Dandelion Clocks (15 page)

I'm lying in bed, trying not to think. I'm not sure how long I've been awake but it gets light so early at the moment and once I've woken up it's really hard to go back to sleep. I never close my curtains any more and I always keep my window open, even though Isaac keeps moaning at me – he reckons it's cold. I don't bother to tell him that the cold feeling in our house has got nothing to do with my window being open. Dad mutters under his breath that I'd better start closing the window when autumn arrives or the cost of heating will bankrupt him. I don't listen, though – having my window open makes me feel closer to Mum.

‘Liv! Isaac!'

I can hear Dad calling and I bury my head deeper under my duvet. My door rattles a bit as Isaac thunders past and races down the stairs to
where Dad is waiting. He has a meeting with Isaac's teacher this morning and told us last night that he'd take us both to school in the car today.

I, however, have absolutely no intention of going to school. I've come a long way since my first rubbish attempt at skiving all those months ago. I am now Queen Of Bunking Off. My success is mostly based on keeping under the radar – I still go to school a couple of times a week but I rotate the days I miss so that no individual teacher senses a pattern in my absences. My school has a two-week rolling timetable so I reckon I can get away with it for quite a while yet.

‘LIV!' Dad is opening the front door and I can picture him looking anxiously at the clock in the hall.

‘Have you seen Liv this morning?' I hear him ask Isaac.

‘No.' Isaac sounds keen to go. ‘Come
on
, Dad, or we'll be late.'

‘She must have gone in early. I hope she took some lunch money.' Dad sounds a bit worried and I feel a pang of guilt. For a second I'm tempted to call his name. I know that he'd be up here in an instant. He'd ask me why I'm still in bed and I could tell him everything – that some mornings it
seems like my whole body is made of concrete and the prospect of getting up, dressing and leaving the house seems impossible. Maybe he'd cancel his meeting and we could all stay at home in our pyjamas, cuddled up in front of the TV, eating toast and peanut butter.

Then I hear the front door slam and I'm all alone in the empty house. I'm too late and the chance to ask Dad for a hug has gone.

I'm not really sure why I haven't gone into school today. I do know that it feels like a lonely place to be. When I went back after it happened everyone went out of their way to be nice to me. I didn't really like that cos it felt wrong – I just wanted to get on with normal stuff. But it was worse whenever anyone mentioned the word ‘mum'. Everyone would freeze and then the person who'd said it would say, ‘Oh sorry, Liv, really sorry – didn't mean to upset you or anything.' Like, come
on
. I'm not stupid – I know that there are mums out there, going to work, making the tea, forgetting that you need your PE kit washed by tomorrow. Just not my mum.

To be honest, it's not really any better staying at home. It's weird. All of our stuff is here, the stuff we've had forever – but it just doesn't feel
like home any more. It's a bit like when you've been away on holiday and everything feels a bit different when you get home. Except that things usually go back to normal pretty quickly and I don't think our house will ever feel the same again.

I must have dozed off for a bit cos I've just looked at the clock and it's 11.30 a.m. My tummy is rumbling but I can't be bothered to think about food. It seems utterly pointless to put any effort into making a meal when it's only me that'll be eating it. I get out of bed and drag myself across the room to the door. I brace myself and open it slowly – I hate being in the house when there's nobody else here.

The house is silent. Too silent. I can hear the hall clock ticking and the sound of blood rushing in my ears – when I swallow it sounds stupidly loud. I'm wondering why I didn't just go to school where I could get lost in all the noise. If I was still friends with Alice I suppose I could have hung around with her, but since it happened I've gone out of my way to avoid her. I feel bad, like I've abandoned her, but when it first happened I didn't have the energy to deal with anyone else's sadness.
Alice phoned me up after the funeral but she just cried down the telephone and I didn't know what to say. It felt like I should be making her feel better, but she's still got
her
mum – she's got nothing to cry about.

After a few weeks I kind of understood why she was sad. I wished that I could tell her how it felt and let her try to make me feel better. But then I realized nothing could ever make me feel better and it seemed wrong even to think of being anything but sad – like being disloyal to Mum. Now I can't be near Alice in case she reminds me and makes me feel even worse. She knows everything about me and if there's anyone who could open the box in my head that I've padlocked shut, it's her – so I've just kept out of her way. It seems safer like that. I'm still here so it's obviously possible to live when your whole, entire life has been destroyed. I just have to do this my way, and that means not letting other people bring their memories and thoughts and sadness into my world.

I close the door again, walk across to my dressing table and sit down. The face staring back at me from the mirror is pale and ugly – I've got spots all across my nose. After Mum's make-up lesson I was really taking care of my skin but that
was ages ago now. I ran out of cleanser early on – I know Dad would buy me some more if I ask him but I can't be bothered. I pick up my hairbrush and try to tame my mad hair. But there're so many tangles that I do what I always do and grab a scrunchie. At least when it's tied up nobody can see what a mess it is. Then I lean forward and really look at myself, right in the eyes. I'm not sure what I'm hoping to see but whatever it is, I don't find it cos there's nothing there. It's like looking at a painting on a wall – not that anyone would want to do a painting of me. The person staring back at me doesn't even begin to remind me of me.

I slump back down across my bed and stare at the ceiling. I seem to spend most of my time lying here – I'm just too tired to do much of anything else. Sometimes I sleep, which is good because it helps to kill a few more pointless hours. The only problem with sleeping is the waking. Every time I sleep, I dream – vivid, lifelike dreams that wake me up feeling, for just a second, that everything is OK. I wake up unsure about where the dream ends and reality starts, and that moment is full of joy. Then I remember.

So mostly I try not to sleep. Mostly I lie on this
bed and wonder why. I wonder if this was always going to happen – if my destiny was decided long before I knew anything about it. It makes me feel as if all the happy times were just a joke – the warm-up act before the main event. Maybe it would've been better if Mum had never been here in the first place? Perhaps this is so hard because I know what life was like before, and everywhere I look there's about a million reminders of what we used to have – of the family that we used to be. I wonder, for the thousandth time, why this had to happen to me. And the nasty, nagging voice in my head whispers that maybe, Mum just didn't love me enough to stay.

I would rather feel nothing for the rest of my life than feel like I wasn't good enough to keep her.

The sound of the door slamming jerks me awake. I'm lying on my bed and my whole body feels stiff. I have no idea how long I've been asleep. Before I have time to sit up, I hear loud footsteps running up the stairs two at a time, and then my door crashes open so hard that it slams into the wall.

‘Liv! Thank goodness you're here! What the hell are you playing at?'

I look up and see Dad staring down at me. His face is red and his eyes are full of worry.

‘I was so scared, Liv. Don't
ever
do that to me again.' He rubs his face with his hands and takes a deep breath, blowing the air out in one long stream. ‘I didn't know what to think. I didn't even know where you were.'

Even though my brain feels all foggy, I know why he's mad and I wonder how I've been rumbled.
I pushed it too far with the bunking off and now I've been caught. Not that I feel upset. I don't feel anything really. Dad's still talking and it's a shame that he was worried, but maybe he should have realized what was going on. I mean, he's the grown-up and meant to be in charge of everything. Mum wouldn't have fallen for my tricks – there's no chance I'd have got away with skiving school if she'd been here.

‘How did you find out?' I ask. My voice sounds like it's coming from a long way away. I'm really not interested, but Dad's gone quiet and I think he's expecting me to say something.

‘School rang me – said they were worried because you've missed so many days lately,' Dad answers, but he sounds distracted. He's looking at me in a really odd way and it's starting to freak me out a bit.

‘What's going on, Liv? Talk to me,' he says quietly.

‘I just couldn't face school today, Dad,' I tell him.

‘Have you been in your room all day?' he asks, his voice sounding totally weird.

‘Yeah. I've been asleep pretty much the whole time. Why – what time is it now?'

Dad doesn't answer. His face looks worried
and sad and something else that I can't quite figure out.

‘Liv –' he starts and then stops. It's as if he doesn't know what to say and I don't like it.

‘I'm sorry, Dad – I'll go to school tomorrow,' I say in a rush. I want him to stop looking at me like that. It's making me feel frightened.

‘Why did you do it?' Dad says, and I realize that he sounds scared.

‘I don't know, but I promise I won't skive again. I mean it.' Dad frowns and steps back from the bed. I sit up and swing my feet down on to the floor.

‘That's not what I'm talking about, Olivia.' Dad's voice is gentle, like he's talking to a small child. ‘Why did you do
that
?' He swings his arm towards my bed and I look where he's pointing.

I don't understand what I'm seeing for a moment. The bed's a state – lots of bits of paper all over the duvet, and lying on top of my pillow are Mum's sharp scissors that she used to cut Isaac and Dad's hair. I gape at the mess – how did all that get there? The paper seems familiar and I look a bit closer. My brain is struggling to make sense of what I can see and when I work it out, I wish that I hadn't.

All over the bed are photographs. They've been chopped up into different-sized pieces – they are barely recognizable. Some of them have rough edges, as if whoever did this got fed up with using scissors and started ripping them up. It looks horrible – almost like the scene of a crime. My hand reaches out and picks up one of the pieces even though my brain is screaming at it to stop. I try to close my eyes so that I don't have to look, but my body seems to have taken over and I can't control my movements.

I look at the destroyed photograph in my hand. I can see a bedside table and part of a bed. I instantly know where it was taken – I've been climbing into that bed since I first managed to escape my cot when I was a toddler. I can see an arm, a shoulder and half a face. I stifle a sob and look quickly down at the rest of the pieces scattered over my bed, searching desperately for the other half of the picture. I haven't got time to look at Dad, but I sense him coming closer and as I find the piece I'm looking for, I feel his hand on my shoulder. I grab both halves of the photograph and hold them together in front of me – and there she is. Mum, in bed, on the day that we made the indoor garden. The day that she left me. The photo
has been torn right down the middle of Mum. I ram the pieces together, but it has been ripped with so much force that it won't match up properly and Mum's face is distorted. She was smiling at me when I took the picture, but now her face looks wrong. Mum is spoilt.

Holding the two halves carefully, I stare down at the floor, unable to take in any more. My mind is working overtime. What has actually happened here? Did I do this? Why would I ruin a photograph of my mum? I'm scared to look properly at the other pieces on the bed – what else has been destroyed?

‘Liv?' Dad's voice is quiet and some part of my mind registers that he isn't cross with me. ‘Liv, please, sweetheart – look at me.' He sits down next to me on the bed and wraps his arm round me. ‘It's OK, Liv – it's all going to be OK. But you need to talk to me – tell me what's going on with you. Tell me what happened here.'

‘I can't, Dad,' I whisper.

I feel Dad stiffen and then he pulls me in even closer, holding me so tightly that I can hardly breathe.

‘Oh, Livvy. I know I'm not as good as your mum and I know I keep getting it wrong – but
I am trying, sweetheart, and I need you to let me in. I don't know what else to say to you.' His face is pressed against the top of my head and his voice is muffled by my hair, but I can still hear his worry and it makes me feel even worse than I already do.

‘No, Dad – I mean I don't know what happened.' I pull away from him and stand up so that I can see him properly. ‘You woke me up when you came into my room. I don't remember doing any of this. Maybe I didn't do it.'

And for a brief, beautiful second, I believe myself. I would actually prefer to think that some lunatic sneaked into my room while I was sleeping and cut up photographs and scattered them all over my bed. My heart lifts, for just a moment, as I wonder what sort of person would do such a terrible thing. What were the other pictures that they destroyed?

Then I catch sight of something out of the corner of my eye. I turn to look at it and solve both mysteries at once. There, on the floor, is my memory box. The lid has been thrown into a corner and the box is on its side, totally empty.

This time I can't contain my sob as I turn back to the bed and acknowledge what I knew from the start – all the photos are of Mum. The photos I've
taken over the years – gone. The photos I took over her last few weeks; my project to show Mum in all her wonderfulness – gone. The photos given to me by Mum's friends after the funeral – all gone, ripped and torn and ruined. I am the sort of terrible, disgusting, evil person that would do something like this and the evidence is here, right in front of me. I don't deserve to be happy.

‘I get that you're angry, Liv,' says Dad, looking at me helplessly as tears start to roll down my face.

‘It's probably all my fault that she died,' I howl. ‘I was just too horrible to keep her.'

‘Woah – enough of that stupid talk,' says Dad, looking alarmed. ‘Is that what you really think?' He stands up and grasps my shoulders, making me look at him.

I think for a moment. ‘No,' I mutter. ‘But there must be something wrong with me.'

‘Oh, Liv – there's nothing wrong with you.' Dad sounds relieved and I can't figure out why he's not going ballistic at me.

‘Err – Dad? Have you seen what I've done? There's obviously something wrong with me.' I point to the scene of the crime and start weeping again. ‘I've ruined everything.'

‘That's not true, Liv. Yes, OK – I agree, there is something wrong with you. Mum has died and you've done everything you can to keep it together and pretend that you're not feeling anything. Well – I'm no expert but I think that feelings need to be let out and if you don't let them, well –' he gestures towards the bed – ‘then they'll find their own way of being released.'

He pulls me into another hug and I start to let myself relax a tiny bit, when I have a horrible thought.

‘Mum's diaries!'

I wrench myself away from Dad and crouch down on the floor. I can see that my memory box is empty, but I can't stop myself from picking it up and shaking it and looking underneath it, just in case. They aren't there, though, so I leap up and race to the bed, where I sift through the pieces of paper, looking for anything with handwriting.

‘They're not here!' I turn to Dad with relief. ‘I didn't cut them up!'

He smiles at me but looks worried. I'm unsure why for a moment until it dawns on me that they're still missing. I get back on the floor and start looking under the bed.

‘Look in my wardrobe, Dad,' I call to him and
am glad to hear his footsteps racing to the other side of my room. They must be in here somewhere.

We end up emptying my wardrobe, chest of drawers and bedside table, but don't find the diaries anywhere. I find some stray socks and a lot of fluff under my bed, but nothing else. We look everywhere we can think of and then we start searching the rest of the house, even though I'm sure I didn't ever leave my room.

By the time Isaac gets home we're both exhausted and miserable. Dad tries to take my mind off the diaries by telling me he'll spend the evening in his studio, printing out more photos of Mum. It won't bring back the memory pictures that her friends gave me but it'll be better than nothing, he says.

We eat tea in silence. I know that Dad is worried about me, but I'm too upset about the photos and the missing diaries to try and reassure him that I'm fine. Anyway, I don't think I am.

I wash up and listen to Isaac telling me about an experiment he did in science today. He doesn't actually need me to respond. He's not interested in what I've got to say, he just wants a captive audience, which suits me completely tonight. Dad has gone out to the studio, so when the chores are done I go upstairs – even though I've spent most
of today asleep, I still feel drained. Every bit of me is tired, right down to my bones.

I clean my teeth and splash a bit of water on my face, and then I find a clean pair of pyjamas and climb into bed. As soon as my head hits the pillow I feel them, and it all comes back to me. I remember putting them carefully in a place where I knew they'd be safe because they, more than anything else, are too precious to risk any danger coming to them. I reach my hand under the pillow and feel the reassuring bulkiness of Mum's diaries, safe and sound and next to me. I think that maybe, I'm not as awful a person as I thought I was.