About Last Night - Chapter 17
"It wouldn’t be the first time I’d hitched a ride to nowhere."
Catch-up on Chapter 1, Chapter 2, Chapter 3, Chapter 4, Chapter 5, Chapter 6, Chapter 7, Chapter 8, Chapter 9, Chapter 10, Chapter 11, Chapter 12, Chapters 13 and 14, Chapter 15, and Chapter 16.
March, 1999
A woman I didn’t know chewed loudly on a cocktail sausage. The sitting room was full of people I barely knew and half-eaten Pyrex casseroles. They spoke in hushed tones.
‘Mathilda was a lovely woman.’
‘A saint.’
‘One of a kind.’
I could barely make out their faces, the contours of the world blurred ever since I found Ma in her bed, tucked under her quilt. She looked so beautiful, so peaceful, under the shards of full moon light piercing through the window, but her skin was cold to the touch. I shook her a few times, screaming at her to get up but she didn’t move.
I felt the tears threatening, but I couldn’t let myself cry. I didn’t deserve to cry. I killed her, I knew it, despite what the doctor said. That she had a weak heart. That she had this condition for years and she had hidden it from me, but I didn’t believe him. She wouldn’t be dead right if it wasn’t for me and my stupidity.
‘What’s going to happen to her now?’ I heard a whisper.
‘She’s eighteen,’ said somebody else. ‘She can look after herself.’
‘How is she going to pay her bills?’ said a husky voice.
‘I guess she will have to get a job,’ said another. ‘I think that they are looking for cashiers at Asda.’
I didn’t know any of these voices, and yet they seemed to have all my future planned.
‘Helena, you can come and live with us if you want,’ said someone whose voice I recognised as Amy’s mother. Next to her, the familiar white shirt, the navy blue skirt of our school uniform and the flaming red hair.
‘You can stay for as long as you want. Gives you a chance you figure things out,’ Amy’s mum continued.
That would be the last thing I would do. I’ve already killed Ma, I didn’t want any more victims. ‘Thank you, Mrs. Young,’ I said. ‘But I’m okay.’
Amy sat down next to me and offered me a glass of water. I took it from her hand and drank in small, measured gulps. She watched me with big eyes, as if expecting me to change my mind and pour it on the floor, like I did with the pack of nuts she pushed in front of me at school last week. I didn’t just open the pack and let the nuts drop one by one onto the parquet, I also stamped on them too until they turned to dust under my feet.
I wiped my mouth with my sleeve and hand her back the glass.
‘Are you okay?’ she said.
‘No,’ I said, speaking to her for the first time in months. I’d done my best to avoid Amy since my suicide attempt. By the time I went back to school, the rumour mill was already busy at work. I was a pariah, a crazy girl, a catching disease. It wouldn’t have done Amy any good to stick with me. I made a scene every time she tried to talk to me, letting the school know we were no longer hanging out, hoping she’d make new friends. Last I heard, she’s been invited to join Clara Ridge’s study group.
Amy pushed a sandwich in front of me. ‘Here,’ she said. ‘You have to eat something.’
I looked at the sandwich on the paper plate that she put on my lap. It was a white bread sandwich and the crusts had been cut away. It had cheddar and relish filling and the bread looked a little soggy, like it had been sat in the fridge for a while. I wonder when she made it. It was the least appealing sandwich I had ever seen, but I couldn’t think of anything else that I could possibly eat.
‘I made it for you,’ she said.
‘Thanks,’ I said and fought back tears again.
Amy put a hand on my shoulder. ‘What are you going to do?’
I took a deep breath and considered my options, but none of it made any sense. I hadn’t been able to envisage a future for months, let alone now that I was an orphan. I had no idea what I was going to do. But I could no longer punish Amy for my sins. If anyone had to suffer, it would be me. Nobody else.
‘I guess I’m going to eat this sandwich,’ I said and took a bite. And it suddenly happened. The need to break down into million little pieces. The urge to tell Amy that I was scared. That I wished I could remember what happened to me at the festival. That I was sorry I had let her down.
But I couldn’t face this conversation. Not yet anyway. Not when there were so many things I didn’t remember.
‘Excuse-me,’ I said, putting down the paper plate. I got up, walked into the bathroom and buried my face into a towel, trying to keep the tears in, but the towel smelled of Ma and they came flooding against my will. I cried until I ran out of tears and my whimpers became soundless. In this state of weightlessness, I had a clear vision of what to do. The only thing I could do. Run away. From this house, from the memories, from myself.
I go up to my room, stuffed a few clothes into a bag and reached up to the box where I kept my savings. Eighty-six pounds and fifty-two pence and a scratch card worth twenty pounds. Enough for a bus ticket and a couple of nights in a cheap hotel.
I walked into Ma’s room and looked at everything, wanting to etch every last detail into memory. Her robe still on the chair, the quilt she made, the tasseled lamp, the pink satin cushions, the painted silk partition, her jewellery box.
I felt like a stranger in my own body. I was no longer Ma’s daughter. She taught me how to give my heart away completely. She never did anything in half-measures. When she loved, she loved fiercely. I guess that’s where I got it from. My extreme attachment to those I cared about. But now that she was gone, I didn’t know how to be like her anymore. What good that unmeasured love did to either of us? She was dead and I was lost. An unwanted orphan. But an eighteen year old one who could make decisions for herself and it was time to cut my ties.
I took one last look, before I stepped out through the window and down the wisteria trellis, until I reached the gravel. I sneaked through the back, into the azalea bushes and made my way to the main road, towards the train station.
It wouldn’t be the first time I’d hitched a ride to nowhere.
Stay tuned for Chapter 18.
Love,
Iulia xxx
