Chapter 11
Eleven
LEAVE A MESSAGE AFTER the beep.
‘Hi Shannon, it’s Dad. I hope you’re all right and your job’s going well.
Have you got any auditions coming up this week?
Me and your mum are doing fine. Anyway it’s our twenty-fifth wedding anniversary and we wondered if you wanted to come home – I mean, come back here to a little party we’re thinking of having – nothing big, mind, just a few family and friends.
‘We were thinking we could maybe go for a meal. There’s a new tapas place that’s opened under the arches which your mum fancies.
Anyway, it’d be really good to see you, that’s if you think you can make it.
We know your job keeps you busy . . . and all the auditions you’re getting and that, but we miss you .
. . your mum misses you, and it’d be good to see you again.
But of course, no pressure. It would just be nice .
. . I can text you the details if you’d like.
Anyway, your mum’s left me in charge of dinner so I’d better go. All right, chuck. Chin up . . . Bye.’
I replayed the message. I thought about Dad, about Mum – ostensibly my parents, although it was Grandma who’d raised me really.
She was the one who scooped me up into her arms when my parents rushed to the hospital.
She was the one who held my hand at my sister’s funeral.
She was the one who drove me to the library; who took me to the theatre; who hosted birthday parties, marking the turning of each year with cake and laughter, and always doing her utmost to make sure I felt special, wanted, enough.
My parents tried, I know they did, but after my sister’s death I felt them turn away from me, unable to brave the ghost in my image. It was only as I grew, only as my features changed from those of a child to those of a woman, that they learned how to love me again.
It had been three years since I’d been back up North, and I’d only seen my parents a handful of occasions in that time.
Sometimes they made excuses to come and visit me in London: Oh, well, you know, we wanted to see the poppies at the Tower; Your mum got a voucher for afternoon tea; It was two-for-one on train fares.
I’d take time off work and sit and listen as they filled me in on everything that had been going on back at home, then change the subject when their questions strayed too close to the fiction of my life.
Sometimes I wonder if they knew: that my burgeoning career was a fantasy, that all I did was work in a cafe and fill my head with books. Whatever they knew, I felt bad for them. It wasn’t their fault. The cage of lies I’d built around myself kept me from getting too close.
I don’t know for certain what finally pushed me to accept their invitation and return home, but ever since Obi’s confession on Victoria’s behalf, something had shifted within me.
For the first time, it felt like Victoria was really gone, like this space had opened up beside me, empty and waiting to be filled.
When Victoria was alive, she’d felt so out of reach to me, her life so unattainable.
All I’d wanted was to be more like her and less like me.
But now, bound by this terrible thing, I finally saw how similar we truly were. We’re sisters, you and I.
I GOT THE TRAIN back. I did my makeup; I put on a smile and braced myself for the bullet-spray of well-meaning questions I knew I’d be subjected to by my parents’ nearest and dearest.
Auntie Faye kept touching my hair and remarking on how long it had grown.
She asked me if I’d thought about writing to Coronation Street and asking for a role, or maybe EastEnders if I was set on staying down south.
Uncle Tom asked if I had a boyfriend, and Mum’s friend Claire wanted to know about the last audition I’d gone up for.
The grown-ups sat around the table and waited for an answer, their faces eager and filled with hope.
Go on, they seemed to say, tell us it’s possible.
I couldn’t disappoint them or untangle the mess of lies my parents had unwittingly passed on for the last three years, so I repurposed a recent anecdote of Jolly’s, telling them I’d auditioned to play a young heroin addict in Brighton who discovers they’re gay while living on the streets.
I told them that the casting director said I’d done a really great audition, but that they’d decided to go with someone with a bigger profile for the part.
Claire pulled a face. Well, next time, love, she said, patting my hand.
Then Dad leaned over and brought the conversation back to food, asking if we should get olives and pitta for the table and wondering how many small plates would be enough, and how small was a small plate really?
I WOKE THE NEXT morning in my childhood bedroom from a surprisingly deep and dreamless sleep.
My head felt clear, my senses alert. I pulled the powdery-soft covers over my nose and gazed up at the plastic glow-in-the-dark moons and stars stuck to the ceiling.
I stared at Dad’s gym equipment, now dismantled and crammed at the far end of the room; I stared at the participation rosettes lining my shelves from sports days gone by, at the Victorian dolls, still in their boxes, their springy ringlets pressed against their plastic windows; I stared at the huge volume of Shakespeare plays I’d forgotten to pack for my first term at RLSDA, which sat covered in a fine film of dust, bound within cellophane, pristine, untouched.
A strip of light peeped through the curtain. I reached up and tugged back the fabric so sunlight filled the room. I climbed out of bed. My train back to London was booked for later that day, but there was still one place left I needed to visit.
MY PARENTS HAD SOLD Grandma’s house two years prior. They made enough to pay off their mortgage, enjoy a fortnight in Tenerife and put something away in case I ever wanted to, you know, get married, or maybe study for another degree or something, but no pressure.
I didn’t want my parents knowing about my plans for the day.
I didn’t want them thinking I had some morbid fascination with what had happened, so I told them I was meeting an old friend and caught the hourly bus that trundled past the end of our road.
I took it to the station, then grabbed a taxi for the final part of my journey.
As I approached, I lowered my gaze. There was no one here to recognize me any more, but still.
I crunched up the footpath that led towards the house.
There was a silver Kia sitting in the driveway and a green swing set in the garden.
The old net curtains were gone, replaced by stylish Roman blinds in Neapolitan pastels.
Geraniums spilled from a window box outside the kitchen.
An antique trough gurgled serenely by the door.
There was a sign clamped to the gatepost: Moorland Cottage.
When I drew level with the garden, I spied two little girls, twins, playing by the foot of the swing.
One was scooping handfuls of soil with her chubby pink fists into a yellow bucket held by the other.
As I passed the fence, the girl holding the bucket picked up a worm between her thumb and forefinger and dangled it in the air for me.
She giggled and flashed me a gap-toothed grin.
I returned the smile and gave her a small wave before continuing, my eyes fixed on the moor.
I followed the trail up and up, pounding the same path I’d walked a thousand times with my grandmother, with friends and then with her.
The way was easier in summer, less treacherous; less frightening.
I climbed over the kissing gate. The usually muddy dip on the other side was dry, its tramlines baked hard by the sun.
As I climbed higher, the landscape changed from willowy grasses to carpets of dense, spongy moss.
I tripped at one point, nearly falling to my knees, but continued on, a dogged pilgrim.
I felt the sun on my shoulders, my arms, long patches of red spreading across my skin.
My lower back grew damp, the bone behind my ears, the nape of my neck. Not far now. Nearly there.
When I reached the top, the world was silent.
I stood a way back, not yet daring to go near the edge.
I shielded my eyes from the sun and stared out at the sloping landscape, past tower blocks in the distance, past toy cars skirting the motorway, to the fields, far, far away, stitched to the contours of the land in quilted squares of brown and green.
I eased myself to the ground and picked at a tuft of grass. I brushed its sharp fingers of hair then rolled onto my back. Clouds drifted across the sky and I closed my eyes.
Minutes passed.
I heard a bird, a buzzard maybe, then a scuffling sound.
I was no longer alone.
I lay still. The wind whistled through me, one straight line from ear to ear. I breathed deeply, inhaling the sweet scent of peat, dirt, an Ice Age’s worth of decay. I heard the soft crunch of footsteps moving closer, disturbing the ground with their unearthly tread. Her.
A shadow fell across my face and I felt a kind of peace, an emptying, as if the contents of my brain and all the poisonous thoughts that swilled around there were draining out of me; ebbing away; leaching their bitter nutrients into the soil.
The shadow disappeared and light bleached my face again. I lay there a moment, staring at the skin of my eyelids, two red-veined moons.
I clambered to my feet and, with great care, found my way towards the ledge. I half expected to see Victoria there still, but there was nothing, no one. The stream was gone and the dip overgrown, greenery reclaiming its curves.
This was the place. This was the place where I’d pushed her.
A hand on her shoulder – not much, but enough to let gravity do the rest.
I saw her then in my mind’s eye: a scratched image, a flash, and then her smile, achingly pure, lighting up the entire gloomy moor.
You’re my best friend, Shannon.
Victoria was gone, and I was responsible for that.
I let out a bark of laughter. I felt delirious with relief, with giving myself over, finally, to the truth. She’d rejected me, used me, hurt me. And I’d killed her for it.
When she’d announced the role of Jane Eyre was hers, I’d seen a vision of our shared future, of her, the favourite, forever strutting and fretting in the limelight, climbing the ladder higher and higher, while I watched on from the bottom rung, slowly shrinking from view.
I couldn’t let that happen.
I hadn’t planned for it to end that day, in that exact moment, but a part of me had always known it had to end somehow.
The world hadn’t enough space for two creatures such as Victoria and me.
There was only so much stage, only so much light, and for someone like me, it would never be enough, living in her shadow – my best friend – a mere supporting role.
Was that a good enough reason? the assembly of imagined jurors ask me.
Was it enough to write her out of the story?
I don’t know. Love makes us do mad and terrible things.
And I did love her. That night at Godwin, I would’ve done anything she’d asked of me.
I would’ve killed for her. But instead she cast me aside like nothing, less than nothing.
Losing V was hard, but continuing to live alongside her would’ve been harder.
I heard her voice inside my head then.
Look down.
I crept forward and peered into the abyss.
Look.
The dip was no longer empty. Lying there was one last gift – from Victoria or from the deranged conjuring of my imagination, I don’t know.
I felt sick, but I forced myself to stare at the terrible image before me: the human remains of Shannon Bell, my eyes staring blankly ahead, my body positioned as Victoria’s had once been, at the same broken angle, a perfect imitation.
I stared at the unholy mirage.
My body swayed on the spot, leaning into the emptiness before me, about to fall or take flight.
A tear rolled down my cheek.
I wiped it away. I had no time for tears. The next steps were already forming in my mind. I could see the path before me, illuminated.
It was easy; I’d done it before.
I would leave Shannon behind. She needn’t follow.
Neither Victoria nor Shannon need ever leave this place.
They could be happy up here, and I, whoever I was now, could make a life down there.
It would be an experiment, no, a performance, the next greatest of my life.
I stood there as someone better than the girl who’d walked up the hill, better even than the girl who’d died here three years ago. Someone more.