Authors: C. L. Taylor
He frowns. “So why hasn’t she woken up?”
“They don’t know.” I squeeze Charlotte’s hand. She’s so still and silent, you’d expect it to be cold, but it’s not; it’s as warm as mine.
“Really? You would have thought that they’d be ab—”
There’s a loud sniff, and we both turn to look at Keisha.
“Oh my god.” Danny looks appalled at the tears spilling down her cheeks. “Stop it, would you? You’re embarrassing me.”
I tense at his tone. James was the same, cold in the face of tears.
Keisha covers her face with her hands but she can’t hide her tears. They drip off her jaw and speckle her pink top with red splashes.
I reach out a hand, but I’m sitting too far away to touch her. “Are you okay?”
She shakes her head and swipes at her cheeks with her right hand; her left clutches the hem of Danny’s leather jacket. She must be eighteen, twenty tops, but the gesture is that of a five-year-old child.
“It’s just…” She swallows back a sob. “It’s just so very sad.”
I’m surprised by her accent. I didn’t expect her to be Irish.
“Yes it is. It’s very sad. But we’re still optimistic. There’s no reason why she shouldn’t pull through.”
Keisha wails as though her heart is breaking and wrenches herself away from Danny.
“Keish,” he snaps, a muscle pulsing in his cheek. “Keisha, stop it.”
“No.” She wraps her arms around her slender waist and steps backward toward the door. “No.”
“Keisha?” I stand up and take a slow step toward her. I hold out a hand, palm upward as though I’m approaching a startled foal. “Keisha, what is it?”
She looks at my hand and shakes her head.
“I’m sorry.” She takes another step toward the door, then another. She’s trembling from head to foot. “I’m really sorry.”
“We all are.” I’m trying to stay calm, but my heart is beating violently in my chest. “But there’s no need to be so upset. She really will get—”
“That’s not what I mean. I’m sorry that—”
“Keish!” Danny’s voice is so loud that we both jump. “Calm the fuck down.”
“No.” She tears her gaze from Charlotte’s face to look at her boyfriend. “She needs to know.”
“Know what?” What’s she talking about? “What do I need to know, Keisha? Tell me.”
She and Danny stare at each other, their eyes locked. His eyes narrow. He’s warning her, silently ordering her to shut up.
“Keisha!” I need her to look at me. I need to break whatever spell Danny has cast on her. “Keisha!”
“Sue? Why are you shouting?” Brian appears in the doorway behind Keisha, a cup of steaming coffee in each hand.
I stare at him in astonishment. How long has he been there?
“I knew it.” He glares at Danny. “I bloody knew there’d be trouble if I let you—”
He’s interrupted by Keisha who moans softly, then shoulders Brian out of the way and sprints out of the room. Hot coffee slops onto the cold, vinyl floor.
“Keish!” Danny’s after her in a flash.
There’s a horrible moment when he and Brian face off in the doorway and I think someone’s going to throw a punch, but then Brian steps to the side to let Danny pass. I hear Keisha shriek something as her boyfriend’s sneakers pound the corridor, then the room falls silent again.
The heart monitor beep-beep-beeps in the corner of the room.
Brian looks at me, confusion and shock etched onto his face. “What the hell happened?” There’s an unspoken accusation behind the question, and he looks at Charlotte, concerned. “I could hear that girl screaming from the vending machine in the corridor. I’m surprised the nurse didn’t come back. Or security. What did she mean?” He places the coffee cups on the bedside table and takes Charlotte’s other hand.
“Who?”
“The girl with Danny. She shouted something as she was running down the corridor.”
“I didn’t hear anything.”
Brian fixes me with a look. “She shouted,
‘Stupid fucking girl. She trusted me, she thought I was her best friend, and look what happened to her.’
”
Saturday, September 15, 1990
It
was
James on the phone on Wednesday. He was terribly apologetic, said some awful things had happened in his personal life and asked if I’d ever be able to forgive him for leaving me hanging. I wanted to be angry, to tell him that I deserved to be treated better and that he couldn’t just expect me to forgive him because he’d deigned to pick up the phone. Instead I said, “Buy me a beer and I’ll think about it.” He called me an angel then and said it was typical of the amazing person I was that I’d be so understanding.
When we met for a beer, I tried to find out more about these “personal things” that had stopped him from calling, but he skirted the issue, telling me he’d reveal all once we’d been together a bit longer. (So we’re “together,” are we? Interesting!)
Almost inevitably, we ended up in bed together. Again.
We’d been to the Heart and Hand in Clapham Common, and as last orders were called, I suggested we get the tube back to my flat because I had a couple of bottles of wine that needed drinking. James jumped at the idea. He said he couldn’t wait to see my flat and what my things said about me. As it turned out, all he saw as we spilled through the front door, into the bedroom, and onto my futon was a couple of magnolia-painted walls and the white ceiling.
Afterward, as we lay in each other’s arms, listening to “Monkey Gone to Heaven” by the Pixies, I asked James when I’d get to see his place. A cloud passed over his face and he said, “Never, hopefully.” When I asked what that meant, he shrugged and said he needed the loo. When he came back, he said something that made me laugh and that was it, subject changed without me even noticing.
I won’t give up so easily next time the subject comes up…
“Keisha Malley?” Oli reaches across the table for a cookie and bites into it. He’s only been back in the house for ten minutes and he’s nearly demolished an entire pack of chocolate HobNobs. “Fit black girl? Yeah, I know her, goes out with Danny.”
It’s the day after the incident with Keisha and Danny in the hospital, but I’m still reeling. What did she mean—
“She trusted me, she thought I was her best friend, and look what happened to her.”
Brian and I talked about what had happened all the way home and for hours into the night, but we still couldn’t unravel it. It took all my self-restraint and Brian’s firm hand on the phone not to call Oli at midnight to ask him for Danny’s number so I could get some answers there and then.
“Did Charlotte ever mention anything about Keisha being her best friend?”
“Keisha? Her best friend? You’re kidding me, right? What about Ella? Those two are as thick as thieves.” He raises an eyebrow. “Or did they fall out?”
I shake my head. “I don’t know. Charlotte never mentioned falling out with Ella but then…” I tail off. I’m starting to get the impression there’s a lot I don’t know about my daughter’s life.
Oli pulls a face. “It’s a bit unlikely, isn’t it? A fifteen-year-old and a nineteen-year-old being best friends? Or is it different with girls?”
“I don’t know.” I shrug. “But why would Keisha say that if it wasn’t true?”
“She’s a woman. She’s mental!” He laughs then looks contrite. “Sorry, Sue, present company excepted.”
“Oliver James Jackson,” Brian bellows from the porch. “Are you insulting your mother again?”
He fixes Oli with a steely stare, but he can’t stop his lips from twitching into a smile and giving him away.
His son doesn’t miss a beat. “Thought I’d give you the day off, old man.”
“Oi!” Brian crosses the kitchen and lightly cuffs him around the back of his head. “Less of the old, thank you very much.”
I smile as they slip effortlessly into their roles for the father-son banter-athon. Information is swapped, insults are traded, and jokes are told and never once do the grins slip from their faces. I adore watching the two of them together, but a tiny, hateful part of me is jealous. Theirs is a closeness I could only dream of sharing with Charlotte. When she was born, when I held her in my arms for the first time, my head was full of happy imaginings for the future—the two of us shopping together for shoes, gossiping over manicures, cooing over Hollywood hunks in the cinema, or just sitting around the kitchen table chatting about our days. But it never quite turned out that way.
I was Charlotte’s favorite person in the whole world until she turned eleven, but then something changed. Instead of skipping home excitedly from school to tell me all about her day, she became sullen and withdrawn. Instead of giggling on the sofa together at an episode of
Scooby-Doo
, she’d hole herself away in her room with her laptop and mobile phone for company. She’d scowl if I so much as peeped my head around the door to offer her a cup of tea. Brian tried to reassure me that it was normal, all part of her becoming a teenager. He reminded me of the way his relationship with Oli had suffered at a similar age, and although I could vaguely recall them clashing, it was always over things like bedtimes and pocket money. It didn’t seem as personal as it was between Charlotte and me.
Her refusal to talk to me was the reason I bought her her first diary. I figured it would give her an outlet for all the new, confusing feelings she was having—including ones of resentment toward me.
“Isn’t that right, Sue?” Oli waves a hand in front of my face and laughs. “Anyone home?”
“Sorry?” I look from him to Brian and back. “What was that?”
“Dad just made a joke.” He raises an eyebrow. “Well, he thinks it’s a joke and I was trying to get you on my side because…” He tails off and laughs, presumably at the blank look on my face.
“Did Sue ask you about Keisha?” Brian asks, changing the subject.
Oli nods, but he’s just shoveled in the last HobNob and his mouth is too full to answer.
“Yes,” I say. “He knows her—she’s Danny’s girlfriend—but Charlotte never mentioned her.”
“Hmmm.” Brian reaches for the empty plate, deposits it in the sink, then returns to the table. “And she didn’t mention anything about falling out with Ella? Was there an argument or a disagreement of some sort?”
Oli shakes his head. “Charlotte never really texted me with news and updates about her life. She only ever got in touch if she needed advice or…” He tails off.
“Or what?” Brian and I ask simultaneously.
Oli shifts in his seat. “Or if she wanted stuff bought off the Internet.”
Brian and I share a look.
“What kind of stuff?” he asks.
“Nothing dodgy! Gig tickets, magazine subscriptions, eBay purchases, just stuff you need a credit card or PayPal account for.”
“Was there anything strange or unusual she asked you to get her? Before her accident?”
“Nope.” He shakes his head. “Like I said, just gig tickets and celebrity signed photos and junk like that.” He reaches across the table, then pauses, realizing the plate has disappeared. A frown appears between his eyebrows.
“What is it?” Brian asks.
Oli looks from one of us to the other. His lips part as though he’s about to say something, then close again.
“What is it?” Now I’m worried too. “You can tell us anything, Oliver. You know that, don’t you? We won’t judge and we won’t be angry. I promise.”
Well,
I
won’t be angry. Brian is sitting on the very edge of his chair, his elbows on the table, his eyes fixed on his son’s face.
“I…” He can’t meet his dad’s gaze.
“Please,” I say softly. “It might help.”
“Okay.” He sits back in his chair and drums his thumbs on the table, his head down. “Okay.” He pauses again to clear his throat, and I think I might explode if I have to wait one second longer. “She asked me if I’d pay for a hotel room for her and Liam.”
“She WHAT?!”
“She said she didn’t want to lose her virginity in a car or the playing fields behind the school like everyone else and—”
“A hotel room?” The back of Brian’s neck is puce. “She’s fifteen, for fuck’s sake. What the hell was she thinking? If you bloody—”
“I didn’t do anything, Dad!” Oli holds up his hands. “I swear. I wouldn’t.”
I can tell by the horrified look on his face that he’s telling the truth.
“Why didn’t you tell us this before?” I ask.
“Why would I?”
“Because your FIFTEEN-YEAR-OLD SISTER was planning on having sex with her seventeen-year-old boyfriend in a hotel room!” Brian is halfway out of his seat, his hands splayed on the table, the tips of his fingers white.
“Brian.” He doesn’t so much as look at me, so I say his name again as he continues to rant. Then again. “Brian, stop it! Stop shouting. It’s not Oli’s fault.”
Both men look at me in surprise. I don’t think either of them has heard me raise my voice before.
“Sorry.” My husband’s voice is gravelly but soft as he sinks into his chair and rubs the back of his neck, his eyes closed. He opens them again and reaches for my hand. “Sorry, Sue.” He looks at Oli. His chin dimples as he presses his lips together in contrition. “Sorry, son.” Oli shrugs but says nothing. He’s smarting, I can tell. “I just find it all so—”
I put my hand over his. “I know.”
Brian’s eyes search mine. “You don’t seem surprised by all this.”
“I’m not.” I squeeze his hand. “I’ve read Charlotte’s diary. I know how she felt about Liam.”
He frowns. “She’s got a diary? When did you find it?”
“This morning,” I lie.
Brian sits up straighter in his chair. If he
is
somehow responsible for Charlotte’s accident, he doesn’t look worried by the fact that I may have had an insight into our daughter’s most private thoughts.
“Does it…” He leans forward. “Does it reveal why she might have wanted to…”
He can’t bring himself to say the words “try to kill herself.” He refuses to entertain the thought that our daughter may have been so unhappy that she chose to end her life rather than share her unhappiness with us. I can understand why he’d feel that way, completely understand.
“No,” I say, and he visibly deflates with relief.
It’s another lie, of course, but I can’t share the truth about the diary until I know for sure if he played any part in “the secret” that weighed so heavily on her. Right now, I don’t know what—or who—to believe.
“Can I see it?” he asks.
When I raise my eyebrows, he shakes his head.
“No, you’re right, of course you are. She still deserves her privacy. But…” His eyes flick back to Oliver who’s observing the two of us with a curious expression on his face. This is the first time we’ve been open about Charlotte’s accident in front of him. The “everything is fine” façade has finally dropped.
Brian shakes his head and slumps back in his seat. We lapse into silence, and I find myself staring at the pile of crumbs on the plate in the middle of the table. I wasn’t surprised to read the entry in Charlotte’s diary about how much she wanted to lose her virginity to Liam and how excited and scared she was. I was quite touched and didn’t think much of it. I certainly didn’t wonder whether it might be connected to “the secret” Charlotte mentions in her final entry—I assumed that was to do with Brian—but now that Oliver has brought up this hotel business…
I tear my eyes away from the cookie crumbs and glance at Milly who’s half asleep at my feet. We need to take a walk—to Liam’s house.
Saturday, September 29, 1990
James told me he loved me last night—three weeks to the day after our first date.
He took me to a fabulous Mexican restaurant in Camden—all low lighting, intimate tables, flickering candles, and not a cactus in sight. I was trying to eat my fajita without it flopping all over the place, but the harder I tried to angle it into my mouth, the more food fell out the end and the more I laughed. When I looked across the table at James, he had a terribly serious look on his face. I glanced behind me to see if he was reacting to some terrible accident out in the street, but cars and people were streaming past as normal.
I put down my fajita. I suddenly didn’t feel very hungry anymore. “What is it, James?”
He shifted in his chair. “You.”
“What about me?”
“You’re the most incredible woman I’ve ever met in my life.”
His eyes were fixed and unblinking, his mouth set in a straight line, his hands folded neatly in his lap. It was like he was looking beyond my flowery red dress, black beads, and curled hair and peering straight into my head.
“I love you, Suzy,” he said. “I’ve never loved anyone the way I love you and it terrifies me, loving someone this much. I can’t sleep, eat, or think because of you. I can barely act. I’ve lost control of who I am, and that scares the shit out of me, but I can’t run away because I love you so much. I can’t ever be without you.”
He searched my eyes, looking for a reaction. I’d never seen him look so worried. I smiled, desperate to relieve his discomfort, and reached across the table for his hands. He unfolded them from his lap and held my fingers.
“I love you too, James, but I’ve never felt more scared or vulnerable in my life. I’ve got no defenses left, nothing to stop you from hurting me if you wanted to.”
“I’d never hurt you, Suzy-Sue.” He let go of one of my hands and reached across the table so he could cup the side of my face. “Never. I’d rather hurt myself than see you in pain.”
There were tears in his eyes but he brushed them away brusquely.
“Let’s just go.” He took a handful of money out of his wallet and threw it down on the table. “Let’s go back to yours, put on a record, crawl into bed, and block out the world.”
I couldn’t think of anything I’d rather do.