Emily Selencky

Emily Selencky trained as a print journalist before moving into education, and has been teaching English Literature in and around London ever since. She is interested in the idea of cause and effect and how the actions of our naive younger selves can impact so heavily on the course of our lives. This is explored in her novel, It All Comes Back to This.
Contact: emilyselencky [at] fastmail [dot] fm 

It All Comes Back to This

 

Part One

10th August 1981

She dug out a handful of the brownish gloop and squeezed it between her fingers, her head on one side as she watched it drop in cool, grainy chunks from her hand. Sarah was cross-legged on the wet sand, her costume wrinkled over her belly, her hair whipping her eyes. The salty breeze skipped across her shoulders. As she plunged her red plastic spade into the beach, she looked up to see her dad walking towards her from the sea. His brown shoulders sparkled and his hair was dripping.

“Daddy!” she called as she waved the spade over her head, grinning.

To her side, Sarah’s mum leaned into a green and yellow striped deck chair. She was holding a folded back copy of ‘Woman’s Weekly’ at arm’s length but, at the shout, she too sat up and waved. Sarah’s dad ran towards them.

“The water’s amazing - you two need to come in for a swim,” he said, breathless as he rubbed himself down with the towel Sarah’s mum had thrown to him.

“Freezing, more like!” her mum said. “Come on Sarah, let’s show him what we’re made of!”

Sarah’s sandy fingers grabbed at her mum’s as they ran towards the waves, her jelly shoes slapping on the wet sand. The sea roared at them as they approached.

Her toes touched the icy edge of the water and her heart pounded - her mum pulled her into the foam, giggling. She was picked up, and the beach blurred into colours as she swirled through the air, her legs swinging out like the Chair-O-Plane ride she had watched open-mouthed yesterday. Her feet dipped down into the cold froth of the shallows and Sarah laughed, her belly shaking until it hurt. Pinheads of cold dotted patterns all over her body.

***

Later, her dad took her to see the animals on the farm while her mum cooked sausages and baked beans on the camp stove for tea.

“Daddy, look at the donkey, ‘e looks sad,” she said, pointing across to the gate where the beast’s long grey face rested.

“Come on,” he said, “let’s go and see if the rabbits are out of their hutches. The owners said we can pet them if we like.”

Sarah grabbed her dad’s hand tightly and walked with him across the lumpy cobbled yard towards a pen made from chicken wire. A cool breeze whispered along her arms and little bumps formed on her skin. Her dad pulled a cardigan out of his rucksack and helped her wriggle her arms in.

“Daddy, look!” Sarah squealed as she ran towards the rabbits’ enclosure.

A baby rabbit loped towards the side of the pen, snuffling along the ground for food. Its over-sized ears stuck straight up like it was listening to the sky. Shiny black eyes looked out from its fur. Shortly after, two more babies and a grown-up hopped out of the hutch and followed the first youngster, each rabbit twitching its nose at the air.

Sarah’s dad followed her and they knelt together, his arm around her.

“Look at that one washing its face,” Sarah giggled. “Is that the mummy?”

“I think so,” said her dad. “Shall I ask if we can pet them?”

Sarah put on her most serious face and nodded.

***

When her fingers brushed against the fluff of the rabbit’s tummy, Sarah wriggled with excitement.

“Be very gentle, love,” her dad whispered.

“I am!” she said.

While the lady from the farm held the rabbit, Sarah whispered into its ears, running the back of her forefinger slowly down their length. She put her cheek to its downy body and pulled her sticky left palm across its back, taking with it a layer of tiny fine hairs which she rubbed off her hand onto her cardie.

“What’s she called?” Sarah asked the lady holding him.

“Smudge,” she said, “because of her patchy markings.”

“Hi Smudge,” Sarah said. “You’re lovely.”

By the time they arrived back at their tent, the sausages in the frying pan had developed a dark, volcanic crust on the outside.

“Where’ve you two been?” Sarah’s mum said. “I thought you were going to be quick!”

“You know what it’s like love. Sarah was besotted with those rabbits. We really should think about some kind of pet you know.”

“Oh please!” said Sarah, hugging her mum’s leg. “Please, Mum. I’d feed it and clean it and everything. Please can we get a rabbit? Dad said we could if you said. Please Mum!”

“I’m allergic love, you know that,” her mum said, ruffling Sarah’s hair with her hand. Sarah pulled away, wiping some tiny rabbit hairs that still tickled underneath her nose with the back of her hand. Sickly disappointment dropped like an over-sized egg down her throat and into her belly.

That evening, Sarah lay in her sleeping bag fiddling with the zip, her eyes open. Sunlight still shone through the walls of the tent, washing everything blue. She held her hand to her face, examining the creases of her palm: tiny rivers in the strange light. Panda and Favourite Baby were with her, guarding the door in case night-time animals tried to get in. Outside, Mummy and Daddy chatted and laughed.

“It’s great here isn’t it?” her mum said.

“Sarah loves the farm you know, especially the rabbits. We should take her back tomorrow,” her dad said.

“You’ll have to go, love. I don’t want to risk it and feel terrible for the rest of the time. Even the hairs she brought back on her cardie have set me off sneezing.”

There was the clinking of glass, a drink being poured. Sarah turned slowly onto her other side, trying not to rustle the sleeping bag – she wanted them to think she was asleep.

“It’s done me the world of good you know. It’s been a proper escape,” her dad said.

“It’s done all of us the world of good,” her mum replied. “This thing has been hard on us all,” she said.

“Well, things are looking up,” he said. “Should all be back to normal soon.”

It went quiet and Sarah pulled Favourite Baby under the covers, pushing her under her pyjama top so that her plastic features pressed into the skin of her chest. Her eyelids fluttered closed.

***

The sun was just coming up when her eyes peeped open. She screwed up her face and shut her eyes again as the light flashed on her pupils, then opened her lids more slowly, using her fingers as a shield. Rubbing at her warm, round cheeks she sat up, her canvas camp bed creaking. The slow, steady rhythm of her parents’ breathing flowed through the fibres of the tent wall next to her – her own compartment was filled with the fug of their sleep and she was hot.

Sarah pushed back her damp curls from her forehead and eased herself out of her sleeping bag, kicking at its slippery material to free her legs. The door on her sleeping compartment hadn’t been zipped up and she went down on all fours, poking her head through the open flap into the living area of the tent. Two enormous shapes - suitcases full of their clothes - sat side by side and a washing line draped itself high up in the tent, their swimming costumes and towels hanging blackly down. A plastic washing-up bowl was on the metal fold-up table filled with last night’s dirty dishes. The cool box lid had been left off and Sarah could see the top of the apple juice cartons.

Sticking one pyjama-covered knee over the threshold, Sarah crawled towards the juice, then lifted herself up and hauled the pack of cartons out of the box. She pulled and twisted at the plastic that held them together, biting at one corner then jamming her finger in and pulling until it hurt. It was too difficult. She gave up, leaving the cartons in the middle of the floor and sitting on the cool ground sheet.

The breeze lifted the outside flap of the tent at the bottom of the zipped door. Each time it lifted, Sarah saw the grass outside, wet with dew. She thought about the rabbits she had visited with her dad. They would be hopping about on the deep green grass in the morning sun, nibbling on cool pieces of carrot in their enclosure. Smudge would be up on his back legs, his fluffy white tummy tickled by the breeze.

She’d only needed to open the zip a tiny bit in order to wriggle under the door and once she was outside she remembered easily where to go: it was straight down towards the campsite office and then around the back of the old wooden building with the rusty metal roof. The grass was cold and slippery under her bare feet and the breeze chilly through her pyjamas. She cuddled her arms around herself as she neared the rabbits.

“Smudge! Smudgy!” she called, sticking her index finger into a hexagon in the chicken wire fence and wriggling it like a worm.

The mummy rabbit they had seen the day before appeared from around the back of the hutch, sniffing at the air then searching the ground for food. Sarah knelt on the floor and pushed her face right up to the wire, letting its cold grid press into her skin. She looked across the pen to check for Smudge and the other babies, excited to see their deep, black eyes and their little round paws. She wondered if she might be able to touch one of them through the wire if they came close enough.

There was a daub of red at the other end of the hutch, smeared across the grass like a giant’s finger paint. It glistened wet in the morning sun.

Sarah stood and edged her way along the fence, her face still pressed to the wire so that she had to keep pulling her nose in and out of the hexagons. As she drew closer to the far end, she stopped and pulled her head back, screwing up her eyes in an effort to work out what she was seeing. Across the grass there was a mess of fluff and red – a rabbit’s white tail and a leg stretched out. Where the head should have been was a deep red, something fleshy and torn. Minced beef; raw chicken liver on her nan’s chopping board. Next to the bigger rabbit was Smudge, on his side, his patchy brown fluff catching the breeze. He didn’t move. The fur around his neck was stuck up with the redness and his black eye was dull.

Sarah knelt, waiting for Smudge to move.

“Smudgy,” she called softly. “Are you ok?”

Smudge was still.

Sarah scrambled up off the small stones that stuck painfully into her knees and ran back in the direction of their tent, her breathing quick and sharp. Her chest hurt.

She reached the dark blue flap and wriggled back inside, grabbing at the zip of her parents’ sleeping compartment. Her cold fingers struggled with the metal pull but eventually she opened the zip enough to allow her in and pushed herself between her still-sleeping mum and dad, pulling up her bottom and forcing her legs down inside their zipped-together sleeping bags.

“Sarah,” her dad slurred without opening his eyes, “You’re freezing.”

Sarah pushed her head in towards his chest, pressing her cold cheek against him, and he rubbed at her arm for a moment before his breathing settled again into its rhythm. She shut her eyes and pretended to sleep. 

Part Two

3rd May 1994

Peters thought they were bloody laughing with him, stupid twat. Sarah Donaldson watched him stalk the narrow corridors with his Rupert Bear checked  jacket straining across his belly, his rat of a toupee scratching at the bald dome it covered. ‘The Rat’ as it had become known. Every so often, she noticed, he would reach up and thrust his fingers underneath it, rubbing furiously, his veins bulging and pulsating at his temples. He would shriek banshee-like at kids jostling ahead of him, his face reddening.

“Michael Jones, tuck your shirt in,” he would scream. Or, “Julia Barker I can nearly see your knickers in that skirt – roll that waistband down.”

And he sang. Onward bloody Christian Soldiers mostly. A thin voice, almost falsetto on the high bits. It cracked Sarah up - it cracked them all up. But not in the way he thought.

It was just before GCSEs and Sarah’s lot had been cramming at Jimmy’s house the night before, testing each other on the periodic table while Jimmy’s mum brought in rounds of white toast and peanut butter and a big jug of orange squash. That morning the upper school sat shoulder to shoulder on rows of moulded plastic chairs in the assembly hall. Wooden shields, thick with years of varnish, hung around the tops of the walls. They bore the names of students who had sat there years before them. Sarah had spent so many dull hours in that hall that she knew the gilt lists off-by-heart. She often wondered what their lives had been like. Most of them would be dead by now – ghost students.

Sarah heard a whisper at the far end of her line. A note was being passed down from Martha Burden via Kirsty and a couple of others. She watched each girl take it quickly from the last, the movement of their eyes barely noticeable to anyone looking on. It felt like an age before it got to her. ‘Meet at the back of the Humanities block at break. Got something to tell you, M xx’ was written on the paper in purple gel pen, the dots of the ‘i’s’ done as little hearts. Sarah winked at Martha and passed it forward to her best mate, Lucy. Just in time too, because just after that Miss McArdle came over and told them to do their ties up properly. Mr Peters was on stage droning on and on about revision and all the time The Rat was slipping just a little bit towards his right eye. Some days the rugby lads took bets on how far down it would fall before the end of assembly. One morning it reached the top of his eyebrow and Josh Rivers did a silent punch in the air without thinking - half of the Fifth Year ended up in detention with Macca for laughing.

When the morning break bell went at the end of double English and the chair legs scraped across the parquet floor, Sarah grabbed Lucy’s hand and dragged her through the classroom door, ignoring Mr Wilson’s shouts.

They giggled together and ran down the gloomy English corridor towards History. Sarah’s rucksack bumped up and down on her back, books and pencil case flying around inside. At the end they ducked around some Second Year boys gathering in the dusty space under the stairs to play cards and Sarah pushed through the fire door that led out onto the grass outside the dark, stone building. Lucy grabbed Sarah’s arm and they crossed the road over to the grass verge in front of the Humanities bit – a ‘temporary’ prefab that had been there at least fifteen years. Two of the windows around the back were cracked and the door had been kicked in years ago.

Martha was already there, her back arched against the peeling green paint of a doorframe, her wavy red hair draped over the shoulders of her polyester blazer. Her right foot was up on the wall and her boobs stuck out. Below her were the open fields that many of the pupils tramped over to get to school in the morning, Sarah included. Long, thick grass that she would drag her scuffed leather shoes through, collecting dew on her toes. Sarah pulled Lucy over, giggling.

“Where’s Jimmy?” Martha asked without smiling.

“Dunno,” Sarah said.

“Giz a chuddy,” Martha said to Lucy who had pulled a pack of Wrigley’s Juicy Fruit out of her blazer pocket. Martha took a stick and folded it into her mouth. Sarah did the same.

Another couple of minutes and Jimmy and his best mate Rob turned up, Jimmy untucking his shirt and pulling at his tie and Rob following suit. Kirsty followed, out of breath. She’d been put in detention for scratching her name into her desk with a compass but had persuaded the new trainee teacher to let her out. Something about her time of the month, she said.

Martha never moved – everyone else just sort of gathered around her, shuffling closer and closer as she began to speak. Jimmy, with his blonde tipped hair parted in the middle and his tanned arms full of friendship bands stood next to her so that their hips touched. They were an item. Sarah had fancied him for a while in Second Year, along with half of the girls - she’d even sent him a Valentine’s card with one of those ‘Forever Friends’ bears on the front. Jimmy had been really sweet about it but Josh had got hold of it and passed it around the whole year group. It took forever for her to live it down.

“So, you guys probably know I had detention with that creep Peters last night, right?” Martha said, leaving a dramatic pause.

Sarah had no idea but she looked at Lucy and then across to Jimmy: both of them were nodding. She joined in.

“Well, I’m telling you,” she carried on, “he had more than my essay on his mind when we were in that classroom, if you see what I mean.”

Martha pointed dramatically at her boobs and pulled a funny face, screwing up her mouth and widening her kohl-lined eyes.

Sarah looked back at Lucy who smothered a grin with her hand, then she quickly switched her gaze to Martha. She creased her mouth into a sad face. Kirsty stepped towards Martha and put a hand on her arm while Jimmy put his arm around her shoulders. Rob muttered something Sarah couldn’t hear. He eyed Jimmy and Martha closely.

“You ok, hon?” Kirsty said, stepping forward. Martha nodded and smiled weakly. Kirsty stepped back, a textbook look of concern on her face. Probably pissed off she hadn’t known about this first - Martha and Kirsty had been pretty inseparable since the end of Third Year when Kirsty had joined the school. She’d managed to blag her and Martha into a Prodigy gig and from that day on they’d been best mates.

“Shit no way!” Rob said, his timing off as usual. He too stepped forward and placed a pale, long-fingered hand on Martha’s sleeve. On the side of his cheek, just below his left ear, was an angry red lump and a smattering of white spot-heads ready to spew out their contents. Martha put her hand on his before he stepped back. Sarah shuddered.

“Thanks guys,” she said, looking at the floor. “I’m telling you, there’s something wrong with him. He needs to be stopped before some poor girl who can’t handle herself ends up on her own with him.”

Jimmy nodded and squeezed Martha’s shoulders. Sarah looked at Lucy who had moved closer to her. Lucy had lost her smile and kicked absently at a pebble on the floor, her arms crossed. Her long blonde fringe hung over her eyes making it difficult to read her face – Sarah couldn’t get her to make eye contact.

“Did you tell yer Mum?” Sarah asked.

“Don’t be an idiot. Then she’d tell my dad and he’d lose it again like he did when our Emma got pregnant. D’ya remember how that turned out? Plus, it’s my word against Peters. Who they gonna listen to?”

Kirsty, Jimmy and Rob nodded in agreement. Sarah wedged her elbow into Lucy’s side to bring her attention back to Martha.

“So what’d he and The Rat actually do?” Kirsty spat out.

Martha wiped an invisible tear from under her left eye and Jimmy tightened his grip on Martha’s shoulders, pulling her body closer to his.

“Don’t make her go into details, man, that’s gross,” Jimmy said, rubbing Martha’s shoulder and flicking his head back to remove the hair from in front of his eyes. “The guy’s an old perve and he needs to know he can’t get away with it.”

Kirsty’s face and neck flushed red and she pursed her lips. Rob nodded enthusiastically while Martha tugged on Jimmy’s sleeve. He winked as though they had agreed some kind of signal, and the pair of them walked away, around the corner of the prefab and back towards school, Martha’s shoulders bobbing up and down as though she were sobbing.  A pair of blackbirds chirped noisily in a tree nearby.