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Never never never never… But what if?
That’s what turned me inside out. That’s why I could never get over it.
Not knowing the truth about something as big as that? That can fuck you up for life.
76
NOW
‘Rose?’ shouts Lydia. ‘Is Rose there?’
‘No!’ Mina shouts back, tears coursing down her cheeks. Ash and Ava cling to her. Tristan stands behind them, his jaw clenched, the whites of his eyes shot red.
I sit on the floor and block it all out – the question on the wall most of all, because my daughter isn’t dead. I’d know if she were dead. I’d feel it.
I read Jenna’s journal, flying from page to page, trying only to find the important bits – the bits that might tell me how we’ve ended up here, like this.
AA must be Ash and Ava. They’ve been bullying my daughter. They’ve been doing it since they were little. They left her alone at first, at school, but then something happened before this journal began, something to do with a Bob Dylan concert – Jenna had been to see Bob Dylan? – and then they started being mean to her at school, and because they’re popular everyone else thinks she’s fair game.
She believes my father hates me, hates her, hates his entire family. She sees clearly how he abuses my mother, how he gaslights and bullies and coerces, and when that isn’t enough how he finds ways for us to hurt ourselves.
There is an older man, T, who has been wooing her, grooming her, for years, and she hates it and loves it and doesn’t know what to do about it. She thinks it might be her escape. She thinks it might be the end of her.
T is putting pressure on her to kiss him. To go away with him for the weekend, to Glastonbury. He kissed her once before but now he wants her to want it and she thinks she might, except maybe she doesn’t.
I think of Mina crying in the kitchen, the red garnet that is in fact a ruby, and all the red-jewelled necklaces my brother has given every girl he has ever liked, and my stomach turns over.
There’s a girl, R, who must be Rose. Rose isn’t mentioned anywhere on the walls of the bathroom, but inside the journal she’s everywhere. R is kind and smart and funny. R is fierce.
Jenna loves Rose. And Rose loves her back.
My daughter has felt a love so pure and strong swelling in her chest that it fills her with complete, overwhelming joy.
And at this I cry again. At least she has felt this. At least she has had something good in her life.
But she thinks it’s dirty and wrong, that God will send her to hell, that her family will disown her.
Dan knows. Dan has tried to convince her to tell me. She hasn’t told him anything else but she knows he understands what’s going on in this family.
Something breaks into my reverie: Ash shouting, ‘I’m sorry – I’m sorry! – but the message said we had to come without anyone knowing or Jenna would die.’ The twins are both still clinging to Mina like she’s a life ring. Tristan gnaws his thumb as he paces. He halts and throws open the bathroom window.
I read on. Jenna found the tape. She watched the tape. She doesn’t say exactly what was on it, just that it has made it hard for her to eat, sleep, look in the mirror, and she can never trust me, Tristan or my mother ever again. It’s like she couldn’t bear to write it down. Each time she tries, all she manages is a glimpse of Tristan walking up to a teacher, or the click of my mother’s heels, or the sight of her own mother, her own age, kneeling down to reach the camera and turn it off.
What possessed me to put the tape in the Pocahontas case? When Georgia stopped coming to PES and I heard she’d left Port Emblyn, I scrabbled back onto the school toilet and retrieved it from the vent. I smuggled it home and moved all my old tapes and TV into the extension attic, where no one ever went. It would just be me up there, hoovering up Disney when I was too old for it, wondering if I’d ever slip up and choose Pocahontas.
But I never dared. And my daughter fell into the trap I’d set for myself.
Apart from Dan, Jenna thinks her whole family is evil, and her fear and desperation over what to do with the tape scream from the page.
Rose took the tape. And now here we are.
There’s more in the diary. There’s me.
She thinks I’m disgusting. Laughable. A sham covering pain with positivity.
She knows why I keep craft knives even though I never do any craft. She has seen my scars and watched me slide the tip of a blade into the side of my hand when I was chopping carrots and thought no one was watching.
She thinks I don’t see her.
