My Name Was Eden, page 9
I sink down on her bed, carefully. “I heard what happened at school today.”
Eden inspects herself in the mirror. She tilts her head and then picks up the scissors to snip at a couple of errant strands.
“That was Bex on the phone. Charlie told her about what Alex did.” I find myself twisting my wedding ring, and stop. “Do you want to tell me . . . anything else? Or would you like me to call the school and have a word about—”
“No. It’s fine.” She puts the scissors down and turns to face me. “There. Is that straight?”
“Almost. It looks lovely,” I lie.
She smiles. “Do you think Charlie will like it?”
“Yes, I do.” I look down at the shape of my feet inside my spotted socks, sharp against the contrast of Eden’s cream carpet. “Bex said Charlie’s sorry for falling out with you.” It’s not strictly the truth, but now that I know why she’s doing this, I want to ease her pain. “Listen, I wish—I want you to be able to talk to me. I want to hear about stuff that goes on at school and I know we haven’t always seen eye to eye . . .” I look up. “I want this to be a fresh start, for both of us. Do you think you can do that?”
“Of course. A fresh start.” Eden sinks down beside me and, to my surprise, wraps one arm around my neck. “Thank you, Mum.”
My nose scratches against the stubbled edges of her hair. She smells of something sharp, leathery, and her grip is tight. It’s like a lightbulb switching on: She needs me. For a few minutes we sit and watch the clouds scud across the sky, just the two of us.
It’s almost perfect.
“I don’t like it,” James says, pressing a glass of ice-cold rosé into my hand. We’ve retired to the patio—a large rectangle of colored stones, which always catches the last of the sun’s rays. Tonight, there are orange smears in the sky, as though a child has dragged their grubby fingers across a canvas, and the silos up the road are sending long, thin shadows across the farm track. There’s a slight breeze, mellowing the lingering heat of the day.
“You don’t like her haircut? I did warn you.”
James stretches his legs out, making the iron chair opposite screech across the stone. “I just don’t get it. She loves her hair.”
“I know.” They all love their hair. Eden—like all the other girls in her class, it seemed—would post glossy, clone-like photos of herself on social media, with lips pushed out and features filtered to represent an idealized image of womanhood. “But, like I said, she and Charlie had a row about a boy today.” I take a sip of wine. “I’m pretty sure all this is connected. I’m going to call the school again tomorrow.”
“What about Dr. Oke?”
I take a sideways look at him, then tap idly at the side of my glass. “What about her?”
“I thought you were going to speak to her. Maybe she’ll put a different spin on it.”
“You’ve changed your tune!”
He takes a gulp of wine, then places the glass down, missing the coaster. “I haven’t changed my tune. I’m just wondering what Mum and Dad are going to make of it all when we visit on Saturday. And—come on, Lu—it does look pretty shit. Can’t you take her to the hairdressers, see if they can sort it out? She looks ridiculous.”
“But afterwards, when I went and spoke to her . . .” I bite my lip. “She seemed happy. Calmer, you know?”
James frowns. He’s normally the one who can get her onside, and I know he’s frustrated that she won’t let him in. Earlier, at dinner, he started with a joke, one that would normally have had Eden snickering while I rolled my eyes: Hey, it’s meant to be me having a midlife crisis, but she stared at him impassively before shaking her head with a pitying smile.
We drink in silence for a few minutes, listening to the late evening birdsong. Anyone driving along the farm track would see only a scene of idyll, but the unease between us is vast, sullying the picture of beauty, making the wine taste sour. “Did they tell you I popped into your work earlier?” I say, eventually.
“Yes.” James’s knee knocks against the table; the wine lurches inside our glasses. “Why didn’t you stick around?”
“I saw you upstairs. With Tia.” How pathetic it sounds now. I feel the bulb of tears growing fat beneath my lids, and press my fingers into my thighs. James leans forward, and I think he’s going to take my hand, tell me he loves me and nothing else matters, we’ll be fine, we’ll all be fine, but instead he grips the table leg.
“This is wobbly,” he says. “Pass me that coaster.”
Lucy, aged 6
The baby is here!
We’re on our way to see Mum in hospital, and I’m actually, properly, a big sister. I feel older already and sit up straighter in the seat. It’s a responsible job. Daddy said I look really big compared to the baby and I laughed at that—of course I am big compared to a baby, I’m six! I asked Dad if I’ll be able to hold him, but he says the baby’s neck is too fragile, the muscles haven’t developed properly yet. I sort of understand, but it’s not like his head is going to fall off. I’ve never seen a baby with a fallen-off head.
There are lots of cars, stretching all the way along the dual carriageway (that means there are two rows of traffic, not one). Dad taps his fingers on the steering wheel then scratches his goatee beard, and I lift myself up in the seat to try and see why we’re not moving. The red lights are winking in a long string, all the way up to the petrol station. “Did having a baby hurt Mummy?” I ask. “Chloe said her mum had to have stitches in her tummy.” It’s funny to think of her mum being sewn up like a toy. Mum tried to stitch Bunny’s eye back on when it fell off, but she did it in the wrong place with too much string so now he looks all funny.
Dad says Mum didn’t need stitches, but it hurt a bit. I ask how they put her back together, maybe they used glue instead, but he tells me off for playing with my seatbelt and doesn’t answer the question. I think he doesn’t know. It’s like when I was asking where my brother was before he went into Mummy’s tummy, and where I was too. Grown-ups know a lot less than they think they do.
We move forward a bit, then stop. There are blue lights flashing in front of us now, and winky yellow ones where all the cars are moving into one lane. I tell Daddy that the road looks pretty, like a giant Christmas tree, but he’s not listening. He tells me not to look, but I see it anyway: a twisted-up car, parked the wrong way round in the road. A lady is lying on the ground, and her hair looks like dark scribbles all over her furry hood.
“Is that lady going to be okay?”
“Yes, love,” Dad says, even though he’s started staring now, his eyes have gone all googly. “She’s going to be fine.”
I thought he would look different. The babies on TV are all round and giggly, and they smile when people pat their bottom or clap their hands, but my baby brother has lots of wrinkles all over his face like an old man, and he looks cross. I introduce myself with a big smile, but he starts crying. His mouth is so big, it takes up most of his face. “Don’t worry,” Mum says. “He does that a lot. He’s just got to get used to the world.”
She leans forward to give me a cuddle but she smells funny and she doesn’t look like Mum anymore, either. There are pillows under her eyes and another one where the baby was, in her tummy. I want to ask why it’s still so fat, but Mum looks like she’s been crying and it might be a rude thing to say, so I keep my lips sealed shut. “You’re so big,” she whispers, into my hair. I look down at my baby brother, over her shoulder. I do look big, compared to him. His fingers are tiny, like little Tic Tacs. It makes me feel powerful.
It makes me feel scared.
17
We don’t talk much on the way to James’s parents’ house. I put on the radio and Sting croons ominously that he’ll be watching, every step we take. I’m swiping on my mascara, having not had time to finish the job in the house, and in the mirror Eden’s eyes meet mine.
“This song is about a stalker,” she says. Her hair is pulled tightly into a skater-style ponytail at the back, revealing the choppy, shorter strands of hair underneath. She agreed to come to the hairdressers with me yesterday, but when I asked them to “tidy it up,” Eden smiled at me, took my hand and instructed the orange-faced stylist to cut level at her shoulders and shorten the strands underneath as short as she could manage without using a razor. “Wicked,” the stylist said, touching her nose ring before pumping Eden’s chair up until we were all staring at our reflections. It made me uncomfortable. I wondered if we all carry around this idea of what we look like, an idea that differs so dramatically from the truth.
“Actually, I did know that,” I tell Eden. “It’s a bit creepy. I used to enjoy it until I found that out.”
“Why would you not enjoy the song after finding that out?” James asks. He shakes his head at Eden in the rearview mirror, as if to say: Your mother.
“It’s about perception,” Eden says coolly. “When your eyes are open to new facts, the meaning changes.” She turns her head, looks out at the scenery rushing past, and then it dawns on me: normally James sets up the pins, Eden knocks them down. Banter. She’s not playing, not this time. James looks stung. The smile remains on his lips, but he doesn’t say anything else.
I change the radio station.
We pull up outside David and Anna’s house at 10:30 a.m. It’s a cozy three-bed cottage in a village popular for its water sports in the filled gravel pits which tourists flock to in droves during the summer; already it’s a struggle to get parked. The narrow pavements are flecked with people photographing the quaint thatched roofs and taking a stroll along the river. Until a few years ago, Eden used to love coming here to hire the rowing boats and pedal boats and swim off the makeshift beach area. Often, Charlie and Bex came with us and we would arrive early, armed with sun cream and barbecue food or a picnic so that we could make a day of it; halcyon days that feel like they happened a lifetime ago.
Anna flings open the front door and welcomes us in, hugging me briefly before giving James and Eden a longer—and more sincere, it seems—cuddle. Over Eden’s shoulder, I register a fleeting twitch of concern on Anna’s face as her eyes roam over the back of Eden’s head. “Come on, then,” she says. “Come on in.”
“Smells lovely,” I say, closing the front door behind me.
“Thank you, Lucy.” Anna takes my coat and hangs it on the hat stand in the wide, open hallway, beside the wooden rocking horse that used to belong to James. On the opposite wall, half a dozen framed family photographs are mounted: James and his younger brother Daniel together, as babies and toddlers, then separate pictures of each of them clutching scrolls at their respective graduation ceremonies. Daniel went off backpacking around Thailand straight after graduating and decided to stay out there after finding love. Anna reminds me frequently how proud she is of her boys and how well James has done for himself. For all of you, she usually adds, as though I have nothing to offer.
“Here they are,” David chirps, as Anna bustles off to the kitchen to make us all drinks. “The rat pack.” He claps James on the back then brings his hand to his chest at the sight of Eden. “What’s this? Teenage rebellion?”
James and his father share the same abrasive sense of humor which Eden usually indulges with gusto. David doesn’t understand people who don’t tell it like it is and I watch Eden stare blankly at him as his face breaks into laughter. “Not that I can talk,” he says, pointing to his own sparse patch of gray. “I’ve been rebelling all my life. Don’t tell the wife.”
The delayed smile that Eden offers is a thin curl of contempt. David lowers himself onto the arm of a chair, and I ask how Anna’s arthritis has been in an attempt to deflect attention. “Not great,” he says, swinging his own leg as if to prove its competence. “They’ve put her on a waiting list for a knee replacement. Thrown her a bone, so to speak.”
“Here we are.” Anna appears with a tray of teas, and instructs us to help ourselves. We busy ourselves with spoons and sugar, and Eden politely answers Anna’s questions about whether she remembered riding in an ambulance, how did she enjoy being back at school, was it the accident that made her go for her new “look”?
“Not really.” Eden smooths her palms across her thighs. “I like it like this.”
“Oh,” Anna says. “Well, it’s very nice. Just don’t go scaring us like that again.”
Eden frowns. “I won’t. I’m not going anywhere.”
After a lunch of home-cooked soup and crusty baguettes, we go for a walk. The sun is starting to prickle through the clouds, bathing the cottages in a yogurt-colored glow. Anna hangs back from David, who is trying to engage Eden in a conversation about a new species of worm discovered on the riverbed. She tugs at my arm. “Is Eden okay? She seems a bit quiet. And the haircut—”
“The consultant did warn us that she might have some minor personality changes, although we were thinking about contacting the GP for counseling, given what she’s been through.” Beside me, I feel James stiffen. Counseling is a “silly American obsession,” according to his parents. What else had David called it? An excuse for navel-gazing. Whatever happened to resilience?
“And what about this funny name-calling thing? That must have made her very confused. Has all that stopped now?” Anna says.
I’m careful to sidestep the question. “Well, she’s had a traumatic experience and, between you and me, she’s also had a falling-out with her best friend, so maybe that also has something to do with it.” I contemplate how Eden was before: unable to control impulses, with a habit of slamming doors and shutting me out literally as well as metaphorically. “Hopefully it will all settle down but, whatever happens, I don’t want to upset her any further, not when we nearly lost her.”
Anna doesn’t look convinced. “James? What do you think? Surely it’s worth paying for a different opinion from another professional?”
“I can hear you, you know,” Eden calls out over her shoulder. We laugh, and it’s such an Eden thing to say that I feel a rush of relief. We’re all overthinking things. Everything’s going to be alright.
And it is, for a few hours. We throw pooh sticks under the bridge, and James wins with a long, thin twig that earns him a suggestive comment from David about stick envy. We watch a school of fish dart along the river, slick and silvery, before they disappear into a murky shadow cast by the overhanging roots of a tree. We order ice creams from a van that belches out brown smoke, and they melt faster than we can eat them on the slow walk back.
At the house, Anna offers us tea and cake. Eden is frowning over her phone and I notice that she is sitting straighter than usual, not fiddling with her hair the way she used to. She doesn’t touch her slice of Victoria sponge.
“Oh, before you go . . .” Anna creaks to her feet.
“Are you okay?” I ask. “Is it something I can get for you?”
“No, no. You stay there,” she tuts, and disappears into the hallway before returning with an oversize jute bag bulging with photographs. “We were having a clear-out and found these. James, you have to see this one.”
She always does this before we go. She can’t bear to see us—or more accurately, James and Eden—leave, and employs a number of distraction tactics until David’s protests grow louder and he reminds her that we have our own home to get to. I’d feel sorry for her if it wasn’t so nakedly desperate.
“I remember that,” James says, stabbing at an image of himself perched astride a bike, his brother standing beside him with crossed arms and a scowl. “Dan was fuming that I got in there first with that BMX. Limited edition.”
“We couldn’t get you off the thing,” Anna said fondly. “You wouldn’t even let Dan borrow it for a ride around the village.”
“It was much too good for him,” James laughs. It’s an open secret that he has always been the favorite son. I remember my preteen years: those endless, empty weeks after Dad moved out; the girls at the new school who stared at me like I was a petri dish specimen, and just as a flare of annoyance rises, Anna lifts another photo from the pile.
“Look at you boys,” she says, proudly. It’s an image of James and David at her birthday meal last year. They’re both lifting pint glasses, and there are flecks of gray in James’s stubble. They look inordinately pleased with themselves.
“It’s a lovely photo. Still, hardly boys.” I smile, looking at James for recognition of the joke, but he doesn’t look up. Anna continues the indulgence, pulling out more snapshots of their lives, leading to anecdotes about places I’ve never been, people I’ve never met, speculation about the paths they chose.
“Oh, Eden, here’s one of you,” Anna says. “You were such a doll. That dress didn’t fit you for about a month, it went right past your little toes. Do you remember that, David?”
“I do. We had the same conversation last night when you showed me.”
“Here’s another one, Eden. It’s your first day at school, you—”
“No, thank you.” Eden stands up. “I really think we should get going soon, Mum, it’s getting late. Can I use your toilet?”
Anna pauses, one hand still in the bag. There’s a low rumble of voices and, at first, I think I’m going mad, that they must be inside my head, when I realize the radio is still on in the kitchen. “Yes, love,” she says. “Of course you can.”
I tell her I need to go too, and hope to catch up with Eden to see if she’s okay, but Anna asks if I can be a love and help take the plates out, and by the time I’ve placed them on the kitchen side Eden has already disappeared upstairs and locked the bathroom door. A few minutes later, while I’m stacking the dishwasher, James comes into the kitchen.
