Nothing made sense, and all of it did. Karen wanted to clamp her hands over her ears and run, but she sensed that would only lead to a chase. Despite her wobbling knees, she stood her ground.
‘You don’t know what you’re talking about. It was an accident.’
The girl’s throaty cackle turned a teacher’s head. ‘What, she accidentally went swimming with her clothes on? Well that’s a different take: she didn’t kill herself then; she was just a nutter.’
The scream brought the teacher running, but not before Karen had left dripping scarlet tracks across the girl’s fleshy face and a bruise already blooming.
She was still kicking when they dragged her to the Headmistress’s office. She was still refusing to speak when her father arrived, covered in apologies.
Their hushed conversation circled. Perhaps it’s too soon; she needs more time at home. No, she needs routine and structure. This type of behaviour won’t happen again.
It wasn’t until Father marched Karen to the car that she finally found her own voice.
‘Is it true? Is it true? Did Mummy not drown by accident like you said? Did she kill herself?’
Over and over, until he slammed on the brakes.
‘Stop it! I won’t have this hysteria. Your mother died, isn’t that enough?’
‘No! No, it’s not. Tell me the truth. Tell me she didn’t do it on purpose.’
Her father had pushed her grabbing hands away with a force that left her breathless.
‘Not when you’re like this. Not when you’re yelling. You’re too old to be so out of control. Why must you be so selfish? Why can’t you be quiet? Why can’t you be good?’
The same words he’d hurled at her in the street in Brighton, when she’d shouted at him for being dull and old and no fun at all. When her mother had stopped pointing out how prettily the sun shone on the water and started one of her headaches. The day before the world tipped over.
Karen shrank back in her seat.
They had driven the rest of the way home in silence. Karen had gone straight to her room, without making a fuss, without being asked. She had waited for him to come and offer an explanation that would wipe away the dull thud of she did what that girl said and it was my fault she did it that filled up her head. He never appeared.
The next morning, Mrs Hubbard was in the kitchen making breakfast, refusing to be drawn into conversation, pushing her out the door to school.
When Karen stumbled through the gates, a circle widened round her that only Angela had crossed.
‘My mother takes pills to stop her crying.’
They had built a friendship out of that, a friendship that had gradually drawn others in. The quiet girls, the studious ones. Not the most popular group in the school perhaps, but enough to give Karen a vague sense of belonging.
A bee buzzed too close. Karen roused herself. The sun’s glare was so bright the garden had vanished.
She blundered back inside, but the house was no cooler. The heat wormed through everything, clinging to the faded curtains, crawling round the carpet’s flattened pile. Five years ago, when Father had suggested moving, Karen had screamed herself sick. Now, she couldn’t wait to be gone. But not with him. Not anywhere with him.
Karen had picked over every inch of her childhood until it gaped like a wound. No matter how deep she dug into its silences, the conclusion was the same: her mother’s death was her fault, she was certain of it. Mother had been gentle. Karen had been noisy and difficult. Not grateful; not perfect. She hadn’t been the kind of daughter her mother could properly love, or she would still be alive. Mothers stayed with their children whatever happened – everyone knew that. So Karen hadn’t been what her mother had wanted, but she had tried. She had let her mother walk her to school every day, holding her hand although Karen hated looking so childish. She had learned not to complain about the cancelled birthday parties and the trips out that the headache days ruined. She had stayed quiet even when the quiet made her want to scream. So it was definitely her fault, but it was Father’s fault too. On good days, she could make it Father’s fault more.
Karen had loved her mother, her father hadn’t. The more Karen pulled at the past, the more convinced she was of that. She remembered bringing home glitter-thick cards and shakily drawn pictures that made her mother smile. She remembered sitting on her mother’s knee and not being chased away for ‘being too big now, Karen’, the way her father had reacted when she had tried the same with him. She had kept trying to be what was wanted, even if she had got it all wrong. Her father’s efforts hadn’t come close.
He had been the one who made Mother cry, trying to drag her to dinners and dances and keeping her up in the kitchen night after night, talking and talking when she was clearly exhausted. He had been the one telling her over and over that she had to ‘buck up and get better’.
Karen hadn’t been good enough, but neither had Father. Which Karen considered was hardly surprising. He was cold and stiff and stern. God knows why her mother had married him, or how she had lived with him. Well, Karen couldn’t, and Karen wouldn’t. Two more years – not so long really – only two and then she would be gone, to a university as far away as she could get.
The heat was closing the walls in. She went to open a window, before she remembered she couldn’t. Her mother had painted all the downstairs ones shut. It was such an odd thing to do, but, as Karen suddenly remembered, Father hadn’t tried to dissuade her. ‘Whatever helps, sweetheart; whatever helps.’ Karen stopped that thought in its tracks: it cast him in a kind light she wasn’t in any mood to consider.
Maybe upstairs would be cooler.
The window in her bedroom opened right out. She could set up her easel and work on some sketches to add to her portfolio.
Karen filled a jug with water and ice cubes that immediately began melting and headed up the stairs. Halfway along the landing, she paused. Father must have been in a rush that morning: he had left his bedroom door open. Karen hovered in the doorway. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d seen inside. In the days after Mother had died when no one was really watching her perhaps, but certainly not since.
The brightly covered cushions were gone from the armchair; the bed was made with precision corners. The hairbrush on the dressing table was rulered into place. There wasn’t a speck of dust, or any sign of a personality: the room could have jumped from a recruiting poster. Its military sparseness filled Karen with gloom.
She was about to turn away when a memory grabbed at her: Mother’s jewellery box. It used to sit on the dressing table over by the window. When Karen was little, her mother would let her sort through its trays and emerald-lined drawers. She remembered holding earrings up to her face, twisting her head so the coloured chips glittered back from the mirror. Wrapping herself in the necklaces and bracelets and holding up her arms as if she was dancing. Loving all the pretty pieces that her mother never wore.
The heat was dredging up strange thoughts; she couldn’t have remembered that right.
Forgetting about her portfolio, Karen crossed to the dressing table and ran her fingers over the red-tinted wood.
Every Christmas and birthday without fail, Father had bought Mother something new. And she wore whatever it was for a day and then away it went, into the box.