Trapped Between

The next afternoon I had another study period after lunch; it was the perfect time to go to see Drew’s parents. It hadn’t been hard to find out where they lived. The offices were all pretty much empty as most of the senior staff were at David Pearson’s funeral. I had told the school receptionist that I was in charge of sending the invitations out for the unveiling of the memorial sculpture, once it was completed, and that Mrs. Ashburn had suggested that Sherrie Murphy and Drew Clayton’s parents be invited. Yet another lie.

Ms Dennis, the ancient, beak nosed receptionist, hadn’t asked any questions. She had simply turned her sour, powdered face to the computer screen in front of her, stabbed at a few keys with her bright red finger nails and then turned back to her magazine as the decrepit printer began to churn out a couple of sheets. She didn’t look up from her crossword as the final sheet nestled onto the paper tray, so I took that as my cue to grab the sheets and run.

That had been first thing, before form period, and now as I sat with Jess in the lunch hall, I felt fear in my belly again. I had been so sure I wouldn’t be able to get the address, so sure that this insane plan wouldn’t have got off the ground, but it had been easy. The sheet felt heavy in my pocket, as if the neatly printed address was typed in some kind of leaden ink that weighed a tonne.

39 Rowland Place. That was where I would find Drew’s parents and that was where I was heading straight after lunch. I pushed my sandwich into my mouth and chewed, struggling to swallow. I was going to puke. Nerves were eating away at me like woodworm silently chewing through the timbers of a house. If they kept up their ruthless attack it wouldn’t be long until I crumbled to the ground in a pile of sawdust. I swallowed a lump of sandwich hoping that it had landed on top of the worms, crushing them, stopping their relentless jaws.

“Common room?” Jess asked through a mouthful of chips.

It was so unfair, no matter what rubbish Jess stuffed into her face, she never put any weight on, never changed from the beautiful, slim, blonde girl sat in front of me.

“Not for me,” I shook my head, glad for an excuse to put the sandwich down. “I’ve got a few books to take back to the library and then I’m going to head home to study.”

“Oh, okay. Can we into Fornby tomorrow afternoon? We can even hit the gallery, if you want.” Please? Pretty please?

I didn’t really want to, but I would escape quicker if I agreed. I hastily nodded and Jess turned her attention back to the table of Year 13 boys, Patrick Airey included, who were discussing what to do in their free period next. Relief flooded through me. There was no way Jess would offer to come with me to the library when she had the chance to pout and flick her hair at Patrick Airey for a whole hour.

She was still staring longingly at him as I made my excuses; she wafted her hand at me, never once taking her eyes off him. Poor Patrick, it was only a matter of time until she had him, hook, line and sinker. Once someone was on Jess’ hot list, and they weren’t a major celebrity, she would get them, she always did. In fact, even the celebrities would probably jump at the chance to go out with Jess if they ever met her, she was that irresistible.

Outside the school gates, I turned left and set off up the hill. I tried not to think about what I was walking towards, what I was going to do if the Claytons were actually in. It was surprisingly easy to empty my head of worry and just look around me at the wintery views of Newlington.

Heading up the hill the air felt still and cold, but with my hood pulled up over my curls, I didn’t mind. Even the squishy leaves under foot felt comforting, like a thick, soggy blanket muffling out the heavy sound of my footsteps on the cold pavement. Last night’s frost had thawed leaving everything shiny and bright, as if Jack Frost had failed to win in his battle to turn everything into white ghosts; nature had won the fight, pushed through, woke up with colour and brightness.

Rowland Place was a cul-de-sac made up of large detached houses. Each house looked the same, with regimented square windows and red tiled roofs. The drives were lined with trees that had also stood in the battle against Jack Frost. They were barren and leafless but their trunks shone brown and green with damp velvety moss. The afternoon light winked on the windows around me and for a moment I was bathed in a pale, yellow glow. It energised me, making me feel good to me alive. I checked the doors carefully looking for number 39.

The Clayton’s house was at the bottom, where the road widened out and looped back on itself. It stood like its comrades, disciplined and orderly in its plot. Though, on closer inspection, it had a tired, weary look about it. The paint on the fascia boards was peeling away and a few tiles looked loose on the overhang above the door.

There was a red estate car on the drive and my breath rushed out like the puff of steam from a boiled kettle, it hung in the air in front of me as I failed to pull it back in, failed to breath.

Someone was definitely in.

Someone would answer the door.

Someone would hear when I lifted the knocker and let it fall back into its place on the brass square screwed to the door. They would hear my hammering heart, see the beads of sweat that sat on my top lip, and then see straight through my cover story.

My mouth felt dry as I reached into my bag with shaky hands and pulled out my drawings of the sculpture. I was going to have to talk about it, invite them to the unveiling for real; otherwise I was just a weird girl turning up at their house for no reason at all. I took a deep breath, grasping the cold metal between my thumb and forefinger; this was it, last chance to back out.

I let the knocker drop; the sharp clang of metal on metal rang out into the still air, like a gun shot, making me jump.

Nothing happened.

Then, ever so quietly, I heard the squeak of a door from inside the house, heard slow footsteps which got gradually louder as they came closer and closer to the door.

I gripped my drawings in a tight fist, white knuckles pushing through my skin, and plastered a friendly smile on my face.

The door opened revealing a small, thin woman; she looked about sixty, with greying hair pulled back from her face by a velvet headband.

“Yes?”

I pulled in another quick breath, keeping the smile on my face, even though it was beginning to ache in my cheeks, and began the spiel I had practiced.

“Mrs. Clayton?” I asked. She nodded. “My name is Elizabeth Sutton. I’m a student from Newlington Sixth Form. I wondered if I could come in and talk to you about our plans to create a very special sculpture. Would that be okay?”

My request was met with silence. She stared at me with confused eyes, as if an invisible wall stood between us and she hadn’t heard a word I’d said. I fidgeted, clutching at my drawings, willing the overly smiley mask to stay on my face, willing her to let me in.

Finally, good old British politeness won and she opened to door wider, gesturing for me to step inside. My mask must have done its job, and as she turned her back I let it slide of my aching cheeks. I followed her down the dark hallway into a conservatory at the back of the house. A fan heater pumped warm air into the room and I shrugged out of my coat before sitting in the chair that she gestured towards.

Once she had taken her seat, she smiled at me with glassy eyes.

“What kind of sculpture are we talking about…?” She squinted at me, grimacing awkwardly. Obviously the invisible wall hadn’t let my name through.

“Elizabeth,” I said.

“Elizabeth,” she repeated, looking thankful. She lifted her eyebrows, waiting for me to answer her question.

“Ahem,” I cleared my throat. This was the hard bit, to explain about the sculpture I’d have to mention the word suicide. I cleared my throat again, desperately trying to think up a more tactful way to explain things. “We’re creating a memorial sculpture, to commemorate a student who died last week. David Pearson?”

She shook her head, clueless; the name meant nothing to her. Damn it. I had assumed that she would have heard about David Pearson’s death, it was major Newlington news, but clearly it hadn’t reached 39 Rowland Place.

I put my drawings on the floor next to my feet, before my sweaty fingers disintegrated them to a messy pulp, and quickly explained what had happened.

“His poor parents,” she whispered, her glassy stare focussed on nothing in particular. I didn’t respond. She didn’t seem to be talking to me; in fact I wasn’t sure that she even knew that she’d said it out loud.

The next bit was even harder and I struggled to phrase it right, to say it how I had practiced it as I had walked up the hill.

“We thought…well, Mr. Sharpe thought… the sculpture should remember the other two…” I trailed off; I didn’t need to say anymore.

Her eyes filled with grief, like the eyes of someone who had lived through a great and terrible sadness, which of course she had. She still was. Her sad eyes slid past me to look at something just beyond my right shoulder.

The silence that followed was unbearable, like a thick blanket smothering all of the air away. The fan heater whirred on, feeding more and more stifling heat into the already too hot room. I rubbed my sweaty hands back and forth on my jeans, leaving dark trails in the denim on my thighs. She was still looking past me, still staring off to the right as if I wasn’t there. I took the chance to glance over my shoulder, trying to see what had grasped her attention so completely.

“That’s Drew!” I froze; but my exclamation was already of my mouth, shattering the silence. I snapped my head back round, fast, to face her. She was looking at me intently, shocked by my outburst.

I blushed, a livid red. I could feel it burning though my skin, warming my already boiling cheeks until they were on fire. I shouldn’t have recognised him. I was only two when he had died. And even if I had somehow recognised him, I should have called him Andrew, not Drew.

She sat, confused, with her head cocked to the side, waiting for my explanation.

I stammered through the story of my sister’s scrapbooks, how she was at school at the same time as him and how I had wanted to do some research around the sculpture project. She nodded absentmindedly, never taking her eyes from the photograph and I let out a sigh of relief.

I looked back over my shoulder, drawn to the image just like she was. It was definitely the Drew I knew, he looked about the same age, but I had never seen him like this.

He looked out of the frame with a half-smile, like he knew a really good secret. His face was tanned a light gold and it was framed by his messy fringe, hanging over his forehead like a blanket of rich, brown leaves. His eyes smouldered, two steaming mugs of cocoa, inviting, tempting, and full of warmth. His eyes were alight, like the secret was just too good and he was desperate to share it. His brown leather jacket was zipped up and the gold buckle on his belt had caught a rogue shaft of sunlight, just as the shutter had come down, sending a bright white line shooting out to the edge of the picture. His scruffy, well-worn jeans looked soft; they were too long and frayed, hanging over his green lace up trainers.

This was Drew, the real Drew, buoyant and warm, beautiful and full of life. My Drew was merely a shadow, a sad, grey reflection of what he had been.

A knot of sadness curled into a tight fist and pushed itself, hard, into my chest, twisting as it went. This was the Drew who was lost to the world, a smiling, happy boy. Only a part of him was left now, a grey spectre trapped between this life and the next.

“He would have loved the idea of a sculpture,” she said.

Mrs. Clayton’s sad voice, reminded me where I was, what I was supposed to be talking about, so, with genuine difficulty, I tore my eyes away from the photograph. It was like turning away from the sun, its shape had imprinted itself on my eyes and every time I blinked I could see his smiling face looking at me from behind my eye lids.

I had to get back to the plan.

Drew, my version of Drew, would be waiting for me, anxious to hear what I had found out. I needed to get his mum talking about him, but I didn’t know how to get her started. Then, as if she had heard my thoughts, my desperate plea, she asked me a question that would start the ball rolling.

“Do they know how the Pearson boy did it?”

“I… I… think he…pills,” I stammered.

“Oh,” she said. It was her only response. The silence threatened to engulf the room again.

I took a deep breath, feeling sick about what I was about to do.

“Is that how…your son..?” I let the question hang in the air between us. It was a horrible question to ask, made even more sickening by the fact that I already knew the answer, but I had to get her to open up somehow.

“No, he jumped.”

The way she said it was strange. Her voice had taken on a flat and lifeless tone, like the way you might imagine a zombie would speak. It dawned on me that she looked like a zombie too; she was all glassy eyes and stiff arms hanging awkwardly from her shoulders.

She suddenly gave a short, sharp laugh, a dark humourless sound that made me jump. As soon as the bark was out of her mouth she threw her hand up to her face, as if she could push the sound back in. She sat for several seconds with her hand pressed to her mouth until the dazed expression descended over her face once again.

“He jumped in front of a train,” she said, trying to carry on in the same lifeless tone as before, as if her horrible laugh had never interrupted what she’d been saying. But she couldn’t quite manage it. The laugh had let something out with it, something that weaved between her monotone words, a slither of disbelief.

I looked at her in shock.

She didn’t believe it either.

Drew’s mother didn’t think he had killed himself. I sat up, spine ramrod straight. What did she think had happened? What did she know?

“You…you don’t think he did?” I gasped, looked at her with incredulous eyes. I didn’t blink, I kept my face open, questioning, silently begging her to say more.

Her whole body seemed to slump forward; she slowly moved her stiff arms and folded them carefully in her lap, clasping her fingers together. It looked as if two heavy, invisible hands had clamped onto her shoulders and were forcing her into her chair with some unseen and unmanageable pressure. She seemed to physically wilt and get smaller before my eyes, a shrinking flower.

I opened and closed by mouth several times, like a fish, but no words came out. I looked at her crumpled body, sunk into the cushions, and couldn’t bring myself to say anything else. I couldn’t ask this poor, broken woman anything more. If I asked her what she thought happened, if I made her dredge up the memories of finding out he had been killed, horrifically on the train track, then she might crumple to ashes in front of me. She looked so fragile, brittle, like a pillar of dust. If the fan heater kicked up a notch its force would shatter her into tiny pieces and blow her away.

The sound of the front door opening, and then banging shut, startled me, and brought Mrs. Clayton back to life. She smoothed her skirt over her knees and flashed an anxious glance in my direction. She stood up to face the door and I could see a slight tremble in her knees.

A large man, Mr. Clayton I assumed, came into the room and completely filled it. He was the total opposite of Mrs. Clayton, whereas she was small and frail, this man was tall, with broad shoulders and a rotund belly. He looked at his wife, saw the jittery, exposed look in her eye, turned, and zeroed in on me with a hard look. His eyes were the same colour as the photograph Drew’s, but they didn’t shine with the same brightness and light, they were hard and cold, like brown ice.

“And you are?”

His direct question cut through the hot, sticky air making the temperature of the room plummet until it matched the coldness of his icy stare. I staggered out of my seat, not daring to meet his eyes.

“I’m sorry… so sorry to intrude…Sir,” I stammered.

My voice shook like the final leaf clinging to a tree in an autumn storm. I shivered; it was strange to think that I had ever found this room too hot, too stifling.

“Well, why are you here?” he barked.

“I…I just came to give you this.” I kept my eyes down as I held out the invitation to the memorial sculpture’s unveiling. It shook slightly in my hand and when he didn’t take it from me; I placed it, carefully, on the arm of the chair.

He made no attempt to either pick it up or speak to me again so I decided it was time to make a swift exit. I stepped awkwardly around his hulking, overbearing frame, flicked an apologetic glance at Mrs. Clayton, and headed back into the hall, keeping my face downturned.

“Thank you for coming, Elizabeth.” Mrs. Clayton’s quiet voice drifted out of the conservatory, like a wisp of smoke. I opened the front door and stepped out into the cool afternoon. I pulled up my hood as I reached back to close the door behind me, but the sound of strained voices stopped me in my tracks, my hand already on the handle ready to pull it shut.

“She knew him. She knew Andrew,” Mrs. Clayton said, her voice desperate and pleading. Mr. Clayton didn’t respond, and I could picture him turning his icy glare onto his tiny wife. “She called him Drew,” she whispered.

I held my breath waiting; it seemed my slip up over his name hadn’t gone unnoticed after all.

“Of course she didn’t know him,” he said, his reply was terse and exasperated. “She didn’t even look old enough to have been born when it happened.” Another silence, and then his voice softened, becoming gentle, and I imagined him kneeling down, maybe putting an arm around Mrs. Clayton’s fragile shoulders. “Come on, love. This is madness. You know what the doctor said. Don’t do this to yourself again. Shall I get you your pills?”

I closed the door as quietly as I could and turned away from the house.

My thoughts were in a whirl, a spinning kaleidoscope of chaos. Drew’s mum didn’t think he had committed suicide. She was right, yet the people around her, her doctor and her husband, had convinced her she was crazy. A mad woman, who needed medication to help her deal with her overwhelming grief, a grief so consuming that she wasn’t able to believe that her son had killed himself.

She didn’t know anything about what had actually happened. No details that would help us to find out the truth. She was just a mother who loved her son and couldn’t believe that he would have chosen to leave her.

I took a long time walking back from Rowland Place; I dragged my feet, not rushing at all through the cold afternoon. I had a lot to think about and a lot of time to kill. I’d head to the park for the usual time, but before then I decided to go the library. Being amongst the books would help me get my thoughts in order, calm down a bit, and I’d already told Jess I was going so it would make me feel better to not have told her a total lie.

I trudged through the empty market and nearly had a heart attack when I saw Drew, leaning against the gates, obviously waiting for me.

“You’ve been ages,” he said, his voice strained and edged with agitation. His grey eyes were cold, so different from the warm pools of chocolate in the photograph, and they bore into my face. “So?” he demanded.

“But…but it’s not five yet,” I stammered, rooted to the spot.

“So?” he said again, impatience colouring his voice. Clearly my confusion over the time was not the response he’d been looking for. He blew out a frustrated sigh and began to walk towards the park, his body stiff and straight; I had to jog a little to catch up with him

“Hang on; I didn’t think we could meet until five?” I gasped, struggling to keep up with his long strides. I felt silly voicing my assumption, like saying it out loud proved that I never forgot he was a spectre, a ghost trapped here, wandering the same path back and forth. I was glad he was a few steps ahead; it meant he couldn’t see the confusion etched all over my face.

He turned back to look at me, with soft eyes and he laughed, shaking his head once.

“I only ever said five o’clock because I thought it was a good time for you, you know, after school, before dinner.” His laughter died off, leaving his voice dark and sombre. “I’m always here, Beth. Every moment of every day.”

He turned away and set off back to the park, but not quick enough to stop me seeing the bleakness in his grey eyes.

“Oh.” I felt foolish and my cheeks began to warm, giving away my humiliation, as always.

I cast my embarrassed eyes down and began to walk again, feeling stupid. Of course five o’clock wasn’t some kind of magical time, the first time I’d seen him, the first time I’d accepted his silent request, had been in the morning. I instantly felt better, realising I would never have to hang about, itching for five o’clock to come; I could see him anytime I wanted to. Five o’clock the mystical witching hour when the other world overlapped with mine. I felt stupid that I’d ever thought it was.

“Silly Beth,” he laughed, my eyes flicked up to his beautiful face when he said my name, but it wasn’t patronising, it was a balm, soothing away my discomfort.

He waited for the blush to fade from my cheeks before he let his smile fade away.

“Were they there?” he asked. His grey eyes darted round my face, beseeching me to tell him about my afternoon, about his parents. My heart ached to see his earnest impression and once again I wanted to reach out to him, to touch him, to ease the tension in his forehead away with my fingertips.

“Yes, they were there. I spoke to your mother.”

A million expressions flickered across his face in the space of a second. I couldn’t name all of them, but I saw shock, panic, excitement, fear, amazement and dread before he settled on plain old nervous. He raised his eyebrows, imploring me to begin.

So I told him. Even though I didn’t want to. I told him about his mum’s anguish, about the pills, about his dad’s attitude, about the photograph on the wall. He stayed motionless, but not like a statue, it was like he had been electrified, full of nervous energy, but just couldn’t direct it into movement.

“Drew, I’m so sorry,” I whispered. I couldn’t bear to look at his crumpled face so I stared at his chest instead.

The electric current that had been zipping through his immobilised body ebbed away, I saw his shoulders droop and he deflated, becoming flat, dejected.

“I was so sure they would know something, didn’t you?” It wasn’t really a question; he knew I had no answer to offer him, no way of lifting him, filling him with air again. “And I’m so sorry you had to do that,” he said guiltily.

“I didn’t have to do anything,” I shook my head, my heart tearing at the look of anguish on his face.

Didn’t he understand?

Yes, it had been horrible to bring that look of grief and despair to his mother’s face, to feel the anger boiling beneath his father’s cold façade. They were dealing with their grief in very different ways, but when you stripped it all back, they were two desperate people who had lost a massive chunk of their hearts, felt their lives break apart by their loss. But I would go back again if that is what he wanted me to do; I would go back a million times. Didn’t he see that? I would go to the very ends of the earth and back again if that’s what he asked me to do. I took a step towards him.

“I wanted to go for you, Drew. I’d do anything for you, you must see that.”

Silence.

My declaration of why I was committed to helping him, hung in the air, suspended between us and I couldn’t do anything to reel it back in. It wasn’t justice and rightness that were directing my actions, making me promise to help him find the truth; it was my need to be with him, an overwhelming need to be near him, a selfish reason.

The plume of light exploded out of my chest, a warm tongue flickering towards him, desperately trying to find a way to warm his cold, grey skin.

His eyes snapped to my face, a look of amazement rushed across his features.

I stopped breathing.

He could feel it, I was sure he could. He could feel the energy licking, pulsating through the air between us, connecting us. He took a step back, as if the flame had just reached him and burnt him. His face turned wary.

“I don’t want you to do this for me,” he said, taking another step back. His voice was steady, determined, but his eyes were still guarded as he struggled to meet my eye. “It’s not about me; I want us to find out the truth for my parents, for my mother.”

He was selfless, he didn’t care about himself, didn’t care about being trapped here with me, he wanted to find out the truth to ease his parents suffering. He doesn’t care about you said a thin reedy voice in my head, I tried to ignore it. Here I was selfishly thinking of ways to be with him, stay near him and he was focussed on the task for the sake and sanity of his parents, nothing more.

Everything seemed to drop away and I was left standing alone, like a bare rock surrounded by cold darkness. The stones had found their way back into my stomach and they filled me, dragging me down towards the ground. I was happy to let them, I wanted to lie down on the earth, curl into a tiny ball so I wouldn’t feel so open and exposed in front of him. I felt wretched, rejected, like I had offered myself to him and he had turned away. It was stupid to feel like that, he didn’t know that I loved him. But I swear that he had felt it, the energy radiating out from my chest, zipping through the air between us, and it hadn’t frightened him at first, it had amazed him, I’d seen it in his face.

“I have to go,” he said.

He didn’t. He didn’t have anywhere to go. He wants to get away from you the reedy voice sneered at me again.

The stones increased in number, filling my stomach with a feeling of sickness, rejection and despair. I couldn’t look at him either, couldn’t bear that he had registered my feelings and refused them, turned away from them, from me.

He left me, halfway between the market and the park. We’d never made it to our usual place, allowing him to see how I felt about him had had seen to that. It had been enough to make him turn cold and disappear.

The weight of the day bore down on me, pinning me down under layers and layers of regret. I’d lied to get the address, deceived my best friend and brought suffering to a heartbroken mother and anger to a grieving man. But none of that cut as deep as the regret that I had allowed Drew to see how I felt about him. The pain sliced into me like the cold, hard edge of a razor blade, thin, exact, and guaranteed to draw blood.

I dropped to my knees, welcoming the cold bite of the pavement through my jeans, as I tried in vain to push back the flow of blood that I imagined was oozing from my chest, flowing through my fingers. The pain made me realise how stupid I had been, it shouldn’t matter that he had turned away from me because he wasn’t mine to lose.

He didn’t belong here, more than that; he didn’t want to be here. He’d told me that he felt the lure of the afterlife calling to him, and that pull must still be there, regardless of what he said. He wasn’t just doing this for his parents, no matter what he said, he wanted to put things in order, get everything straightened out so he could succumb to the pull.