Beside Myself Read online

  She tried to think. Had she been out and spent it during one of her times? But her brain would only turn up useless images: a leaf dangling from a spider’s web; the pudding face of the woman in the dole office; a baby’s bootie stamped in the mud.

  The craving for fags was bringing the nausea with it now, the shakes. If she didn’t leave soon, she’d have to start going through the rubbish in the kitchen, looking for butts. She hurried out into the hall, jammed her feet into her slippers and threw on her anorak. The scarf was hanging on the banister at the foot of the blind staircase that led up to the ceiling they’d stuck in when they carved the house up into flats. She hesitated over it. She hadn’t been spotted in ages. What with the way her cheeks and mouth had greyed and sunk in, there was really very little similarity between them now. You no longer needed the scar and the tattoo to tell them apart. When she caught her reflection in shop windows these days, she barely recognised herself. Still, the scarf made her feel safe. And it would be a help against the bastard February cold that these days bit at her bones as never before. She wrapped the black wool round her head, leaving just the upper part of her face visible.

  (‘Edifying,’ announced a rather camp voice approvingly. ‘À la mode.’)

  The wind rushed in, bringing with it the roar of the traffic on the Old Kent Road, as she walked round the house, past the stairs to the flat above, and down the steps to the pavement. It was fucking freezing and everywhere was as grey as her mind. The entrance to the estate loomed ahead of her, yawning to reveal its grey blocks rising to different heights like rotten, broken teeth. She walked quickly, head bowed against the gusts, keeping her eyes to herself. A gaggle of teenage girls appeared out of an alleyway and sidled past her. One of them spat and the gobbet landed next to her slipper, but she didn’t turn round, leaving them to their squawks and laughter coming in waves on the breeze.

  The shop was set into a concrete wall underneath the walkway leading to the tallest block. It was the only one still open, its windows fractured into spiders’ webs that sent out shards of light to glint on the cans and crisp packets blowing across the concourse.

  She pushed the door open and stepped in, past a bucket of bright plastic children’s umbrellas. The shopkeeper looked up and his expression darkened as he registered her, taking in the stains on her jacket, the tattoo poking out from the scarf over her left eyebrow. He turned his attention back to the small television showing Al Jazeera on the corner of the counter, but she could feel his mind on her, just waiting for her to make a false move. She walked between the shelves and picked up a loaf of sliced white and some peanut butter. Then she went to the counter and put them on the pile of newspapers beside the till.

  ‘And a bottle of value vodka and a small pack of Amber Leaf and some Rizlas, please,’ she said.

  The shopkeeper pursed his lips and reached into the cabinet behind him for the tobacco and booze. He plugged the figures into the till.

  ‘Twelve pounds fifty-six,’ he said.

  She dug out the money from her pocket, looked at it, then at him.

  ‘Don’t suppose—’ she began.

  ‘No,’ he said firmly, holding up a hand. ‘I am not a charity.’

  She shrugged. Inside her head, a voice was launching into a fraught monologue about pedestrianised zones.

  ‘Well then, I suppose I’ll have to put the peanut butter back,’ she said hurriedly.

  He watched as she took it over to the shelf.

  ‘Ten pounds and nine pence,’ he said when she got back to the counter.

  She handed over the money and waited as he put the items into a blue plastic bag. When he moved the bread, she was startled to find her face – the correct, whole version, the way it used to look but shinier – staring up at her from the front page of the newspaper. Daytime star Sallis in car crash coma, read the headline.

  Like a blast from the heater above the shop entrance, it came back to her: the phone call, Mother’s voice. She gasped. Her body jerked as if shunted by a car. The voice in her head went mute.

  ‘Can I get this too?’ she said, pointing to the paper.

  The shopkeeper frowned at her. His eyes strayed to the door, wary in case this was a diversion.

  ‘All right,’ he said, as though granting a favour.

  She handed over the coin, snatched up the bag and the paper and was gone, hurrying from the shop, her heart pounding, her hand clutched over Hellie’s smug face. Outside, the laughter of the teenage girls echoed in her wake across the concourse from a place she couldn’t see.

  4

  The next morning I am up before everyone else. While Ellie is still sleeping in my bed by the window under my Rainbow Brite duvet that Mother tucked round her last night, I creep to my drawer and put on my Helen clothes, including my Alice the Camel T-shirt with the bit of soft fur on the hump. Just stroking it makes me feel Helenish again. I smile and do my hair in Helen’s plait the way Mother would. It’s fiddly because I can’t see what my hands are doing behind my head and when I look in the mirror it’s sticking out to one side rather than straight down the back, but that doesn’t matter: anyone would know it was me. I go and sit by the bookcase to wait, grinning to myself, and all the time Ellie is dreaming away, not knowing that the game is being tidied away right under her nose.

  When Mother comes in, I beam up at her with my best Helen smile. But here’s the odd thing: Mother isn’t wearing her normal buttoned-up-to-the-neck dressing gown. She’s in a silly, floaty pink thing that shows the bumps and curves of her underneath. There is a strange smell about her, like salt and earth and flowers all at once, and when you look in her eyes you can just tell they are switched off from their normal seeing.

  ‘Oh Ellie,’ she says. ‘What are you lurking down there for? And what have you done to your hair? I’ve never seen such a bird’s nest.’

  She takes my hand and pulls me up. ‘And wearing Helen’s clothes too. How many times do we have to go through this? Yours is the left drawer and Helen’s is the one on the right. Left is where you can look at your hand and see the “L” in your fingers.’ She takes a deep breath and closes her eyes. ‘Still, good girl for trying to get ready by yourself, I suppose. Even if you have done it all wrong.’

  ‘But—’ I say.

  But Mother doesn’t listen. Instead she has started to hum: a bright, trumpety tune that sounds like it’s going a little too fast. I have never heard Mother hum before so I am too surprised to argue when she pulls the Alice T-shirt up over my head and puts Ellie’s stupid Pigeon Street top on me instead over my head. But when she scrapes my hair into two sections and starts doing the Ellie bunches, I squirm away and slap at her hands.

  ‘No!’ I shout. ‘That’s not right! That’s not how my hair’s supposed to be!’

  Mother stops humming and leans down to bring her face close to mine. Behind her, I see Ellie sitting up in my bed, blinking.

  ‘Oh, Ellie-bellie,’ sighs Mother, frowning as though she is trying hard to see through a thick fog. ‘Not today, please. Mr Greene has organised a nice surprise and we’re going to have a lovely day out. Don’t ruin it.’

  ‘But I’m not Ellie-bellie,’ I say, my voice wobbling with crossness because Ellie has got out of bed and is wriggling into my clothes, pulling the Alice T-shirt this way and that so the neck stretches over her silly head.

  Mother puts a hand to her face. ‘Oh, not this again,’ she says. ‘How many times?’

  And now I am surprised because when did Ellie ever say that she was me before? We have always been us just as we were and no exceptions. Changing places was never one of the Mary lessons.

  ‘But—’ I say.

  ‘And as for you, Helen,’ says Mother, dreamily straightening up and going over to do my Helen plait in Ellie’s hair, ‘I’m relying on you to be the grown-up, sensible one. Understand?’

  ‘Yes, Mother,’ says Ellie, with a little nod like a secretary in a TV drama who has been given important work to do. She stares up at the Beatri
x Potter clock above the door, far away from where my eyes are trying to scream all her wrongness at her.

  We go downstairs. All through breakfast, my fingers itch to take the bunches out, but when I see Mother shaking her head sadly at me over her steaming cup of coffee, my hands go still. Instead, another plan comes: I make up my mind to do everything I can to be my best possible Helen so that even with the rubbish Ellie hair and clothes, the real Helenness will shine through and Mother will have no choice but to know that it’s me.

  For the rest of the meal, I mind my Ps and Qs and sit up straight keeping my elbows in. Except it’s hard work because Ellie is Helening for all she’s worth too, smiling and talking politely and passing the sugar before anyone’s even asked. When she neatly mops up a spill from Akela’s mug and rinses the cloth out in the sink, I stare at her with my mouth open until Mother tells me to close it. Ellie purses her lips and peers off into the distance, like I am not even there. To look at her you would have no idea about all the wrongness underneath. You wouldn’t know she slurps from her cup at breaktime or that the PE teacher has to help her up on the climbing frame in the gym because she’s scared.

  It turns out the special treat Akela has in store for us is that he is taking us to Thorpe Park. We both nod and smile and say how exciting it sounds, and I look up at Mother especially hard, making my eyes big and blinking like those children you see on the adverts that ask you to give a pound, in case something in her brain goes ‘ping’ and she suddenly knows who I am. But she just says, ‘Oh Ellie, for goodness’ sake,’ and goes to take the rubbish out. It makes me worried that my Helening looks like Ellie nonsense to her, but then I take a breath and give myself a good talking to, moving my lips silently and jiggling my feet under the table, while Akela smiles at us with his eggy breakfast mouth. If I just keep being Helen, I tell myself, then sooner or later the truth will be there for everyone to see. Besides, Ellie is too stupid to keep the game up. Before long she’ll be dragging her feet and whinging and moaning in that way she has, and then it will all go back the way it was. I am better than Ellie at things like this. I am cleverer and everyone says so. I just have to wait.

  The car journey to get to Thorpe Park takes three years. First there is our road, then the high street, then the road that leads to the swimming pool, then another road with shops on it, then a roundabout, then a big road with cars whizzing past, then an even bigger road. Then it turns out that Mother’s been looking at the map the wrong way and we should have been on a different big road all along. But instead of getting cross about it, Akela just gives a laugh and pulls into a petrol station where he buys us all Feast lollies before turning back and going the other way.

  I sit and eat my Feast as the cars flash by. Feast is my favourite ice-cream, because I like how the outside layer of chocolate and ice-cream crumbles around the slab of chocolate in the middle. Always when I eat it, I want to save the middle bit and then take it off the stick and put it in my mouth so it pokes out like a tongue, but I never manage it because the chocolate is so tasty that you just have to bite right in.

  The road carries on rolling. I tuck the stick from the Feast into the wrapper and put it carefully by my feet so that I don’t get chocolate mess on Akela’s car. Ellie has already finished hers and dropped off to sleep. I can hear her snuffling and I am pleased about this because I hope it means Mother will spot who she is. But Mother is busy looking at the map and saying things to impress Akela in a bright, giddy voice that is even worse than the crystal-chandelier talking she used to bring out when well-wishers came to the door after the Unfortunate Decision, which was polished and hard and sounded like it might crack. Plus there is noise coming from the radio that drowns out the snuffling. Soon after that a drowsy feeling comes over the car, and I lean my head on one side and go to sleep.

  Thorpe Park is more than just a park. It is a big place with rides and rollercoasters and people dressed up as cuddly elephants. When we get there, there are so many cars lined up that I say it is more like it should be called Thorpe Car Park. Everybody gives a laugh at that and I watch them carefully to see if anyone realises it’s actually clever me.

  When we get inside, Akela says, ‘Now what do you want to do?’ and Ellie, who always gets excited by silly things, shouts that she wants to go on the whirling teacup ride. So we go and sit in one of the cups and soon we are whirling in and out and round and round. It’s fun and we all go ‘Whee!’ but it also makes you feel a little bit sick. It’s not just me because when I look at Ellie I see that she has gone quiet and the sides of her nose are white and when we get off she walks slowly with her hand to her head in a slightly staggery way. Mother and Akela are striding ahead because they want to find somewhere we can have lunch, but I stay behind with Ellie because I think now might be my chance to talk to her properly about putting a stop to the game.

  In a minute we are passing the toilet block and there is a big high hedge where you go in, so I reach out and grab Ellie’s wrist in a pinch and pull her behind it.

  ‘Listen Ellie,’ I say into her swaying white face. ‘Enough’s enough. We’ve had our fun but now it’s time to tell the truth. You have to swap back to being you and I have to swap back to being me.’

  She looks at me with dull, wandering eyes and her lips do that trembly thing that makes me want to get the hard lessons going again really quickly.

  ‘Besides Ellie,’ I say, ‘they already know what you’re up to. I heard them talking about it last night after you were asleep. They’re just waiting until you’ve done enough naughtiness so that they can punish down on you really hard. That’s all they’re waiting for. So you might as well own up now and save yourself some of the punishing.’

  Ellie slumps forward with her eyes closed and gives a slow, saggy nod. I put my arm up round the back of her neck.

  ‘That’s a good Ellie,’ I say. ‘I knew you’d see sense in the end. Some people just aren’t meant to be the leader.’

  Ellie opens her mouth to say how sorry she is and that she’ll never disobey again, but instead what comes out is a long stream of chocolate-coloured sick that spatters all down my front and on to my feet in Ellie’s white, holey socks and sandals. I stand blinking in the sour smell as a shadow falls over us.

  ‘There you are! You mustn’t wander off like that!’ says Mother. Then she looks at me. ‘Oh God, what have you done now?’

  ‘Ellie’s been sick all down herself,’ says Ellie quickly, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand and pointing at me. ‘It really smells.’

  ‘Oh, Ellie!’ shouts Mother, reaching down and snatching up my hand. ‘You couldn’t manage to keep things nice for even one day, could you?’ She drags me out from behind the hedge to where Akela is waiting, holding two cuddly tigers.

  ‘I’m so sorry, Horace,’ she says, loudly and brightly so that all the families walking past can hear. ‘We’ve had a little accident. She’s been sick everywhere. You couldn’t be a dear, could you, and go and find something we can dress her in? One of those big T-shirts from that stall by the fountain will do fine. I’ll take her in here and try and get her cleaned up.’

  Akela trots off and Mother turns and starts to pull me back towards the toilets. But my feet don’t want to move. Suddenly all the things of the last two days – the game and the monster-man carrying the boxes and ‘fucked’ and the smell of the eaten Feast lolly – build up and build up and start fizzing in my head until there is nowhere left for them to go and they have to come spilling out, like mind sick, all over everywhere.

  ‘No!’ I scream and I pull back on Mother’s arm. ‘No! It wasn’t me! It was her! She was the one! She was sick, not me! No one’s being fair!’

  Mother rounds on me and there is a look in her eyes I have never seen before. It is like all the mumblings and spikiness and clouds of glum have hardened into a sharp, black point.

  ‘Ellie,’ she hisses. ‘You are not going to have a tantrum here. This is going to be a nice day out and you are not going to spoi
l it. You are not going to take this away.’

  But the tantrum is coming thick and fast now, and with it sobs flood up my throat like backwards gulps.

  ‘I’m not Ellie!’ I yell. ‘I’m not Ellie! It’s her! She’s the one! I’m Helen! I’m the one who does everything right! I’m Helen!’

  But the sobs are making it difficult to speak and the words come out all broken up as a rollercoaster swoops over our heads and all the people put their hands up in the air and shout with glee.

  Mother glances at Ellie. A frown comes over her face. Something glimmers in her eyes.

  ‘What’s this all about?’ she says.

  I do my most Helen of all faces. Surely she must see. Surely the me-ness in me will shine through.

  ‘What’s going on?’ says Mother, wrinkling her nose like someone has done a windypop and no one is owning up.

  Ellie takes a deep breath. She looks at me, then back at Mother. For a minute the world tips and sways like the magic carpet ride wavering in the distance.

  ‘Oh, it’s just Ellie,’ she says in a pinched little voice. ‘You know how she’s always making things up and saying she isn’t her? Well, now she’s made up a story that she’s really me and I’m really her. She won’t stop going on about it. I’ve had it up to here.’

  I stand looking at her with an open mouth, because none of that is true. The real Ellie was far too boring to make up stories. This is a new Ellie – an Ellie that she is making to fit me.

  Mother rolls her eyes. ‘I might have known!’ she sighs and starts to pull my arm again.

  ‘No!’ I shout, tugging and stamping. ‘She’s lying! She’s lying! It wasn’t me!’

  The smack sounds like a gunshot. I clutch my bottom. A big boy in a baseball cap gives a laugh as he walks past. He points at me and his friends turn to look. Tears flood into my eyes.

  ‘Ellie,’ says Mother, her mouth narrow and tight, ‘I will not stand for this. You are going to behave. This is too important to be ruined by silly games. Do you understand?’