Sarah Pinborough - Cross Her Heart

Still, when it comes to the crunch we may be bitchy at times, but we have each other’s backs.

‘Did you knock this off?’ She’s standing by the hall table holding a broken photo – it’s a picture of the two of us from a few years ago. Alton Towers? Marilyn took it, I think. The glass is smashed in the frame.

‘Nope.’ I’d forgotten it was even there.

‘What about the other one?’

‘What other one?’ She looks angry, her soft, doughy face pinched and tight, and I feel suddenly defensive. She never gets angry. Disappointed and hurt and all that shit, but rarely angry. My loyalty of moments ago fades.

‘There was another picture here. Of you. Your first day of Year Eight. It’s gone.’

‘You must have moved it.’ I don’t know what the big deal is. They’re just old photos.

‘I didn’t,’ she snaps.

‘Well it’s nothing to do with me!’ I bite back; it doesn’t take much to light the touchpaper between us.

‘What about your friends? Could they have done it? By accident? Maybe thrown the other one away?’

‘No. They’d have said. They’re not idiots.’

She’s looking down at our younger faces through the broken glass as if this is some major deal.

‘Can I go now?’ I’m surly. All my guilt, the sex, him , bubbling out in moodiness. He tells me she’s too clingy. She should let me be free. He’s right. He understands me. She wants me to stay a little girl.

‘If it was you, tell me. I won’t be angry.’

And there it is. The pleading tone along with the pathetic facial expression that makes all the fine lines on her forehead and around her mouth crease and deepen.

‘For God’s sake!’ I explode, as if she’s accused me of stealing or something. My jaw tightens as rage surges through me. My fingers curl into claws. I feel more animal than human. ‘I’ve already told you! No! Anyway, they’re just stupid old photos, so who cares! Maybe it’s a poltergeist or something!’ I don’t wait for her response but turn and stomp back up the stairs.

‘Oh, and my exams went fine – thank you for asking!’ I send the words down to her with enough venom to make them poison arrows in the heart and leave her there, clinging to the old photo frame. Maybe that’s why I’m so angry. She misses those days. I know she does. And I do too. Life was simpler then, with no tits and no sex and no becoming something new, but I can’t help growing up – I want to grow up – and she needs to let me get on with it.

‘Everything okay?’ Ange asks when I close the bedroom door firmly behind me.

‘Yeah. Exam stuff. You know.’ I force a smile. It’s a lie, and I have a feeling Jodie knows it because as I pass her she flashes me a sympathetic look the others can’t see. Weird mums club. That, or they all heard me shouting.

‘Jodie was telling us how she likes old men.’ Lizzie snorts as I flop on my bed. ‘So gross.’

‘I said older , not old.’

‘I don’t think it’s gross.’ I try to sound nonchalant. ‘A lot of older guys are hot.’

‘I don’t think she means like thirty.’

‘Neither do I. Brad Pitt’s still hot and he’s fifty or something.’

‘I don’t care what you say,’ Jodie lets their mocking disgust wash over her. ‘It’s true. Older men have something.’

‘Experience,’ Lizzie says and giggles. ‘And cash.’

‘Your dad’s pretty hot, Lizzie.’ Jodie leans forward, enjoying the conversation. ‘How old is he? Forty-four? Forty-five?’

‘God, you’re disgusting!’ Lizzie shrieks.

‘He’s in shape though.’ Jodie wiggles an eyebrow. ‘I bet he looks good naked!’

Lizzie looks so appalled we all lose it and soon we’re trying to outgross each other with how Jodie could fuck Lizzie’s dad until our sides ache with the kind of laughter that makes your eyes water and your breath catch. We’re laughing so hard I forget to text Courtney back and I don’t care. I don’t need anyone but these girls. MyBitches . The Fabulous Four.

LISA

This has not been my day.

The thought is so comical I let out a snort of a hysterical giggle. It’s the kind of thing the old me would say. Before all this. Before Daniel. Back when I was funny. The laugh turns to a choked sob and although it’s still hot, I pull my duvet up to my chin like a child scared in the night.

You and me together, stealing into the night.

Is that a deal, is that a deal? We can make it all right.

Round and round in my head all day.

There was no respite at work either. Marilyn was off sick with one of her migraines and didn’t text back when I checked on her, which left me with more unease – something’s going on with her she’s not telling me about – and then Julia had gone out this afternoon for a first client meeting and come back smug and flushed and with cakes for everyone. It made me think of the money again and I missed Marilyn.

I had a meeting with Simon to finalise some job specifications, and found myself saying yes to having dinner with him when Ava’s exams are over, because I was too weak – too weak at the knees – to say no. It was easier to say yes. Less confrontational. That’s what I told myself. It was easier . It’s not true though. I said yes because I wanted to. Because I’m lonely. Because he makes me throb in ways I thought were lost to memory. Because being near him is like peeling back layers of delicate crepe paper wrapped around a treasure you’ve packed away somewhere to keep safe and forgotten about.

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 was That will teach me to try to be happy and my stomach cramped in that way from then . 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.