‘ Girl Detached lays bare the mechanics of grooming, in all its tempting, abusive detail. Such a brave book! Now I know what it feels like to have my heart taken for a ride, and then dumped’ MELVIN BURGESS
GIRL D E TA CHED
GIRL DETACHED MANUELA SALVI
Translated from the Italian by Denise Muir
First published in 2016 in Great Britain by The Bucket List, an imprint of Barrington Stoke 18 Walker Street, Edinburgh, EH3 7LP Text © 2016 Manuela Salvi Translation @ 2016 Denise Muir The moral right of Manuela Salvi to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988 Excerpt from “Illusion is the first of all pleasures” from How to Measure the Sky © 2012 Dropout-Davide Burattin Quotes taken from A Woman of No Importance, Oscar Wilde, 1893 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in whole or in any part in any form without the written permission of the publisher A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library upon request ISBN: 978-1-911370-02-4 Printed and bound by CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon, CR0 4YY
To all the children inside the adults, who know and never forget
He touches me, but it’s weird because I can feel his hands but he’s not beside me, he’s over by the door. I see different faces. I can feel my skin against someone else’s. They touch me. They adore me. Someone mumbles in my muffled ears, “Never seen anything like it.” Or something like that. Then it all goes dark.
1 Helena’s banging again today. I wish she wouldn’t. I’d like to tell her to stop, that my head’s thumping, that the dust is sticking in my throat, but I can’t. The words won’t come out, they’re stuck inside, throbbing, hurting; so instead I drag my suitcase along and think that one jammed wheel isn’t as bad as two. I look at the white line it’s making on the faded lino floor, another scratch to add to the collection. It feels like I’m scratching at somebody’s soul. “I-it’s c-coming on well,” I say when I reach Helena, letting go of my suitcase and catching my breath. She stops hammering and looks at me. I don’t like the look in her eyes. They’re so full of tension all the time. “Y-yeah, uh, y-you know, th-the set d-design. It’s n-nice,” I add, wishing I’d never opened my mouth. I’m starting to stammer too much again. I take a big, deep breath and say shit, shit, shit to myself. It works. I feel my tongue relax a bit, and the pain in my chest eases off. I watch as she picks up a sheet of sandpaper and starts rubbing angrily at the wood. I’d like to be her right now. 1
I’d like to be anyone else but me, because today I’ve got no choice but to keep moving, when all I really want to do is scream. A shower of raindrops suddenly hits me. Cold water drips down the back of my neck and along my spine. But my hair is so bushy that most of the water just runs off and drips onto the floor and my shoes. “Oops,” says a voice from somewhere above me. “So sorry, I was trying out the rain effect.” I look up at the ceiling and see our very own Hunchback of Notre-Dame clambering around the rafters and lights. Jonah. He likes to think he’s the lights, sound and special effects engineer, but I think the only reason he’s here is because he’s got nowhere else to go. I’d like to tell him how stupid he is. I’d like to tell him to stop playing stupid pranks. But I don’t. I take a deep breath, wipe my face and say, “Ap-p-parently it w-works.” I’d never want to be him, and that makes me feel a bit better. I shove my suitcase into a corner behind the scenery and step out onto the stage. Thomas is there already, along with the other actors, and he’s explaining about the rehearsals. He stages shows in a town where no one cares about theatre, using actors who would be good for nothing in the real world. That’s us. The homeless stutterer. The hunchback. The mute set designer who never says a word to anyone. And all the other freaks. Thomas makes fun of us sometimes. “We’re a real Ship 2
of Fools,” he says. “But there’s worse than us out there.” Ship of Fools. I don’t like the name of the theatre company. I know that centuries ago lunatics would be forced on board ships and cast adrift. That’s how they got rid of them. I can’t help thinking about those poor people, left to starve or die of thirst, thrown overboard and eaten by sharks, burned up in the sun or shredded to pieces in a storm. I don’t want to be aboard the Ship of Fools. But I am, because I like acting. My gran wanted me to act. And if I don’t act, there’s not much else I can do, apart from think, which is what I’d really rather not do, especially today. Especially after the events of the past few days. “Hey, Alek,” Thomas says when he sees me. “You look kind of wet. Is it raining?” I nod, silent. He takes a towel from the back of a chair and throws it at me. “Go on, it’s your turn. We’re all ready.” I’m playing Hester in the play we’re rehearsing. Hester the nice girl. Hester the puritan. Young Hester, who judges everyone else so harshly, but who knows so little about life and the ways of the world herself. When she falls in love, she’s willing to change the way she thinks. I close my eyes and the stage disappears. I hold my breath. I imagine Hester and her long, swishy dress, the corset holding her upright, the silk shoes, her gloved hands. I straighten my back and I’m no 3
longer wearing a checked flannel shirt, buttoned up and two sizes too big. I’m not Aleksandra any more. I’m Hester and I’m at an upper-class dinner party. Lady Caroline asks me, “Have you any country? What we should call country?” Smiling, I lift my chin. “We have the largest country in the world, Lady Caroline.” I love Oscar Wilde. The night my gran died, I started learning the lines of the play off by heart, in a panic, sobbing and laughing at the same time. Oscar Wilde knew that life is both pleasure and pain, always mixed up, never just one or the other, always entwined. Then I choke on one of my lines. Thomas looks up sharply from his script – I never stammer when I’m acting. He raises an eyebrow and I try again. “Nothing should be out of the reach of hope. L-life is a h-ho-ope.” Thomas signals to the other actors to ignore me and keep going. And so I wait for the actor playing Gerald – my onstage suitor – to ask me to go for a stroll. I accept and exit the scene with him, advancing into the semi-darkness backstage. I’m Aleksandra again, the ‘k’ in the middle the only thing I inherited from my dad. Jonah comes down from the rafters and starts messing about with the lights panel. In a costume drama, set in the 1890s, there’s not much to play with, apart from maybe a candlelight effect. All the same, he seems to be 4
taking it very seriously, but that’s only because he takes himself so seriously. “What’s with the suitcase?” he asks me out of the blue, while keeping his eyes on his lights panel. “Going on holiday, are we?” “S-sort of,” I reply. I don’t want to talk about it with him. I haven’t told anyone, except for Thomas. Putting it into words would make it feel too real. Words are heavy. When you pronounce them, when you’re acting, you feel the weight of them. If you mix them up, or get them wrong – say marvellous instead of magnificent, for instance – they sound like nails on a chalkboard. Screeching, raking. In the theatre, Thomas can shout, “No! Do it again!” But it doesn’t work like that in real life. If you get a word wrong, if you go off-script, you can’t retake the scene. Jonah doesn’t seem to understand this. In fact, he’s still prattling on in that droning voice of his. “So, where are you going?” he asks. His long blond hair has slipped out of his bandana. “That case looks way too heavy for a weekend break. There’s something serious about it, like it’s about to explode. Are we going to be buried under a mountain of lumberjack shirts, Lady Hester?” He smirks. I think how it’s a nice smile, but shifty too. I shrug and concentrate on the scene being played out on stage. I have to go back on very soon. “Hey, Helena’s our resident mute,” he says. “How about you s-s-say s-s-something?” My onstage suitor comes rushing back from the toilet, 5
hooks his arm in mine and we go back on just in time, Jonah’s sniggers still ringing in my ears. A few lines later, Mrs Allonby – another guest at the party – starts telling me about London dinner parties. “I adore them,” she says. “The clever people never listen, and the stupid people never talk.” “I think the stupid people talk a great deal,” I say, throwing an eloquent glance backstage. “Too strong, Alek. Watch your tone. You’re not angry here,” Thomas says. A glaring spotlight suddenly switches on above us and the thousand-watt light shines straight down on me. It feels like I’m in the gravitational ray of an alien spaceship, about to be sucked up into the sky. I have to squint to stop the light from blinding me. “Jonah.” Thomas sighs. “Pack it in.” The light goes off and semi-darkness returns. “Sorry. Must’ve been an electrical fault,” he says, and although I can’t see him snigger, I can hear it. We’re about to pick up where we’d left off, but there’s no peace for anyone today. The silence is broken by Helena’s hammering – she’s started banging again. Her hammering is harder than usual, which means she’s not happy about something and is interrupting our rehearsals on purpose. It’s amazing how much she can say with just a hammer and something to hit. “I don’t believe it!” Thomas says. I guess that story about the fools cast adrift doesn’t seem quite so poetic at times like these. “Helena!” he cries, hands on hips, as if 6
that pose might be enough to intimidate someone who’s looking at you like a malevolent raven, waiting for the right time to gouge your eyes out. Helena comes over, dragging her feet. Her combat boots kick up the dust of the stage, dislodging it from the old, worn wooden planks. Whenever she comes on for anything to do with the scenery, we all wonder why she doesn’t act. Her presence lights up the stage, transfixing everyone with the very sight of her, as if we’re all holding our breath, waiting for her to say something, anything, even an insult. She’s not one of those girls who only look good with make-up on, in certain clothes, or from a certain angle. She looks amazing just the way she is now, in a pair of baggy denim dungarees, combat boots and a ripped, faded black T-shirt. The dingy rags hanging from her skinny, tense frame contrast with the intense colour of her eyes, making them seem greener than ever. What’s up? she asks Thomas by running a hand through her short black hair. Her fingers leave a dusty streak of sawdust behind. “You’re doing an excellent job, but we need to rehearse,” he explains patiently. “Can you come back tomorrow after school?” She looks at him expectantly, like she’s waiting for him to say something more, then turns on her heel and leaves the stage. We hear the clang-clang of her tools as she gathers them up, then thrusts them into her tool belt. Heavy footsteps follow, the door creaks for a second then bangs shut. 7
“Maybe you should tell the others,” says Lady Caroline, who’s actually Thomas’s real-life partner, Electra. She’s chirpy and plump and playing the part of a 19th-century upper-class Englishwoman suits her. “Tell us what?” I ask in Hester’s voice. Clear, confident. No one notices because all eyes are on Thomas, who has beads of sweat on his forehead even though it’s February and it’s not hot in here. He hesitates. Electra waves her hand to urge him on. “I’m sorry, guys,” he says. A wave of anxiety starts to swell inside me. “They’ve pulled our funding for next year. The council has decided to sell the theatre. So this is going to be our last performance.” You can hear the despair in his voice by the time he gets to the word performance, which he manages to whimper before disappearing backstage. I stand there panic-stricken, rooted to the spot. “We tried everything, but there was no way of stopping it,” Electra adds, flopping down on the lopsided wooden chair that passes as an armchair in the mock sitting room created for our rehearsals. “What about us?” the guy playing Gerald asks. No one has time to answer because the sound system suddenly blasts on and we’re assailed by a burst of shrill, piercing sounds, like electronic screams from a secondrate horror film. The volume is so loud I can feel the planks of the stage vibrating under my feet. I put my hands over my ears. “Jonah!” Electra calls in a tired voice. “Turn that thing off and come here!” 8
We’re plunged back into silence, and I’m not sure what’s worse. Jonah comes on stage and this makes me feel even more uneasy; he doesn’t belong here. The hunchback lives in the tower and should never be seen in public. “You need to find a new place,” Electra replies. “Me and Thomas too. We’ve lost our jobs, the theatre, everything. The world sucks sometimes.” I start to cry. The tears pour out, I can’t stop them. Then I realise that everyone else is crying too, apart from Jonah, who keeps grinning as if all this had nothing to do with him. I’d like to punch him. I want to scream or smash something, take it out on someone. But I hate making a scene, and Hester does too, so I scarper backstage to look for my suitcase. I see Thomas in the shadows; he’s cleaning his glasses with a tissue. “Hey, Alek. Wait, I’ll give you a lift,” he says, forcing a smile. “Today’s a big day for you, despite all our problems.” “No thanks. I’ll go by m-myself. I need to cl-clear my head.” It’s weird, because as I reply, dragging my broken suitcase out of the theatre, the tears keep coming but I don’t make a sound. I’m silent, like there’s just too much pain inside. I lost my gran. I lost the house we used to live in. And very soon I’m going to lose this place too. There’s not much left to make my life bearable. 9