Saturday, 17 March 2035
Things That Have Bloody Annoyed Me Today:
The hand dryer in the girls’ bathroom. I don’t need that kind of noise when I’m already in a bad mood.
The too-long nail on my pinky which snags on everything I touch.
Chloe Dantzer, my soon-to-be ex-girlfriend.
The entire music and drama department at St Emily de Vialar.
My birth mother, Rhiannon Lewis, for abandoning me. Again.
I kept looking at the last text messages my mum sent me:
Don’t forget to take PE kit tomorrow xxx
Good luck with audition – go get ’em Dolly Bird (aka Miss Sally Bowles!) xxxx
If you pop into the shop on your way home, can you bring me some more of those pineapple ice lollies please? Love you lots xxx
It was all mundane stuff like that about shopping and school but if I deleted them there would never be more.
I kept her handbag too, just so I could look at her lip prints on her half-used lipstick, see her handwriting in her little notebook, smell her perfume which permeated the tissues.
She’d blotted her mascara on one from months back when she still wore make-up.
I couldn’t imagine ever throwing it away.
‘You don’t have to make any decisions yet,’ Heather kept telling me. ‘You can take what you want to and leave what you don’t want, don’t worry about a thing. Let me worry about it.’
I was to stay with Heather for the foreseeable.
Mum’s death had made international news because of the link to me, so more and more journalists and photographers were arriving at our house by the hour.
Heather went round to make sure the security lights and alarms were working and to grab me some more underwear, but it was clear I couldn’t go back yet.
A grey van had appeared in the lane – she reckoned it was newspaper bods.
A few more kept popping by with cameras and disappearing – they were staying at a B the next I was laughing my head off.
One moment I was wondering what she would feel like to hug; the next I was nauseous; then I was wishing I hadn’t messaged her at all because she scared the hell out of me.
But it was taking my mind off the funeral catalogue that Heather had left on the coffee table and the appointment to see the celebrant scribbled on the calendar.
It was taking my mind off the fact Mum had been on ice for ten days now.
I kept seeing her face in my dreams – cold. Skeletal. Gone.
As a goodwill gesture, Heather had booked the service for the end of the month so the Australians would have a chance to pay their respects. They were coming over anyway to take me back with them so might as well have a gawp at Mum’s corpse while they were doing the rounds, I supposed.
Book Two was even weirder than Book One. Rhiannon recounted her life as a pregnant woman with a talking foetus. The foetus being Me-tus. And it – I – was telling her what to do. Guiding her. Urging her not to kill. Threatening to self-abort if she didn’t do as I told her.
‘This is just bizarre,’ I kept saying aloud, but the pages kept turning nevertheless.
Outside, the rain that had started as a pitter-patter was now a full-on spring storm, thundering on the driveway and pummelling against the Grade II windows.
I watched it for a while, until I saw something in the trees separating the lawn from the road.
A man. I tried not to blink so I could see if he was moving.
He wasn’t. Then an arm went up to wipe his face.
‘The hell?’ I spat, chucking my book down and padding towards the hallway. I wedged on my trainers and ran outside, across the gravel, across the lawn towards the figure which was moving away towards the road.
‘Oi!’ I shouted, not taking my eyes off him.
His black hood was up and he continued to walk quickly and didn’t look back.
He was tall and his walk was more of a loping stride – not hurrying, but there was no way I could catch him.
He didn’t seem to have a camera but he might have been casing the joint.
‘Bastard,’ I muttered as the rain hammered harder. He vanished like vapour as I jogged back towards the house. Maddox waited on the doorstep for me like a good bunny.
‘Go inside, good boy,’ I said as he hopped back into the hallway.
I double-locked the front door and started stripping off my wet clothes, putting them straight in the washing machine and padding upstairs.
I had a bird’s eye view of the front garden from the spare bedroom.
I looked out for the man again while I was changing but he hadn’t come back.
I heard my phone ping downstairs and when I got to it, I had a notification from Chloe.
Did you get your Cabaret part yet? Have to go in to school to pick up some books from the library. Wanna meet? I need to talk to you. I miss you x
I stared at the message for a good long while.
No mentions of me being a mourning daughter or how bad she felt for keeping me at bay for the past Christ knows how long.
This girl, whom I had loved and adored for a year now, but who didn’t want anyone knowing we had become sexual, and who had been seeing our PE teacher behind my back for the past four months, snaps her fingers and I come running.
I didn’t want to do what I always did and text her back straight away.
What would Rhiannon do, I wondered. Kill someone and blame it on Chloe so she’d go to jail, probably.
Instead? No. I had to be the opposite. I had to be better.
Yeah I could do with grabbing some art stuff, I text back. Art room 2pm. No kiss.
She sent back a series of love heart emojis. I left her on Read.
Chloe wasn’t in the art room when I got there – it was still in partial darkness, lit only from the window light.
I liked it that way – natural. Daytime. The oppressive strip lighting hurt my eyes, especially after another solid night of crying and nightmares about Mum.
I’d decided to be all aloof with Chloe before she arrived.
Civil but not cold. Conversational but not chatty.
She didn’t deserve more than a lukewarm reception, but then she walked in and smiled at me, and my heart did that stupid thump thump thing, and I remembered what her lips tasted of and how one of my pillows still smelled of her banana leave-in conditioner.
‘Hey,’ she said, closing the door quietly behind her.
‘All right?’ I said, continuing to pour my little samples of paint into pots and snapping the lids on. I’d already packed a fistful of brushes and canvases and written them on Mrs Walker’s inventory.
‘How’s it going?’ she asked.
‘Fine,’ I said. There was a silence but I was not going to be the one to fill it. Don’t you dare hug me, I thought, and she stopped the other side of the table like I was praying her to. ‘Did you want something or …’
‘I wanted to see you. I’m so sorry about your mum.’
‘Which one?’
‘Claudia.’
‘I told you, I’m fine.’ It came out meaner than I’d intended but I went with it. ‘I wasn’t fine ten days ago when she died, mind you.’
‘I texted you, I’m sure I did.’
‘Yeah, one text. Thanks for that. Hope it didn’t hurt your thumbs too much to type out.’ She had the most beautiful thumbs I’d ever seen.
‘I’m sorry, Ivy. I’m no good with grief. I never know what to say or do.’
‘Your dad’s a vicar. His sermons go on for days.’
‘Well, I’m not like him, okay? I couldn’t find the words.’
‘Try looking. Anything’s better than nothing.’
She nodded. ‘You’re right. I’ve been a coward. How’s it going?’
‘She’s still dead if that’s what you mean. I’m living at her solicitor’s house because no other sod wants me.’
‘That Heather woman?’
‘Yes. She’s been great. Sorting out the funeral, the catering, helping me choose a coffin …’
‘I can’t imagine it,’ she said, coming to stand next to me at the workstation, stroking the back of my hand. ‘That’s awful.’
‘Don’t. You don’t mean it.’ I baulked and continued to pack the little paint pots in my bag. ‘It’s quite fun actually. Deciding if you want your floral tribute to say Mum or Mummy or God Bless. They even have Disney urns. We got her a Greatest Showman one. She’d like that.’
‘Maybe I could come to the funeral with you?’ Chloe suggested tentatively, as if she were trying to cut the right wire on a bomb.
‘You don’t have to.’
‘I want to. I want to be there for you.’
‘I’m fine by myself, thanks.’