Page 40 of Sad Girl Hours
“I haven’t spoken to them. They haven’t called. Or texted. All I got was this.” I take the card from her and put it back in the envelope, like if it’s tucked away it doesn’t exist.
Nell is looking at me like I’ve grown another head. “That card is all you got? No present or anything?”
“I got this,” I say, lifting up my sunflower. “And you guys all gave me really lovely things.”
“But that was it?” she says. “From your parents?” She’s saying it like she doesn’t understand, and I’m not sure if it’s making me feel better or worse. When I don’t say anything in response, she fills in the silence herself.
“Saffron, that’s AWFUL. What kind of people don’t speak to their child on theirbirthday? They should beoverjoyed; they should be dancing in the streets. This is the day that the worldchanged from a Saffron James Lawrence-less place to onewithher, an infinitely better place. They should be doing this.”
She steps forward a few paces into the deserted street and starts violently disco dancing like she’s just watchedSaturday Night Feverand then done a large quantity of drugs. “LOOK. Dancing. Celebrating. What a day this is,” she pants, now doing the Hot To Go dance, despite the absence of the song.
I’m not sure whether to laugh or cry. I decide to opt for laughter. “You’re ridiculous.”
“Personally I think I’m being very sane. This is the only rational response to you entering the world.”
“I love you, you know? You absolute buffoon,” I say through another laugh.
“I love you too,” Nell says, attempting a moonwalk. “OK, I’m going to stop dancing soon but please don’t think I’m not dancing on the inside about the fact that you exist, because I am. Constantly.”
Something slips over on the laugh-to-cry-o-meter and tears fill my eyes. I think they’re the good kind, but Nell’s by my side instantly anyway.
“Oh no. What’s wrong? Was my dancing that bad?”
“Your dancing was wonderful,” I say with a watery smile. “I just … I’ve never had any of this before. I’ve never told anyone about my parents.”
Nell’s quiet for a moment before she speaks again. “What are they like?”
“I don’t think they like being parents,” I say, voicing aloud for the first time what I’ve wondered all my life. “So … they just kind of try not to be. They had me because that’s what people did, but I’ve never really felt … anything from them. There was this time, when I was a kid … it was my tenth birthday, I think.” I say it like I don’t remember vividly. “I was really upset. I didn’t know why, I just feltsad, and I kept crying, but my parents got tired of mesaying that I didn’t know what was wrong so they sent me to bed. But I still couldn’t stop crying. I just felt so…” My voice trails off.
It was the first year that I felt properly low. It came around mid-September and never fully left again. “Anyway,” I carry on, “eventually, many hours later, I must have fallen asleep. When I woke up in the morning, I went to go downstairs and I tripped over a pillow that had been left outside my door.”
Nell’s brow wrinkles. “Why would they just sleep outside instead of coming into your room if they were worried?”
I feel my centre of gravity deepening towards the earth’s core.Of courseshe would think that that was what they did. She has parents who love her.
“No,” I say softly. “That’s not why it was there.”
“Then why?” Nelle asks, still looking confused. But then it hits her. Her jaw juts out. “To block out the noise.”
I nod.
“That’s…” She doesn’t seem to have words. She takes a few moments but, when she lifts her head, her eyes are brimming with fire. “That’s horrible. You were just a kid… And you’ve known that’s what it was for since you were ten?”
“Yep.”
I’d known it before then on some level but that was the day I fully understood that my emotions were an inconvenience to my parents, that it would be better for them if I hid things inside. That’s why they’ve been even worse since I came home last January. I had to admit to them that I wasn’t OK, and they had to watch me cry every day.
I know I have seasonal affective disorder – I went to the doctor’s when I was in sixth form and told them about how I can feel low all year round, but things are amplified in the darker months. They gave me some leaflets, put through a referral for counselling I never heard back from and told me to make another appointment if things got worse. I didn’t tell myparents. I knew they’d just think I was making excuses. Part ofmewonders whether I’m just making excuses.
But anyway. That’s why they’ve been worse this past year. I broke our unspoken agreement. I let my feelings win.
Chapter Eighteen
Saffron
“You deserve so much more than them,” Nell says. I can still feel the rage coming off her. In a way, it’s keeping me warm against the night’s chill, but I’m not exactly sure that she’s right. No one likes a buzzkill, even if it’s your own kid. Maybeespeciallyif it’s your own kid, and you’ve realised you don’t like being their parent at the best of times.
Sometimes I wished for a sibling so I wasn’t the only person who knew what it was like to live in that house; other times I was glad it was just me that had to feel the things I did.
