Black Heart Blue by Louisa Reid

his hand on me, no one would ever see the mark underneath my hair.
    ‘Where have you been?’
    ‘At school.’ The words came out as a whisper and I knew my lie convinced no one. Lifting me by the hair, he picked me up and threw me against the wall. My head clipped the ancient mirror hanging there and brought it crashing down, banging my shoulder painfully as it went.
    ‘Don’t lie to me,’ he threatened, his fist poised. I smelled the whisky on his breath, saw the red eyes and floridcheeks. Cowering, my arms over my head, I waited for the next blow.
    ‘Where have you been?’ he demanded again. ‘The truth of it.’
    ‘At a friend’s house.’
    ‘Liar!’ he screamed and I braced myself for the blows.
    I needn’t have bothered with the fabrications. He knew I didn’t have friends and he knew all about my job, one of the local busybodies had spotted me and spilled the beans, and my pathetic attempts to worm my way out of trouble saw me tumbling in the force of his rage; drowning, wheeling, caught by a wave elemental in its power. I could only wait for the tide to abate and trust that I would soon come up for air. When he’d finished with me I crawled up the stairs. He’d hit me in all the places where bruises can easily be hidden: my torso, upper arms, chest, buttocks and thighs. And he knew I wouldn’t scream. The whole thing was silent, almost balletic, the dance so familiar now that I knew how best to crouch, how to move a shoulder to deflect a blow aimed at my breasts, but most of all how to hold back the tears. At least this time he hadn’t had his strap. Hephzi had always said she would hide it
and maybe that had been her last gift to me.
    Earlier he’d ransacked my room and found the money I’d saved from the job and hidden under Hephzi’s mattress. So he relieved me of today’s ten-pound note too and emptied the edition of Eliot’s poetry out of my bag, grinding it with his foot on the floor, just to make sure Ilearnt my lesson. I crawled under my bed, shuddering, and then started to hum a quiet tune, deep down in the back of my throat. If I filled my head with that noise I wouldn’t remember anything else, I could force the pain away and become invisible. He’d knocked my hearing aid off the screw attached to the side of my skull and I was glad that everything was even more muffled now, as if I were swimming underwater. I lay under the bed with the dust balls and odd socks and imagined drowning. The carpet dissolved and I let myself sink, further and further, deeper and deeper, just as Hephzi had on the day
she’d died.

Hephzi
    Before
    Finally I make it home from the pub. I’ve run all the way from the bus stop and I’m out of breath, but Reb has been watching for me and opens the front door to let me in, at no small risk to either of us, as she tells me in her best bossy-boots voice. I tell her to shut it and we scamper up to bed fast. I decide not to bother telling her what a horrendous night I’ve had when I see her scowl.
    ‘What are you wearing?’ she asks, dropping her mouth open, in horror, I suppose.
    ‘Stuff of Daisy’s. Why?’
    ‘You look like a slut.’
    ‘Shut up! You sound like Mother.’
    ‘No, I don’t. And you do look like a slapper. Admit it.’
    I nearly laugh hearing Reb say that word, she’s obviously picked up something about how to be normal at last.
    ‘Don’t you dare laugh! Don’t you realize how risky all this is?’
    We’re hissing our argument, she’s sitting there in her bed, a little ball of malice, and I’m trying to get out of theclothes fast before someone comes in and I’m rumbled. I stuff them under the mattress, my heart still skipping from the run home from the bus stop and the sneaking upstairs. If he’d caught me I’d probably be half dead by now.
    ‘I’m not doing that again.’ Rebecca won’t shut up.
    ‘Doing what?’
    ‘Lying for you. Sneaking around, opening doors in the middle of the night. You’ll get caught and we’ll