‘So you’re telling me that you, the doctor, let your sister leave this house wearing next to nothing, and went to your old school and took on the headteacher?’ Mum says, as she stands over me in bed having actually tucked me in. There’s a towel in a plastic basin on the dresser which is Mum’s default go-to bowl when someone needs to throw up. That bowl has seen things. That bowl should be in therapy.
‘We weren’t meant to go in but we did. I thought she was fine. We took her blood sugar in the ambulance, it’s just low. She’s fine.’
‘So you took her on this adventure and didn’t even feed her?’ Mum adds.
‘I will take full responsibility for this,’ Emma says, still sweating slightly at the events of the last hour when she cried on the floor of the school’s new drama studio thinking I’d stroked out. Of all the places to die, Ems. But hell, maybe this is how I’ll get my plaque and it’ll be the perfect way to oust Willett from the place: the teacher who’d literally argued one of her ex-students to death.
‘Mum, go easy on her. Had she not been there I’d probably still be on the floor. We’ve called Mr Gomes, the brain man, and he’ll see us tomorrow. Please don’t worry,’ I say, grabbing onto her hand.
‘Well, you’re not to move. Only for the toilet. We will bring food to you. I don’t want you anywhere near the stairs and a sister is to bathe with you.’
‘Bathe with me? We won’t fit in the bath. Meg’s pubes would float around the bath like seaweed.’
‘As in I want them supervising you. Sitting in there with you so you don’t fall or anything.’
‘Really?’ I ask. ‘It’s got an air of Little Women about it. Please assemble around my bed, tell me your tales and plans of the world, we can quilt while I recover from my fevers.’ I break open my American accent for that. This does not amuse my mother in the way that it should.
‘Please don’t joke, Lucy.’
‘It’s all I have, Mother.’
She comes to arrange the pillows around my back and I catch her eyes examining my scar. It wigs her out, I know. Whereas Meg is fascinated by the grotesque nature of it and Emma cleans it daily, it serves as a reminder to my mum at how easily humans can break. How her daughter broke and they had to put her back together again like Humpty Dumpty. I want to say Mum is stoic but the truth is I don’t know how she’s dealing with any of this. Every time I see her, by my bedside or over a plate of pasta, she’s quiet for once. She shrieks about the cat but she doesn’t break into random sobbing like Dad. She doesn’t engage with me like she normally does, which is to criticise and for our banter to go back and forth like rocketing tennis balls. Instead, she remains like some wall of strength, her eyes willing me to get better, to get through this. This is her Lucy. She gets herself out of scraps, this daughter of mine; this is just another scrap.
‘All that hair gone,’ she says, her eyes tracing my fuzzy scalp.
‘Hair grows,’ I tell her.
‘Did you both at least give that Willett woman what for?’ Mum asks.
‘You raised us to do nothing less, Mum,’ I say. ‘Is it true you called her an amateur?’
‘I called her far worse. It was my greatest pleasure sending all five of my daughters to her over the years. To haunt her with my presence.’ Mum says it so coolly and I secretly admire her for it. ‘There really isn’t anything else wrong here, Emma? You are sure? Do I need to call the GP?’
Emma looks at me, smiling. She’s only a surgeon. ‘Look, I’ll be around all day, I’ll check her every hour. I promise.’
There is still some residual anger and blame there but essentially this was no one’s fault. The only thing I can blame them for is ineptitude as, when we returned, all the sisters emerged from the house and tried to carry me inside in the same way you might see a Neanderthal man drag back a deer to his cave. They’re my bitches but, geez, we need to work on their upper arm strength.
‘I’m doing eggs for lunch to get your energy up.’
‘Can you feed it to me, Marmee? I may not have the strength to lift the spoon, what with my malaise…’ I say, falling back into my accent, putting my hand to my forehead.
‘And I’ve sent Meg and your father to Costco to bulk-buy your favourite things. It’s obvious we need to look after you better. We can’t have you living off chips and Hobnobs any more.’
‘Spoilsport…’
She shakes her head at me, leaving the room. Emma comes to sit down next to me, trying to wipe the sweat from her brow without me looking. Emma doesn’t like to fail, for things to go wrong, and she’s very much like Mum in how she lets all those feelings swim about inside her soul instead of expressing them.
‘I never knew you felt that way about school…’ I tell her. ‘I always thought you were Little Miss Perfect, that it was your thing.’
‘Well, you haven’t seen my last decade, Luce. My marriage to Simon would have disproved that completely. And I think the way we were educated contributed to that. I always thought you weren’t supposed to challenge anything or rock the boat. You keep your head down and get the work done, your feelings don’t matter…’
As she says it, my heart breaks completely. Two of my sisters went through something so awful and painful and I can’t recollect any of it.
‘Was Simon a complete shit then? I’m sorry. I hope you’re OK? Did you see a therapist or anything after it finished?’
‘Almost. You moved in with me. You were the therapy. You used all my good shampoo and you had sex in my utility room with a man dressed as Batman but you loved my girls so joyously. You had all the fight in you when mine had run out.’
My heart sings to hear that I was useful during that time at least.
‘Batman?’
‘He was a school-run dad. His name was Leo.’
‘Were we dating? What was it?’
‘It was something. He’s still a good friend. Maybe you can have a chat with him, it may jog your memory?’
I nod and take her hand. I have Batman questions. Was I dressed up? Was it an event or some kink? Is Leo reasonably good-looking? Like Christian Bale Batman or Michael Keaton? Leo. I don’t remember a Leo.
The moment is interrupted by a galloping on the stairs. This sound is not unfamiliar. Our stairs are like the heartbeat of this house. You can tell who’s walking up them from the pace and gait on the treads. There’s someone rushing to the loo or running away from a fight, someone sitting there taking a phone call thinking none of us can hear. There’s the sound of me sitting in the laundry basket asking Grace to push me down because we’d watched too much of the Winter Olympics at Nagano. I still remember the juddering, the big clash at the bottom when I collided with the banister. I remember blood and a giant fat lip and Mum having to write letters to school to explain. There’s Dad’s slow measured steps and Grace jumping like a gazelle from the third step to the bottom. This is Beth. When she crawls up frantically, using hands and feet. She once admitted to me that she often worries she’s being chased because she watched Halloween way too young and it left permanent scars. She bursts into the room.
‘Hey,’ she says, straightening herself up. She looks slightly manic. ‘How are you? Why am I out of breath? This is awful. I’m so unfit.’ She doubles over and then stands to attention again. ‘How was Willett? What a disaster they made her head. Was she awful?’
‘Reptilian,’ I reply, waiting for her to explain her manic entrance.
‘Soooo… Grace is making you dippy eggs with soldiers and I also did a thing. Don’t hate me for doing the thing but it’s a thing and basically there’s someone downstairs?’
‘Does he have a mullet? Is he wearing Crocs?’ I ask. ‘Igor the physio was supposed to come round today.’
‘Not quite,’ she replies. ‘So, when we were on the sofa the other day and we were stalking people, you told me you wanted to see Josh. Well… news of your accident has got round. Not from me. Just the general grapevine and Josh got in touch with me to ask if you were OK and I explained the situation and, well, he’s downstairs now with a bouquet of supermarket flowers and, quite interestingly, a box of Maltesers, which to me feels a tad cheap…’ she spills out.
I sit there for a moment to take all of Beth’s ramble in. I’m having eggs. But Josh? Is here?
‘You invited him here? You didn’t tell me?’ I tell Beth.
‘I didn’t think you’d be out this morning and I thought we’d have time to prepare, properly. I can send him away?’
Emma nods but I hold a hand to the air. ‘No… he’s here? He came?’
Beth and I did the full Facebook stalk of him the other day. It turns out we weren’t friends on there but it was easy to see from his profile pictures that he married someone when he was about twenty-four and they had two sons together. He’s not a footballer any more, he fixes domestic appliances and has his own van, which Beth was angry about because it had the words ‘specialises in fridge’s’ and the apostrophe catastrophe made her bare teeth. It felt awful seeing him. It felt like this was someone I’d spent nearly every minute of every day with. In my mind, we’re still together. Back then, he had a souped-up little Vauxhall Corsa, which was his pride and joy and we used to sit in deserted car parks in it and have sex, smoke weed and listen to music until my mum would text in full caps telling me to haul my arse home. My seventeen-year-old self adored his bones, gave herself to him completely and adoringly. That was what I thought love was at that age. It was consuming and full of energy and desire and, even after all my sisters told me about how it finished, I can’t quite believe that something so potent just stopped existing.
‘Mum won’t engage with him and she thinks this is an awful idea after this morning, but it’s your call.’
‘How do I look?’ I ask Emma.
‘Pale and bald.’
‘You’re such a cow. But what if I see him and it all comes flooding back? The memories? He is one of the last people I remember, maybe it will trigger something…’ Emma and Beth’s faces drop to hear the desperation in my tone. ‘Maybe if it’s just to say hello, it can’t hurt.’
‘Five minutes maybe?’ Emma suggests.
Beth nods. ‘I’ll get him up then.’
As soon as she leaves the room, I turn to the dresser next to me. ‘Should I wear a hat? How pale am I? Do you have any blusher? Lip balm? Do I look like a fricking zombie?’
‘You look like you. The Lucy I know wouldn’t care,’ she says, putting a hand to my forehead. The footsteps tread heavy on the stairs. Trip, trap, trip, trap. Emma goes to the bedroom door to open it. Oh. Hi. Josh.
In my mind, Josh still wears jeans and Puma sweatshirts and, my days, he had good hair. A group of us dated the lads from the Sheen Lions football team and we’d go to the matches and be indiscreet and cheer every time the boy we were dating had the ball, which didn’t go down well with the coach, who eventually barred us. The one thing Josh had in spades was presence. He made us all laugh by taking the piss out of everyone and everything. He was the group alpha and I was drawn to that. However, the man at the door of my room is not that same cocksure guy I once knew. The hair is now gone, shaved, except he’s got hints of a dodgy goatee, bags under his eyes, and a questionable tattoo that winds its way around his neck. Is that a name? He’s in a zipped-up tracksuit top and there’s a hole in the big toe of one of his socks as Mum has obviously asked him to remove his shoes. There’s a feeling in the pit of my stomach to see him, I want to call them butterflies but they feel more like old moths just fluttering around in there not really knowing where they’re going.
‘Lucy. God…’
His face reads horror, maybe relief that he’s dodged a bullet. I don’t know why. We have matching haircuts. But he has no other words, which is quite unlike him. His voice is deeper, more gravelly. Unfamiliar.
‘Josh… hey…’ Christ. Say something. ‘I’ll take it those are for me?’ I ask, trying to break the silence.
‘Yeah, I didn’t know what to bring, you know?’
My first thoughts are that they’re not tulips and that he’s left the price tag sticker on. He got them at a reduced price. Classy.
‘That’s kind of you. Thanks. Thank you for coming.’
I await all the memories flooding back but nothing. I sigh and slump my shoulders over. That’s a bloody disappointment because I’m going to have to entertain him, aren’t I? I wasn’t sure what I was going to feel when I saw him. Possibly something like a surge of electricity running through me, I’d jump into his arms like we’d never been apart and we’d have sex in my mum’s spare room. Time would not have got in the way of all that love and lust we shared for each other. The Notebook really has a lot to answer for. Instead, he stands there with his hands in his pockets, a shadow of the lad I once knew, all grown up.
‘Yeah, I heard from a mate what happened and then I got in touch with Beth. She said you thought we were still a thing?’ he mutters.
‘Well, it’s the last thing I remember.’
‘Oh, so you’ve got, like, that ammer-ne-sia thing?’
‘Amnesia,’ Emma says, correcting him. He looks at her, and takes a step back, almost intimidated.
‘Yeah. I mean, don’t worry. I know you’re married now with kids so maybe I just thought meeting you might bring something back…’
‘And?’
‘Nothing. Sorry. That’s not a reflection on you. So what happened with the football? You had those trials with Fulham. Did that not happen?’
I get a sense that hits a nerve by the change in his expression. ‘Did my Achilles in, didn’t I? Just wasn’t meant to be. Like you with the acting. These things have a million in one chance of turning out.’
‘I’m still an actress.’
‘Oh. Would I have seen you in stuff? Like on the TV?’
I shake my head.
It used to be all we talked about in his car. How I was going to be his WAG with a respectable sideline in winning BAFTAs while he’d be some England hero who’d score a deciding penalty on the world stage and then have a career in punditry and advertising Paco Rabanne. But I guess that’s what you do when you’re young and your whole life is in front of you. Everything is soaked in hope and youthful dreams.
‘And you fix fridges now?’ I ask, hoping I’m not pissing too much on his present endeavours.
‘Yeah, I’ll leave a card with your mum. Dishwashers, dryers, freezers. Steph is in the beauty biz.’
‘And Steph is your wife?’
He nods, a little worry in his face that the news may break me but I get it. He married someone else and I’m cool with that. Now I’ve seen him in the flesh, I know I haven’t missed out on some great love.
‘Yep. And we have two boys, Hudson and Hunter.’
‘Oh, are they twins?’ Emma asks.
‘Nah.’
He gets out his phone to show me a screensaver of him and the family on holiday. Steph is preened and skinny and the lashes are a statement. She’s not me because I get the sense I’d be drunk on that holiday and unable to stand. This is the moment when I should smile and pour praise on this little foursome outside some restaurant in Spain, looking tanned and happy, the boys in matching outfits to their dad. But unfortunately, along with the picture there is also a text message from someone called Henno.
Still shaggable, mate? Or a complete munter now? Or like a complete veg from the accident? Still would if she’s still fit.
Naturally, Josh thinks my shock comes from the picture so looks horrified as he takes his phone away.
‘Luce, are you OK?’ Emma asks, coming over.
‘We broke up in 2010. I’m sorry if you’re upset,’ Josh adds.
I reach down and take the phone from his hand, turning it to face him. His face drains of colour.
‘Oh shit, that’s awful. Like, he’s not even a good mate. Well, he is but that was a bad joke to make. I didn’t come here for that. I came to see you because Beth said what happened…’
Emma glares at the phone, wondering what she should be doing. What was the joke? If you can call it that. But the fact is I’m not upset. I’m disgusted, silently fuming. I feel old Lucy would have quicker reactions than the ones I do right now. I heard she once threw someone’s phone out of a window. Good for her.
‘My sisters tell me what we had ended in Oceana. Farah found me because she saw you all over some girl in the toilets.’
‘Well, yeah… you don’t remember that? We’d had a proper fight because you were going off to uni.’
‘So you just hooked up with the next girl that came along?’
It feels strange to call him to task on this over a decade after the event but the rage simmers in me. If I was full-strength Lucy then I suspect I’d launch myself at him. I hope I did at the time.
‘This was a pretty long time ago.’ He keeps looking over at Emma, hoping she will intervene, but she stands there, arms folded.
‘Why don’t you tell Lucy what happened at the time?’ Emma says.
‘It was your birthday. We were all celebrating that and A-Level results and all your sisters were there, they’d all come down for the night. Are you sure you don’t remember this?’ he asks tentatively.
I shake my head.
‘It was your eldest sister who went for me first. The other girl involved then went for Beth, they properly had it out and it was all a bit of a do. We got thrown out and I think you and your sisters were barred because you went for a bouncer, and then we never spoke to each other again. No, I lie. I think I did when I came round accusing you of slashing my tyres and then your mum chased me down the road and said if I wanted to see real criminal damage then she’d show me.’
I try to hold in my smile. And suddenly, all these notions of young love just escape like hot air into nothing. Thank the lord I did not try and salvage that or flog that relationship for years. It wasn’t love at all, in any shape or form.
‘So basically, you were a knob.’
‘I was called far worse that night.’
I laugh. ‘Well, you can tell your mate, Henno, that I’m still shaggable, I’m not a vegetable and he should go stick his dick in a bear trap.’ Emma realises what I saw before and her jaw drops in horror. ‘I may now know why we’re not mates a decade later.’
I’d like to say he shows an ounce of repentance or guilt but, instead, his back straightens out. ‘Look, I came here to be nice, to help you access all them lost memories, not to be made to feel guilty for something I did a long time ago.’
‘Tell me, Josh. Did you get run over by a bus?’ I say, completely deadpan.
‘That’s not the point. I did love you, once. You were a top girl.’
‘I still am.’
There’s a moment of silence as he studies my face, knowing it’s time for him to get out. We’re done here. Leave the chocolates though. I’m owed that much. In the bedroom next to ours, I hear hushed whispers through the wall as Beth, Grace and Mum are obviously vying to hear what’s happening. Is that clapping? It’s certainly Beth trying to bargain with Mum to stay in the room and not get stuck in.
‘Well, whatever happens, I do hope you get better, Luce,’ he tells me, smiling. That smile hasn’t changed. It was cheeky and I would have done anything for it. Once. I might wave back. Au revoir, shithead.
He leaves, Emma following him out and I hear his footsteps on the stairs. Trip-trap-trippity-trap and the front door opens and slams shut. Faces appear at the door. I lie back. Memories that I thought were important are just meaningless or a small little corner piece in a much bigger puzzle. I’m exhausted but glad I didn’t end up with him with identi-kids in matching shoes and my name tattooed on his neck.
‘Are you OK, Lucy?’ Grace asks.
‘You’re telling me you all had some group brawl in a nightclub?’ our mother asks. Mum seems to have not been filled in on some of the detail of that night. ‘You told me Meg got that black eye because she fell out of a minicab drunk. She was a mother!’
The sisters’ eyes look in different directions of the room.
‘And we’re not allowed back there?’ I enquire.
‘Oh, we are. Oceana closed and changed into something else. But you jumped on a bouncer’s back after he tried to forcibly remove Meg, threw up on him and broke a table. Apparently, they used to have your face on a poster in the entry booth. But it didn’t matter. Weeks later, you went to university,’ explains Beth.
It was like Josh never existed. He got removed from memory and replaced by men with aubergines for willies, dressed up as Batman.
‘Gracie – go get her eggs on…’ Mum tells her, studying my face. I don’t know what I need at this precise moment but my mother seems to think it’s protein. ‘I never liked him. He had that arrogant man energy, he had some sort of garage street name for me that was funny to him but no one else.’
‘Madame Fee-Cee,’ I suddenly recall.
Beth tries to stifle her laughter.
‘I’m glad the pertinent things have stuck, Lucy. It sounded like faeces. He was basically calling me human waste. He had no respect for this house or you. He was lucky we let him back in,’ Mum says, gesturing to Beth, who wonders how productive her intervention really was.
‘Well, it’s done now. I now know what happened. I know I’m not in love with him. I just have to piece together all those uni years. God, did I really slash his tyres?’ I say.
That feels like my sort of energy but I’m glad, for one night only, the sisters were a part of that. That we were all one big gang, taking on the world, getting thrown out of joints. But a face pops up from behind, having skipped up the stairs.
‘No, I did,’ Emma says, grimacing. ‘I used a scalpel too.’
Beth laughs uncontrollably. My mother might shake her hand.