The Furies: A Novel (25 page)

The annual craft fair appeared at St John’s church, filled with intricate silver earrings, carved wooden bowls and bright felted birds. As I walked round it one drizzly Saturday morning, I saw a tiny wooden spaniel on one stall, which looked exactly like my mother’s dog. It was carved from a dark red wood, its polished grain glistening like Pickle’s fur. I bought it for her, and walked down Lothian Road to buy a padded envelope from the card shop. Then I thought of the phone call I’d get when she received it – the pleasure in her voice mingled with the sadness that I hadn’t seen her all year – and I decided to wait, and take it down for her birthday next month.

2

DD,

This has honestly been the worst fucking summer ever. Worse than even I imagined it would be. Here’s what I didn’t want to do this summer: sit at home every day on my own, not see any of my friends for weeks on end, not know what’s going on with Alex. And how many of those things happened? All of them.

I know. I have a bus pass, I have legs. I could just have gone out whenever I liked. Except I couldn’t, because I spent most of the summer with an ear infection. And given that I can’t hear, that is about as unfair as things get.

God, it hurt. It really, really fucking hurt. I don’t know where I caught it: my mum is convinced that it was from swimming at Warrender pool. She gets these ideas stuck in her head sometimes, and you can’t reason with her.

The doctor said it was a virus, anyway, which turned into a bacterial infection. He was going to send me to hospital at one point, but I persuaded him to let me stay at home: my mum promised she’d look after me when she wasn’t at work, and our flat is warm and dry, which is all they could really offer me in hospital.

I had to take antibiotics for weeks, which just make me really sleepy, and I felt like crying from how badly it hurt. I would rather have anything than earache. I’d much rather break an arm or a leg, because it can’t hurt as much. The worst part is, it hurts when you swallow. Every single time. I read my Greek myths book a lot while I was lying on the sofa, hurting. And I worked out that this is my idea of Tartarus: the bit of hell where people are punished with the same thing every day. Tantalus is always hungry, trying to reach his grapes that keep slipping out of sight. Prometheus has his liver pecked out every day by a bird. Sisyphus has to push a rock up a hill and every time he gets to the top, it rolls back down, and he has to start all over again.

And for me, hell would be a middle-ear infection. Every time I eat, or drink, or swallow, it’s like someone slicing a razor through my eardrums. I couldn’t keep my aids in for more than a few minutes at a time, because the noise was too much. I watched the TV with subtitles on, but after a while, you think if you’re going to do that much reading, you might as well just pick up a book.

I stopped eating and drinking during the day, even though I was supposed to drink lots of water. Easy for the fucking doctor to say: I had to press my fists into my ears every time I swallowed anything, even just saliva, to try and dull the pain in the middle of my head, burning through my ears from the inside. If every time you had to swallow, it felt like someone was pressing a lit cigarette into your ear, you wouldn’t drink anything either. I said I felt like crying, but of course I couldn’t cry. Crying means swallowing, too.

I couldn’t go away with my dad to Greece, which is what he suddenly decided we should do. I couldn’t go with my mum to see my grandparents. I couldn’t even go to see Carly, because I had to stay indoors in case of a secondary infection. The doctor was really stressed about it. He kept making eye contact with me for too long, and saying that if I wasn’t very lucky with the antibiotics, I could sustain further irreparable hearing loss. What I wanted to say, but couldn’t because my mum was sitting right there, was that I would have willingly swapped my remaining hearing if it would just make the pain stop. It would have been a fucking bargain.

So, my hearing is worse than it was, but it will improve, he thinks. It might never get back to where it was last term, though. The scarring is pretty heavy at the moment, so it depends how that heals up. It was just about the worst possible combination of things: I was in Edinburgh, about two fucking miles away from Alex, and I have no idea what’s happening in her life. I haven’t seen her since June. Since June, for God’s sake, and now it’s August. After everything she’s been through, she’s probably spent the whole time on her own, which is the last thing she should be doing.

I did try. When I was starting to get better, I walked up to where she lives. It was a warm day, so I thought I’d be OK. She stays somewhere off Blackfriars Street – I know that, because I asked her. She would have given me the address before the holidays, for sure, but Jono made some crack about stalking her, and she went all vague. But I already knew it must be around there, because she comes up either Nicolson Street or St Leonard’s to get to Rankeillor, so it must be somewhere between the two, mustn’t it? I’ve watched her coming and going from the Unit, she always goes that way. And she’s definitely near Waverley, because she walks that way out of the station when she comes back from London, and heads up Cockburn Street. But I still haven’t seen her all summer. I waited around for ages in a café on Blackfriars that one day, but nothing. I wandered round St Mary’s Street and near there for a bit. I couldn’t see her.

I hardly even heard from Carly either. I couldn’t use the phone for weeks, and she prefers talking to typing. Plus, she’s always busy these days. She said she was helping her mum at work a lot, and then they were all going away to Spain for two weeks. Her mum loves Spain. She takes evening classes, that’s how much she likes it. But even when she was here, she wasn’t around. I don’t know if she’s dropped me, kind of, or if I’ve dropped her. Does that make sense? I mean, we’re still friends and everything, but not in the same way. The old Carly would never have been too busy to come and see me if I was ill. The old me would have called her even if I couldn’t hear what she was saying. I don’t know what happened exactly. I wonder if she could tell she’d annoyed me that day she wigged out at Alex last term. We still look like friends to anyone else, but it’s definitely not the same as it was.

And the Fringe is in town now, so everywhere must be fucking rammed. I thought Carly might want to go and see something, but she didn’t seem bothered when I asked. And going on my own would be lame. Besides, the tickets aren’t cheap, so you have to pick something that isn’t going to be shit. But if we’d gone to see some shows, we might have bumped into Alex, and it would all have been worthwhile.

Term starts again next week, though, which is a massive relief. I never thought I’d say that. But I’m so sick of being stuck with no-one to talk to. I’ve been so bored, I just want to see everyone again. My mum keeps asking about which college I want to go to next year. I keep telling her I’m thinking about it, which I’m not, but now she’s started asking about open days and all that shite. Ordering prospectuses. I have no idea where she gets these ideas, but once she’s got them in her mind, you can’t shake them.

What she doesn’t understand, because she doesn’t ask, is that I don’t want to be anywhere except at Rankeillor. I don’t want to have to go somewhere new, I don’t want to meet new people and make new friends, which is what college will be like if you ask my mum. She says it will be a chance for me to make a fresh start. But I don’t want a fresh start. I just want this one to be better.

The beginning of term in Edinburgh came early. School holidays in Scotland mystified me: why did they finish so early in the summer, and then drag the kids back to school in the middle of August, when the festivals were all in full swing, and the city was full of stuff for them to do?

‘It’s because it usually rains less in July,’ said Jono, when I asked them on the first day back.

‘Did you go to see your shows, Alex?’ Carly was sitting very close to Jono. I guessed their summer holidays had largely been spent together.

‘I saw a few, yes. There are some very good plays at the Traverse, if you can persuade your parents to let you go.’

‘You could take us,’ said Mel.

‘Please,’ said Jono. ‘We’re a bit past school trips, aren’t we?’

‘Besides, Alex already saw the shows, didn’t she?’ Carly was quick to slap her down, I thought.

And Mel agreed, I guessed, as she reddened slightly. She looked tired, I thought. And she’d lost weight over the summer too: she was always slim but now she was gaunt. There were dark creases beneath her eyes that I hadn’t seen before.

‘We could go and see a play,’ I said, trying to cheer her up. ‘If the four of you would like to, I mean. There’s still two more weeks of the Fringe: I’ll look into what we could see when.’

‘Thank you, Alex.’

As I looked around the classroom, it wasn’t just Mel who’d changed over the summer. Jono seemed to be inches taller: for the first time I thought if I walked past him on the street, I wouldn’t have guessed he was still at school. Carly had either dyed her hair or covered it with a jet-black wig. She was wearing a pale-blue vintage dress covered in dove-grey beads. If anyone needed a 1920s flapper-girl, she was ready for their call. Even Annika, eyeing Carly’s new look with astonishment, had exchanged her glasses for contact lenses. At least I hoped that was plastic, glinting in her eyes.

When Robert had questioned her about the thefts at the end of the summer term, she hadn’t even pretended she wasn’t guilty. She’d shrugged her slender shoulders and said that if he would just throw her out, her mother would give in and take her away from Edinburgh for good. She would do anything to make that happen: and he could let her go now, or she would continue doing whatever it took to force his hand. She wouldn’t be participating in classes till he gave in and promised to let her leave. He’d explained to her that while he was happy to meet with her mother and discuss her concerns, he wouldn’t be blackmailed.

All of the stolen objects – the hoody, the purse, my bag, and whatever else she’d lifted from other staff – had found their way to the first bin she passed on Clerk Street as she went home each day. She didn’t want any of the things she took. She just wanted to take them away. Robert asked her to apologise to me, in writing, on the first day of the new term. When I checked my pigeonhole before I went down to teach their first class, I found a torn page on which she had written: ‘Dear Alex, Sorry about your bag. I hope you’ve bought a better one now. Annika’. In reciprocation, I scrunched it up as I walked down the stairs, and when I finally reached the basement, I threw it straight into the bin.

‘Did you all have good holidays?’ I asked.

‘Yeah, I s’pose,’ Jono said, yawning as though he was still working his way through jetlag. ‘I went away to stay at my grandparents’ for a bit, in Inverness. It was OK.’

‘And Carly?’

‘I went to Spain,’ she said, happily, shrugging her shoulders and shaking back her newly black hair so I could admire what I presumed were her holiday earrings, in the shape of tiny martini glasses, bubblegum-pink plastic representing their contents. ‘You can see what’s left of my tan, can’t you?’ She had indeed turned a pale gold colour, which was nonetheless peeling.

‘Did you burn?’ I asked her.

She nodded. ‘I always do. A Scottish suntan is bright red, Alex, you must know that.’

‘Annika?’ I didn’t really care what she’d done with her summer, but I didn’t want the rest of the class to know that.

‘Stockholm,’ she said. I saw Mel look across, waiting for her to say more, but one word was all we were getting.

‘And what about you?’ I asked Mel. She curled her lip into an elegant snarl.

‘I stayed here,’ she said, flatly. ‘It was fine. I wanted to go away, but it didn’t work out.’

‘I’m sorry. Where would you like to have gone?’

She tilted her head to consider it. It looked like she was trying to get water out of her ears. ‘A Greek island, or something.’

‘Lesbos?’ Jono suggested, his face dangerously straight.

‘Fuck you,’ she replied. ‘Sorry, Alex.’

‘Let’s try and keep things civil, shall we? I haven’t seen you all summer. It’d be a shame if we spent today arguing.’ I looked over at Jono. I could already see that a relationship between him and Carly was going to make things more difficult than they had been.

‘Sorry,’ he muttered.

‘That’s OK. So, are we going to carry on where we left off?’ I asked them. ‘We finished
Agamemnon
last term, so shall we move on to
The Choephori
?’

‘The what?’ asked Jono.

‘The second play in the trilogy,’ I explained. ‘Choephori are libation-bearers.’

‘Right,’ he said. ‘Bearers are people who bear things. So that clears things up perfectly. Or at least, it would, if you mentioned what a libation is?’

‘An offering,’ Mel said. ‘A religious offering.’

‘Very good.’ I smiled at her. I knew it was wrong to have favourites, but she tried so much harder than the others. It was impossible not to feel grateful for her enthusiasm, especially with Annika glowering two seats away from her. ‘You’re absolutely right. It’s a ritual offering of a drink to the gods.’

She grinned smugly at the others. Perhaps the truce was more of a détente.

‘Oh right,’ said Jono. ‘This doesn’t sound like one of your more exciting plays, Alex.’

‘Well, it’s about what happens after Clytemnestra kills Agamemnon. It gets pretty exciting. The libation-bearers are just the chorus: a bunch of old women who go with Electra to pour a libation on her father’s tomb. Remember Electra? We talked about her before: she’s the second daughter of Clytemnestra and Agamemnon. Sister to Iphigenia.’

‘Iphigenia is the one Agamemnon murdered?’ said Carly.

‘That’s her. Electra is the remaining daughter. She’s been living with her mother, Clytemnestra, and her mother’s boyfriend, Aegisthus.’