TW: mention of suicide
Lily is almost asleep by the time the door opens to the library and the lights emerge from their darkness. She has stayed in the same position on the beanbags for hours, waiting for Rachel to finish dealing with the police, and children's services, and a year eight girl who was sobbing in the welfare office. The library smells of satsumas.
Soft footsteps near the beanbag.
"Lils?" Rachel strokes her hair back. It reminds her of being little, of laying on the sofa and listening to dishes rattle together as they are stacked in another room. "I'm sorry, darling. We can go home now." Her eyes open. "Hey, gorgeous girl. Have you had a long day?" She nods. "Alright. Let's go home now."
The warmth she has collected against the beanbag evaporates as she sits up.
"Do you want to wear my cardigan, sweetie?" Rachel asks, slipping it off her shoulders. Auntie Rachel can read minds. "There we go." Lily pulls it on. "You alright?" Rachel whispers, her voice is like silk. Lily nods. "Okay." Auntie Rachel doesn't look like Ms Mason anymore, not with the soft smile and tired, reddened eyes. "Come on then, darling. Let's go home now."
Mr James is stood in reception, against the front desk that has been obscured by grey shutters. Rachel tenses her jaw and looks at the automatic doors resolutely.
"Rachel." His voice is firm and calm, and he shoots a small grin at Lily before Rachel has collected herself enough to turn and glare at him. "Can we talk for a moment?" His face is composed; Lily watches him rub his thumb over the buckle of his bike helmet compulsively.
"I'm going home." Rachel tells him.
"It won't take long, Rach. We just need to talk for a minute." Ollie explains. Kindness oozes out of the creases of his palm when he gestures at the door to the atrium.
"Fine." Rachel whispers, it sounds more upset than she had wanted it to.
Lily sits on the spongey chairs.
"Rach, I didn't mean it like that." Ollie says on the other side of the door. Lily doesn't think they realise that the doors aren't soundproof, at all. "Sweetheart, none of us saw it. I wasn't blaming you."
"I'm the head."
"And I'm the deputy. Darling, you can't do everything."
"I can try."
"But that's not…" Ollie sighs. "That might not be the best thing to do." he tells her carefully.
"Why?"
"Because you can't do everything, Rach. You just can't. No one can. If you… If you try to do too much then things will slip through."
"So it is my fault?"
"No, that's not what I- I think you... Look, maybe there's too much pressure on you, we all need to take a step back every now and again, I could come over-"
"So I should just not bother? I'll just let the kids look after themselves, shall I? I'll just do nothing like the rest of you?"
"That's unfair, Rachel."
"Is it? She spends thirty-five hours here every week, and you're telling me she's never done anything to arouse suspicion before? Not one teacher even noticed, Ollie."
"No, I-"
"And that there's nothing wrong with that? That it doesn't matter because we're doing so well in the league tables? I don't care about results as long as they're safe when-"
"Rachel, you're not the only person who's upset about this, okay?"
"I don't care if she was upset. She was supposed to be a form tutor. I'm not interested in whether she was upset, I'm interested in whether or not the kids are-"
"You could have handled it more sensitively."
"You're seriously more bothered that I made a twenty-eight-year-old cry than you are that a thirteen-year-old was-" For a moment neither of them speaks.
"Of course not. But you'll still have to work with her, and you can't treat your staff like that."
"Fine."
"Right, well it doesn't sound fine."
"How would you like it to sound, Ollie?" Rachel sighs.
"Rach, I'm trying to help you."
"Okay."
"That okay?"
"Yeah. It's fine."
"We still okay?"
"I want to go home."
"Rach, you-"
"Lily's tired."
"You can't keep using Lily as an excuse."
"An excuse?"
"That's what this is, isn't it? You don't want to have a rational conversation, so you bring Lily up."
"What do you expect me to do, Ollie? Drop her off at her dad's so that we can go out for dinner at the weekend?"
"No, but if you don't want to make time for our relationship then just say so, Rachel. I'm sick of being on the back foot."
"You think I'm doing this on purpose? She hasn't got anywhere else to go! I'm sorry that looking after a child might detract from how much time I can spend with you, but that's the way it is."
"It feels like you're pushing me out, Rachel."
"Well, I'm not."
"It feels like you are."
"She's not ready." Rachel tells him quietly. "She's very tired and she's... You saw the marks she's getting, all the detentions."
"None of which changes the fact that you're pushing me out."
"Fine."
"So are we going to work this out?"
"No. She's not ready."
The door is pushed open. Lily smooths the handles of the tote bag and thinks about ways to make herself seem less tired and more intelligent. She thinks about the sort of person she might have become if her mum had ever signed her up for Brownies. "Come on then, darling. Let's go home now." Auntie Rachel whispers. She holds out her hand and smiles at Lily when her fingers slip over her palm. "How was your day?"
Melissa used to do this too, the softness after a fight.
Lily is very quiet on the journey back, running her fingers against the cuff of Rachel's cardigan.
"What do you want for dinner?" Rachel asks, taking her boots off by the front door.
Lily steps forward and puts her arms around Rachel's waist and closes her eyes to breathe in the smell of Auntie Rachel, because it is the only thing that has stayed the same. "I love you." Rachel's fingers dance through her hair. She is the same. She is still the same. She is still Auntie Rachel. She still wears the same perfume and has the nice blue dress, and all the childhood magic hasn't completely gone away. It hasn't all changed completely. She's not broken or anything. She is not lost. "Lils, darling, do you want to talk to me about something?"
"No."
"You alright?" Lily nods. Auntie Rachel isn't gone. She's just different, she's just busier and more confusing and hidden behind 'Ms Mason'. She doesn't have time to sit and read about cats in hats or to colour-in pretend flowers. That has finished. It is over. Nobody ever explained to Lily that it would all end one day. It is like being cheated out of your own life.
"Yeah, I'm fine." She bursts into tears.
"Oh, darling." She has no control over herself anymore. It is embarrassing. Even the fact she has a body and an existence is embarrassing. "Has something happened?" Lily shakes her head.
"Everything." she whispers. This is all going too fast. She didn't want to go to the library after school and listen to the year nines talk about all the horrible things that happened to the year eight girl, she didn't want to move school, she didn't want to break up the relationship that she would never have been able to deal with. She wants Auntie Rachel to lift her onto her hip and carry her to the room with the dark pink duvet, she wants to cartwheel over the grass and eat raspberries from a ramekin dish. She wants the small gingham summer dresses and July heat and her mum waiting for her in the school playground to pick her up. She wants to unlearn everything she has ever learnt and start a new life with a new name and a different skin.
"Everything?" Lily nods.
"I want my mum." She can hear how pathetic she is.
"I bet you do." Auntie Rachel holds her more firmly. "It's really tough, isn't it?" There are tears dropping over her cheekbones.
Her mum found out she was being bullied when she was in year 3. Auntie Rachel would have called up the headteacher and complained and gone up to the parents in the school playground and had 'quiet words' with them. Melissa just went, 'oh well, you can just get new friends, Lil, who cares about what a load of eight-year-olds think anyway?', and it was exactly what Lily had wanted her mum to say. No standing up for herself or showing them they couldn't hurt her, just a straightforward move to a school that had a red school jumper instead of green, and no one had bullied her again.
"I want my mum." The little white rabbit has probably been burnt up or shredded or dumped in a landfill site. "I want my mummy." She just wants one hug, one call, one text, just so she knows her mum is still alive. "Where is she?"
"I don't know, Lils."
"Do you think she'll come back this time?"
"Yeah." Rachel whispers. Her niece needs her to lie. She needs reassurance. Not reality. Some mothers don't come back, some mothers hang slumped over the edges of beds with purple lips and red eyes and knots around their necks. "Yeah, I think everyone just finds things difficult sometimes. She just needs time to figure things out."
Lily steps away from her and wipes her tears against the sleeve of Auntie Rachel's cardigan. She doesn't know what she wanted Rachel to say, but it wasn't that. Just for once she wanted someone to explain it to her. "You going to help me get some dinner?" She shakes her head. Everyone is always lying to her. "You alright, Lils?" Auntie Rachel must be stupid. She hasn't been 'alright' for months. Years even. A whole lifetime.
"Yeah." She takes off her school shoes.
"Okay. You going to get on with some homework or something?"
"Yeah." There is no point in doing homework, she'll only get it all wrong. There's no point in any of it.
She pretends she is asleep when Rachel knocks on the bedroom door and tells her that dinner's ready.
"Lils, come on, darling. It's dinnertime." She pretends not to feel the folder being taken off her legs and put on the floor. "Sweetheart, I know you're not asleep." She carries on pretending anyway. "Come on, Lily-girl. You'll be alright." She doesn't move. "Lily." Rachel breathes out loudly, as though this is testing her patience, and she does not need her patience tested. "Fine. That's fine. Nothing like gratitude, is there?" Lily sits up and stares back at her aunt's puffed, heartbroken eyes.
"I didn't ask to come here." she mumbles, even though she knows that the only reason she is angry is because she's embarrassed. "I didn't ask to come and live with you, did I?"
"Sorry?" Lily swallows. "I know things aren't easy at the moment, Lily, but I expect you to treat me with respect."
"You're not my mum." Philip said that too, thirteen years ago, so did Melissa, once upon a time.
"I'm not trying to be." She doesn't want to be. She wants her niece and nephew to be her niece and nephew. She wants her sister to be her sister. She wants to be Auntie Rachel. "I am not responsible for the way your parents have treated you."
"Aren't you?" Lily whispers. Her father's broken heart, her mother's habit of running away, just like her big sister.
"No. But I'm sorry that they've let you down." Lily stares at her.
"You're full of crap."
"Lily! You do not swear at me, do you understand?"
"I hate you."
"Fine." Lily clamps her lips shut. "Come on, your dinner's getting cold."
"I don't want any."
"I didn't ask you if you wanted any." Rachel holds the door open. Lily doesn't move. "Come on, sweetheart, it's dinnertime." Rachel attempts a smile before abandoning it to rub her thumb and forefinger over her sinuses. "Lily, will you hurry up?" she snaps.
"I don't want any."
"No, I know you don't because you never do." she mutters. She tilts her head back against the door. "I don't know what you want me to do, Lils." She turns to look at Lily and shrugs. "I don't know what it is you want from me." Auntie Rachel is giving up. "I don't think there's anything more I can do."
This is not Auntie Rachel who spent hours trying to find the exact type of shell she had described, or Auntie Rachel who had surprised her with a butterfly garden so they could watch the caterpillars turn into cocoons, or Auntie Rachel who pulled her onto her lap so she could paint her toes sparkly pink. There is no magic. It has all gone. Auntie Rachel really does find her difficult, just like everyone else. Lily nods.
"Oh." she whispers. "Okay. Sorry." She stands up. There isn't time for magic. She is expecting too much. She must not be difficult. Annoying. Inconvenient. She must not make mistakes. She must fly under the radar. This is not a house she belongs in. She is not loved. She-
Not loved?
It repeats itself over and over as she eats the cold carrots.
She stays quiet. Cold carrots, cold peas, cold baby potatoes, cold vegetarian sausages. The food tastes of grey.
Not loved. It settles like another stone to the pile between her ribs, pulling her down.
Not
loved.
"How was school?"
"Great." There is a lump in her throat.
"Yeah? What did you have?"
"Geography."
"Oh, did you? What were you doing?"
"Rivers."
"Really? I didn't think you did rivers until year eight."
"It was just for a change." She puts her fork down on the side of her plate.
Not loved. Not loved. Not loved. How has it taken her twelve years to realise it? How has she been so stupid?
She stares at the grey plate and grey food and her grey hands on the grey placemat. The stones pull her down. Her belly is full of stones.
"Lils-" She looks up at Auntie Rachel. "You need to eat the potatoes, darling." Auntie Rachel cannot see how her stomach is already swollen.
They rattle around inside her as she stands once her plate is empty. Pull her down as she follows Auntie Rachel with her knife clutched between her fingers.
"Do you want to watch TV or something, Lils?" Lily drops her knife into the dishwasher. Heavy. Weighted.
"No, I'm alright, thank you, Auntie Rachel." Her skin strains to accommodate the smile.
"You sure? You can choose - we can watch anything, I don't mind."
"I'm fine."
Rachel watches her walk over to the door.
"Lils?" She hadn't expected her niece to stop. "I'm sorry I snapped at you earlier, I shouldn't have spoken to you like that."
"Oh, no worries. It's fine."
Lily goes up to her room and hides in the wardrobe with the three odd hangers and the blue suitcase with 'P Ryan' written on the tag. She cries into the soft cardigan like she did when she was nine and she found out Auntie Rachel didn't love her for the first time. She thinks it probably hurts more this time around.