Page 90 of The Flowers of Bay C
‘Give us a nip of that brandy, then,’ Violet says, and Jodie takes a little swig herself and passes it on. We all sit there in a row passing the flask between us.
‘It’s a bit like communion,’ Kat says.
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The sky hangs low in foggy ribbons of all the colours of grey and the snow tumbles outside the shelter in great cascades of whiteness. We sit, bundled up and huddled together for warmth, and we wait. The brandy sits warm in my belly and releases a tiny ball of something like happiness in me.
‘We’re like a nativity scene,’ Jodie says. Kat raises her eyebrows in a question. ‘Well, I mean, this could be like the stable, and then you’re in an animal costume, right, so you’re like the ox or the donkey or whatever, and Violet could be like the shepherd in her dressing gown, and Barbara’s a Wise Man ’cause of that bright orange thing, like a cloak or something, and Amina’s Mary with her blue headscarf and all that. And Snowy is the little lamb.’
‘So who’s Joseph?’ I say.
‘That’s you because of that stripy blanket.’
‘You must be the angel, then,’ Kat says. ‘With that halo of blonde hair poking out of your Santa hat.’
And with the magic she has somehow wrought among us today.
‘I wish I had some wings to fly away and bring us back home,’ Jodie says.
Violet says, ‘I don’t think a Star Wars bear and Santa Claus were present at the first Christmas.’
No cars come by. The road stretches out in infinite snow-numbed silence, the winter trees silhouettes of writhing bone stark against the sky. I wonder what the time is, but DCD took Kat’s phone and nobody has a watch. I wonder what they are thinking, back at the hospital, and if they have called the police. I think about how stupid we were, to not tell them what we were up to, and it makes me think about how Marcus always told me I was a loser who could never do anything right. Yet through the dark haze of my thoughts a new light is poking through, like the ethereal luminosity of the falling snow, shining on my insecurities and highlighting them for what they are. I think about Kane and how Jodie shines without him, and I know that I want to shine, too.
‘Are you okay?’ Kat says to me.
I realise that tears are crawling down my cheeks and I blink at the strangeness of them. ‘I never cry.’
‘It’s okay to.’
‘It’ll be the brandy,’ Violet says.
‘I just… I was thinking about my ex. How he didn’t really love me at all.’
Kat finds my hand under the blanket and squeezes it.
‘I think Kane was the same,’ Jodie says. ‘It’s like, he told me he loved me, and all that, but he didn’t really act like it, did he?’
‘No, he didn’t,’ Kat says.
Jodie rubs her face. ‘No man’s really loved me. My dad ran away when I was young, just like your Jake, Penny. He beat my mum around and I was glad to see the back of him. My mum was different when he left, but she always said he loved her, really, that he just got a bit angry sometimes. Kane said I was his princess, but it was on his terms, I suppose.’
‘You’d hardly had a good role-model for a loving partner,’ Kat says.
I nod. ‘It was the same with Marcus. It was always on his terms, as long as I did what he asked of me and became the person he wanted me to be, it was fine. But as soon as I said no, it wasn’t fine anymore.’
‘He hurt you,’ Kat says softly.
‘He hurt me more in here.’ I point to my heart.
‘You should never have to become somebody you are not to please another,’ Kat says. ‘Especially when they are subjecting you to emotional abuse.’
It feels right to me, somehow, that the first time I am confiding all of this in its raw candour to others is here, in a frozen wasteland, with five people I have come to love. I taste the unfamiliar saltiness of tears on my tongue and think it tastes a bit like all the colours in the world. ‘But how do I move on? It’s like… like he still has a hold on me. Like I look at myself and still see that person he wanted to change, and I keep trying to please people to cover it all over. I don’t have any strength in me, not like you, Kat, or you, Jodie.’
Jodie shakes her head. ‘I don’t have a lot myself. I didn’t have the strength to bin him off.’
‘I have less than you think,’ Kat says, staring out at the snow.
‘You will, though, Jodie. You will find the strength,’ Amina says.
