The Edge of Me (7 page)

I reckon along with everyone in the school, there’s probably a family of moles living under the football pitch that knows Joe and Camille were going out.

‘I … saw you with her. And Zoe. They seemed … you seemed …’

‘When?’

‘At school,’ I say miserably.

‘Oh. Yeah. That. Listen I can’t help it if she comes over and acts like that.’ He pauses and pushes his hair off his face.

‘I was just wondering … why did you and Camille finish? I mean … you don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to. I’m …
shit
… I’m sorry.’

‘No. It’s OK. I finished with her because I found out she was seeing James behind my back. I walked in on them and you know … I … She was all over me:
‘I’m sorry, it was James, he wouldn’t leave me alone, it doesn’t mean anything…’
and you know what, I was thinking I should hit him, but watching her there in front of the two of us, trying to get out of it, I could see he was gutted. She’d obviously lied to him as well – told him he was the one – the same old crap.’

‘I had no idea.’

‘That’s OK. I’m over it.’

‘She’s … she’s really beautiful.’

He stares at me for the longest time, then looks away. ‘Yeah. Yeah, maybe. I used to think so. But I can’t see it any more. I guess it’s because I know how much she knows it. How much she uses it.’

‘Is … um … are you … is Zoe …?’

‘What about Zoe?’

‘Um …’

We run over a bump in the road and a pair of table legs bound with duct tape falls onto the floor beside me.

‘I don’t even like Zoe,’ he says, then, ‘so what about you and boys? I never knew – were you going out with anyone?’

I splutter. ‘Boys? No. Not. Boys. I don’t really have that many friends. Well … I have one friend – Lauren,’ I trail off into a mumble.

‘So you see people outside of school?’

‘No,’ I say.

I swallow.

He looks down and plays with the buttons on the torch. The heavy stench of diesel is filling my lungs like wet wool.

He says, ‘Why?’

‘Why what?’

‘Why no friends?’

I take a deep breath: ‘Because I’m just one of those people who don’t. I’m not … popular. I don’t know how to
be
. I can never seem to think of what to say, you know? I can’t be funny or clever. I’m shy. I’m really, really shy. I mean, I don’t make it easy for people.’

‘Is that what you think?’

‘I know it. You’re lucky.’

‘Why d’you say that?’

‘Well. It’s obvious. I mean everyone likes you. You’re … you know …’

‘What?’

‘Well, you’re … I don’t know, you’re in a band, girls like you …’

He’s watching me, an odd expression on his face. Then he says, ‘Bullshit. Being in a band doesn’t mean I’m popular. I just like playing music. Any fans we have – and we don’t have that many – all like the lead singer. And, yeah, I’ve been out with girls: two girls, two relationships, and they both cheated on me. So who’s popular now?’

‘I don’t understand.’

‘What’s not to understand? Being shy isn’t an incurable disease. You can get over it. Maybe I hang out with more people than you do, but I’m shy too. If it comes to that I reckon most people are. Some of us just work at it a bit harder.’

‘I guess.’

He hesitates. I sense his eyes on me. He says, ‘Have you
ever
had a boyfriend?’

I feel the blood rush to the surface of my skin and I’m glad we’re sitting in semi darkness. I wait a while before answering.

‘No. That’s why I didn’t believe you when …’ I look at him. A quick glance and away again, but he catches it.

He sits up against the side of the van.

‘Look. I asked you out because I like you. Because I wanted to get to know you better. It’s not that complicated. I mean, it happens all the time.’

‘Not to me it doesn’t.’

‘That’s because you don’t look like you want it to. The thing is – you think you’re shy but really you always
look like you’ve got better things to be doing – like you’re really independent.’

I’m dumbfounded.
Independent?
‘But I’m a loser, Joe – I’m shy, I’m clumsy – people laugh at me. I don’t understand.’

He’s smiling. ‘Sanda, you’re not a loser. You might think you are – that’s not what other people think.’

‘Other people? Other people don’t notice me.’

‘Other people notice you – take it from me.’

‘In a good way?’

‘In a good way.’

I roll over on the blanket. I need to think. He says nothing but sits and fiddles with the torch, switching it on and off like some weird signal. And I see myself like I’m looking through two different lenses: the me lens where I’m a nobody, and the other lens where I’m not: where I’m independent, confident, with – what had he said? – better things to do. Come to think of it, Lauren had said it too. And no matter how I try, I can’t get the lenses to close together to become one. It makes me think about my life with my parents and how seeming and being can be two completely different things.

Joe breaks the silence. ‘Are you OK?’

‘Yeah,’ I breathe.

I decide that I’ll keep this conversation and look at it later. I turn to the matter in hand: the small matter of being kidnapped.

8

We lie in silence for a while and I can hear him breathing softly. My mind’s whirring. I raise myself up onto my elbow and turn to him.

‘Did
you
get an idea of where we might be going? Did they say anything?’

He’s kind enough to play along. ‘Plenty. But all in their language. Sanda, I have no idea. I mean we’re going east but you figured that anyway.’

‘Yeah. Yeah. But …’ I can still see Andrija’s face in mine: sour breath and purple flesh.

‘But what?’

‘I don’t know. Just something he said, about where we were going …’

‘Go on.’

‘“Back to where you belong” –
that’s what he said.’

He breathes out and it’s almost a whistle, and somehow the air thickens and curdles. I know he’s thinking what I’m thinking: about what it might mean.

After a minute, he says, ‘But your parents?’

‘What about them? He’s right. They didn’t want me. They don’t want me.’

‘Don’t talk like that. Maybe they had to go because they owed money or something? The mortgage?’

‘Oh yeah. Of course. The mortgage. The gas bill was overdue so they just emptied the house and pissed off without me.’ I’m being a bitch. ‘Sorry,’ I say. He smiles and I go on, ‘I’ve been thinking about it. I think they’re in trouble. I think in the past they did something – or
saw
something – really bad and maybe whatever it is has finally caught up with them.’

‘What sort of thing?’

I roll over and pull the newspaper cutting from my pocket. I wait a moment before handing it to him.

He squints at the paper in the torchlight. ‘Who are all these men? Soldiers?’

‘I think so. That one’s my dad.’

‘Yeah? What was he, like a mercenary?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘What does it say?’

‘This bit says Scorpions. I don’t know why, or what it means. The rest is just a list of names. But I can’t find his name there.’

‘So maybe it’s not him?’

‘It’s him. It’s just a different name.’

‘Where did you find it?’

‘In the attic at home. That’s where I was when you called me.’

Again I feel that bleakness overwhelm me in a kind of icy embrace.

‘You don’t look like him – your dad,’ he says.

‘I know.’

‘Do you look like your mum?’

‘No.’

He looks at me and I can see that he’s wrestling with whether to ask the question: the one I’ve locked up in a drawer deep in the back of my mind.

I cut in: ‘You live with your mum, don’t you?’

He’s quiet for a moment. ‘Um … yeah. Sometimes, yeah.’

‘Sometimes?’

‘She stays away sometimes. Men. I’m on my own a lot, I mean I manage. It’s not a problem.’

‘So where’s –?’

‘My dad?’

‘Yeah. Do you see him … much of him?’

‘He lives in Germany. He’s married with a baby.’

‘Oh right.’

‘I see him about twice a year when he comes over.’

‘Oh.’

He shifts position and I catch something in his eyes that I haven’t seen before.

‘When he comes over, he stays with us and they always get drunk and end up in bed together and they seem to think that’s not going to be a head-fuck for me at all. I know they’re adults and there’s no law against it but I can’t get my head round the fact that Dad’s got a kid back in
Germany and he’s cheating on his wife with his ex-wife. But last time he was here he took me to Wembley to see England play.’

‘So was that OK? The football?’

‘I hate football. And he knows it, but he’s a big Arsenal fan. He left after that – went straight to the airport – and I spent the evening with Mum in tears because she’s still in love with him. Classy guy.’

‘I had no idea.’

‘How could you? No one does. I don’t talk about it.’

‘I’m sorry.’

‘You’re doing it again.’

‘What?’

‘Saying sorry.’

I smile and look down. ‘Busted.’

‘Actually it’s good to talk about it – makes it seem more normal. Anyway you changed the subject. We were talking about
your
parents. What do you think is going on?’

‘I wondered …’

‘What?’

‘Well, I guess when something like this happens, when everyone you thought you knew turns out to be not what you thought at all, then maybe that means I’m not what I thought at all either.’

‘You’re not making sense.’

‘If my parents aren’t who I thought they were; if they were – I don’t know – pretending, then what does that make me?’ I wait. ‘D’you see where I’m going?’

‘If I’m honest, not really,’ he says.

I breathe, ‘I’m just starting to wonder if … if I’m their daughter at all. You know, if everything else is messed up, if everything else is a lie, then why not that?’

‘So you think …?’

‘I don’t know. In some ways it would really make a lot of things clear. Although why would you adopt a child you didn’t want or even like?’

‘Why? Is that what they were like? Shit Sanda. That’s rough.’

His voice and the kindness in it make me want to cry again. Quickly I hand over the photograph, the one of the child.

‘This was all they left.’

He takes it and turns it over in his hands. He looks at it for a long time without speaking then he says, ‘Is this you?’ I nod. ‘But the name on the back, who’s that?’

‘Senka. Senka Hadžić. That’s my grandmother’s name apparently; at least that’s what my dad told me.’

‘You don’t believe him?’

I shake my head. ‘They’ve done this to me. They’ve lied to me. Why should anything be true any more?’

He nods gravely and hands back the photograph, and I think about those bone fragments of memories of my childhood and they’re dust. White ash.

‘You know, you can find out if you’re … adopted. They have to tell you.’

I look at him. ‘Maybe.’

‘What is it?’ he says.

‘I’m just thinking, if I was adopted – and this is me in the photo – and my Dad was some kind of soldier in the war there …’

‘What war?’

‘In the early nineties there was a war in Bosnia … you must know that.’

‘I heard something about it maybe …’

‘Well, there was a war – it started in 1992. The Bosnian Serbs wanted an independent Serbia.’

‘Who won?’

‘Who won? My God. That’s so like a boy.’

‘Well – it’s important, isn’t it?’

‘Everyone and no one. They just made peace I think.’

‘OK. So, maybe you were an orphan. Maybe your real parents were killed in the war and your dad – I mean your adopted dad – found you and adopted you?’

‘God, I really need to know.’

‘So who’s this Branko then? If they think I’m helping you for him, then … well, he
must
be someone you know.’

‘I don’t know anyone called Branko.’

‘You
sure?’

‘
Yes
. Maybe they were confused. Or making it up.’

Joe looks away.

Just then the van slows and brakes and Joe drops the torch, which goes out. I hear a fist banging on the side and the doors open.

‘OK, get out,’ says Andrija.

We’re in a fenced car park with trucks and trailers all around us. In the toilet block, I wash my face and
smooth my hair. Once we’re back in the van, they give us sandwiches and water. We start up the torch again and try to settle down. Joe is asleep at once but, exhausted as I am, it’s a long time before I can go to sleep, and several times in the night, I wake to see the torchlight flickering and dying as the battery gives out.

Early in the morning, they wake us and the sandwich and toilet routine is repeated. We cross two borders in one day. I know, because before the crossing points, we’re bound and gagged. At one border, the doors are opened and a torch flashed over the van contents. I even see the face of the border guard, heavy set with a black moustache. I chew and spit at the foul-tasting cotton gag to make some sound.

The next time we’re allowed out, we’re in Austria.

I can taste blood in my mouth.

We sleep then till we’re woken by the van bumping and rolling over ground that doesn’t feel like road, and when it comes to a halt and the doors are opened, it’s dark. We’re led out into a grassy clearing surrounded by tall spruce trees. Andrija gives us a bag of crisps each and we tear into them. I can hear water in the distance, and strange bird calls sound in the cold night air. Joe takes a blanket from the van and puts it round my shoulders.

Andrija and Boris pace about the clearing talking in low voices. Boris carries a rifle. Andrija tries his phone a couple of times. I find myself wondering whether he knows much more than we do.

I can’t stop thinking about dying here in the forest, imagining falling onto the hard brush, my blood leeching
away into the pine needles, my eyes open and staring. I shiver and all I can hear are my teeth drumming in my head.

The thing is I’ve never kissed a boy. And the boy I’ve dreamed about kissing practically every day since I first saw him is standing right next to me; except he might as well be a million miles away.