Mirrorland by Carole Johnstone

Author:Carole Johnstone [Johnstone, Carole]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
Published: 2020-12-15T17:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 17

Time is so thick and slow, it’s like I can feel it. Like I could reach down and push my hands inside it, watch it drain through my fingers. Ross and I move listlessly from room to room. We stay close together. Whenever we stop or sit, we touch knees or arms or fingers, and I can’t bring myself to care about all the reasons why we shouldn’t. He shakes; tremors rattle down through him and into me. We’re sitting at the kitchen table when he finally lifts up his head. I realise that he’s as angry as he is afraid.

‘I don’t want El to be dead, Cat.’

‘I know,’ I whisper.

‘I never wanted her to be dead.’

And I don’t know if he means because of us, because of how quickly we’ve turned back towards each other, or because of how strong his grief has always seemed from the start, how certain. I reach for his fingers, weave mine between them. ‘I know, Ross.’

Eventually, I have to be alone. I lock myself in the bathroom, blink at the face in the mirror, its eyes tired and just as afraid. I think of the last time I looked at this face and it wasn’t a reflection. New Year’s Day, 2006. Six months after El’s I win. Six months before we would no longer be teenagers any more. We met at Yellowcraigs. It was two buses and a mile-long walk from my house share in Niddrie. I had no idea where El had come from; didn’t even know if she was still living in the city.

The beach was empty, the waves wild, wind vicious, the day sunny and cold. It was hard to look at her for long. I missed her and Ross so badly it was an angry, wretched ache; a stump that itched and tingled and couldn’t forget what it felt like to be whole. She wouldn’t let him talk to me, although he did and often, phoning me whenever he could – even if both of us could see that it was pointless, more painful than silence. I couldn’t bear to hear about her, about them, about plans that didn’t include me. I couldn’t bear to hear his sadness, his guilt, his pleas for me to understand why. Why it had to be this way.

‘You’ve lost too much weight.’

I couldn’t sleep. I saw too many doctors and took too many pills. I’d even flirted with the idea of suicide, and the only thing to stop me was the thought of how ridiculous I’d look if I failed, how pathetic. That then there would be nothing at all of mine that hadn’t first belonged to El.

I kept looking at her in small snatches. Her skin was bright and her hair blonder. Her nails were red and long. I wondered when she’d stopped biting them.

‘You need to eat.’

I saw her glancing down at my ragged nails, the scabbed-over scratches and cuts on my hands that so often appeared without me knowing why or when.

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