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Alive. He makes me feel alive again.
But I got home and there was the broken picture and the missing photo and my first thought wasThat will teach me to try to be happyand my stomach cramped in that way fromthen. Sharp, acid pains as if two sides of my gut have been glued together and someone is trying to tear them apart again. I’d had to wait five minutes, doubled over, before I could call Ava down because I could barely breathe, let alone speak.
Above me, in the grey of the night, the ceiling swirls like dangerous eddies in a river. I want it to suck me up and drown me and break me into nothing.
It wasn’t Ava or her friends who smashed the picture of us and took the other of her. After I confronted her and she stormed upstairs, I feverishly searched all the bags the girls had dumped in the kitchen, no doubt while ransacking the cupboards for snacks. There was no glass, no picture frame, nothing. Neither did I find anything in the kitchen bin or the larger ones in the garden. I even forced myself to check the recycling container where I’d thrown the not-Peter Rabbit. Though I knew it had been emptied days ago, I still half-expected to see the sodden, dirty toy looking balefully back up at me. He wasn’t there. Neither was any hastily hidden evidence of broken or stolen pictures.
Drive away with me, drive away, baby, let’s take flight …
Maybe I am going mad.
When the girls were leaving – all tight clothing, nothing hidden there – I asked Jodie if she wanted to stay for tea. She’s the one I know least, and although she’s older I didn’t like the thought of her going back to an empty house and a microwave meal. Also I didn’t want to fight with Ava any more. I thought maybe my edginess was what was making her moody and if I showed willing with her friends she’d calm down. But as it was Jodie scurried out fast, head down, and I felt worse about whatever Ava must have been saying about me.
I made us dinner, my hands on autopilot and my mind numb, but my gaze kept stealing off down the corridor to the empty spaces on the hall table and so we sat in near silence, her still rankled at my accusation, and me in the grip of some paranoid fear. It was, in the end, a relief when Ava took her plate and went to the sitting room to watch something on MTV and I was left to sit staring at my own reflection in the kitchen windows.
One photo missing, one broken. Was one left broken to draw attention to the missing one? Is it a message of some kind? A picture of my little girl taken, and the one of the two of us looking happy, smashed. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out what that means, does it?
Ava. My baby. I must keep her safe.
My breath is hot and sour against the covers as I try to stay the right side of hysteria. I checked all the doors and windows. There was no sign of anyone breaking in. The kitchen door was locked. How could someone have got in and out without leaving a trace?
Maybe itwasAva. The thought is a tiny buoy to cling to in the dark ocean of fear. Maybe the evidence is hidden in her room somewhere. It’s the only place I haven’t been able to search. Maybe it was Ava, I repeat over and over but I’m not convincing myself. I keep seeing her face on the stairs. She was confused. She didn’t know what I was talking about.
My eyes burn, tired, despite my racing mind. They want to close, to rest, to sleep, but I can’t allow it. I dread the dreams. I can’t face Daniel, not tonight.
And I know he’ll come, because I can’t let him go. How can I ever let him go?
You have to learn to live in the present. Focus on every day. On Ava.
I thought it was crazy bullshit the first time a therapist said it to me, and I’ve tried, God knows I’ve tried, but it remains impossible. The past is my shadow, always there, clinging to me.
Maybe I should ring Alison. She’d listen to me.Listen to what?my inner voice sneers.I have an odd feeling? A photo has gone missing? I heard a song on the radio?I know what she’d say. I’ve rung her too many times recently. She probably thinks I’m crazy. It’s only my imagination. Take deep breaths. Let it go. I should cancel dinner with Simon. Maybe then all this will stop. It was stupid to think I could go on a date. I should know better.
I’m withdrawing, a snail pulling back into its shell.
We’re gonna live wild and free, on the road, you and me,
It’s a deal, a done deal, now drive away baby …
Maybe it’s nothing. Maybe I am just going mad. Maybe I broke the photos. Maybe it’s me who’s broken.
14
AVA
My room is dark, except for the glow from my iPad and iPhone screens, like two moons in the night. Facebook is open on my iPad and I stare at it, waiting. I’m always waiting for him and it’s like an itch on the inside of my skin that I can’t reach. I think about him all the time. More when he’s like this – in a hurry or stuck doing something in his boring real life. He said he’d be back in ten minutes but it’s been nearly twenty.
Have I driven him away by ranting about my mum? Was it teenage and childish? The skin on my bottom lip is sore where I’ve been biting it. He didn’tseemto mind. In fact, he was so understanding of how embarrassed I’d felt when she invited Jodie to stay for tea. She hadn’t invited the others so it was totally obvious I’d been talking about how Jodie’s mum is never here. I really like Jodie and I felt like I’d betrayed her somehow – sharing her weird mum’s behaviour with my own. Thankfully, Jodie didn’t mind. Or if she did, she didn’t say anything and seems pretty normal.
I look down at our last WhatsApps on my phone.
So, is it a teacher? Your crush?
I’d answered:Kind of.
She hadn’t asked more. It’s what I like about Jodie. She knows when not to push. If it was the other way round, I’d be nagging her to tell me. I make a mental note in myhow to be a better personendless list to try not to do that any more when someone has a secret. In a lot of ways, it’s made me want to tell her more. I want to tellsomeone. I’m bursting with it.
My WhatsApp has three unanswered messages from Courtney too – even though he’s probably seen I’ve been online. I sent one to him earlier saying my mum was being a bitch about going out while my exams were on and he seemed to believe it.