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  I thought of Peter again. I thought of his dark shape at the end of the boat. I thought of him sinking down into the depths. I thought of the ocean swallowing me, then a huge weight on my leg, unbelievable pain, before a great dark cloud billowed out around me and blinded me to Peter forever.

  Chapter Nine

  Once, when I was ten and mum had been gone for six months without so much as a phone call, I found my dad crying in their bedroom. The blinds were drawn, and it was about two o’clock on a Saturday — one of our “family” days. We never did many family things, except watch re–runs of Frasier and Roseanne and a whole bunch of other shows that my parents used to watch before I was born. Other than that, the Saturday supermarket run and the Sunday walk to the park and back was about all the family things we did.

  There was school, but my parents weren’t much help with that either. Mum went out every evening and dad wasn’t good with numbers, so I usually did my homework alone. That, or I stuffed it down the toilet and read one of mum’s magazines instead, or one of her trashy romance novels. We were a pretty quiet family.

  It got even quieter when mum ran away with her new guy. When I found dad crying, I wasn’t sure how I could cheer him up. We never really played any games together, and seeing as I’d never really liked mum much I never cried like he did. I’d be lying if I said I missed her, but I did miss watching Frasier and Rosanne, and I did miss snatching her magazines.

  I stood in front of him in my nightdress, the silver strands in his hair shining in the half–light. ‘Dads can cry too Ellen,’ he said, breaking the silence. He wiped his tired eyes and looked at me. ‘Don’t be scared.’

  ‘I’m not,’ I said. I took a strand of my tangled hair — I wasn’t good at brushing it myself — and toyed with it while I thought of something to say. I couldn’t think of anything to say about mum to make dad feel better, so I tried to think of things that I liked about mum. I could only think of one thing. ‘Can we get one of mum’s magazines at the shop?’

  His eyes widened, his unshaven mouth hanging open. ‘Yeah,’ he said, his voice hoarse. ‘You always liked reading those after her, didn’t you? Yeah.’ He nodded his head slowly, his eyes wandering about the room. When they wandered back to me again, he got up and took my hand, and we went straight downstairs and out the front door to dad’s van.

  He fitted aerials at the time, so the van had a big Enfield Aerials slogan on the side, and even though my dad didn’t own the company I liked to think he did. In mum’s magazines, the dads always owned their own companies and the mums always worked in offices and the kids always wore clothes from John Lewis or Mamas and Papas, and no child was ever alone because they had brothers and sisters to play with.

  I only had me, and now dad only had me. I didn’t even think it was weird that he was wearing a grubby T–shirt and a pair of boxer shorts outside, or that he was taking me with him by the hand without asking me to brush my hair, wash my face and change out of my nightdress.

  Looking back, I was an incredibly naive child. In mum’s magazines, ten year olds rode their bikes to school and caught the bus to town with their friends for the first time, and went to the park in groups at the weekends. I didn’t do any of those things. I just followed my parents from room to room, and now that mum was gone I was following dad.

  Dad’s eyes were glazed over like pickled onions, and he didn’t even wear a seatbelt or ask me to wear one either. We drove to the big supermarket just a few miles down the road. I remembered feeling so exposed under those halogen lights. I remembered dad tugging me through the store and, as I saw all the other kids in their knitted jumpers and long socks and bobble hats, it dawned on me that I was different. We weren’t a Cosmo family.

  I was a grubby ten year old in my night dress, and the whole world could see it. Dad couldn’t. He just kept on tugging me around the store while the mums looked in disgust and the kids laughed at me.

  First, we went to get his favourite pack of lager. ‘We can both have treats for ourselves, eh? You can have your magazines and I’ll have my drink.’ Dad smiled, his tired face awfully red and sagging in the clear light of the shop. My heart thudded. This wasn’t right. I looked around at all the other kids with their girly picture books and cartoons on their T–shirts and my heart ached so, so much and I didn’t know why.

  Then dad was pulling me around to the magazine aisle. ‘Go on then,’ he said. ‘Pick whatever you want.’

  I’d never chosen anything from the magazine aisle before. I glanced at all the kiddy–looking ones with cartoons and free gifts on the front, to the older ones with girls on the front, then over to the ones with horses and puppies and kittens all over them. My heart ached even harder. There was a big princess sticker book, and even as I stared at its sparkling cover I could just imagine peeling each sticker off and decorating my mirror with them, or one of my notebooks.

  I looked up at dad’s face, and he had seen my longing glances at the children’s magazines. He picked up Cosmo and Marie–Claire and Red, then Heat and OK! And a whole bunch of others, tucking them all under his hairy armpit with the dark crescents of sweat beneath.

  ‘You wanted your mum’s magazines,’ said dad. ‘You’re too old for all that lot. You were always more like your mum, weren’t you, love? You always wanted to be like your mummy.’

  ‘Can’t I just have some of those as well and less of these ones?’ I asked, pointing to the girly mags with stickers and lip–glosses and girls on the front. I hugged myself around the waist, suddenly ashamed of my nightdress, wondering what the hell me and dad were doing there, showing ourselves up.

  ‘No, no,’ he said. ‘We’ll pay for these and get out. We’re getting funny looks.’

  The paying queue was the worst part. Two little girls were in fits of laughter, looking at my clumped–up hair and my bare legs with their downy hairs. I’d never felt so dirty in all my life. As we walked from the shop, stones and bits of plastic got stuck in my heels while everyone watched and stared and clucked their tongues. I knew then that dad was going crazy.

  It wasn’t until we got home that I found out just how crazy. He opened one of his cans in the kitchen and took a good long swig, before wiping his stubbly mouth and looking at me. I was clutching my magazines, my knees shaking, while dad looked me over.

  ‘Do you miss your mum?’ he asked, holding the can up by his lips.

  I knew he wanted me to say yes, but I just couldn’t. I tried to think of the things I missed about her. ‘I miss smelling that perfume she wears, and her lipstick.’ I didn’t know what else to say. When I thought of mum, that was all that came to mind. She had cigarette breath sometimes, but I never liked that.

  ‘Yeah,’ said dad. ‘I miss those things too.’ He frowned, staring down into the black hole of his open can. ‘Would you like to try some of mummy’s clothes and make–up on? Would you like that?’

  I thought of those girls with the lip–gloss on the front of the girly magazines and my heart leapt. ‘Yes!’ I said. I might not be able to look like all the other girls, but that didn’t matter. I was going to dress up like a real woman. How many kids got to do that?

  I was so excited that when I went straight upstairs and rifled through the clothes mum left behind, I didn’t find it strange that dad followed me. I didn’t see anything weird about him getting our video camera out and positioning it on the dressing table, and even while I changed out of my nightdress and stood there in my knickers, I didn’t think anything was strange about it at all.

  But you don’t when you’re a kid. Everything is normal. You take things at face value, even when the thoughts behind the ‘face’ are more sinister than you could ever understand.

  I chose a long black dress with sleeves and found a pot of mum’s blue eye shadow, which she never used because she said it look too tacky. She used to call it “Midnight Harlot”.

  I blew kisses at the camera and twirled around in the dress. I even put mum’s voice on and told dad off, wagging my fi
nger back and forth. I didn’t think it was strange that he was laughing and crying at the same time.

  It didn’t feel weird when he left the camera and went to the bed to watch me playing, and nothing seemed weird when he pulled me on his lap and looked at me for what seemed like hours and hours and hours.

  Nothing seemed weird when his hand moved up my leg and the other pulled down my sleeve.

  Nothing seemed weird when he started crying harder, his hands crawling all over me like ants, while the camera was still watching. Dad wasn’t laughing anymore.

  And neither was I.

  Chapter Ten

  When the rapping came at my door, I scrunched my arms and legs up so tight that he couldn’t prize me open. Instead he put his arms around me and cried.

  I hated it when dad cried. It seemed so unnatural. None of the husbands in Comso or Marie Claire did things like crying, although I supposed my dad wasn’t in those types of articles. He was a different species of his own.

  I’d read once about a girl who had been ‘groomed’, they called it, by her own uncle. I was about twelve at the time, and I remembered feeling really sorry for the girl because she had been so naive to think that uncles weren’t allowed to do that stuff to their nieces, when I knew that they could. By thirteen, I’d read enough articles to know I was the naive one. I also learned that every time it felt so horribly, horribly shameful and wrong, there was a very good reason behind it — because it was all those things.

  But then, what could I do? What does a girl do when all she has is her father, and nobody else to take care of her? I just did what the girls in the magazines did. I followed their advice with men — take control, treat ‘em mean, all of that. And I thought it was going to pay off someday.

  Wasn’t that every girl’s trouble? How to figure out how to get everything she wants?

  All I wanted was for dad to get the hell out of my room and leave me alone to think about Peter. I was searching for him on the cliff top, searching for his shadow to come out and walk where we used to walk together, but nothing came.

  ‘Get out now dad,’ I said, my voice hoarse. ‘That’s enough now.’

  ‘You’re a bitch,’ he said, crying against my shoulder. ‘One day you’ll miss me when I’m gone. And what will you do, eh? What will you do without your dad?’

  ‘Find a replacement,’ I said. ‘Like mum did.’

  His face went cold against the skin of my shoulder. ‘Don’t say that. You’re my little flower, you know that.’

  ‘I don’t care,’ I said, shoving him by the shoulders. My knee throbbed, making me grit my teeth. ‘You’re hurting me.’

  ‘You’re hurting me,’ he hissed, his hand grasping for my face. When he got a hold of me he jerked my head to one side and stared and stared for ages, just breathing, his eyes searching mine. Eventually he let go and went back to his own room.

  At about three in the morning I woke and saw Peter Denton standing over me.

  I yelped and struggled up, scrambling back against the headboard, kicking so hard my knee clicked and sent a fierce pain soaring up my leg. I cried out, but I was crying to thin air for, when I looked around, I couldn’t see Peter anymore.

  My cries turned to sighs and panted breaths, my palms sweating, but as minutes passed I calmed myself down enough to think about what I had just seen. A dark room, my wardrobe beyond, moonlight filtering through the curtains and, in front of me, the silhouette of Peter watching me sleep.

  Shaking, I pulled the covers up to my neck, knowing I would never get back to sleep that night. That’s when my body started getting colder, so cold I couldn’t feel my hands, or even my painful knee anymore.

  I wanted to call out for dad but I just couldn’t, because my mouth felt frozen too, the words a million miles from my mouth. I didn’t know something was happening until my blood rippled under my skin and something started to move inside me. My limbs stiffened and un–stiffened, and my hand grasped the blanket of its own accord, my entire body flexing, and there was nothing I could do.

  I screamed and screamed but no sound came out. My throat was seizing up.

  My vision blurred; I became delirious. An image of Dennis floated to the surface of my mind. His shaven head and big, sad brown eyes staring ahead. My legs swung out of bed of their own accord, my knee squealing, yet feeling nothing.

  I was trapped in my own body, my breaths muffled behind someone else’s skin, and even if I screamed my mouth wouldn’t move because it wasn’t mine anymore, it was someone else’s.

  In my delirium I knew it had to be Peter. I was inside Peter.

  No, no, that couldn’t be it. It was still my room; still my legs moving in their nightdress, still my screaming, painful knee. I wasn’t inside Peter, and I wasn’t dreaming.

  Peter was inside me.

  We moved through my bedroom, stopping and starting, shuffling, sometimes struggling against my own willpower, but it was no good fighting. Peter was too strong for me. My fingers curled up and stiffened as I screamed inside, terrified, and when I saw my face float by the mirror it was just one great big smudge of white, anonymous now, lost to myself.

  The bedroom door swung open and the landing waited before me, shrouded in darkness. Even the silence seemed absent, for there were no sounds to compare it with; I couldn’t even hear the sounds of my own breath.

  I strained and cried but it didn’t work; I wasn’t me anymore. My hand reached out and touched the banister, and all the while I was thinking Please Peter please Peter please Peter please Peter please don’t, but if he could hear me he wasn’t listening.

  It all happened so fast that I stopped breathing, as if Peter had his hands around my throat. How, I couldn’t tell; his hands were now my hands, and when I glanced down — it was all I could do— my hands were a blur just like my face; warped and unrecognisable.

  When I looked up again I saw the stairs coming toward me, rapidly fast. I was flung deep down into the dark stairwell as if by a great invisible shove.

  As I fell, my body flooded with warmth and I could feel again, but it was too late, it was too late.

  The stairs were coming for my face, and I was crying, I was crying,

  I was crying.

  And Peter was floating to the bottom of the ocean, and the red cloud was all around me, and my leg stung so hard.

  And Peter was falling away from me, and—

  It all just happened so fast.

  I saw dad’s face above me, crying, and then he disappeared again.

  I saw Peter’s face above me, just watching, and then he disappeared again.

  I woke up and I saw Melanie’s face watching me at my bedside. I closed my eyes.

  I opened them. Melanie was still there.

  ‘Hello Ellen,’ she said, looking down at me beneath a halo of red hair.

  I remembered what had happened to me, and I knew she’d want to know too. But I just didn’t have the energy to explain. I was sore and numb and heavy, a whole burden on my shoulders, and I couldn’t take the weight of another. I just knew that I did not want Melanie to be here, because Melanie, like every counsellor, meant bad news.

  ‘Hello,’ I croaked. I looked around and saw my bedroom, not the hospital like I feared. I should have known that, seeing as hospitals weren’t dad’s style. It was habit he’d picked up from after mum left, never taking me to doctors, or police, or teachers, or anyone who might pinch and probe and ask a lot of questions.

  Not until Dennis, anyway, but that was another story. And it was never dad’s idea.

  ‘How are you feeling?’ she asked.

  ‘I don’t know. Hurting,’ I said. ‘How long have I...You know, how long?’

  ‘Oh, you’ve been checked over by the doctor — I insisted it. You were awake long enough for the doctor to perform a couple of simple tests, and he thinks you’re going to be fine,’ said Melanie, patting me on the wrist.

  ‘Oh,’ I said. ‘What are you doing here?’

  ‘Your father called
me in a panic. I expect he was in shock, because if he had have been thinking clearly he would have called an ambulance himself. Thankfully, you woke up.’

  ‘So I haven’t been to hospital?’

  ‘No, there was no need. You woke up bruised and a bit delirious, according to your dad. He took you back to your bedroom and called me this morning, worried. I suggested the doctor. You clearly don’t remember any of it!’ She laughed, her big teeth impossibly white.

  ‘No, I don’t,’ I admitted, feeling the back of my head. It was bruised, but I would live. ‘Why did dad want you to come?’

  She smiled the fake smile, the one where her eyes were dead even though her mouth was grinning. ‘Dad said it might be nice if somebody came to talk to you. Don’t worry, we don’t have to talk about it right this second. I thought I’d see how you are first.’

  ‘Why do we have to talk about it at all?’

  Her eyes darkened. She folded one leg over the over and picked up the coffee mug resting on my bedside table. ‘Well, we need to know why you ended up falling down the stairs at three in the morning,’ she said, taking a deep sip.

  Well officer, I mean ma’am, my old best friend, yes the dead one, came into my room and possessed me, then he flung my body down the stairs. If truth be told I quite liked it, because at least he thought of me as much as I thought of him, even if he wanted to hurt me.

  I was shivering all over and I felt so incredibly nauseas that I thought I might vomit on Melanie’s ugly brown suit. Somehow I still preferred that to really thinking about what had happened, let alone talking about it. It was better to react than to think, sometimes, because it was easier. Especially when you thought your dead boyfriend might have tried to kill you.

  Peter’s face came to mind and suddenly I just felt like crying.

  I gripped the pillow tight and forced myself to remain calm. The last thing I wanted to do was tell Melanie what had really happened, because she’d put it down to some kind of delusional suicide attempt and it just wasn’t true. Then she’d start probing and she’d bring up Peter’s death and then she’d bring up Dennis, and I just couldn’t handle that right now. I just wanted it all to stop.