Lisa Heathfield - I Am Not a Number

‘There are no rules about where we can and can’t go,’ Luke says, looking around before he walks slowly through the long grass. ‘Yet.’

I follow him. We always try to zigzag to the bottom, so there’s no path to give us away. Not because we’ve ever been frightened of being caught before, but just because this is our place and we don’t want anyone to find it. Today, I just run down, needing to get to the bottom fast enough. Luke holds up the broken barbed-wire fence and I crawl underneath, holding it for him until he’s through.

We hold hands as we slip behind the line of trees and walk further down until we’re on the track. I never step on the metal bits, even though it hasn’t been used for years. Instead I walk on the piles of leaves in between.

For the first time since this morning’s assembly I feel as if I can breathe normally. I reach up to yank off the purple band on my arm and stuff it into my bag. Down here, with the branches of trees touching each other above our heads, life feels normal again. There are no soldiers. No strange rules being introduced. No jealous guarding of some national identity. We can say what we want, wear what we want. I start to roll up the waistband of my skirt, so ridiculously high that I know my knickers show.

‘If I like short,’ I say, ‘I’ll have short.’ Luke turns to look at me and he nearly falls over.

‘Ruby.’

‘Yes.’

‘Don’t do that to me.’

‘I’m not doing anything to you,’ I say. ‘I’m doing it for me.’ And I brush past him, swaying my hips as I hook up my bag on my shoulder.

Our hut is there as it always is. Something solid in this madness. Something hidden and secret and us. I think it was something to do with the trains – maybe a signalman’s hut. Luke says it was for a rabbit-shooting man. There was an animal skeleton inside when he first discovered it after he moved to our town and that was all the evidence he needed to create a bogeyman in rabbit skin.

I spin the numbers on our padlock until it opens and am about to push on the door when Luke puts out an arm to stop me.

‘Close your eyes first,’ he says.

‘What for?’

‘You’ll see.’

And so I do and I’m expecting to feel him kissing me, but instead I hear him rustling in his bag.

‘Okay,’ he says and when I open my eyes he’s holding a necklace. It has Ruby spelled out across it in small looping letters. ‘For you.’ And he laughs. ‘In case you hadn’t guessed.’

Everything else is silent around us. ‘It’s beautiful.’ And I really mean it.

‘As are you.’

He puts it around my neck, his arms leaning lightly on my shoulder as he does the clasp.

‘Thank you,’ I say. ‘I love it.’ And I kiss him, taking every drop of the dread and confusion of the day and making it disappear. My hand finds Luke’s Core band and I yank it from him. I don’t want to open my eyes and see it there.

We stumble into our hut and I kick the door closed.

‘Wait,’ he says and he pushes me away.

‘I don’t want to,’ I tell him, but he ducks away and goes to the table by the wall.

‘I want to draw you first. Like that.’

‘In my knickers?’ I raise my eyebrows at him.

‘No. In your skirt like that.’ He’s all serious now, like he gets whenever he’s near his art stuff. He grabs his sketchbook from beside the wall. ‘If they really are going to ban short skirts, I need something to remember it by.’

‘That just sounds like an excuse.’

‘Maybe,’ Luke says and smiles that smile that he knows will make me do anything. ‘Seriously, Rube. You look beautiful. I need to catch that.’

I put my hair back into its ponytail and feel the softness of my undercut, before I hold the necklace Luke gave me and trace my fingers along the letters of my name.

‘You know, I love you more than popcorn,’ I tell him.

‘With sugar or salt?’

‘Both.’

‘Good. Just checking.’ And he gets his sketching pencils from his bag.

‘Are there any biscuits left?’

‘A few, I think.’

They’re in a tin that his grandad used to keep his ration book in. His dad was going to throw it away, but Luke managed to save it and bring it here. It’s on the floor next to a bottle of water. The tin is stiff to open and the smell of it always makes me feel a bit ick, but I’d never tell Luke that.

‘Do you want one?’ I ask him.

‘I’m all right,’ he says, as I knew he would. He doesn’t eat when he’s drawing. Something about him not wanting to confuse the senses. I watch as he lights a couple of candles next to his paper. They shine up on to him and make him look carved from stone.

I take the tin with me and go and lie on the rug on my side. It’s more of an offcut of carpet we found in a skip one day, but it was brand new, so we carried it between us all the way from Sydney Street, next to the park. I stretch out my legs and have to shuffle up a bit so my feet don’t press into the chair. The biscuit is definitely stale.

‘Eugh,’ I say, as I drop the rest of it back into the tin. ‘It’s bendy.’

‘They’re meant to be,’ Luke says, his pencil in his mouth as he straightens his sketchbook. ‘They’re called bendy biscuits.’

He looks up at me and it’s always in this moment that he sees me differently. I’m not just Ruby. I’m sort of more than me. I’m every line, every shadow that makes up the person I am. All my imperfections too. My nose that could be straighter, my eyes that I wish were brown. The strange splodge of a birthmark above my knee that is clear as anything with my skirt like this.

‘Hang on,’ I say and I have to move a bit to get the Core band I threw on the floor. I pull it over my head and it squeezes tight over my eyes, before I leave it around my mouth.

‘You’re not going to be able to breathe,’ Luke says, but I shrug. ‘Or speak.’ I pull the band back up until it rests on my forehead.

‘Good point,’ I say.

‘Ready now?’

‘Yup.’

I’m hoping that me lying here like this might distract him enough from his drawing, but my luck’s not in. I could lie here naked and he’d probably still just study me and scribble away, detached yet somehow more involved all in the same moment. Maybe one day I really will strip off completely. See if he manages to keep his concentration then.

‘Darren says the Core supporters are planning big demonstrations about the Trads wanting to close our borders,’ I say. ‘He won’t let me go to any though, which isn’t fair if your dad takes you to them.’

‘Mm.’

‘I reckon the Trads should introduce a rule that stepdads don’t have to be listened to. I wouldn’t protest against that one.’

Luke is lost in his world of pencil and paper. He has this expression when he draws – frowning but with one eyebrow a bit higher than the other. And he always has one pencil in his hand, one in his mouth. I’ve warned him about lead poisoning, but he says he’s happy to die for his art.

‘How can women ever vote for him?’ I ask, deciding to reach for the bendy biscuit after all. It’s meant to be ginger, so if I ignore the fact that it doesn’t crunch like it should, I can concentrate on the taste instead. ‘I reckon if they could all vote again tomorrow, loads of women would change their mind. Because it’s not like the Trads were completely honest in their campaign, were they?’

‘No one ever is.’

‘They talked about strengthening the family unit, but there was no mention of banning new mums from work.’

Luke doesn’t answer. There’s just the faint scratch of his pencil.

‘Sara chose a green band,’ I say.

‘I know.’

‘How could she? Her parents voted Trad, but she should know better. I thought she was stronger than that.’