Sunflowers in February Page 9

  I make my way out of Ben’s bedroom and across the landing to the bathroom for the water. I can smell toast coming from downstairs. Welcoming, warm and familiar. Wonderful.

  I need to pee. The awful realisation of this fact causes me to study the toilet as if I’ve never seen one before. I now have boy parts and not just any boy’s parts … these ones belong to my brother, and they are right there, dangling somewhere within the navy shorts. This is wrong on so many levels. I can’t bring myself to even consider delving into Ben’s shorts to empty my bladder but I’m going to have to do something.

  I adapt. Suddenly aware, with an inner smile, that I’m automatically checking, as always, for Ben’s favourite and boringly repetitive cling film across the toilet seat prank.

  Anyway, I sit down, and I’ve never been more grateful for anything than the fact that everything tucks discretely downwards towards the toilet pan. This way I neither have to look nor hold.

  Having sucked deliciously cold water directly from the tap, I dry my face and enjoy the feeling of the rough towel on my skin. Every sensation is enhanced, as if life itself is a drug, making me focus on every single thing that is happening: the cold tiles on the soles of my feet, the hungry rumble in my stomach, the scent of buttermilk and honey soap in the dish by the sink. Pulling Ben’s T-shirt over my head, and carefully looking up at the ceiling, I remove his shorts and turn on the shower.

  It’s almost possible to forget I’m dead. It’s almost possible to forget that I’m hijacking Ben. The water feels warm against my skin and the massaging effects of hundreds of drops of water on my shoulders and the back of my head is heaven. Taking my own pink sponge, I cover myself in soap, then wash it off in foamy rivers that cascade towards the shower tray and collect around my feet. Then I do it again.

  I massage shampoo into Ben’s hair, noticing once more how short it feels in my hands, then I turn my face to the water, enjoying the feel of it running off my head and face, forcing me to take gasps of air between water and soap. I could stay here forever. It is almost as if I will wash Ben away to the Lily that I am somewhere inside.

  ‘Can you save some hot water for your mother?’ Dad shouts, after thumping loudly on the bathroom door.

  ‘I’m coming out now,’ I shout back, but my voice comes out deep. ‘Whoa.’ I’m immediately surprised at the sound of it and it instantly reminds me of the imposter that I am. What I hear inside my head is ever so slightly removed from the voice of my brother, like when you hear yourself on a recording. I step outside of the shower and reach for a large grey towel, wrapping it round myself. ‘Spoooonnge,’ I drag the word out slowly, while making a turban for my head, out of a small blue towel. ‘… waaater … toooth brush.’ I need to practise speaking. I don’t want to look visibly surprised every time I open my mouth to talk to anyone.

  ‘Are you all right?’ asks Mum from just outside the door. ‘Only, you’re listing the contents of the bathroom.’

  ‘I’m fine,’ I call out, even though I am so far from fine right now. I try singing instead. Less obvious but no less freaky.

  I clean my teeth with my own toothbrush, which is still poking its lime-green head out of the fish-embossed holder, along with the other toothbrushes belonging to Ben and my parents. When I dry my mouth, I feel once again the patches of stubble on Ben’s chin and realise with a slightly sinking heart that I ought to attempt to shave them off.

  I can’t look at him.

  Doing this while avoiding every mirror in the bathroom isn’t easy, but filling the sink with warm water I dutifully rub soap onto the sparse patches of hair. ‘Not exactly a beard, Ben,’ I say out loud in my unfamiliar deep voice.

  ‘Oh, it’s coming along,’ I hear Mum say, as she waits patiently outside the door. ‘In fact, it’s going to be the full Popeye if you take much longer in there.’

  ‘Conchita Wurst more like,’ I murmur quietly to myself. Five minutes later, my face is sore where I’ve made it bleed, so I tear a piece of toilet paper like I’ve seen Dad do, stick it to my chin and leave it there.

  As I open the bathroom door, a high shriek in my ear surprises me, and I let out a high shriek too. Dad runs up the stairs two at a time to see why we are both screaming at each other.

  ‘Oh God,’ Mum breathes out, with a hand to her heart as if she’s about to have an attack. ‘I thought … you were Lily.’ Her face is white, and I instantly compute that Ben would never put his hair in a turban, and his towel would be wrapped round his waist, not round his chest, like a strapless dress, as I have done. With only my face on display I know that our likeness must have really frightened Mum.

  I escape to Ben’s bedroom, rapidly having to change direction halfway there, as I automatically make for my own bedroom door. I can feel them both staring and I can hardly shut the door quick enough behind me, before I lean on it from the inside, trying to catch my breath.

  I struggle to wrench a pair of Ben’s boxers on, under my towel, as if I’m dressing on a public beach, hardly able to believe this is all happening. ‘Oh, Ben, how the hell did we get into this mess?’ I complain.

  But I know what he’d say. ‘I think you’ll find you got into this mess all on your own.’ And for once, he’d be right.

  Picking my way through a pile of clothes on the floor looking for his uniform, I lift up a crumpled towel from yesterday and his school blazer, which has been thrown on the carpet. ‘You’re revolting, Ben,’ I tell him, as I shake out yesterday’s socks from inside the legs of his school trousers.

  I can finally understand how it must feel when people say they’re trapped in the wrong body. Ben’s hobbity feet are covered by black socks, and his trousers and blazer feel … too shapeless, and don’t represent who I am. I want my black tights and my short pleated skirt and my fitted white blouse. I don’t know what I look like, but I know I don’t feel very Lilyish.

  ‘I can’t face looking at you, Ben,’ I tell him, knowing that if I looked in the mirror, I would see my own shame staring back at me. How long can I survive without looking? How long can I survive at all?

  Taking some huge deep breaths, I head downstairs to the kitchen, noticing that, despite all this, my stomach belongs to Ben, meaning that I seem to have inherited his insatiable appetite. China banging against china and the tinny rattle of cutlery meets me in the hallway, as Dad puts his breakfast things into the dishwasher. I need to act normal. I need to act … Ben-like. They can’t know it’s me in here, because they just won’t believe it or they’ll think Ben has gone mad or is playing a really cruel trick.

  I hesitate outside, wiping my sweaty palms on the legs of Ben’s uniform.

  So, I’m going to walk into the kitchen.

  I’m going to say nothing, like Ben does most days now, and I’ll just start getting something to eat.

  ‘Here goes,’ I mutter under my breath.

  I step into the kitchen, heart beating wildly as I walk past Dad, reaching for cereal with one hand and two slices of white bread from the bread bin with the other. His knees crack as he straightens up from loading the dishwasher and despite myself I catch his eye. I scan him in an instant. I see the way a little bit of greying hair sticks up at the side of his head, the way his ears kink at the top and his neck melts into his crisp white collar. His cheek and jaw are a freshly shaved kind of smooth, only now I can smell the wonderfully familiar scent of his aftershave.

  Don’t hug him. Don’t do it.

  I force myself to concentrate on pouring cereal into the bowl and putting the bread in the toaster. I must not give myself away; he’d never understand.

  ‘I’m off to work now,’ he says. ‘I’ll see you later.’

  I hug him.

  It’s a scientific fact that people hug for approximately three seconds. We all follow some kind of unspoken social rule. I learnt this at school. I think about this fact, and I can’t let go. I’m also aware that I haven’t actually hugged my parents properly in a very long time. I read once that a twenty-second hug will
release some sort of bonding hormone so I try it now. Seven, eight … A party of aromas join his aftershave: washing powder, toast, coffee and … him. Eleven, twelve … I feel his cheek all warm and squashy against mine. When I fall asleep tonight Ben will come back, and I’ll never be able to do this again. But I’m doing it now, and I need to make this moment last me for eternity.

  Dad is surprised at this sudden outburst, and I can hardly blame him. Twenty! He steps back, his eyes travelling back and forth across my face, trying to read my expression, to glean some sort of a clue for my sudden display of affection. ‘You OK?’ he quizzes me.

  I toy with the idea of asking him to define ‘OK’. Am I OK that I’ve pushed Ben into oblivion so that I can return from the dead? Am I OK that I can’t tell him what I’ve done, or about how guilty I feel, or how scared I am, or how desperately I want to have one last chance at living?

  ‘I’m OK, Dad,’ I answer.

  I feel that if I look at him for too long, he will be able to tell that it is me, because if eyes really are the window to the soul, then he will be able to see through them to the Lily inside. But as I unwillingly turn away with the distraction of taking a jar out of the cupboard in front of me, I can tell that for a few seconds he looked different, as if when I hugged him, I drew a little of the blackness out of his heart. He didn’t ask me why I hugged him, he thought I was Ben, and he didn’t need to know why, he just needed to know that I had.

  ‘You don’t like peanut butter,’ Mum says, walking into the kitchen, just as I’m spreading my toast with peanut butter. I have already eaten my cereal, sugary, crunchy, cold from the milk, and its deliciousness suddenly churns in my stomach, and my knife stops mid-spread.

  ‘Errrm … I want to see if I like it yet,’ is my lame reply, and I take a bite. An event worthy of a fanfare is going on in my mouth right now, a toast-and-peanut-butter sensation and it’s sticky and sweet and salty and lovely and my eyeballs roll involuntarily with ecstasy, almost retreating inside the back of my head.

  ‘You look like you’re really enjoying that,’ she says, then adds, ‘You look like … Lily.’

  My throat constricts and I choke on my mouthful, regretfully putting the evidence down and covering my tracks. ‘Nope, I still don’t like it … nasty,’ I lie, pushing the plate away.

  She turns quickly towards the coffee machine and away from me. I scrape my chair back and pretend to throw my food in the bin, ramming as much in my mouth as I can before she notices.

  ‘You’d better go; you’ll be late,’ she orders abruptly, placing a coloured capsule of coffee in the machine and pressing down the lever. She is cross that for the second time this morning I’ve made a tear in the protective wrapping she has spent weeks putting round herself. I swallow large gulps of apple juice, feeling it sliding coldly down my throat and cleansing some of the deliciously cloying peanut butter from my tongue.

  This time I know I’m going to do it but I don’t care. I lean towards her and my arms circle her body. Her initial surprise that her son, who has grown so distant lately, is hugging her, folds quickly as she gives in, slumping against my body. As Ben, I’m slightly taller than her now. Despite the smoke still lingering on her clothes, I can smell her shampoo and perfume, and I hold her scent within me for as many seconds as possible. Thirteen, fourteen … She sniffs and I realise that she is crying.

  ‘Mum?’ I ask her and she shakes beneath my question.

  ‘It … still … hurts too much,’ she mumbles into my shoulder. ‘Just when I think I’m coping … there’s always something to catch me out. She should be here.’

  I kiss her cheek and it is salty wet against my lips.

  I am here.

  She reaches out and carefully removes the now-dry toilet paper from my cheek. ‘Ow,’ I squeal in a girly way and start to smile, but I see another fleeting shadow cross her face. She turns away, pushing gently from my hold and sighing wistfully. ‘Go to school, Ben … I’ll see you later.’ And as I dutifully leave the kitchen, I hear her whisper. ‘You’re too much alike.’

  I don’t know where I am going, just that I am going.

  My feet step along the pavement towards the school bus, toying with the very tempting chance I’ve got to see all my friends.

  I want to go to school more than I’ve ever wanted to go to school in my life, but I can’t rely on myself not to run up to Nathan and kiss him full on the mouth, or to fling my arms round Beth or to go round hugging random friends passing me in the corridor – even Mr Dougall would probably get a hug! If stealing Ben is selfish, then totally ruining his reputation with a sudden inability to contain a psychotic passion for everyone would be worse.

  ‘You’re at my mercy, Ben,’ I say in my head, imagining the fallout of this weird situation if I were to behave like Lily while I’ve got Ben’s life for a day.

  But this day is too precious, and the decision of what to do with it is agonising. My heart sinks a little at the fact that my enjoyment must be limited.

  I can hear Ben’s shoes tapping on the concrete beneath me as I walk away from the direction of school. I zip his black coat up to the neck, covering the school blazer, and pull up the hood. It is cold but I also don’t want to look too much like a kid who is bunking off school. Even if that’s exactly what I am.

  It’s been raining and I can smell that gritty smell you get when rain has fallen on dusty ground. The sun comes out every now and then and turns the watery grit on the road into shiny particles. It plays in puddles and bounces off windows. It warms the skin on my face just a little. Fabulous. I think of the little child I saw from Ben’s window seeing everything life has to offer.

  I want to touch everything, as if I am feeling the world by Braille. Dragging my fingertips along a garden wall, they feel the roughness of the brick and the softness of the moss in little lumps. They feel the dips where the concrete binds the bricks together, then rise and fall over the metal pattern of a garden gate.

  I put my hand in Ben’s coat pocket and run the pads of my fingers over some coins. If I can’t spend this opportunity seeing the people I care about, then I’ll just have to stuff my face with sweets. I walk past the nearest shop to a newsagent further away so I won’t be recognised.

  The shop has a smell. The smell is of everything. Of tobacco, of sweets, of boxes, newspapers, bottles, toys and cards. The smell of things we don’t need but things we like. I ignore the suspicious gaze of the man behind the till, and head for the sweets. The packets, the tubes the lollies. My mouth is watering and I feel like a small kid counting my money, five pounds in total. I want them all. I want to feel popping candy on my tongue and hear it crackling inside my head. I want to taste chocolate and feel it melt. I want crisps, Coke, bubblegum, sherbet.

  I make a collection of top-priority sweets and pay for them. £4.82. As close as I can get to my total. I hand over the hot coins that I have been clutching, and reach for my booty with the other hand. The man behind the counter looks at his watch. ‘You’re a bit late for school, son.’ I glance briefly at him as I pull open the shop door.

  ‘I’m a bit late for everything …’ Then as the door closes behind me I add, hardly keeping the smile from my lips, ‘but at least I’ve got today.’

  I tip a small packet of Jelly Tots into my mouth and, screwing up the wrapper, I aim for the rubbish bin, scoring a direct hit before walking slowly down the road rolling the delicious gummy sweets around in my mouth. When I finish them, I eat each different packet, one after another. Tasting sherbet. Tasting chocolate. E-numbers, sugar, chemicals. Who cares? Crunching, chewing and swallowing, fizz up my nose. A massive burp comes from the pit of my stomach, making me laugh and choke at the same time.

  Next, I head towards the green where people walk their dogs and children fly kites, then down the short lane that leads to some big open fields, away from anyone who could recognise me and challenge me about what Ben is doing out of school. Living in a village means that there is no urban anonymity to protect Ben fro
m the whispers of sympathy, like wind through a leafy forest. ‘There goes the boy whose sister died. They were twins you know. Ahhh.’

  Clouds are rolling across the sky in grey lumps of different shades, blocking out the sun in patches across the fields. A blast of sharp wind blows in my face as soon as I reach the open field, and I stand and let it assault me, enjoying tiny spots of rain prickling my skin and clinging to my eyelashes and my hair. Normally I would have hated this, the weather wrecking my carefully straightened hair and ruining my painstakingly applied make-up. I would have grimaced and run for cover. Now, I stand out here and let it give me all that it has. I can feel the strength of each gust racing through the trees and over the grass, bringing winter across the open countryside and slamming it into my body. It shows me that I am really alive.

  I let my new friend the wind push me up a hill and closer to the sky, while memories play around me. Ben and me as children, rolling down this hill, screaming with laughter, and running back up again. Mum watching us from the bench at the bottom, clutching a bag with drinks and crisps and treats, ready for when we ran breathlessly back to her, our hands outstretched and our cheeks rosy. In those long-ago years this hill seemed like the top of the world. I believed as a child it brought me closer to heaven and if I jumped high enough I could touch a pink cloud where all the angels lived.

  Where is God now? I ask myself. ‘Where are you now, God?’ I shout at a blue hole in the clouds above me. The driving wind rages in my ears, and whips my words away down the hill, and I imagine that it carries God’s words with it, mocking me. You … can’t … find me.

  ‘Give me a few more hours, Ben,’ I call out to the sky, ‘just to remember what it’s like to live again.’ My insides sting when I realise that somewhere in death I learnt to really love the life that I had.

  Walking to the other side of the hill, I stand looking down at the view. In the distance there are acres of winter countryside with the fleshless bones of trees poking through the land. At the bottom of the hill is our village, where the spire of the church rises between rooftops, pointing its ancient finger up to God.