47. Before

The sky is a silk sheet pierced with starlight. Around me the grass is growing damp. A bat darts, then another and another, almost invisible, from the trees out over the clearing, catching midges in a frenzy.

Why didn't I just get in the car with Miss Smith? Why did I trust Princess?

Because I wanted to forgive and forget and be friends again. Even after a year of them torturing me.

Pathetic.

I see again Don coming towards me, his slow smile; feel his hand brushing up my thigh, under my skirt, and that shameful, melting part of me.

Maybe if I hadn't pushed him away, this wouldn't have happened.

Maybe he'd have kissed me and we'd have lain down and confessed how we'd felt from the beginning – from the first time I was made to sing in front of the whole school, my face on fire, and there he was in the front row, just grinning at me.

Why hadn't I just let it happen? All I'd wanted for years, for forever, was his beautiful tanned hands on me.

But no. I couldn't have let it happen, not because I didn't want it but because it was a joke. He didn't want me. It was planned to humiliate me. He'd never have gone through with it even if I'd said yes. Although – although it had felt like he'd wanted to.

My ribs ache and my ankle sings every time I move it, and my nose feels like an explosion when I touch it. I wonder how I look.

Can I hide this? Does anyone have to know?

Because what would my mum say? And really, the bigger question – how does she not know already?

She knows something's wrong. She must know. But what can she do if I won't tell her?

But I can't tell her. I can't make her life worse. Because despite the constant, relentless, fucking inescapable smile on her unbearably beautiful face, underneath she's always hurting.

This is all my dad's fault. I hate it, I hate it, I hate it. The way he hides himself away from us and expects us to pretend it's normal. The way he announces his trips up to London, excited, desperate, itching, and comes back as if our home is a prison, his face like a – like what? A sick old pug? A wilted and broken petal all mushed up and – what? A dying goldfish gasping for air at the top of its festering, murky – God I hate – I hate – how my mum primps and preens herself till she looks like a show cat or a news presenter or something every single day for breakfast – for a fucking movie in the living room with – adjusting her top so her honest to God cleavage catches the firelight just – oh my God – oh my GOD – and how she glows after a compliment that he doesn't even mean. That he throws out like a measly kernel of corn for her to peck up and gobble down and thank him.

And her birthday, Mothers' Day, Christmas, conveniently spaced out across the year, when he wears the blue shirt and sings her ‘At Last', like he is her, because she waited so, so long for anything to happen between them, and then takes her to her bedroom like he's his gift to her.

I hear her crying at night. I go to sleep listening to her.

In a flash I see him grinning at me and I wish I could reach into the memory and break his face. But then he laughs. ‘These hands!' he says, brushing my fingers where they lie resting on the strings of my guitar. He cups my chin. ‘That voice!' And my whole body fills with pride. ‘You have a gift. You are a gift.' And then he rolls his eyes at the earnestness of it all and snatches my guitar and starts performing a mangled high-pitched Chipmunks' version of ‘Isn't She Lovely' and I clamp my hands on my ears and shout at him, cracking up, to stop.

God. I hate him for the days that make it all seem worth it.

I shiver and freeze again as a bolt of pain shoots up from my ankle. I close my eyes and hiss.

It's not his fault really. How could my friends beating me up be my dad's fault? My parents weren't meant to be together. But that's not the problem. I'm an accident – an aberration. I was never meant to be.

People hate me because they see inside of me something weak and disgusting – something subhuman.

But how could my friends turn on me like this? What did I do?

Again, I think over the party with our parents, searching for something, anything, that could have ended up with Princess sobbing in the orchard, pushing me, hating me.

Maybe they had just been pretending before. They were being nice because they felt sorry for me, and then they ran out of patience.

I spot the bright dot of a satellite speeding across the navy sky. I cover it with my palm and wait for it to come out the other side.

In the distance: the dull roar of a combine harvester and sheep baaing.

No one is coming.

My mum is busy. My dad never knows where I am anyway. He doesn't really care about us. He's only here because of some twisted sense of duty.

Maybe Mum only stays with Dad because of me. She loves him, but he's not good for her. He makes her sad. Maybe if I weren't here, she'd finally leave.

Wouldn't it be better for everyone if I weren't here?

What, exactly, is the point of me?