Lies Like Love Read online

  And then she was dragging me towards the girls’ loos and there were arms round my neck, round my shoulders and waist and I couldn’t escape them, not by pulling or twisting or screaming or fighting back. Lizzy’s hand covered my mouth and I tried to bite her. She squeezed my face, tightening her grip.

  They slammed the door. Someone stood against it. I yelled out for them to stop.

  ‘Let’s make her shut up, yeah?’ Lizzy said, and they dragged me into a cubicle and shoved me to my knees, pushing my head into the filthy toilet bowl. My stomach heaved as water flooded my mouth and eyes and nose and ears. Twisting and writhing, like a thrashing animal hooked and caught, I lurched and pulled. But they held me there; someone flushed and flooded my face and I saw the blackness of the moat, felt the panic of drowning, the horror of knowing I couldn’t save myself, the thud of it coming.

  When they let go I slumped to the floor. Gasping, I lay there, a puddle of victim.

  ‘Hey,’ Lizzy said, and I raised my eyes. She had her phone and was filming.

  ‘Say hi,’ she said, grabbing my hair and pulling back my head. ‘Say hello to the camera.’

  I had to stop her. I had no choice: she was hurting me and it was cruel and I didn’t want to be the one they laughed at any more. I lunged forward, with my fists, my feet, my teeth and caught a little of her, knocking the phone out of her hands and into the toilet bowl. She screamed and I fought her, scraping my nails down one cheek, snagging her shin with my shoe as I got to my feet, kicking and pushing and punching my way out of there. I heard myself scream, I hate you, I hate you, and then I fled, my hair hanging down my back in a heavy filthy mess. It doesn’t matter, I muttered, under my breath, it doesn’t matter. But something burned and I felt the heat and scratch of it in my throat and coughed out the first sob, swiped at the tear. No one saw me when I left the school, slipping out through the gap in the fence at the edge of the field. I didn’t feel the chill in the air, or the wind on my shoulders through my soaking shirt. I didn’t notice the long walk towards the Grange, I just concentrated on moving, on putting one foot before another and getting away. My head thumped, the drumbeat, the sign. The Thing whispered that I was useless. The Thing told me not to hope. That there would be nothing good for me ever, that I deserved what I got. Lizzy was right, it said. I was nothing. But I didn’t know what I had done wrong.

  I wished I could go home. Every ten paces I stopped, dizzy, and I made my way as if walking up and down see-saws, balancing on the shifting planes of the earth. If my head would just clear, if my thoughts would untangle, if I could just see myself as others did. Make my life make some sort of sense.

  I made it to the woods. The smell of the dank soil rose up like a mist and I walked into it, breathing the rich sour odour of decay. The sun caught a cobweb, set it alight, birds rattled the branches overhead. My breathing slowed, I was safe here in the clearing at least. Our den was still there, just, Peter’s and mine, ragged now, almost entirely collapsed, but I crawled inside what was left of the shelter, imagined the leaves folding over me, the soil opening, accepting, digesting, and that it was warm in the belly of the earth.

  Leo

  The rumour spread along the corridors fast. In and out of classrooms it skittered: Lizzy Carr had been attacked. Lizzy Carr was with the nurse, rushed to hospital, might lose an eye. And Audrey was to blame. She’d gone nuts, they said, spazzed out; attacked Lizzy and smashed up her phone and run off somewhere, no one knew where. Leo closed his ears to the words, bandied about, careless. He decided they were more lies, but when Audrey didn’t appear on the last day before the half-term holiday he wondered if she really had been excluded. He heard the kids say ‘schizo’ again, ‘nutter’, ‘mental’, and his stomach turned. Whatever might have gone on, he was sure it couldn’t all be her fault.

  It was Saturday night and he was supposed to be going to Joel Blake’s Halloween thing, but he wanted to go for a run, nevertheless, before he left to catch the bus. Late October and the evenings getting shorter and shorter; there was just enough time before the night dipped into darkness. Graham was right: it was addictive. His breath made big clouds as he paused, hands on hips, and stood and stared up at the Grange. He ran his eyes over the walls, the blank windows, vacant yet glaring. NO TRESPASSERS read a new sign that had been hurriedly rammed into the ground near the gates. He ignored it and ran up the drive, refusing to be afraid of mere bricks and mortar. And then there was a movement at the window he’d decided was Audrey’s. Just a shadow, a flitting, fleeting thing, butterfly light. It was worth a try. He could get the full story, try and help maybe.

  ‘Hey,’ he yelled, cupping his hands round his mouth. ‘Audrey,’ his voice boomed, and carried, bouncing off the walls and the water in an echo that chased itself round and round. Audrey, Audrey, Audrey, he heard, the voices singing back at him as if they laughed, and for a second it looked like nothing was going to happen. But then the movement was back and this time it was clearer; the shadow took shape. A figure was standing at the window, struggling with the latch, wrenching open the casing.

  ‘Hi,’ she called back, her voice dipping on the wind. ‘What are you doing?’

  ‘Out for a run. I thought I saw you, so I called. You OK?’

  ‘Yeah. Not doing much.’

  ‘Can you come out?’ he shouted. ‘Or shall I come up?’

  But she didn’t answer; she’d disappeared already and the next moment she was charging out of the front door, running towards him, gravel flying under her bare feet, her hair streaming pale and long behind her.

  ‘What’s up?’

  ‘Nothing.’ The way she’d run, like there’d been something chasing her, Leo wanted to put out his arms and steady her. Be something solid and strong for Audrey to hold on to.

  ‘What are they saying?’ she said, and Leo didn’t know how to answer. Her eyes blinked behind her glasses and her cheeks burst red; she held her arms across her chest, defending herself. There was no way he could make this worse and tell her the truth, so he smiled, pretending he didn’t know what she meant. It felt like smiles were all he had to give Audrey and that made him angry.

  ‘Look, why don’t you come out with me tonight? There’s a party.’

  ‘I can’t. I have to babysit. Mum’s at work.’

  ‘OK. Do you want me to stay with you?’

  She took a step back, her face closing.

  ‘Right, well, never mind. But listen, Audrey, don’t worry. It doesn’t matter, this thing with Lizzy; people will forget about it. Everyone knows what she’s like. Just don’t get down, OK?’ God, he was useless. This wasn’t what he wanted to say at all. He wanted to invite himself inside, sit down and really talk to her, find out what the hell was going on and who she really was. Right now he didn’t have a clue.

  ‘I’m OK. You enjoy yourself, anyway. Have a good one,’ Audrey said, and he nodded and waited until she was inside before he ran down the drive and across the fields to the farm.

  The party sucked and Leo wasn’t in the mood. Some idiot had thought it was funny to come dressed in a white coat spattered with fake blood, axe in hand, long blond wig, glasses, eyes wide and staring and, just in case the ever-so-subtle message hadn’t hit home, the words MAD AUDREY painted in red on the back of his lab coat. Leo curled his lip. His fists clenched. He walked in the other direction and there was Lizzy laughing her ass off, barely a scratch on her. She saw him and shifted in her seat to stare at him full on before she grinned and raised her eyebrows – an invitation. My God, he thought, Lizzy is actually deluded. He spun round on his heel, walked back to the guy who thought he was funny and shoved him hard.

  ‘Hey!’ The lad turned round. Leo recognized Mark Brooks from his tutor group. They’d never spoken.

  ‘Don’t you think this is pretty pathetic?’ Leo gestured at Mark’s costume. Thought about tearing off his wig. Landing a hard punch in his face. ‘Taking the piss out of a girl who’s not here to defend herself?’

  ‘It’s only a l
augh. What do you care?’ Mark said, holding up his hands as if to say calm down, and Leo could tell he really didn’t get it.

  ‘Well. You’re not funny. Think about it, right?’

  Leo walked into the kitchen. Grabbed a beer and drank, his lip still curling. Jen came over.

  ‘All right?’ she said, and he shrugged.

  ‘I’m pretty knackered actually. I might just bail.’

  ‘Sure, sorry about Mark and that stupid costume.’

  ‘Not your fault.’

  ‘Is it true though?’ Jen asked him. ‘Is Audrey … well, is she a bit, you know …’

  She didn’t know how to say it, especially not to him. Leo had thought Jen was better than that, he thought she was Audrey’s friend, and he gritted his teeth.

  ‘I don’t know, Jen. If you mean has Audrey got mental-health problems, well, I haven’t a clue. We barely know each other. But what I do know, I like. I know where she’s coming from. I’ve been there.’

  ‘Yeah?’ Jen sat up on the kitchen worktop, kicked her legs back and forth, picking at her black nail varnish. She was dressed up as a vampire – Dracula’s bride – and pulled out her fake teeth, so she could talk. ‘The thing is, Lizzy’s totally got it in for Audrey. And you know Lizzy. She’s such a nightmare.’

  ‘Well, maybe someone should have a word.’ Like me, Leo thought. I could go up to her now, tell her to shut her evil mouth. Make her actually hear it this time. That would really finish this party off. Jen jumped down, held his sleeve.

  ‘That would make her worse, I reckon – you know she does it for attention. She’d be accusing you of all sorts if you did that. You’d have her mum round yours, like she came down the school, mouthing off.’

  ‘I guess so.’

  ‘Well, maybe Lizzy’ll leave Aud alone now she knows she’ll get it back.’

  ‘I hope so. It’s really shit, Jen. She was trying to fit in, trying to have a fresh start.’

  ‘I know. But it’s not always as easy as that, is it?’

  Audrey

  I sat up waiting for Mum to get in from work, thinking about Leo at the party and how I could have gone too. It might have been fun. Jen would have been there. It would have been a chance to try again with the kids at school, to show that I was all right and knew how to have a laugh. I wanted to talk about it, but Mum was tired again; she banged into the kitchen, slammed the door and I knew it was my fault. There was no point trying to talk to her when she was like this, and I went in the opposite direction, up the little flight of stairs to my room. Mum was angry at the school, after the thing with Lizzy. And then this morning she’d said, ‘What I don’t get is why it’s always you, Aud. Why can’t you just keep yourself out of trouble? Have you been messing about with your medicine again?’

  And then she stood over me as I swallowed my pills, checking and counting and making me feel like a criminal. Mum was right, when I didn’t take the pills then the Thing came, worse than ever.

  I sat cross-legged on my bed, my skin prickling. It had to be my fault somehow, my fault that they always chose me to pick on. My fault that I was odd and different. But how did I change? Shivering, I lay down and pulled the covers up and over me but the pillow was wet and clammy under my cheek and I reached for a jumper to bunch under my head. Downstairs Mum was still crashing around; the smell of her cigarette leaked into the room, lighting it with the burning stub of her anger. And she wasn’t the only one who was mad. My brain began to ache. The Thing was here. Throbbing, beating, gathering speed, pulsing into the walls and the window, making them rattle and the room shake. I pulled the sheets tighter round my chin and curled smaller.

  ‘Go away,’ I whispered, putting my hands over my ears, trying to stop the rumbling threat. ‘Leave me alone,’ I told it. ‘You can’t get me – I’ve been taking my pills. You don’t exist, so just go away.’ Muttering, I lay in bed, my body beginning to shudder. It didn’t matter what I said; it could do whatever it liked. It had been at it for years, visiting me and hurting me, and even when I tried to recreate the Thing as a girl like me and push it away its face ripped and peeled, shedding skin like a snake, crumbling to dust in my fingers.

  Leo, I wrote, once, twice, three times, with a fingertip on my skin. Leo liked me. I scratched a pattern of flowers around his name before I gritted my teeth and tried to steady myself.

  Night gathered. I listened, alert, on guard.

  The floor creaked, the sheets shivered. It was coming, coming now. My heartbeat quickened, in time to its march. You couldn’t resist the Thing. I tried and held on to the bed. No, please, no, whispered someone, very far away.

  It led me. Out of the house, down the stairs and into the freezing night we went, my hair flying and winding away from my head, the cold breathing ice into my bones. I let it pull me forward, forward towards water that sung and summoned, and the Thing opened my skin, scoring with a blade, put its lips to my flesh and sucked up the blood.

  November

  Audrey

  Mum was standing over me when I woke up. She grabbed my arm and pulled up the sleeve before I could stop her.

  ‘What’s this, Audrey?’

  ‘I didn’t do it,’ I whispered, staring and cradling my arm against my chest. Crusts of blood. Pain stabbed at my eyes, my stomach, my thighs.

  ‘So explain it to me, then.’

  ‘I don’t know, Mum, I don’t know what happened.’

  ‘Come off it. You think I’m going to buy that after what I found in the bathroom, Audrey? Where did you get the blades?’

  ‘I didn’t do it,’ I told her. I knew where this was leading.

  ‘Rubbish,’ Mum said. Peter appeared in the door, pale, still wearing his pyjamas. He was watching us, so I tried to keep my voice calm and swung my legs out of bed.

  ‘Come on, Pete. Come on – let’s go and put the TV on or something.’

  He nodded and let me lead him away and I heard Mum pick up the phone, asking for an emergency appointment. ‘Pinch, punch, first day of the month,’ I whispered, so no one would hear, especially my skin.

  Why did the days have to get so dark? The doctor’s surgery. Mum at my side, staring at a magazine without turning the pages. She’d been reading the same article about some woman’s gastric band for forty minutes.

  ‘I don’t know why these bloody doctors don’t work weekends,’ she muttered. ‘We should have gone to A and E, Aud, yesterday. But I thought it was better if we saw Dr Caldwell. Don’t you think?’

  I plucked at the wool on my jumper, twisting the threads into a tight knot. When my name was called, Mum stood first and led the way and I trailed in her wake, a little tug boat, bobbing on a line.

  ‘Hello, doctor,’ Mum said, sitting forward on her chair, legs folded, voice all pretend businesslike. ‘Us again.’ The doctor smiled like she didn’t mind and nodded. ‘As I explained when we saw you before, Aud’s not doing well. She’s been battling depression since she was about thirteen; that’s three years now. God. Three years.’ Mum’s eyes were wide, like she couldn’t believe it. ‘Anyway, last year she began self-harming. We worked on it and she stopped, or at least I thought she had, but now it’s happening again. That’s why we’re here, doctor.’

  The doctor looked at me. Her expression interested, intelligent.

  ‘Anything else you can tell me, Audrey? How do you feel generally at the moment? How are you sleeping?’

  I yawned.

  ‘I’m not,’ I said, and stared out of the window. Bit at the insides of my cheeks. Mum chimed in, filling in the gaps.

  ‘That’s been a pretty constant thing. I mean, going back years, this insomnia. I don’t know, doctor, I’m no expert, but it’s obvious the treatment isn’t working.’

  ‘Yes?’ The doctor looked at me again. She took my hand. Very kind. Gentle. And my heart stopped for a moment as I looked at her and wondered. Mum was still talking.

  ‘Audrey started school very introverted, very shy. Never made friends, fell behind. There were time
s when she was off for months at a time. Lots of chest infections, breathing problems. I did my best to make things as normal as I could, but she got too used to being on her own, I think. And now we’ve got this depression, as if she’s internalized all her problems. Well, I’m no psychiatrist, like I said. That’s my interpretation. And the bullying at school doesn’t help. But now she’s lashing out, violent. She was in trouble at school last week and now she won’t go back.’

  Mum looked at the doctor for confirmation, biting her lip. Dr Caldwell indicated with a little nod that she should go on.

  ‘I wonder if maybe Aud gets like this because she’s not like other girls. Not as bright. Maybe the cutting and the anger, maybe it’s her way of asking for help? I don’t know – I’m just looking for answers really. You’re the experts. But I think this is serious; I think she’s verging on psychosis, doctor.’

  ‘OK, thank you, Mrs Morgan.’ Dr Caldwell turned to me again. ‘Audrey, how do you feel about all this? Would you agree with the way your mum’s described how you’re feeling? Or is there something else, anything else you’d like to tell me?’

  Mum looked at me; they both did. The air in the room was very still. I could hear them breathing, hear my own heartbeat, the scream on my skin.

  ‘I’m fine.’ And there was my voice. So pathetic. So small. I wasn’t a mouse. I tried again.

  ‘I just want to be left alone. I’ll be all right if everyone leaves me alone.’ And now tears welling. That wouldn’t help. I wrapped my arms round my knees, folding myself into the chair and stared at the floor. I didn’t want to hear Mum’s tears.

  ‘As I said, she’s difficult. I try and get her help and she won’t cooperate. Messes about with her medication.’

  The doctor held out her hands, her voice gentle.

  ‘Your mum says you’ve been self-harming, Audrey. Can I see?’

  ‘Look at the state of her – I mean –’ Mum threw her arms up in despair.

  I let the doctor touch me, pull up my sleeves and inspect the wounds. I didn’t want this. Didn’t want anyone to see. It was my body and it was ruined. Hurting. The pain was private, not Mum’s to give to the rest of the world.