My Name Was Eden, page 18
I step inside. There are badly crayoned pictures Blu Tacked onto the kitchen walls and fridge freezer, a sea of toys spilling from a basket in the lounge and a drooling, bear-size dog named Beau that expresses his undying devotion to everyone that sets foot in the house. The rooms smell of slightly burnt cookies and something citrusy that I think might be her perfume, until she shouts up the stairs and demands that Lucas stop spraying the air freshener now. I haven’t been here for so long, and it strikes me that I’ve missed her home almost as much as I have missed Bex herself—the tidal wave of sounds and colors, constantly in motion, so unlike my own house.
“Sorry,” Bex says, bending down to pick a piece of Lego off the floor. “I’m a bit stressed out, as you can probably tell.”
“If this isn’t a good time, I can—”
“No. No, it’s fine. Do you want a drink?”
“A tea would be great. Don’t worry—I’ll do it.” I move past her to lift the kettle from its base. I know where everything in this house is. When Bex split from Charlie’s dad, I learned my way around pretty quickly, rustling up hot drinks and bringing over cooked meals as she sobbed on the sofa. It was nice to be appreciated.
“I’m sorry to just spring on you. How’s Charlie doing?”
“She was a nightmare this morning. I mean seriously, a proper miserable cow. But how can I blame her? I can’t stop thinking about the accident, I mean—fourteen. Such a horrible age to die.”
My blood slows to a crawl. I imagine it thickening, pooling in dark puddles inside my veins.
“Eden’s been amazing, though,” Bex goes on. “She keeps phoning and texting to make sure Charlie’s okay, bless her. I told her that it will get easier, that she will find someone else, although—” Bex breaks off as Lucas ambles into the room, complaining that he’s hungry. She shakes her head. “You’re always hungry, piglet. Here, you can have some carrot sticks. No, no more cheese.”
Lucas folds his arms and protests until Bex relents. She slides a tub out of the fridge and tips a pile of small yellow chunks onto a plastic plate. “Take it in the playroom,” she instructs, pressing her palm to the small of his back. “And make sure you share them with your brother.”
I stir a sweetener into Bex’s tea and hand it to her. I think she’s going to suggest we take them in the lounge, but her phone lights up with a WhatsApp notification and her eyes drift to the screen. Natalie@mumfriends:
Still ok for this afternoon? X
“Shit,” she says. “I totally forgot—I was supposed to be . . .” Her fingers start tapping. “God, it’s like I’ve still got baby brain three years later. They’ve got so many clubs and, now that they’re both at preschool, it’s a nightmare trying to fit everything in. I swear, if I still worked full-time, I wouldn’t . . .”
Her words trail off. Of course she’s busy. Of course she is. Weren’t we always busy when our paths crossed for the first time, eleven years ago? We crammed our daughters’ days full of dance classes, trampolining, swimming, music and soft play centers. We were giving them opportunities to discover their potential, but we were also doing it for ourselves, using up the endless, endless hours of nothingness by rowing invisible boats and winding invisible string, because it gave us the chance to interact with each other too.
“You’re busy, so I won’t stop.” I pour my own tea down the sink and rinse the mug. “I just wanted to ask you something.”
“Ask away, lovely,” Bex says. “If it involves wine, the answer’s yes.”
“I wish it did. It’s about James.”
“What about him?”
“I checked his internet history. He’s been googling STDs.”
Bex looks up from her phone at last. “What?”
“How to tell if I have an STI, symptoms of STDs.”
“Oh my God. Fuck.”
“Yeah.”
“Jesus. What are you going to do? I mean, did you think . . . why though? Why would he—? Who—”
“I don’t know. He’s been making me think I’m crazy, Bex, and I don’t know . . . I don’t know if it’s him, or me. It’s all been a fucking—” I feel like I’m going to cry. First with Alison, now with Bex. I pinch the bridge of my nose, blink the tears away. “I went to see El—Eden’s therapist. She got me to talk through our relationship: everything, and it just . . . I’m starting to think that maybe he’s used Eden against me, all her life. All this daddy–daughter bullshit, it’s a control thing. And you know what? He doesn’t like it, now that he’s Eli.”
She gives me a strange look. “Fucking hell, Luce.”
I have a sudden urge to tell her everything: about the wasp in the car that killed Elliott, how I feel a constant, throbbing guilt that Eden’s drowning was my fault, because James made me feel like everything always was—it was his way of deflecting blame. And the other thing, the thing that really is all my fault. Alex.
Bex’s phone pings again.
“Shit, fifteen minutes. Fifteen minutes. Sorry, hon, I’m going to have to go.” She drops her cup into the washing-up bowl. “I’m so sorry, but listen—we’ll catch up later, yeah? I’ll ring you. Are you sure you’re okay?”
“I’m fine. Honestly, I’m fine.” I lift my bag onto my shoulder and pull it across my body, like a shield. “Have a good afternoon.”
34
Charlie
I keep seeing Alex. I see him in my bedroom, I see him in my head. It feels like he’s everywhere, and he’s nowhere, and it’s all such a head fuck I don’t know what to do. On the bus into school yesterday, there was a boy walking up High Street with the same rucksack as him, hands shoved into his pockets, and there was this walk he did, I can’t explain, it was Alex’s walk, and from the back he looked like him as well. But as the bus went past and I twisted around to look at him I could see it wasn’t Alex at all. His nose was wrong and he had massive eyebrows. I had to sit on my hands after that, they were shaking so much.
When Eden got on the bus, she was all like, Hey, are you okay, you look really upset, and I didn’t want to talk to her, I didn’t want to talk to anyone, but she pulled this picture out of her bag that she’d drawn, and gave me a massive hug. I started crying then, like, proper crying, and it hurt so much, like someone stamping on my chest. At the back of the bus, I heard someone trying not to laugh. And this is the other thing: with Alex, he didn’t just change me, he changed the way I felt about myself. When we were together and I caught sight of myself in a mirror or a shop window I thought yeah, like, I actually looked attractive. I could forget about Mum telling me what to do and Matt moaning at me—or about me—in a voice just loud enough for me to hear. I could forget about Eden. But on the bus, with my tears dripping onto Eden’s picture and someone coughing out a laugh at the back and Eden’s arm tight around my shoulder, I got it: the me I was with Alex was never real. It’s like the shit version of me has come back and that’s what I was always supposed to be, all along.
Through my bedroom window, I hear Matt’s voice. I can’t hear the words, but it must have been pretty funny, because it’s followed by a wave of women cackling. The smell of grease and burnt meat from the barbecue drifts in too, and it’s kind of offensive, the way life just carries on after someone’s died. Last night, Mum sat on my bed with her totally fake sad expression and said it’s terrible what happened, but I will find someone else again. I’m not even joking. Like, she thinks I will ever find anyone like Alex ever again?
I suppose I should show my face. It’s supposed to be a “family gathering,” even though I know literally nobody there. Aunt Sarah and Viv and Dean are okay except they’re Matt’s family, and they talk to me in that weird, not-really-interested-but-being-polite way that people do when they don’t really know you. Matt said he wanted me to help put out the buns and, if I don’t go down soon, Mum will probably come and poke her nose into my room to see what I’m doing. That’s another thing: like, she’s busy all the time, rushing the boys all over the place, taking them to the park and soft play and swimming and meeting up with all her new friends—so busy that she forgot about my parents’ evening two months ago, then forgot to get my ingredients for cooking the week before last, even though I literally reminded her a thousand times—but when other people are around, suddenly she remembers to pretend to be interested. And I know what people are thinking: I’m the odd one out. I’m the child she had with the fucking bastard who left us.
“Here she is!” Matt cheers, as I go into the kitchen. Drunk, obviously—he’s never usually that pleased to see me. He’s holding two open wine bottles by their necks, like they’re something he’s killed with his bare hands, and behind him, Aunt Sarah and Mum come in through the side door, carrying glasses and plates smeared in dark stains and ketchup. “Watch the step,” Mum says, in this cheery voice, like she’s just watched someone fall over it, and for some reason Sarah laughs. It would probably be easier if I got drunk too. It would literally be a piece of piss to pour some vodka out of the bottle and top it up with water—it’s not like I haven’t done that before—but if I got drunk I would forget, and I don’t want to forget Alex. Not now, not ever.
I tell Mum that the boys have been at my stuff again. I can’t find my lip liner pencil or my two favorite lip salves. She drops the plates into the sink with a clatter and without even turning around, says it doesn’t matter, she’s sure they’ll turn up.
“Oh, sweetie,” Sarah says. She’s normally pretty, but right now her eyes look like the spirographs I used to make when I was five. “I’m so sorry to hear about your boyfriend.”
“Why? Did you kill him?”
“Charlie,” Mum says. She shakes her head at Sarah, then says “Teenagers,” like it’s some kind of disease. She wants me to apologize, so I do, in a sarcastic voice.
I don’t know why I’m being a bitch. Maybe it’s the way Matt has his arm around Mum right now like she’s his possession or something, or maybe it’s because “24/5” has just started playing in the garden and I can see Dean through the window, tapping his beer bottle in time to the music. That song reminds me of the time I rowed with Alex after Eden said he’d flirted with Misia and said he wanted to fuck her. He promised me he never said that, Eden must have misheard. And it was the way he looked at me and went “Me and you, Charlie, we’re tight,” and pulled me against his chest—I’ll never forget that. He smelled of Obsession, and his body was warm from the football he’d just been playing.
God, I feel like I’ve been punched in the stomach again.
Mum puts her arm around Matt’s waist and wiggles her head on his shoulder. Gross. I remember about a year ago, when I woke up and heard them having sex, and the worst thing was that they were trying to be quiet, going shhh, shh, then Mum giggled and Matt grunted, and I can’t even . . . whatever. I don’t want to think about that. Maybe Eden was right when she said everything comes down to sex. I never thought Dad would leave me and Mum for another woman, but he did. I never thought Eden’s dad would cheat on her mum either, but there you go. Some younger woman from work, apparently. Eden told me she saw it happening through the bathroom door, and that’s got to be worse, way worse than hearing what I heard. That’s if it’s true. Eden makes shit up sometimes. She said I should get tested for STDs because she’d checked it out on her dad’s computer and that Alex could give me one even if he’d never had sex before. I knew that wasn’t true, ’cause we just learned about it in Science last term, but the way she was talking, she could have made me believe I had two belly buttons. She used to be totally bad at lying but, even then, she’d catch me out sometimes. You literally never know what’s real with her. It’s kind of creepy.
Someone’s turned the music up, and now Mum’s moaning that they’ve run out of rolls. I’m so desperate to get out of here, I tell her I’ll go to the Tesco Express and get some more. Matt says “Oh, I don’t know, it’s a bit late,” trying to act like he cares, then Sarah drops the plate she’s been trying to balance on her arm, and as Mum and Matt rush to help, I grab Mum’s purse and slip out of the front door.
The sky looks like a licked ice cream, with pink and yellow streaks which go all the way across the newly built housing estate, to the empty fields with the train tracks on the other side. I can hear what’s going on behind the closed curtains: babies crying, TV programs blaring out, voices rising and falling in conversation, music playing, and it feels weird, like there’s this black hole in me that wasn’t there before. I don’t get what the point of anything is anymore. With Alex, I came alive. Now, it’s like I’m dead again, except I’m not; he is, and I’m just stuck here, watching my Converse scuff across the gray pavement. Maybe this is how Eden felt. I probably shouldn’t have been such a cow to her, even if she didn’t like Alex. She’s been through shit too.
I haven’t replied to her earlier message:
What a disaster! Do you want to come to mine? Mum’s in a weird mood x
Her mum’s always in a weird mood. She always used to have a go at Eden for being late and dropping her stuff on the floor and putting things back in the wrong place, to the point where Eden started doing it on purpose because her mum was so totally OCD. “Chill out, Mum. God, you never believe me,” she used to say, before leaving the door open for the fiftieth time, and it was quite funny. Eden’s mum hardly ever lost her shit though, and in a way that was creepier, because she was triggered by stuff that wouldn’t bother anyone else. Like when Eden tried to climb Eli’s tree: Lucy went ballistic. And sometimes, she’d accuse Eden of doing other stuff like taking her car keys. Eden hated her for that. Like, Mum can be a cow and doesn’t care about me like she cares about Matt and the boys, but she’s not a psycho.
I tap out a text to Eden as I push open the door to Tesco’s:
No, it’s okay, going to bed when I get back.
I read it twice, then delete the message. I wish I hadn’t told her about the barbecue. She wants to support me, and I get that, but she keeps sending me BFF and heart emojis again, and it’s not what I need right now.
I slide the phone back into my pocket. There are only a few people in the shop, and the woman behind the tills is doing something with a roll of scratch cards. Seriously, this is my life. Nearly fifteen years old and hunting for burger buns on a Friday night. I think about walking out of the shop with Mum’s purse and sticking a thumb out to the traffic on the A591. Maybe a trucker will stop and give me a lift to Newcastle or wherever it is that they go. Maybe I’ll be raped and left for dead on the side of the road. Whatever.
I pick up the burger buns and as I turn around, my bag knocks two boxes of aspirin from the shelf behind. I don’t think about it, I crouch to the floor and shove them up my sleeve. I don’t even bother paying for the burger buns. I just literally stroll right past the till and the shop assistant with the scratch cards doesn’t even look up. I don’t know what I want to happen, whether I want to get arrested or what, but, before I know it, I’m out of there with sixteen brioche buns, sixty-four aspirin and a king-size candy bar. Alex would be proud.
Except he’s not here, is he? And it still feels pointless.
I pull up the hood of my jacket and start walking slowly back home.
35
I should hate James. I should, but it’s not always that easy when you’ve built a lifetime with someone. And there have been good times, so many of them. Our first holiday together as a family when Eden was four: running through puddles to catch the transfer bus from the car park to the third terminal, our suitcases clattering like tap shoes on the tarmac behind us, and stepping off the plane into a wall of heat. Grabbing Eden’s hands, one each, and swinging her through the reception of the marble-pillared hotel. That slow, meaningful kiss we shared, the first night on the beach, as we watched the sun slip into the sea. Even when I thought Eden had removed the bikinis I was sure I’d packed, it didn’t spoil the magic: I bought more, from a pop-up shop on the promenade. And there were countless holidays, countless tiny memories like that, sprinkled like confetti over the years we’d spent together. It would have been easier if it was all bad, right from the beginning. But the toxicity must have crept in gradually, like an infection into a graze, and I didn’t see it. I just didn’t see it. Ironic really, when I’ve devoted my life to order and routine, scrutinizing detail. But there you have it. We’re all good at seeing what we want to see.
Later, when James is in the office taking a call from someone in a different time zone, Eli ambles down the stairs and asks if Charlie can come for a sleepover. He says she’s been really low since Alex’s death. “Sometimes I want to tell her what happened. I hate lying to her.”
I press the iron onto the sleeve of James’s shirt. “If you need to tell the truth, then you should.”
“But will you go to prison?”
“I don’t know. I hope not. But won’t Charlie . . . won’t she think it’s strange that you’re telling her now?”
Eli shrugs. “Possibly.”
He looks so young, so lost. My poor child. “I’m really sorry,” I say. “I didn’t mean for it to happen. Any of this.”
Eli’s phone pings. His eyes drop to the screen. “It doesn’t matter. She can’t come for a sleepover tonight, anyway.”
“Okay.”
He shuffles from the room, and I release the iron from the fabric. There’s a scorch mark, just above the armpit.
The following week, a few days before Alex’s funeral, I drive into town and order two of Blooming Orchid’s biggest hand-tied posies and ask for them to be sent to the homes of Alex’s parents and the driver of the car that hit him. After I’ve paid, I walk through Main Street where a farmers’ market is setting up stalls beneath green-and-white striped canvas, and I buy a packet of cigarettes from the newsagent next to the car park. I smoke five of them, one after another, before the nicotine high injects my head and legs with a lightness that makes me dizzy.
