Beneath the surface, p.24
Beneath the Surface, page 24
‘I can’t believe I’m back,’ says Lilly. ‘Do you know where my phone is?’
‘There’s a sign that she’s fully recovered,’ Patrick teases.
‘On the desk in your bedroom,’ Grace confirms brightly. ‘Fully charged.’
Mia grabs a sheet of cardboard from the kitchen table and runs over to Lilly. ‘I’m so glad you’re back.’ She presses a poster into her hands. ‘Welcome Home Lilly!’ reads the crooked handwriting. The line of the exclamation mark is drawn to look like Elvis’s body, with gills and a fin, and the stop point is his smiling face complete with overbite. Lilly laughs and Mia hugs her tight, pressing her head into her sister’s shoulder so that Lilly can clearly see the imprint of Tas’s hand on her neck. She touches the mark and Mia flinches.
‘What were you thinking?’ Lilly whispers.
‘Lots of things,’ Mia whispers back, in an uncharacteristically wistful tone.
During the journey back from the hospital Patrick had casually dropped into the conversation that Mia was once again in ‘Big Trouble’ at school after playing something called the Choking Game. ‘But when is Mia not in Big Trouble?’ he had quipped, with an overworked laugh. Turning something serious into a joke has always been one of his most transparent diversionary techniques. Lilly knew straight away that he was holding something back. She pressed him for more details, weevilling in with questions until he capitulated, declaring she was turning into a bullish journalist like her mother.
‘Bullshit not bullish,’ said Lilly, dismissively. ‘Mum’s not a real journalist. She writes a newsletter.’ She immediately regretted the accusation, less for its petty meanness than the way it betrayed emotion she didn’t want to have to explain to him. Then she remembered the infuriating way he avoids unpacking tricky emotions and turned the spotlight of her fury on him, sitting in hostile silence until he gave a full account of what had happened. He reluctantly explained that Mia and Tas had played a game they had copied from the internet that involved choking each other until they passed out from oxygen deprivation. ‘That doesn’t sound much like a game,’ Lilly said, in amazement. ‘Why would they do that?’
‘They were trying to make it look like they were having seizures.’
She noticed the muscle in his jaw twitching. ‘Like me?’ He was trying to protect her, which made Lilly feel even worse because it was a reminder of how everyone will tread warily around her when all she wants is for everything to be the same.
‘Her teacher thinks she was attention-seeking because we’ve been so focused on you.’
‘Well, I bet that got their attention.’
‘For sure.’ Her dad nodded. Then he started talking about how he would put good money on a northerly wind bringing a storm just in time for the weekend, and wondered if she knew that there were 286 pumping stations in the Fens working round the clock to force the water back to the sea. She stared out of the window as he talked, tracing a line along a dyke all the way to the horizon. It looked as if someone had drawn it in black ink. One day the water will come for us all.
‘Lil, Lil.’ She’s suddenly aware of Mia tugging at her arm. ‘So what do you think of my poster?’
‘I love it,’ Lilly says, ironing it out on the table to examine it more closely but also to turn away from Grace’s feverish surveillance.
‘Do you really?’
‘One hundred per cent. You’re very good at drawing.’
‘It took her absolutely ages,’ says Grace. She comes over to the table, puts her arms around Lilly and hugs her tight. ‘I can’t believe you’re really here. It’s like a miracle.’
Lilly counts to five, then untangles herself and peers at the strange hieroglyphics around the edge of Mia’s drawing. ‘What’s with the spooky writing, Mimi?’
‘It’s your name in Anglo-Saxon letters,’ Mia explains. ‘We’re doing them at school.’
‘Shall we have supper?’ asks Grace. Lilly wishes she would stop saying everything with such a hopeful look in her eyes. She reminds her of Hayley’s Labrador. The emphasis is meant to be on restoring normality. But everything smacks of effort and a desire to please, which only makes her feel under more pressure. She remembers the psychologist’s words: Sometimes being in hospital is a release from an unhappy or pressurized home environment. When they sit down she notices that the table is covered with a pale blue cloth that normally only comes out when her grandmother visits, and the vegetables have been decanted into bowls. The glasses and cutlery all match. Even Grace looks glossy.
‘I’ve got you some of that juice you really like. The one with kale and cucumber,’ Grace says, as she opens the fridge. It’s packed with food. Every shelf is stacked with military precision. There are orderly columns of milk, juice and different types of probiotic yogurt, a battery of vegetables and salad, and a whole regiment of pickles. It’s just like the picture of the fridge her mum had drawn in the notebook. Lilly feels an unexpected wave of emotion sweep over her as she observes Grace’s futile search for the juice.
‘Have you drunk it, Mia? I told you to save it for Lilly. It’s got to be here somewhere.’ She starts frenetically to remove everything from the top shelf.
‘Actually, water is fine, Mum.’
Patrick pours Lilly a glass of water while Grace flutters up and down the kitchen, like a moth, opening and closing cupboards.
‘Please, Mum, it doesn’t matter,’ begs Lilly. Grace finally sits down and peers into the jug of water.
‘There’s a red film. You didn’t clean the jug properly, Patrick,’ she says brusquely, seizing Lilly’s glass just as she’s about to drink from it.
‘It’s fine,’ counters Patrick. ‘There’s nothing there.’
She washes out the jug and glasses before sitting down again.
‘Bloody dust,’ says Grace, breathlessly. ‘Did Dad tell you? The builders have abandoned us.’
‘It’s all got a little weird here,’ Mia warns apologetically from the opposite side of the table.
‘Why has Marius stopped coming, Dad?’ Lilly asks.
‘They went on holiday,’ says Patrick, vaguely.
‘All of them? For three weeks?’ Lilly asks.
‘They’ll be back next week.’
Grace asks questions without waiting for answers. ‘Is the food okay for you? I’ve tried to use ginger and honey to marinate the chicken because it’s meant to be good for maintaining calm. But maybe it’s too spicy after all that bland hospital food. I should have done something simpler. Like carrot and parsnip soup. I’ll do that for lunch tomorrow.’
‘It’s great, Mum. Thanks,’ says Lilly, cutting the chicken into tiny slices to keep busy. She sees the knife shake in her hand. She’s worried about going back to school in case she has another seizure, but she doesn’t want to tell her parents because then they might prevent her from going. All her teachers have received precise instructions on what to do but, instead of reassuring her, it somehow makes a relapse seem inevitable. She worries that Dr Santini and the psychologist might have missed something and that she really is physically ill. What if I have a seizure and die? She remembers their advice and repeats it in her head. Accepting the seizures are harmless is a key part to making them stop. Don’t feed them with attention.
‘Is it too hot for you in here, Lil? We can’t get the radiators to turn off but I can open the door into the garden.’
‘Honestly, it’s fine,’ says Lilly. ‘It was hot in the hospital.’
Her dad tries to lighten the atmosphere by pretending he can’t find his glasses when they’re on his head and telling a story they’ve all heard before about one of his students who was asked to illustrate his answer with examples in an exam on landscape painting and drew pictures of rabbits and birds instead.
Lilly longs to escape to her bedroom. When Dr Santini came to say goodbye this morning, he advised her to find space alone whenever she started to feel anxious or the tingling in her hands. He gave her a small leatherbound notebook as a present. ‘Watch out for triggers. And write them down.’ She should have told him she feels worst around her mum. She knew this from the start. But if she had, she might have ended up blurting out the whole story. However, she did admit to him that the seizure three weeks ago was not the first. The first one happened the last weekend of the summer term. She could pinpoint the exact date because it was the day her aunt and uncle came for lunch, just after Mia discovered the pregnancy test. One minute she had been standing in the garage, the next she had found herself lying on the floor, unable to remember what had happened. He looked puzzled and asked why there was a paramedic’s report about her collapsing at a festival in the middle of the holidays. ‘It wasn’t me,’ she told him. ‘We gave my name to the paramedics so my friend wouldn’t get into trouble.’ He asked her if she could tell him any more and she shook her head. ‘That’s enough for the moment,’ she said. He congratulated her for making such good progress.
‘Can I just say how wonderful it is to have all four of us round the table again?’ says Grace, reaching out to hold hands with Lilly and Mia. Patrick sees Lilly glance at the kitchen door and knows she’s itching to escape. He does a sympathetic eye-roll but she doesn’t respond. He senses a new steeliness in her demeanour but, unlike Grace, he feels no fear that she no longer bends to their will.
‘Mum, please,’ Lilly implores. ‘You’ve seen me every day.’
‘So what did you get up to today, Mia?’ Patrick interjects, attempting to turn the spotlight away from Lilly and on to her younger sister.
‘Not a lot,’ says Mia, shovelling food into her mouth, seemingly unaware it is spilling on to her school skirt.
‘Well, maybe that’s no bad thing,’ he teases. He wishes she would do up the top button of her shirt so he can’t see the marks on her neck and hopes she didn’t go to school exposing her craziness for the world to see.
‘What are all those scratches on your hands and wrists?’ Lilly asks.
Mia hides her hands so no one can examine them. ‘I fell over during Netball Club.’
‘You’ve joined Netball Club! That’s great,’ says Grace, who has been trying to persuade Mia to sign up all year. ‘Sport is such a great way to make friends. Isn’t it, Lil?’
‘Well done,’ Patrick loyally echoes in his most upbeat tone, even though he thinks they both sound like evangelical preachers.
‘Does Bea do Netball Club? Maybe you should invite her over and do some goal-scoring practice. We could put up a hoop outside,’ suggests Grace.
‘I’m playing a defensive position,’ says Mia, her mouth full of rice. ‘Bea’s a natural attacker. And I don’t want to be in the team.’
‘It’s sad not to be part of a team when you could be. Lilly has got so much out of swimming squad. Haven’t you, Lil?’
‘It’s not that sad,’ says Mia. ‘There’s far sadder stuff.’
‘Like what?’ asks Lilly.
‘Like war and famine.’ Mia pauses for a moment and rubs the tail of her plait above her upper lip. ‘And when people who want to have babies can’t have them and people who don’t want them get pregnant. Like the Anglo-Saxon girl who is buried at the Travellers’ site.’
‘How do you know she didn’t want to get pregnant?’ asks Patrick, when what he really wants to ask is why her healthy interest in any subject always corrodes into unhealthy obsession, like her infatuation with Tas and her fixation with her teacher. He can understand why people find her intensity so offputting. It repels him too.
‘She fell in love with a boy who didn’t love her back and she knew she would die during childbirth so she wanted to be rid of the baby.’
‘You can’t know that,’ says Grace. ‘You’re imagining what happened. You’re projecting a false reality.’
Mia’s gaze darts between the three of them. ‘When you think about it, there’s probably more reasons for not having a baby than for having one, aren’t there? If you’re too young to look after it or the father doesn’t want to be involved. Or you don’t have enough money.’ Mia glances at Lilly, who glances at Grace and Patrick and sees them stiffen.
‘I’d better get my stuff ready for school,’ says Lilly. She’s clock-watching, calculating whether she has spent enough time at the table to leave without causing either offence or worry.
‘What do you mean?’ Grace asks sharply.
‘Grace …’ Patrick warns. But he pulls back when he sees her expression.
‘I don’t know where anything is,’ says Lilly, who is already halfway out of her chair. ‘I’ve got to get all my files together. And my swimming kit. Do you know where my goggles are? And my biology textbook?’
‘You can’t go to school tomorrow,’ says Grace, frantically. Her face is ashen.
‘Why not?’
‘It’s too much too soon.’
‘Too soon for who? You?’
‘You need time to adjust. It’s too risky.’
‘What are you talking about, Mum? If I miss school I’ll get even more behind with my work and Mr Galveston will definitely throw me out of his class. Isn’t that what you care about most?’
‘Maybe that’s not such a bad idea,’ Patrick jokes, but the mood has curdled.
‘I’ve thought about it a lot. The sooner I go back, the better. Otherwise the pressure will just build up. Dr Santini and the psychologist both agree I should get back to normal life as quickly as possible.’
‘Maybe we can go together on the bus,’ suggests Mia. ‘I know the route really well. I’ll look after you.’
‘I’ve had enough of your bad ideas, Mia,’ says Grace savagely.
‘I think it’s a good plan,’ Lilly counters. Mia smiles adoringly at her.
‘What happens if it was something at school that caused the seizure?’ says Grace. She pauses for a beat too long. ‘Or someone? What happens if you have another seizure and there’s no one there to help?’
‘Come on, Grace, the school has drawn up a ten-page contingency plan,’ says Patrick, impatiently.
Grace bats his comment away with her hand, as if swatting a mosquito. ‘If I were you, I’d stay at home for the next couple of weeks and let me help you. You can ask the teachers to set you assignments and I can oversee them. I can help you make a timetable and write up lists of quotes for you to learn.’
‘But you’re not me, Mum. I’m going and you can’t stop me.’ Lilly leaves the room and storms upstairs, closely followed by Mia. They hear her bedroom door slam shut at the top of the house.
‘That went well,’ says Patrick. ‘You need to go back to work, Grace, and get on with your own life. For all our sakes.’ He doesn’t mention that they can’t survive without her meagre salary.
Mia sits at the desk in her bedroom, composing her Anglo-Saxon diary. She’s coming to the end of her story. They’re starting a new topic next week and Miss Swain’s written instructions for their final homework are to ‘finish with a flourish’ with a ‘detailed and dramatic’ conclusion using ten complex words they have never used before. Mia has made a list that starts with opium (she’s got Dr Santini to thank for that one) and ends with abortion (following on from her Show and Tell). Anyone who does this is guaranteed the top grade, Miss Swain had promised, as she handed out the sheet in class, just after she had announced that Bea and Madani were joint winners of the Show and Tell. Miss Swain gave Mia the award for Best Effort. ‘That’s a real achievement,’ she told Mia.
As soon as class finished, Mia got a pair of scissors and cut up the certificate into hundreds of tiny pieces and scattered them like confetti over Miss Swain’s desk. Tas had skipped school again so there was no one to agree with her that she had been robbed of victory.
Although Miss Swain has instructed the class to focus on writing rather than drawing, Mia has dedicated the final page to a very detailed picture of her Anglo-Saxon girl floating above a field full of flowers, smiling serenely. Her uncomfortable pregnant stomach has disappeared. The ring is back on her finger. On her head Mia has drawn a flower crown with intricately sketched tiny flowers that she’s colouring in.
She had started drawing it during a lunchtime detention yesterday. Bea had spent most of morning break pretending to have a seizure every time she saw Mia. If Tas had been there, they would have laughed it off together. ‘If you don’t shut up I’ll strangle you until you pass out,’ Mia had retaliated. ‘I’m good at that.’
Bea had burst into tears and Mia was the one who ended up in detention. ‘Do you often have thoughts about harming Bea?’ Miss Swain had asked casually.
‘Of course,’ she had replied. Honestly, adults ask such stupid questions.
She hears Lilly’s footsteps leave the bathroom and hesitate outside her bedroom door. Please come in, Lil! The door slowly opens.
‘Shouldn’t you be asleep?’ Lilly asks. She goes over to the window.
‘Don’t,’ says Mia.
‘Don’t what?’
‘Don’t open the curtains. Please.’
‘Why?’
‘I get scared of the bad spirits out there.’
‘Funny how you’re not afraid when someone half strangles you but the night air terrifies you. Makes no sense.’ Lilly snaps the curtains shut. ‘What exactly are you scared of?’
‘Bad spirits that lead you into the water and leave you to drown.’
Lilly wanders over to her desk and looks over Mia’s shoulder. ‘Gosh, that’s such a good picture.’ She sounds genuinely impressed.
‘Thanks,’ says Mia, softly. She’s always pathetically grateful for Lilly’s praise.
‘Why aren’t her feet touching the ground?’
‘She’s floating above the earth,’ says Mia, vaguely.
‘Why?’
‘She’s come out the other side of a bad experience,’ Mia explains.
There’s a noise like bubbles bursting coming from Elvis’s bucket. He pokes his head against the grille and Mia lifts it off so she can stroke his chin. His skin is still as smooth as liquid velvet. But it has turned from inky black to mottled green on top and silver underneath and his eyes look bigger.
