The World Wants You To

Coral cuts the Virgin Mary out of The Children’s Holy Bible and puts her face-down onto the scanner. Joseph and his donkey peer out at her through the hole Mary left. She closes the book.
Fuck you, Joseph.
She waits for Mary to arrive in Photoshop, gradually, stripe by stripe, then moves her around the screen for a while. Turns her 180 degrees so she stands on her head, then dangles a pair of horse bollocks from her throat. Finally, she splits Mary's head in half, leaving her in a permanent state of horror.
“That's better.”
Coral thinks she hears Lottie laugh and jolts, swaying slightly from the sudden surge of her blood. When she finally turns round, there she is.
Lottie.
Grinning at her. Standing just out of reach. She blows a kiss, leaning casually against the window sill.
“What you up to my love?”
Coral just smiles, dizzy.

Downstairs, Gisela is failing to be patient with her son.
”How come Coral isn’t helping?” he whines for the dozenth time and she snaps.
”For God’s sake Matthew, shut up about your sister.”
Matthew is silent then, and Gisela realises it is the first time he has heard her take the Lord’s name in vain. He stares at her across the breakfast bar, where she is stirring mayonnaise into a bowl full of mashed up eggs, and looking at his face she softens.
“She's having a difficult time. The accident is harder for her to deal with than for us. You know how close the two of them were.”

Coral scans a naked picture of herself into her computer. She can feel Lottie close behind her now and it’s a cold, magnetic feeling, like something inside her is being pulled down.
”You’re beautiful,” Lottie says. “But I can’t believe you’ll let anyone see it.”
”Believe it,” Coral says quietly, not daring to turn around.
”My little protégée.” Lottie says.
Coral lets her head fall back but it strikes against air.
Lottie's words echo around the room and Coral sits, perfectly still, trying not to think about what it means that she could hear them.

When the room feels empty again and she can move, Coral prints out a picture of the two of them. She takes a black marker and writes MY LOVE across the arch of Lottie's bare back, pressing the tip firmly so it gives and splays. Lottie’s white skin stands out against the black ink and Coral lets the pen hover, remembering what that skin feels like.
She writes until her hand aches, then she starts to scribble until only Lottie’s grey eyes are left. Then they disappear too, underneath the black ink and Coral puts the pen down, lays her head on her desk.
The words bounce around her skull, black and spiky, digging their corners in, multiplying like cells, until her head is as submerged as Lottie’s. Filled with a blackness that won't go away.

As Gisela slices egg and cress sandwiches neatly into triangles, she goes over the funeral in her head, imagining the ceremony down to the last hymn. She practises looking respectful and taking condolences.
”What are you doing, Mum?” Matthew asks, looking up from scraping the seeds from the middle of the tomatoes.
Gisela smiles at her son, distracting him with praise about his technique.
There will be a lot of people looking at her today. People that are resentful of her success and family. She mustn’t give them anything else to feed on. It is enough that Mark left. They must appear strong, united.
She tries not to drift towards resentment about the funeral. Yes, she was a fool to hire the girl, but she mustn’t dwell on that. All she can do now is try and make the best of the situation. Do the right thing then move on.
If it was Coral that had died, without any family to speak of, this is what she hopes someone would do for her. Or Matthew. Gisela shudders at the thought and passes her son a small white triangle.

*

Coral walks down the stairs as silently as she can, takes her parka from the end of the banister and sits down on the step to pull on her boots. She slips her print-outs into her satchel.
Lottie stands by the front door in just a grey vest, her thin, pale hand holding the latch, ready to go.
”Where are you off to?” Gisela says, appearing in the hallway.
”Town.”
“Well make sure you get the bus. I don’t want you walking round here by yourself.”
Coral lets the door slam.

Gisela sighs and goes back to the breakfast bar to continue with the crudites. The sky is a pale, icy blue outside the window and she watches her daughter disappear into it.
”Where did my little girl go?”
”Huh?” Matthew looks up at his mother and she smiles at him, vaguely.
She’s so different to you. So much more like her father. And me.
She gasps as her freshly sharpened knife slices into her index finger. She breathes deeply.
”Matthew, go and get Mummy a plaster, would you? You know where they are.”
Matthew scampers up the stairs.

*

Coral hurries to catch up with Lottie. Snow crunches underneath her feet.
”What a glorious day for a funeral,” Lottie says when Coral draws even with her. Coral tries to laugh and reaches out for her hand. But Lottie shakes her head.
”Someone might see,” she says sarcastically.
”I don’t care anymore,” Coral says, but Lottie’s already gone.

Coral pays the bus fare silently. She pulls her hood up and puts her head down, stares at the snow that has fallen from her boots. An old lady with eyebrows drawn halfway up her forehead sits down opposite, humming a sad, old song that Coral can’t quite remember and she wishes she could just pass the satchel onto this safe old woman. Let her take the pictures away. Let everything go back to normal like Gisela said.
But then she thinks of Lottie. Cool, beautiful Lottie leaving this world to the sound of strangers singing hymns in St Edmunds church. Poor dead Lottie who just wanted them to tell the truth, who said fuck the consequences. Coral thinks of Lottie and knows she’s doing the right thing.

*

The boy behind the desk at Copy Copy grins expectantly at Coral.
”I need twenty copies please. Stapled. As quick as you can.”
The clock behind him is ticking noisily. It’s in the shape of a digestive biscuit and at eleven o’clock a little plastic cup of tea waits.
Coral ignores the boy’s sly expression as he sifts through her papers and sits down on a stool.
”What are these for then?” The boy shouts from the back room. “Personal use, is it?” He laughs to himself.
Coral doesn’t answer. She’s listening to the sound of the photo copier clicking and whizzing, imagining hers and Lottie’s naked bodies illuminated by flashes of white light underneath.

When the boy tells Coral she can pay two pounds instead of three, she hands three pounds over just the same. He holds the extra pound out, insistent, but she walks out the door. Just before it closes, the clock above his head whistles like an old fashioned kettle.
”No sugar for me!” it shouts. “I’m sweet enough!”
She turns back to look at the boy. He’s still holding the pound up, his mouth open as if he was about to say something.

*

On the bus, Coral puts her knees up against the seat in front and rests the warm zines on her top lip. Low winter sun shines in her eyes as the bus takes her home.

*

Gisela’s suit is laid out on her bed. She bought it when Lightshine Press agreed to publish her book. It’s a shame about the plaster, but hopefully it will go unnoticed. Or perhaps, people will see this little carelessness as a sign of her anxiety. How well she copes, they will whisper. She shakes her head at her vanity and begins to undress.
She is in her underwear when there’s a knock on her door.
”Coral?” She asks. Matthew never knocks.
She pulls her dressing gown on quickly. “Come in.”
The door opens slowly to reveal her fifteen year old daughter staring at the floor. Gisela smiles gently.
She is coming for forgiveness.
”Can I have Lottie’s camera back please?” Coral says loudly, without looking up.
Gisela stands for a second, considering, then walks to the office section of her room. She holds the camera in both hands, wishing for the dozenth time that she’d never found the damned thing.
”I have deleted all the pictures,” she says, watching for a reaction. “As soon as today is over we can put the whole thing behind us. Forget all about it. Don't worry Coral, we will soon be back to normal.”
Coral looks at her directly then, for the first time since the accident and the hatred Gisela sees makes her drop the camera as if it had just told her to go and screw God Himself.
Breathless and shocked, she leaves Coral to pick the camera up.
”And brush your hair today, for goodness sake!” she snaps, slamming her bedroom door shut.

Gisela slumps onto her bed. The first edition of her book lies face down on the bedside table. Its gold title taunts her. Raising a Christian Family in an Unchristian World.
She picks the book up carefully and places it in her bottom drawer. This is not the time for revelations. She must say positive. She must stay in control. She turns her thoughts to something less painful.
Now, will there be enough food to go round?

Coral lies on the carpet rubbing her head from side to side, feeling the charge grow with every stroke. Her scalps’s getting hot and itchy, but she doesn’t stop. She stands and looks in the mirror, smiling at the halo of electrified hair that floats around her head. She tilts her face slightly, watching how the separate strands hover shakily, as if bearing their own weight for the first time.
She wanted Lottie to help her get dressed, but there’s no time now. She’s got to get on with things. The zines sit on her desk, silent and powerful.

Coral pulls Lottie’s black pinafore over her yellow t-shirt and ties a yellow ribbon round her ponytail, the way Lottie used to like it.
”You look like a fifties school girl,” she’d whisper. “Now give me a school girl kiss.”
Coral looks in the mirror. This is what Lottie was wearing when she first saw her. Her dark hair was short and soft then, a skinhead growing out, and Coral thought she looked so hard and beautiful she daren’t speak to her. Lottie talked of crime and politics in the same easy way she explained her parents’ deaths.
“My dad was caught in the cross fire of a drug deal and my mother hung herself the year after. She had hoped to return here, to Cornwall, where she was born, but it didn’t mean anything after Dad died.”
Coral remembered Gisela’s face then. Proud with pity. She'd gotten up to make everyone coffee and Coral just knew she'd be standing in there, smiling about her own good deed as she waited for the kettle to boil.

“It is half twelve!” Gisela shouts, making Coral jump. “Are you nearly ready?”
Coral presses her forehead against the cold glass of the mirror then smooths her dress down. She tucks the zines into her satchel and goes downstairs.

*

Gisela glances at the white lilies against the dark wooden coffin in the car in front. She made the right choice. She sits with her back straight as the two cars negotiate the narrow cobbled streets. As they reach the centre of the town, a woman with a push chair stops walking to bow her head and Gisela thinks what a lovely gesture.
Matthew sits next to her, with Coral next to him. He is in the middle as usual. His hand is rested on his hers and Gisela picks it up to kiss it, grateful once again that it wasn’t one of her family that died.

Coral puts her fingers on the window as they pass the spot where Lottie’s Fiesta span off the road. Three bunches of flowers sit on the pavement, one from each member of her family and Coral wants to scream at how fucking pathetic that is.

Gisela stares at the small clear spaces surrounded by steam that Coral’s finger tips have left on the window. A sudden memory of lying in bed with her daughter before Matthew was born pops into her head. She remembers the feeling of Coral’s cold feet tucked into the crease at the back of her knees.

*

White stones covered in a thin layer of snow crack and shift beneath the car’s wheels as they drive through the cemetery gates. Coral turns in her seat to stare at the world beyond them, feeling as if it is that she is leaving behind. She swallows as the car slows down.

The Do Gooders wait outside the church, like she knew they would. The car door opens. She looks down at the way the white stones move to accommodate her feet, how her shoes shift gradually over them. She stands on the frozen ground. Gisela’s arm is around her waist. A bright blue sky is overhead.

By the door, a small group of people stand. Coral recognises some of them from her mother’s writing circle. The Can’t Fuck Won’t Fucks. They wear black and hold lilies, their faces simper with pity.
”They never even spoke to Lottie.”
”Shhhh,” Gisela says, softly. “They are here to support us.”
“Lottie didn't even believe in God.”
“Don’t make a scene, Coral.”
A couple approach and Gisela puts her hands out to greet them.
”Susan. Peter. Thank you so much for coming. What a beautiful day has been provided.”
The three adults smile complicitly at each other as if they are responsible for the day. Coral watches Matthew trying to keep his face solemn then breaking out in a grin every time someone new pats him on the head.

Sickness paws at the back of her throat and she clamps her teeth together, keeps her head down, away from the gushing adults. She concentrates on breathing through her nose, concentrates on the freezing air scoring a trail to her lungs.

*

Coral keeps her eyes open through the prayers and her mouth closed through the hymns. She tries not to hear what Big Faced Norris is saying, tries to remember Lottie instead. Tries to imagine her beautiful face, unscarred by the accident. As she was. But all she can imagine is her face caved in, her narrow rib cage collapsed in on her heart, like the doctors said. She squeezes the heels of her hand into the hollows of her eyes.

As Gisela stands down from the pulpit, Coral realises she's wearing her book signing suit. She pushes past Matthew to get to the aisle. The Do Gooders look at her, eyes wet with pity. Only Gisela's eyes are different, hard and desperate. Coral walks out the church, laying down one foot then the other until she is outside. She climbs into the waiting car, opens her satchel and takes out a zine. She turns to her favourite picture of Lottie, laughing, lying under the bed with just her head sticking out. Holding the zine underneath her cheek, Coral curls up on the back seat and cries.

*

Back at the house, Gisela drifts between the kitchen and the living room with a bottle of Merlot, topping up people’s drinks and smiling lightly. Across the room, Coral is sitting in Mark’s old chair, glowering at the guests. Gisela starts to walk over to her, then stops.
She looks around the room at Paula Goody, painstakingly polite at all times, and Reverand Norris, who seems to wander around in a force field. She looks at Peter and Susan Miller who are never anything but business like, despite only having married last year.
None of these people are real. I wonder if any of them ever even have sex. Gisela shakes her head and puts her tray down.
I’m even trying to control my thoughts. Arsehole, bugger, twat-fuck. Cunt. Shit-tits.
She takes a sip of wine to cover a smile and glances back towards her daughter. It is all over. If this is how Coral wants to show her grief, that is fine. Forget what happened between her and the girl, today she has buried someone she was close to. This is a pivotal moment in her young life.
Looking at her warm, bright eyed, angry daughter drinking orange juice undoubtedly topped up with something else, Gisela feels proudness swell in her throat.
She picks up a bottle of white wine, resets her smile and begins to circle the room.

*

Coral sits on her dad's chair, drinking vodka.
Lottie used to say she only felt bad because she was hiding things. That if no one kept secrets, no one would feel ashamed. There would be no taboos.
“But the world wants you to keep secrets.” Lottie had said to her. “Without secrets there can't be power.”
”But is this even legal?” Coral had asked and Lottie'd just grinned.
”Of course it is, we’re girls.”

Coral watches Gisela, working the room like it’s a book launch, the Perfect Hostess, and thinks there is nothing more disgusting. She watches the Do Gooders stuffing egg sandwiches into their faces, no longer even pretending to talk about Lottie, and she wonders what she’s waiting for.

Gisela sees Coral rush out of the room. She is pretending to listen to a problem regarding Paula Goody's most recent work: If God is Dead then Why Do I Feel so Strong? She stares into the big pores on either cheek and feels immensely sorry for her. She feels immensely sorry for them all, loitering around, trying to care. It's exhausting. She hopes Coral is okay.

A noise starts upstairs. It's getting louder and the guests are starting to look around. Coral must be playing her music. Peter Miller has his hands on his ears.
“Sorry!” Gisela shouts, as the noise takes over the room. “I’ll go and see what is going on.”

Coral isn’t sure if she can feel the banging on the door or hear it over the build up of violins, but she doesn’t flinch. She is on her knees, with her forehead pressed against a speaker, absorbing the sound as it vibrates through her skull.

She holds the zines in both hands, like a prayer book. Jesus looks out from the cover, standing in front of a neon GIRLS GIRLS GIRLS sign. Her heart, lips and throat pulse in time to the music and she notices the banging on the door stop, imagines Gisela downstairs apologising, trying to keep control.

She reaches for her bedroom lock, easing it open just as the strings join in for the crescendo. A thousand instruments fill the landing, travel down into the living room, and Coral floats down with them, holding the zines so tightly she crushes the pages.

The door to the living room is shut. Gisela must've closed it to keep the noise out. Coral opens it, slowly, watches the wood give way to a room full of nervous faces. The closest one is Gisela’s. Her hands are reaching out for something, but Coral just walks past. Certain things have been set into motion and she is powerless by now, part of something inevitable.

The whole room is looking at her, waiting to see what will happen next. She listens to the second wave of strings, climbing and undulating in rotation, still waiting for something. She looks around the room at Gisela who is in front of her, trying to put her hands on her shoulders. Behind her the Can't Fuck Won't Fucks stand, quietly aggrieved. Big Faced Norris looks irritated. Matthew looks gormless.

Coral pushes a pile of zines into Gisela's outstretched palms, then rushes towards the Can’t Fucks Won’t Fucks who, bewildered, take the zines. She hands one to Susan and her husband, who look at each other for how to act. She gives one to Big Faced Norris who takes it reluctantly, then drops it on the floor when he sees the cover. Peter slams his zine shut too, but just a second too late. Susan keeps hers gripped tightly in one hand, darting her eyes around the room, glancing at Coral then Gisela and back again.

The Do Gooders stand in groups, looking at each other. Some of them flick through discretely. Only Matthew looks openly. He wails when he sees the Virgin Mary. The music carries on, layers and layers of strings, discordant and eerie and beautiful and Coral stands in the middle of the room, looking at the zines on the floor and the shaken adults, looking for her mother.

*

Coral finds her in a corner of the kitchen, near the drinks. She is surprised at her composure. She looks defiant, like a child in the middle of a party she didn’t want and hasn’t enjoyed. Coral stands still by her mother, her adrenalin running out. Reality seeping in. As her heartbeat gets less fanatical and the music begins to fade out she starts to wonder about what she’s just done. Remembering that Matthew was crying, she looks for him.
He’s sitting in Dad’s chair, surrounded by some of the Can’t Fuck Won’t Fucks. When she goes to him, the women and men disappear like she's some kind of Christian deterrent. She takes his small heaving body into hers and thinks about how coldly she cut into his Children’s Bible. She wonders why she did that.

Over her brother’s head she sees Paula Goody walk over to her mother and put a fat hand on her wrist. Her mother steps back, pulling the hand that was touched in towards her chest.
She glares at Paula, then walks out the room.

Matthew’s breathing evens out against her neck as the front door slams for Big Faced Norris’s departure. It shuts again as Susan and Peter hurry out, more flustered than angry. Coral is sure they have bulging pockets.
Car engines start up, growling to rush quickly out the drive. Away from this unholy, contaminated house. Coral strokes her brother’s back and shushes in his ear, rocking him back and forth.

The Can’t Fuck Won’t Fucks wait longest, looking around for something they can do to help. But eventually, they begin to leave too.

Only Paula Goody stays. She wanders silently around, bending her swollen bulk to pick up zines from the buffet table and the floor, patting them into a pile. She collects glasses, takes them through to the kitchen, arranges them by the sink. When they're all clear she pulls herself up onto a stool at the breakfast bar and waits.

The house is finally silent. Coral leans her head onto her brother’s soft hair and listens to his breathing. His crying is just a gesture now, just the odd sniff and suckle.

*

Gisela walks slowly into the silent, emptied room. She looks at her children, huddled together in Mark’s old chair.
Paula Goody walks towards her, holding out a pile of the little magazines, and her eyes are casual as she says:
“Do you want me to get rid of these?”
Gisela shakes her head and Paula hands over the tattered magazines.
“Give me a ring if you need anything.”
“I will do,” Gisela says.
Her voice is flat, but she means it. She smiles and squeezes Paula’s hand. She tells her thank you and sorry.

She sees her to the door then stands on the doorstep, breathing in and out, looking at the sky, which is losing its light. The snow has melted into a grimy, gritted brown.
The icy air lifts the hairs on Gisela’s arms and tightens her nipples until, eventually, she walks back into the house and shuts the door.

It's warm inside. Coral is stroking Matthew’s back gently, leaning her head on his to whisper in his ear. Gisela pours herself a gin and tonic. She has a sip, then changes her mind, holds it out to her daughter. Coral takes it, meeting Gisela’s eyes for a brief second before taking a gulp. She puts the drink down and rests her head back onto her brother's.

Gisela pours herself another gin and sits down. She opens the magazine that her daughter made for Lottie and looks through it silently.