Being Toffee Read online

  For Aoife

  They may forget what you said—

  but they will never forget

  how you made them feel.

  —Carl W. Buehner

  Contents

  Her Name Is Marla

  At the Bus Station

  The Ruby Ring

  The M5 Motorway

  Bude

  Forever

  The Mark

  Shed

  Nothing

  During the Night

  Popcorn

  Bruised

  Cover Up

  Breakfast on the Beach

  The Empty House

  An Invitation

  Overflowing

  Hot Cross Buns

  I Am Marla

  I Am Toffee

  Bacon

  Hobnobs

  Victory

  Alarm Bell

  Who Did That to Your Face?

  No One Did Anything to Me

  Home Help

  I Check My Phone

  Later

  Birdbrain

  Lipstick

  Sweetness

  Dawdle

  Rattle

  Birthday

  Disregard

  A Companion

  Forgotten

  Back

  Fruit

  The System

  Moon Tiger

  Too Long

  Cleaner

  Caught

  Beach Hut Number 13

  Friends

  Waiting

  Crosswords

  Tired

  During the Commercial Break

  Marla Has Moves

  Routine

  Strictly

  The Hunt

  Toffee

  Scars

  Out

  Fictional

  Research

  Good Girl

  How Long?

  And How Long?

  Transparent

  Okay So

  Miscalculations

  A Great Place for Kissing

  Unkissed

  Bloody

  Eggshells

  When the Sun Comes Out

  Clearing Up

  What Is Left Over

  Mercy

  Love

  Washing Dishes

  Rolling Smokes

  Scabby

  Allowed

  Conkers

  Stinging Nettles

  Babyish

  Carol and Lee

  Loss

  Sometimes I Forget

  A Father Too

  I Did Not Kill My Mother Immediately

  Are You My Daughter?

  Giant Rock Candy

  Screaming

  Mashed Potato

  Slam

  Frozen

  Should Have

  Two Hours Later

  Planning

  Makeup

  Homework

  Jobs

  Hiding

  I Tell Lucy

  Shady

  Normals

  The Beginning of Burns

  Funny Thing Is

  Hot Bread

  Out There

  One Thing

  Sexier

  Not Lost

  Trick or Treat

  Whatever

  Fireworks

  Phobia

  Before Kelly-Anne

  The Missing Girl

  When to Leave

  Distrust

  Slippers

  Who Did That to Your Face?

  No One Did Anything to Me

  Memories

  Witchy

  I Sort of Do, Yeah

  Drug Store

  Alone

  Old Enough

  Smash

  Gin Is Tonic

  Single Ladies

  Hangover

  Any Jewels?

  Have You Seen?

  Where’s the Remote?

  The White House

  Marla’s Tiny Terraced House

  Meeting Marla

  People

  Bath Time

  Unlocked

  Reading the Meter

  Pneumatic

  Can I Owe You?

  Cupcakes

  Chats Over Tea and Cupcakes

  You Could Make Anyone Love You

  Valentine’s Day

  Romeo and Juliet

  What I Wanted

  Before Bed

  Behind the Butcher’s

  Darkness

  Betrayal

  Space

  Pointless

  Snickers Bar

  The Blackbird

  Stuff

  Concern

  In Knots

  What John Lennon Does

  After Donal

  Police

  Loitering

  Small Talk

  Wasted

  Bra Shopping

  Tweeting

  Recycling

  Scabby

  Power

  Beach Day

  Brief Encounter

  Captured

  You Are Mine

  After the Summer Fair

  Iris

  Birthday

  Soothing

  So Maybe

  Still My Mother

  How Worried?

  Breakfast

  Imbalance

  What I Don’t Know

  A Consolation

  Assault

  In the Daylight

  Bad Weather

  Who Did That to Your Face?

  My Dad Did It

  Sulking

  Get Up

  Understanding

  Thing Is

  Acceptance

  Different Lessons

  Advent

  Hamless

  The Beach

  Please

  Grease

  I Am Allison

  The Sea

  Fallen

  This Time

  Paramedics

  Passing On

  Mine

  Keeping Busy

  Asleep

  Peggy Appears by the Bed Too

  The Call

  No Answer

  The Fire

  Intruder

  Packing

  Free-Falling

  Jazz

  I Am Allison

  She Will Know

  The Other Side

  Boxing Day

  Kelly-Anne Calls

  The Sun-Up Bakery

  Apartment

  In Marla’s House

  Always

  Demi-Sister

  Louise

  Forever

  Marla Is Home

  Blank

  In and Out

  You Owe Me

  Doughnuts

  Calling Dad

  In Need

  Enrollment

  What Happened to Toffee?

  Final Act

  Leaving

  Taillights

  Her Name Is Marla

  Her name is Marla,

  and to her I am Toffee,

  though my parents named me Allison.

  Actually

  it was Mum who made that decision;

  Dad didn’t care about a bawling baby

  and her name

  the day I showed up.

  He had more important things on his mind.

  And now,

  Marla sleeps in a bedroom next to mine

  with forget-me-nots

  climbing the papered walls,

  snoring,

  lying on her back, lips

  parted.

  Sometimes, at night,

  she wakes,

  wails,

  flails, and begs the air to

  leave her alone, leave her alone.

  I scuttle in,

  stroke her arm with my fingertips.
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  I’m here. It’s okay.

  You’re just having a bad dream.

  That usually settles her:

  she’ll look up

  like I’m the very person she expected to see,

  shut her eyes and

  float away again.

  The mattress on my bed is so soft I sink.

  The cotton sheets are paper-thin

  from too much washing.

  Nets, not curtains, cover my window:

  streetlights blare in.

  This is not my home.

  This is not my room.

  This is not my bed.

  I am not who I say I am.

  Marla isn’t who she thinks she is.

  I am a girl trying to forget.

  Marla is a woman trying to remember.

  Sometimes I am sad.

  Sometimes she is angry.

  And yet.

  Here,

  in this house,

  I am so much happier

  than I have ever been.

  At the Bus Station

  A bearded man sits

  by me on the bench

  in the bus station.

  His nails are broken, dirty.

  His sneakers have holes in the toes.

  Want a Pringle?

  He conjures a red tube from his khaki coat.

  I edge away,

  focus on the backpack by my feet

  stuffed with clothes, bread rolls.

  I couldn’t carry much—

  didn’t have much to take anyway.

  What the hell happened to your face?

  The man squints, crunches on the Pringles,

  slides toward me.

  There are crumbs on his coat,

  in his beard.

  Looks like someone got you good.

  I turn away

  hoping

  he’ll think I don’t understand,

  mistake me for a foreigner.

  And I feel it today,

  an alien far from home already,

  the world all noise and nonsense.

  A bus pulls up. I hand the driver my ticket,

  a yellow square to Elsewhere

  paid for with Dad’s card.

  Runaway.

  Liar.

  Thief.

  In a seat near the back

  I press my forehead against the

  cold, sweating window.

  I am heading west—

  to Kelly-Anne,

  who never wanted to go—

  never wanted to go without me anyway.

  The bus revs and shudders.

  I am leaving.

  The Ruby Ring

  Her suitcase bulged in the middle

  like it had overeaten.

  She must have packed the day before—planned it.

  Sorry, Allie, I gotta get out.

  He’s getting worse.

  Kelly-Anne took off the dull ruby ring Dad had

  given her.

  Her face was bloated and pale.

  No smile in weeks.

  Still.

  Don’t go.

  I yanked at her jacket.

  Come with me.

  Her eyes were on the wall clock,

  feet in her boots.

  We’ll get somewhere cheap and

  work it out, yeah?

  Go and throw some stuff into a bag.

  Do it quickly.

  Come on. Quick!

  I let go.

  Don’t you love him?

  He’s a bastard, Allie.

  She had a plummy bruise on her arm to prove it.

  Don’t you love me?

  I can’t stay. And I can’t explain.

  She eyed the ring.

  Surely you above all people can understand.

  I do but…

  My forehead felt hot.

  My knees locked.

  He isn’t all bad, is he?

  He works so hard.

  He’s tired.

  Allie—

  We could make him happier together.

  Both of us.

  We could try again.

  I can’t try anymore, she snapped.

  She twisted my wrist.

  She’d never

  hurt me before,

  yet here she was

  stacking it up.

  You don’t need to stay here.

  She unintentionally gestured to the mirror—

  to herself.

  The reflection stared back,

  broken and

  unconvinced.

  What she didn’t realize was that

  I didn’t have any choice.

  I had to stay.

  He was my dad, not my boyfriend.

  You can’t just walk out on your parents.

  Who else did I have apart from him?

  Who did he have but me?

  I sobbed in the hallway.

  Kelly-Anne pulled a scrunched-up ten from her

  bag,

  a coin hidden inside like a present.

  Here, she said,

  as though money might make it all right.

  I’ll get settled and call you.

  Be strong and don’t piss him off.

  Tell him you didn’t see me leave.

  Make him believe I’ll be back

  so he doesn’t look for me.

  And that was that.

  I watched her from the window,

  worrying about what would happen when Dad got home

  and discovered his fiancée was gone,

  the engagement ring left on the hall table,

  the same red ruby that had belonged to my

  mum

  back when he loved her

  best.

  The M5 Motorway

  This road must be the longest in the universe.

  Concrete and concrete and concrete.

  I fiddle with my phone,

  follow the jagged blue line to Bude.

  A few months ago I would have spent the journey

  sending Jacq crude emojis

  and taking sly photos

  of losers on the bus,

  their mouths gaping open in sleep.

  Now I have no one to message

  and nothing to go back to.

  I hope Kelly-Anne still has space for me

  in her life.

  Concrete and concrete and concrete.

  The longest road in the universe.

  Bude

  Buckets and spades

  hang from an awning.

  Titan-white gulls yap overhead.

  A gaggle of girls slurp ice cream from waffle cones

  despite a slight drizzle.

  One girl pauses

  then suddenly skips after the others:

  Wait up!

  I lug my bag after me

  down the

  steps of the bus

  and on the pavement,

  inhale salty air.

  I have an address on a scrap of paper,

  a map on my phone.

  It is two miles to Kelly-Anne’s place.

  Forever

  A man in a checkered soccer shirt

  opens the door. Yeah?

  He unashamedly stares at my cheek.

  Is Kelly-Anne home?

  My shoulders are burning.

  I put down my backpack.

  Kels? Nah.

  I doubt we’ll see her again.

  She buggered off, didn’t she?

  He lifts junk mail from the mat,

  flicks through it,

  steps outside

  and bungs it into a recycling bin.

  She’s in Aberdeen.

  Got a job in sales. Owes me rent.

  He picks his ear, stares at his finger

  like he might discover something fascinating.

  Try her phone. Not that she’ll answer.

  I’ll try.

  I don’t tell him

  she hasn’t replied to my messages recently either,

&n
bsp; or that it seems pointless

  if she’s in Aberdeen and

  I’ve come to Cornwall.

  We are a whole country apart.

  You all right?

  The man examines my backpack.

  I better go, I say.

  Do you have somewhere to go?

  His expression has softened.

  A cat is nudging his sneakers.

  I don’t know.

  But not home,

  I know that for sure.

  The Mark

  I tap

  my cheek

  with the tips

  of my fingers.

  It is still hot.

  Shed

  The air is bruised by the blast of fireworks

  and the dusk smells faintly of gunpowder

  though it’s weeks until Guy Fawkes Day.

  Straight ahead

  a gravelly lane separates

  two rows of gardens,

  and despite Google Maps telling me to

  turn right,

  I cut through it, back into town,

  down toward the sea.

  In one garden,

  a greenhouse with moldy windows.

  In another,

  a collection of toys piled into a pyramid.

  In the next,

  a stack of deck chairs and folding tables.

  But near the end of the lane

  is a ramshackle shed,

  its door ajar,

  overshadowed by an abandoned house—

  no lights on inside,

  ivy like lace across its windows.

  I slip through a gap in the fencing,

  push open the door to the shed,

  slip inside.

  It is strewn with rusting cans of paint,

  a split bag of cement.

  Heavy tools hang from hooks;

  the one small window looking onto the lane

  is curtained over with a torn cardigan.

  I can use my sweater as a pillow.

  I can lie with my feet against the door.

  There are worse harbors.

  Nothing

  I check my phone

  though I haven’t switched off the sound,

  would easily have heard a ping,

  but still nothing from Kelly-Anne.

  And nothing from Dad either.

  I try lying down,

  imagining tomorrow’s sun