Undertow (2 page)

“We don’t have to live there. Cass says I could sell it –
we
could sell it, I mean. Pay the back rent here. Or buy it even. Or one of those big houses on the Grove near Cass and—”

“No,” she says. “It’s a sign. It’s serendipity. We’ll go. We’ll move.”

My stomach is alive again. Butterflies battering against the sides trying to get out.

“What’s serendipity?” asks Finn. “And where are we going?”

“Fate,” she replies. “Good fate. And it’s taking us to the seaside.”

“Like Margate? Will there be donkeys? Can we stay for dinner?”

“Yes.” She nods. “Yes, there’s donkeys. And yes, we can stay. Not just for dinner though. For the night. For a thousand and one nights.” And her smile widens, as if she’s just realized what she’s said.

Finn yelps with delight and flings himself onto Mum. I watch as she basks in his adoration. Then, infected by his eight-year-oldness, she wraps him round her and stands, dancing him across the painted floor, Finn screaming as she whirls to the tinny sound of the radio. But I don’t dance. Instead the butterflies surge upwards and I have to fight to push them down.

“And Dad will come?” Finn says, breathless. “And we can swim in the sea like sharks?”

“Yes,” Mum says, her eyes closed, still dancing. But I know she doesn’t mean it. This is her escape. Her get-out-of-jail-free card. “We don’t need anyone. We have us.” That’s what she always said, even before Finn came. “Us is what matters. We are all the family we need.”

And part of me believes her. That it’s just us. And that home will be wherever we want it to be. But then I think about Cass. Who I’ve known since for ever. Who bought me my first Beanie Baby. My first tampons. My first drink. About Luka. Who’s not my dad, but is the closest I’ve ever got. And as good as I’d ever want.

“It’s my key,” I say in desperation.

Mum stops and lowers Finn down, one arm round him, the other reaching out to stroke my face.

“I know,” she says. “And it’s your decision.”

“Please, Billie,” begs Finn. “Please.”

I look at him, his eyes wide with worry, scared I’ll shatter his sand-covered peppermint-rock-flavoured dream.

“I’ll think about it,” I say. “I need to think about it.”

But as Mum pulls us tight to her and carries us round, the ceiling a kaleidoscope of broken light bulb and damp and purple-felt-tip planets, I know I’m losing the fight.

HET

SHE TELLS
them not because she wants to, but because she has to. Because Tom has begged her, and because she knows there is no other way
.

Maybe she will feel a weight lifted, she thinks. Maybe relief will wash over her. Like the problem pages say it will. But Het can see them in her mind’s eye, the women at the magazines, in their glossy world, rose-tinted glasses with their glasses half full, always half full
.

And Het’s glass is empty
.

Her mother touches three polished fingers to her lips, trying to catch the “Oh, Hetty” that escapes from them. But Het hears it, hears the fear
.

Her father says nothing. Lets nothing out. Just stands there for a second, his jaw set with tension, straining to contain his rage, his disappointment and disgust. Then he turns and walks out of the room, slamming the door behind him
.

Eleanor flinches at the sound, at the gust of air that scatters a sheaf of papers across a side table and onto the carpet. Het waits for her to say something. To do something. To hold her, to say it’s going to be all right
.

But instead she stands quickly, scoops up the stray papers and places them neatly in a pile back on the table. Then walks smartly out of the room
.

It’s not going to be all right
.

Het is lying on her bed when she hears the tread of the stairs. Two sets of feet, one in black brogues, size ten, one smaller, in heels. She has learned their rhythms, their meanings over the years. The prickling irritation of one; the threat of the other
.

Het looks at the shoes in the frame of the doorway. Like policemen, she thinks. Bringing bad news
.

“I have made an appointment for you,” he tells her
.

“It will be quick,” Eleanor adds. “Over with.”

Het looks up from the floor. “I’m keeping it,” she says simply
.

“But—” her mother starts
.

“The university won’t allow it,” he interrupts. Then slower, calmer: “I won’t allow it.”

Het turns over to face the window. “It’s not up to you.” She watches as this sinks in. Then adds the punchline: “Anyway, I’m not going back.”

“But all your hard work…” Eleanor gasps. “It’s what you always wanted.”

“No,” Het says calmly. “It’s what you always wanted.”

For seven seconds there is silence. Het counts them. One elephant, two elephant… Then the door closes and the feet tread their familiar step along the corridor, but quicker now; then another door slams, and Het can hear raised voices, accusations, blame, the heavy slap of a hand against a rouged cheek. She pulls a pillow over her head and fills her glass another way. Fills it with him
.

Two weeks, he said. Enough time for him to earn some money from the fair. For Martha to find them somewhere to stay
.

Two weeks and she will be gone. She will leave all this weight, this dull aching impossible life behind. And she will be his. For ever
.

BILLIE

I’M SITTING
in my bedroom, curtains open, London night seeping in through the gaps in the broken sash window. The sound of traffic, the smell of fried food, the shrieks of hamburger-happy girls bathed in the golden glow of McDonald’s. Sheer teeming life that dances down the dirty pavements twenty-four hours a day. My life. A life I’m not sure I want to leave for a dead-end seaside town.

It’s different for Finn. He’s a kid. All he can see is candyfloss and the big dipper and donkeys on the sand. But what would I do there? Who would I be?

Cass says she’d kill to get out of London, live by the sea, with her year-round tan and surfers checking her out, waiting on her every move. But the beaches she’s lain on are in Corfu not Cornwall. And she’d never leave London anyway. Not if it came down to it. She says she feels dizzy if she has to go to Zone 3. And when our year went to Windsor Castle for the day, she told Mr Hegarty she got travel-sick and stayed behind in the library all day. She
is
London. She’d fade like a hothouse flower if you took her out of the noise and the dirt. And I wonder if I’d be like that. If I’d shrink even further into myself. If I’d wither. Stop breathing. And I add it to my list of excuses.

“I like London,” I say to Mum. “It’s alive. There’s museums and art galleries and stuff.” Every word practised, knowing that this has been her argument in the past. Her reason for coming, for staying.

But not now, not any more. Mum says London is a bad place to raise a kid. She means Finn. “But what about me?” I say. “You raised me here. What’s so wrong with how I turned out?” But then I think of the time she and Luka came home early one night and Cass was in their bedroom with Ash Johnson. You’d have thought it was me in there, the way she went off. And I said I’d begged Cass not to. But it’s hard to say no to her. And I remember what Mum said: that Cass was a bad influence, out of control. And what she didn’t say: that maybe I would go the same way. And I think, Mum one, Billie nil.

I say, “What about school? I can’t just leave after one term of A levels.”

But Mum says there’s schools there. And they won’t have to use dog-food tins instead of Pyrex jars in science, won’t have a crèche for all the Year Elevens who’ve had kids.

I say, “If they’re that good then they’ll be full.”

But Mum says she can home-school until a place comes up.

And I’m three points down.

The next morning I try again.

“You hate the sea,” I say.

And it’s true. That time in Margate she sat up high on the sand, her back to the stone wall of the promenade, like she was fastened. A shell. Wouldn’t even let the water spread over her toes. Luka had to take me and Finn into the shallows.

“I did,” she says. “But it’s different now. It’s all different, don’t you see? Don’t you understand?”

And I nod. Because I want her to think we’re still all right. But I don’t. Understand, I mean. Why she wants it so bad. Why she wants to go back to the place she’s run from for sixteen years. To the people. She’s the one who’s always saying stuff like “It’s not where you come from, Billie, it’s where you’re going that matters” and “You can choose who you want to be. Who do you want to be, Billie?”

But I don’t know. Who I am. Or who I want to be.

I slump on my elbows and look at myself in the mirror. See me surrounded in the flyblown glass, draped with necklaces; gig passes and notes from Cass Blu-Tacked to the chipped gold frame. Who am I? I think. Then I cringe at myself, at how lame it sounds. Like one of those self-help books that Mum’s friend Martha reads, or some
High School Musical
shlock. Only it’s not a book or a film. It’s real.

And, as I stare at my reflection – at my hair, lank and dark, the opposite of Mum’s thick, wild blonde; at my pale skimmed-milk skin – I wonder if she’s wrong. If it’s a lie that the past doesn’t matter. Because we’re made up of our past. Of our parents. I think of Finn. And I can see which bits are Mum – the same hair, the same smile; and which are Luka’s – his brown eyes, his wide hands – guitarist hands, Luka says. But when I look at me, there’s this stranger.

Then something clicks inside me. This little switch. Or a seed. Like the pink and black of a runner bean, it splits and something grows. A need. And I pull open a drawer and scrabble under the postcards and the Tube tickets and the pink Post-its to find what I’m looking for. A blank piece of paper. And a pencil. And I start to draw. But not all of me. I take away the bits that are Mum, the cat eyes, the too-big lips that she hates, and Luka loves.

I only draw what I don’t know. My nose, the high forehead, the hair. But when I look at the sketch, at what’s left, it’s like one of those photofits on
Crimewatch
. Or that kids’ game where you slot different face sections in. Nothing fits. I can’t see him.

I know nothing about Tom. My dad. Never have. Just that Mum loved him, and he left. I don’t know how tall he is, what colour his hair is. I’m guessing pretty tall, because I’ve already got six centimetres on Mum. And dark. But I don’t know for sure. There are no photos. No letters. And Mum doesn’t talk about him any more than she talks about Will or her parents. I have no idea who he was. Maybe an artist. Because this must come from somewhere. Like Finn’s guitar hands. These things don’t just happen, and Mum can’t draw. Her birds are like aliens. Blobs with slits for eyes and wings in the wrong places. But I know I’m good. Good enough, anyway.

And for the first time in a long time I want to know. Because I figure unless I know who he is, I don’t know who I am. Or who I want to be. And that’s when I decide we can go. Because I want to find him. To find me.

HET

HET SITS
at her mother’s dressing-table. She is ten. Too young to be wearing the lipstick that coats her mouth and cheeks; thick red grease, like a clown child. Too young for the cloud of Chanel that surrounds her. Too young, too, for the tears that are trickling down her cheeks, taking a layer of soot-black mascara with them, running rivulets to her chin before dripping noiselessly onto the white smocking of her dress
.

You can’t cry in a mirror, she remembers. Can’t cry if you look at yourself. And so she stares hard at her reflection, willing the tears, this feeling, to stop. But Will’s fact is a lie after all. Or she is the exception. A freak. An aberration
.

She blinks away the inky salt of her tears and looks harder. She has her mother’s eyes, her mouth. Just like Will. So why is she so different? She repeats her father’s words silently to herself: “Why can’t you be more like your brother?” But the Het in the mirror doesn’t know either, just shrugs and lets another Elizabeth Arden tear stain her collar
.

Why can’t she be like him? Why can’t she feel like he does? Why can’t she dig for lugworms with Jonty, screaming with laughter as they disappear further into the waterlogged sand, too quick for the steel of the spade? Why can’t she wake happy that the sun is drenching her bedspread, filling everyone it touches with drunken joy, pulling them to the beach, to the fairground, into cafés and arcades? Everyone except her. Why, instead, does she feel this greyness that not even lipstick can hide? This weight that keeps her inside the cold, quiet granite of the house and pins her to her bed for hours, staring wordlessly at a crack in the plaster?

Then she hears the creak as her mother’s heels dig into the wide staircase, feels the minute change in air pressure. And Het stops sniffing and silently slips to the floor, crawling under the lace-edged valance of her parents’ bed, where she will stay for two hours, until her father’s anger-soaked baritone chases her out for supper
.

BILLIE

FOR A MINUTE
I think I’m going to bottle it. When we’re sitting at Paddington: I think, I could do it. I could get off the train right now. Go to Cass’s. Or back to the flat.

Mr Garroway doesn’t even know we’ve gone yet. Mum doesn’t want to ring. Knows he’ll come round and demand the back rent there and then. Rent we don’t have. Not yet. She says he’ll find out soon enough when he turns up and all that’s left is an empty flat and a boiler that’s on the blink.

Before we left, I looked around: at the pencil notches on the kitchen wall marking off the months and years of Finn’s growth in centimetre increments. Day-Glo magnets clinging to the fridge – the
f
,
i
and
n
s long missing – spelling out nonsense words now, gobbledegook. A picture of a horse by a seven-year-old me that I glued to the door because we’d run out of Blu-Tack. Pieces of us.