‘Are you trying to get me in bed with you again?’ he says. I feel his breath on my face and try not to flinch from the close proximity.
‘No,’ I whisper.
‘I didn’t think so. Go to sleep.’
Amazingly, I do. Am too tired not to, even knowing my monster is there in the dark.
If love is made from dreams, then whatever we have . . . is made from nightmares.
36
ME
I watch her SLEEP.
For the first part of the night, she’s restless under the influence of the fever. She tosses, unable to turn over, and whimpers. She mumbles things, things like, ‘How could you do this?’ and ‘Remember to forget.’
I sit next to her. She smells pretty, flowery. I stroke her long soft hair. She doesn’t wake.
I try to imagine being able to do whatever I like and not always be locked in some kind of mental combat with Amy. I try to think about it, take myself dangerously close to waking the beast, but the fantasies are stale. Is it the anger I like? Or is it her unwillingness to be with me?
No, she’s willing. She fought me a little, but she came here and took off her clothes herself. Because she enjoys my body. And isn’t that interesting? How she hates taking pleasure from me, but she’s going to keep coming back for it, because she needs me. Thinking of that stirs me, and I’m too aroused to stay.
She needs to sleep.
I kiss her softly on the forehead. It’s worth it just to kiss her affectionately like this, when she can’t feel it, when she can’t see my raw emotions.
It’ll never be enough, is never enough, but Amy gives me only what she can give and I’m getting used to it now. Used to her rejection. Used to her hate. So to me, I need to make this moment enough. I need to spend so long making every little moment I get to be with Amy . . . enough.
I’m not her hero.
I’m the villain she needs.
37
YOU
MOST OF THE GIRLS here smoke, but I don’t because of my asthma. Still, I join them in Lilac’s bathroom, under the extractor fan so the smoke rises and doesn’t trigger the alarm.
The girls are gossiping about Rebecca, and how fat she’s looking since Christmas.
‘She should spend some time with me,’ Lilac says. ‘Wouldn’t take me long to get her back into shape.’
Daisy stands awkwardly on one tennis shoe, pulling at a coil of hair that’s released itself from her hat. Today, she wears a red woollen hat, shaped like a poppy, making her impossibly fairy-like.
Scarlett offers Daisy the end of the cigarette, and I blanch but say nothing. Daisy has to make her own decisions. I know that, but she’s vulnerable, and I want to take her by the hand and lead her away. Her fingers hover in the air, just above the lit stub.
‘Take it, Daisy. It’s calorie-free,’ Scarlett advises in a fake American, have-a-nice-day voice.
Daisy puts it to her lips and sucks, then she starts to cough. Each cough feels like it’s coming from my own chest. She passes the cigarette to Annabeth, who pulls a face, so it’s returned to Scarlett.
‘Yup,’ continues Scarlett, inhaling deeply and warming to the theme, ‘we could teach her some weight-loss tips. Looks like she had too many mince pies.’
‘I’d love to have her body,’ I say. I like Rebecca. She’s been nice to me and doesn’t deserve such bitchy remarks.
‘Then why are you starving yourself to be so stick thin?’ Lilac says. ‘You can hide under your baggy clothes but we all see it, Amy.’
The other girls don’t understand. I hadn’t meant to lose weight. Stress of my mother’s death, my father contacting Shepherd, Elizabeth’s recent letter . . . all of it has been eating away at me. I am trying to make an effort to eat more.
‘I know your secret, Amy,’ Lilac says, tapping my skinny arm. ‘Your sexy therapist has you on a liquid diet. Bet he has plenty of juice for you.’
Scarlett and Annabeth fall into fits of laughter, but Daisy gives me an admiring look from under the brim of her hat. I immediately regret not taking care of my body.
After taking a final drag, coughing into her bony hand, Scarlett concludes, ‘We look like the models in the magazines, but we’re the sick ones.’
DAISY COMES TO my room after dinner, this time wearing a bright orange baseball cap. She perches on the end of my bed, writing on her forearms with a black biro, and talks about the voice in her head.
I have a voice too. I know how she talks, the secrets she whispers: Keep quiet . . . remember to forget . . . you don’t deserve him . . . Elizabeth was your fault.
Daisy is so translucent her skeleton is on show. Her skin is like webbing, strands of her hair fall from her head every time she runs a finger through it, and her breath seems impossibly light.
She takes her hat off, when we’re alone together, and the bald spot on her crown glows like a halo. Sometimes she pulls just one hair and runs it through her teeth, before I gently remind her not to.
She looks admiringly at my wrists. Narrow. Bony.
‘You’re so beautiful, Amy. Such pretty bright green eyes. Are they really that colour?’
‘Yes. And you’re the pretty one.’
‘No I’m not. You’re the luckiest girl in the world. I wish somebody looked at me the way he looks at you. He dotes on you.’
Daisy considers her own forearms, which are covered by silvery threads of old scars. She starts to draw over them with curly writing. ‘I see you as . . . inspiration. Like, a
