When you crouched to pick it up with a shout of delight, rubbed it on your trouser leg, I already had my hand held out. But you turned and presented it to our child instead, and my fingers fluttered like shot doves back down to my side. Neither of you noticed.
A pebble shaped like a heart. Sea-smooth and veined with delicate threads of quartz. I wanted it. I watched as our child turned it over and tapped at it, slid it into her pocket without a word of thanks. She looked over at me and caught my narrow-eyed gleam of jealousy, interpreted it as admonition and muttered a sullen,
thank you, daddy.
We all turned again to our treasure hunt, peering into rock pools and weaving trails through the sand with our toes. Your bucket was half full of shells and stones and slivers of glass, mine virtually empty. The sun shone but the wind was cold and I wished I'd brought my cardigan. Our child tramped along in our wake, head wilting on her neck and scowling down at her sandals. Her hair was knotted around her cheeks. It needed a trim.
You stopped regularly to exclaim over some fresh find and I always paused to admire, raised my eyebrows at Fern to do the same. The way you let out a hearty yell each time you scooped up some cracked shell or twisted piece of driftwood made me want to clutch you close to my chest and shield you from catching sight of her scathing pout. You were trying too hard and she knew it.
I resolved to make more effort, to see treasure where you did and not just detritus, but I was too conscious of the sand gritting against the soles of my feet, the salt sting of the breeze. I wanted to go back to the car and declare this day officially over, return our child to her grandmother's keeping and spend the meagre time remaining to us alone with you. I wanted to sit down and have a tantrum.
The rain, when it came, brought smiles to all of our faces. I realised then that you had been as anxious as me to halt this failed attempt at Family. It no longer worked. So back to the car via the ice cream van and then home, with all of us singing songs. Even Fern was grinning through her raspberry sauce.
I tried to talk to you about it afterwards, rehearsing lies to blot the seeping pus of our child's dislike, but you wanted to kiss instead, and so we did.
She was still awake when I went up to bed that night. I ignored her as I undressed, tight-lipped and cool in the spotlight of her fret, but then I saw the heart-shaped pebble on my pillow. I cupped its perfect fit in my palm and carried it to the dressing table, and then I climbed into bed and wrapped my arms around her, whispering thanks into her neck. His gift to her and her gift to me.
Mine now.
7
I was eighteen when I broke into the school to steal the papers for my A level history examination. After a bottle of fizzy white wine on an empty stomach, it had seemed like such a good idea.
I'd received a couple of university offers from the mainland and though I was confident that I'd pass English literature and art, for history I needed a backup plan. And I'd made that promise to my mother that I was going to leave her and never look back. I reckoned I could do with a little extra help to keep that promise.
School-yard rumour had it that the headmaster kept the examination papers in the top drawer of the filing cabinet in his office, and rumour also had it that the caretaker was a drunk who forgot to lock up when he left for the night. I shook the last drops from the wine bottle into my mouth and hunted out my torch.
The window of the girl's toilets slid open easily beneath my hand, releasing tangy particles of bleach and body spray into my face and past me, floating invisible through the night. When I licked my lips my tongue furred with chemicals.
Two of the cubicle doors were shut and I shuffled by the window for a moment, staring, tensed against the sound of a flushing toilet that never came. I nudged the doors open with my foot, just to be sure, and let out a tiny scream when a pipe above the cistern hissed.
My reflection in the mirrors above the row of sinks almost made me scream again. My eyes were
a fathomless black, flat and lifeless as tiddlywinks counters. All angles, all expression, all that made me
me
were distorted by the gloom and rendered grotesque by the hat that I'd taken from my mother's wardrobe and customised to suit my needs.
It was in crushed navy velvet, huge and floppy. I'd looped a pair of tights around my head a couple of times to keep it in place and it bulged monstrously above my eyebrows. The tights dangled from their knot below my ear. I looked as if I'd been garrotted.
For a moment I was fourteen again and terrified of this stranger in the mirror, but then the rest of the wine I'd drunk oozed into my bloodstream and I began to giggle. I folded at the waist, hands on my knees, and then down onto the floor. I could have sat there all night, rocking and snorting, but the lure of the headmaster's desk with its paper prize pulsed through my growing hysteria, sobering me and bringing me back to my feet. I eased open the door to the corridor and slipped through.
The moon in stripes across the noticeboards. Shadows thick as felt. I'd never known the school so empty, so quiet. There was something eerie about the stretched darkness that made me wish I'd started on that second bottle of wine instead of tucking it under my pillow for another evening.
At the far end the headmaster's office waited. All of the classroom doors were ajar, milky half-light sprawled across the desks. To stand or crawl? I settled on an awkward half-crouch, a stumbling zigzag along the length of the corridor that tugged the muscles in my thighs painfully. There were sweet wrappers on the floor below the lockers, splashes of crimson overlooked by a cleaner rushing through her tasks to get home to her family. I picked them up and pushed them into the pocket of my donkey jacket. Only another few yards now.
The town hall clock struck three booming notes and I jerked and careened into the wall. My left ankle twisted beneath me and something ripped, just above the tender ridge of scar tissue. I collapsed around it, marionette stiff, as the world tipped sideways and my vision blurred. Pain like a thousand tiny men in fluorescent jackets wielding a thousand tiny saws, all at the same time.
When I was finally able to raise my head the town hall clock was striking four and there was vomit all over my jacket sleeve. I was terrified that I'd done something awful to my ankle but I didn't want to look at it. All I wanted to do was rest my cheek on the floor and stay as still as possible until someone came to help. I wished I had a blanket to pull up to my chin and snuggle into. Was there one in my rucksack? I couldn't remember.
By the time the town clock had sounded five times I was in a sitting position, leant against the wall, and thirstier than I'd ever been. But I was nearer to the headmaster's office than to the water fountain by the lockers. I had to see this through. I tried shuffling on my bottom, left leg rigid before me, and then levered myself onto my good foot and hopped the last few steps.
The headmaster's office door was cool and slightly slimy against my forehead. Decades of greasy knuckles soaked into the grain of the wood. When I pulled back and focused, it gleamed in patches where my skin had stamped its own sweaty mark. There was a brass nameplate screwed on at waist height, and above that a dirty sheet of paper hung from a piece of sticky tape. The school rules. I had a quick re-read while I steadied my breathing. All earrings other than studs were banned, but it said nothing about stealing examination papers.
I gripped the handle and turned it. No movement. I tried again, pushing at the wood with my palm, swinging my hip into it. The caretaker must have been having a sober evening when he locked up. With something close to elation I swivelled round and limped back down the corridor, burying my face in the water fountain. I sucked in long, greedy gulps until my stomach sloshed with liquid. There was water all over the front of my coat and the brim of my hat was soaked through, spilling droplets down my neck so that I shivered with the delicious chill of it.
There was nothing more I could do. It was time to go home. Nearly six now, and two miles walk ahead of me. My arms throbbed as I hoisted myself into a kneeling position on the sill in the girl's toilets. A second's panic as my hat caught on the latch and was dragged off my head, but it swung from the knotted tights like a bonnet, taut across my throat and safe. I left the window wide open and headed over the playing field, no longer even trying to stay out of sight.
The sun was a blood orange resting on the distant hills, gathering its strength before making the final heave up into the sky. I walked home drenched in colour, peach and pink and auburn, a stained glass figure limping into the light.
Tommy drove past on his way to an early fare and he stopped and reversed back up the road until he was alongside me. His moustache glistened with morning tea. He asked if I was okay, probably thought I'd gone mad like my mother. I accepted a lift and travelled the last mile and a half in the back of his car, legs up on the brittle leather, head tipped back against the window so that I wouldn't lose sight of the sun's ascent. He dropped me at the garden gate and I bent and kissed his cheek, making us both blush. He stopped asking questions then, turned the radio up high and tipped his cigarette to me in farewell. I limped down the path and round to the back door.
There was plenty of ice in the freezer, mum always made sure of that. I folded a few cubes into a tea towel and sat at the table. The press of cold against my swollen foot made me sigh with pleasure.
Noises above me, and then mum opened the kitchen door and shuffled over to the window.
I thought I heard a car.
She stood for a moment, looking out, and then turned to the kettle, holding herself hunched and stiff. Another hangover. She tripped over my shoe and swore, kicked it across the floor and then looked at me properly.
What the hell are you wearing? Is that my hat?
I winced as I rolled the tea towel half way up my calf and then all the way down to my toes. The bones in my foot had disappeared beneath a shiny puffball of flesh.
I don't think I'm going to be able to make it in to school today, mum. I fell over and twisted my ankle, look. It's the bad one as well.
She bent to examine me and then groaned and clutched at her head, sinking backwards onto the floor between my knees. Her eyes shut for a moment and her lips twitched as she muttered silently, then she pushed herself up and bent over me once more.
We need to get you to the doctor's. I'll ring Tommy, and Alison at the surgery.
Her voice on the newly installed telephone was shrill with triumph and purpose.
Just see,
she seemed to be saying,
I told you I'd get a phone, and now just see how good a mother I can be, if only I'm given a chance!
She checked the clock on the wall and redialled, spoke to Tommy, nodded and checked the clock again. Then she replaced the receiver gently, still scared that it would break if handled too roughly, and bustled out of the room, calling over her shoulder for me to get ready, get out of that ridiculous outfit, hurry up and make myself decent.
As I travelled once more in the back of Tommy's cab on my way to the doctor's, catching his eye occasionally and smirking in embarrassed complicity, my night-time antics already felt like a distant memory or an anecdote told to me by someone else. I wondered what it was I'd wanted more: to cheat my way off the island or to get caught doing so. I hadn't planned any of it properly, hadn't made any attempt to cover my tracks. I had a horrible feeling I'd left my torch behind in the school corridor.
My head throbbed from the after effects of the cheap wine and I felt sick again. If this was how mum spent her every morning I had to admire her persistence in drinking every night.
I looked over at her. Her knuckles were white as she gripped the handbag resting on her knees. Every bump in the road induced a small groan of misery that had Tommy grimacing his concern. She turned her head and smiled grimly at me then faced front once more. Tiny droplets of sweat shimmered on her throat.
The sun reared from its place above the hills, now separated from land by a blue strip of nothing. I twisted to keep it in view as the road dived down into town but then it was lost behind the scented grey of the soap factory. The car edged through shadow and stopped alongside the doctor's surgery. I sat and ignored mum's impatience, the open door. I suddenly didn't want to get out. I didn't want to go anywhere. The future leered through the cab windows, a future unknown and away from here. It was too much. I wanted to take it all back; the university applications, the extra revision tutorials, the sneering at my mother's claustrophobic little routines and the safe boundaries of her neutered world.
Please just let me stay right where I am
. I had my answer. If I could repeat last night then I'd do it again with greater sabotage, ensure I was caught and any escape routes away from here closed to me for good.
My hands knotted around the headrest in front of me and I hung on, shaking my head, until Tommy took me gently by the arm and persuaded me out onto the pavement.
*
I'm joined on deck periodically by other passengers, share a half-smile and the bench for a while, but spend most of the ferry journey to Sorel alone. I've never been a good traveller, even car journeys can make me nauseas, but there's something about boats in particular that brings on a cold sweat almost immediately. Face stiff with salt spray and numb with cold, feet vibrating against the slow grind of the engines, I sit and try to work out whether the rhythmic flicker between my hipbones is morning sickness, seasickness, or even the confused tumbling of the baby itself, shifting and resettling with each rise of the waves. I'm too miserable to even raise my binoculars to peer at the morning mainland ferry as it passes us on its way to Spur.