Chapter 9 #3
And then she collapsed in more explosive laughter.
I was so embarrassed, and so confused by why I should be embarrassed, that all I could think of doing was walking into the water until it was above my waist before I turned to confront her.
I didn’t do anything, I said. It just happened.
I could see that though she might not have conquered her giggles, she had found the time to wrap the blanket scrap she used as a towel around herself. Even though she was still wet and hadn’t washed the soap off at all.
I didn’t do anything, I repeated. And I must have looked as lost and bewildered as my voice sounded, because she stopped laughing and took a deep breath before sitting down on a rock and looking at me, suddenly serious.
I know you didn’t, she said. It’s OK, Mouse. It’s just your body growing up. Like me and mine and the bleeding. We can’t help it.
No, I said. Yes, you’re right.
And we both know what it means, she said.
I’d read enough books by then, and we’d had a long talk when she had begun to bleed a few years earlier, so I just nodded.
And we’re never going to do anything about it, she said.
No, I said. No. Because it would be wrong.
Yeah, she said. And as she said it, I couldn’t help but notice she sounded older and more tired than she normally did.
Yeah, it’d probably be wrong, she said. But mainly, we’re never going to do anything about it because we’re each other’s only-ones.
Which means that whatever happens in the world, for ever and for now we’ve got each other.
If we did do something about it, if, you know…
and there was a baby from that, we’d be condemning it to a lonely life after we’ve gone, where it would have to be its own only-one for ever and ever after.
And that would be the cruellest thing, to be alone for a whole lifetime in the big, empty world.
Yes, I said.
That was maybe the closest we’d ever got to talking about the one thing Cat never talked about, which was that our promise that we’d never be alone wasn’t really ours to keep.
Not talking about it helped us not think about it most of the time.
And of course, it was the biggest fear both of us carried because one day one of us was going to die, and one of us then would be as alone as that baby she had talked about, no matter how much we wanted to keep the promise.
Thing is, and it’s stupid I know, but I still believed her in the deepest part of my mind.
Even though it wasn’t rational. Maybe it was what they used to call blind faith, or maybe it was just because she’d never lied to me.
Her word was true as her aim. So normally I just tried hard not to think about it, just like right then I was also trying very hard not to think about the word “probably” that she’d just used.
You think putting it in the cold river is going to make it go away? she said.
I’m hoping, I admitted.
How’s it working? she said.
So far, I said, trying hard not to look down. Pretty badly.
Cat grinned. And suddenly everything felt sort of OK again, like old Cat was back and the shaming weirdness of my body betraying me had not happened at all.
I’ve never seen it like that, she said. Does it hurt?
Hurt? No, I said. It’s just…
It looks like it would hurt, she said. It looks weird and angry and sort of… throbby?
Like a sore thumb, I said.
There you go, she grinned, wider. Don’t worry, Mouse. It’s all natural. Doesn’t change anything.
And she was almost right. Except for the bit where she was completely wrong.
Something had shifted between us. And that winter, when it got cold, we still moved back into the one bed for both of us for warmth like when we were little, but we slept back-to-back now, still close, still touching – but also far too far away.
I just missed the comforting feel of her wrapped around me from behind, holding me and the light warmth of her breath on the back of my neck in the dark of the night, that one true feeling that was always, and always had been, my unfailing proof of safety and home.
Back on the day the girls arrived out of nowhere, seems to me that the Bunker suddenly felt like anything but home any more.
Or safe, somehow. Maybe because our entire world had tilted, maybe because shock happens to the brain as well as the body.
Either way my memories are not just cloudy and jumbled, they also have a sour feeling when I lie in the dark and revisit them, as if there’s something wronger about what happened then than I knew, or know, or maybe will admit to myself now.
I sometimes feel that if I had just turned around at some of the moments that I do remember clearly, I might have seen something bigger that was there all the time, lurking just on the edge of my vision, out of sight – but stalking us nonetheless.
Maybe there was nothing, or perhaps it was just bad luck.
Maybe you can’t see bad luck with your eyes.
Maybe you just feel that sourness of something good going off.