Heart-Shaped Bruise (22 page)

‘This way!’ I heard him shout, as he led me to the side, where it wasn’t as busy.

As we got deeper into the crowd, it got darker and the air felt thicker. It stuck to my skin as I stumbled behind him, stepping on people’s shoes. The closer we got to the stage, the more reluctant people were to move as they tried to hold on to their spots before the Beastie Boys came on. I could hear Sid apologising as we slid past them, and I don’t know whether it was because he was polite, or twice the size of most of them, but they shifted grudgingly. Not an inch more than they had to, though, so I felt damp T-shirts against my bare arms and at one point, I felt a girl’s hair drag across my cheek.

I didn’t think we’d ever find Juliet, but finally –
finally
– there was a break in the crowd and there she was, waiting for us by the column to the left of the stage.

When she saw me, she jumped on me. She’d never hugged me before and I was so surprised that I laughed and hugged her back. She smelt of daisies.

‘We did it!’ she said, stepping back with a grin.

‘I know!’ I shouted over the din, holding out my right hand. ‘My hands are shaking!’

Sid smiled smugly. ‘I told you!’

‘Great spot! It’s so close to the stage. I usually stand on the other side.’

‘This side is better.’ Juliet pointed at the plinth at the bottom of the column. ‘We can take it in turns standing on this, otherwise we won’t see a thing!’

‘Who are LM and DM, do you reckon?’ Sid asked, reaching up and running his hand over the initials scratched into the column. ‘Do you think they’re still together?’

Juliet pretended to gasp. ‘What if they’ve broken up?’

‘I bet they have!’ I said, already hoarse from shouting over the band. ‘I bet she can’t stand here any more because it hurts too much so she has to stand on the other side. I probably stood next to her the last time I was here.’

Sid tipped his head back and laughed. ‘Your brain, Ro.’

He pulled my hair and I grinned. ‘I very much need a drink! Beer?’

They both nodded and I turned back towards the crowd.

I remember thinking, once more unto the fray, as I started to make my way through it again. But then I realised that I hadn’t asked Sid and Juliet which beer they wanted and turned back. There were only a few people between us, and as they stepped out of the way to let me back through, I saw Sid smile at Juliet, then dip his head. His hair fell across his face, and when their mouths met, my heart caught in my throat.

‘Emily,’ Doctor Gilyard said then.

I looked down at her desk and realised I’d been writing my name – EmilyEmilyEmilyEmilyEmilyEmily – over and over. The blotter was covered.

‘I saw them kiss,’ I whispered, like it was a secret.

‘Why did that upset you, Emily?’

‘I’d never seen them kiss.’

Doctor Gilyard sounded surprised. ‘You’d never seen them kiss?’

I had, of course, but not like
that
. It was always quick – a peck between classes or when she bought him a can of Coke at the canteen. I don’t know why. I guess the three of us were together so much they didn’t want to make me feel uncomfortable. I’d never thought of them as the type of couple who spent hours kissing, but as I watched them, his hands on her face and hers cupping his elbows, I saw that they were, they just didn’t do it in front of me.

‘How did it make you feel, Emily? Were you jealous?’

I shook my head and stared at the blotter. ‘I was embarrassed.’

‘Why were you embarrassed?’

I looked up. ‘They were waiting for me to walk away so that they could kiss, weren’t they?’ That’s why it took Sid so long to come out and get me. He wasn’t waiting for the right time; he was prolonging it for as long as he could. I imagined Juliet telling him to go, while he kissed her again and said,
one more minute
.

I wondered how often they looked at me when we were together and thought,
I wish she’d take the hint and leave us alone
. How many times they’d lied to me about not being about to go out because they were tired or had too much reading so that they could snatch an evening alone to go to the cinema or eat sushi.

The thought made my skin burn. I stared at them as they kissed, but when they stopped to giggle and Sid wound one of her curls around his finger, I had to turn away.

‘Make up your mind, love,’ a bloke muttered as I headed back to the bar. But I didn’t apologise. I didn’t apologise to anyone, just pushed my way through until I got there.

As I waited behind a girl with a tattoo of a barcode on the back of her neck, I looked at the doors to the lobby and I wanted to run for them, to run and keep running until my legs gave way. I didn’t want to be there any more. I didn’t want to stand next to Sid and Juliet, pretending that I didn’t see them holding hands and snatching kisses when they thought I wasn’t looking. But when the girl stepped out of the way and the guy behind the bar asked me what I wanted, I didn’t want to run, I wanted beer.

I ordered four and downed one at the bar, before I turned to face the crowd again. I tried to go a different way this time so I wouldn’t spill the beer, but it meant going through a knot of blokes who cheered when they saw me.

‘Alright, Pink Lady?’ One of them said, reaching down to pinch my arse.

I hissed at him, but with three beers in my hands, I couldn’t do much else. So he pinched it again and I pulled away, stomping back to Sid and Juliet, seething impotently.

They were still kissing and Juliet giggled when she saw me. ‘Sorry!’ she said, taking one of the beers, and I had to resist the urge to throw the other two in her face.

As soon as I gave Sid his, I started to slide back into the crowd, but he grabbed me by the elbow. ‘Hey. Where you going?’ he asked with a frown.

‘Sorry!’ I said, peeling off the pass and handing it back to him.

I tried to slide away again, but he wouldn’t let go of my elbow. ‘I don’t mean that!’ The band was so loud that he had to lean towards me, his mouth against the shell of my ear. The heat of
his breath felt so nice, I wanted to cry. ‘What’s wrong, Ro?’

‘Nothing!’ I leaned in to tell him, but there’s no way of
shouting
that without sounding like something’s wrong.

‘Sorry if we embarrassed you! We don’t want you to feel left out!’

We. We. We. I hate that word. Never has a word made me feel so lonely.

I could hear Juliet asking what was wrong, and I pulled away. ‘I don’t!’

‘Where are you going, then?’ he asked when I started to walk away.

‘I’m getting another beer! I’m not going back to the bar once they get on!’

Except I didn’t go back to the bar, I downed my beer and headed straight for the doors to the lobby. I made a point of passing through the knot of blokes and they cheered again when they saw me. This time I had my hands free, so I put them on the shoulders of the one who had pinched me on the arse and kneed him right in the bollocks.

When he folded to the floor, I kept walking. I walked and walked until I was in the lobby, then on the pavement, then on the tube.

‘What did you do, Emily, when you saw them kissing?’ I heard Doctor Gilyard ask, but I couldn’t stop staring at the blotter, at my name. I didn’t recognise it. It didn’t look like it belonged to me.

‘I left.’

‘Where did you go?’

‘To Juliet’s house.’

‘Why?’

My eyes lost focus as I remembered walking through the side gate to find Mike there, smoking a cigarette. He frowned when he saw me. ‘What are you doing here? Aren’t you supposed to be at the Beastie Boys gig with Nancy?’

I didn’t answer, just licked my lips. He watched me, his eyes suddenly black. When he edged closer, I licked my lips again. ‘Give me that,’ I told him, taking the cigarette and making sure our fingers touched when I did.

‘I went to finish what I’d started,’ I told Doctor Gilyard.

Through the blur, I could see wet dots appearing on the blotter and I stared at them. I guess that was our tipping point – mine and Juliet’s – that moment with Mike. The moment I’d had enough of flicking matches at her and finally set light to everything she had.

I woke up the next morning in my make-up with the taste of cigarettes in my mouth.

For a moment, I didn’t know where I was. The air was still sweet with perfume from when I got ready the night before, so I thought I was at St Jude’s. When I opened my eyes, I half expected to find Olivia on the other side of the room face down on her bed, her pillow streaked with eyeliner and one leg poking out from under the duvet. But when my eyes adjusted, I saw my wardrobe and realised I was in London and it came back to me all at once.

That happens every morning, even now. There’s a minute when I first wake up where everything is watery and edgeless, like the Monet postcard Juliet had taped to the inside of her locker at college. My head is empty, I guess. Clean. And in that minute
everything is quiet again. Nothing is broken. My life is as it should be; I’m at St Jude’s; Dad is at home, eating a fry-up and reading the paper; Uncle Alex is listening to the football results in his car and swearing at the radio; Duck is asleep on the suit Dad has laid out on his bed.

I could quite happily lose the other twenty-three hours and fifty-nine minutes of the day if I could just keep that one minute. I could live a whole life in that minute. That’s where Emily Koll is right now, in that minute. But I can’t and as soon as it passes, it all comes back in a rush. I remember. The cracks reappear. And it’s so cruel, having that reprieve, because of all the things I want to forget, it isn’t what I’ve done, it’s what I had. Who I was.

No one else remembers Emily Koll with any fondness, so why should I?

That morning was worse, though, because I didn’t just remember what Juliet did, I remembered what
I
did – with Mike – and the weight of it pinned me to the bed. I tried to get up, but I couldn’t. My bones felt as thick as branches, my heart like a rock. I didn’t think I’d ever have the strength, that I’d have to live there for ever, on that bed, in that room, with the smell of perfume in the air.

I tried again and managed to lift my head off the pillow to check the clock on my bedside table. I had to blink a couple of times before the red lines on the digital display came back into focus, but when they realigned I realised it was 11:11.
Make a wish
, I thought, but gave in to the weight of my head before I could.

When I opened my eyes again, it was almost one in the afternoon and I felt worse. Every part of me ached, even my fingernails. And my head – oh my head – felt full of something, like that yellow sponge they used to stuff sofas with. I hadn’t shut the curtains before I went to bed so the sunlight spilled through the window, making my eyes sting. I went to pull the duvet over my head but realised it wasn’t there; I wasn’t underneath it, I was curled up on top of it in the clothes I’d worn the day before.

I hadn’t even taken my shoes off.

I groaned and sat up, blindly reaching for the bottle of water on my bedside table. I drained it in a few desperate gulps as I turned my phone on and waited. After a second or two, it sprang to life, the screen flashing with a list of text messages and voicemails. I jumped as it started ringing and jumped again as I realised it was Mike. Then, as if I wasn’t already a wreck, someone started pounding on my front door.

My whole body went rigid, my fingers curling around my phone. I waited, hoping it was just someone coming to check the meter or to shake a charity tin at me. But the knocking got more and more persistent until I was sure the door was going to give way.

I crept down the hallway, my heart on my tongue, and peered through the peephole.

Juliet.

‘Alright,’ I muttered, the muscles in my shoulders softening as I opened the door.

When I did, she was standing on my doormat, looking at me
with utter contempt. ‘So you’re alive.’ She crossed her arms. ‘What happened to you last night?’

‘I wasn’t well,’ I said. It didn’t take much effort to sound pathetic.

‘We missed the gig looking for you. Why aren’t you answering your phone?’

‘I lost it.’

She nodded at my right hand. ‘Isn’t that it?’

‘It was under the sofa,’ I told her, tucking it into the back pocket of my jeans in case Mike called again and she saw. ‘I just found it.’

‘Sid’s mum’s in the hospital,’ she said with a sigh, throwing it at me like a rock. My legs almost gave way. I reached for the door and realised I was already holding it.

‘What?’

‘She tried to kill herself.’

‘What?’

‘He came home to find her last night.’

It was like a succession of slaps. I stared at her. ‘Last night?’

My stomach lurched so suddenly, I was sure I was about to vomit at her feet.

‘This is my fault,’ I murmured.

I didn’t think she’d heard me, but when I lifted my eyelashes to look at her, she looked so angry, I thought she was going to hit me. ‘Can you not, Rose?’

‘Not what?’

‘Can you not make this about you?’ she said with a sneer.
‘Don’t get me wrong, Rose, it’s quite a gift, how you can turn every conversation, every situation, back around to yourself. Even Sid’s mother trying to kill herself is about you.’

She stopped to roll her eyes and I wanted to fly at her, tell her that I wasn’t being melodramatic; it
was
about me, if Sid hadn’t been looking for me, he would have been at home and he might have been able to stop his mum, to talk to her. But Juliet had obviously been practising her little speech, so I let her have the stage.

‘When you change a light bulb, Rose, do you just hold it up’ – she pointed at the ceiling – ‘and wait for the world to revolve around you?’

I’ve never wanted to kill her more than at that moment. I wanted to bite the smirk off her face. But I straightened up. I was only a couple of inches taller than she was, but it was enough.

‘Feel better?’

‘Not really.’ She crossed her arms again. ‘Sid’s mum’s in intensive care, but he’s out of his mind worrying about you. So can you let him know you’re okay so he can focus on his mum for a while? I think she needs his attention more, what with her nearly dying.’