Stolen Skies Chapter 1

Chapter 1

I stare out of the window. Past the camel’s hump of the couch side and the frosted slat of glass, Autumn is burning itself out, a frenzied inferno of gnarled oaks and drab, greyscale skies. The leaves, russet and ochre in colour, have gathered into clusters and puddles; the air is pregnant with moisture, and a faint odour �" the smell of damp, rotten leaves �" has filtered through the walls: it bothers me now, too heady and dank for the pale light of morning. There’s a pounding upstairs, plodding footsteps as Lily gets ready for school, and in the kitchen, the clatter of pots and pans and cutlery is excessively loud �" I think Jess is transferring all the anger, the frustration, she assumes I’m unaware she feels, onto the washing up.

“Hannah!” Jess calls.

“Yeah?”

Her voice is muffled by the walls, and it can’t carry my interest for that long. She’ll just be waffling on, spouting some rubbish about ‘keeping myself busy’ or discussing the length of her runner beans. Interesting. She’s always been like that, my sister, the first to fill a thick silence with messy scrawls of syllables and scrappy sentences. Her voice drifts in, and I can’t be arsed listening anymore, so I pull myself under the soft, threadbare comfort of my blanket, and dig my toes, elongated digits, into the nooks and crevices of the sofa. Enveloped in the darkness, shadows swarm and bulge, shifting before I can figure out their shape; their colour; their texture.

“Hannah, are you listening?”

For God’s sake.

“Yeah.”

“What did I just say then?”

She stomps in, a thinly veiled expression of contempt �" no, not contempt, more a swirling mix of pity, disgust and mild irritation- disdain on her face. I hate that about her �" her directness, her inability to cover her emotions. Her eyes �" dense pools as languid and liquid as melting, silky chocolate �" slip up, revealing her feelings before she can rearrange her face; place on that stock smile I’d had enough of years ago.

“Something”.

Past words elude me �" I can’t quite fathom them, it’s as if they lie, dust sheathed and just forgotten, behind an impenetrable wall.

“Hannah?”

She’s there, straight in front of me, seeking me out and hungry for answers. I latch onto her eyes, so laden they are with worry and frustration and bitterness, and then turn away again, nuzzling into the fabric of the settee and throwing the blanket over my head.

“You’ll try and do something today, won’t you? Keep yourself busy?”

She waits. I don’t think she’s expecting an answer, but she’s bound, a slave of social niceties, to wait anyway, shuffling around, harried and anxious to be off. Probably wants to say something else. Some other regurgitation of a cliché.

“No point moping about.”

Oh, thank you. I focus on breathing �" deep refreshing inhalations that ease my soul and calm me: I’m not going to scream; I’m not going to run; I’m not going to cry or shout or make a scene.  Under the blanket here, it’s too warm; the air is dense and hazy and humid, an intensifying thunderstorm, muggy greyness illuminated by the silver light filtering through the fabric. One potato. Two potato.

Footsteps; a call of ‘Lily!’; frantic plodding; hurried goodbyes.

Finally. Peace.

I resurface. For all of her normal crap, she’s got a point. I feel like I’ve wallowed here for days �" I suppose I have �" and suddenly I’m overcome with the desire to move; be free from the nest; rise from this squalid state.

Urgh. My head is misty, foggy, overwhelmed by thickening, sickening clarity. I leech myself up, steady myself onto brittle bones, thin reedy limbs as weak as bird’s legs. God. How can moving hurt so much?

Being vertical is a new state. From this height, I can see morning’s lazy light pepper pearly patterns across the wall, alighting the dust on the carpet in the corner of the room. Not bad dust; my sister cleans the place both often and thoroughly, but family dust, the sort gathered by business and work and general living. Anyway, I can hardly complain about it, it’s not like I’ve been helping out recently, invading her living room and slumping on the sofa all day. Talking of the sofa, it’s messy, hidden under my sweat drenched blankets and dressing gown. I walk over there, start to move things around slightly, tidy things away, until I’m shifting the things half way across the room only to move them back again. I’m stalling �" I know, but I’m bored and there’s nothing to do stuck inside. The view is grey and dull, the house is too orderly, and everything is just… empty.

I go into the bathroom, scrub my face and scour the dirt out of my hair. The place seems unnaturally quiet now, like the silence itself has become heavy and leaden with unuttered words.

Green top; grey top; black top.

They all fit. They’re all fine.

I discard them anyway, trying on every piece of clothing I own and inspecting it critically, looking for something to do: 

something new; something interesting.

There’s nothing.

I don’t know what I’m even doing here.

 

When Jess gets in, I’m elbow deep in flour, kneading dough onto the worktop. Lily bounds into the kitchen, her hair draped in tendrils and her forehead beaded with raindrops; outside, the rain is lashing down in violent curtains, and I notice Lily’s eyes are red �" raw and tacky, drowning with emotion.

‘Hiya’

Jess peeps her head in. I don’t look up, but I can feel her gaze boring into the back of my head, and I feel a jolt of pure elation, at the thought of earning her trust, gaining her respect.

‘Hi’

I’m tired now. Being perfect for a whole day, acting like someone else �" it’s wearing, to say the least. I push harder into the dough, trying to dampen down the prickles of irritation flickering through my veins, trying to ignore the feeling that this is simply not fair, not right. When she was in trouble �" before the perfect mother façade and the mortgage and steady job �" when she was young and ashamed and frightened, I was there. Properly there. I picked up the pieces, cared for her without judging her.

But Jess, she’s too busy with her own life, too preoccupied with Lily and being an ‘advert’ woman, to think about how I feel. It’s all 2d shapes to her �" if I get up, I’m fine; if I talk to her; I’m being friendly. She never goes any deeper. I’d probably be better by now, if she wasn’t so stupidly easy to fool.

But no. Her respect, her acceptance feels good, all the same. I slide the bread into the oven and start on the washing up.

‘What’s up with Lily?’

‘Dunno. She won’t tell me.’

Jess walks over to the sink, joining me with a towel, drying each item once I’ve washed it.

I wait. Her body is tense, pulled tight and taut, like a tree bracing a storm. She’ll say something else, I’m sure. I just need to wait. Ride out the silence.

She sighs.

‘I thought we’d have longer than this’

‘For what?’

‘She’s six. She’s not meant to be shutting us out already.’

‘Of course she is. It’s normal. Leave her be.’

Great. Not only am I bored out of my mind, I’ve now become the sole confidant to neurotic mother number one.

The plates crash and smash against the drying rack as Jessica slides them in. It’s too loud, crudely loud, and I have the compulsion to take her stupid hands and squeeze them tight, until she stops making such a racket. Or at best, I need to press my fingers against my skull; relieve the pressure, stop the thrashing and banging from cracking open my head and blitzing my brain. Allowing my thoughts to drop onto the floor like last week’s grubby washing.

I wish she would stop.

I bite the side of my nail. Only briefly �" can’t let her see my anxiety.

‘She could be being bullied. I can’t just ignore it … we need to sort it out’

It takes me a second to realise I’ve tuned out. Too wrapped up in my own thoughts. Being selfish, as usual.

‘She’s fine. It’s not like it’s a regular thing, is it? Probably just a tiff with Freya.’

Lily’s not the type of girl to be bullied. She’s lively �" vibrant. There’s enough intelligence there to be captivating, but not so much that she’s freakish. I was never like that.

The silence has descended again. The density of the air increases, and a pungent thought ‘How would you know?’ clings to every surface.

 

The door to Lily’s room is open a smidge, revealing a sliver of hot pink carpet and a cascading sea of toys. Through the gap, I can see the jerky, jagged slices of her arms, and her faint mutterings are just audible. Sweet. I nudge open the door, and lower myself onto the bed.

‘Lily’

Her cheeks are tinged red, and the stuffed animals on the floor, a minute ago animated, have become stagnant and lifeless.

‘Shall we have a chat?’

No response. I pull her up onto my knee, nuzzle my face into her damp hair, breath in the warm, slightly savoury smell of her: school dinners and stuffy classrooms. Her eyes, wide and dark like her mother’s, dart round franticly, and I wonder what her secret is.

‘Has someone upset you?’

Her head moves slowly in a nod, and she snuggles in closer to me. I wrap my arms around her tight, wishing I could protect her, keep her like this forever. Neurotic Auntie number two.

‘It’s nothing bad, but I don’t want you to tell mummy, cos she gets worried and I shouldn’t even be telling you because you’re poorly, but I’m just sad.’

‘I’m feeling OK now, not too sick. And you can tell me or mummy anything.’

‘Freya’s fallen out with me.’

‘Today?’

She nods.

‘Just today?’

She nods again, and I feel the tangled mess of my guts begin to unwind, released from their panic. I have to suppress the relief in my voice, give this petite squabble the respect and attention it deserves.

‘What happened?’

Her forehead creases up in a scowl, and she shuffles away now, sitting opposite me.

‘Well Chernade and Lauren were playing on the field and they said that everyone could play with them, so we all started playing like we were at high school and they all said they were teenagers cos they were eleven.’

‘Eleven year olds aren’t teenagers. That’s thirteen year olds.’

‘I know! That’s what I said but they…’

‘…Wouldn’t listen?’

She nods ferociously now, and her bottom lips sticks out at an ungainly angle, sulky and sullen.

‘So then what happened?’

The atmosphere has lifted, the upset of the day washed away with the fun of storytelling. She recounts the tale with relish, rambling now and then as she gets carried away, caught up in the details.

‘So they said you couldn’t play with them? Just because of the eleven/ thirteen fiasco?’

‘Yeah!’ Her face is wild and lively with indignation. Then, ‘what’s a fiasco?’

‘Not sure. Didn’t Freya stick up for you?’

‘No.’ She sighs, weighted down by her memories, and I watch her various clocks: the alarm by her bed; the large one on the wall; the novelty teddy bear one. Tick. I think time has actually given up �" today is scratching to be rid of itself, and I’m aching to start again.

‘Chernade said Freya could play with her or me, so I was all alone all break.’

‘Ignore her. It’ll all be better again tomorrow, you’ll see.’

Tomorrow. I push the thought of it aside, the thought of another day like this, so suburban and ordinary. One day at a time. One hour. One minute. One second. Tock.

‘Chernade’s a b***h.’ Lily says.

She hops off the bed and onto the floor, separating her toys into piles: rabbits and bears; baby dolls and Barbies.

‘Yeah, stupid cow.’

I shake myself.

‘A b***h?’

‘Yeah’

She’s grinning now, and I raise my eyebrows.

‘Don’t let your mother hear you talk like that.’

 

Indigo mist seeps through the windows, deep with rain and silvered by moonlight. I whip up a batch of icing, stain it fusia, and start piping it onto cupcakes for tomorrow. There’s something hypnotic about baking at night. Maybe it’s the way you have to hush each and every movement; quiet the slush of the metal bowl as it slides across the worktop; the hum of the oven. It’s exciting, or as near as. If Jess heard me up, she’d assume I was plotting escape. Fat chance. The door’s always locked, and the key never leaves her sight. If I needed to go, I’d just smash the window anyway.

But there’s more to this baking than that. It’s the physical exertion �" the stirring and the whipping and the cleaning afterwards. When I was little, mum used to tell me to read a book if I couldn’t sleep. Then later, when it became a problem again, Jess suggested watching telly. Never worked. You need to jellify your limbs, get it to the point where your exhaustion beats everything else. It takes me back too, I suppose, to the days when Jess’d be up and down all night, feeding Lily, bathing her, changing her. We’d stop pretending we were ever going to sleep; I’d brew cups of coffee and switch on the kitchen lights, quickly knocking up buns or muffins or biscuits to slip into her bag for uni the next morning.

That was when I was useful though. The girl who cared for Lily all day while Jess finished her education. There are blots of icing over the worktop like polka dots, and I taste one on my tongue, feel the sizzle of sugar, sickly sweet. The food curdles in my stomach, and my intestines tangle in knots. I feel each grind and bump of digestion, and suddenly, all my attention is focused inwards. My limbs are extra-terrestrial beings, and their movements make me cringe. Like chalk on a blackboard.

I doubt I’d be allowed a coffee now. Probably not even a cupcake. Wouldn’t want my brain getting addicted to sugar now, would we?

The cupcakes are ready to decorate. I’d be enjoying this, if I wasn’t so tired. I tried to get to sleep a couple of hours ago, but as soon as I stopped doing something, the scuffling at the edge of my head started to spread, boring into my brain with a thick droning, drilling sound. My eyes are sore, legs heavy. I can’t go on much longer. Maybe after this, I’ll be able to sleep. Hopefully.

I sprinkle edible glitter onto every cupcake, pink and pretty. Lily will love them. I shove one in her lunchbox for tomorrow (Neurotic mother prepares it the night before �" she’s that obsessive) and put the rest out on the work surface. 

The sofa beckons. I’ll clean up in the morning.

The sofa is soft, and the blanket cool and clean. Sleep wraps around me, silken snakes pull my hair onto the pillow, a warmth inside that spreads and smooths, comforts and calms. All my muscles begin to relax, and I stretch my neck out, focus on the inside of my eyelids.

I thought I’d done enough. Thought all that concentrating on measurements, on timing, would freeze my worries like a broken computer. But I can feel it now: the anxieties gnawing at the edge of my skull; the whisper ‘you need to get out of here, you need it, you need it’ threatening my resolve. I’ve got to make it stop. Because I don’t need it. I’ve been fine for weeks, nearly a month; I’ve fought through withdrawal and all the physical pain has ceased. I hate this bit. This is where I always trip up. The mental pain hits me sideways.

I search for my IPod on the floor, put my headphones in, turn up Penny Lane good and loud, until all I can hear is the music and the Beatles’ cascading voices.

 

‘Hannah!’

Morning falls on me heavy and full, and Jess stomps in from the kitchen, ready for work. Her uniform is crisp and clean; her dark hair fastened in a tight bun. Her head wobbles as she talks, and the bun is starting to move, a gelatinous mess. Utterly ridiculous.

‘What have you done to my kitchen?’

My kitchen now, is it? It also becomes ‘my kitchen, my house’ when she’s annoyed with me. There’s a throbbing at the front of my head, and my IPod has run out of charge. I keep the headphones in.

‘It’s a tip.’ She turns her head, marches out, and calls ‘Lily!’ up the stairs. She likes to be busy, I think. Or likes to look busy at least. It’s part of her persona, being constantly harried. That’s why nursing suits her. Looking after people builds up her ego.

‘What were you doing in there?’

‘Baking’

I sound sulky, even for me. I make the effort to haul myself up onto my elbows, trying to steady myself and brush away 

the bruises of sleep.

‘Why?’

No concern, just irritation. She’s sick of me.

Her fingernails rap on the sofa, little rhythms morphing into more rhythms morphing into more rhythms; no pattern; no order; no consistency.

I want to tell her to shut up.

I want to seize her hands, stop their music.

I want to reach out, explain, apologise.

She looks away.

I just sit there, blind and dumb, waiting for her to talk to me, but she doesn’t. I don’t know what to say.

Lily rushes in, hugs me goodbye, and I smile, thinking of her surprise at lunchtime.

The door slams shut.

Locked.

 

Making lunch is a chore. At first I think of toast, a hot slice of it oozing with butter, but I can’t cut the bread. I keep staring at the knife, the ugly jaws of its serrated edge; its crocodilian menace. Sunlight drips onto it and spills across the tiles on the floor, miles of gold which stretch onwards and onwards like yarn. I approach the bread knife, slide it across the counter, out of reach of my hands and the window’s glare. The yellow beam disappears, and the kitchen goes an earthy, woody colour.

I heat up a ready meal: fish pie. The mash is stodgy. It sits at the bottom of my stomach like a stone. Everything tastes of nothing. Even the air feels thin and insufficient.

I go back to bed, pretend I’m asleep for a couple of hours.

I don’t clean the kitchen.

 

The front door slams. Jess streams in, seeing the mess of the kitchen and then standing in the doorway, facing me. Lily’s plodding footsteps disappear upstairs. I bite the edge of my nail. There’s something about the redness of her cheeks, the firmness in her stance that makes me feel nervous. A storm is coming, and I’m not ready.

‘You didn’t clean the kitchen’

She’s staring straight at me.

‘No.’

I search on the floor for my IPod, plug my headphones in, shut her out with music. I’m grateful I charged it.

Her eyes are soft, and she moves my feet, sitting next to me on the sofa.

‘You can’t keep messing us about like this. It’s not fair on me, it’s not fair on Lily’

She’s looking right into me, but she can’t see inside. I hear Lily upstairs, and I think of her pixie �" like face; her wide, innocent eyes, her tiny hands.

‘You know, today, at school, I had to sit there and be lectured, thanks to you giving her that stupid cupcake’

‘What?’

I never guessed this would be her problem. It was a cupcake, hand baked and decorated with care. Not a f*****g hand grenade.

‘The school has a healthy eating programme. And I’m on a diet. Which you’d know if you ever listened.’

I sit up, and it’s no effort now, because I’m angry, angry that she’s so quick to get sick of me, angry that she’s so dumb and ignorant and naïve. I glare at her.

‘Those sugar checker, middle class, mung bean wheat grass mums should get a life. What’s the problem with a cupcake? What do they do for party food, carrot sticks and hummus?’

I hate the look on her face. She’s always trying to suck up to Mrs ‘I’m a GP’, Freya’s mum, trying to fit in with those pretentious tossers. I hate them. She’s probably never even mentioned me.

‘I’m trying to fit in. It’s hard enough to prove I’m a good mum, without you making it worse.’ She says.

She’s so predictable. Anger burns like acid in my chest, hot and sharp. I taste bitterness in my mouth, and I want to scream at her, scream until she understands what it’s like to be punished for one mistake, for years and years and years.

‘Get over yourself. You’re a teenage mum, not a war criminal. Plus, you’re hardly a record breaker. You were eighteen. Amelia’s mum was fourteen, and Melanie…’

‘Yeah well…’

‘And anyway, you think I made it harder! I could’ve gone to college, could’ve had a future. But I stayed with you, left home, spent every day looking after the brat you were too busy to give a s**t about…’

The only sound is my breathing, fast and uneven. I bite onto my lip, feel the rush of blood and pain. It doesn’t touch the sides. Calling Lily that �" a brat �" all I ever wanted to do was care for her, hold her. Nothing was her fault. Nausea rises in my throat. The anger has gone, and all I feel is the weight of guilt, cold and stolid. My hands are shaking. Tears, pickling with vinegar, are stabbing at my eyes, but I won’t cry. I press play on my IPod.

Her jaw is knotted tight, teeth grinding together, and her fingernails are plunged into the palms of her hands.

‘I would say that I’m showing my appreciation through letting you stay here. And I was seventeen when I got pregnant.’

I breathe in and out, but nothing will clear my head. The heat of anger hasn’t dissipated, just trickled into my mind and thrived, a new cloying sort of pain, needing to be released. It brushes the intricate maze of my hands, sparks against my porcelain hips.

The button on my IPod is red, the music is too loud, unsafe. I listen to the lyrics, Bohemian Rhapsody.

‘I can move out. I don’t want your charity.’

‘No.’ she says. She doesn’t waver.

‘I’m moving out’

‘No you’re not. I’m happy for you to stay’

‘Happy for me to stay? You do nothing but have a go at me!’

I’m sick of her. She is too close, her face bearing over me, and the heat of her body worsens my sweating. The pulsing heat bursts through my fingertips. Pushes her off me.

Her body moves too far, too fast. Strength I didn’t know I had.

There’s a pause, a moment where we draw our weapons, choose our strategies.

‘Now I’ve gone and thrown it all away’.

Nothing truer than music. I dart up, try to make for the door.

Jess pins me down, her thick limbs overpowering mine, the soles of her feet scrubbing my skin.

I wriggle and writhe to break free.

Her eyes have grown hard and dark, her features are stretched, the bags under her eyes emphasised and bruised with lack of sleep.

I wait.

Her face is all revulsion, and she releases my arms, shakes them. They’re pitifully thin, and they flop down when she lets go of them. She smirks, as if pleased that she is strong, and I am weak. But it’s the smirk of hatred, a smirk of a bully.

‘I’m sorry if I’m not the life and soul of the party, but I didn’t think I’d spend all of my twenties trying to get my junkie sister off smack.’

Her voice is too loud, dripping with sarcasm.

Junkie sister.

Me.

I can’t look at her. I stop moving. My eyes are too tired to cry. The beating of my heart is shallow, broken.

I turn away, listen to the words of the song.

‘Nothing really matters to me’.

If only that was true.

 

We’re both indulging our creative sides. Jess is upstairs, weaving fairy tales and fantasies to soothe Lily to sleep; I’m plotting escape, thinking of ways to open the door and leave this hellhole. It’s dusk, the grey sort where smoky light creeps around the room; a fog which brings more confusion than clarity. The room is slightly cool, a brutal November chill replacing the rain.

I tie my hair back, pull on my jeans and hoodie. They feel dirty, scarred by memories and everything they represent. I want to leave without a fuss. Lily doesn’t need to hear anymore arguing, and I want time to get away.

Thoughts buzz around my head like flies. I don’t bother to flick them away, I let them leach on my worries and grow fat and brutish with desire. I’m not scared anymore. Nothing can get any worse. I need to silence the whirring of my head, but there’s not long to go now, and soon I’ll be free.

There’s a shuffling upstairs, Jess’ soft footsteps as she leaves Lily’s bedroom. I don’t have a key, so I can’t unlock the door, and I don’t have time to think of another way. I smash the window, watch as it splinters into icy shards. They look sharp, like bared teeth, and I stuff my IPod in my pocket, try to ease my body through the spikes and thorns. They scratch my hair, and I feel a searing pain as one slashes into me. Jess’ footsteps speed up, running down the stairs to detain me. The time has gone. I run, pushing through the glass as it tugs at me; abrading and jabbing and tearing into my skin, and then I’m through, pulling my hat on, my trainers pounding the floor as I run from the pool of glass, which glimmers against globules of chewing gum on the street like a puddle of mercury.

I see the reflection of Jess’ face.

I walk on.

Speed up.

Faster.

Author's Note

I know the pace is a bit slow here, but it will speed up. All constructive criticism welcome.