Beside Myself Read online

But after a while, I get bored of taking sympathy because of Father, so instead, when someone comes to ask me what’s wrong, I do another story. Like, sometimes I’m sad because my uncle lost his job or another day it’s because my baby brother had to go into hospital. Telling these stories makes me feel better, but it also makes me sad in another way because I get jealous of the me inside the new problem and I want it to be my problem too. I see me standing at the incubator of the baby brother, with Mother and Akela’s hands on my shoulders giving me loving support, and I think how busy and important I would be if I had to stand by the incubator all the time, mopping the baby brother’s brow. Or I imagine me sitting up at the grown-ups’ dinner table giving advice to my uncle on how to get a new job and everyone being impressed.

  Sometimes, the stories get so exciting that they wriggle out of control and I have to watch out, like when Gemma the going-to-be-child-minder screws up her eyes and says they don’t put old babies in incubators, only new ones that have just got born. That made me have to swallow hard, but I nodded and said how normally that was true but my baby brother’s illness was so serious that the doctors were at their wits’ end and were trying everything they could think of. That made all the older girls look wise and nod, like they heard about this sort of thing all the time, and a pleased feeling sprung up in my stomach and grew like a creeper to wrap around my heart.

  When the outside gets too much, I go in and slink up the corridor to Mrs Courtney’s room that says ‘Welfare’ on the door. I put my hand to my head and screw up my eyes and say how I am feeling dizzy and there is a pain going round inside my skull. And when I say it, often the headache comes to back me up and then I lie on the bed that smells of swimming pools and medicines and stare up at the orange light and the nits poster at the end of the bed. It has a giant nit on it that looks like a woodlouse with fangs. The nit has an evil glint in its eyes and I stare up at it from the bed and think how much I would like it to come and eat Ellie up. Because even if the story is all made-up-in-my-head it would make me feel much better not to have to see her gallivanting around with Jessica and Charlotte and that lot while I sit on my own on the bench.

  But sometimes I look at Ellie and I can see the truth. Her eyes flinch and her mouth twists like she is tugging it from inside to stop it trying to talk. She turns her head away and puts her nose in the air like she is too good for the likes of me but I know that deep down there is a worm of worry wriggling through her insides. And then I know that I didn’t make it up, that the story is real because it is in her head too. There is a copy of it lodged in there and it makes no difference how good she tries to be or how much she dances around with my name and the inside bit from behind the name that she has stolen and won’t let me have back: what happened will always be there, like a rock from the olden days slammed into the grass. She will always be Ellie, trying to be me.

  Those are the times that the calm thoughts come and it feels like the sea is lapping on a beach and a hand is steady and warm on my back and someone is laughing a river of notes that flows upwards on the breeze. For those little moments, it is peaceful.

  Then the clouds roll in and everything is lost again in the fog.

  15

  She sat up most of the night, staring at the envelope lying on the scarred living-room table. She reached for it over and over, but always, just as her finger found the gap at the corner of the flap, she would drop it again. She wasn’t ready, she felt. She wasn’t prepared. Her mind was too cluttered, too disordered for whatever the letter might contain. She needed to get command of herself, to find some equilibrium before she felt equal to reading it. She had to be her best self and she wasn’t there right now. Just a little longer, just a moment more. A cup of tea (she went to the kitchen). No tea. Hot water then. Next, a cigarette. Perhaps if she went for a walk? The hours ran on, but the readiness never came. It was always hovering there, on the other side of the next minute, just out of reach.

  When the voices woke her up first thing and she saw the brightness of the spring day glimmering through the dirty living-room window, she knew what she had to do. Of course: she would clean. She would get the flat straight and chuck out all the crap. And then, with her mind finally quiet and calmness as far as the eye could see, she would sit down in her neat, orderly domain and read the letter. Then she would have the mental space to take it all in.

  The voices were in agreement. (‘Washing day!’ they’d crooned in the manner of Mr Humphries in Are You Being Served? ‘Time to rise and shine!’)

  Oh yes! Today was the day. She was up from the chair, she was out, she was buzzing. Seething with energy, she donned a pair of rubber gloves from under the sink and took all the rubbish bags out to the bin. After that, she whisked through the living room, sweeping everything into a black sack and carrying armloads of junk outside. When the wheelie bin was full, she used the one from upstairs. And when that was gaping, she dumped the rubbish in the spaces between – anywhere, so long as it was out and away. She shifted all the furniture in the bedroom – oblivious to the thumping on the walls from the family with the Rottweiler next door – and snatched up the shards and scraps and dustballs underneath. In the kitchen, she threw wide the doors of the cupboards and turfed out the mouldering contents: the paints and brushes stuffed in among the rusting tins and packets of dried-up pulses, supergrains and desiccated leaves from the Chinese supermarket she’d bought on one of her sprees. And in the bathroom she sluiced water around, creating white streaks and then white expanses in the layer of grime coating every surface until it was all gone and there were only the essentials left, along with the envelope tucked down the side of the armchair in the living room for safekeeping.

  Now she was off out to the shops. The ESA money would have come in on Wednesday and with that she was going to buy cleaning products to get the place new and shining, ready for a fresh start. And once that was done, she would sit down in the armchair facing the window. And then, finally, in her clean home, she knew she’d feel ready – feel fit – to read Hellie’s words.

  She cackled as she crossed the road, every nerve zinging. Fuck, it felt good to be alive! It felt good to be living in this way, to have a purpose, to have a plan. She pitied the poor sods lying asleep now behind their curtained windows, drained and dulled by the grind of the working week. What sort of life was that when you could be up and out at seven in the morning to see the world in all its fresh colours? To taste possibility on the tip of your tongue? To laugh? Ha! (‘Ha!’ the voices chorused. ‘Hoo-hoo!’)

  The cash machine was on the corner by the Seven Eleven, next to a newspaper stand full of copies of the South London Press. Its front page was taken up with a computer-generated image of the controversial building proposed for central London: the Hairpin, so-called because of its pair of sloping towers that seemed to meet in the middle. She stood for a moment, staring at it. There was something alarming about the way the two towers twisted together, as though locked in a nightmare embrace. She glanced away towards the heart of the city, where the dagger point of the Shard sliced its way above the other buildings, and tried to imagine the cruel slant of the Hairpin there. The image made her shudder.

  (‘Oh go soak your head,’ grumbled a voice.)

  She fumbled her cash card out of her pocket and plugged in her pin. The screen took her through the motions. Fifty pounds should do it, she thought – not that she had any idea how much cleaning products cost these days. Well, fuck it, if it ended up being too much, she could always treat herself to breakfast out. She hadn’t done that in, like, never. A coffee and a bacon roll – her stomach growled at the thought. Really, she deserved it after all she’d been through and for what she was doing now – turning a corner, rebuilding her life. Wasn’t that what they’d always been on about at the unit? Looking after yourself? Cutting yourself some slack. Putting yourself first. Well, that could be her slack. That could be her mark of putting herself first: four pounds for a slap-up breakfast in the caff up the road and not a sip
of vodka in sight (well, maybe she’d pick up a bottle for later on, for Ron, but definitely not until the cleaning was done and dusted). Ha! Fifty pounds, yes. That would still leave her with half the money to see out the rest of the week. And it was already Saturday. She was on a roll.

  The machine whirred and beeped and then the screen flashed up the message: ‘Insufficient Funds’. She rolled her eyes and retrieved her card from the slot. Typical. They clearly hadn’t got round to topping it up yet after everyone had been on the lash on Friday night. What a shitter. She had stuff to be doing. She had an itinerary. This was holding her up. She looked around. Should she wait here until they came with the van? The road was empty, but for a pensioner wheeling her trolley across at the lights. It could be hours.

  (‘Rattlesnakes,’ griped a voice. ‘Big hairy baboons.’)

  Sod it. She walked on up the street, eyes raking the frontages for the familiar blue and red Link sign. There was one – set into the wall of the HSBC. She darted across the road, causing a car to slam on its brakes, and stuffed her card into the slot. She followed the sequence of screens and waited impatiently, hand held out to receive the cash. The message flashed up: ‘Insufficient Funds’.

  For fuck’s sake! People must have been out on one hell of a bender here last night. What was it? The end of the month? Pay-day? A memory of Friday-night euphoria flared in her mind. Everyone leaving the studio early and heading down the Cock and Hen. Vodka tonic with a slice of lime. That feeling of work done and rest earned and the weekend stretching away in front of you like an eternity. She tamped the sensation down and pressed on up the road.

  It was the same story at the next machine and the next. She lost track of the time she spent wandering, jamming her card into one cash point after another, until at last she stood, hands gripping the plastic casing of a dispenser, forehead pressed against the rim, staring at the screen. Behind her, the road was starting to get busy. Someone coughed.

  ‘It’s telling you you haven’t got any money,’ said a matter-of-fact voice.

  She turned round, bristling, and the man stepped back.

  ‘It’s just, you know, you were taking rather a long time,’ he said, gesturing at the queue forming behind him.

  ‘What do you mean, it’s telling me I haven’t got any money?’ she said. ‘It’s the fucking machine!’

  He coughed again. ‘Well, if that’s the case,’ he said, ‘how is it the woman before you got it to work?’

  She followed his gaze up the street to where a fair-haired woman was paying for a bag of groceries from a market stall with a crisp ten-pound note.

  Smudge opened her mouth. ‘But…’ she said. ‘But… But the money’s there! It went in on Wednesday.’

  The man shrugged. ‘Sounds like you’ll have to take that one up with the bank. Excuse me.’

  And he pushed past her and inserted his card. The people in the queue behind him shifted awkwardly, not meeting her eye. One of them gawped at the gashed tattoo on her forehead, still oozing through the steri-strips. She stepped away from them and stood in a doorway, her mind a blur. The money should have been there on Wednesday. It went in every Wednesday – £100.15 exactly. There were times when she’d been driven to going into the bank and taking out the fifteen pee over the counter. So why wasn’t it there?

  Her thoughts were interrupted by the door behind her opening and a woman with shopping bustling past. Glancing back, she saw it was the door to the bank in which the cash machine was set. Her bank.

  Smudge stumbled in and stood twitching in the queue, feeling the need for a smoke beginning to nibble at her nerves. She drummed her fingers on the plastic surface of the barrier that separated the queue from the space in front of the counters. There was no other sound in the room except for the hum of voices and rustling paper.

  When the cashier beckoned her forward, she took a deep breath. She closed her eyes and tried to breathe steadily, summoning the image of the sun glinting on shingle to calm herself as they’d talked about doing during sessions at the community centre, but it eluded her, slipping out of her grasp. She walked to the counter, swallowing hard.

  ‘Er,’ she said. ‘Well, it’s my account. There was supposed to be some money going in on Wednesday. Only it’s not there and I need to know where it is. Please.’

  The girl – ‘Shannon’ according to her name badge – nodded, making her dyed-blonde ponytail jiggle.

  ‘Just pop your card into the machine there for me,’ she said.

  Shannon tapped at her keyboard and stared at the screen above. She was young – around twenty – with heavy make-up and hooped earrings that swung and glittered in the light.

  ‘And what was the money you were expecting?’ she said.

  Smudge leant forward towards the holes punched in the shatter-proof screen, conscious of the queue behind her in the hushed room. ‘It was my ESA money,’ she said. ‘A hundred pounds and fifteen pence.’

  The girl frowned. ‘Your—?’

  ‘ESA money,’ she said again. ‘Employment Support Allowance… you know.’

  The girl’s eyes narrowed. ‘Oh right. Well, there’s nothing here. Nothing’s come in.’

  (‘Grace and favour!’ a voice piped up.)

  Smudge gripped the counter to hold the world steady.

  ‘Well,’ she said, ‘could you find out what’s happened to it? Please?’

  The girl clacked a couple of keys and looked at the screen.

  ‘Just says the direct debit’s been stopped,’ she says.

  (‘Grace and favour!’ the voice repeated.)

  Smudge swallowed hard against the rush of feeling that threatened to surge up her throat and spill out across the counter there and then.

  ‘Why?’ she croaked.

  The girl shrugged. ‘Doesn’t say. You’ll have to take it up with them.’

  (‘GRACE AND FAVOUR!’ roared the voice, furious now, before subsiding into an ominous muttering.)

  Smudge raked her fingers through her hair in alarm. The girl stared at her for a moment. Recognition bloomed in her eyes and Smudge remembered too late that she had forgotten to put on the scarf in her hurry to get out of the flat and embrace the breezy day.

  ‘Are you—?’ the girl began.

  ‘No! I’m not,’ Smudge shouted. The people at the other counters turned to look, the girl shrank back, and a man in a jacket and tie popped his head round the corner behind her.

  ‘Everything OK?’ he said.

  The girl eyed Smudge and nodded. ‘It’s all right,’ she said. ‘Customer’s just had some bad news.’

  ‘Mmn,’ said the man, glancing at Smudge’s tattoo and the stains on her anorak, before disappearing again.

  ‘Is there anything else I can do for you today?’ said the girl, her eyes straying hopefully to the next woman in the queue.

  ‘No,’ said Smudge. ‘I mean, yes. I mean, wait – there must be something!’

  The girl looked back at her. ‘Like what?’

  (‘Poke ’em in the eye! Kick ’em up the arse! Get ’em in a half nelson!’)

  Smudge clenched her fists with the effort to think.

  ‘Well…’ She stared around the room, her mind switching back and forth between different tracks like points gone berserk on a railway line. ‘I mean, can’t you call them up or something? I don’t have a mobile, you see and—’

  (‘Work ’em! Aim for the legs!’ ‘Call that an aubergine?’)

  The girl shook her head. ‘Office won’t be open until Monday,’ she said. ‘Anyway, I can’t discuss your benefits with a third party. It’s confidential. I wouldn’t be insured.’

  (‘Down it! Down it! Down it!’)

  ‘But…’ said Smudge, spitting now in her anxiety, spattering the glass with her fear. ‘But what am I going to do now? I haven’t got any money. Like, literally no money. And I was in the middle of, like, a project. And I haven’t had anything to eat since yesterday and—’

  The enormity of it rained down on her: a galaxy
imploding and raining molten matter down upon her head.

  (‘Please sir, can I have some more?’ whined a voice.)

  ‘Shut up!’ yelled Smudge, hitting the side of her head, sending pain sizzling through the gash and into her brain.

  The girl rolled her eyes. ‘Is there anything else I can do for you today?’

  Smudge gripped the counter and stared at the streaked image of the girl. ‘So what am I supposed to do now?’

  Behind her, someone muttered something. She spun round and faced the queue.

  ‘What?’ she said. ‘What was that?’

  They stood there in their overcoats and jackets – all durable fabric and value for money – and glowered at her. The man at the front coughed.

  ‘I said, I think you should get a job,’ he said, and jutted his chin forward.

  She gaped at him.

  ‘A job?’ she said. ‘A job? But I’m ill! I need that money! Do you think I’d be here—’

  A fat woman in an anorak piped up. ‘Well, you were well enough to find your way here and have an argument, now weren’t you? You had money enough to get whatever that thing on your face is done.’ She sniffed. ‘Honestly, some people don’t know they’re born.’

  Smudge stared at them and saw they were a million miles away. Between their world and hers was a surging gulf of silence across which no meaning could travel without being wrecked. There was no talking to them.

  Without a word, she turned and blundered out through the wooden doors into the morning. She stumbled up the street, oblivious to where she was going, her mind churning. Shock tingled along her arms and legs. Again and again, like goldfish swimming round and round a bowl, her thoughts returned to the cleaning and the letter and how she hadn’t eaten and how she needed to get some money out and how there wasn’t any money to be had. The faces of the people in the bank loomed at her from shop fronts and post-boxes: closed and shuttered.

  She walked on. Schools, community centres, fences, ranks of flats, townhouses and mansion blocks, which eyed her stonily as she walked past. Life organised, laid out, neatly arranged. Life insurance and pensions and saving for a rainy day. Don’t spend it all at once and mind how you go. A stitch in time is worth the candle. A bird in the hand is worth nine. When the road split and the pavement gave out, she walked on the tarmac. Up on to the flyover where the wind whipped and the trees nodded far beneath her feet. Soon the cars were rushing towards her in a stream and she weaved between them, watching the white line appear and disappear like stitching fixing the tarmac to the ground. Horns blared but she ignored them, waving her arms at the blurred faces scudding by to show she didn’t care. A lorry rumbled past and, when it was gone, she looked through the swirling air to the far side. And there, fixed to the concrete, she saw it: Hellie’s picture, the one from the newspaper, beneath a sign that read ‘In our thoughts and prayers’. There were bunches of flowers tied to the barrier, trembling in the rush of wind from the cars, and from this angle, as the paper flapped, Hellie seemed to be winking, sending out a message just for her. She stood and stared at the face that was nearly hers, trying to read it as it bucked and swayed. She stood there as the cars streaked by, grazing the air with reds and blues and greens. She stood there until the clouds thickened and drops of rain began to fall and the sound of the horns curdled into a siren’s wail.