Beside Myself Read online

  Then a loud voice rang out across the ward: ‘Do I smell smoke?’

  The sound of a team of basketball players ducking and feinting its way across the court came towards the cubicle. Smudge and Nick looked at each other and then at the lighter and fag packet on the bed.

  As the curtain was swept aside, Nick stepped in front of them.

  The nurse advanced, lips pursed.

  ‘Has someone been smoking in here?’ she said.

  They shook their heads.

  ‘Then why is the bed pushed to the window?’

  ‘I wanted to look at the view,’ she said, gesturing to the car park as Nick groped behind him and transferred the packet and lighter into his back pocket. ‘And to get some fresh air. I was feeling faint.’

  ‘Hmmn,’ said the nurse. ‘Then you should have called for me, not started rearranging the furniture. Besides it’s too cold for open windows. The lady in the next bed is ninety-six. How would you feel if she catches pneumonia and dies and it’s all because of you?’

  The nurse bustled over and reached between them to yank the window shut. Her nose wrinkled.

  ‘There is definitely a smell of smoke in here,’ she said.

  Smudge opened her mouth to explain, but the ready story was not there. Her mind was blank and she felt tired. She caught sight of Hellie’s face flashing up on the television over the window and looked hurriedly down at her hands. It could be in her head, for all she knew, but she didn’t want Nick seeing it and launching into pleading mode again.

  ‘Well?’ said the nurse, tapping her foot. ‘I’m waiting.’

  ‘It’s my fault,’ said Nick, a blush spreading up from his throat. ‘I had a cigarette before I came in.’

  ‘You?’ said the nurse, folding her arms and sucking her teeth. ‘So you do sugar in your coffee and you smoke? Boy, you are setting yourself up for a miserable old age, let me tell you right now. If you are lucky enough to live that long.’ And with that she turned round and bustled out of the cubicle, shaking her head and muttering.

  After she’d gone, they burst into sniggers. They looked at each other, shaking their heads. Smudge’s expression hardened.

  ‘You have to go,’ she said.

  ‘Helen needs you,’ he blurted. ‘We all need you. It’s been a month now and there’s still no change… Every day, it’s the same. They say the hearing is the thing that lingers longest and sometimes that can be the thing that brings them back. There are stories of people hearing conversations while they’re under… I don’t know. We’ve all been trying but nothing seems to make any difference. But I can’t help thinking that perhaps if you came—’

  He stopped to fumble a tissue from his pocket and dabbed at his eyes, sniffing.

  She regarded him coldly. ‘You’re wasting your time,’ she said. ‘Anyway, they all hate me. Mother, Horace, H-ellen. Richard probably too. They all hate me for what I did. For what they think I did.’

  ‘But all that’s in the past – way in the past,’ said Nick, holding out his hands. ‘Time heals. Maybe it could here. You’re twins after all. You share the same DNA. You lived for nine months in the same womb.’

  A wave of nausea engulfed her. The walls were starting to throb. She was getting sick of his face, of the wheedling tone in his voice.

  She swallowed hard. ‘You need to leave me alone,’ she said. ‘This is not going to work. You don’t know what you’re dealing with. We can’t be in the same room as each other, me and her. You have to fuck off.’

  He winced like she’d slapped him.

  ‘Fuck off,’ she said again, relishing its impact.

  Above them, the fluorescent strip light flickered. Nick’s mouth trembled. With his big, brown eyes, he looked like a scolded little boy.

  ‘If that’s what you really think,’ he sniffed, and turned to go. Then he paused.

  ‘But—’ he said, looking back. ‘Just answer me this: if you can’t be in the same room as each other, how were you going to speak to her that afternoon?’

  Smudge narrowed her eyes until he was just a shadow across from her, dark against the cubicle curtain.

  ‘How do you mean?’ she said.

  ‘The day of the crash,’ said Nick. ‘It happened just coming off the roundabout at Elephant and Castle on to the A201 – leading down to the Old Kent Road.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘Well, there was no other reason for her to be driving on that road that afternoon,’ he said. ‘Even if she hadn’t left the piece of paper with your details on by the front door, it would have been obvious: Helen was coming to see you.’

  12

  I am thinking about ideas for tempting a murderer to get Ellie today while we are on the seesaw in the park. The seesaw is an old clanking thing next to the swings. It lurches up and down when you push off with your legs and, if you are not careful, it can bump you when you land so you have to hold on tight. Underneath there is tarmac with lots of cracks spreading all over it like a spider’s web. Mrs C, who is the mother of Hannah C at school, who bites her fingers and smells of Quavers, has been trying to get it changed for, like, three years. She’s even been going around with a petition about getting a new soft, squidgy material to spread across the ground. She comes and talks at you with her bossy face and in the end all the parents are so tired and bored that they sign it just to make her be quiet.

  I push off with my legs and soar up into the air as I think about what might get a murderer’s attention. Like, in most of the programmes, it’s usually because someone wants to kiss someone they’re not supposed to. Or sometimes it’s because of money. I can’t imagine anyone wanting to do a murder that involves kissing Ellie so it will have to be money that gets the murderer going. And this is where there is a stroke of luck because there is actually millions of money in the pottery owl piggy bank that Mrs Dunkerley bought for me. Last time I pulled the plastic stopper out of the bottom and played the counting game, where you line up all the coins that match the same size, there were two five-pound notes and one ten, plus a lot of shiny pound coins. It is much better than what’s in Ellie’s pottery elephant, which has almost nothing except for two pees because every time there was a programme about children with no clothes on and covered in flies, Ellie used to put all her money in an envelope addressed to Africa and drop it in the postbox on the way to school, even though I told her it wouldn’t work in their shops. And even though Ellie has stolen all the other bits of Helen, she has forgotten the pottery owl, which is good news for me.

  It is lucky that I never did anything stupid like that with my money, because now it turns out that all the pound coins that come from Aunt Bessie every Christmas, Sellotaped inside cards with cats and flowers on the front, will do a very useful thing indeed. And that useful thing will be to lure a murderer into doing Ellie a mischief and getting me back where I belong.

  I give the ground a shove of glee, so hard that the seesaw lurches Ellie down and bumps her and we both have to scrabble to hold the handle and stay on.

  ‘Play nicely,’ says Ellie crossly, and she tries to shove back so I’ll bump too, but even though she is being Helen with all her might these days, her legs are still clumsy and Ellie-ish and all she can manage is a gentle push that sends my end of the seesaw drifting lazily back to earth. I narrow my eyes at her and think of all the murderer traps I could set. Like, maybe I could dangle the money in a bag from a branch and get Ellie to show off her ballet skills underneath. Or maybe I could put the money in Ellie’s clothes when we go for our swimming lesson so that the murderer will come and surprise her when she tries to get dressed.

  I especially like that idea and I give another pleased shove as I think of Ellie being all shocked and surprised as she comes out of the footbath to find a murderer standing over what should be my clothes.

  ‘God-uh, Ellie,’ shouts Ellie. ‘I nearly fell off that time. What’s wrong with you today? Play nicely!’

  I look back at her, at her Ellie-ish face all outraged and smug gliding up
past me in the air, and suddenly the fire that has been smouldering inside me flames into life. A hard feeling comes over my arms and legs and it’s like they take over and do everything by themselves. When I land back down on the ground, I don’t push off again. Instead I throw all my weight into keeping my end low, so that the seesaw hovers with Ellie up high in the air. She looks down at me, shuffling to try and stay on the seat, her fingers white with gripping the handle in front of her. I let her hang there for a moment, watching the breeze lick the wisps of hair free from the Helen plait. Then, gathering all my strength into a fiery ball, I hurl my end hard at the ground so that the seesaw clanks and judders and up at the far end Ellie shrieks and flails and bounces free, tumbling on to the tarmac at my feet.

  For a second, nothing happens. I stare down at Ellie, and all there is is the breeze and the sound of a car alarm screeching in the next street. Then Ellie moves and starts to wail and a voice is shouting: ‘I’m coming! I’m coming! Don’t worry, girls, I’m almost there.’

  I turn and it’s Mrs C, galumphing across the grass and snorting like a horse.

  ‘I saw it all! I saw it all! Oh, you poor darlings,’ she bellows, running on to the playground. ‘Don’t worry, sweethearts, it wasn’t your fault. It’s this wretched tarmac. This is a prime example of why we’ve got to get this changed. Wet-pour rubber would be so much safer.’

  She plonks herself down next to Ellie, who is sniffling now, and pulls her on to her lap.

  ‘There, my darling. Are you hurt? Are you?’ she says, squeezing Ellie all over like she’s a mango she is thinking of buying at the supermarket. ‘Oh, your poor knee. We’ll get that cleaned up for you. What a horrid thing to happen. Here,’ she says, delving into her bag. ‘Let me see if I’ve got anything that can help make sore knees better. I know.’ She pulls out a packet of Opal Fruits. ‘Here. And I expect your sister would like one too, wouldn’t she, for such a nasty shock?’

  We unwrap our sweets in silence and pop them in our mouths. I suck at the fruity square, feeling its hardness turn to soft mush. Then I look up. Ellie is watching me over Mrs C’s arm. Our eyes meet. And in that moment, we both know.

  13

  The back door swung inwards when she tried to insert her key. She must have left it ajar. She’d have to stop doing that. Anyone could have got in. She glanced round to check that Nick wasn’t watching and was relieved to see he’d already gone back round the side of the house. Evidently her stonewalling throughout the cursory questioning by the police and the ride back from the hospital had finally done the trick. Perhaps now he would leave her alone. Good.

  She stepped inside and the sour smell hit her. Christ! Had it really been this bad? She held her breath and felt pain scissor through the cracks in her ribs. Fuck!

  Daylight spilled over the rubbish bags strewn across the floor, belching plastic wrappers and rotting takeaways. She stared around at the walls smeared with grease, the cobwebs looped down with dust like ghastly Christmas decorations, the clutter spilling off every surface.

  She’d only been away for a few days, but the place felt different, smaller somehow and dead, like a museum of someone else’s life. She could imagine groups of tourists shuffling from room to room in hushed disbelief, the way she’d done during a visit to the Anne Frank House in Amsterdam way back in that brief, anomalous time when she was happy.

  Her eye fell on the yellowed bra slung from the banisters on the blind staircase in the hall. Just as well she’d refused to let Nick come in. For all that he had been kind to her – writing down his phone number on a scrap of paper, pressing it into her coat pocket, telling her she could call him any time – he’d never have coped with this. Kindness had its limits.

  (‘Kind, who said it was kind?’ carped a voice. ‘He wanted something and he felt guilty for causing the accident. That was all it came down to. You stupid, worthless piece of nothing. Why would anyone want to be kind to you?’)

  ‘Shut up,’ she said, smacking the side of her head so that the gash on her temple burned.

  She winced. It was true. He had been kind. She was going to hold on to that. Because it had felt nice. Because it had felt halfway normal. And because it was a long time since she remembered feeling that way. Probably that had been Amsterdam too.

  (‘Oh, you’re a classic case, aren’t you?’ retorted the voice. ‘I’d wager sex is all it comes down to. Rutting. I bet you just want to jump on his cock. Your own sister’s husband! You disgusting piece of shit. I’d like to put you over my knee.’)

  She shook her head to dislodge the voice and walked into the hallway, feeling the dirt and grit crunch between her plimsolls and the bare concrete. God, what a dump! She saw the flat suddenly as a visitor would – as Hellie might have done if she had made it that day – and the chaos of it rushed her, assaulting her with its filth and unlovedness. She felt ashamed and her mind turned tail in the face of it, rooting through its trash heap of associations in search of something that would comfort and obscure. She wondered about having a drink, but her stomach heaved and she had to take deep breaths to calm it. Then her thoughts fled to the telephone and the Samaritans. But the idea felt hollow and she knew the voices would crowd around whatever scenario she concocted today, scoffing at her and the poor fool expressing sympathy at the other end.

  She reached into her jacket pocket and extracted a fag from the packet Nick had left with her. At least she still had this. She sighed as she lit up and took a deep breath. Perhaps she should just dedicate herself to this: keep smoking, fag after fag, until she puffed her way to death. The world’s longest-ever suicide. Who knows? If she got it properly adjudicated, it might even make The Guinness Book of Records.

  She croaked a laugh and caught sight of the letters piled up in drifts around the door. More chaos – this time from the outside, seeping in. She walked over and stared down at them, cradling the elbow of her smoking arm. Bills, blushing red. Circulars. A note from Nick asking her to please call him. Something from the doctor’s surgery – nagging for a smear test no doubt, as if avoiding death was something that everyone by default would want to do. She kicked at the pile of paper with the toe of her plimsoll and a letter promising cheaper car insurance flipped over to reveal a handwritten envelope lying underneath. The address was written in Hellie’s rounded, schoolgirl hand, but that wasn’t what made her freeze where she crouched, her cigarette sprouting ash. She put a hand out to steady herself against the wall and checked the envelope again. No, there was no doubt: it was there in black on brown. Disbelief exploded in her brain, sending squibs of joy, fear and amazement whooshing and squealing through her. The letter was addressed to Helen Sallis.

  14

  Sometimes I think I have made it up. Days come where it feels like the whole thing is a story in my head and there was never any swap and any game and it is really me who has been the Ellie all along.

  Sometimes it lives in the place in my head where the other stories that don’t fit in the world hide – that day skipping along the pavement clutching the bags from the shop in the precinct containing the things in all different colours, Mother in her dressing gown slumped behind the closed curtains on a sunny afternoon, the day they laid a big doll out in a man-sized box and told us it was Father and that we were being very brave even though all we were doing was just standing there. These things feel like broken-up pieces – bits of a puzzle lost behind the sofa, waiting for the day the Hoover will come and suck them up and they’ll be gone.

  Then there are days when nothing can be trusted any more. Words run away and hide and, by the time I have come chasing after, they have wriggled off somewhere else to be another thing. ‘Mother’, ‘Father’, ‘sister’, ‘Akela’, ‘twin’ – nothing does what it means any more. They all just sit in a black lump, whispering together and making up games to trick me. When they tell us to write stories in school, all I can do is sit and look at the lines on the page and think about how words are liars, while next to me Hannah C bends her head down with
her tongue poking out, watching her hand make the words of her boring stories about going to see her father in Milton Keynes and getting the tarmac under the seesaw changed in the park.

  When Miss Inchbald comes to collect our work, she just looks at my blank page and shakes her head.

  ‘Oh dear, Ellie,’ she says. ‘Having another bad day, are we?’

  But I think the blank page is the best I can do. Because it is a lot better than the mess that would come out from inside my head if I really got to work.

  Other times, it all just makes me sad. Everyone seems a long, long way away and it is like I am inside a tunnel looking out through a tiny hole. If I held up my finger and covered the place, the world would be gone and there would be nothing but blackness all around. All I can do is sit on the bench at lunchtime with my arms around myself and my hood up and pulled tight with the string.

  When the tears start, people sometimes come to see if I’m OK. Like, there are these girls in the year above who try to look after me because one of them wants to be a childminder when she grows up. Other days, Katrina the dinner lady comes and sits next to me. Katrina is originally from another country, which means her accent is sour like a Cola bottle, and she says things like ‘the loser weeps, the finder keeps’ when people come to complain about older boys stealing their ball.

  Usually what people ask when they come to sit next to me on the bench is if I am sad about Father. Sometimes I nod and say yes and let them give me sympathy and share their sweets if they have any, even though all there is left of Father now in my head is a dark shape with a blur where the face should be and the stack of Pointless Creations in the little box room. If it’s Katrina, I shake my head and say nothing, and then she tells me about how her parents lost their house and everything they worked for in her country and really we don’t know we’re born.