I didn’t stay late after class. I didn’t hang around at lunchtime. I didn’t go on the internet. I didn’t even ask for my phone back.
Every day Mark would look at me like his heart was broken, and my heart felt it, and it knew the same pain.
I’d cry more than I thought it was possible to cry. After tears came these horrible dry sobs that hurt my stomach. I’d retch and there would be nothing there, because I could hardly eat a thing.
A week in and it wasn’t any better. Mum would come to my room every night, and she’d stand in the doorway and sometimes she’d say my name and I know she’d be crying, too.
One night she even came and sat with me. She put her hand on my shoulder and begged me, pleaded with me just to talk, to tell her about it, to tell her anything.
But I couldn’t.
It was all I could do just to breathe.
I sat at the table and my fork stabbed at nothing on the plate. Again. The same every evening.
Only this time Dad slammed his fists down, and he stood, and he was angry. Again.
“Eat your fucking dinner, Helen!”
I shook my head. “I’m not hungry.”
“JUST EAT YOUR FUCKING DINNER!”
I choked on tears. “I can’t.”
His eyes were so nasty. So full of rage. “If you can’t behave like a fucking adult, then our deal is off. Do you understand me?”
And I did understand him. I understood loud and clear.
I picked up my cutlery and I chopped my waffles into pieces and I swallowed them down while he watched and my eyes were fixed on his until he looked away.
It tasted like shit. Just like everything else.
Mum couldn’t even sit there. She went to the bin and scraped her dinner off.
It seems she wasn’t hungry either.
Breathing and sleeping and eating were hard, but painting was hardest of all. Every time I tried it would hurt so bad I couldn’t bear to hold the brush. I had nothing to give.
I wished I could just tell Mark to put in his notice. I thought about it every minute of every day. Every morning I feared I would break, and take the weak option, the selfish option, and cave and watch his world fall down while I cried on the sidelines.
But I didn’t.
I just kept breathing.
And sleeping.
And walking around in a daze.
It got a little easier with Lizzie back around, but only a little. Lizzie’s mum threw Ray out, and they found pictures on his phone. They arrested him, and I was glad. One sliver of happiness amongst the grey.
Lizzie was away from school for days, but when she came back things were like old times again, as much as they could be. There was no Rachel, only us. Two broken people trying to make their way through the day together. A lot of the time we walked in silence, sat in silence, just being there. And that was ok, too.
We were ok.
Barely, but we were ok.
***
Mark
Every morning I walked to Kenneth’s office to hand in my resignation, and every morning something would stop me. A student with a question, some meeting or other, or Helen. Mainly Helen.
She was morose, but resolute, with the tenacity of a bloodhound. Her pretty eyes defied me every fucking day. She was my first thought, and my last. She was my only thought.
Life had faded to a ghostly shade of pale which no employment contract could ever fix, but she wouldn’t listen. She didn’t want to listen.
She wouldn’t even give me chance to speak.
She wouldn’t paint, either. She’d make scratchings of nothing, with no substance, no texture. I’d stand at her side, and I’d do everything I could to reach her in that place, but it was beyond me. In all my years of doing this she was the only student I couldn’t reach.
She broke my heart every day. But never so much as she did when I watched her stare at an empty canvas for hours on end. She was losing weight, too. I could see it in her drawn face, the bones in her fingers. I wondered what life at home was like for her. And I felt so bad, so guilty for putting her through it all.
I hated the house. I hated being in there. I hated pulling my car into the driveway at night, knowing she was gone from me. The house was dead, again. I was dead, again.
So, I’d walk. Pull up the car and walk in the opposite direction, through the fields and the woods until I couldn’t walk any further. Sometimes I’d be lucky and walk faster than my thoughts, other times I’d race them and lose.
Most of the time I’d end up in the alleyway at the back of Helen’s, and I’d ache to charge in there and lift her into my arms and take her away and put this stupid situation to bed, once and for all.
But she’d hate me for it, maybe not now, but someday. Just another example of someone making her decisions for her, telling her what’s right and wrong and insisting she toe the line.
She was worth so much more than that.
I thought it would be a matter of days before she saw sense and asked me to hand in that letter, but days turned into weeks, and weeks turned into a serious lack of coursework. It just added another colour to the rainbow of anguish that Helen Palmer caused me in those horrible weeks.
Professional concern.
The icing on the fucking cake.