face. ‘It was an accident; I know you didn’t do it on purpose.’
‘Really?’
‘Sure!’ I pasted a smile on my face to reassure him, but I needed to get out of there before my eyes started leaking. It killed me not being able to reach up and rub my cheek better, but it would only upset him even more. ‘Here you go.’ I placed the key in his clammy little palm, then pushed up to standing. ‘You get started whilst I jump in the shower.’
The lock clicked open before I’d even made it to the bathroom door, swiftly followed by the tell-tale creak of the lid opening. I opened my mouth to remind him to be careful but quickly closed it again. For whatever reason unknown to me, Charlie loved my drawings and treated them like priceless artefacts but it was nice to be appreciated by somebody.
I pulled the bathroom door to behind me, leaving it ajar, then pressed my cool hand against my burning skin. With my chewing gum still in my bag on the bed, I had to raid the emergency nicotine supplies I kept hidden in a toiletry bag in my bathroom. A poor substitute for the real thing, but I could indulge in as many cigarettes as I wanted once Charlie was tucked up in bed.
For now the gum would have to do so I popped two of the white tablets into my mouths and chewed, wincing at the movement. I took out my contacts before jumping under the blistering shower. Five minutes later, I was scrubbed free of makeup—along with all traces of Hayden—and as ready as I’d ever be to brave the world again.
Charlie had stayed exactly where I’d left him, only he was now surrounded by sheets of sketch paper: drawings of hills, old cotton mills, and lots of pictures of him. He was so engrossed he didn’t notice me pottering around and getting dressed, so I squatted down beside him to see which drawing had held his attention for so long.
Big mistake.
‘I like this one best,’ he said, holding up the pencil sketch of me and Mum.
‘Thanks.’ I wedged my hands behind my knees, trapping them against my calves to stop me from snatching the picture out of his fingers.
‘It’s you and Mummy, isn’t it? When you were little?’
‘It sure is.’ I’d copied it from a photograph I’d found being used to prop up the wonky leg of our old table. Folded into a small square and badly damaged, it fell apart soon after I’d finished drawing my own copy.
‘Do you have any other sisters? Or brothers?’ he asked. ‘Or is it just Mummy?’
White lies like not knowing any Spanish were one thing but I couldn’t lie to him about the big stuff. Since it wasn’t my place to tell him the truth, it left me stuck in an awkward limbo. I must have made some kind of weird sound because Charlie turned his head to look at me.
‘Are you OK, Aunty Alice?’
‘Me? Yeah, of course I am!’
‘But you’re crying?’
I am?
‘No, no, I’m not crying.’ I freed a hand from my behind my knees and wiped my fingertips across my cheek. Sure enough, they came away wet. ‘Oh. I er… I got some shampoo in my eye when I was in the shower. It made my eyes sting, you know what that’s like.’
‘Does it hurt when you turn your blue eyes off?’ he asked, far too observant.
‘No, not at all.’
‘Is everything blue when you look through them?’
‘No. It’s just normal.’
‘I like you with green ones better.’
‘So do I,’ I admitted. Unfortunately, Charlie and I were in the minority. The fact he’d already picked up on the two different sides of me and made the connection with the eye colour left me wanting another shower. How much longer did I have before Charlie learned the truth of what I did?
‘Why don’t you keep the green ones switched on then?’
Good question.
Too good.
‘I um…’ While I might despise the girl with the blue eyes, she was strong and fearless. She got noticed, unlike the real me. The guys couldn’t get enough of her and no one dared to confront her—except for Virginia and her posse—so she was the perfect front to hide the shy, frightened green-eyed girl behind.
Charlie waited, staring up into my eyes. Would he understand that I only behaved that way to protect myself from any more hurt? Would he still love me and stick around or would he too disown me? Without him to keep me grounded, the green-eyed girl would surely be gone for ever.
A bead of sweat broke out on my forehead and trickled down over my bruised cheek before narrowly missing the chalk picture at my feet. Conversely, my mouth ran dry with the rocks in my throat creating an effective dam. ‘Didn’t you say something about wanting a picnic?’
‘Yeah!’ Charlie yelled, jumping to his feet. The now discarded pictures left him stranded in his own island.
‘Hold your horses,’ I croaked. ‘Just give me a second to clear these away and we’ll get going, OK?’ I purposely gathered up the drawings so that the one of me and Mum lay at the bottom where neither of us could see it any more.
Climb
By the time Charlie and I had put the pictures away and prepared the food, the sun glowed high in the sky. Indian summers were great but winter couldn’t be far off, which meant rain. Lots of it. My days of driving around with the top down were numbered, so I grabbed Charlie’s car seat out of Mum’s car and fitted it into the rear seat of mine. Despite being forced to travel in a bright-pink car, he loved my car almost as much as I did.
Mental cobwebs didn’t stand a chance as we drove to the park with the wind rushing through our hair. I probably resembled a windswept poodle, thanks to my still damp hair, but it wasn’t like I had plans to see anyone. This green-eyed girl was getting a rare outing, liberated by the knowledge everybody I knew was either at college or work. Even if they weren’t, it was unlikely that they’d be hanging around a park in the middle of the day.
Today, the only person I needed to impress was Charlie and he was grinning broadly whenever I checked on him in my mirror. He waved to every person and animal we passed, including a squirrel that dashed across the road and very nearly got squished. I’d never been so relieved to see a disease-ridden rodent make it across the road alive and well.
Charlie’s babbling lasted for the entire ten-minute journey and he was still buzzing when we pulled into the car park. The moment I released him from his harness, he dived out of the car and hopped from one foot to the other. Due to the roar of the wind, I hadn’t caught half of what he’d said on the way and now had a bad feeling that I’d agreed to something I shouldn’t have.
In an attempt to calm his giddy excitement, I popped the boot open, then loaded him up with the picnic blanket and his ball, but it only seemed to crank him up even more. My rucksack weighed a ton when I dragged it over my shoulder. Spare clothes, wipes, mini first aid kit,
