Chapter Thirteen #2
‘I’m going to clean it with some saline solution,’ she says, and Skyla looks away, burying her face into me as the wound is flushed. I wish I could cover my ears, look away, but I force myself to stay strong, to be the anchor my daughter needs.
Once it’s clean, Peyton cuts the bar off with a pair of medical pliers, gently tugging the piercing out of Skyla’s navel.
‘I’m prescribing an oral antibiotic, Flucloxacillin. Start it right away. If you don’t see an improvement in the next day or two, please come back in.’ Again, she looks at me, not Skyla, as she speaks. ‘If this infection had become any worse it could’ve potentially been life threatening.’
‘Life threatening?’ Skyla pales, reaching for my hand. I squeeze it in my own.
Peyton nods grimly. ‘Sepsis was right around the corner. You need to tell your friend to stop piercing people’s belly buttons at home.’
I like the way her tone implies that Raven isn’t a friend at all, because that’s exactly how I feel, and I’m hoping it’s only a matter of time until Skyla sees it too.
On the way home Skyla holds tightly onto the prescription. ‘I’m sorry, Mum,’ she mutters as we rumble away from North Cotswolds Hospital.
I want to tell her it’s okay, but it’s not and so I answer her with a stony silence. I’m glad Raven has gone home, that we have a break from her being around. Her presence was stifling, not to mention the shift in Skyla’s personality from the moment she started hanging around.
The old Skyla never wore make-up, drank, stayed out late, pierced parts of her own body.
Maybe this is all normal when children become teenagers.
Maybe it’s their way of testing boundaries, like the way they start doing when they’re toddlers, fighting bedtime routines and refusing to eat their dinner, the first flicker of their independence starting to shine through.
That was hard enough for me to handle but this is a different ball game.
It’s all new for me and I have no idea how to navigate it all.
But there have been odder, more disturbing things too.
Things I can’t shake off no matter how hard I try.
Raven wearing lingerie around the house for us all to see, stealing my lingerie and scurrying them away in the spare room like some sort of magpie.
The WhatsApp message I sent to James disappearing, the one asking him to come and pick me up from the hair salon — could that have been her, too?
Then there’s that disgusting bloody pad in the bedside drawer.
Since she arrived, I’ve felt nothing but trepidation.
This girl, I’m starting to realise, is trouble. Whoever she really is.
* * *
The next time I see Raven is at the summer party.
An event I did not invite her to — and frankly she should have considered herself uninvited after what she did to Skyla.
The severity of what happened is still sinking in.
And yet, despite her absence, things haven’t improved with Skyla.
If anything, they’ve become worse. I can’t figure out if she’s just worried about her GCSE results or if she’s mad at me for sending Raven home, but she won’t talk to me, and this antisocial behaviour is so out of character for her that I really don’t know how to handle it.
I watch the girls together now, leaning against the wall of the house looking as bored as can be.
They’re dressed almost identically, all in black.
They look more like they’re about to rob the place than celebrate the end of their GCSEs and my fiftieth.
They look, I realise, and I’m seized with some sort of overwhelming nausea, like ravens.
The thought sends every hair on my arms standing on end despite the humidity.
I try to make out what they’re saying by reading their lips, but they’re talking too fast and I’m too far away to be able to hear over the reverberating bass of Billie Eilish sounding through our ceiling speakers.
Not my choice in music. Skyla put the playlist together last week — but her usual artists, Fleetwood Mac, Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin and Dire Straits have been replaced with this electronic mix that I’d usually turn down if it was on the radio.
I do notice that neither one of the girls has smiled since seeing each other, and a part of me wonders if they’re having some sort of argument.
Fixated, I stare at them, at their similarities and their body language.
I think about approaching Raven, confronting her about the piercing situation.
It needs to be addressed. She needs to know just how sick Skyla was from what she did, but someone calls my name from across the patio and I turn away.
‘Happy birthday, you!’ Harper croons, charging up to me with a gift wrapped in shiny pink paper. ‘Sorry I couldn’t make it to you sooner.’
I take the present and walk with her to the drinks table where she pours us both some champagne. James went all out, Dom Pérignon.
‘No less for your fiftieth.’ He grins, slinging an arm over his sister’s shoulder. ‘How’re my nephews?’
‘Oh, y’know. Boys. Undomesticated. Galling.’ She sips her champagne. ‘But gotta love them.’
She nudges me, and I wish her comment didn’t sting as much as it does. She expects me to understand a mother’s grumbles about her children, and deep down I know she’s only joking about them, but I’ve never been able to find her quips funny.
There’s my jealousy again, resurrecting itself.
It’s like when someone talks about pregnancy symptoms, the back ache, the nausea, the swollen ankles.
Or birth, like Harper detailing the massacre of her vagina for Jake’s delivery, how she had to get stitched back together and has reportedly ‘never been the same since.’ Even breastfeeding, the tearful stories about spilled milk, cracked nipples and mastitis.
Hearing about these things only serves as a reminder of something I missed out on.
Something I felt I was meant to experience, but didn’t get to.
A design flaw in my female body. I’d have taken any of those hardships, all of them over having a wasteland of a womb any day.
I pinch the stem of my glass and gulp back the contents.
It is my birthday. I guess if I have to deal with Raven and Harper today then the best way to get through it is with alcohol in my system.
Just enough to take the bite out of the day.
I pour another glass and drift away to find some of my friends from my infertility support group, the only group of women I feel I can truly trust. I have helped them over the years, and in turn, they have helped me, remained loyal throughout every vile rumour and vicious news report that has been published about us as a family.