs Bossy Boots.

‘Yeah, all right, whatever.’ No way.

I unpacked the shopping and started heating soup. Peter hovered close, like he always did when Mum and I rowed, checking my face, then Mum’s. Mum was just standing there watching us, and I moved stiffly under her stares.

She lit another cigarette – she must have got through a
whole pack this afternoon – and then said, all casual, as she took a drag, ‘I know what you’re up to, Aud, and I’m just saying, I wouldn’t make a fool out of myself if I were you. I’m not being funny, but no lad’s going to want to touch you, believe me.’

I pushed my hair out of my face and tried to smile when Peter looked at me, his face all in a worry. My brother tugged my sleeve, and I crouched lower to hear him.

‘I think you’re pretty, Aud,’ he said, and I dropped a kiss on his head.

‘Look at the state of you,’ Mum continued. ‘He’ll be sorry for you, that’s all. And you don’t want sympathy like that.’

Mum’s words were little daggers that scored and stabbed. But Leo had touched me. He’d kissed me. He liked me. The soup began to bubble; I turned down the heat and stuck some bread in the toaster, smiling at Peter and pretending I couldn’t hear her.

‘Are you mad with me,’ Peter whispered, ‘for telling?’

‘No, no. You’re fine. Don’t worry, mate. Here. You stir. Carefully, so it doesn’t slop over and splash you; it’s hot, all right?’

He nodded and took the wooden spoon, standing on tiptoe and biting his lip with concentration, stirring round and round and round, and we pretended Mum wasn’t there.

The next morning Peter and I got up early to cook pancakes. I’d told him he could be head chef after he’d done such a good job with our tea the night before, and I watched
him mixing, like I’d taught him, then going too fast and slopping the batter over the sides of the bowl. Mum watched with me and we exchanged a glance, smiling. There was no point in my staying mad at her. For Peter’s sake I had to forget it. Tell her what she wanted to hear, then do my own thing. When Peter was born I was almost eleven and she said I could be his mummy too. What I wanted most was to push the pram, and Mum let me put him in the buggy and push him around as if he were my toy. I was careful though. I fastened the straps round him, made our perambulations slow and gentle. He never fell out, not when I was pushing, not when I was in charge. Peter never had a dad. At least I’d had mine for a little while.

‘Ready!’ called Peter, as I helped him flip the first pancake and catch it before it fell. We clapped and cheered and he put it before Mum as if he were presenting her with the Crown jewels. Slathering it with syrup, she ate slowly, savouring each mouthful, and my own mouth filled with saliva; I wanted to take a bite, just a little, to please Peter and because it smelled so good. She saw me reaching out, raised an eyebrow.

‘Can I, Mum? Just a mouthful?’

‘Audrey.’ There was a warning note in her voice.

‘I’m fine though, Mum. I’m sure it’ll be all right. I could try.’

‘Allergies don’t just disappear, love. The reason you’re fine is because you’ve been steering clear. I know it’s hard, but we can’t be too careful.’ She pointed at me with her right hand, another forkful coming to her mouth with her left. ‘And do you really want to end up like me? Bursting
out of your clothes? That’s not going to do your health any good, is it?’

I looked back down at the table, at my fingers spread there, long and thin and empty, but when she’d gone to get a shower Peter passed me a bit of his pancake that he’d saved.

‘Eat it,’ he whispered. ‘Quick – it tastes of sunshine.’ And I crammed the lot in, all at once, chewed it slowly and helped him with the washing up.

Mum checked the mail on our way out of the Grange. I knew what she was looking for – the next appointment card. It had arrived two days ago and I’d found it first, taken it to the moat and stood there and shredded it into tiny pieces, impossible ever to reassemble. It wouldn’t give me much time, but maybe a little more.

‘Nothing. Again.’ Mum riffled through the envelopes she’d snatched from the letter box. The front door was still broken, swinging on its hinges and I shuffled leaves underfoot and waited. It was all junk. Mostly.

‘I mean, where are we, mid-November now? They usually send the cards out straight away. I’ll give them a ring,’ she said, then: ‘What’s this?’

Something fluttered out of her fingers and she snatched it up, staring.

‘Give it here.’ I held out my hand. The paper was a little crushed, but you could still see what it was. A flower. Five petals. Someone had folded paper, old and yellowing, and I made out the words: tiny print, disappearing into the petals, the stem. There were few words left whole:
I
,
and
,
love
,
sure
,
bird
,
my
,
at last
. Unless I unfolded the paper, smoothed it out flat, I wouldn’t know what they said. The mystery was better.

‘Can I keep it?’

She shrugged and I took it, put it in my pocket, planned to plant it later in my room, like a magic talisman to chase away a bit of the dark.

On Friday evening after school Mum and I worked on the blog again. I kept looking out towards the farm, wondering what was happening there, which record Leo was listening to, which book he was reading, what he and Sue were talking about. So I was watching for him as he ran past. Every night this week he’d stopped in exactly the same spot and waited, ten seconds, then lifted his hand before running on.

‘Come on, Aud – what are you doing?’ Mum said, dragging my eyes back to her laptop.

‘What shall I put?’ I rested my head on my hand, yawning. Leo had brought a picnic to school. We’d sat at our bench. I couldn’t remember what we’d talked about. I just remembered our ankles, tangled under the table, and his cool strong hand, holding mine, swinging my arm when we walked back inside. Our eyes, locking, as he walked backwards down the corridor because he said he didn’t want to look away, and how all afternoon not a single word a teacher had said had made any sense.

‘Describe what you’re feeling like. Like you do in your diary,’ Mum said. She was close at my shoulder, her breath in my ear.

‘Mum.’ I ground my teeth, crushing the words I wanted to shout. She ignored me.

‘Write about the meds, the therapy with Harry. You can write about me if you like, how I’m your support network. Write about why you cut yourself, why you’re not doing so well at school. How it feels, your depression.’ She leant forward, her elbows on the table. ‘Anything really. It’ll be therapeutic.’

Mum had taken some pictures and I let her load one. If I was supposed to look like shit, then she’d done a good job. The girl in the photo was pale and sickly looking, all skinny long legs and greasy hair. At least my face was a bit blurred.

I started to type.

I’ve been a bit ill, things have got a bit crazy – excuse the crap pun. I can’t really explain it – the whole story is way too long – but thanks to my mum I’m doing all right, oh, yeah, and Harry, my therapist. Yeah, I have a therapist now, which I suppose means I truly am INSANE. NUTS. MENTAL. PSYCHO. That’s what they say about people like me, that’s what the kids say at school anyway. Like all I am is a madness, a hideous, frightening thing. But I’m real. I’m a girl and I’m trying to get by, even though I’m scared too. Deep breath. Well, Harry seems all right. Maybe he’ll help.

If I really tried, I could imagine her. This girl, aged sixteen, really screwed up. I imagined her feeling so shit that she wanted to get away from everything, could see no other way to be happy other than by slicing into her skin and setting it alight with blood. I saw the dark stain of
that girl in my bedroom window, saw her screaming and bleeding. Her mother rushing her to the doctor. I wrote the story for her. Put her pain into words.

Usually I cut myself to get away
, I typed.

Because, and I know this sounds weird, sometimes I feel dead and the pain brings me back to life. Sometimes I think I’m so bad that I need to hurt myself – to dig as hard as I can into my skin, teach it a lesson. But now I’m feeling better. And I hope it lasts. So long as I take my medication, so long as I’m good, maybe I’ll be OK.

It was like the stories they used to make us write in English lessons. Imagine you are Miss Havisham. Write a diary entry explaining what it feels like to set yourself on fire. Until it turned into an essay factory about more things I didn’t understand. The real me? Well, I was saving her for other things.

Mum read through what I’d written.

‘Is that it?’

‘Yeah. What’s the matter?’

‘Well, it’s not really very interesting, is it, Aud? Plus you hardly mention me at all.’

‘Mum, I don’t think you get it. I don’t want to do it. This is all I could come up with.’ My finger hovered over the delete button. She held my wrist, pushed me aside.

‘Right, well, give me a go,’ she said, and I got up and left her to it.

Nearly two weeks later and Lorraine was downstairs in the kitchen again. She’d become a bit of a regular fixture since the bonfire party, but when she came over Leo tried not to be around. Often there was crying. It got heavy. Sometimes it was about Aud’s dad, who’d left her way before she had Peter. Other times it was about her job and the sick kids she looked after. And today: Audrey. Thoughts of Audrey made him restless. He couldn’t sit still, couldn’t finish a meal, couldn’t read a line without forgetting its beginning, but when he heard Lorraine start, his stomach turned.

‘Audrey’s not good, Sue,’ he heard. ‘Really; she’s seeing things, talking to people who aren’t there. I thought this new medication she’s on would help, and the therapy with Harry. But she never makes progress. We just go round in circles. What if she never gets the help she needs, what if she never gets better? What’s the future for her, Sue?’

His aunt murmured something, Leo couldn’t hear what, but he knew he shouldn’t be listening at doors like a spy. He stepped away, ran back up to his room, then the front door slammed and it was safe to venture out and go for a run. Sue called him into the kitchen, hearing him crashing about. It stank of fags; there were three butts stubbed out in an old pottery ashtray that maybe Sue had
made thirty years ago when she was at school. Whisking it away, binning the contents, opening windows, she told him to sit down.

‘Right. So we need to have a chat.’

They didn’t usually have premeditated conversations like this. This was more his mum’s style. Leo swung back on his chair, looking at the ceiling.

‘Lorraine’s pretty worried,’ Sue said. Leo righted himself, sitting up straight.

‘Audrey’s OK, isn’t she?’ He knew she was. He saw her every day at school.

‘It depends how you define OK. You know she self-harms.’

‘Yeah, and?’

‘It’s not our business. It’s up to Lorraine to deal with this. Audrey’s a pretty fragile girl. Lorraine thinks her friendship with you, lovely as it is, might not be helping.’

‘Why?’

‘Well, she’s still hearing these voices, seeing things. Lorraine says maybe psychosis. She’s not happy with the diagnosis. That it’s depression. Audrey’s very anxious and unstable.’

‘Meaning?’

‘Meaning no boyfriends, I’m afraid.’

‘Sue, for the thousandth time. I am not Audrey’s boyfriend. I have not upset her. I am not going to make her cut herself.’ He hoped all of those things, apart from the first, were true. Felt pretty certain.

‘All right, all right, I’m not suggesting you are. It’s just that Lorraine hasn’t been that explicit and of course you
can’t ask for the grisly details. I don’t want to upset her. And I think talking about it is hard for her. I get that. The upshot of it is: Lorraine doesn’t want Audrey getting attached to you. She doesn’t think it’ll help, in the long run. Either of you.’

‘Everyone needs friends, Sue.’ Leo returned his aunt’s words to her and folded his arms. No way was this happening.

‘Agreed. But if you can give her some space.’

‘Sure.’ He shrugged, pretended this was cool. ‘Why wouldn’t I? She can have all the space she needs.’ He gestured at the world beyond the kitchen. ‘Just look out there. There’s miles of space.’

Sue gave him one of her looks. ‘You know what I mean, so no need to get all clever, clever.’

‘Yeah, I know.’

‘Just a guess, but I thought you were getting keen.’

Leo stood up. He couldn’t help but grin at the understatement.

‘Is that it? Lecture over?’

His aunt nodded. ‘That’s it.’

Leo pulled on his trainers. It was getting dark and it was cold, but he needed out. Their conversation played in his head, over and over, a really bad record he couldn’t switch off. He wanted to take it and smash it to pieces. It was bullshit. First Sue asked him to make friends, and then when he found someone he liked, someone he could actually talk to, next thing he was being warned off. What the hell? No way would Audrey want her mother interfering with things between them, and he wasn’t going to listen to
any of it either. The shock of the night took his breath and, gulping for air, he ran as fast as he could towards the Grange. His daily pilgrimage, whether she was there or not. Just to check, make sure.