Chapter Thirteen
Raven chucks her bags into the backseat and I wait for her to plug in her seatbelt before edging away from the house, leaving James and Skyla behind us.
The girls didn’t even say goodbye to each other, and while I worry about the impact this may have on their friendship, I also can’t help but think perhaps getting them away from each other is a good thing.
GCSEs are over now. Skyla is going to move on to study her A levels, and as her school doesn’t have a sixth form, she’s moving to a college. Perhaps her camaraderie with Raven will dwindle when they are no longer together every day. One can only hope . . .
Besides giving me clipped directions, the drive to Raven’s house is silent. Icily so.
‘You can just drop me off here,’ she says sulkily as we reach a gate.
I look at the property with narrowed eyes. There isn’t a house in sight.
‘You sure this is the place?’ I ask uncertainly. Despite wanting to get rid of her, I can’t just abandon her at the side of a road next to a field. I can’t.
‘I think I know where I live,’ she says, wrenching the seatbelt away from her.
‘I need to see you to your door,’ I insist. ‘Your mum’s back, right?’
‘I told you, I don’t know when she’s getting back,’ she snaps, throwing open the car door and stalking over to open the rusty gate.
She doesn’t look back or wave goodbye but closes the gate and marches through the field.
Every part of me wants to throw my car into reverse and get as far away from here as possible — but I can’t just leave her here.
No matter how much I don’t like her, I can’t leave her stranded in a field.
There’s nothing around for miles. What kind of parent would I be if I just walked away — even if she isn’t mine. She’s someone’s.
I huff, reluctantly getting out of the car and following her through the gate.
The land is boggy, my feet sinking into the ground, ruining my sandals, but I trudge on.
Rounding a corner, I swallow at the sight of a corroded Fleetwood caravan.
There are what looks like hundreds of flies lying dead in the window, trapped behind a discoloured voile net curtain.
I’m really not one to judge, but it looks condemned, and it smells too.
Not of the countryside, of manure or silage but of something more putrid and fouler.
‘You live here?’ I speak softly, but my voice still startles her.
She rounds on me. ‘Piss off!’ It’s the first time I’ve seen any sort of colour to her sallow face.
There’s a jingle from inside the caravan, someone unlocking the door. We both look up at it in alarm.
‘Please!’ she snarls. ‘Please just leave. She’ll be mad at me if she sees you here.’
I furrow my brows, trying to understand. Raven has lost the hardness to her; she looks petrified, wide-eyed. Her vulnerability tugs at my every maternal instinct.
‘Go!’ she yells, and despite my better judgement, I take off through the squelching mud and race back to the safety of my vehicle.
* * *
At first, I think Skyla must be pissed off with me. I hardly see her for a few days. She keeps to herself, shutting herself away. I know I need to speak with her about the drinking, but right now all I want to do is get her to break down the walls she’s built, get her to confide in me again.
I’m wandering the hallways like a lost puppy, trying to give myself things to do around the house, when I hear a subtle whimper come from the guest bathroom. I press myself up against the door and realise quickly that Skyla is crying inside.
‘Skyla?’ I call, unable to stop myself.
She sniffles, and something clatters to the tiles. ‘Just a minute,’ she says.
I wait, hearing her muttering under her breath, like she’s on a phone call. I frown, struggling to make out any sentences.
‘Skyla, honey?’ I ask when things go quiet again. ‘Are you okay?’
She unlocks the door, backing away from me. Her hair is damp, as though she’s just stepped out of the shower. I peer into the room but there’s no condensation, and the shower is dry.
‘I’m fine, Mum,’ she says, but she doesn’t sound it. She doesn’t look it, either.
‘Who were you talking to?’ I check her hands for her phone, but they’re empty. Was I hearing things?
‘No one,’ she snaps.
My temper blazes, suddenly and unexpectedly. I’ve had it with her mood swings. All these years of being her mother, nothing prepares you for the sudden arrival of hormones, of mood swings and the desire to be completely independent.
‘Fine!’ I retort and turn to leave. I never thought her aloofness could be so alienating. It’s like I’m being punished for something, but what?
‘Mum. Wait.’ Her voice trembles, a sound that has the power to instantly pull me back into the room. That’s when I notice her shaking, pale.
‘Are you sick?’ I place the back of my hand on her forehead, and my God, she’s on fire.
I lead her out of the bathroom, and she clutches at her stomach as I sit her on my bed.
‘Honey?’ I press, needing her to tell me what’s wrong. Already my mind is racing. Is her appendix about to rupture? Does she have another cyst on her ovary? She gets those sometimes, something I’m all too familiar with myself.
There are circles beneath her eyes as though she hasn’t slept in days.
‘I don’t want you to be mad at me,’ she says under her breath, as though speaking any louder would be too much for her.
My heart breaks. The last thing I’ve ever wanted is for her to feel like she can’t come to me with something because she’s afraid of how I’d react. Is that how I’ve made her feel lately? I scoop the back of her head into the palm of my hand and press our foreheads together, uniting us.
‘Why would I be mad at you?’ I laugh, unable to think of any reason I’d be mad at her for being unwell.
‘I need to show you something.’ She swallows, breaking away from me and peeling up her lime green jumper.
I look down and my pupils flare.
‘Jesus!’ I drop to my knees to get a better look at her belly button where a surgical steel bar has been pushed through. The soft pink crystal balls are a stark contrast to how red and inflamed the skin around it is.
‘Skyla!’ I can’t keep the irritation away from my voice but instantly regret it when a flicker of hurt passes over her features.
‘When did you do this?’ I sigh, surprised by how hot her skin is to the touch. As I press gently down, the piercing oozes with pus, a yellow, milky fluid.
‘Last week.’ She winces.
‘Why?’ I ask, hoping for some sort of reasonable explanation, as if there could be one. But I think I already know what she’s going to say.
‘Raven.’ She squeezes her eyes shut, inhaling a sharp breath. ‘Please help me get it out,’ she chokes, desperately. ‘I can’t untwist it.’
‘Hold on.’ I run back into the bathroom and quickly disinfect my hands. When I get back, I lie her back and pinch the top ball of the piercing in my fingers, but Skyla cries out in pain. It’s the worst sound in the world, and my hatred for Raven spreads like the bacteria feeding on Skyla’s wound.
‘Baby, I can’t get it out unless you keep still.’
‘I can’t,’ she sobs. ‘It hurts so bad!’
‘Where did you get this done? We’ll go there. They’ll be able to help,’ I say, realising I’m not going to be able to get this thing out myself. There’s no way. She won’t let me touch it.
Skyla blinks up at me rapidly. ‘Raven did it. Here,’ she admits.
Fuck. My brain whirs. Unsterile equipment and God knows what else has caused this. What the hell was Skyla thinking? I can’t hide the worry from my face. She needs a doctor. Now.
‘I told Raven it was infected days ago. She told me to leave it alone, said it’d heal on its own. But I can’t take it any more, Mum. I just want it out!’
I feel helpless. Tattoos and piercings have never been my thing.
It took me until I was sixteen to get my earlobes pierced and even that was petrifying for me.
Just looking at Skyla’s tummy, at the swollen skin throbbing around her belly bar, it makes me want to gag.
I’ve never been particularly good with blood, gore.
If James was around, he’d always be the one to handle minor scrapes and injuries.
God, I wish he was here now. Just as I’m thinking it, Skyla speaks again.
‘Please don’t tell Dad about this,’ she begs me, and I know why.
James has always had one rule. No tattoos and no piercings until she leaves home. He promised to buy her first car if she stuck to that. Why would she put that offer in jeopardy?
It isn’t a nice feeling to be keeping things from my husband, but I want Skyla to trust me, and so I promise her this will stay between us.
‘We do need to get you to the doctor though, okay?’ I say with a sigh.
She nods and we drive in silence to the A & E.
The entire time I can’t stop imagining Skyla lying there in her room, on her bed, biting down on something while Raven stuck a needle through her navel.
I wish I knew what possessed her to do such a thing.
This is not my daughter. What Raven is doing to her is rattling.
She’s morphing her into someone she’s not.
Surprisingly, Skyla’s more open with the doctor than she was with me at home. I do my best to sit on the sidelines and just listen as she tells the doctor about the day Raven pierced her belly button.
‘She told me she knew what she was doing, said she does it all the time,’ she tells the doctor, a young girl who can’t be much older than Skyla herself.
The name Peyton is printed on a name badge clipped to her jacket.
She has that dewy sort of complexion of a young adult with not much to worry about in life.
‘Well, whoever she is, she’s wrong,’ Peyton says with a smirk, snapping on a pair of surgical gloves. ‘The infection here is severe.’ She looks at me as she says this, as though I should’ve known better, got her here sooner. If only I’d known.