Billy and Me (17 page)

The next few messages all follow the same lines. It seems that Mary is now part of the popular crowd, thanks to Carla’s help, no doubt, and has decided to pass around my number. I decide to delete the lot without reading them, my earlier thrill at Mary getting in touch subsiding.

‘Who are they from?’ asks Billy. Having finished his telephone call from Paul, he is now reading over my shoulder.

‘Oh, it’s nothing. Just some people I used to go to school with,’ I say, realizing that that’s all they were and ever will be. They weren’t ever really friends who I shared things with – I made sure I had none of those, preferring to keep them all at a distance, not wanting to be asked questions. They’re strangers to me now, only getting in touch because they’ve seen me on television.

‘Your old school friends? We should have them over to the flat!’ Billy says with enthusiasm.

I grimace at the thought of it.

‘What?’ asks Billy, looking confused.

‘They haven’t spoken to me in years. They’ve just watched the awards and that’s why they they’ve got in touch, not because they seriously want to know how I am. In fact, they probably want to know more about
you,’ I explain, feeling deflated by the truth of my words. ‘They’ve never tried to contact me before now.’

‘But they’re your friends …’ he offers.

‘Not really,’ I admit. ‘So, what did Paul say?’

‘He’s chuffed, obviously.’

‘Not angry that you forgot to write your speech, then?’

‘The opposite. Apparently, people from
Twisted Drops
have been calling him all night in hysterics, finding the whole thing hilarious. So I don’t think I’ve managed to seriously offend anyone. He also said that he thought you looked incredible, as did my mum and dad by the way.’

I look at him questioningly. I highly doubt that Paul would’ve found it within himself to say something nice about me – not that I’m going to say that out loud, though. Not after the last chat we had about him.

‘They did. Paul said he’s even had a few calls from people wanting to know more about you. Some asking if you’re an actress or model yourself.’

‘Shut up!’ I say, whacking his arm gently.

‘I’m serious! I’m sure you could get into it all if you wanted.’

‘No chance. What else did he say?’ I ask, feeling embarrassed.

‘The producer for that rock film
The Walking Beat
has been on the phone to him, too. They want to announce me as their lead as soon as possible and get the ball rolling while there’s such hype about the win.’

‘Do you still want to do it?’

‘Definitely. Although I think it’s going to be a crazy experience.’

‘Great, I’ll have the flat back to myself then!’ I joke.

‘No, you won’t. You’ll be coming with me.’

‘What? To the set?’

‘Yeah, of course I want you there. We’re a team, remember? Besides, I want you to see how boring it all actually is. I’m telling you, you’ll feel so sorry for me once you experience the early morning starts, the never-ending days and see the way I’m bossed around like a moving prop.’

‘You poor, poor thing!’

‘I know … it’s so tough.’

We sit silently for a few moments, letting the quiet sink in after our manic day.

‘Ahhhhh!’ squeals Billy, clenching his fists with excitement. ‘I still can’t believe I won! It’s crazy. I always dreamed I’d get a pat on the back for my work one day – but this is bonkers.’

‘You deserve it.’

Billy flashes me a cheeky smile. ‘It’s made me realize how much I love it. Wait, does that make me sound egotistical?’ he asks with a grimace. ‘Moaning about acting when we first met and now that I’ve won an award I love it?’

‘Not at all.’

‘It’s like it’s awoken a fire in me. Paul is so geared up. He has such massive plans. There’s all sorts of meetings being set up, over here, in LA and New York … who knows where we’ll be in a few years’ time. I feel
like our future has just been thrown wide open. It’s so unbelievable.’

I’m thrilled for Billy because he really does deserve the praise that is being sent his way, but this talk of the future scares me. Not because I’m not being included – I am. Billy is always careful to say ‘we’ and ‘us’, but because our world is about to be dictated by Billy’s career. Putting Paul in the driver’s seat. I’m not sure how I’d be able to cope having Paul’s input into every decision we make.

I can’t sleep. A mixture of excitement and nerves swirls through me, keeping my mind active and alert. It’s been an amazing night for Billy and I’m delighted that I was able to be there to watch and support him. It was such a rush to be by his side – I actually thought I’d be left on my own again, looking like a lemon as I was on the Press Night, to be honest, but Billy kept me close to him as promised.

Even though I’m largely ecstatic about how the evening went (that I didn’t fall over in my heels or make a fool of myself in front of Jude), I can’t seem to shake off Russell Mode’s comments or the feeling that things are about to snowball so fast that I won’t be able to keep up.

When it comes to women, I trust Billy. I honestly do. It’s hard not to trust someone who has never really given me any reason not to. Yes, I know he is popular with the ladies and I know he likes to be affectionate with Ruth, but that’s just his way. Right? And yes, the
whole inappropriate thing with the play was a problem, too, but that was just his naivety about how to handle the situation. Having spoken about it I’m sure that scenario will be handled differently next time around. Although will I ever get over the distress of watching Billy fool around with someone else – even if it is in the name of work? I know I’ll deal with that when I have to, but thanks to this new film that time might come sooner than I’d have liked. Rock stars are, after all, notorious for their bad-boy behaviour. I’d be foolish to think there’d be nothing risqué in it.

If Russell is right and it’s only a matter of time before he runs off with a co-star or some glamorous model he meets on a night out, then what am I doing here? Why am I actually sitting around waiting for him to crush and humiliate me? Because I love him, I guess, is the obvious answer. From day one I’ve always said that I can’t compete with those types of women, powerful and glamorous, but I believed him when he comforted me by saying he wasn’t interested in the changeability of girls who would be all over you one minute for the cameras and then drop you the next. He wanted something more meaningful. I do believe that in me Billy has found someone he can have a normal life with – as normal as he can have, being an actor and having parts of his life on display for all to judge. I know I give him stability in an otherwise unpredictable lifestyle – but am I just a phase in his life? Billy’s way of trying to fight the urge to become a part of the actor’s world that he’ll inevitably succumb to eventually anyway?

In reality, it’s not Billy that I’m worried about, I don’t believe he would purposely go out to cheat or find someone new. I honestly don’t think it’s in his character. What unnerves me is the scores of women who will now be on his case, trying to tempt him. Doing all they can to win his trust and lure him in their direction, not caring that he has a girlfriend. In fact, in some twisted way, I predict my presence in his life will make him even more of a challenge for them, making him even more desirable. I can’t sleep as the image of these seductive lionesses walking around their prey fills my mind.

I suppose only time will tell if he’d be stupid enough to fall into their traps, but for now I have to keep faith in Billy and stand by him, until he gives me cause to do otherwise.

As for Billy’s future glittering life and my presence in it? Who knows. I just wish I could get rid of this feeling of grief that has clamped hold of my heart.

The flashing of my phone causes me to stir. I always sleep with it on silent when I’ve decided to have a lie-in the next day, knowing that Molly or Mum will call me at the crack of dawn otherwise, forcing me to wake up earlier than planned.

It’s a couple of weeks since the BAFTA awards. Billy has finished working on
Dunked
and is waiting for filming to commence on
The Walking Beat
, so we are making the most of having nothing planned and have been enjoying waking up when we want to, napping if we fancy it and being spontaneous with our days without the need to rush back home for anything. It’s been glorious just being a couple again with no outside interference.

The screen of my phone is so bright I can’t open my eyes properly to see who is trying to get hold of me, so I miss the call. I close my eyes again, turn over and extend my arms above my head whilst flexing my feet, revelling in the sensation of my muscles stretching after being curled up in a ball all night. I cuddle into Billy, enjoying the warmth of his body underneath the fluffy duvet, and continue to doze.

A little while later I force myself to wake up and get
out of bed, even though Billy is still sound asleep. I grab my phone and walk into the kitchen, fill up the kettle and flick it on. As it starts to grumble, letting me know that a well-needed coffee is on its way, I have a look at my phone. Sixty-seven missed calls and ten voicemails. Panic grabs me, instantly knowing that something has to have happened for people to be trying to get hold of me so urgently before ten o’clock in the morning. I go straight to the voicemails.

‘Oh Sophie, I’m so sorry!’ cries Molly’s voice, causing a lump to form in my throat. I’ve never heard Molly cry as hard as this before. She sounds heartbroken. ‘I didn’t know, I honestly didn’t. I wouldn’t have told her anything if I had. But she kept asking me questions about you. I thought she just admired you, or realized how much I was missing you … I –’ she tries, before breaking down in sobs. ‘I didn’t mean to tell her about you. I didn’t know she was a journalist, Sophie.’ My chest tightens as I make out her words through the sobs of regret. Eventually, she has to put the phone down because she can no longer speak.

There are seven more voicemails from her, each of them offering more of an explanation as to what’s happened, which I start to piece together. It turns out Sally, the girl Molly decided to employ as my replacement, without even seeing her CV, is a freelance reporter. She hadn’t just randomly turned up in Rosefont Hill to see her aunt, she was there to see if she could persuade me, face to face, to do an exclusive interview with her about
my relationship with Billy. Instead she managed to get a job in the shop and worm my life story out of the clueless customers, fitting little pieces of information together until she had a story she could sell.

Once I’ve heard enough from Molly, I pull the phone away from my ear and discard it. Taking deep breaths, I steady myself on the kitchen worktop, wondering what to do. My mind feels empty, offering me no answers. Eventually, I walk into the hallway, grab my coat and walk to the corner shop, not caring that I’m obviously still in my pyjamas.

The sight of the front pages grips me by the throat, restricting my breathing. Each contains two pictures, one of me and Billy at the awards and one of me when I was younger, with my arms flung around my dad, kissing him on the cheek as he laughs at the camera. I know the picture well – after all, I’ve gazed at it longingly for years. It’s also the one they used back then when it all happened.

I clench my jaw and push away the tears that threaten to spill out of me. Quickly, I grab one of the papers and pay for it at the counter, ignoring the idle chat coming from the young shopkeeper serving me, wanting to be back home as soon as possible.

Back at the kitchen table I put the paper in front of me and stare at my dad’s beaming face. I sit down and slowly absorb the details of my life that someone I have never met has decided it’s fair to share with the world, without my knowledge or consent, or giving me any warning.

SECRET HEARTACHE FOR BUSKIN’S GIRL

She’s won over the heart of former lothario Billy Buskin, as he displayed in his acceptance speech at last month’s BAFTAs, but behind Sophie May’s dazzling smile hides a bitter heartache, which led her to shut herself away from those around her throughout her teenage years.

Speaking to friends close to Sophie it has been revealed that the tragic death of her dad, when she was just eleven years old, has understandably had a huge impact on Sophie’s life.

Carla Daily, who grew up with Sophie, said, ‘At primary school she was friends with everyone. She was always dancing or prancing around and found everything funny. She was such a lovely girl, always bubbly and kind. Everybody wanted to be her friend. She was the popular one who all of us flocked to.’

However, Sophie changed dramatically when her father, Dean May, was killed instantly in a hit-and-run accident, just minutes away from their family home in Rosefont Hill.

Carla continued, ‘Obviously, there were rumours about what had happened flying around the playground, and I can still remember the school assembly when the headmaster called us all in to tell us about what had happened to Sophie’s dad. At that age none of us had had to deal with news like that before, we didn’t really understand death. We all just sat there looking confused, knowing that it was a terrible thing that had happened, but not quite sure what we were meant to
feel or how to react. A lot of us cried, imagining how we’d have felt if it was our own dads and feeling bad for our friend’s loss.

‘It was so sad, but what shocked us the most was the state of Sophie when she finally came back into school. She looked ill. Her rosy cheeks had disappeared along with her smile. Her hair, which was always long and free-flowing, was now pulled back in a painfully tight bun. She looked awful.

‘She no longer wanted to talk to anyone either, no matter how much anybody tried to comfort her. Whenever you tried to talk to her you’d see her shaking, as if she was scared of us. It was terrifying. She’d become a closed book; literally an empty shell of the girl that she once was. I tried on many occasions to talk to her about it, but seeing her wither away like that made me frightened to go near her, I didn’t want to upset her further. So I gave up eventually, we all did.’

According to the source, Sophie’s mum Jane May suffered from severe depression following her husband’s sudden death, leaving Sophie to care for them both.

‘I think a large part of that was having to look after her mum, who I heard had a breakdown as a result of the accident. It must’ve been a lot for Sophie to cope with, especially at such a young age. Very stressful, I imagine.

‘We all moved to secondary school a few months after the accident. My mum thought the new environment would make Sophie better, give her a fresh start away from everyone who knew about her dad, but it made her worse. Somehow she managed to isolate herself even further. They didn’t know what she had been like before, so they just
accepted her as this quiet girl, meaning no one bothered with her.’

When at eighteen Sophie’s peers were making plans for their futures, she shrugged off the idea of going to university or travelling, preferring to stay at home.

‘It was pretty obvious that Sophie wouldn’t leave her mum,’ the friend continued. ‘It’s like the guilt of escaping their despair ate her up. To be honest, I never spoke to her about it, but from the moment her dad died, the Sophie we knew disappeared.’

Sophie never reformed the bonds with her former friends. Instead, it was working in her local teashop, at the end of sixth form, which brought her back into the community, thanks to her friend and former employer, Molly Cooper.

Looking back at the day Sophie first walked into the shop, she said, ‘I knew who she was as soon as she walked through the door. All of us in the village had heard about what had happened to her dad, of course we had, but I didn’t expect to see her looking so fragile so long afterwards. I wanted to do all I could to help her move forward, but obviously the death of someone so close, when they’re just suddenly snatched away from you like that, is heartbreaking. I don’t think anyone fully recovers from it. Ever.

‘She still has the odd shaky day, you know, when things get brought to the surface. But her main concern is, and has always been, her mum.’

Speaking of the night the accident occurred, Molly said, ‘Something like that, a death, in a village as small as this, hits the whole community hard. For days, it felt wrong to laugh or feel any joy. A black cloud had washed over us, so
I can only imagine how that must have felt for poor Sophie and her mum. Dean had only popped out to grab something quickly from the shops. He was literally a few hundred yards from home when he got knocked over. He died instantly.

‘It wasn’t just the death that Sophie had to deal with of course, it was the knowledge that people were whispering about her behind her back. That’s what she really struggled with, and that’s why she became a closed book, I think. No one was doing it to be mean, we were all just concerned, but as a child she viewed that differently. She just wanted to disappear. I think working here [in Tea-on-the-Hill] helped her see that, sometimes, calling on those around you is a good thing. Sometimes life is too tough to face alone, no matter how much you want to shut everybody out.’

It appears that, with the help of Molly and the customers in the shop, Sophie started to come out of her shell, after years of hiding away.

It was in this comfortable environment that she met Billy for the first time.

‘I knew straight away that she’d caught Billy’s eye,’ continued Molly. ‘Sophie’s always shied away from any kind of attention, so she was completely oblivious to his affection for her. But I could see him watching her, being amused by her little ways. I knew he’d taken a shine to her.

‘They have a connection which makes her feel safe in a world that has been full of so much uncertainty, whilst giving him the normal relationship he craves.’

Billy stated in his BAFTA acceptance speech that Sophie has completed his life, saying, ‘There is one person here who I would like to thank … the better half of me, that is,
Miss Sophie May. I feel like I’ve already won the biggest prize of all having her beside me. It’s thanks to her that my life is now complete.’

Well, it seems, in some way, that Billy has completed hers, too, by filling the void left by the sad death of her beloved father.

‘What’s that?’ I hear Billy ask from behind me, causing me to jump in fright. I’d been so consumed by the article I hadn’t heard him come in. ‘What’s wrong?’

I stay silent, aware of the tears and snot running down my face. Not sure what to say, I close the paper and slide it across the table in his direction, by way of an explanation. I hide my face, unable to look at him as he reads the front page, cringing as he turns the pages over and reads more. I sit motionless and wait.

‘Where has this come from?’ he says softly. ‘Who did they tell all this to? Molly wouldn’t talk to a journalist.’

‘Sally …’ I squeak.

I feel his hand on my back, moving in a gentle, rubbing motion. He leans into me and kisses the top of my head, staying close. I hear him make a few sounds with his mouth, taking breaths as if about to say something, but, like me, I guess he doesn’t know where to start.

‘Why didn’t you tell me?’ he asks, sadly.

‘There was never a good time,’ I answer truthfully.

‘I knew something was wrong. Whenever you’ve talked about your childhood it’s always been the memories that include your dad – but, obviously, I knew he wasn’t around. I just didn’t want to ask.’

‘No, I know I should’ve told you. I almost did a couple of times,’ I say, sighing. ‘Losing Dad was the hardest time of my life. I’ve always felt that by telling you I’d be lifting the lid and making it all real again, having to relive it. It’s taken me so long to want to move on with my life. I wanted to keep it in the past. I didn’t want to taint what we have. I didn’t want you to feel sorry for me. I don’t want to see the pity in your eyes, too.’

‘I can understand that, baby, but it’s a huge part of who you are. OK, I promise to give you no pitiful looks,’ he says, squeezing me into him once more before sitting beside me. ‘It’s out there now, though, so take your time and tell me about it. Tell me what happened,’ he pleads. ‘Tell me your version of what happened.’

It was the day after the three of us had painted my bedroom pink. Coming home from school I found Dad banging nails into the walls and hanging up photo frames, full of pictures of him, Mum and me. It looked wonderful. Looking at that wall made me feel so happy, wanted and loved. The three of us always had such fun together – we were a real team.

It was then that Mum decided to come in and sit me down on the bed with a big smile on her face, telling me she had some news to tell me. I honestly thought they were taking me to Disney World. Giddy excitement rose within me as I sat waiting for those words to come from her lips.

‘I’m pregnant,’ she announced, with a huge grin, glancing at Dad who was also beaming with joy beside her. ‘You’re going to have a little brother or sister to look after, aren’t you a lucky girl?’ she added as she wiggled my nose in her fingers.

I guess I was in shock, or disappointed that I wasn’t going to meet Cinderella or Minnie Mouse; it wasn’t usual for me to act up with my parents or be spiteful … but I just went berserk. I can remember screaming at them, telling them I hated them for destroying us. Asking them how they could be so mean. It was meant to be just us three. Wasn’t I enough for them? I couldn’t understand why they had done this awful thing. I told Mum she was too old to have a baby, that it would be disgusting when my friends spotted her walking around the village with an ugly bump, that she was an embarrassment.

I was only eleven years old, of course, but even then I knew better. I knew what I was saying was spiteful and malicious. I knew I was hurting them. The words still haunt me now along with the hurt expression on Mum’s face. How could I have been so selfish to the two people I loved most in the world?

At first they tried to calm me down, but in the end they left me on my own in my room – letting me scream, shout and sob until I found myself exhausted into an angry silence.

A little while later I heard my door open and someone creep into my room. The sigh told me it was Dad. I was curled up under my duvet in bed, hugging Mr Blobby, pretending to sleep. He perched next to me on the bed, causing the whole thing to wobble.

‘Soph, you will always be so special to us,’ he said, pulling the duvet down slightly to reveal my face and stroking my forehead.

I stayed silent, still feigning sleep with my eyes shut.

‘Do you want to know a secret? You’ll always be my number one,’ he persisted. ‘I cried so much when you were born, I couldn’t get over how much love I felt for this tiny little thing who was squawking her head off. I don’t think I could love anyone as much as I love you.’

‘That’s what you say now, but wait until the baby comes along,’ I shot back, opening my eyes and giving him a sulky pout. ‘You won’t love me as much then, I won’t be your favourite any more.’

‘Oh yes, you will,’ he said, planting a kiss on my forehead, leaving his face right in front of mine on the pillow.

I looked into his eyes and I saw the sincerity.

Dad would never lie to me. Would he?

I bit my bottom lip, mulling over his worlds.

I needed to be sure.

I needed a guarantee.

‘Pinkie promise?’ I squeaked sadly, holding out my little finger.

‘Pinkie promise,’ he laughed, grabbing my little finger in his and shaking it wildly in the air, sealing the deal and making me chuckle. ‘Now,’ he added, his tone changing to a more serious one, letting me know that what he was about to say was important. ‘Mummy is downstairs and she’s a little bit sad that you’re upset,’ he said, as he brushed my hair away from my face. ‘We have to take extra special care of her from now on. We can’t be shouting at her and making her sad. She needs you.’

‘I’m sorry, Daddy,’ I mumbled, my lower lip starting to quiver.

‘Hey, baby girl …’ he cooed, kissing me again on the forehead. ‘I know you are. Why don’t you go downstairs and see Mummy? Give her a hug and tell her you’re sorry?’

I pulled a face at him, needing further encouragement to take the walk of shame and apologize for my appalling behaviour.

‘I’ll make you one of Daddy’s extra special hot chocolates if you do.’

‘With cream and marshmallows?’ I begged – making the most of the offer.

‘Yes! And we can drink them in front of the fire if you like. Now, off you trot,’ he said, lifting me off my bed and guiding me to the door.

I leapt down the stairs and ran into the living room to see Mum, who was lying on the sofa. I could see she had been crying and I felt terrible.

‘I’m so sorry, Mummy,’ I cried, bursting into big sobs at the thought of upsetting her.

‘Oh, love …’ she said, grabbing me and laying me down next to her on the sofa, giving me a big hug. I held her back, so tightly.

‘I didn’t mean the things I said.’

‘I know, love. I know,’ she whispered, kissing the side of my head.

‘Is it going to be a girl or a boy?’

‘We don’t know yet.’

‘If it’s a little girl, can we call her Ginger?’ I squeaked.

‘As in the Spice Girl?’

I nodded in reply, as I looked at her with pleading eyes.

‘We’ll see, love. Although you already have a goldfish called Ginger, you don’t want to upset her by stealing her name …’

‘True,’ I said sadly, wishing I hadn’t given such a good name away to a boring fish.

We were still curled up on the sofa when Dad came in and said that we were out of marshmallows.

I moaned. It wouldn’t be a real hot chocolate without marshmallows.

Anger rose within me again – had Dad known we were out of them and tricked me into coming downstairs? Had I been lied
to? The tears that had only just left me threatened to spurt out once more.

Wanting to keep me calm and to stop another outburst, Dad decided to run down to the shops quickly to pick up some more.

Phew. Crisis averted.

‘Do you fancy coming with me, Soph?’ he asked, nudging me gently.

Lying there next to Mum on the sofa, all snuggled up in front of the fire, the thought of going out in the cold wasn’t appealing at all. I didn’t even answer him; I just closed my eyes and shook my head, holding on to Mum a bit tighter.

We dozed off.

It was the sound of sirens blasting by and the blue lights flashing past the front of the house that woke us with a start, causing us both to jump up off the sofa.

Mum’s eyes were instantly full of fear. Looking back, it was as if she knew that something serious had happened. As if she knew it was Dad.

‘Soph …’ she said, coming down to my level calmly. ‘I’m just going to go out and find Daddy. You stay here all wrapped up, OK?’

I nodded and watched as she walked out of the front door and into the cold, dark night.

She didn’t even bother putting her coat on.

She left in her slippers.

Unsure what to do, I just stood in the same spot. Looking at the front door. Waiting for them both to come back home.

When I heard a knock on the door quite a while later I knew it wouldn’t be either of them, they wouldn’t have needed to knock – Dad had his keys with him.

I opened it to find a policewoman standing on the doorstep. She had a very kind face. She was sort of smiling at me, but it was a sad smile. A troubled smile.

‘Sophie?’ she asked.

I said nothing. I just nodded my head slowly.

‘Hello, Sophie, I’m PC Wallis. Your mummy has asked me to pick you up so that we can go meet her. Is that OK?’

I can remember thinking to myself, ‘She didn’t mention my daddy. What about my daddy? Why aren’t you taking me to him?’ But I said nothing. I walked upstairs to get Mr Blobby and then followed PC Wallis to her car.

It felt so strange to be in the back of that police car behind PC Wallis and her partner – a young man who didn’t even turn around and say hello. I can recall the route perfectly; I know the traffic lights that let us drive by without pausing and those which stopped us with their menacing red glare, where we were joined by other vehicles on the road and where we drove in solitude through the empty streets.

I didn’t say anything to the two adults in front of me on that journey, and they didn’t say a word to me. They barely spoke to each other, in fact. The only noise in the car was the constant bark of the police channel, ‘… any cars in the area can you make your way there immediately and report back. Over,’ ‘… suspect on foot, heading west on Brucknell Road,’ and lots more police jargon that I didn’t understand. I listened carefully, though, trying to hear if there was any mention of my dad at all. There wasn’t.

Once at the hospital, I was taken to Mum who was slumped on a chair in the middle of a busy corridor. Walking towards her I could see her puffy red face and could tell she’d been crying. I knew that wasn’t a good sign.

I felt more scared than ever.

‘Mum?’ I said meekly, when I was finally standing in front of her, the short walk through the corridor seeming to have taken hours.

She looked up with a pained expression, her face and body crumpling as she slid off the chair on to her knees, grabbing hold of my waist and burying her head into my body.

Then she started wailing.

The noise was like nothing I’d ever heard before, loud and animal
-
like. It sounded as if she was in so much pain.

I stood there as her sobs vibrated through both of us, causing us to shake.

I can remember not knowing where to look as people around us began to stare at the broken woman on her knees, gripping hold of me. I wasn’t embarrassed, though. I was numb.

Nothing made sense.

Mum never did tell me that Dad had died. Those actual words were never uttered from her mouth. The wailing, which lasted for months, told me everything I needed to know. That and the fact that Dad wasn’t there to make her stop.

I didn’t join in. I didn’t shed a single tear when my dad died, because there was one thought that kept hammering around my head – it was my fault. If I hadn’t been such a spoilt little cow, Dad wouldn’t have been out in the dark on his way to buy a stupid packet of marshmallows. He wouldn’t have been in the middle of the road as a car, going twice the national speed limit and driven by a drunk, whizzed around the corner and ran straight into him. Killing him instantly.

I’d done it.

It was my fault.

It was wrong for me to cry.

I’d look at Mum with her tortured faced and I’d be consumed with guilt.

Going back to school and seeing other people was awful. I couldn’t bear the looks on their faces as I walked into a room – the stares, the whispers. I couldn’t stand their kind, pitiful, empty words. Or how their eyes would well up as they spoke. I could feel their pain adding to my own, increasing my guilt and weighing me down further.

I was convinced that one day someone would find out the truth and declare me a murderer. That they’d all turn on me in disgust.

I withdrew into myself. My body language changed. I was so sunken, shoulders rounded, chest concave, head dipped. It was like I was trying to make myself as small as possible, so that nobody would notice me. I hated their attention.

At first, people did try and help me, to get me talking about what had happened, like my teacher Mrs Yates and the girl who had previously been my bestest friend, Laura Barber, but after a while they gave up and left me to my own devices. No longer sure what to say to try and tempt me to talk, or unable to understand that I hadn’t ‘gotten over it’ already. Their desistance suited me fine. I didn’t feel like I deserved their time. I had done a terrible thing. I had killed my dad. I didn’t want them talking to me, or about me. I wanted to disappear.

That’s when my panic attacks started – although I never had the courage to ask anyone for help. It was embarrassing. In some way I thought it was a punishment for being such a bad person.

Things went from bad to so-bad-she-wondered-what-there-was-left-to-live-for for Mum. She suffered a miscarriage just weeks after Dad’s death.

The doctors weren’t sure whether it was her age, stress
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related, or simply one of those things – either way, she’d lost her husband and unborn child in a matter of weeks. She might have had me, but it seemed her unborn child had been her glimmer of hope – another connection to Dad that had disappeared.

She quickly became a shell of her former self. Nervous and twitchy, constantly cleaning anything and everything, she obsessed over it and became panicky if things weren’t done her way.

Our relationship at that time was strained to say the least.

She never blamed me. Never mentioned the fact that if I had only let Dad give me a blooming hot chocolate without marshmallows, then he’d still be with us, but I knew that’s what she thought. I’d robbed her of her husband and her unborn child.

A light in her eyes had gone out – as though part of her had died too. She didn’t love me as much. She would sometimes still hug me and talk to me like a mother does but it would be rigid and stiff, her mind was elsewhere. She was empty. Cold. Distant.

She kept working through her grief. She had to. With Dad gone she was the only one able to bring money home. She spent as much time as she could at the library, hating being at home. I wasn’t sure whether that was because Dad’s belongings were still scattered around the house as a constant reminder that he was no longer with us, or so that she could spend as little time with me as possible.

When I was old enough, I decided to get a job in the local florist’s to help Mum with the bills at home. I wasn’t getting much, £15 for a full day’s work on a Saturday, but it all helped. I was their ‘bucket girl’, the one who had to clean out all the slimy buckets at the end of the working week. I liked the job because I was secluded, able to hide away in the back room not talking to anyone while I got on with the cleaning. I also liked it because the owner would let me take some bunches home with me if they were past their best. There was something about the life of a flower and its brief beauty that had me transfixed – all its energy went into blooming. For that one moment they’d be beautiful and close to perfection – but as soon as that moment had passed, they’d start to shrivel away almost instantly. I saw my life in those rotten petals. My family had bloomed to its peak, but now we were withering away.