Read by Susan Moisan
(For the full podcast of the night, please click here.)
The third text buzzes at Maya’s hip as she pulls into Chieveley Services. She’s no intention of reading it, but it presses upon her anyway – a little extra tightness in the chest. In the back seat, Bibi is crying in that lacklustre way she has when she’s forgotten what exactly needed protesting, but the protest is the point and she must go on with it.
Maya cruises the car park with care. Families pop out into the little gaps between cars, and parents dart for straying toddlers. It’s tricky negotiating the tight corners and the little human hazards in his Audi, which handles like a boat with no edges.
“Yellow car,” says Bibi mournfully, pausing the tears.
There’s a space – bang in front of the little red tent tops covering the outdoor seating area, between a Land Rover and a blue van with its back doors lashed together. Maya heads for it, then hesitates.
Silly bitch, her head says. Can’t even steer a supermarket trolley. Can’t even park your arse in the right place.
Bullshit. She shoves the indicator down, and positions to reverse in.
She edges back, slow, slow, steer, adjust, like Femi showed her in his little dual-control Corsa. Different from this sulky beast, and different in daylight too, under the watchful eyes of the smokers beneath the tent tops. Three goes, straighten to avoid the van. She’s too close when she gets in the space first time.
It’s okay. Pull forward, slow, slow, mirror, steer, now back, straighten. Yes!
Femi’s voice is quieter in her head than his, but it’s Femi who lets her sit and smile at herself for a moment. Then, glancing in the wing mirror, she sees a woman frowning at her from the passenger window of the blue van, and remembers to move.
She scoops Bibi out of the cup of the car seat. Bibi is a warm and nut-scented bundle in last night’s pyjamas until the cold air blasts its energy into her, and she wriggles her way from Maya’s arms to the pavement. She gallops off, and from behind her hair is still matted and damp, carried from bed in the pre-dawn, with no time for brushing.
“Wait, Bibi!” Maya strides after her.
Chieveley Services is gearing up for breakfast. The smell of frying breathes out from the entrance, and as they go in Maya is plunged into a temporary bacon-y darkness behind her sunglasses.
“Burger Kin!” shouts Bibi. That she even knows about it is a relic from a holiday last summer with cousins – just like ‘yellow car’. Ignored so often, it’s barely an actual request by this point, so Maya decides to grant it. What the hell.
The fourth text snarls at Maya from her jeans pocket as they stand hand in hand in front of the menu. This time it makes the skin on her scalp prickle up as if someone is watching her.
“What can I eat with just a fork?” she asks the boy in the cap behind the counter, whose name badge says Simon. It’s a ridiculous question, but she’s powerless not to ask it. Simon, for his part, looks rightly baffled, like he can’t conceive of the desire to dislocate someone’s little finger because of the way they hold a knife.
“The – chicken salad?” he says.
“One chicken salad and one mini pancakes, then.”
“Pancakes, pancakes, pan…cakes!” says Bibi.
They eat in the food court. Around them people are sitting down, getting up, moving trays from table to table, talking, not talking. The building’s too small for a hum, but big enough that you don’t have to smile at your table neighbours, noisy enough that you can’t make out conversations. Then as the activity settles into organised patterns, it starts to happen.
Maya has lately discovered she has a superpower – she can see them now. First time was in a park on a Sunday, families swarming and bellowing. He was next to her, watching the football on his phone. She wore a cap to disguise how he’d scissored off her hair. There for the first time she saw clearly. There, with Bibi in her lap, and threading her fingers through Bibi’s own hair, they faded away – all the daddies throwing frisbees, kicking balls; all the perfect boyfriends dry-humping their girls; all the men, fighting or shouting or touching too much, too often. Instead, as if they were flicking into focus for the first time, she saw the women who turned away from those men, breathing, reading, staring at nothing, choked with their own difficult thoughts. The sun prickled on Maya’s face, and from twenty yards away another woman looked right back at her, as if Maya herself had just flicked into focus.
Over the last few months, while she spent her nights remembering how to drive, Maya has passed the days noticing them. If she squints, they beam out at her, everyone else fuzzed and amorphous. There’s one of them standing by the meal deal poster in the doorway of WHSmith’s: a biddy in a knitted hat that might have been a teacosy, and a coat that’s missing its buttons. In both hands she’s strangling a Tesco carrier bag, which hangs down, taut and thin like there’s only one thing in it: a set of keys or a purse or book. You’d think she was waiting for someone, but the people who come out of Smiths with their copies of the Mirror walk straight past.
“Hey!” shouts Bibi. The old woman looks up, but Bibi’s attention is on someone else. “Why that girl do that?” Perhaps the superpower’s waking up in her too.
In the Lucky Coin a little blonde girl, maybe two or three years older than Bibi, is pushing the buttons of a fruit machine, pushing so hard she’s practically bouncing her whole body off it.
“She’s trying to make the lights happen,” Maya says, knowing the lights won’t happen because nobody’s put any money in. A man is playing the machine next to her. He must have lifted her over the barrier. No one’s on duty.
Maya looks back at Bibi, whose attention has wandered again. “Watch out – you’re getting syrup on your top.” She pulls up the sleeves of Bibi’s pyjamas to expose her little butter-soft butter-fat arms. Maya prods a bit of dry chicken with her fork. She’s hungry, but frustrated with herself for ordering something she doesn’t want.
Then from two tables over comes a muted clatter. It’s the woman from the blue van. There’s a broken cup – coffee all over – and a man, half-standing, leaning over her from the other side of the table. As the coffee slides across the tabletop towards his burger, the woman tries to dab at it with a napkin, but he grabs her wrist and holds it away. Whatever he’s saying is too quiet for Maya to hear, but then Simon in the cap is there offering help. The man lowers the woman’s hand to the table and pats at it – So clumsy, my missus – his gentle touch says. The woman looks at Simon, too, smiles and shakes her head: See, it’s all fine. Simon’s an easy sell.
Bibi sighs.
“How are your pancakes?”
“Mm-mm-mm-mm.” An emphatic nod. There’s syrup and crumbs finger-painted onto the tabletop, and sticking Bibi’s curls to her cheek. The fifth text arrives with a quiet snarl, and Maya puts the fork down.
“Are you finished? Shall we go and wash hands?”
A small but glacial queue has formed for the ladies’. When they’ve stood in it for a minute or two, the woman from the blue van arrives. She catches Bibi’s eye and smiles a little hesitantly, and this is opening enough for Bibi to strike up a conversation. The woman’s name is Helen. She’s on her way to Wales.
“Are you going on a holiday?”
“No, we’re moving. Moving to Wales.” She glances up at Maya as if she’s expecting a challenge, then looks back at Bibi. “Are you on holiday?”
Bibi thinks for a moment, and Maya feels a hot squeeze of guilt in her chest. “Don’t know,” Bibi says. “We’re going to London.” Then she thinks of something else she can say, “Daddy’s not coming.”
“Oh,” Helen says. “Maybe he’s busy.”
“Maybe.”
Maya holds her hand a little tighter. “Isn’t that funny that we’ve met Helen here?” she says. “When we’re going different ways.”
A cubicle opens and Maya ushers Bibi in. They take it in turns for a wee and then out to wash hands, and Maya can feel her heart starting to push adrenaline through her system again. There’s the panting sound of someone crying discreetly in a cubicle. Helen. Maya washes the syrup off Bibi’s face, pulls her pyjama sleeves up again and soaps her hands and arms as she wriggles and starts to whine.
When Bibi’s clean, Maya looks up at herself in the mirror, pushes the sunglasses onto the top of her head. Nothing to see, unless you really looked closely. Nothing you’d remark on anyway. She sits Bibi on the counter top next to the sink, wets a paper towel and begins to rub at her cheekbone.
“What you doing?”
“Mummy needs to wash her face, too.”
The marks slowly reveal themselves: a cut high on her right cheek, a bruise spreading up into the brow, a pinked and swollen eyelid. No point hiding them; she needs to be seen. She throws the paper towel away and waits, pulse jumping, for one minute, two. The crying in the toilet has quieted to breathing, but Helen doesn’t come out. Second after second she doesn’t come out.
“Mummeeeee.” Bibi’s starting to fret.
“Yes, we’re going now. In a minute.”
The phone in her pocket vibrates, then again and again. He’s calling her. He’s looking. He’s probably called the police. Maya finally jerks into action, pushes her sunglasses back down and scoops Bibi off the counter top and onto her hip. It’s late – they have to go right now.
Helen’s man is standing outside the toilets, arms folded. “Hello, darling,” he says to Bibi as they walk past, and Maya just manages not to spit in his face.
Outside under the tent tops, the old lady with the Tesco bag is sucking the guts out of a cigarette. Simon in the cap is sitting next to her, on his break.
“Bye bye,” says Bibi, waving to the seating area in general, and the lady winks at her.
Maya settles Bibi and straps her in. She gets into the driver’s seat to the old refrain of the voice in her head: Stupid cow, thinking you can drive.
Fuck you, fuck you, and fuck you forever, Maya says back.
She’s adjusting the rearview mirror, like Femi taught her, when Helen and the man finally appear. She pauses. The man stands Helen on the kerb, points at the ground, then heads back inside. Helen stands there as if he’s filled her pockets with stones, her shoulders slumped and her arms like plumblines.
Without stopping to think, Maya steps out of the car, and Bibi cranes round to see what she’s looking at.
“Helen!” Bibi shouts through the Audi’s rear window.
Helen peers out into the car park. She’s washed off the tear tracks, leaving her face red and soft. When her gaze falls on Maya and on Bibi waving from the car seat, Maya lifts her sunglasses.
There it is: a deep in-breath of recognition, of something flicking into focus. Seeing Maya; seeing herself, too. Helen’s whole body slowly lifts in a sort of terrified anticipation, her arms raised and bent at the elbow, but static as if they haven’t quite decided whether to push away or pull closer.
Maya nods at her, holds a hand out gently, coaxing, and then all at once the old woman is standing up, too, waving a hand. “Go!” she shouts. “Go now! Be quick!”
And Helen is running.
(c) Rebecca Skipwith, 2018
Rebecca Skipwith is an editor and charity worker in South London. She practised writing with Literary Kitchen and is still practising off and on. Her stories have been longlisted by The New Writer and selected for Arachne Press's 2018 anthology An Outbreak of Peace.
Susan Moisan trained at Drama Studio London. Roles include Beatrice in Much Ado About Nothing, Mistress Fitzdottrel in Johnson’s The Devil is An Ass, Elizabeth I, Queen Victoria, a Pharaoh, an elderly hypochondriac and a Russian prostitute. She has been involved most recently in a series of stage productions raising money and awareness for PTSD charities. Though now mostly retired from acting she finds Liars League perfect for when she needs a quick fix.
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