I Know Who You Are(49)

“Take your clothes off,” she says, so I do.

I always do what I’m told now.

Maggie disappears for a moment, then comes back holding a box of Flash powder, which is what I pour in the mop bucket before cleaning the floors each night. “Sit down,” she says. Her face looks strange. It’s twisted a little the wrong way, and looking at it makes my knees feel wobbly. She puts the plug in the bath, then turns on the hot tap and waits. The water is cold on my feet at first, but by the time it reaches my ankles, the water is warm. A bit too warm.

“Can I put in some cold please?”

“No.”

“The water is hot.”

“Good.” She pours some of the powder onto a wet flannel, before pouring the rest into the bath until the whole box is empty. The water is burning my skin and I try to stand up, but she pushes me down. “Close your eyes.” She starts to scrub at the skin on my face awful hard; it feels like the powder is scraping my cheeks right off. I scream, but Maggie doesn’t seem to hear me, she just keeps scrubbing and the water keeps burning. “You have blood on your hands, you need to get clean.” She scratches away at my arms, my legs, my back. The water is so hot, and the flannel hurts so much, that I’m screaming more than I have ever screamed before. The noise coming out of my mouth doesn’t even sound like me. I hear John banging on the bathroom door, but Maggie has locked it so that he can’t come in.

When she puts me to bed, all of me hurts.

She doesn’t kiss it better, or kiss me good-night.

My skin is red and my throat is sore from screaming, but I am quiet now.

I am alone in the dark, but inside my ears I keep hearing the last thing that Maggie said, as though she is whispering it, over and over. She has locked me in my room and taken the bulbs out of the light in the ceiling and the lamp next to the bed, even though she knows I get scared. I am hungry and thirsty, but there is nothing to eat or drink. I close my eyes and I put my hands over my ears, but I can still hear her words: That man is dead because you didn’t do as you were told. I didn’t kill him, you did.

She says I killed him, so it must be true, Maggie doesn’t tell lies.

I killed my mummy and now I’ve killed the bad man.

I keep doing bad things without meaning to.

I cry because I think I must be a very bad person, and I cry because I think Maggie doesn’t love me anymore, and that makes me feel sadder than anything else in the whole world.





Forty


London, 2017

The wrap party is being held at a private club in the heart of London. Even as a child I hated parties. I never had anyone to talk to and I didn’t fit in. I’ve never known who to be when I’m supposed to be me. I don’t want to go tonight, but my agent says I should and, given everything that is currently going on, it seems wise to do as I am told. He doesn’t seem to understand that social gatherings, with people looking at me all night, fill me with the most horrific and inexplicable fear.

Perhaps I’m just scared of what they might see.

I think about the version of me I need to be tonight, then flick a switch and turn her on, hoping she’ll stay with me for as long as I need her to. She doesn’t always.

I pass a McDonald’s and remember that I haven’t eaten. I double back and order a Happy Meal, hoping it might work in more ways than one. I choose the same things I used to as a child thirty years ago: chicken nuggets and french fries to take away. I don’t get far. I don’t even open the box. I see a homeless girl lying in a doorway on a folded-up piece of cardboard and I stop. I know that could have been me. She looks cold and hungry, so I give her my coat and my Happy Meal, then carry on towards the tube station.

I stare at the floor of the train carriage, avoiding eye contact with my fellow travelers, pretending they can’t see me if I can’t see them. When I was a little girl, I was always afraid that I might disappear, like the little girl who lived in the flat above the shop before me. I still don’t have children of my own, despite wanting them so badly, and time is running out for that dream. The only way I can now live on after I die is through my work. If I could star in the perfect movie, a story that people would remember, then a little bit of me might continue to exist. Someone once said that people like me are born in the dirt and die in the dirt, and I don’t want that to be true. The Fincher audition might save me, and if I get the part … well, then maybe I won’t have to be scared of disappearing anymore.

I get off the tube and fight my way to the surface, walking up the escalator, through the barriers, and up the stone steps, until I am in the open air again. I’m cold without the coat I gave away, but it feels better to be above ground and I remind myself to breathe.

It’s just a party.

I let go of the me I need to be for just a moment and lose her in the crowd. My fear turns the volume and my terror up to maximum. I stare down at my new red shoes; it’s as though they have become stuck to the pavement. I wonder if I click my heels together three times, if I might magically vanish, but there’s no place like home if you’ve never had one, and I was only ever pretending to be Dorothy in that school play all those years ago. Just as I’ve only ever pretended to be Aimee Sinclair.

The closer I get to the venue, the worse it gets. I haven’t slept for days now, and it feels as if I’m losing my grip on reality. I lean a trembling hand against a wall to try to steady myself as the rush-hour traffic roars past. A black cab races by, then a red double-decker bus seems to charge straight at me, its windows morphing into the shape of evil yellow eyes in the darkness, and even though I know it can’t be real, I turn and try to run away, pushing through the crowds of pedestrians marching in the opposite direction. It’s as though they link arms and deliberately try to block my path. I cover my head with my hands and close my eyes; when I peer out between the fingers I’m hiding behind, it feels as if the whole world is staring at me. The canvas of multicolored faces starts to twist and blur with the streetlights and traffic, as though someone has taken a paintbrush to this scene of my life and decided to start again. When I lower my hands, I see that they are the same color as the bus, dripping in what looks like red paint. Or blood. I close my eyes again, and when I next open them, the world has reset itself to normal. I switch her back on and force my feet to start walking in the right direction once more.