Black Heart Blue by Louisa Reid

to start the summer term at the tail end of April, and her sharp eyes fastened on me as I quietly brought her sweet tea. She raised an eyebrow.
    ‘Why aren’t you at college, Rebecca? It’s exams soon, surely?’
    I didn’t dare answer her.
    ‘I’m sure you’re terribly useful around the vicarage, dear, but really, it’s a terrible burden on your parents, having to keep you at your age. Really if you’re not going to bother with your studies you ought to find a job.’
    The Father nodded and pretended to agree with her assessment, protesting that I was too shy even to try, but the next thing I knew I’d been let out on day release. Thank you, Mrs Sparks.
    Instead of living out the rest of my existence in the vicarage, I was to go next door.
    The care home next door is a place for all the people no one wants any more. If you lollop and your face is twisted, if your voice comes out slurred and you can’t really hear, if you’re old and have forgotten how to remember, then that’s where you’ll end up. And that’s where I was going.
    ‘You’ll fit right in,’ he said when he told me, late that night as I lay in bed, before he laughed and slammed the door.
    At first it was hard. The smell of hours lived out in lingering resignation stayed on my clothes and I carried it back with me to my room at the end of every day. I didn’t like to look at those faces; I don’t want to feel the way I know people feel when they see me.
    Hephzi wouldn’t come, she told me so, there was no way she was setting foot in that place.
    It stinks of piss
, she says,
and those weirdos freak me out
. I sighed and went off alone. Anywhere was better than the vicarage.
    On my first day the woman in charge, Mrs Sweet, handed me cleaning stuff and I set to work in the bathrooms. It was hard work and I tried to daydream as I scrubbed the dark yellow stains from around the rim of the toilet bowl. Remembering where I was up to in
Middlemarch
before The Father ripped it up kept my mind off the past and I finished the story in my head. The stench and the stains on the loos refused to be masked but at least I didn’t need to fear footsteps in the hallway, adumbrating pain. By lunchtime I was sweaty and stinky; I would haveto try to sneak to the chemist and steal a deodorant, like Hephzi had done. I could just imagine her pulling faces at me and holding her nose when I got back later. The carers ate with the residents in the sunny day room and I felt my stomach knot up as I watched the messy business get underway. I looked them over, for once I was the one doing all the
staring, and it was strange to see these people, their faces creased with life, wearing plastic bibs and sipping through straws held by patient, younger hands. Guiltily I looked down at my plate and shuffled the bits of salad. I couldn’t eat the soup, not when I’d watched it slide down so many faces and be mashed into so many fists.
    I didn’t mind the work. It was easier there than in the vicarage. The Parents were leaving me alone and although I didn’t trust their silence it was a relief. The pattern repeated itself, day in, day out. I cleaned, I wiped, I helped to dress and change and feed. Hephzi still kept away when I was there and I didn’t really blame her. No one really talked to me, although they smiled. The other carers and cleaners were mainly foreign workers, from Eastern Europe or the Philippines, but it didn’t matter if they didn’t understand the residents since none of them made any sense anyway.
    It was another Friday but I wouldn’t be going out, I was in my room and it was almost clean. I knew the stains had been growing and I’d been avoiding looking at them, but it was getting so that if I didn’t at least try to clean them away then they might burst. The hoover belched andgroaned and once I’d cleaned the floor I scrubbed at the marks on the walls by Hephzi’s bed. They wouldn’t come off even though I used bleach. Even as I worked it seemed