Rachel had a mega watt smile.
She always had; going as far back as she could care to remember, and then some. She was acutely aware as a four year old, that when she'd stolen the plastacine from the box in reception and hidden it in someone else's lunchbox all she had to do to escape punishment was smile, and perhaps twirl a lock of hair around her thumb and forefinger for good measure. The teachers would coo, and even the child who had been blamed in the first place would take her hand and offer to share their lunch.
In high school, it had come in even more use. She perfected the downturned eyes and heavy lashes with light make up to begin with, and tinted her smile with clear gloss. Teachers would brush aside her lack of homework or late submissions, and her reports were always graced with happy clichés like 'is a charming addition to the class' and 'your daughter is a joy to teach.' It escaped their attention for the most part that Rachel rarely graced their lessons with her presence.
Her grades didn't slip; but she had found other more pleasurable uses for that smile of hers, and by the time she was fast approaching GCSEs she had come to the conclusion that no one gave a stuff about her schooling. Because they didn't really, she was Daddy's little girl. Mummy's little angel. And things would always work out fine.
Except she wasn't Daddy's little girl forever. His death shook her hard, and threatened to take her happiness and agonisingly slowly rip it to shreds, piece by piece. Rachel had coped admirably at the funeral but it was afterwards, after the cuddles and tears and platitudes sprinkled over a corpse of sunshine that she had realised what his death had brought in his wake. Because Mummy didn't have the heart for her little angel. Her heart had been buried with her husbands, and as each day drew it's dreary head once more over the dank prospect of another 24 hours Rachel's carefully constructed world threatened to come tumbling around her shoulders.
She couldn't bring herself to go out with her friends, nor go to school. She tried hard to find something that was worth dragging her legs out of bed every day for, but all she could latch onto was resentment for her mother. Her one time rock, her one time guardian. No more though, never more, as her mother took comfort in depression and gin in equal measures, served in their best crystal cut glass and on the rocks.
And then it had come.
The day Rachel had had enough of being sad, and miserable, and wanted her smile back. The day she looked to her mother to show her the way. The day her mother broke her heart with the shocking truth of her father's suicide with spite and malice spiking her throat. And along with reality came resentment and hurt. And, as it will, rebellion.
So she had screamed at her mother in disbelief and terror, furious that her bastion of faith in humanity was as weak as everyone else. As fallible. As corrupted. She could never remembered how she ended up in school that day; all she knew was that she was furiously chain smoking Marlboro Reds when the smouldering man in a leather trench coat came up to her with sad eyes. He shared a half smile with her, and said nothing as he sucked headily on his rollup that didn't smell the same as her beloved cigarettes. It was somehow heavier, sweeter. And when he proffered it in her direction, it didn't cross her mind for a moment that something that felt so good had to be destructive in equal measures.
Everything about that afternoon had stuck in her mind like gum in hair, and no matter how much she consequentially tried to pick at it she couldn't get it out. The feel of his hands scraping up her back as he lead her away from school and introduced himself in the most husky voice she had ever heard. The way the Jack Daniels she drank was the same colour as the sepia walls in his spacious apartment in town, neat and somehow classy in its elegance and style. The way the pipe he smoked felt nestled against her lips, the taste of sour mash and him resting elegantly on the mouthpiece. And then. Oh and then, with that first drag, she found her smile.
She knew it couldn't be tobacco. She'd been on 20 a day since she was 14 and not once in that small amount of time had a cigarette ever bought a smile like this to her lips. She knew it wasn't the same as what he'd given her before because this was more intense, more real. Her entire body relaxed, and her smile had found her again, and the things he did to her just made so much sense. Even in hindsight she couldn't call it what it wasn't, because she'd wanted it as much as he had. She'd wanted anything that would bring her closer to this: the magic man with the answers. The man who held her smile in the palm of her hand.
People have told her consequentially that underneath it all she must have known she was doing something wrong. That somewhere in the recesses of her mind the happy bright girl from the private school must have realised what she was being sucked into. Those people are wrong. She has never bothered to try and explain that when all you're doing is chasing salvation, you rarely stop to question your morals. She doesn't mention that the Crusades were supposed to be holy wars, and turned into massacres. She doesn't point out that she had nowhere else to turn. Most of all though, she doesn't ever bring up her most hidden secret of all: Because until she had worked out what was going on, until she had realised there was money changing hands over her head and out of her control; Rachel had enjoyed it.
In her angrier moments, usually aided by a cigarette in one hand (the only childhood friend who had the courage to stick by her) and a glass of half empty wine in the other, she would ask the thickening air around her who wouldn't. What 16 year old wouldn't adore being adored, with rich people in a rich house and air rich with smoke and drugs and sex. It was a full time party and she had her full time smile back, until the business man came along.
He wasn't like the others, wasn't fun, or sexy, or kind. He didn't offer her a drink, or tell her she was beautiful. He told her she was a slut, a whore and that kids like her deserved nothing better than what he was giving her; fucking for money. He spelt it out so clearly and she was so distressed that it didn't occur to her to say no. It didn't occur to her to do anything other than take the pipe she was offered later, take the pat on the back and the 'well done kid' in any other way. And he took the money.
And so it was, until the police came. Three years of crack and prostitution meant she'd smoked her smile when she got desperate, and just about anything else that was left of her too. She was hollow lipped and vacant as she was sentenced, and shipped off to the prison detox unit. Luckily for her a kindly guard took pity, and had the foresight to see what would happen to a pretty 19 year old on a hard as nails wing. She was left in her cell to work through the shakes and withdrawal, let into the sunshine to look over the bars at the world she hardly missed. She learnt the importance of facade, and looking like you mean what you say. She pretended her smile had come back to her.
It didn't.
It wouldn't for a long time after. Not during her fast ascent in the business world with a new name and a new identity, where she excelled due to a complete refusal to trust any instinct bar her own. Not when she decided to go back into education, and try and help kids who were as lost as she had been. Not when Melissa had been in touch with the news that their mother had passed, nor with the introduction of her nephew.
It was almost twenty years until they would be reunited, Rachel and her smile; and when they were neither of them could remember being apart. He had given it to her, gifted in a box of love and tied neatly with a bow on top reading quite clearly, 'I'm yours.' And underneath it all, underneath the facade and underneath Rachel all the way to Amanda, underneath the professional intent and the personal dream, underneath everything she'd ever pretended was important it was all she had ever wanted. The man with crinkled eyes as kind as her father's.
She should have known it couldn't have lasted.
And so she sits. Neither Rachel nor Amanda; she's outgrown both and fits neither personality anymore. He's taken her smile with him, and she doesn't have the strength to be angry about it. She sits with her legs crossed in her living room, on the carpet, swaying perilously from side to side. She sucks furiously on the pipe that tastes not of sex, or alcohol or kisses but simply of bitterness and regret and a past that offers as little hope as her future does. She sits in her lament, and welcomes obscurity.
Nothing changes, underneath it all.