LITMIR.BIZ

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to a flurry of turned heads. I no longer have a home; that has been made clear. I walk on through frigid sludge, numbness rising from my ankles to my knees. Gradually, the snowfall peters out and I find myself at the gate of Whitworth Park. I peer through the bars. The paths are streaked with ruts where mothers pushed perambulators earlier that afternoon. Snow cloaks the lawns and piles in heaps upon the bushes, transforming it into a strange, smothered landscape.

      How I scale the locked gate I have no notion, but in the blink of an eye it is behind me. The clouds peel away, leaving the sky clear. I make my way into the park, ploughing through the drifts. I find myself lying down. I must have slipped and fallen. My shoulder and elbow shriek. It appears that I can feel pain, after all.

      I struggle to my feet and continue walking, trailing my fingertips along the hedges. Without any warning, I am on my knees. I must have fallen again. I don’t remember. My memory is as full of holes as a tea strainer. I examine my arms, sleeves rolled to the elbow from when I peeled the potatoes. The flesh is bluish. There is no longer any sign of bleeding.

      The snow is as thick as a mattress and as inviting. Without thinking overmuch about what I am doing, I lie down and sink into feather softness. I cannot recall ever feeling so content. I wonder if this is happiness. If so, it is very agreeable. I will stay here. There is no shouting. No loneliness. No confusion. No pain. No hate.

      I close my eyes. A distant part of myself knows I ought to feel cold. If anything it is the opposite. Something that is not precisely warmth, but very much like it, steals through my limbs. It is unbearably sweet. Tears spring, forming icicles. My head draws away from my body, my limbs also. I lose sight of them. I do not care. I am at peace. It has all stopped. All of it. So simple.

      My heart beats. The thumping grows in intensity until my body is shuddering. I am a door and someone is knocking so furiously I am being shifted off my hinges. I smile at the peculiar idea. In the thunder I hear a voice.

       You! You! Get up!

      ‘Leave me alone,’ I mutter and stick my fingers into my ears. If I can’t hear him, he’ll have to go away. I’ll be able to hide. I will, I will.

      You can’t do this! he yells. Edie!

      All I want is to fall asleep. But this creature won’t let me.

      ‘Let me stay here,’ I say.

       Not a chance.

      ‘I’m happy.’

       You’re not.

      ‘Am so,’ I whine. ‘Just a little longer.’

      Bloody get up! he screams. We need each other. There is a pause. I need you, Edie.

      A longer silence follows, so profound I can sense each snowflake in the quilt beneath which I lie.

       It’s not fair. You can’t do this to me.

      ‘You’re not real,’ I mumble.

       I’m Gnome, you idiot. Have you forgotten?

      A chill cuts to my core, far icier than the burrow in which I’m buried. I shake my head.

      ‘No. You are all in my mind. Gnome is a bad memory. Ma says …’

      My brain is being dragged awake. I try to ignore its spark and fizz, try to slip back into the delicious lassitude, but it nags and niggles and will not let me lie. I hardly know if I pull myself or am pulled out of the snowdrift, but emerge I do.

      Now, I feel the bitterness of the weather and wish I didn’t. I look over my shoulder at the soft bed I have just left, but the voice lays on the whip and drives me forward. Each step is like walking barefoot on broken glass. I stagger to the gate of the park and this time, climbing over is torture.

      I lurch along the street, shivering. People throw sideways glances, wrinkling their lips at this guttersnipe straight from the pages of a cautionary tale told to warn girls of what they’ll be reduced to if they stray.

      There is nowhere for me to go but The Comet. It is not home, not in the way the world takes the word, but it is all I have. By the time I turn on to Renshaw Street it is past closing time and the windows are dark. My fingers are so stiff I can barely open the door. I cower in front of the kitchen range and listen to my teeth chatter, oddly loud in the quiet house.

      The broken glass has been cleared away, the plates and cups on the shelf rearranged. There’s no sign it was ever there. The only proof I left The Comet is my sodden pinafore. Did I really lie down in the snow? Was I really waiting for – wanting to – My mind gutters like a cheap candle.

      I can’t stay here for Ma to trip over me come morning. I tiptoe through the public bar. Papa observes me from behind his glass.

      ‘Did you leave because of me?’ I whisper. ‘Who are you, really? Who am I?’ He lifts a hairy eyebrow. I’ve always taken his expression to be sympathetic, but after this evening, nothing is certain. ‘Why am I talking to you?’ I sigh. ‘You’re a photograph.’

      I climb the stairs. Nana calls out a sleepy greeting. I peel off my filthy clothes, promising whatever guardian angel is listening that I’ll wash them tomorrow. I crawl into bed. Arguments rumble through the wall. The sound is almost comforting.

      ‘Why me?’ Ma whines. ‘What did I ever do to deserve this?’

      ‘You’re a hard woman, Cissy. The child is going out of her mind.’

      ‘So she should be.’

      ‘A secret is one thing. Hatred is another.’

      My door opens. I hear the smoky wheeze of Nana’s breath. The mattress shifts as she lowers herself on to the end of the bed.

      ‘You shouldn’t rile your mother, child,’ she sighs. ‘She takes care of us all.’

      She speaks carefully, and I know it is because Ma is eavesdropping.

      ‘Yes, Nana,’ I reply. I lower my voice. ‘Why does Ma hate me?’ I whisper.

      ‘What sort of foolish notion is that?’ she replies, but will not look me in the eye.

      ‘Am I so horrible?’ I say, words thick with misery.

      ‘Lass. There is nothing horrible about you,’ she replies with great tenderness.

      ‘Then why …’ I sob.

      ‘Your mother has a difficult time of it,’ she continues. ‘She’s not strong, not like you or me.’

      I’m strong? It is a strange idea. Nana stretches out her arms, draws me into the safe harbour of her lap and begins to sing.

      ‘See how she runs, she tumbles and falls,

      She catches the sunbeams that come through the door.

      Nobody knows how I adore

      Nana’s little girl.’

      For the space of a song, I taste safety and it is delicious.

      ‘Will I grow up like Ma?’ I ask with a guilty blush I hope is obscured by the darkness of the room.

      ‘I pray to all the saints in heaven that you don’t,’ she sighs. ‘Enough. You might not need to sleep but I do. Goodnight.’

      She presses dry lips to my brow. Her chin scratches. I think nothing of it, not till much later. I lie quietly, the warmth of my body soaking into the bed, and fall asleep.

      The next morning, I wake up with not so much as a speck of dirt under my fingernails, nor one tangle in my hair. I regard myself in the mirror. Ugly as always, but miracles are not for the likes of me.

      However, there has been a small miracle of sorts. The previous evening, I came close to extinguishing my life, and stayed my hand. I stumbled, but didn’t fall – not all the way. My mother poured her whole store of bile upon me, all fourteen

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